Resonance - Erica O'Rourke Page 0,7
side.”
I saw when she caught the edge—a hitch in her movements and a slight curling of her fingers as she found the right Echo, widening the pivot as she eased inside.
When she’d disappeared, I took one last look at Simon’s desk, envisioning him sprawled there, long limbed and laughing, and pressed my fist against my heart. Then I pulled myself through the pivot, following her lead.
• • •
On the other side the classroom was equally deserted. Ms. Powell was paging through the sheet music on the piano, waiting for me. Around us the frequency throbbed in a steady rhythm.
“Who’s teaching if you’re not here?” I asked. Ms. Powell interacted with Original students and staff all day, but her impressions wouldn’t last in the Echoes—countless versions of Washington High were missing a music teacher.
“Nobody. I keep a letter on my desk in the Key World, explaining my sudden resignation due to urgent family matters. It’s been here since the day I started, so every Echo that’s sprung up since my arrival has one. When administrators in those worlds find it, they hire a sub.” She shrugged. “It’s not strictly necessary, but we like to be inconspicuous, even in Echoes.”
“Do all the Free Walkers masquerade as Originals?”
“Very few, actually. We have people working undercover in every Consort—”
“Even ours?”
“Even yours. But the majority tend to live in Echoes. It lets us limit our interactions with non-Walkers, so the repercussions are more manageable. This is the longest I’ve been in the Key World in years.”
“Don’t you get frequency poisoning?” Even the most stable Echoes would make a Walker sick over time. Minor bouts, like the one I’d suffered fixing an inversion, would put you out of commission for a few days. Major ones could rob you of your hearing and your sanity. “You should be a raving lunatic by now.”
“We have ways to counteract it,” she said, toying with her earring. “I’ll show you later. For now, let’s focus on the cleaving. Or rather, the not-cleaving.”
We wandered through the school. Class was out for the day, and while there were still people around, teachers and custodians, students with detention or clubs, none of them noticed us. I could see how living in Echoes was easier—and how lonely it must be.
Ms. Powell stopped in front of the library. “Cut site,” she said, pointing to a bank of lockers. A place where an Echo had been cleaved. The only sign was a barely perceptible line a few inches in front of the metal doors, hovering like spider silk. Invisible, unless you were looking. “Have you ever felt one before?”
“With my dad, when I was little. We’ve checked a few in training, too.”
“How did they feel?”
“Rough.” The pads of my fingers tingled at the memory. “Like burlap, you know?”
“Cleavers cut the strings of an Echo and reweave the fabric of the parent world. Because it’s man-made instead of naturally occurring, the patch isn’t as finely woven as the surrounding fabric.”
“That’s why cut sites are weaker? Because the fabric’s not as dense?”
“Partly. You’ve learned about the energy transfer in your Consort classes, correct?”
“The basics.”
When an Echo forms, it creates energy, which circulates between the existing branch and the new offspring like sap through a tree. That energy bolsters the Key World, protecting it from unstable frequencies. When Cleavers cut the strings between two realities, they direct the energy back into the parent world, use the weaving to seal it inside, and allow the cleaved Echo to unravel.
“One of the problems with cleaving is that not all of the energy can be harvested. Some percentage always escapes during the reweaving, so the cut site is never quite full strength.”
I hadn’t heard that before. “Still better than letting an inversion take root. Or leaving the edges unwoven,” I said. “The energy would be wasted otherwise.”
The smile she gave me was almost triumphant. “Not necessarily. Feel it,” she said, and pointed at the lockers.
My hand inched toward the cut site, and the frequency around me quieted, the faintest of diminuendos. The air split beneath my touch, and the strings vibrated in perfect unison. Listening with my fingertips as well as my ears, I found the cut site. Instead of the coarsely woven fabric I expected, a line of tiny bumps pressed against my fingers, firm but resilient.
“Knots,” Ms. Powell said when I twisted to look at her. “The threads are tied, not woven.”
“This is a cleaving?” That couldn’t be right. But the odd seam was silent, like any other cut site.
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