“Yes. This is the bit.” He ran his fingertip beneath a section of text. “Coinníonn neart an déantóra an Uacht le chéile,” he murmured in Gaelic, the language of Ireland and its Celtic heritage.
I looked at him. “Huh?”
“Now, as you know, my Gaelic isn’t great, but I think it’s something along the lines of ‘The maker’s strength holds the Will together.’ I’m guessing that ‘Will’ is referring to the Wisps.” Nathan scanned a portion of text beneath. “Yes, and here it says that ‘they reside in a different realm—an interdimensional pocket enveloped in secrecy. This realm is thought to have been created naturally or, at best, accidentally.’”
“But we know it wasn’t,” I chimed in. “The pixies said it was created to imprison the Wisps after they disobeyed their missive.”
Nathan’s eyebrows knitted together. “That may explain this next part. It says that the Wisps were thought to have been expelled about a thousand years ago by a Primus Anglicus by the name of Fergus McLeod. No one knows why for sure, but it’s speculated that he was punishing them for leading people astray.”
Boudicca yelped suddenly, nodding so hard I worried her head might fall off.
“Did he forge the gateway? Is he the one who trapped the Wisps and took away your Necromancy?” I held out my arm, and she hopped onto it. She squeaked enthusiastically and began a one-woman show. She knelt in prayer before leaping into the air and pretending to be some kind of higher being, floating down to… answer that prayer?
“Fergus McLeod summoned a Child of Chaos to help with the Wisps?” I asked. “And that Child took away your Necromancy and helped Fergus forge the gateway?”
Boudicca grinned and clapped. From what I could remember of Mom’s and Uncle Finch’s Child of Chaos lectures, they probably would’ve been in their otherworlds by then, but still at liberty to help the Primus Anglicus here and there. It was only when the bloodlines got watered down that the rules had tightened. And since it had been a life and death matter, and wayward spirits misbehaving was against Chaos’s rules, I guessed the Children of Chaos had no choice but to get involved.
Nathan nodded thoughtfully. “That would explain why it’s such a powerful gateway. If these Wisps are spirits of the dead, then it would be tantamount to creating a separate afterlife in that interdimensional bubble. As you can imagine, the energy required would be enormous, but child’s play for… well, a Child.”
“Wait… a separate afterlife?” That chilled me, for one terrifying reason. “Do you think people die instantly, when they go in there? Do they become spirits, too?”
Nathan flicked back through the book, his mouth scrunching up in concern. “Here’s something.” He swallowed loudly, as though trying to force down a lump in his throat. “It says: all that enters is held under the maker’s rule. No soul may leave unless bidden. No Chaos may leave unless instructed. Corporeal beings should not set foot in such a world, lest they find themselves confined, their bodies turning to spiritual matter with the passage of time.”
I gulped. “Any suggestion of how long a person has in there before they start to turn?”
“No.” He shook his head grimly. “But we shouldn’t assume they have decades. We should work on the assumption that they don’t have long, because I’m not risking everyone coming out… dead.”
Neither am I. My nerves amped up with the thought of Genie being trapped in there, only to turn to dust or something if we managed to get her out. Surely, it couldn’t be an instantaneous thing? I had to hope it wasn’t, because losing Genie was something I knew I would never recover from. Never. She wasn’t just a friend. She was more like a sister, and I refused to walk this life without her.
“Does it mention what happened to Fergus?” He was the key to this, the supposed ‘ruler’ of the realm behind that door. The more I knew about him, the better prepared I would be to break into his world and get back what belonged to us.
He pored over the pages some more. “It says he disappeared one day without a trace. Some believe that the Wisps took him with them when they were sucked through the gateway. Although it might’ve been the cost of building the gateway in the first place, his sacrifice to the Children for ridding the world of these disobedient spirits. A gatekeeper of sorts, though I’d say he’s not doing his job properly, since they’ve managed to sneak out again.”
“What about the Door itself? Any way we can open it without the Wisps?” Theorizing as to how it had been created was all well and good, but getting through was more important. Genie was still in there, somewhere.
Nathan licked his finger and turned the page. “I’ll need a few more minutes and a bit more light.”
He got what he asked for, sooner than either of us expected. Just then, the Door to Nowhere flew open and searing white light spilled out into the darkness of the sphere, setting it ablaze. The gaseous Wisps pummeled out with a vengeance, and in greater numbers, determined to hypnotize us this time. They were less like floating ballet dancers this time and more like angry hornets buzzing around our heads, stingers out and eager to strike.
I covered my head with my hands as a group hurtled toward me, swirling around and around in a dizzying spectacle. They weren’t trying to hypnotize us; they were going for harder, more violent tactics. Aiming to weaken us or bring us to submission, maybe, before they hit us with their siren song again. Another cluster gunned for Nathan,
