In my vision, a silver rope appears with four knots. It’s looped in a circle.
“You are bound together in life and death,” she says.
Death. This is death. The Sea of Dreams is from a bedtime story my mother would tell—a place where people go when they die. I thought it was a fairytale. But my mother had wings. I saw them. What is happening? Maybe I’ve been working too much. Stress building up or I’m having a breakdown.
“Darling, don’t be afraid,” my mother’s voice intones.
“I want to live. I want you to live, Mom.” My jaw trembles.
“My time has passed, my darling. I did what I could to spare you. Now, please break the curse.”
Spared me? What curse?
“I love you and your sisters,” my mother says.
Then the silence becomes loud in my ears.
I drift in that strange place of thought for a few more moments before a flame ignites within, starting in my chest. Was she referring to the message on the note I read from the demon? She must’ve been. My eyes blink open.
Surrounded by mist and clouds of white fluff, I hear the faint thump, thump, thump of my heart struggling to beat. My body is heavy, as though it’s forever cemented to the ice.
Ice? Where am I?
My breath puffs an impossibly faint cloud. My breath. The dead can’t breathe. I wiggle my fingers to find that a silver rope, the skyn my mother spoke of and that I saw in my vision, tangles around one hand. The note from the demon is in the other. I stuff both in my pocket with shaking hands. I squeeze my toes.
There’s blood in my veins and a pulse in my heart. My cheeks ache as my lips lift. I returned from the Sea of Dreams or wherever that was. I’m alive.
A soft drip, drip, drip draws my attention outward.
Ice melts from my lashes. There’s no time to think about how or why I came to be here, if death released me from its icy grip, or what exactly is happening. I need to move and create heat.
As I try to stand, my feet slip from under me. I tilt and then slide toward black water. I realize that I float on a precariously small hunk of ice. Fog rolls over me as I glance toward the sky, searching for the sun or the moon, for light, land, or home.
All I hear is the shushing of the floe through the night shades of gray like murky puddles. I roll over onto my stomach and clutch the top of my tiny iceberg.
In the distance, I spot something solid and decidedly lighter gray, white, like the edge of the icy land. I slide lower, flinching when my boots hit the water, but I begin kicking to propel myself forward.
My legs are stiff at first, but I gain momentum and ignore that the splashing might attract creatures that lurk beneath the surface of the water. I’m intent on getting to the nearby land.
I pump my legs up and down, my breath shallow as I float closer to the sheet of ice. I quickly tire. My boots are laden with icy water. My eyes dip closed and blink open. My vision glistens. I could really go for some birthday cake. This must be a weird dream.
The cold water suggests otherwise, waking me up.
I’m so close...
With one last surge of energy, I thrust myself forward, and crash into the edge of frozen land. I heave myself onto the ice shelf, roll over, and catch my breath as the moon appears from behind a cloud.
A hot flare surges inside me. Where am I? Am I alive? Did death give me a choice like I offer the demons when they come in for processing?
Certainty solidifies like the surrounding ice. My mother said she’s spared me and kept me from dying, but I don’t think she meant just now. The pendant around my neck chills my skin as I remember the story of the Sea of Dreams my mother told me—a place of faeries and elves. I’m not a magical being, but maybe my mother was. That sounds weird, but she did have wings I didn’t know about until I found her earlier. I press my hand to my chest. The pain of losing her shoots through me.
I inhale. Yes, I’m alive. For now. But she is not. I sniffle, but even that is ominously cold. I have to keep moving.
I press onto all fours and straighten then walk along what may very well be the jagged edge of the world. The moon lifts higher in the sky, illuminating my path and shining a light on my surroundings—ice and water in every direction.
I’m still in my work uniform so I have a knife in my belt and a few single-use talismans to subdue demons. Heather snuck them to me when she started with the Force. She said she didn’t want me stuck in a dark alley with a demon and only my fists to defend me—though I’m no slouch when it comes to fighting. In fact, the chancellor at the Magical Management Vocational Academy thought I showed promise, but she said I lacked control and precision. Wrong. I saw a target. Locked on. Wouldn’t let go until they were dead. I possess a deep desire for justice. Allie said it was sometimes like I was possessed by an otherworldly desire to eradicate the world of demons. Doesn’t everyone feel that way?
With the moon to my left and the lapping ocean to the right, I continue walking. My feet crunch over chunks of ice. I call into the night and then become worried about the kind of response I’ll get. I’ve never heard of demons
