Additional Disclaimer: The song, "Angeles" (yes, that's how it's supposed
to be spelled) that I included in this chapter doesn't belong to me. The
song was composed and sung by Enya, and Roma Ryan wrote the lyrics.
****************************************************************************
We ended up not going on our supernatural mission until the next day. Spirit decided to tell Professor Xavier about her idea, and then wanted us to get a good night's sleep first. I nearly changed my mind about helping out when my friend explained to the Professor why he needed to know this.
~I don't want anyone else to know about this, ~ Spirit thought, ~because I don't want to disappoint anyone unnecessarily. It is probable that we will fail.~
~WHAT?!~ my mind burst out.
"You agreed to take the necessary risks, correct, Amanda?" Professor Xavier's voice steadied me and kept me from quitting. People only called me by my real name when they were very serious. One look at his terribly hurt face made me gulp and agree.
My friend continued, ~I'm sorry, Spy, but it's really possible. Even if we manage to get our spirits there, we might not be able to come back. I'm not sure how the return'll work. Which is why Professor Xavier needs to know about this. Please, Professor, if it's been more than a month (I don't know how time there interacts with time here) and we are still vegetables, let us die.~
How she was so calm is still a mystery to me. I was breaking out in cold sweat.
Eventually, though, we were given permission to go through with it, and went to bed. Spirit was so tired, and so afraid of the consequences of being unable to accomplish our aim, that she was willing to risk sleeping. I couldn't sleep at all. This made me able to wake her up when she began to have nightmares, though, so it wasn't altogether a bad thing.
~Ew, you poor girl, your fur is singed,~ I thought to her.
~Dreamed about my old home burning again,~ she thought back shortly, rubbing salve on the burns. ~Thanks for waking me up. You can't sleep?~
~Too scared.~ I answered, hugging myself in the semi dark.
~I can't get back to sleep either. I'm tired of this. I want to rest! Let's go now.~
~NOW? At this time of night?~
~Technically, it's morning. 2 AM. Besides, I can hear better at night. There is less brightness to cancel out my other senses. I'm not so flooded with light.~
~How can you be so cheerful?~
Her dark abysses of eyes widened. ~I'm just trying to put a brave front on it. Are you ready?~
~I need the picture. And a flashlight.~ She produced both from under her bed, and donned her shades against the light. The picture still made me shiver. ~I really don't want to go there, ~ I thought nervously.
~Want to hold hands? I'm just as terrified as you are.~ Her fur was bristling like the tail of a nervous cat. ~When you do this, make sure that you keep the telepathic link with me strong. Read my memory if you have to. Keep a fierce hold on me while at the same time project yourself to the place. Take a good look at it, then turn off the light.~
I switched off the flashlight with my shaking free hand and took a deep breath. Simultaneously, my mind took in a long drink of my friend's quiet but powerful thoughts. The only sounds I could hear was our breathing and my own heartbeat. ~I'm scared,~ I repeated.
~We're in this together, Spy. I promise that I won't let go until this is over. Feel the connection between us. You and I have an unbreakable bond. This will make me able to follow you into the darkness and back out again.~
~Right. Best friends together. Now what?~ Doubts were creeping in my mind, drowning it in anxiety.
~Calm down, Spy.~ Spirit wasn't relaxed herself, but I could feel her self- confidence and faith in me that strengthened my will. ~Take us to the place. Imagine it. It's cold and dark and is filled with a sense of waiting. There is no life, and there is no peace. I know that your entire being wants nothing more than to stay away, but remember that it is not all a void. I will be there too. What keeps me going is the thought that all your life and laughter and spirit will be with me there. Everything that you need to help you, find it in yourself, or in me.~
I did all she told me, straining all my powers to the utmost. The effort began to give me a headache, and I felt chills travel down my spine. Even though I had worn old sweatpants to bed and had put on a sweatshirt over an oversized T-shirt, I felt very cold. It was almost completely dark, and I couldn't see a thing. ~I can't do it, Spirit,~ I thought in despair. ~I'm sorry. I really tried.~
"Who says you couldn't do it?" said a quiet voice at my elbow. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
"Who is it?" I asked, dazed and now on my feet. The only thing I saw in the darkness was a faint gleam of silver.
"Me, of course." It was a thin, reedy voice, like the sound of wind whispering through the trees. In my morbid state it sounded to me like the voice of a girl ghost. "Get used to the light first, then you can see me. I can see you fine. I took my glasses off back in the room."
My voice quavered uncertainly. "Silent Spirit? Why can I hear you? Does that mean we're...THERE?" I realized that my voice was also a dim echo of my actual one, and that I couldn't manage to sound louder than a whisper.
"We certainly are. You're wonderful, Spy! Even though I gave you all the instructions I could, that was a really hard thing to do with minimal guidelines. Professor X should promote you to the X-team as soon as we get back. Oh, careful, you're standing on the edge. Don't fall off."
Inching forward cautiously, groping my way forward in the darkness, I reminded her, "There's not much use for my powers in battle, I'm afraid."
"But you could definitely find out what the Brotherhood was doing. Can you see anything now?"
"My eyes are starting to adjust. Oh dear. It looks exactly like your picture." We indeed seemed to be on a plateau of bare, light gray rock, suspended in blackness. Darker boulders pierced the star-less, eternal night, with razor-sharp edges. I tried touching one. The stone went straight through me. "I'm a ghost!"
"If ghosts are insubstantial in the living world, doesn't it make sense that living things would be insubstantial in theirs?" Spirit's eyes, which I had previously found cold and empty, were now a relief to me. They were restful pools of sleep and meditation, as opposed to the foreboding, sinister darkness around us. However, they seemed to be almost suspended in midair, surrounded by a gray fog that used to be her face, and framed by a silvery shine that no longer looked like hair.
I asked, "Where is the light coming from?"
"From the building. It's hidden behind the rock I have to my back. I can't look at it."
"Was that where your dream..."
"Yes," she cut me off.
I moved to where there were no stones blocking my view. The distance to the brilliantly bleak white cell was much farther than her picture had led me to believe. It seemed to be at least a mile, and it was in the exact center. "Do we have to go there?" I asked her weakly.
"Yes. He'll be in it." Though her voice was barely audible, it was very steady. "Lets go." Spirit pulled me away from the boulder with her left hand.
"Hey, your cast is gone!" I exclaimed. "Our bodies look like shadows." Flickering dark outlines of where my torso and legs used to be met my eyes. We could see the rocky ground through our feet. "This is weird.
"Life is full of weirdness," whispered Silent Spirit. I noticed that she was looking in every direction except the building. Side by side we walked, grasping each other's wraithlike hands. The warm pressure of her fingers was an immense comfort in all this emptiness.
As we walked I asked my friend several questions. "Why can I hear you?" was my first.
"By transporting your soul here, you've tuned your hearing to the same sound waves that I hear. So now we can hear each other, which is a good thing because you're keeping our psychic link together, which makes your telepathy too busy for you to read my mind." Her voice blew in and out, increasing and decreasing in volume in an inhuman way. She didn't need to pause for breath.
"But why are we so quiet?"
"Your voice belongs to the world of the living. Mine now belongs to the world of the dead. The ghost world is halfway between both. So we hear half of our voices."
"Where'd your cast go?"
"We didn't bring our bodies with us. What you see is our memories of our own bodies being there."
"Then how can we see and feel? How come your eyes still see in the dark better than mine?"
"Spy, I don't know everything." Her sad look silenced me. "Everything I know, I learned during the past few days. I don't want to think about them."
"I'm sorry." I apologized. "I forgot that you're not a wizardess."
She answered, "It's okay. It's just that – well - I'm getting tired of this power. Talking to my parents is great. But not hearing your voice, or the voice of anyone else at the mansion, is not so great. I miss hearing rain falling on the roof. I miss watching movies and listening to CDs. It seems like forever since I heard music on the radio, or popcorn popping, or crickets chirping, or birds singing in the morning. And I've never been able to go into a public place all my life. ALL MY LIFE!" On the last statement her voice grew to as loud and she could manage, which was an intense stage whisper. Then her voice dropped to as quiet as possible for her, and I had to strain to hear. "If I weren't a mutant, my mom wouldn't have died when I was born. Sometimes mutant births bring complications." My friend sighed.
"Spirit, you can't help being what you are. Besides, there must have been some other reasons!"
"She had pneumonia then, too, Dad said," admitted Spirit.
"See? And if you didn't have these powers, we wouldn't have met."
"True."
"And we wouldn't be able to win against Stryker."
She turned to me, though still walking onwards. "Do you think we will?"
I assured her, "If you and I can't do it, no one can."
Spirit smiled slightly. "I'm glad you're here with me." She paused. "You know, I've been thinking...this is probably the only time in this life that you'll ever hear my voice. So, um, could I sing something?"
"Go ahead. It would help a lot."
Silent Spirit thought for a moment, then whispered, "This was one of my dad's favorites. It's pretty old. He used to play it at night..." Her voice trailed off. Then she began to sing. Her full voice came in then, clear, strong, and lovely. It seemed loud after all the whispering. The sound itself seemed to alter the shape of the land we were in and make it more bearable, the land which had never heard music. I doubt that anyone could've come up with a more appropriate song for the occasion. Why did she sound like her true self when she sang? My belief is that music transcends all dimensions and times.
[Angels, answer me, are you near if rain should fall?
Am I to believe you will rise to calm the storm?
For so great a treasure words will never do
Surely, if this is, promises are mine to give you, mine to give...
Here, all to soon the day!
Wish the moon to fall and alter our tomorrow.
I should know heaven has her way - each one given memories to own
Angels, all could be, should you move both earth and sea
Angels, I could feel all those dark clouds disappearing...
Even, as I breathe, comes an angel to their keep.
Surely, if this is, promises are mine to give you, mine to give...]
As soon as her song ended, I nudged for her to look up. "That can't be a falling star, can it?" I said. A white spark was shooting down towards us. It grew as it fell, until it began to resemble a human form. The form was also transparent, but unlike our dark shadows it was a white mist. When it reached the ground I could see that it was in the shape of a man. Somehow the presence made the terrible emptiness less empty and terrible, and my fears were soothed.
"Dad?" whispered my friend. Then, a phantom tear running down her cheek, she said, louder this time, "Dad! Why...why are you already here? Our enemy is still hiding."
The form said simply, in a voice that was just as quiet, but much more powerful than ours, "You called." He smiled. "I couldn't miss that song." Spirit reached out a hand to him, but he drew back, shaking his head. "Not yet, Myra. It is not the time. One day you can touch me again. But not tonight." We resumed our trek, having stopped walking when he appeared. Spirit was between him and me.
"Is Mom coming?" she asked him, a little hurt about not being able to hug him.
"Do you want her to be here now? I could have her follow. She's been organizing the people who want to help you. They will come at her signal. I'm sort of scouting it out first, as it were." He seemed to notice me for the first time. "Is this your friend Spy, Myra?"
Spirit answered, "Yes. Sorry I forgot to introduce you. Spy, this is my father, Charles Sing. Dad, this is Spy. She got us here."
Mr. Sing nodded at me. "I've heard a lot about you. Thank you for looking after my daughter."
"It's-it's n-nothing." I stuttered. "She's a great friend."
"Are you a little skittish about the fact that I'm dead? You sound nervous."
I was extremely embarrassed. "Well, it's a pretty disturbing place anyway. But, yeah, I just find it a little weird..."
"It's all right. I was a bit uncertain of myself after I died, but by now I'm used to that. Actually my shape is a bit brighter than this, but I had to tone it down so that Myra could still look at me."
"Oh, good," whispered Spirit in relief. "I'd just realized that I forgot to tell everyone about that."
"We'll be pretty blinding even so, though. Be ready for it when the rest come," warned her father.
"I don't want the rest of the spirits here yet. Do they have to come at the same time that Mom does?" asked my friend.
"I was able to find you because of the song. It connected us. Your mother will be able to find me, because we are so close, but the others need to be directly behind her, or else they might get lost. You have no idea how dark and far the way here is," he answered.
"Where did you come from, anyway?" I inquired.
Both the Sings stared at me. "Somewhere..." answered Mr. Sing. "Call it what you like. I'm not allowed to tell anyone about it."
Spirit added, "He hasn't told me either, Spy. It's nothing personal. Nobody I've talked to may tell me what the afterlife is like. Nor what religion got it right. That would...mess things up. People aren't meant to know for sure about what happens after death. It has to depend on faith. But I know that SOMETHING does, obviously."
Changing the subject, I asked Silent Spirit, "What exactly are we going to do once we reach the building?"
"Our helpers are going to go inside the building..." she began.
Mr. Sing shook his head. "We can't." He tried to explain why, but couldn't think of the word. "It's..."
"Too evil?" suggested I.
"That's one way of putting it," he whispered. "But there's more to it than that. The substances are incompatible. Ghosts are so close to Nothing. Angels are so close to Everything."
He seemed to be struggling, so I whispered, "It's okay. Don't hurt yourself."
"I guess you'll have to, Spy," Spirit told me regretfully. She looked shell- shocked by this change of events.
"You're coming too, right?" I asked.
Spirit shook her head. "I'm really sorry. I would, but it's too bright for me in there. And Stryker doesn't know you, but he knows me. He knows what I'm scared of, and he knows how to attack me. Though he knows you exist and that you're my best friend, he doesn't know your mind, because he hasn't been studying it. It never occurred to him that you might pose him a threat."
I cringed. I've never pretended to be a girl of valor. "What?!" I protested. "You never said I'd have to do that. This was not part of the deal!"
"I'm really sorry," Spirit repeated, looking down and letting go of my hand. "I was so certain that the spirits could go in, that I forgot to ask. I thought I'd said that I needed you to do that, though, Dad."
"No," said her father, "you never did. You should have. This is when happens when you're not prepared. Remember what I said about that, Myra? What your mother said?"
She began to look frustrated. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I've been under a lot of pressure lately, you know."
"That you have," he replied soothingly.
Forgiving her for her mistake, I said, "Okay. I think that it would have been more reasonable if you had told me earlier, but this is no time or place to argue. This has to be done, even though I must be one of the worst people to do it." I paused. "For our teachers and friends. For peace."
Relief washed over Spirit's face. "For me. Thank you. This won't happen again."
"I hope not," I commented acidly. "What do I have to do, anyway?"
"Get him out of there," whispered my friend. "Theoretically, you could walk straight through the wall. Like that girl in the dorm across the hall from ours. Use any way you want. Insulting him would probably work best. But be careful, because he can control everything in that room. Make sure that he's outside of it before you get him too riled up."
"Suddenly, it seems like it'll a loooong time before we go home," I muttered to myself as we, two phantoms and an angel of glory, continued to travel on a plain of futility, under a sky of death.
****************************************************************************
We ended up not going on our supernatural mission until the next day. Spirit decided to tell Professor Xavier about her idea, and then wanted us to get a good night's sleep first. I nearly changed my mind about helping out when my friend explained to the Professor why he needed to know this.
~I don't want anyone else to know about this, ~ Spirit thought, ~because I don't want to disappoint anyone unnecessarily. It is probable that we will fail.~
~WHAT?!~ my mind burst out.
"You agreed to take the necessary risks, correct, Amanda?" Professor Xavier's voice steadied me and kept me from quitting. People only called me by my real name when they were very serious. One look at his terribly hurt face made me gulp and agree.
My friend continued, ~I'm sorry, Spy, but it's really possible. Even if we manage to get our spirits there, we might not be able to come back. I'm not sure how the return'll work. Which is why Professor Xavier needs to know about this. Please, Professor, if it's been more than a month (I don't know how time there interacts with time here) and we are still vegetables, let us die.~
How she was so calm is still a mystery to me. I was breaking out in cold sweat.
Eventually, though, we were given permission to go through with it, and went to bed. Spirit was so tired, and so afraid of the consequences of being unable to accomplish our aim, that she was willing to risk sleeping. I couldn't sleep at all. This made me able to wake her up when she began to have nightmares, though, so it wasn't altogether a bad thing.
~Ew, you poor girl, your fur is singed,~ I thought to her.
~Dreamed about my old home burning again,~ she thought back shortly, rubbing salve on the burns. ~Thanks for waking me up. You can't sleep?~
~Too scared.~ I answered, hugging myself in the semi dark.
~I can't get back to sleep either. I'm tired of this. I want to rest! Let's go now.~
~NOW? At this time of night?~
~Technically, it's morning. 2 AM. Besides, I can hear better at night. There is less brightness to cancel out my other senses. I'm not so flooded with light.~
~How can you be so cheerful?~
Her dark abysses of eyes widened. ~I'm just trying to put a brave front on it. Are you ready?~
~I need the picture. And a flashlight.~ She produced both from under her bed, and donned her shades against the light. The picture still made me shiver. ~I really don't want to go there, ~ I thought nervously.
~Want to hold hands? I'm just as terrified as you are.~ Her fur was bristling like the tail of a nervous cat. ~When you do this, make sure that you keep the telepathic link with me strong. Read my memory if you have to. Keep a fierce hold on me while at the same time project yourself to the place. Take a good look at it, then turn off the light.~
I switched off the flashlight with my shaking free hand and took a deep breath. Simultaneously, my mind took in a long drink of my friend's quiet but powerful thoughts. The only sounds I could hear was our breathing and my own heartbeat. ~I'm scared,~ I repeated.
~We're in this together, Spy. I promise that I won't let go until this is over. Feel the connection between us. You and I have an unbreakable bond. This will make me able to follow you into the darkness and back out again.~
~Right. Best friends together. Now what?~ Doubts were creeping in my mind, drowning it in anxiety.
~Calm down, Spy.~ Spirit wasn't relaxed herself, but I could feel her self- confidence and faith in me that strengthened my will. ~Take us to the place. Imagine it. It's cold and dark and is filled with a sense of waiting. There is no life, and there is no peace. I know that your entire being wants nothing more than to stay away, but remember that it is not all a void. I will be there too. What keeps me going is the thought that all your life and laughter and spirit will be with me there. Everything that you need to help you, find it in yourself, or in me.~
I did all she told me, straining all my powers to the utmost. The effort began to give me a headache, and I felt chills travel down my spine. Even though I had worn old sweatpants to bed and had put on a sweatshirt over an oversized T-shirt, I felt very cold. It was almost completely dark, and I couldn't see a thing. ~I can't do it, Spirit,~ I thought in despair. ~I'm sorry. I really tried.~
"Who says you couldn't do it?" said a quiet voice at my elbow. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
"Who is it?" I asked, dazed and now on my feet. The only thing I saw in the darkness was a faint gleam of silver.
"Me, of course." It was a thin, reedy voice, like the sound of wind whispering through the trees. In my morbid state it sounded to me like the voice of a girl ghost. "Get used to the light first, then you can see me. I can see you fine. I took my glasses off back in the room."
My voice quavered uncertainly. "Silent Spirit? Why can I hear you? Does that mean we're...THERE?" I realized that my voice was also a dim echo of my actual one, and that I couldn't manage to sound louder than a whisper.
"We certainly are. You're wonderful, Spy! Even though I gave you all the instructions I could, that was a really hard thing to do with minimal guidelines. Professor X should promote you to the X-team as soon as we get back. Oh, careful, you're standing on the edge. Don't fall off."
Inching forward cautiously, groping my way forward in the darkness, I reminded her, "There's not much use for my powers in battle, I'm afraid."
"But you could definitely find out what the Brotherhood was doing. Can you see anything now?"
"My eyes are starting to adjust. Oh dear. It looks exactly like your picture." We indeed seemed to be on a plateau of bare, light gray rock, suspended in blackness. Darker boulders pierced the star-less, eternal night, with razor-sharp edges. I tried touching one. The stone went straight through me. "I'm a ghost!"
"If ghosts are insubstantial in the living world, doesn't it make sense that living things would be insubstantial in theirs?" Spirit's eyes, which I had previously found cold and empty, were now a relief to me. They were restful pools of sleep and meditation, as opposed to the foreboding, sinister darkness around us. However, they seemed to be almost suspended in midair, surrounded by a gray fog that used to be her face, and framed by a silvery shine that no longer looked like hair.
I asked, "Where is the light coming from?"
"From the building. It's hidden behind the rock I have to my back. I can't look at it."
"Was that where your dream..."
"Yes," she cut me off.
I moved to where there were no stones blocking my view. The distance to the brilliantly bleak white cell was much farther than her picture had led me to believe. It seemed to be at least a mile, and it was in the exact center. "Do we have to go there?" I asked her weakly.
"Yes. He'll be in it." Though her voice was barely audible, it was very steady. "Lets go." Spirit pulled me away from the boulder with her left hand.
"Hey, your cast is gone!" I exclaimed. "Our bodies look like shadows." Flickering dark outlines of where my torso and legs used to be met my eyes. We could see the rocky ground through our feet. "This is weird.
"Life is full of weirdness," whispered Silent Spirit. I noticed that she was looking in every direction except the building. Side by side we walked, grasping each other's wraithlike hands. The warm pressure of her fingers was an immense comfort in all this emptiness.
As we walked I asked my friend several questions. "Why can I hear you?" was my first.
"By transporting your soul here, you've tuned your hearing to the same sound waves that I hear. So now we can hear each other, which is a good thing because you're keeping our psychic link together, which makes your telepathy too busy for you to read my mind." Her voice blew in and out, increasing and decreasing in volume in an inhuman way. She didn't need to pause for breath.
"But why are we so quiet?"
"Your voice belongs to the world of the living. Mine now belongs to the world of the dead. The ghost world is halfway between both. So we hear half of our voices."
"Where'd your cast go?"
"We didn't bring our bodies with us. What you see is our memories of our own bodies being there."
"Then how can we see and feel? How come your eyes still see in the dark better than mine?"
"Spy, I don't know everything." Her sad look silenced me. "Everything I know, I learned during the past few days. I don't want to think about them."
"I'm sorry." I apologized. "I forgot that you're not a wizardess."
She answered, "It's okay. It's just that – well - I'm getting tired of this power. Talking to my parents is great. But not hearing your voice, or the voice of anyone else at the mansion, is not so great. I miss hearing rain falling on the roof. I miss watching movies and listening to CDs. It seems like forever since I heard music on the radio, or popcorn popping, or crickets chirping, or birds singing in the morning. And I've never been able to go into a public place all my life. ALL MY LIFE!" On the last statement her voice grew to as loud and she could manage, which was an intense stage whisper. Then her voice dropped to as quiet as possible for her, and I had to strain to hear. "If I weren't a mutant, my mom wouldn't have died when I was born. Sometimes mutant births bring complications." My friend sighed.
"Spirit, you can't help being what you are. Besides, there must have been some other reasons!"
"She had pneumonia then, too, Dad said," admitted Spirit.
"See? And if you didn't have these powers, we wouldn't have met."
"True."
"And we wouldn't be able to win against Stryker."
She turned to me, though still walking onwards. "Do you think we will?"
I assured her, "If you and I can't do it, no one can."
Spirit smiled slightly. "I'm glad you're here with me." She paused. "You know, I've been thinking...this is probably the only time in this life that you'll ever hear my voice. So, um, could I sing something?"
"Go ahead. It would help a lot."
Silent Spirit thought for a moment, then whispered, "This was one of my dad's favorites. It's pretty old. He used to play it at night..." Her voice trailed off. Then she began to sing. Her full voice came in then, clear, strong, and lovely. It seemed loud after all the whispering. The sound itself seemed to alter the shape of the land we were in and make it more bearable, the land which had never heard music. I doubt that anyone could've come up with a more appropriate song for the occasion. Why did she sound like her true self when she sang? My belief is that music transcends all dimensions and times.
[Angels, answer me, are you near if rain should fall?
Am I to believe you will rise to calm the storm?
For so great a treasure words will never do
Surely, if this is, promises are mine to give you, mine to give...
Here, all to soon the day!
Wish the moon to fall and alter our tomorrow.
I should know heaven has her way - each one given memories to own
Angels, all could be, should you move both earth and sea
Angels, I could feel all those dark clouds disappearing...
Even, as I breathe, comes an angel to their keep.
Surely, if this is, promises are mine to give you, mine to give...]
As soon as her song ended, I nudged for her to look up. "That can't be a falling star, can it?" I said. A white spark was shooting down towards us. It grew as it fell, until it began to resemble a human form. The form was also transparent, but unlike our dark shadows it was a white mist. When it reached the ground I could see that it was in the shape of a man. Somehow the presence made the terrible emptiness less empty and terrible, and my fears were soothed.
"Dad?" whispered my friend. Then, a phantom tear running down her cheek, she said, louder this time, "Dad! Why...why are you already here? Our enemy is still hiding."
The form said simply, in a voice that was just as quiet, but much more powerful than ours, "You called." He smiled. "I couldn't miss that song." Spirit reached out a hand to him, but he drew back, shaking his head. "Not yet, Myra. It is not the time. One day you can touch me again. But not tonight." We resumed our trek, having stopped walking when he appeared. Spirit was between him and me.
"Is Mom coming?" she asked him, a little hurt about not being able to hug him.
"Do you want her to be here now? I could have her follow. She's been organizing the people who want to help you. They will come at her signal. I'm sort of scouting it out first, as it were." He seemed to notice me for the first time. "Is this your friend Spy, Myra?"
Spirit answered, "Yes. Sorry I forgot to introduce you. Spy, this is my father, Charles Sing. Dad, this is Spy. She got us here."
Mr. Sing nodded at me. "I've heard a lot about you. Thank you for looking after my daughter."
"It's-it's n-nothing." I stuttered. "She's a great friend."
"Are you a little skittish about the fact that I'm dead? You sound nervous."
I was extremely embarrassed. "Well, it's a pretty disturbing place anyway. But, yeah, I just find it a little weird..."
"It's all right. I was a bit uncertain of myself after I died, but by now I'm used to that. Actually my shape is a bit brighter than this, but I had to tone it down so that Myra could still look at me."
"Oh, good," whispered Spirit in relief. "I'd just realized that I forgot to tell everyone about that."
"We'll be pretty blinding even so, though. Be ready for it when the rest come," warned her father.
"I don't want the rest of the spirits here yet. Do they have to come at the same time that Mom does?" asked my friend.
"I was able to find you because of the song. It connected us. Your mother will be able to find me, because we are so close, but the others need to be directly behind her, or else they might get lost. You have no idea how dark and far the way here is," he answered.
"Where did you come from, anyway?" I inquired.
Both the Sings stared at me. "Somewhere..." answered Mr. Sing. "Call it what you like. I'm not allowed to tell anyone about it."
Spirit added, "He hasn't told me either, Spy. It's nothing personal. Nobody I've talked to may tell me what the afterlife is like. Nor what religion got it right. That would...mess things up. People aren't meant to know for sure about what happens after death. It has to depend on faith. But I know that SOMETHING does, obviously."
Changing the subject, I asked Silent Spirit, "What exactly are we going to do once we reach the building?"
"Our helpers are going to go inside the building..." she began.
Mr. Sing shook his head. "We can't." He tried to explain why, but couldn't think of the word. "It's..."
"Too evil?" suggested I.
"That's one way of putting it," he whispered. "But there's more to it than that. The substances are incompatible. Ghosts are so close to Nothing. Angels are so close to Everything."
He seemed to be struggling, so I whispered, "It's okay. Don't hurt yourself."
"I guess you'll have to, Spy," Spirit told me regretfully. She looked shell- shocked by this change of events.
"You're coming too, right?" I asked.
Spirit shook her head. "I'm really sorry. I would, but it's too bright for me in there. And Stryker doesn't know you, but he knows me. He knows what I'm scared of, and he knows how to attack me. Though he knows you exist and that you're my best friend, he doesn't know your mind, because he hasn't been studying it. It never occurred to him that you might pose him a threat."
I cringed. I've never pretended to be a girl of valor. "What?!" I protested. "You never said I'd have to do that. This was not part of the deal!"
"I'm really sorry," Spirit repeated, looking down and letting go of my hand. "I was so certain that the spirits could go in, that I forgot to ask. I thought I'd said that I needed you to do that, though, Dad."
"No," said her father, "you never did. You should have. This is when happens when you're not prepared. Remember what I said about that, Myra? What your mother said?"
She began to look frustrated. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I've been under a lot of pressure lately, you know."
"That you have," he replied soothingly.
Forgiving her for her mistake, I said, "Okay. I think that it would have been more reasonable if you had told me earlier, but this is no time or place to argue. This has to be done, even though I must be one of the worst people to do it." I paused. "For our teachers and friends. For peace."
Relief washed over Spirit's face. "For me. Thank you. This won't happen again."
"I hope not," I commented acidly. "What do I have to do, anyway?"
"Get him out of there," whispered my friend. "Theoretically, you could walk straight through the wall. Like that girl in the dorm across the hall from ours. Use any way you want. Insulting him would probably work best. But be careful, because he can control everything in that room. Make sure that he's outside of it before you get him too riled up."
"Suddenly, it seems like it'll a loooong time before we go home," I muttered to myself as we, two phantoms and an angel of glory, continued to travel on a plain of futility, under a sky of death.