Chapter Twenty
The air was still. It was as if the room had been shut up for years upon years on end, without anybody giving thought to opening a window. Despite this, there was the faint lingering scent of pine trees and rain. And it was quiet. Almost too quiet.
Opening her eyes, Kayla found herself standing in an enormous hall. The walls were filled with greyscale tapestries and despite being lit by blazing torches, the whole room seemed to be dull, as if half in shadow. There were thousands upon thousands of what seemed to be ghosts, or spirits of some kind, in the hall, but the room was not even half filled by this number. The room gave the illusion that it could go on forever, that a group of spirits of the largest number ever invented would not crowd the hall.
But that was not what worried Kayla. What worried her was the fact that she knew she was dead. So if I'm dead, how am I seeing all of this? Am I in heaven? And if I am, why are there Elves in heaven? She felt something digging into her palm, and upon opening her fist, she discovered she was still clutching the green leaf pendant that Legolas had given to her before she died.
"Well if I have this, I guess it couldn't have been a dream then." Her voice made all of the ghosts, or spirits, turn towards her. She guessed by the surprised, and faintly hostile, vibes she was receiving, that she was the first to have spoken there for an extremely long time. Maybe ever.
Oops.
Kayla looked around, trying to find some clue as to what she was doing in a hall so great instead of just dead. After finding no clues, she decided to just sit down, and be quiet like everyone else was doing. They must be doing it for a reason, she decided. But as she went to sit on the floor, a spirit floated out of the crowd and approached her. It looked like the spirit was wearing a hooded cloak, allowing Kayla no view of its face. But upon speaking, in an almost inaudible voice, Kayla found out that she spirit was, or had been a girl.
"You are here." Kayla thought that was kind of an obvious statement, and so made no reply. Then the spirit spoke again. "Follow me."
"But there's nowhere to go." Kayla was getting confused, and slightly freaked out, by this encounter. All she wanted was to go back to where she was, to be able to go back and be with Legolas. Already she felt her heart tearing from being apart from her, and eerily enough, she knew that the pain she felt was the same that Legolas was feeling.
The spirit started to drift away, and Kayla was glad, until the spirit looked back over her shoulder and beckoned for Kayla to follow. There was nothing holding Kayla back, and so almost against her will, Kayla started to follow after the shrouded spectre. They pushed through the crowds of ghosts, and it felt to Kayla that she had been walking forever, and would continue to walk forever more. But eventually they passed the crowd by, and Kayla was able to see that there was a giant wooden door, barred by what seemed to be a thousand locks. The spectre stopped before the door, and turned to wait for Kayla to catch up.
As she caught up to the cloaked figure, Kayla realised just how big and heavy the doors actually were. She also realised how utterly impossible it would be to get through the doors, at least without a giant key, or a stick of dynamite or something. And just my luck, I seem to have left my dynamite in my other reality, Kayla thought wryly. But her thoughts were when the spirit reached her hands up and drew back the hood of her cloak, revealing her features for the first time. If Kayla weren't already dead, she would have died of shock.
The spirit was her.