Chapter Nine

Hope

I immediately broke the connection between me and Iris and the dead world, as soon as the full-fledged effect of my success came on to me. After about months I had actually smiled; a natural, unfaked smile of victory, success, hope and joy, and it was such bliss to feel my jaw muscles stretch involuntarily into one that I stretched them all the wider into the hugest grin ever.

Iris echoed my exact thoughts by saying "whoa, did you even smile? I mean, look at you, always depressive, angered, moody, silent – the entire queen-ish personalitude. In fact, you know what; I had first thought this was another custom to be followed by the queen – no smiling, no grinning. And well, being well aware about your charming qualities as a queen here in Forening, it suited you exactly fine without a smile; afterall maybe that's another reason that you broke all records of the queen's no-smile law, and came into being one of the greatest rulers ever."

I let out a laugh; an actual, merry, unfalsified laugh, out of my joy. "Oh my god" said Iris, tilting her head in wonder and amusement "I wonder how things would have been like if you laughed like this on a daily basis. I mean, look at that; you actually let out that ha-ha-ha sound from your lips; that is one of the most impossible things ever imaginable. God, I feel – you know, what you call like winning a lottery – winning it, 'cause I must have probably been the first one you've ever smiled or laughed that way at."

"I could say the same about your silence and anxiousness when you were just going to bring me in to the world of dead." I said, still smiling. "And, by the way, I've laughed before too; and smiled."

"Why –" she began, but I cut her off.

"Don't ask me the reason for all that; maybe if I find you trustworthy in future, I might . . . no, I actually won't." It didn't feel right straightaway refusing to answer her first question after she had helped me such a great deal, so I said in a kinder tone "Sorry, I kind of understand your curiosity, but then it's just not the kind of thing you would need to know about. Oh, and, what all damages did I do to you during the process?"

"Surprisingly, nothing much; guess I was just getting unnecessarily anxious before the spell-casting session, since it wasn't a very hard effort to do that. I mean, don't underestimate me and my psychological or internal status, but then it wasn't as bad as Brian had explained to me. Probably he was trying to keep me from doing that, god knows why. And then, you look how I feel, so I guess the side-effects serve both of us." She wasn't lying since honestly she didn't look all critical or psychotic; just faintly exhausted and weakened, but no major damage and all that.

"Feeling kind of unsettled or . . ." I poked at my temple with my index finger.

"Oh my god, I'm not going all psychiatric." She said defensively.

"Don't feel embarrassed if you want to use the bracelet; you're always welcome to use it after we cast this kind of a spell or experiment with your abilities." I said, trying to be as helpful and comforting as possible; almost as if I owed it to her for doing this favor for me – which I of course did.

But anyways, ultimately Iris went off at the end of the class without the use of the drug bracelet. In a way, I was selfishly happy that I got more of the pyschi-healing drugs for me, and lesser to spare for Iris if that was how much she consumed on a daily basis of practice. Also after Iris had gone off to attend her actual training sessions with Brian, I went around for quite a while with this smile on my face. Iris's 'homework' for the day had been to find out through her twenty-four-into-seven-bond-with-the-dead about where was Elora currently situated and inform her of our rendezvous point where me, Iris and Elora were to meet at her next training session and experiment talking to Elora.

That was some trashy and selfish homework for an illegal advance training I was giving her, and this was Iris – a person who would rather jump around and talk the piss out of people than do such nonsensical favors for queeny teenagers; so it was indeed a surprise when she turned out to have done her homework. Iris explained it all in a series of fast words that she had met Elora's ghost in some room filled with paintings and had informed her of our rendezvous point, to which Elora had agreed.

It turned out that we had decided to meet up after some thought in my old bedroom, and the fact that Iris had admitted that due to the immense pressure and strength of the bond that we created temporarily between me and the dead side, she could not hear or pay much attention into whom I was interacting with, had also made me less nervous about having to reveal some unmentionable secrets to her too.

My conversation with Elora was short; maybe about only for ten minutes, but then it was in a way satisfying. I tried not to exaggerate or understate much in my narration; in fact, I decided not to speak too much about my emotions at all, and just focus on the basic points of what the others must have seen in me. I told her firstly about the newcomer – Iris – and her talents, about how I was training her illegally and using her to interact with the dead side.

This didn't seem to please her very much, but she kind of teared up when she realized how hard I was working and to what limits I had gone to only to interact with my dead mother. That was when I gravely told her that it was not just herself, but also someone else whom I was doing this for; someone with whom I hadn't yet had the courage to even clearly think about.

I went about the war, how I defeated Oren and how I lost someone else in turn to do so. Elora said that she was definitely proud of me for doing so, and it was good that even without my mentioning the name of Mr. Unmentionable, she could figure out whom I was talking about. She was – from what I could tell from her tone – thankful when I said how Finn had romantically abandoned me; maybe Elora had never ever wanted a tracker with me, even if it was a snarky Vittra markis instead.

In a short while Elora told me about her life up there. She said that it was basically beautiful – all tension free – with no stressful jobs, other than the fact that she was pretty irate with the chancellor who often came up to mess up with her heavenly life up there. The best thing was that she could stay all young and strong and still use her abilities to their fullest extents, which meant she painted stuff and talked to people in their minds all day long.

Finally we had to end the conversation because Iris was getting weaker and the bond got a little hazy – like a radio with bad inceptions. I offered her the bracelet, and this time she didn't resist it.

We practiced a couple more times that week, though I tried to limit the instances when I tortured Iris so badly. It just got me all sentimental at seeing the scare and anxious look on Iris's face before we started, and the weakened, almost scatterbrained condition of her when she would put an end to the bond between me and the dead side.

I had expected the anxiousness to fade away gradually as we did more of our connecting-me-to-the-dead-side-spell practices, but if I didn't know better I could say that it had almost gone worse. It must really take a scaringly lot of her to conduct such complex stuff with her immature abilities, and no matter how much I would've loathed her talkative nature and inconsideration, I respected her for her major help to me in this. Though, considering how selfish and inconsiderate I was being now with her, I dare not call Iris that anymore; in comparison she was way more abnegate, considerate and understanding than I was to her. Afterall she was understanding fully and helping me on something that I couldn't even trust enough to help her.

It was just that for days, I was going around the palace, trying to seek him, without even evidently knowing where his dead soul must be wandering, I was just lamely experimenting around everywhere in the palace, trying to hunt him down. Basically it was just that in our limited time, me and Iris went to places and started up this spell, where once I was in the dead side, I would check out for him just to till now find no traces as to where he was.

The bracelet was getting used even more quickly now that there were two users other than just one, and I was scared as to what I was going to do once it would get entirely consumed. It was just so ridiculous, I was already planning some deal with the Oslinna king for another bracelet or ornament with his healing abilities inside it, in return for maybe some tracker help or architecture help.

I often also talked to Elora – which felt good after so much of my recent unsuccessful plans and experiments. Okay, the experiment of trying to connect with the dead was probably wonderfully successful (god, I had even laughed and smiled that day), but then it must have been a mistake to assume that it would be an equally easy task finding out the required ghosts. And this failure made me all the more mad, most of which I couldn't just end with a dose of the drug bracelet since I was all the more desperately trying to conserve the fuel as much as possible.

And well, the conservation was all the more of a failure. As long as I would be all the more self-conscious about using less of the calming and psychiatric healing abilities of the bracelet, the more would it be obvious how much of the healing drug I had consumed from the bracelet. I wish I could just come back to the night of Oren's death, and just before waging an attack on the Vittra, drugged him and not have got him here with me at all. In a way, it would have been all the more easier and less depressive without his participation in the war.

Now I almost regret everything in my life. Also the night in Oslinna, if I could've not let him drag me away from my tension and stress over to sex, I would've saved both my virginity and the fetus that currently occupied the bump in my uterus.

One day when I was lunching quietly in the queen's chambers (which partially looked like a greenhouse since two of the walls were entirely of glass), Iris entered the room. It was much of a startle and unexpected shock seeing her here, especially for the fact that I hadn't made any efforts to hide my swelling belly right now, and she wasn't supposed to know about it.

Tove had gone to the library or so I presumed, and with that free time of solitude, I had removed all my extra padding for the places that didn't swell (in order to neutralize the uterus swell). With Iris's entrance, I quickly draped a shawl back on myself, and pretended to not be very obvious about the fact that I was trying to hide my pregnancy. "What is it Iris?" I asked, almost tiredly.

"Well, I don't know what to say and how to, because judging on your unsettling emotions and moods, I couldn't actually figure out how you'd react to this. I mean, it's been, like, almost a day since I kept this from you, but then maybe it's nothing afterall to concern yourself with. I don't know; it's just that in these awkward situations where I don't know what to do, my curiosity always decides to take the better of me, and here I am to ask you to clarify my doubt. Okay, maybe I shouldn't have come to you since I have a feeling you're never gonna answer this no matter how many crucial favors I do for you, but then, I couldn't find a better person to ask about this. I mean, I don't know, it just seemed like you were the right person to go to to ask this –"

"Hang on, Iris. I don't actually get full sense of what you're saying, but okay, ask whatever you've got to ask." I interrupted tiredly.

"Not exactly ask, I just need you to clarify a doubt . . . if you want to, of course. If you don't, I . . . well, I don't know; I guess I'll learn to live with that. Anyway, what I'm saying is that, day before yesterday, I went to the Secret Garden (the Secret Garden was my word, but I didn't interrupt or object). That was where I saw – or rather heard – another dead person. Well, the ghost of the person didn't say anything, but as soon as it must have kinda sensed me – a live creature with a bond towards the dead – it immediately said just one word; one question, I would've said. 'Wendy?' That was it, and I answered back 'No, it's not Wendy, its Iris instead', and then the person was kinda disappointed and went back to being on its own.

"I mean, that is definitely a weird thing; you don't even introduce yourself, get excited about me and all that. Though, at the same time, its relieving that I don't get to deal with a 'hi, I am ABC' trash intro. But then, your name was what got me all puzzled. I couldn't question you about it because I knew something was very fishy about you and that you wouldn't even ultimately answer me. But now, as I said before, my curiosity's getting the better of me, and that's how I just blurted all that shit out."

I remained silent. "Can you tell me what the person's . . . sex was?"

"Male." She said, and that was when I realized that my plan of getting back to him hadn't been all of a failure afterall.