She conjures him. Claims him. She speaks his name: “Dante.”
The darkness shivers with the sound. A silver chime blooms like hot glass, turning the darkness from black to gray. Like smoke. Like stars.
The space next to her suddenly has depth and dimension.
And he is there. Present in a way he wasn’t before.
She is holding tight to his hand, the only point of contact in this terrible void. He is close. She can feel the heat from his body. She inhales the scent of his hair, his skin. She listens to his body move, breathe.
The glassy chime ripples outward, resonating through the darkness, reaching . . . searching.
And then, his voice . . .
“Abby.”
The two sounds meet, merge. They are one. They are whole.
And she feels herself take shape in the darkness, take on depth and dimension.
They are no longer lost in the darkness. They are united. They are together, one harmonious whole.
The sounds of their names spiral upward together, filling the blank spaces around them with light and life and music.
The gray lightens to gold, smoky and muted, but light nonetheless.
She can see more of him now. But only an outline.
He is darkness against the emerging light. His hair is the black of closed eyes at midnight. It is swept back from his face, curling against his neck. His skin is shadowed and smooth. His body is long and lean, the shape of strength, of contained confidence.
There is a power in him. She can feel it pulsing through their linked hands. She is surprised to realize that the power is in her too. It feels the same as his, but different. As though they have both taken a small part of themselves and, in sharing it with the other, have been rewarded with more than before.
She feels hollowed out, but not empty. She is filled with the echoes of her name from his lips. She is amplified.
The music grows, each note high and clear.
He takes her hands in his. His thumbs rest in the curve of her palms.
She looks into his eyes, and she can feel her heart beating in her chest, each thump as bright and sharp as a diamond. Her breath is like silk in her mouth. Her lips are dry, but her bones feel like water.
Anticipation burns.
He moves closer. She moves to meet him.
Hands and fingers intertwine. Her head rests on his shoulder—the perfect height. His hands support her back—the perfect balance.
They breathe together. Their hearts find the same rhythm. The music encircles them, envelops them, encases them. She feels like dancing.
She can feel the rightness of the moment.
It is time.
She steps back and withdraws, from next to her heart, a second heart. His heart. A silver shape that had been cracked open.
The heart is empty except for a small key, yet she still feels a heat spilling over her fingers like blood.
She listens to the music that has been born into the space around them. She can speak this language, this music, and so she listens and finds the words she wants to say.
Whole. Together. Renewed.
The note she speaks is all of these words, but mostly it is love.
When she looks down at the heart in her hand, the fractures have disappeared. The cracks are no more. The heart is whole again. Better—it is as though it had never been broken.
She smiles. She knows how important it is to be whole before you can be healed.
A light shines from inside the heart. A brightness that pushes back the darkness like the birth of a star—or a sun.
She holds the locket in her hands and then presses it against his chest. The light penetrates into his skin, casting a glow from the inside. It centers over his heart, rises up behind his eyes.
She speaks once more. The music of healing. The sound of permanence. The words of strength.
The light flares—inside and outside his skin—and she knows it is done. He is healed. He is strong. Better—it is as though he had never been broken.
And then, from out of the distant darkness, a wave of light.
As the light crashes down around them, sparking like fire, flowing like liquid, the music spirals upward on a rising scale, each note glittering with promise and potential.
The light fills the void. There is a bright point on the ground next to where they stand. The point lengthens, elongating into a line that grows thicker and wider until it is a trickle, a stream, a river that flows away into the distance, burning away the darkness as it goes.
It is instantaneous, yet she can feel the exact moment when it happens. The moment when the river of time begins to cut through the bank on its way to the future and forever. When timelessness changes into time.
But before the first tick of time registers, before the river moves with the first ripple of life, in that moment when the light is the brightest, she sees him clearly—who he was, who he is, who he could be. She sees all of him, and he is beautiful. She knows in that moment that she holds his soul in her hands, in her heart, and she is honored by his trust.
She looks deep into his silver-gray eyes and willingly offers her own soul to him in exchange.
She places the newly mended, perfectly whole silver heart in his hand.
His eyes glisten like stars, like moonlight. He lowers the locket into the river. It slides into the light; he lets it go. As he withdraws his hand, a ripple extends outward from his touch. And another ripple extends beyond the first. And then a third follows the second. And on and on and on until the river of light is teeming with ripples, bubbling with life.
It has begun. And there is no calling it back, no stopping it.
The time that pours into the river is forever protected.
The music is everywhere. The music is everything.
The song the river sings is filled with the language of life and love and light.
He takes her into his arms.
Being held by him is as soothing as ice on a hot day. As comfortable as silence.
As intimate as a midnight kiss.
This is what they came here to do. To restore the balance. To cleanse and be cleansed. To be united and reunited, bound together by a power that will last beyond time.
He places his hands on either side of her face. His eyes are endless pools of light, shimmering with the glow of newborn stars. His mouth curves in a small, secret smile.
“Make a wish, Abby,” he says.
She thinks about those words for a long time. Does she know what to wish for?
Yes. She does.
She holds it in her mind, looking at it from all angles. Past. Present. Future.
It is a good wish.
Her wish flies from her lips in a language both specific and sure. A chime of release. Oh, but there is so much more. She knows it will be years—centuries, even—before the last piece of the wish comes true, but she knows that it will. And she knows that it will be happiness when it does.
When he kisses her, it feels like the first sunrise, it feels like the beginning of her life, it feels like coming home.
Chapter 29
Abby?” a voice summoned me up from the depths of a dream.
The dream was of light. A bright, white, energizing beam of light that seemed to shine straight up from the deepest part of the river and turned the whole world electric.
In the center of the light stood three people I immediately recognized: my mother, my father, and my sister.
They were whole; they were together. The light spilled down the river, washing over them, carrying them downstream. But I wasn’t worried about them. I knew in that strange logic of dreams and wishes that my family was restored to me. They were returning home to their proper place and time.
I opened my eyes to find myself cradled in Dante’s arms, my legs stretched out on the ground. My toes looked oddly far away. I wiggled them to make sure they were still attached. My whole body was filled with light, buzzing with a warmth that felt like white gold.
“The river?” I whispered through lips parched dry as bone. “Is it safe?”
Dante nodded. “Yes, Abby, it is.”
“What about you? Are you safe?”
This time when Dante nodded, tears slid down from his eyes. “Yes, I am.”
I touched one of his tears in amazement. In all the time I’d known him, I had never seen him cry before.
“Thank you,” he said. “For healing my heart. For making me whole.”
“And the you that Zo stabbed in the dungeon . . . ?”
“His heart is whole as well.”
“So, is that it?” I asked as the first hint of exhaustion crept closer. “Are we done? Can we go home now?” Knowing that my family was back where it belonged and that Dante—all of him—was whole was a huge weight off my soul.
Dante smoothed a stray curl away from my eyes. “Almost.”
I looked up into his face. “Let me guess. I still need to go to the dungeon, don’t I?”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Dante said with a small grin. “I know I would really appreciate it.”
“Not at all,” I answered, reaching up to wipe away his tears. “In fact, nothing would make me happier.”
• • •
I left the bank and returned to the dungeon. Part of the wish I had made at the beginning of time was to have a second chance to make this moment right.
In the third cell along the wall, right where he was supposed to be, was Dante. No wound on his chest, no scar to cover a broken heart. He was unmarked and untouched. And with the river cleansed and stable, he probably had no idea anything remarkable had even happened. For him, time had simply flowed as straight and steady as it always had.
As I stood in the doorway, my hand on the frame for balance, I thought that Dante looked exactly as he had when I had glimpsed him in the river and urged him to survive by counting. Still young, still innocent—but with an inner core of strength that would shape him into the man he would become past the door, past the bank.
He was still my Dante, forever and always.
My eyes met his, and I felt like the summer sun had crashed into the dungeon, bringing with it light and life and warmth. I was filled with the promise of a future flowing straight and clean.
I held his eyes with mine for one more moment, and then I smiled.
I saw Dante’s knees buckle a little. He clung to the bars, using them to hold himself up. The torn cuffs of his sleeves slipped down his arms and I saw that his wrists were still bare of any chains.
The river clicked into place with a sound like a door closing.
I wanted to laugh and cry and dance all at the same time. It was done. I had seen and been seen.
The river was whole. Dante was saved. And the circle was finally closed.
• • •
“Is it my turn?” Valerie asked Dante as Orlando and I joined them by the fireplace hearth later that night after Alessandro and Caterina had said good night.
Orlando leaned against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, watching intently.
“Yes, it is your turn,” Dante said gently as he helped her sit in a chair. He knelt in front of her and took both of her hands in his.
I sat next to Valerie, so close that our knees touched. My palms felt cold and sweaty, and no matter how many times I swallowed, I couldn’t quite clear away the cotton in my mouth. Dante said that now that Zo was gone and the river was back to normal, healing Valerie would be easy. I hoped he was right; I hoped she would let him.
“Are you going to sing to me?” she asked, a worried line creasing her forehead.
“No, it’s not a song,” Dante said.
The line deepened. “Is it a story?”
Dante shook his head.
Valerie relaxed. “Oh, good. I have all these songs and stories in my head and I’m tired of listening to them all.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“At least the stories have happy endings again. For a while there, I was afraid they would all end in darkness.” She turned to look at me briefly. “I’m glad the darkness didn’t get you.”
“Me too,” I said.
Dante glanced at me, and I nodded. He took a deep breath and squeezed Valerie’s hands. “I have a poem for you, Valerie. It’s a very special poem. Are you ready?”
Valerie shifted in the chair, straightening her spine and settling her shoulders. Then she tilted her head to the side, first right, then left, like a bird. “Something’s missing.” She frowned. “I’m missing something that belongs to me.”
“What, Valerie?” I asked. “What are you missing?”
“My key.” She twisted around to pin Orlando with a narrow gaze. “I gave it to him.” Untangling her hand from Dante, she held it out toward Orlando. “I need it back now, please. I need to be whole before I can be healed. You do still have it, don’t you? You promised to keep it safe.”
“If I promised, then yes, I still have it.” Orlando reached behind his back and then held his closed fist over her open palm. He spread his fingers. Nothing fell out of his hand, yet Valerie made a scooping motion, bringing her palm directly to her chest and pressing the invisible key to her heart. “Thank you. I feel better already.” She smiled at Dante. “Okay. Now I’m ready.”
Orlando leaned forward, his eyes bright with curiosity.
Dante’s voice started out small and soft.
Your heart beats,
The heat now departs.
The light remains to fill your mind.
Valerie closed her eyes, her face smooth and calm.
Your mind rests,
The test now behind
The past is present is future in your eyes.
Dante continued, his words picking up speed and rhythm.
Your eyes clear,
The fear now dies
To return, to hurt—nevermore.
Tears trickled from beneath Valerie’s closed eyes, streaming down her cheeks.
Nevermore to be broken.
Nevermore to be lost.
This poem now spoken
Forevermore pays the cost.
Dante’s voice faded into silence, but the echo of his words lingered in the space like smoke from a blown candle. I could still feel the rhythm of his words thrumming in my bones.
We all looked to Valerie, waiting, watching. She tilted her head down, her hair falling forward over her face.
I held my breath. The silence stretched out until it reached the corners of the room. I gnawed on my fingernail, chanting a one-word prayer in my mind: Please.
“Dante—” I whispered, but he held up his hand to hold my words. He kept his focus fixed on Valerie.
I glanced at Orlando, but he shrugged his shoulders and remained silent.
Valerie lifted her head. She looked first at Dante, then up to Orlando, then finally at me.
And I could see clearly in her blue eyes the shining light that I had been missing for months. The light of her old self.
“Abby?” she said, her voice trembling ever so slightly. Her tears continued to fall, and when she said my name, my tears spilled over as well.
With a wordless cry, I hugged her to me.
Dante rocked to his feet and stepped back to stand by his brother.
“Valerie!” I said her name over and over. “You’re back. Are you better? You are, aren’t you?”
Valerie nodded. “I missed you so much. It was like I was trapped behind a glass wall and no matter how much I yelled or screamed, no one could hear me or see me or reach me.”
“How do you feel now, Valerie?” Dante asked.
In an instant, she had released me and wrapped Dante in a hug. “Thank you,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough. You are the best River Policeman ever.”
A chill seized my tongue. Even Dante looked a little startled.
Valerie didn’t seem to notice. “That’s what I called you—before. Isn’t it?”
“You remember that?” I asked carefully.<
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“I remember everything,” she said.
“Everything?” Dante repeated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for you to.”