Page 61 of Echo North
“What’s wrong? What happened here?”
I glanced once more to the rider, swallowed up by the trees. “What happenedthere?”
But Hal shouted a sharp word, and the whole scene crumpled around us, melting back into the shadowy corridor.
“Leave me,” he said. He fell to his knees. He dropped his head into his hands.
“Hal, tell me what’s wrong.”
His eyes flashed hot. His body was tight with anger. “Leave me!”
I obeyed.
I stepped into one of the shadow-mirrors, and the corridor faded around me.
IFOUND MYSELF IN ANordinary book-world, standing under a tree on a hill. To my utter astonishment Mokosh was there, wearing a gauzy purple gown that matched her eyes.
“Echo! Where have you been? It’s ages since I saw you last. Are you going to tell me about him this time? Your mysterious other reader?” She winked at me.
I felt like a battered toy, ready to rattle apart in the barest wind. I realized Ididwant to tell her about Hal. I needed to talk to someone, and the wolf didn’t seem at all like the right choice.
So I told her everything, back in her palace room on her floating island, stars winking outside the window. She listened at first with a teasing interest, which morphed into a disapproving severity by the time I was finished. “I feel I should put you on your guard,” she said. She touched my knee, her brows creased with concern. “You don’t know what he wants from you.”
Her tone irked me. “He doesn’t want anything. He’s my friend.”
“Then why isn’t he honest with you? How did he get trapped in the books in the first place? Maybe he’s dangerous. Maybe the books are his prison.”
I jerked to my feet and paced to the window, buzzing with nervous energy.
“He said he was going to hurt you. He warned you himself to stay away.”
“He would never hurt me.”
“Echo, you don’t know that. You need to be careful.”
I studied her in the starlight, her beautiful eyes and shining hair, her flawless perfection, even in her own world. I was sorry I had come.
I made an excuse and left as quickly as I could, not easy again until I was safely back in the library.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IDIDN’T EXPECT TO SEEHALagain, not after he was so adamant I should leave him. But he was waiting in the first book-mirror I stepped into the next day, standing alone on a mountaintop, his eyes and face stricken. A cold wind tore through his hair. Below us rambled a wide green wood.
There was always a wood.
“Will you meet me inShadow of Stars?” said Hal quietly. “I want to show you something.”
I nodded, and he gave me a tight smile. “There’s an old concert hall, abandoned during a war. I’ll be waiting for you there.” And then he vanished.
I commanded the library and a mirror wavered into existence. I stepped through, onto a hill under fierce stars, the shattered ruins of a war-torn city stretching into the night.
I wandered through the winding streets, stepping over rubble and dark stains I didn’t care to examine very closely. A boy with a bloody rag tied around his head pointed me to the concert hall, a huge domed building near the center of the city. Somewhere not too far off I heard shouting. Weeping. A piercing scream. I shuddered and picked my way to the hall as quickly as I could. I climbed a broken stair, stepped through the splintered remains of a door.
The ceiling soared high above me, broken glass showing slivers of stars. Four tiers of balconies leaned over a wide wooden stage, like ornately dressed eavesdroppers peering through a keyhole. Hal sat at a piano in the middle of the stage, wearing ill-fitting black trousers and a loose blue shirt that pooled silk over his wrists. His feet were bare. I suddenly remembered the careless notes he’d played on the harpsichord inThe Empress’s Musician,the offhanded way he’d talked so knowledgeably about Behrend.
I walked toward the stage and settled into a seat in the very front row. Hal didn’t look at me, but he must have known I was there.
He started playing, a low octave with his left hand, his right spinning out a melody that sounded like liquid stars, beautiful and impossible and haunting. The left hand slowly climbed up to meet the right, and a fascinating counterpoint emerged out of nothing, spiraling into a wall of raging chords punctuated by a low repeated note, erratic as a fading heartbeat. The music rose and fell. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard in my life, but the sorrow woven into every phrase was almost too much to bear.
