Defying Equilibrium: Book III

Chapter 17: Spirit encounter

It wasn't the first time that he'd seen her.

The first time he saw here, he had not been ready to see her. He had been struggling with himself, struggling against himself, struggling against his own mind in a battle for control. He saw her the same way you would see a mountain, or a strange cloud. There, but not really there.

There had been a beauty and a serenity to her, but one that was best admired from afar. She had seemed both right in front of him, and at the same time on a different plane of existence. Translucent and ethereal. He wasn't even sure if he had seen her at all.

It was only after then that he thought about her, wondered about her. Even though it had seemed that he was the only one who saw her, the blue eyes of the woman were not for him. They watched over someone else, watched over him with a pure mix of love, longing and pain.

The second time he saw her, it had been little more than a spectre in the corner of his eye, seen and then not seen. A flicker of her shape, a hint of her hair, the blue of her eyes, and then she was gone again. No one else saw, but not because they weren't looking at her. She simply did not register to their eyes. But she wanted him to see her, only him, and when he realised this a chill ran down his spine.

The third time he was alone, and this time he was not surprised. He had been waiting for her, knowing it was only a matter of time. It was one of the things that kept him going when his days seemed the bleakest, the thought of seeing her, because he knew that she possessed answers that he did not.

When Silas Frasier met the girl for the third time, he knew immediately that she was dead.

It wasn't the translucence of her skin that gave her away, nor was it the way her clothing and hair did not move with the breeze. It wasn't even the way that her feet floated an inch or two from the ground, or the chill in the room that heralded her coming.

It was the silence that tipped him off. No one moved that silently. No one.

He met her eyes with the barest hint of a smirk. "Am I being haunted?" Silas asked. "Is this my punishment? You're not my conscience, are you?"

She shook her head, sending the black tendrils of her hair in a few directions, floating like gravity held no sway.

"I'm not dead, am I?"

Another shake of the head.

"But you are, aren't you?"

She nodded, and almost smiled. The last girl had been afraid, but this boy had no fear, at least not of her.

"You can't speak, can you?" he asked, his face betraying curiosity.

She shook her head again, and crossed the room to where a full-length mirror filled one corner. Silas's room wasn't a cell, after all. They had done all they could to make him comfortable, but a pretty prison is still a prison. She touched one insubstantial hand to the mirror, and instantly the entire pane of glass frosted over. With one finger, she wrote a message.

I cannot speak, it said, but I still have words to give.

He leaned back in his chair. "Some sort of premonition, then?" He waggled his fingers at her. "Some kind of grave message of my impending doom?"

She frosted the mirror again, and wrote a simple No. She then paused, and wrote some more. You don't belong here.

He chuckled. "Oh, really? And here I was thinking that I'd finally found a home. I was just getting comfortable."

She shook her head, he wasn't understanding the point she was trying to make. You are not who they think you are, she wrote.

He frowned. "You know, I have too many people these days telling me who I am and who I'm not. What makes you think that you know anything about me?"