Page 50 of Echo North

IFOUNDHAL IN ANoutdoor market by the sea, where merchants were selling their wares under brightly colored awnings. Ships gleamed white on the horizon. The sun was warm; the wind was cool. He was haggling with a dark-haired young woman over a pair of daggers, while she smiled up at him under long lashes. She was very beautiful. I tried to ignore the jealousy that took root inside of me and started to sprout. I hadn’t seen him in some weeks.

“Hal?”

His eyes brightened when he saw me. He paid the young woman for the daggers, and tucked his arm through mine. Together, we walked down to the shore.

“Shall we get some fencing practice in?” He laid the daggers on his coat in the sand, and rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, loosing his sword from its sheath.

“Hal, will you try something for me?”

He must have heard the seriousness in my tone. He grasped my hand. “What’s wrong?”

“The house is unraveling. I don’t want you to be unraveled with it. Will you … will youtryto come back to the library? You can stay with the wolf and me. We can figure out how to get you home.”

The wind smelled of salt and fish and damp. The sea washed over the shore, crawling up to greet us.

A sudden longing sparked in his eyes. “I’ll try,” he said.

I let out a breath and gave him a shaky smile. “Library. I’d like to stop reading, please.”

The mirror shimmered in the air between us.

“You first,” I told Hal.

He stepped up to the glass, stretched out one hand to touch it.

But nothing happened.

“Try again. Please.”

He put both palms flat against the surface of the mirror. He stood so close his nose touched.

Nothing.

His eyes flicked to mine. “Please, Hal.” I was shaking.“Please.”

And that’s when I grabbed his hand, and ran with him toward the mirror.

He hit it with a resoundingcrash,and fell onto the beach in a shower of glass fragments. Blood showed bright on his arms and his face where the shards cut him.

I knelt beside him in the sand. He gripped my shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Echo. I don’t think I really exist, out there. I’m just a shadow.”

“I can’t accept that. You’re as real as I am.”

“Maybe I was, once. But I’m not anymore.”

I touched a spot of blood on his cheek, brushed it away. He sighed and sagged against me.

I fought back my rising sense of helplessness. I’d thought it would work. I’dneededit to work. “I’ll find a way to help you. To free you. We’ll fix this.” But I didn’t know if I believed that anymore.

“I hope so.”

Hal’s breath was warm against my cheek, and the nearness of him made my stomach wobble. I didn’t know quite what to do with my involuntary reaction, so I stood to my feet, pulling him up with me. “In the meantime, how about another fencing lesson?”

He grinned, though a sort of haunted blankness lingered in his eyes. “I thought you would never ask.”

We fenced for an hour along the beach, though I could tell his heart wasn’t in it any more than mine was. We finally collapsed in the sand, watching the waves whisper up onto the shore and then fall back again.

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