Page 25 of Lost Feather
I crumpled onto the ground, and glared up at… “Ry?”
Righteous was breathing hard, like he’d run a race. His huge wings were spread almost all the way around me, covering me protectively. Or maybe like he was keeping me caged. “What were you doing to the gate?” he demanded. I didn’t reply, trying to think of what I should tell him. “Answer me!”
I said nothing, still lost in my impressions of the gate and the man inside. He took a threatening step forward, and I flinched.
“I’m not going to strike you,” he muttered, a glimmer of hurt replacing the anger in his gaze. “It’s late. Why are you here?”
“Well, there was an earthquake, and a cold wind,” I began. “I woke up.”
“Yes, the balance is shifting. The gate is close to falling.” He narrowed his eyes. “But that’s not what woke you.”
“I heard it singing… and screaming,” I admitted, waiting for him to tell me I was nuts.
He didn’t. “Youcan hear it?”
“I’m not supposed to? It woke me up. All those voices, all that pain… I don’t know how anyone else sleeps through it.”
He went still for a second. “Some of us can’t.”
I clenched my fists to stop my hands from shaking. “It really is screaming. How do we stop it?” I swallowed hard when his eyes narrowed on me. “How can we help it?”
“Sometimes I sing to it,” he murmured, then twitched, as if he’d startled himself by admitting that. The gate screeched at that moment, louder than ever, and we both covered our ears.
“Maybe sing now?” I begged.
He nodded. “Stay here.” In two steps, he was facing the gate and singing a wordless hymn I had never heard before. His voice was a clear, pure tenor, and every note was filled with so much emotion that my heart literally ached. The song was heartbreak and healing, love lost and found, a journey and an ending. Sunset and sunrise. It was the second most beautiful song I’d ever heard.
When Righteous was done, the gate was quiet. He stood still for a while, staring at me, or around me. His face was frozen, but his eyes were filled with what looked like awe. Wonder, shining brightly from his entire face.
Then, like he’d been released from some sort of spell, he shook his head and strode back over to me. He stomped around for a minute, like he was looking for someone, then glared down at me. “Don’t come back here, no matter what you hear,” he finally said. “I’ll sing to the gate this week; it should settle.”
“Can everyone hear it screaming for help and they’re just ignoring it?” I felt myself getting upset on the gate’s behalf. “No one else in Sanctuary knows any lullabies?”
“They don’t hear it.” He gave a curt shake of his head. “Only… some of us.” Before I could ask which of us that was, and what we had in common, he went on. “Do not return to the gate. If you come too close, you’ll feel pulled to go into it. And with your filth, who knows what might happen.”
I had a feeling what might happen would be a Feather-pocalypse. “I won’t touch it, I promise.”
Some unnamable emotion flickered across his face, and he reached toward me. I held still as he pulled something away from my clumpy, sticky hair. A feather? No, it was a lot of them.
“How did those get there?” I asked, confused.
“I have no idea,” he said, but his voice was strangled. His eyes kept landing on my gross hair, and then he would reach up and pull yet another of his feathers from it, dropping it to the floor, where it would… not vanish.
Huh. That was weird. Sunny’s had evaporated when they fell. Ry’s were sticking around. Why?
He frowned, pulling one more feather away from my hair, and the back of his hand stroked down my cheek. I was pretty sure he hadn’t meant to do that since he made a face I’d only ever seen at a ghost pepper-eating contest, and held his hand out in front of him like he wanted to cut it off.
He shuddered, then pointed with his grease-stained hand. “The room at the end of this hall is a purification chamber. You should spend some time there.”
“You coming, too?” I asked. His robe was a muddy wreck, and his arms weren’t much better.
“I have my own,” he said haughtily, and was gone in a rush of wings. He had forgotten one of his fallen feathers, though. I picked it up, tucking it into my palm. I’d give it back to him later.
Maybe.
CHAPTER11
Feather
