Page 24 of Lost Feather
“Wait, sacrificed?” She had mentioned the High Angeli walking into the gate, though I hadn’t known what she meant. Had they died?
“That’s the way the gates were all formed. Pure souls sacrificed their own lives to create gates of power to protect the realms—or in the Apprentice’s case, to seal off one.”
What the actual fudge.“They all sacrificed their lives. They’re all dead?”
Sunny bobbled her head, then shook it. “It’s not clear. No one knows if a soul dies when they transform, or when they’re unmade. So we always greet the gate, and bow to honor their sacrifice. They might still be…”
“Alive? Sentient?” I blinked. “Trapped in the gate to Hell for eternity?”
The corners of Sunny’s mouth dipped. “No one knows. And if they are, well, that’s the nature of a Great Sacrifice.”
“I’ll say.” I shivered. The level of weird was getting too high even for me. And my plate was empty. “You know, I’m still hungry.” And sort of creeped out by this gate made of possibly dead angels, that I still sort of wanted to explore. In a totally non-sexual manner. Justnaked.
“Want me to bring golden donuts here for breakfast?” Sunny asked, licking her lips. “The chefs make this vanilla cloud frosting that will blow your mind.”
“Get two dozen,” I suggested, making puppy eyes. “Being this smutty is hard work.”
Sunny saluted as she hopped off the bed. “Yes, ma’am. Get some sleep.” She waved a hand over a panel shaped like a feather at the door, and the lighting in the room faded to a perfect, sleepy dusk.
I waited until she left to remake my bed and rub myself thoroughly on my new, super soft sheets, only murmuring a few obscene suggestions as to what I’d do to them when I had more energy, and then crashed.
CHAPTER10
Feather
I’d never slept well, not since my first life on Earth. The nightmares that came for me were worse than anything I could manufacture: they were memories. I was sort of disappointed I’d need to sleep in Sanctuary. But what woke me here wasn’t a bad dream. It was tremors, like an earthquake. And a new sound.
My eyes popped open as the bed shivered beneath me. Then I heard a disconsolate hum, long and low, moving up and down in pitch. Somehow, I knew it was the gate. Not screaming, but singing a wordless song filled with grief. My throat swelled just listening.
The lights were still dim, but I could see well enough to walk around. I hopped out of bed, slipped on my fluffy sandals, and headed for the song. When I turned the first corner, I realized I had a problem. Every hallway looked the same, and I hadn’t been here long enough to memorize the number of turns it took to get places.
I scratched my cheek, and the flash of sickening gray gave me an idea. The noise came from my right at this junction. So I leaned as low as I could, and marked the bottom part of the wall, a bit on each side around the corner, with a single hint of smut. Hopefully, that would be enough to help me find my way back.
I kept going, trying to find the source of the sound. A few times, I went the wrong direction and reached a dead end, but I marked those spots with an extra dab of gray to make sure I didn’t try that way again.
Once, a trembling in the floor made me reach out to hold the wall. I had lived a decade in Kyoto in the early 1900s, and you never forgot the sorts of tremors we had then. I left a terrible handprint stain on the wall, though, which was made worse when I tried to rub it off.
I hurried on, wrapping my toga around me a little tighter when I felt an odd, cold wind. That seemed unusual. So far, the temperature control in Sanctuary had been phenomenal.
Eventually, I turned a corner and saw it at last: my gate. I peeked around. I was alone. So I walked up to it and sat down a dozen feet away, staring up at the changing landscapes that played over the surface. At first, I saw stormy seas, mountains being crushed under enormous meteors, cities being razed, bombs obliterating farmlands, all sorts of apocalyptic stuff.
After a while, animals began to run across the surface, then strange beasts I had never seen before. A woman’s face appeared, and caught sight of me. I squinted, trying to read her lips as they moved, but I didn’t even know what language she was speaking.
More faces appeared, all of them asking me for something, to do something. But I had no idea what that something was. I felt a scalding sensation on my face, and realized I was crying. My tears had fallen onto my robe and splashed the gray mud onto it instead of the floor, thank fudge. I wiped my eyes and stood, approaching the gate slowly. Maybe I could hear if I got close enough.
As I moved within arm’s reach, the impulse to lift my hand was almost unbearably strong. “Don’t touch it, Feather,” I warned myself. “You break it, and the Abyss will get in here and spoil all the sheets.”
Just as I said that, a sharp blast of icy wind whistled over the top of the gate where it met the pure white ceiling, and pushed my robe into the golden surface. For a split second, I knew it was pulling me in.
For a blink of an eye, I didn’t care. I knew I needed to go into it. It washome.
Suddenly, the man’s face I’d seen the first day appeared, the one that had seemed familiar. Wings flashed out on both sides of him, and his arms stretched wide, welcoming me. Like he’d been waiting for me for thousands of years, and I was finally there. I’d never seen so much joy in a face before—and then it was gone.
“What are youdoing?!” someone shouted into my ear, yanking me away from the gate so hard I did a series of somersaults across the floor.
“I didn’t touch it!” The whole hall was trembling now, and the screaming from the gate was so loud, it was almost deafening. I covered my ears, then rolled my whole body into a ball as whoever this was swooped down in a blaze of white wings, bared teeth, and angry, gleaming eyes. “Don’t hit me!” I yelled.
I didn’t feel any punches or kicks, but I did feel my whole body being lifted. I stayed in the ball, my arms tucked around my knees, hoping against hope this angry angel person wasn’t going to drop me from really high. I was pretty sure I would still feel broken bones in Sanctuary, though I might heal when I slept, like I did between lives on Earth. I didn’t have time to wonder what would happen, because suddenly I was being dropped. But from only a few inches.
