Elegy. Tara Hudson
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Название: Elegy
Автор: Tara Hudson
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Детская проза
isbn: 9780007442690
isbn:
Until the rubble did move again. Instead of falling toward the earth as it should have, it started to drift slowly back to where the bridge originally stood. Once there, rock and metal began to link together like pieces of a puzzle, moving of their own will to re-create the structure I’d tried to destroy. Within the span of only a few minutes, the dark outline of High Bridge began to reform.
I watched, openmouthed, as a tangled set of wires straightened and then slipped into corresponding holes in an upright wall of concrete. A girder set itself upon the newly stabilized wall, as if placed there by an invisible carrier.
But not quite invisible, I realized.
If I looked closer, if I squinted just right, I could make out the occasional inky trace of black smoke drifting beneath the individual components of the bridge. Yet the smoke wasn’t insubstantial. Though thin and nearly transparent, this black smoke could evidently carry hundred- and even thousand-pound pieces of construction.
I’d seen smoke function like this before—smoke that moved in ways it shouldn’t. Which led me to the conclusion that the shadowy vapor now rebuilding High Bridge wasn’t smoke at all.
“Wraiths,” I gasped, crawling farther up the embankment on my hands.
As if to confirm, the individual tendrils of smoke rearranged themselves while they worked, taking on thin but near-human forms. During the transition, they never slowed or faltered in their reconstruction project—even when their environment shifted into something cold and ghastly.
All around them, all around me, the riverbank darkened and hardened until the icy purples of the netherworld appeared. The grass beneath my hands frosted over, and I had to jerk my fingers off the ground to keep them from freezing to it.
I only had time for one chilly breath when a slick, unfamiliar voice echoed across the river and silenced me.
“Amelia Ashley,” it hissed. “This was a mistake. Your mistake.”
Although the voice echoed, it didn’t boom; it crept through the netherworld like a whisper, intimate but discomforting in my ear.
“This error will cost you,” the voice continued. “Instead of seven days in your first week, you have one. Agree to stay here now, or someone dies. Immediately.”
I’d been wrong earlier: this was my moment. Now was the time.
I parted my lips to do the only thing I could: say yes, and commit myself to the darkness forever. But nothing intelligible came out—just one strangled syllable that sounded an awful lot like “No.”
Despite my unclear response, the darkness didn’t hesitate. The netherworld seemed to collapse in upon itself, each garish color disintegrating until nothing remained but real trees, a real river . . . and a very real, very intact High Bridge.
And in that cruel, impossible moment, I knew that my little bomb hadn’t freed anyone. It had condemned someone to death.
No amount of reassurance from Joshua could dispel the leaden ball of guilt in my stomach. Almost three pitchers of coffee and nine Mayhew Bakery day-old pastries didn’t do the trick, either, although they had officially proved that I was a nervous eater. During our drive from High Bridge to the Mayhews’ house, I’d felt strangely calm. Impassive, even. Now, I just felt overstuffed with food and foreboding.
I pushed my half-eaten, stale palmier away in disgust and looked around the kitchen. Across from me, Jillian and Scott had fallen asleep on each other’s shoulders, slumped awkwardly in their dining chairs. On this side of the room, Joshua leaned with me against the counter of the kitchen island. He still watched me warily, as though he thought I might try to blow up his parents’ house, too.
I raked one hand through the ends of my hair. “I’m not going to do anything crazy again, Joshua. I promise.”
“I know, Amelia,” he said, keeping his voice low. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“You’re not worried that I tried to detonate a weapon of mass destruction tonight?”
Joshua shook his head. “Even if I don’t like how you did it, I don’t blame you for trying. And I don’t think this is your fault, either. It’s not like you invented demons and made them evil.”
In response, I held my hands up in a pose of surrender. “But does that matter? Will that matter to the person who dies tonight?” Then I peeked at the kitchen clock. “Or this early morning, I guess?”
I dropped my palms to the countertop in defeat. As he’d done since we arrived home, Joshua placed his own hand comfort-close to mine. I stretched my fingers toward his, aching to tangle both sets together.
“I don’t know the answer to that, any better than you do,” he said softly, running his thumb across the granite counter, near the length of my wrist. “All we can do is wait out the night, and then spend the next six days coming up with a better plan.”
I laughed mirthlessly. “You mean: a ‘better than last-minute, ineffective demolition’ plan.”
He smiled sadly but said nothing. Frowning again, I looked away from him and motioned to the view outside the wide kitchen window, just behind Jillian’s and Scott’s slumped forms.
“Well, fortunately or not, we don’t have much longer to wait out the night.”
Through the newly leafing branches in the front yard, we could see the first traces of sunlight. Without taking his eyes off the window, Joshua walked over to another counter and removed a fresh pot of coffee from the maker. Once he’d poured it into our mugs, we waited in silence, drinking and watching dawn break over the Mayhews’ front garden.
Only when the sunrise shifted fully into early morning did Joshua set down his cup and stretch his arms high above his head. Then he settled back against the countertop with a wide yawn.
“Well,” he said, stifling the last bit of his yawn, “the demons haven’t attacked the house, and we haven’t gotten a tragic phone call from one of my friends. So . . . no news is good news.”
“Maybe,” I murmured. I took another long sip of coffee and kept my eyes trained on the brightening sky. As I watched the colors shift from pink and peach to pale blue and gold, I let myself hope. Just for a few, indulgent minutes.
Maybe Joshua was right. Maybe the demons were bluffing. After all, Eli had told me that demons weren’t omniscient. They didn’t innately know the identity of everyone I’d ever met; the demons merely targeted those unlucky people who happened to be in my proximity. A simple glance around the kitchen showed me that all my companions from last night were very much alive, if thoroughly exhausted. And Joshua had already checked on his parents—more than a few times, actually. So it looked like I could claim the night as a victory.
With one important exception.
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