Free Shimmer by Alyson Noël Page A

realizing I was dead.
    Me feeling so fine, and good, and alive that halfway across the bridge to the other side I changed my mind and went back to search through those vast fragrant fields for my sister.
    Only to find she’d returned to the earth plane—to her body—to life.
    Only to discover the horrifying truth that I no longer could.
    A fact that made me so angry, the next thing I knew I was stuck in a moment of flaming red rage I was forced to relive over and over again.
    A rage so deep, burning so bright, it turned the once vibrating, pulsating field back into its original state of scorched, burned, and unforgivingly seared earth.
    Prince Kanta’s warning The moment you let your mind stray from your friends, you lose reduced to a long-forgotten memory.
    Prince Kanta was gone.
    He had no role in this story.
    My entire world had been reduced to a small plot of land consisting of nothing more than my deep seething anger and me.

15
     
    I sank to my knees, threw myself onto a large pile of ash that instantly blackened my clothes, and cried and screamed and cursed and wailed, just like I had then.
    Though it’s not like it brought my family back.
    It’s not like it returned me to the way I had been.
    Still, I was unable to stop, unable to remove myself from the scene.
    Unable to focus on anything other than the neverending cycle of anger and rage that threatened to consume me.
    If you asked how long it went on, well, the truth is, I have no idea. Somewhere between an eternity and a handful of seconds would be my best guess. Either way, it was far too long for me to be carrying on like I’d been.
    But then, eventually, somewhere in the midst of all the shouting and tantrum-throwing came a sort of break.
    A brief respite that lasted a split second at best.
    A brief respite that contained what I can only describe as a small patch of— silence .
    A small, bright space where anger could not exist.
    And though it only lasted a moment, from that moment on, a part of me was focused solely on waiting for it to happen again.
    And when it did, it seemed to linger just a little bit longer.
    And the time after that—longer still.
    Until finally, that bright and tiny gap of silence stretched and grew until it expanded into a space just large enough for me to crawl into.
    My rage stilled, and soon my anger disappeared, as everything around me and inside me began to settle and calm. Allowing me to observe my situation with such clarity, there was no denying the fact that I was not at all different from anyone else who got stuck in this place.
    We were all just as angry and unforgiving as Rebecca wanted us to be.
    I was connected to all of these lost and lonely souls just as sure as they were connected to me.
    For that brief split second, I could see the truth of everything —and that’s all it took to break free.
    That’s all it took to know that I wasn’t alone, and never had been. I had nothing to fear, nothing to be angry about, and while it was true that I’d never expected my life to end up quite like it did, there was no denying the fact that in a lot of ways it’d ended up a lot better than I ever could’ve imagined.
    I rose from my place, watching in astonishment as the scorched field gave way, revealing the bubble in its real and true state—so different from the view Rebecca wanted me to see.
    No longer was there falling ash or burned-out trees that morphed into kindergarten classrooms, no longer were there vast and lonely fields, and family trips ending abruptly: There was nothing but a dark and murky crowded sea of wretched, writhing souls, each one trapped in a tormented hell of his own.
    I moved among them, wondering what happened to the prince as I searched for Bodhi and Buttercup—eager to try and release them in the same way I’d been. Pushing through a throng of neverending cycles of pain and misery and centuries-old suffering, as I struggled to hold my focus on what I’d just learned, what I needed to