Free Beyond Your Touch by Pat Esden

up next to him. “What are you thinking?” I asked quietly.
    The cup’s plastic sides crunched a little under his tightening grip and his voice lowered. “In the realm, when we headed into the arena to spar or fight, I used to calm myself instead of getting hyped up like most of the slaves.” He took a sip and set the cup on the wide railing. “We had to walk down this tunnel, one at a time. There were these rosebushes, glass instead of green leaves and thorns. They roofed the tunnel and would block it off behind us as we marched forward, so we couldn’t leave. I’d—” His jaw tensed.
    â€œYeah?” I was afraid he wouldn’t go on.
    His voice became taut and even more hushed. “I’d walk down that tunnel and pretend I was walking down my mother’s driveway, the trees’ canopy overhead, my mother holding my hand. Her hands were always so smooth. We’d wait at the edge of the road for the bus to come. She smelled like whatever we’d had for breakfast: bacon, French toast. She never let go until I stepped up onto the bus’s first step. That’s what I’d think of while I walked down that tunnel with the glass thorns closing in behind me. That’s what I was thinking about yesterday in the car. You parked right where Mother and I used to stand beside the mailbox, waiting for that bus . . .”
    I didn’t know what to say as his voice faded. He slid his arm around my waist and I leaned in, resting my head against his shoulder. We stood there like that—me snuggled in close and him motionless—watching as red and yellow rimmed the horizon, brightening the tops of the waves and glistening on a jagged outcrop of rocks slowly being engulfed by the rising tide.
    â€œMy dad used to tell me a story,” I said softly, to break the silence, “about ships getting hung up and wrecked right off the shore of Moonhill on what he called the Pirate’s Coffin.” I nodded toward the jagged outcrop. “Is that it?”
    â€œYeah,” he said. “There’s a hollow in the top of it, shaped like a casket. Things wash into it during high tide and get trapped: driftwood, sea glass . . . A few days after I was rescued from the realm, I found a bottle in there.”
    I took a couple of sips of his drink. Getting mine would mean leaving the warmth of his arm and I didn’t want to do that. More than anything I wanted to keep him talking. In fact, I didn’t care if we made love this morning, as long as I was with him.
    â€œThat’s cool,” I said. “Was it old?”
    â€œIt was black and it had a rough pontil mark on the bottom, like it was hand-blown. It looked genie-made to me.” His tone was so calm that it took a moment for me to get the significance of what he’d said.
    I pulled away from him. “Genie-made? What was it doing in this realm?”
    â€œI figured it had gotten thrown through a weak point in the veil and ended up in the ocean somehow. Your grandfather and Kate thought I was being paranoid.”
    â€œParanoid? Why would they think that? It could have held a genie, maybe a criminal they didn’t want in their realm. Someone could have let it out and thrown the bottle away.”
    He laughed. “Don’t worry about that. There wasn’t a genie in it.” He shrugged, as if surrendering to the idea that he was wrong. “Five years ago, I had no idea that hand-blown bottles were made in this world as well as in the realm. I’d been so young when I was taken. Most likely it was an antique bottle made by a human, probably washed up from a shipwreck.”
    My mind flashed back. Grandfather and Kate had thought Chase was being paranoid when he told them he believed Dad was possessed by a genie, a suspicion that had proven true. “But you could have been right,” I said.
    â€œPerhaps, but when I found the bottle it was sealed and there was a note