Free The Ghost Sister by Liz Williams Page A

Outreven—a woman with magical powers who couldsummon a great bird down from the sky. When she was younger, Mevennen had told herself stories abut Outreven, and dreamed that someone might one day come and rescue her, but now that a ghost was really standing before her she was both suspicious and afraid, and she felt a strong pang of regret for those young and foolish fantasies, in case she had summoned the creature up. She remembered the words of the shadowdrinker that Eleres had taken her to visit in an earlier, fruitless search for a cure.
    “
They don
'
t experience the world in the same way. You can tell it by the way they move. It
'
s because they
'
ve left their bodies behind them, journeying into
eresthahan.
They are only half there.
”
    “
I don
'
t hear the world, either, not properly
,”
Mevennen said.
“
It
'
s as though it
'
s so loud that it deafens me. Does that mean I
'
m not real, too?
”
She did not realize that she had spoken aloud until Eleres dropped to his knees in front of her and took her hands, ig
noring the shadowdrinker
'
s smile.
    “
Of course you are
,”
he had said fiercely into her ear.
“
Of course you are, Mevennen.
”
    Remembering this, Mevennen said cautiously to the ghost, “Are you real?” as one might speak to an animal, never expecting it to reply. The ghost looked up, startled. The box she held in her hands hummed and rattled, and then it spoke.
    “Real?” the box said. The word was so dreadfully accented that Mevennen hardly understood it, but it was recognizably Khalti, just about.
    “Yes, real,” she whispered. She could hardly force out the words through the tightening of her throat.
    The ghost's lips moved, but it was the box that produced a garbled torrent of words.
    “No, I don't understand,” Mevennen said. “Slower.”
    “I
am
real. My name is Bel Zhur Ushorn,” the box said, spacing the words out. Mevennen tried hard to grasp the name.
    “Bel Zhur?”
    “Yes, that's right.”
    “And what are you called?” she said warily, to the ghost.
    “That's my name,” the box said, patiently. “This” —the ghost held up the box—” is my—voice. It speaks your language for me. We are not separate beings.”
    Mevennen was still not quite sure whether they were two things or one, but she was suddenly excited, as well as alarmed, at being able to understand the spirit.
    “I come from another place,” the ghost said now, through the box. “Another world.”
    “
Eresthahan.
” Mevennen said. “I know. I can't see it, but that's where you're from. What's it like, the land of the dead?”
    “I'm not a ghost,” the ghost said, frowning. Mevennen knew about this. Desperate to return to life, summoned by a curse, the spirit would try to trick you into thinking it was a person, and once you acknowledged them as a real human you gave them a little piece of the world. And that took part of the Long Road from them and further delayed them from their journey to the land of the dead. So Mevennen said nothing.
    “What's your name?” the ghost asked.
    This could do no harm. “I'm called Mevennen ai Mordha. Mevennen,” she added, since the spirit's own name was so short.
    The ghost repeated it, as she herself had done. A small green light was blinking on the ghost's wrist like a little star. She raised it to her mouth and spoke.
    “I've got to go,” she said, through the box. “My friend's calling me. Will you be here tomorrow?”
    “Maybe,” Mevennen said, still wary. The ghost, almost invisible now, touched her wrist and a narrow beam of light sprang outward. Eleres stirred, murmuring awake. His eyes glittered in the light, and so did the sword as he grasped automatically for its hilt. Bel Zhur gasped.
    “It's only my brother,” Mevennen said, but the spiritstarted to run into the darkness beneath the trees, and in a moment she was gone.
    Eleres murmured, “Mevennen? Did you say something?” But she answered quickly, “No. Nothing at all.”
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