Beryl looked up from the book she was reading and over toward Aloise’s bed. The corners of her mouth drooped slightly as she saw, for perhaps the hundredth time, that Aloise was not there. Beryl sighed. She had not seen Aloise since that morning at breakfast. The day before had been the same, and the day before that, too. For more than a week now, Beryl would only see Aloise at night, in the morning, or at meals, and increasingly few of those. Aloise had been spending most of her time in her workshop, working feverishly on a project that she had, as yet, refused to tell Beryl about.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Aloise would say with just a hint of mischief in her voice. Aloise’s grin as she said it always made Beryl believe it was worth the wait.

As the candle on Beryl’s nightstand flickered out, she realized just how late it was getting. Glancing out the window, Beryl could see that only the barest hint of twilight’s crimson was still visible over the horizon. Above the fleeting sunset, the sky was a deep purple, and above that, a magnificent blue through which the stars were just becoming visible. Beryl’s first thought, before commenting to herself on the beauty of the scene, was to wish that Aloise were there to enjoy it with her.

Instantly, Beryl was resolute. She didn’t want to ruin Aloise’s surprise, but Aloise was more important. She set aside her book, not even bothering to mark her page, and left the room. Lys must have already gone to bed, because the cottage was dark and silent as Beryl walked downstairs, making her way more by memory than by sight. She moved quickly to and then out the front door, and then circled around the house to the small workshop Aloise had set up just a short distance away. By the time Beryl reached the workshop’s door, the sun had set and the sky was black.

There was a light coming from inside the workshop, but there was no answer when Beryl knocked. Cautiously, she opened the door, which Aloise only locked when working on extremely sensitive projects, and stepped inside. At the far end of the small, one-room workshop, Aloise sat with her back toward the door. She was working on something metallic on the table, a long, heated needle in her hand. Her head was covered by a large mask that was shielding her eyes and protecting her face, but also mostly covered her ears, which likely explained why she had not answered when Beryl knocked.

Moving carefully, Beryl walked up behind Aloise. The needle that the other woman was working with had been heated to a brilliant white point, and Beryl was suddenly terrified that she would hurt Aloise by surprising her. So instead, she reached out, gently and slowly, and touched Aloise’s right shoulder, applying gentle pressure. The other woman froze and tensed slightly, then almost immediately relaxed. She finished the rune she was carving, and then dropped the needle into a small basin of water. Then she pulled off her mask and turned around.

“Oh, Beryl! Great timing! Is it time for lunch?”

“Lunch? Aloise, it’s after sunset. You missed lunch and dinner.”

“I did?” Aloise said, her face scrunching a bit. Then she shrugged and smiled. “No wonder I’m so hungry!”

“Are you feeling alright?” Beryl asked. “You’ve eaten nothing but breakfast for days, and you’re always in here working. Don’t you think you could use a break?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Aloise said, standing up and hugging Beryl. “I have been pretty distracted lately, but I finally got it to work! You have no idea how long I’ve been working on this!”

“Yes, I do, and you’ve been-”

“No, Beryl, you don’t understand! I’ve been struggling with this forever! Years! But a couple of weeks ago, I hit on something that I thought would solve the problem. It’s taken me days and days of working, but I finally got it!”

“Okay,” Beryl said, unconvinced. “Well, what is it?”

Aloise grinned, and then picked up a small, flat sheet of metal from the worktable. The top had a series of magical runes etched into its surface in a continuous line that curled in on itself in a strange knot of magic words and symbols. The piece of metal was square, and only a little larger than Aloise’s hands. It was not much thicker than a fingernail. Aloise handed it to Beryl, and it was surpassingly light. Beryl was both fond of and talented with enchantments, and she could tell that they had been piled on this object generously, and one by one, an image of their ultimate purpose unfolded in her mind.

“It…” Beryl was barely able to speak. “It’s a boat?” Beryl asked, hardly able to believe herself.

Aloise’s grin widened. “Exactly! It’s a boat.”

Beryl bit her bottom lip and looked at the piece of metal in her hand. It was small, thin, and flat. It in no way resembled a boat. “This is incredible, Aloise!” Beryl leaned over and examined the piece of metal again. It had no creases, no folds, no hinges. It was simply a single sheet of metal. “Aloise, how did you do this?”

The other woman grabbed Beryl by her free hand and pulled her outside the workshop. The moon and the stars were shining now, and there was enough light to see by, if just barely. Aloise took the metal object and held it out. Beryl felt her draw mana and funnel it into the object, and then heard her utter a short incantation. The metal object floated upward, then forward, and finally, it began to unfold. Beryl watched in awe as it seemed to create new metal sheets as if out of nowhere, folding outward and upward, each piece connected along one side to the one that had spawned it. When it was finally finished, there was, sitting on the grass in front of them, a small, two-person metal boat.

“That’s incredible!”

Aloise beamed. “I knew I would get it one day! You have no idea, Beryl, how many times when I’m exploring some place or another, I suddenly need a boat. But I can’t very well carry one around with me. Until now, that is!”

“But how did you…” she trailed off, so Aloise continued.

“This is what I love about magic, Beryl! Nothing is impossible! See, each piece of the boat occupies the same space at the same time, until it’s activated. Now, the first time I tried this, I couldn’t get it to share the weight, so the thing was small, but weighed as much as the full boat. Not good enough, right? Right. So I was just banging my head against a wall trying to figure out how to get it to work. Then, it hit me. If I could wrap the enchantments in on themselves, maybe I could make the metal pieces do the same!”

“That’s amazing, Aloise!” Beryl said, moving to hug her one more time. “It reminds me of your tents,” Beryl said, recalling their fateful time climbing the 77,777 steps.

"Yes!” Aloise said, clapping her hands together excitedly. “The expansion enchantments operate on the same general principle. It was just the compression side of things that was a challenge. It turns out that a boat weighs an awful lot more than a tent. Of course, there’s still a lot of testing I’ll need to do. I need to make sure the enchantments are properly sealed, that they’ll work in different climates, that it always unfolds the same way, that…”

“Um, Aloise?”

“Huh?”

Beryl bit her bottom lip once again. “Do you think that maybe all that can wait until at least tomorrow? I…I kind of miss you being around.”

“Ahh,” Aloise said. “I’m always around, Beryl!”

“I know, but…” she trailed off, and Aloise nodded.

“Okay, you’re right. Tell you what. How about we take a trip? We haven’t been off-plane in quite a while, and I could use an adventure.”

Beryl smiled. “I’d like that.”

Aloise uttered a second incantation, and the metal boat folded itself up and levitated back into Aloise’s hands. In the soft moonlight, she traced the knotted pattern of etched runes and slowly started to smile.

“And you know what? I know the perfect place to go!”

Beryl’s breath immediately caught in her throat the instant she and Aloise stepped out of the Blind Eternities and onto the plane of Ceolré. For a moment, she had to shield her eye from the sun shining brightly overhead, but the sun was not oppressively hot. It was, in fact, a perfect day; it was warm but breezy, with a clear blue sky above and fields of endless green and gold beneath. The world smelled fresh and fragrant, as though the entire plane were a garden in the early morning.

But what truly took Beryl’s breath away was the song. Ceolré sang to the planeswalkers as they stood there listening. There were the ordinary sounds of nature, of course, the singing of birds and the rhythm of the wind, but it was more than that. The plane itself seemed to sing, a beautiful sound that hung just below their hearing, but lifted every so often just enough to recognize. It was a peaceful song, a joyous song, a song that spoke of magic and freedom and love.

Aloise moved next to Beryl and took her by the hand. When Beryl looked over at her, Aloise was smiling.

“Well? Did I lie?”

Aloise had spoken of Ceolré before. Sometimes, when Beryl found it hard to sleep, the two women would lie awake, talking softly to one another. One of their favorite topics of discussion was travel; specifically, Beryl loved to hear about the planes that Aloise had been to. While Aloise had not really been a planeswalker for that much longer than Beryl, she had spent more time exploring the Blind Eternities. Beryl loved hearing her descriptions of the places she had been to, but of all of them, none had sounded more amazing to her than Ceolré.

Beryl shook her head, her green eye twinkling in the sunlight. “No. It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Aloise breathed in deeply. “Mmm, smell that air! Have you ever been to a plane where the air actually tastes good?”

Beryl hadn’t noticed until Aloise mentioned it, but the air was tickling her tongue like a subtle wine. Truly, this was a magical plane. “Aloise, where are we exactly?”

“Ceolré, remember?”

“No, I mean, where on Ceolré? I thought you said you wanted to stay in some city you visited before or something.”

The smile on Aloise’s face faded, and she started to look around. They were standing in the middle of a wide meadow, covered in long, thick green grass that flowered golden on top. There was nothing else in sight. “Umm…” Aloise said, then stopped.

“What’s wrong?”

“Uh, well, I sort of meant to bring us right into Bailain. I think I missed…”

“Oh, that happens to me all the time when planeswalking,” Beryl said, even though it wasn’t really true. “Besides, on a day like this, in a place like this?” She smiled brightly. “I think a walk sounds great.”

Aloise smiled back. “Okay! Umm…” She looked around, and then pointed with her free hand toward a tall hill in the distance. “I’m pretty sure it’s that way. But if not, we should have a good vantage point from there.”

Beryl nodded and, hand in hand, the two planeswalkers started off for the hill. Neither spoke for a long time as they both got lost in the music of the plane. They found themselves walking in time to the barely discernable rhythm and swaying slightly to the song that neither could truly hear. The sun continued to shine in the bright blue sky, but it did not burn them. The breeze continued to toss their hair around, but it did not chill them. The day was, all things considered, perfect.

As amazing as Beryl considered the scenery here, it was nothing compared to what she saw as they reached the top of the hill. It seemed like a reasonably tall hill from the direction they had ascended it, but on the other side, it sloped down at least three times the height. Far below them, the green meadow broke against the shore of a massive lake. So large was the lake that even from their high vantage point, they could not see the far shore. Beryl barely noticed Aloise let go of her hand as she looked out over the serene waters with awe.

“Ah ha!” Aloise said triumphantly. “I knew I had to be close.”

Beryl forced herself to look away from the scenic view and looked over at Aloise, who was now holding a map and comparing it to what they were seeing. “You know where we are now?”

“Of course,” Aloise said with a little nod. “According to the map, this is Loch Críoch. It’s fed by the river from the mountains,” Aloise pointed to the northwest, then moved her arm toward the opposite direction, “and then feeds a river south, which runs down to the sea.” Aloise slapped the map softly with the back of her fingers. “And Bailain is on that river, right on the shore of the lake.”

“So, all we have to do is walk around the lake?” Beryl asked.

“Yeah,” Aloise said, then deflated slightly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring us in closer. I’ve only been here once before.”

“What? Oh, no, Aloise, this is lovely! I never get to walk in the countryside, and this world is so beautiful!”

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Aloise asked. “I mean, we’re closer to Bailain than we are the other side of the lake, but it’s still a long walk. It’ll probably be almost night by the time we get there.”

“That’s okay.”

“Are you sure? I mean, we could planeswalk out and try again if you wanted to. I don’t mind.”

Beryl leaned over and kissed Aloise on the cheek. “I don’t have any plans for the evening. Do you?”

Aloise smiled back at her. “No,” she said simply.

The explorer’s estimation proved to be nearly perfect. They arrived at the nearest gate of the city just as the sun was setting. Or they would have, had they not stopped a short distance from the city to watch the sunset together. As wondrous as the sunset had looked out the window of Lys’s cottage, it was infinitely more magical here on Ceolré. The sky was alight with colors so vibrant that they brought a tear to Beryl’s eye as the world itself sang the sun a lullaby. The two women were awestruck for several long minutes after the sun had finally vanished.

The gates of Bailain stood wide open as they arrived, and so they simply walked right in. Although the sky was dark, the town itself was lit up with street lamps and the dancing firelight that came out through open windows of the homes they passed. They met several groups of people on the streets moving from one location to another; some were drinking and jovial, others gregarious and welcoming, but everyone seemed in a pleasant mood.

And music was everywhere. Nearly every home they walked by had a song pouring out. Sometimes it was high and lively, and sometimes slow and contemplative. Sometimes it was played on well-tuned instruments, other times sung by beautiful, full voices. As Beryl and Aloise walked through the streets, they would stop occasionally, just here or there, to listen to parts of, or entire, songs. In all of her travels, Beryl had never been to such a lively and friendly place.

Eventually, they found their way to an inn called the Cloud & Ember, which opened into a city plaza. Inside, an entire band was playing a particularly jaunty tune while the patrons laughed, clapped, and sang along. They secured a room for the night and a late meal, and they stayed up and enjoyed the music for half the night.

It was nearly noon the following day before the two awoke. They rose slowly, ordered another meal from the inn, and enjoyed yet more singing before heading out into Bailain. Apart from being brighter, Bailain was not much different during the day. Everyone they met smiled and greeted them, and several stopped to speak with the strangers. Just as it had the night before, music dominated the city. Every plaza and market had at least one group playing music for the patrons, or just to play. Beryl found herself enjoying the city more and more with each passing moment.

After a few hours of exploring the city, they came across a small art studio. Several exquisite paintings were displayed along the front wall, and the artist herself was speaking with various admirers as they examined her work. Beryl and Aloise were each looking at a different painting when the artist walked up to them. Beryl’s painting was of a ghostly figure floating in a gray cavern, a soft, white light shining at the end of a tunnel off to the figure’s right. The painting Aloise was looking at depicted an older woman, nearly elderly but still striking, standing at the rail of a ship.

“Hello, friends,” the artist said, “and welcome. My name is Fenella.”

“Did you paint these?” Aloise asked.

The woman smiled. “I did.”

“They’re beautiful,” Beryl said.

“Oh, thank you! You’re very kind.” She pointed at the painting Beryl was looking at. “This is probably my favorite. I call it ‘Rúndatollán.’ Do you like it?”

“It’s haunting,” Beryl said, “and lovely. What does it depict?”

The woman gave Beryl a strange look. “The Rúndatollán…” she said, as if that should be obvious. The look of confusion that crossed Beryl’s face must have been evident, because after a moment, the artist spoke again. “Oh, I’m sorry! You must be visitors to Amhrantir!”

Beryl looked back at Aloise, who quickly stepped in. “Oh, yes, we’ve never been to your country before. We’re from across the sea.”

“Oh, how rude of me!” Fenella said. “Please forgive me.” She moved slightly behind Beryl and faced her painting, pointing at it as she spoke. “All souls on Amhrantir are bound to Loch Críoch. When someone dies, our spirits are drawn to the Low Road, and journey beneath the ground back to Cailltinish, the Isle of Souls, in the middle of the Loch. We call that journey the Rúndatollán. This is my depiction of it.”

“I see,” Beryl said. She was not sure she truly did, but the painting was masterful, and she didn’t want to offend the artist.

“What about this one?” Aloise asked.

Fenella moved over to stand between Aloise and Beryl. “Ah, yes. This is one of my most recent paintings. I call it, ‘The Governess Departs.’ My titles, I admit, are perhaps not the most creative.”

“Maybe not,” Aloise said, “but you are an amazing painter. Who is this woman?”

Fenella looked at Aloise the way she had looked at Beryl, but quickly recovered. “Of course, you’re not from Amhrantir. I had already forgotten. The Governess rules the island, and has for at least as long as I’ve been alive. She is a kind and fair ruler, and the peace we enjoy is largely her doing. I painted this last month, as she left Bailain by ship. I know you’ve never seen her, but I captured her pretty well, I thought.”

They spoke with Fenella for nearly half an hour more, admiring her paintings and learning about Amhrantir. The artist seemed very knowledgeable about the history and culture of her country, and a number of her paintings depicted elements of the local folk lore. She had painted her interpretation of the banshees of the northern moors, the shapeshifting pucas of the crags, and the each-uisce, the horse spirits of the large lochs. Beryl and Aloise listened to her stories with rapt attention until the conversation died down and they continued on their way.

That evening, they ate dinner at a large eatery. The food was delicious, the atmosphere wonderful, and the company, of course, was delightful. As their meal wound down, a lone minstrel came into the establishment, selling songs to individual patrons for a small fee. As she walked past Aloise and Beryl’s table, Aloise flagged her down, handed her a few of the local coins, and asked for a song for Beryl. The minstrel happily complied, and played a slow, lovely melody. Beryl, at first embarrassed by the attention, closed her eye, but in time she found herself smiling and swaying to the tune. They thanked the minstrel, paid for the meal, and returned to the Cloud & Ember. Beryl fell asleep easily that night with that song dancing through her head.

They spent four more days in Ceolré. They did everything that they could think of there. They explored Bailain as fully as they could. They hiked the hills outside of the city. One day, they even camped out in the fields under the stars. Ceolré was a beautiful plane, and neither planeswalker could get enough of it. The only thing they could not do, which was a great disappointment to Aloise, was to spend time boating on Loch Críoch. It was, apparently, the primary reason she had been working so hard on her boat. Unfortunately, they learned that private boats were forbidden on the loch. Aloise apologized to Beryl several times, but the one-eyed pyromancer told her, earnestly and honestly, that it didn’t matter. Whatever they did was fine, so long as they did it together.

On the morning of their sixth day, the planeswalkers were debating leaving the musical plane. They had each mentioned the possibility once or twice over the course of their stay, but neither had committed to any plans. They had done everything Aloise had specifically wanted to, and they were beginning to run low on the Ceolré currency she had brought along. They had nearly made up their minds to leave when they heard an excited cry from the square. Outside, they found a small group of people moving frantically toward the docks. Curious, Aloise and Beryl followed them.

When they got to the docks, a massive crowd was there murmuring loudly in an excited fervor. Beryl and Aloise looked around, confused, trying to figure out what the special event was. As they looked around, Aloise spotted Fenella, the artist, set up with a canvas and easel on a small balcony overlooking the wharf just behind the crowd. She waved both of her arms and called the artist’s name, and after a few short moments, Fenella spotted them and waved them over. As they got close, she called down to them.

“Come on up!” She pointed around the side of the building, and when Aloise and Beryl walked around to that side, they saw a simple staircase leading up. When they got to the top, they saw the painting Fenella was working on; it was a view of the docks with the crowd facing away, and in the center of the painting was a ship. Beryl and Aloise looked up, and the scene looked just like in her painting, but the ship was missing.

“What’s going on here today, Fenella?” Aloise asked. “Everyone seems so excited.”

“They are, and rightly so!” Fenella said with a grin. “Remember when I told you about the Governess of Amhrantir?”

“The one from your painting?” Aloise asked.

“Exactly! Well, the city received a messenger bird yesterday evening that her ship had been spotted at the delta and she was making her way back up the river. Everyone is thrilled. The Governess returns!”

“That’s exciting!” Aloise said. “Do you mind if we watch with you from here? I don’t want to get in your way.”

“You’re more than welcome,” she said, indicating her painting. “I’ve got most of it painted already. I’m just waiting for the ship to pull in so that I can paint the Governess herself. You’re welcome to wait with me.”

They did not have to wait for long. The energy of the crowd continued to build for the next fifteen minutes before a shrill cry cut through the din. A moment later, the entire crowd erupted, yelling, waving their arms, and singing songs of joy and welcome. Aloise and Beryl stared at the crowd in awe. They had never seen anything like this before. As they looked down the river, they saw, as expected, the source of the crowd’s excitement: a majestic, tall ship pulling into the docks.

It took several long minutes for the ship to pull into port, but the crowd never once quieted down. The sailors aboard the vessel paid the crowd no mind as they went about their work mooring the ship and preparing for disembarkation. They worked diligently for a long time, and when nobody came to the ship’s railing to greet the crowd, that was when the noise finally started to die down. An anxious feeling settled on the wharf then, wondering what was happening, and even Fenella, her brush hovering just a finger’s width from her palette, barely dared to breathe.

Then, suddenly, a door on the ship’s deck opened, and from Aloise and Beryl’s vantage point, they could see an elegant, black-gloved hand pushing the door from the other side. The figure waited there as the crowd seemed to collectively inhale. A moment later, though, the door opened fully, and Aloise and Beryl nearly had to cover their ears from the roar that issued forth from the crowd.

Through the ship’s door and up to its railing stepped one of the most beautiful women either planeswalker had ever seen. Locks of rich, golden hair lined a smooth and flawless face, and hung down past her shoulders. She wore a striking gown, corseted at her slim waist. Her bodice and the front of her skirt were black, and over these she wore what appeared to be an overcoat of dark pink, although it may have been permanently affixed to the rest of the gown. On her red lips was plastered a wide and confident smile as she waved to the adoring crowd with one delicate, gloved hand. In her other hand, she carried a parasol matching her dress. The entire effect made her look uncommonly striking.

Fenella started immediately on her painting, placing a large dap of pink paint in the empty space she had left for the Governess. As Aloise stared at the young woman standing on the ship’s deck across from the little balcony, a sudden thought occurred to her.

“Fenella?” She said cautiously, not wanting to disturb the artist.

“Hmm?” The woman answered, her eyes locked alternatively on her painting and the woman on the ship.

“I’m confused, Fenella. Is that the Governess?”

“What?” Fenella asked, her eyebrows furrowed. “Of course it is! Can’t you hear the people? Who else would they be cheering for?”

“Sure, but, well, it’s just that in your other painting, ‘The Governess Departs,’ she was, well, she looked, um…”

“A lot older,” Beryl finished.

“Hmm?” Fenella said again. “Oh, yes, I suppose she was a lot older then. My painting depicted her very well, I assure you. She’s just younger than that now, that’s all.”

The two planeswalkers stared at the painter, but she did not seem in any way concerned with the apparent age of the Governess. Instead, she just continued on with her painting. Aloise and Beryl watched her paint, and found that she did not boast; her work quickly took shape into an amazing depiction of the scene in front of them. By the time they had looked up from the painting, the Governess had disembarked, and the crowd had split to allow her to walk through them.

As the Governess drew close to the balcony, she stopped suddenly, and looked up, directly at Beryl and Aloise. Her head tilted to one side briefly, and then she called an attendant to her. She whispered something to her attendant, took another glance at the planeswalkers, nodded to them slowly once, and then moved on, with the crowd filling in behind her, presumably following her all the way to the Governess’s mansion.

Once the docks had largely cleared out and Fenella had put the finishing touches on her painting, which she unsurprisingly named “The Governess Returns,” Aloise and Beryl thanked her for letting them watch and made their way back to the inn. When they were back in their room, Aloise plopped down on the bed and looked up at Beryl.

“Well, that was exciting. So, what do you think you want to do now?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Beryl said. “I think…I think I’d like to go home now.”

“Really?” Aloise asked. “With this Governess back, I was thinking we could stick around for another day or two. I’m dying to know why she looks young again.”

“Yeah,” Beryl said, a note of uncertainty in her voice. “I guess we could stay a while.”

Aloise frowned slightly. “I mean, we don’t have to if you don’t want to. I was just thinking we could maybe ask around. Fenella didn’t seem to think it was strange at all that the Governess is younger now than when she left. Maybe that’s not weird on Ceolré.”

“Yeah, it would be interesting. It’s just, I don’t know, did you see that look she gave us? She was staring at us. I don’t think…I don’t think we should stay here.”

“Fenella said that she’s loved by the people,” Aloise said. “And this city isn’t all that big. I’ll bet this Governess knows almost everyone here, at least by sight if not by name.”

“Maybe they don’t like strangers here,” Beryl offered.

Aloise shrugged. “Everyone else has been very friendly.”

“I guess,” Beryl said, looking away.

Aloise stood up and walked over to Beryl. “Honestly, Beryl, if you don’t want to stay, we don’t have to stay. It’s fine either way.”

Beryl nodded, and started to hug Aloise when a knock sounded from the door. The two women glanced at one another, and then moved to open the door. On the other side was a well-dressed woman, smiling warmly. Beryl recognized her instantly; it was the Governess’s attendant.

“Greetings, ladies. I am told by management here that you are Aloise and Beryl, is that correct?”

“Um, yes?” Aloise said cautiously.

“Ladies, the Governess has charged me with finding the both of you. She noticed you this morning, and would like to meet you. She sends her sincerest regrets that she was not able to greet you upon your arrival to Amhrantir, and would like to invite you to a private dinner at the mansion tonight. She has even extended an offer for you to stay at the mansion, if you would like. What may I tell the Governess is your reply?”

Beryl and Aloise looked at one another, a silent conversation passing between them. After a long silence, they seemed to come to an agreement.

Aloise turned back to the attendant and smiled. “We’d love to!”

Beryl and Aloise arrived at the Governess’s Mansion a few hours before sundown, as the attendant had requested. Beryl was nervous. Aside from her general nervousness about having caught the attention of the most politically powerful person on the island, she was worried about the way they were dressed. The image of the Governess standing on the deck of her ship, wearing a beautiful gown, and wearing it beautifully, made Beryl all the more aware of the drab and ordinary clothing she and Aloise were wearing. And not knowing the customs of etiquette on Ceolré, she worried about how they would be received.

Aloise, meanwhile, seemed in perpetual awe as they approached the mansion. The house was massive, and partially built into the side of a tall, green hill that must have been half carved out to accommodate the mansion. The front of the building was dominated by high marble pillars that seemed atypical of the architecture of the rest of the city. A small stream ran by the front of the mansion and under a white-brick bridge. Both the stream and the bridge seemed to serve only aesthetic purposes.

They were met at the front door by the same attendant who had tracked them down in the Cloud & Ember. She greeted them earnestly with a warm smile and handshake, and bid them follow her to the dining room. It was a long and winding path through lavishly decorated corridors, but eventually they found themselves in a long dining hall that was just a shade or two below opulent. The western wall was dominated by a massive fireplace that was wider across than Beryl and Aloise’s combined height. In the center was a long dining table large enough for perhaps a dozen people. Three places were set at that table: two at one end and one at the opposite.

The two planeswalkers sat down at the places clearly meant for them as the attendant offered them a drink. They politely declined, and the attendant informed them that their hostess would join them presently. She wasn’t lying. Aloise and Beryl barely had time to glance around the room before the far door opened and the Governess entered. She was wearing a new gown now, a tight-waisted, flowing-skirt dress in shades of light and dark blue. She was smiling warmly, but there was an unmistakable intensity in her eyes. The Governess regarded them passively for a long moment, and then smiled brightly.

“Ladies, thank you for accepting my invitation, and please, forgive me for not welcoming you earlier. I have been away, you understand, so I hope that you do not misconstrue my absence for dereliction of duty.”

“Oh, of course not!” Aloise said. “In fact, we were surprised that you invited us at all. I mean, we’re really just tourists.”

The Governess laughed demurely. “Whenever possible, I like to greet visitors to Amhrantir personally. My people are a friendly people, and our land a happy one, and I like for those who grace our shores to feel welcomed. I trust the citizens of Bailain have treated you well?”

“Oh, yes,” Aloise said. “Everyone’s been really great. You really have a very beautiful land, Governess.”

“Thank you,” the Governess said, and looked a little relieved. “We have done what we can to make it – but, oh, have you not been offered anything to drink!” She looked horrified. “Oh, please forgive me! My attendant should have offered you something immediately. Please, give me just a moment and I will-”

“No, no, it’s alright!” Aloise said quickly. “She did offer us drinks, but we…” she glanced at Beryl, “we did not want to impose.”

“Oh,” the Governess said, breathing a sigh of relief and placing a hand over her heart. “Well, would you consider joining me in a glass of wine?”

Beryl and Aloise shared another glance before Beryl shook her head. “Thank you, but I’m afraid neither Aloise nor I are really drinkers.”

“I see,” the Governess said, deflating slightly. “It’s just…well, may I be honest with the two of you?”

“Please do,” Aloise said.

The Governess nodded her thanks. “You see, I have just returned from a very long and difficult journey, and I had rather hoped to relax a bit tonight. And I am afraid it would be terribly rude to drink alone in front of guests.”

The two planeswalkers seemed to consider for a long moment before Beryl shrugged, and Aloise nodded. “Alright, then. I have heard Ceolréan wine is very good.”

“Thank you,” the Governess said, walking over to the eastern wall, opposite the fireplace, and picked up what appeared to be a small club that had been resting on a wooden rack. She then pulled a woven curtain aside to reveal a circular hide-covered drum set into the wall. Using the club, she beat the drum three times, the sound reverberating through the halls of the mansion. She then replaced the club and moved to sit down at the far end of the table.

“Not the most ladylike manner to call for one’s attendants, I know,” she said with a small giggle, before her face turned more serious. “But I am afraid that I cannot abide bells.”

Thinking back on their time in Amhrantir, neither Beryl nor Aloise could remember hearing the sound of bells. For all the music of the plane and its people, no chimes had ever sounded that they could hear. As they were considering this fact, the door opened again and several of the Governess’s servants entered, some with pitchers of wine and others with plates of steaming food. They quickly served these to guests and hostess alike and then, just as quickly, vanished back through the door.

Beryl eyed the wine suspiciously. With everything she had been through, she was just not ready to trust a stranger who was, quite frankly, taking too great an interest in the planeswalkers. However, if the Governess had intended on tricking them into drinking tainted wine, she had taken the wrong approach. Beryl had skills that the Governess could not have anticipated. She first reached out to the wine with her magical senses. Had the wine been enchanted, she would have felt it. It wasn’t. But Beryl had also run a potion shop, and she studied the wine with the eye of an apothecary connoisseur. Every visual test she could perform without raising suspicion revealed nothing. Finally, she decided on the true test: taste.

As she was lifting the wine glass to her lips, though, the Governess stood and gently clanged a small fork against her glass. As Beryl and Aloise looked up, the Governess began to walk over toward them.

“Ladies,” she began, “it is customary on Amhrantir for the hostess to sip from her guests’ glasses, as an expression of sharing and a show of trust. Would you allow me this honor?”

Another quick glance flew between Beryl and Aloise, but finally they nodded. The Governess drank a small sip, first from Aloise’s glass and then from Beryl’s, and then returned to her own seat. She raised her own glass high and said, “to new friends.”

Aloise and Beryl lifted their glasses and repeated their hostess’s toast. Beryl took only the smallest sip, carefully dissecting the tastes as they danced on her tongue. Grapes, sugar, the barest hint of sulfur, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was just a perfectly usual glass of wine. Well, not exactly, Beryl amended to herself. It was, in fact, an excellent glass of wine. She was, as she had said, not much of a drinker, but this was, perhaps, the tastiest wine she had ever had. A glance in Aloise’s direction confirmed that she agreed with that assessment.

After a few bites of their dinner, which was nearly as delicious as the wine, Aloise turned toward their hostess. “So, Governess, do you always invite foreign visitors over to meet them? It seems to me that would be very difficult to maintain.”

The Governess laughed gently. “Not usually, no. I typically greet the ships as they enter the harbor and give a brief speech to our visitors. I invited the two of you because I was not here when you arrived, so when I spotted you in the crowd, I wanted to meet you.”

“How did you spot us, anyway? Do you know every citizen of Amhrantir personally?” Aloise added a short laugh. Beryl, meanwhile, coughed and nearly spat out her food. Without meaning to, she adjusted her hair to be sure it covered her scars as much as possible.

“No,” the Governess said, smiling. “But I know her song. Surely, you must have heard the music on the winds, the rhythm of the land herself?”

Aloise nodded. “It’s lovely.”

“It is,” the Governess agreed. “And those of us who have heard it longest begin to know its secrets. We begin to hear when it changes its tone, or when it lifts or sinks. And a very few of us know that it sings its songs differently, when there are visitors about.”

“So you noticed us because the song sounded different? That’s amazing!”

“Yes, Ceolré sings with a bit more excitement, and a bit more trepidation, when it knows it is being listened to,” she paused as both Aloise and Beryl were taking a bite of their food, “by planeswalkers.”

The other two women froze instantly mid-bite, and then slowly looked up and over at the Governess. She was watching them with an unreadable expression. When neither of them said anything after a long, tense pause, the Governess smiled.

“It has been a very long time since I have conversed with other planeswalkers, you know. A very, very long time.”

“Wait,” Aloise said. “Did you say ‘other’ planeswalkers? So you’re…”

The Governess nodded. “I am, although I scarcely remember the last time that I actually ‘walked. It must be nearly a century or more.”

“A century?” Aloise exclaimed. “Oh, right! We saw a painting of you from about a month ago. You were apparently leaving on your trip, and you looked, well-”

“Yes, I suppose I did,” the Governess said unhappily. “I do not know why, but some time ago, I seemed to start to look…not myself.”

“You started to age?” Beryl asked.

The Governess winced. “I am not old,” she said hurriedly, then composed herself. “I have merely lived for a long time.” She tossed her blonde hair back from her shoulder with one gloved hand. “In all that time that I lived, I had always looked like…me. Then, one day, I noticed that I looked…”

She trailed off. “Unlike you?” Aloise ventured.

“Yes, precisely!” The Governess said excitedly. “Fortunately, Ceolré has its fair share of secrets, and I had already settled here beforehand. And while I have spent most of my time here on Amhrantir, I did some exploring in my early days here, and across the ocean, I discovered a very magical island. And while there are song mages in every land on Ceolré, the song mages there are the only ones with knowledge of the Youthsong.”

“So, that’s how you get your youth back?” Beryl asked.

The Governess scoffed. “I have always had my youth, my dear. It is merely that, from time to time, my body forgets to…display it properly. So I need to go and get age-corrected, if you will.”

“This is fascinating!” Aloise said. She indicated toward Beryl and herself. “We’re both fairly new to this whole planeswalker thing. We’ve only met a few other ‘walkers, and we’ve really only just started exploring the Multiverse. We’d love to hear about your travels.”

“As I would love to hear about yours,” the Governess said. “As I said, it has been a very long time since I have spoken with my own kind, and while I love the people of Ceolré, it is refreshing to finally talk with others who know about the worlds beyond.”

And so they talked. The Governess told them tales of some of the planes she had travelled to before settling on Ceolré, and Aloise told her of the travels she had thus far made. Beryl told fewer stories, and kept guarded on the details, but the stories of the others were infinitely fascinating. As they spoke, the servants returned, causing momentary lulls in the talk of other planes, as they refilled wine glasses and brought in new courses for the feast. The food and the drink were delicious, and hours flew by as they spoke.

After a time, the Governess called for singers to come and entertain. The songs they sang were relaxing, and Beryl and Aloise began to leave their eyes shut just a little longer each time they blinked. As the night wore on, new singers came in to join the others, these in colorful robes and sashes of deep blues and scarlet. As the singing started anew, the planeswalkers dimly heard the Governess ask them to sing. Aloise sang first, and Beryl remembered thinking that she sounded like an angel. The room seemed brighter, and the Governess was smiling.

When Beryl was asked to sing, she at first said no, but with some gentle encouragement from the Governess and from Aloise, she acquiesced. She had never considered herself much of a singer, but she just allowed herself to get lost in the music. She tried at first to join in with the Ceolréan singers, but eventually she was taken by something deep, something beyond the tune, and she simply sang. Her song grew louder and faster as it went, and her eye lost focus and eventually closed. The room seemed to grow warmer as she sang, and between her eyelids, Beryl thought she saw the flickering of flames. When she finished, she struggled to open her eye and saw Aloise smiling widely, staring directly at her. When she turned toward the Governess, though, their hostess was frowning.

A third set of singers entered the room then, these wearing black robes with gray sashes, and Beryl, through her one languid eye, saw the Governess whisper something to the lead singer. A moment later, she was too tired to keep watching. She reclined her head, closed her eye, and fell into the cold embrace of sleep.

Beryl awoke to a dream. Or, at least, to what she thought was a dream.

She was standing on the shore of a vast, underground lake. The water was oily black-blue, stretching off to some unknowable distance, and its surface was rippled and eddied, even though there was no hint of wind. The cavern was lit by a flickering, painter’s gray light, which cast long shadows across the dripping stalactites. Faerie lights floated over the water, while fish stared up at them – gape-mouthed – from below. But what made the dream like nothing Beryl had seen was that the whole scene appeared to be painted.

Beryl knelt down at the edge of the lake, and saw the brushstrokes that made up the water. There were blue streaks of midnight and navy, with a base coat of phthalo beneath. The ripples and eddies were textures, where it looked like a palette knife had dragged them. And the faerie lights were manganese violet, with a wash of titanium sheen.

The dreamscape was odd, and otherworldly, yet at once eerily familiar, and as Beryl walked along the shore, her bare toes squelching through paint, it finally dawned on her where she had seen it. Because the cavern she was in was very much like the painting she had seen in the market. And although the details were different, the mood was the same as in Fenella’s depiction of the Rúndatollán.

The air was cold, and Beryl felt herself shiver.

A stalactite was dripping just off to her right, and, as the next teardrop fell, Beryl reached out to catch it. The drop struck her hand with a thick, viscous plop, and smelled faintly of oils mixed with thinner. Rubbing the paint between her fingers stained their tips dark with pigment, which Beryl had to wipe on her sleeve.

She was wearing her night clothes, which struck her as odd, since she could not recall having changed after dinner. In fact, looking back, Beryl was surprised to discover she could not recall anything after dinner at all. The last thing she remembered was feeling quite drowsy as the Governess held court over dessert. She’d felt a lightness in her stomach, and her head had gone fuzzy, and she might have passed out at the table. The Ceolréan wine – while good – must be stronger than Beryl was used to, and she had been foolish to drink quite so much. But the servants kept pouring, and the Governess had insisted, and Beryl hadn’t wanted to seem ungrateful.

Beryl hoped that Aloise – by virtue of doing more talking – might have paced herself better, and Beryl prayed she hadn’t embarrassed them both. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been drunk, and she wanted badly to leave in the morning, which made her overindulgence doubly stupid. She had never planeswalked with a hangover before, and, while she was sure it was possible, she doubted very much that it was pleasant.

Aloise, Beryl thought, and her heart felt a pang. Aloise must have dressed her for bed. In her mind’s eye, Beryl pictured the scene, and the thought of it made her feel bad. In the morning, when they were up, the first thing she would do was apologize, and then maybe fix herself a willow tonic if the headache was bad.

For now, though – strangely – her head didn’t hurt. The fuzziness she recalled from the table was gone, nor did her stomach feel bad. In fact, Beryl realized – with a growing sense of dread – she didn’t feel anything at all. Reaching nervously up, she pinched her own cheek, and it felt just like pinching a corpse.

Suddenly Beryl shivered again, and she felt cold all over, and she wanted very much for this dream to be over.

And then – all at once – the faerie lights flickered, going from violet to cadmium red. They drifted together, and they sizzled more than shimmered, taking on a painted appearance of flame.

That was when the music started.

Slowly, inevitably, the painted cavern began to fill with sound. But it was not the light, airy, melodious song of Ceolré. Instead this was a new song. A heavy song. A haunted song.

Thin, banshee-like voices seemed to rise up from the sea, their whispers forming a funeral dirge. A church bell tolled its solemn toll, and – for one, horrible second – Beryl imagined herself back on Aliavelli. Bass drums kept an unsteady rhythm, like the beat of a sclerotic heart. And, somewhere in the unseen distance, the sounds of a piper wailed in reedy mourning.

Beryl clutched her nightdress to her, but could not keep out the cold. Meanwhile, the painted fire began to spread, until it formed a narrow path above the water, stretching off into the blue-black distance.

This isn’t a dream, Beryl thought. It is a nightmare.

Beryl still had nightmares sometimes. She dreamt of Astria’s broken body, her mother’s corpse, a city wreathed with flame. She would whimper in her sleep, and her mind would fill with fire. And then she would wake to the sound of her own screaming, as she started upright, the bedclothes drenched in sweat. It was only the wards worked round her bed that kept the house from burning down, and, in that panicked, swirling space halfway between sleeplessness and waking, Beryl’s chest would tighten, and she knew that she would die.

But then Aloise would be there, holding Beryl in her arms. And she would mop the sweat from Beryl’s forehead, and brush the hair from Beryl’s eye, and she would cradle Beryl’s head against her chest, so that Beryl could hear the slow and steady beating of Aloise’s heart.

She would be there, soft and warm, rocking Beryl in her arms, and she would whisper in her ear: “It’s okay. It’s all okay.”

As Beryl stood there on the shore of the eerie, painted lake – stood there shivering, and alone – she wanted nothing more than to wake up. She wanted to feel safe in Aloise’s arms, and hear her soft voice whisper: “It’s okay. It’s all okay.”

But all she felt was cold. And all she heard was the piper’s mourning cry.

Where am I? Beryl thought, as her teeth began to chatter, and the painted fires flared.

From somewhere close behind her, a voice said: “Haven’t you guessed?” And Beryl spun round to see a pale, familiar figure, in a white robe stained with red.

“Astria,” Beryl said, her voice a strangled whisper. “But you’re… you’re…”

“Dead?” Astria volunteered, a sardonic smile upon her lips. “Yes. And so are you.”

Aloise woke up slowly, very slowly, as the fog around her mind began to dissipate. Her head was throbbing; not a painful, pounding sensation, but a slow, easy beat that was more curious than irritating. At first, she did not wish to wake at all, and instead rolled to her other side and shut her eyes tighter, as if willing the morning to delay its approach.

It didn’t work.

After what must have been minutes of rolling, repositioning, and shifting, Aloise finally gave up and decided it was time to begin the day. She was still a bit groggy, and as she worked her way up to a sitting position, she momentarily forgot where she was. That moment passed quickly enough as she remembered the previous evening, but even realizing she was in the Governess’s mansion did little to assuage her confusion.

She sat in bed for some time then, trying to piece together what had happened. She remembered arriving at the mansion, she remembered the meal, and she remembered music being played and songs being sung over a particularly delicious dessert, but that’s when things got fuzzy. She could not remember how the evening had ended, how she and Beryl had made it to their room, or how she had changed into her bed clothes. She was not even entirely certain she had brought her bed clothes along with her, but she was wearing them now, so somehow or another, the Governess must have arranged it.

Aloise yawned and stretched. She looked around the massive bedroom, so large that it contained two canopy beds, and spotted Beryl sleeping soundly in the other one. Aloise smiled. The night must have been good. She and Beryl had been sharing a room for some time now, and Beryl never really slept soundly. There were some nights that were better than others, but even in the most peaceful nights, Beryl’s repose was never really still. Now, though, she wasn’t making a sound.

Not wanting to interrupt Beryl’s sleep, Aloise very quietly slid out of bed and changed into her day clothes. After that, she took a few moments to reflect on the previous day, still trying to remember what exactly had happened. After a while, though, she decided it was time for both of them to get their day started. Although she hated to do it, she gently called out “Beryl, time to get up.”

Beryl didn’t move.

Aloise frowned slightly. Beryl was not a heavy sleeper, and usually even a whisper in the same room would wake her, unless she were in the middle of a nightmare. But Beryl was never motionless during a nightmare. She took a few steps closer, and noticed that her own heartbeat was speeding up, although she was not entirely sure why.

“Alright, Beryl,” she said louder. “It’s morning.”

There was no movement, not even a twitch. Aloise froze. She stood there for a moment, staring at Beryl under her covers. The room was silent, apart from Aloise’s heartbeat, which was starting to sound more like thunder in her ears. She only hesitated a moment before rushing to the side of Beryl’s bed. She placed her hands gently on Beryl’s shoulders and shook.

“Beryl! Beryl, please, wake up!”

There was no response. Beryl just lay there, her good eye closed and refusing to open, her other eye open but, as always, unseeing. Aloise felt something grip her chest, no, not her chest. Her heart. She panicked then, for just an instant, and shook Beryl again, but there was no effect. She leaned down quickly, placing her ear right above Beryl’s heart. At first she thought she heard a beat, but it was only the echo of her own. She took a deep breath, forced herself to be calm, and listened. There was nothing.

Beryl Trevanei was dead.

Aloise sprung instantly into action. She tried every trick she knew, magical or otherwise, to bring Beryl back. She breathed her own air into Beryl’s lungs and tried to encourage a heartbeat. She cast spells of healing and of vitality, but none of them worked. She cried and pleaded with Beryl’s body to wake, but it did not. Finally, seeing that this was something beyond her ability, Aloise scrambled off the bed and ran out the door, desperate to find someone to help her.

The mansion was built something like a labyrinth, but each servant she found pointed her onward, and eventually she burst into the dining room, where the Governess was having breakfast with a number of her attendants.

“You have to help me!” Aloise yelled, running straight for the Governess’s chair.

The Governess looked over at her calmly. “Good morning, Aloise,” she said. “Did you have a pleasant evening?”

“It’s Beryl!” Aloise said, grabbing the Governess’s arm and trying to pull her from her chair. “Something is seriously wrong! Please, I need your help.”

“Everything is alright,” the Governess said, not standing up. “Just calm down, and I’m certain we can get to the bottom of this.”

“It’s Beryl!” Aloise repeated. “I think she’s…please, you have to come quickly!”

The Governess looked around at her staff, watching her expectantly. She cleared her throat and spoke to them. “If you would all please excuse me, I must have a private chat with our guest.”

Without a word, the attendants and other servants left, leaving Aloise alone with the Governess. Aloise watched them go in silent awe, unable to think straight as she wondered why the Governess was not believing her. She was about to ask, but as the last of the servants left the room and closed the door, the Governess spoke first.

“Now, Ms. Hartley, there is something that you need to understand.”

“There’s no time! I think Beryl might be in serious trouble. I tried to-”

“She is,” the Governess said, holding up one gloved hand. After a moment of silence, she sighed heavily. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Aloise, but Beryl Trevanei will never awaken.”

Aloise’s eyes grew wide. “What are you saying?”

The Governess indicated toward a nearby chair. When she spoke, her voice was almost motherly. “Sit down, Aloise. We need to have a talk.”

“There’s no time! There has to be a way to-”

“Sit down,” the Governess said again. This time, there was a command in her voice that told Aloise that she did not truly have a choice. After Aloise had – reluctantly – sat down, the Governess turned her head down and to the side and slowly exhaled. After a moment, she refocused on Aloise, her blue eyes piercing. “How much do you remember about last night?”

Too shocked by the Governess’s demeanor to argue, Aloise quickly told her everything she remembered, up to the point where her memory started lapsing.

“Do you remember singing for us?” The Governess asked.

“Vaguely.”

The Governess nodded. “The song that you sang, and that Beryl sang, is a magical song. You may remember when my song mages came into the room? At first they soothed the two of you, compelled you. Then, they led you in the Truthsong, the song that revealed who you are, and what you have done. I needed to know what sort of people you and Beryl were.”

“What? Why?”

“I told you yesterday that Ceolré sings differently when there are planeswalkers about. Its song becomes more guarded, more fearful. There is good reason for that. Ceolré’s history is not as peaceful as her present, and it has been hurt by planeswalkers before.” Her face darkened. “As I have.”

“Neither Beryl nor I meant you or Ceolré any harm!”

The Governess regarded her with a warm – if patronizing – smile. “I had to know. And your song, Aloise, revealed who you are. Yours was a song of light, and love, and hope. You, Aloise Hartley, are a truly good person.” Aloise could see as the Governess set her jaw. “Beryl’s song, however, was something different. Hers was a song of flames, a song of death and destruction, and power beyond measure or restraint. Her song showed the things she has done, and the things she might yet do, had she not been stopped.”

“No…” Aloise breathed.

“I sentenced Beryl Trevanei to death last night, and my Dirgemages carried out my sentence.”

“No!” Aloise yelled, pushing her chair away from the table as she practically jumped to her feet. “That’s not Beryl at all! You don’t know her! She has a good heart!”

“Please, Aloise, calm down,” the Governess soothed – unsuccessfully. “Your devotion to her is admirable, but she does not deserve such honor. I have seen the things she has done. She was a monster-”

“No!” Aloise screamed. “Beryl’s no monster! She has a good heart, and I love her!”

Suddenly, the Governess was on her feet, too, and, for the first time since Aloise had known her, she was furious. “You love her? And what good does that do? Tell me! Tell me how your love gives back the lives she’s taken! Tell me how loving her makes her even the slightest bit better! Love doesn’t change a monster, Aloise! It just blinds us to them. Trust me.” She paused, breathing heavily. When she spoke again, her voice was slow, and cold. “I know.”

Aloise stared at the Governess, her eyes wide and threatened with tears. “You don’t know her,” she managed.

“I’m sure that it hurts now,” the Governess said, “but I assure you, it’s for the best. You are free now. She would have led you down a monstrous path. Now you are free to walk your own, one of goodness, and light.”

“My path is with Beryl!” Aloise said, crying freely now. “You can’t do this.”

The Governess shook her head. “It is already done, as I know it needed to be.” She moved to put a comforting hand on Aloise’s arm, but the younger planeswalker shrugged it away. “For what it is worth, she did not suffer. Her death was calm, peaceful, and painless. She walks the Rúndatollán now, and when she completes her path, she will know eternal peace. It is better this way.”

Aloise’s head snapped up. “What do you mean, ‘when she completes her path?’ You mean, she’s not dead?”

“She is dead,” the Governess said, harshly. “Her spirit just needs…”

“I’ll save her!” Aloise said defiantly. “She’s not a monster, and she’s not dead yet!” Aloise thought back to what the artist Fenella had told them about the Rúndatollán. She had said something about the spirit’s journey, and now the Governess had hinted that, perhaps, there was still time. “You’re wrong, Governess. Beryl is a good person! And I’m going to bring her back, even if I have to take her place to do it!”

Without waiting for the Governess’s response, she turned around and ran back to the bedroom. She ran straight to Beryl’s body, still lying motionlessly in the same place. “Don’t worry, Beryl. I’m going to help you. Just stick with me, okay? Promise me you’ll stay with me!” She then began to maneuver Beryl out of the bed. Although Beryl was not a large woman, being generally thin and relatively short, it was exceedingly awkward to manipulate her limp and lifeless body. Aloise, being both unfamiliar with moving dead bodies and cautious to not hurt Beryl, struggled extensively.

“Help her,” a strong, sad voice said from the doorway.

Aloise looked up to see the Governess and three of her attendants just inside the door. At their mistress’s command, the attendants moved to help Aloise carry Beryl.

Aloise looked at the Governess hopefully. “You’ll help me then?”

But the Governess shook her head. “No. I have done what I know is right, and you are wasting your time, anyway. But,” she said with a small shrug, “it is yours to waste. In time, you will see that this is only your grief, but I will not keep you from the lesson.” She turned to her attendants. “Bring her to the stables, and give her a horse and one of the carts.” She turned back to Aloise. “You are a good person, Aloise. When you have accepted her death and the rightness of it, feel free to return. I should like to call you a friend when this is all over.”

Aloise said nothing, but simply helped the attendants bring Beryl’s body out to the stables, where she commandeered a cart and sped away, desperate to find a way to bring Beryl back.

“But you’re not real,” Beryl said, after a long time passed in silence. “None of this is real.”

Astria shrugged her shoulders.

“Your repetition on that point feels pedantic at best,” Astria’s ghost said, rolling her eyes. “But, if you insist on splitting philosophical hairs, then, no, none of this is ‘real,’ strictly speaking.” Her pale lips curled into a smile. “Except, of course, for the part where you’re dead. That part is real enough.”

In the painted distance, an unseen pipe wailed its reedy wails, and the funeral drums pounded out their dirge. Beryl shivered. Gods, but she was cold.

“This is all a bad dream,” Beryl said.

Again, Astria shrugged.

“Not strictly speaking, no,” Astria said. “If we’re going to be pedantic. But, if it helps you to think of it that way? Then fine.” She waved one hand dismissively. “This is all a dream. It’s just a dream from which you never wake up.”

“That isn’t how dreams work,” Beryl said.

“Between the two of us,” Astria said, “I don’t think you’re the one to be lecturing me about death.”

Beryl opened her mouth to reply. But then she closed it, saying nothing.

Astria waited in silence, her sardonic smile frozen in place. The mourning pipes moaned in the distance. The drums beat like a shattering heart.

It was all up to Beryl to speak.

“What do you want?” was what she finally said.

Astria laughed.

“What do I want?” she said. “What do you want, that’s the question. After all, you’re the one who summoned me, not the other way round.”

“I summoned you?” Beryl looked confused.

Astria nodded.

“That doesn’t seem like something I would do,” Beryl said.

“No,” Astria said. “On that we agree. But, then, I never understood half of the choices you made,” she said, “and I bet that you didn’t, either.” The ghost grinned. “Besides, I always suspected you had a masochistic streak. Maybe that’s why I’m here.”

“Maybe,” Beryl said.

“Maybe you want to be hurt,” Astria said. “Maybe you want to be punished.”

“Please stop,” Beryl said, but Astria kept on talking.

“You were always happiest playing the martyr,” Astria said. “And I always did know how to hurt you. But then you knew how to hurt me, too. After all, that’s what family is for.”

“Stop!” Beryl said. The word echoed from the painted walls.

“It suits me fine,” Astria said, “if you’d prefer to do this on your own.” And her specter began to fade.

“Wait,” Beryl said. “Stop!”

Astria’s form flickered, caught somewhere between darkness and light. The specter crossed its arms expectantly.

“Wait,” Beryl said. “Don’t go.” She swallowed to clear her throat. “Don’t leave me here by myself. I… I don’t want to die all alone.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Astria nodded, and her silhouette regained its opacity.

“Just so long as we’re clear,” Astria said, “about who is imposing on whom.”

Beryl bit her tongue. It was useless to argue.

“What do we do now?” she said.

Astria shook her head.

“Not ‘we,’” Astria said. “You. What do you do now – that’s the question. After all, this is your Rúndatollán.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Beryl said. “It’s just a name on a painting.”

Astria sighed, and shook her head.

“The Rúndatollán is a metaphor,” she said, “for the journey from life into death. Or, more accurately, from death into the formless beyond.” She waved one hand at the painted cave, where thinner dripped from the stalactites, and rippled the water below. Astria walked in Beryl’s direction, leaving eerie blue footprints along the oily shore. With every step, the gash in her robe shifted, oozing out bright tempera red. “Death works differently on different worlds,” Astria said. “On Ceolré, it takes the form of the Rúndatollán. On Aliavelli, it was different back when you killed me.”

“I didn’t kill you,” Beryl said.

“So you keep telling yourself,” Astria said. “But that’s not what you say in your dreams.”

“I was trying to save you,” Beryl said.

“Of course you were,” Astria said, and laughed. “Beryl nameless, patron saint of good intentions – they should carve that on the tombstones of everyone you tried to save.”

Beryl bit her lip to keep from shouting. She had to close her eye, and count to ten.

“Astria,” Beryl said, her good eye still squeezed shut, “I am prepared to bear your company, but not to have this conversation.”

When Beryl opened her eye again, Astria was waiting.

“Whatever you say,” Astria’s specter said, and smiled. “Just remember, I’m only here because you called me. You know as well as I do that I’m dead, my body burned. This is your Rúndatollán – if I exist, it’s because you brought me. And any conversation I have with you is a conversation you have with yourself.”

“You make my head hurt,” Beryl said, and rubbed her temple.

“You tore my heart out. Now we’re even.”

“I didn’t do that,” Beryl said. “I never meant for that to happen.”

“Remember,” Astria said, “it’s not me saying that – it’s you.”

“Fine,” Beryl said, “fine.” She clutched at her throbbing head. Maybe it wasn’t Astria’s ghost that was hurting her – maybe it was the drums, booming in the distance. With every passing second, they seemed to be getting louder – their beating echoed in her ears, until she thought it would drive her crazy. “What do I do?” Beryl said, shouting to be heard over the droning of the dirge.

Astria crossed her arms. “This is your Rúndatollán,” she said. “You tell me.”

Beryl thought back to Fenella’s painting, and to the ghostly figure it depicted, journeying into the light. But there was no light in the cave that surrounded her. Just the endless, dripping shore, and the dark, oily-blue water, and the hovering bridge of painted fire.

The bridge of painted fire.

Beryl looked out across the bridge, and – for a moment – the Rúndatollán shifted around her, and she was someplace else. She was not in an underground cave, but on the bridge between worlds. She felt fire beneath her bare feet, and she felt warm instead of cold, and – for that one moment – the pounding of the funeral drums stopped, and Ceolré’s dirge was replaced by a different song entirely. For just that one moment, Beryl heard the sound of a single voice singing. She heard the sound of a lone priestess’s song, singing out to the fire between worlds.

Then Beryl blinked, and it was gone. She was back in the Rúndatollán again, and the funeral dirge was droning, and Astria’s ghost was staring at her with arms crossed impatiently.

“I know what I have to do,” Beryl said, and she stepped onto the painted bridge. The cadmium red flames were not warm, but oily, and the paint squished cold between her toes. But Beryl put her head down and, slowly – determinedly – she began to walk across the bridge, and into the painted blackness beyond, where the unseen drummers drummed, and the ghostly pipers piped.

“You know it had to be this way,” Astria said, falling into step just behind Beryl. “You’ve followed the fire your entire life. Why should your death be any different?”

Beryl said nothing, but tried to remember the priestess’s song.

A cart’s wheel struck a divot in the road, and the cart, and everyone and everything inside it, shook violently. Aloise, who was driving the cart like a madwoman through the streets of Bailain, was jarred out of her thoughts, and she forced herself to slow down. She reined the horse down to a trot, and looked into the back of the cart. There Beryl lay, her head propped up slightly against a small pile of straw that had been in the cart, her body covered by a thin blanket that had been given to her by the healer.

The third healer she had seen since leaving the Mansion. The third healer who had told her that there was nothing that could be done to save Beryl.

The only thing keeping Aloise from crying was the knowledge that there was no time. She did not understand the Rúndatollán, not fully, but what she had pieced together was that Beryl would not truly die until her spirit completed the journey. Every moment that Aloise wasted must be bringing Beryl that much closer to her true death. Aloise was determined to save her before that could happen.

It was a curious thing, although none of the healers seemed to think anything of it. Beryl was dead, surely. She did not breathe; she did not move; her heart did not beat. And yet, she had not grown cold. Her limbs were not yet becoming rigid with death, as they would have by now on other planes. Ceolré was a magical plane, and its song, which even now Aloise could hear and feel in the air, was a beautiful thing. Perhaps its beauty kept hold of people longer, when the silence of other planes would have already let them go.

And yet, all three healers Aloise had found had told her the same thing. All three healers, and an apothecary besides, had told her that Beryl was dead and that the only thing to be done now was to mourn. Aloise had thanked them, made Beryl’s body as comfortable as she could, and gone on to the next one. Their advice, though doubtlessly well-intentioned, was unacceptable. It was unthinkable. And that was a word that Aloise Hartley did not believe in. Ceolré was a magical plane, and with magic, nothing was impossible.

The healers, though, would be no help. There was no point in trying any more of them; they all said the same thing. Any more visits to healers would waste time that Beryl might not have left to her. If Aloise was going to save Beryl, she needed to know more about the Rúndatollán, and there was only one person she could think of who might be able to help her.

Aloise pulled up in front of the artist Fenella’s studio just as the woman was saying goodbye to some admirers of her work. She waved a friendly greeting as Aloise swung down from the cart’s driver’s seat and rushed over.

“Hello, Aloise! Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

Inwardly cringing at her own rudeness, Aloise ignored the artist’s question. “Fenella, I need your help badly!”

The artist was taken aback, but recovered quickly. “I…I don’t know what I might be able to help with, but I’ll try.”

Aloise took Fenella by the wrist and led her over to the cart, where Beryl’s body was. Fenella gasped. “What happened to her?”

“That’s a long story,” Aloise said hurriedly. “We don’t have time right now. Please, tell me everything you know about the Rúndatollán.”

Fenella covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh, my. You mean, she’s…dead?”

“No,” Aloise said resolutely. “Well, I mean, the healers say that she is, but… never mind. If her spirit is in the Rúndatollán, then how do I save her from it?”

“Save her? She’s…dead. It has nothing to do with saving her. If her spirit walks the Rúndatollán, then she’s gone. Let her…let her go in peace.”

“There must be a way!” Aloise implored. “Please, anything you can tell me might be useful. Anything at all. You painted it, you must know something about it. Please!”

“Aloise,” Fenella said, trying to calm both of them, “I know this must be very hard for you, and I am very sorry for your loss, but the Rúndatollán’s not a place, it’s just…it’s just…I don’t know, it’s a spiritual journey. There’s no,” she hesitated, then shook her head and continued, “no way to save them.”

Aloise eyed the artist carefully. Something about the woman’s hesitation bothered her. “There’s got to be a way. You must have heard of something.”

Fenella looked away, unwilling to meet Aloise’s gaze. She did not answer.

“Fenella,” Aloise said simply, then waited for the other woman to look up at her again. “Fenella, where did you get the inspiration for your painting?”

Fenella looked away again. “Every…everybody knows about the Rúndatollán.”

“Please,” Aloise said, then gestured toward Beryl. “I can’t let her die. Please, tell me what you know.”

The artist sighed heavily. “Alright, look. I had heard…rumors. I overheard someone talking about an old woman who, in her youth…” she glanced up nervously at Aloise, “had survived the Rúndatollán.”

Aloise’s eyes widened. “Really? So it is possible! Who? Who is she? Where is she?”

“I don’t want to give you any false hope.”

“Hope is hope,” Aloise said. “I’ll take any kind I can get.”

“You say that now,” Fenella said, shaking her head. “Her name is Mhairi. She lives in a small cabin outside of town to the east, on the lee of a hill there. Says she can’t stand the view of the loch anymore.”

The color drained slightly from Aloise’s face. “Outside of town? But, the time…”

“The road leads right by there,” Fenella said. “But it won’t matter. I’m sorry, Aloise, but I don’t think her story is true. She’s just a crazy old lady. I liked her description well enough to paint, but…it can’t be true. It can’t.”

“It has to be,” Aloise said and she climbed back into the cart. “Thank you for everything, Fenella. I’ll be back…” she caught herself. “Beryl and I will be back to thank you later!”

Aloise urged the horse onward, off toward the city gates. Behind her, Fenella brushed off a tear forming in her eyes, and then walked into her studio to begin work on her newest painting, which she would call “The Championed Corpse.”

“What was it like?” Beryl said, quietly, as cold paint squished between her toes. They had been walking in silence for a long time – or at least it had felt like a long time to Beryl. The monotonous pounding of the funeral drums and the featureless expanse of the landscape made it difficult to judge the passage of time – if indeed time was passing at all.

Beryl wasn’t sure. She did not know how things like time worked in the Rúndatollán.

“What was what like?” Astria asked, hovering alongside.

Beryl shot the ghost a look. “You know what I mean,” she said.

“Of course I do,” Astria said, her bloodless lips curled into a diffident smile. “But I want to hear you say it.”

Beryl closed her eye and counted ten, as she remembered why she and the ghost had stopped talking.

“Dying,” Beryl said. Her count was finished, and she reopened her eye. “What was dying like?”

Now it was the ghost’s turn to be silent. In the long distance, the keening pipes wailed. In the oily water all around them, glowing jellies rippled the surface. They hovered in swarms around the bridge, as if drawn by curiosity to the painted fire, but they solemnly kept their distance.

“It hurt,” the ghost eventually said.

“I’m sorry,” Beryl said. She reached out to take Astria’s hand, but the ghost drew back.

“Well, that makes it all better, then, doesn’t it?” Astria said. Beryl watched as the ghost drew itself up slightly, assuming that posture of regal indifference that Beryl remembered so well from life. The folds of Astria’s robe shifted, revealing the dark stain across her chest. Pigment dripped red from the wound.

“I know it doesn’t make anything better,” Beryl said. “But I’m still sorry.” Again, she reached for the ghost’s hand, and, again, the ghost flinched back, like a child burned by touching a stove.

“You wanted to know how it felt?” Astria said, and she drew her robe back, so that Beryl could see where her heart had been torn. “It felt like a hand, reaching inside my body, and ripping me apart from the inside. It felt like everything that made me me was being violated, and destroyed. I don’t have words to describe the pain. No one who has ever lived has the words to describe that pain. And, for you, it probably looked like it was over in a moment. But, for me?” Astria laughed – a cold, hollow laugh. “For me, it felt like eternity. Entire generations were born and died between the moment I felt Him enter my body, and the moment my heart stopped beating. I would have cried for joy, at the end, if I had the strength to speak. But He wanted me to suffer, and, by the Gods, did I suffer.”

“Astria, I—” Beryl started to say.

“And do you know what I saw?” Astria said. She was hovering close to Beryl now, her words coming out in a tumble, the red paint dripping from her chest in a crimson cataract. “Do you know what the last thing was that I saw, before everything faded to black, and the pain finally went away?” She pointed at Beryl. “I saw your face. I saw you – standing there – with this look of bovine surprise on your face, as though you couldn’t believe what was happening.” The ghost jabbed a finger at Beryl’s chest, and Beryl – who was already blue with cold – felt herself shiver. “You looked so stupid,” Astria said. “So surprised. As though you couldn’t believe what was happening to me. As though this wasn’t exactly what you had known would happen, from the moment you walked into that room, and turned them all against me. As though this wasn’t exactly what you had wanted to happen, ever since you’ve been old enough to speak.”

“That’s not fair,” Beryl said. She could feel herself flush, and yet her skin remained cold. “You know that’s not fair.”

“Oh, it’s not fair, is it?” Astria said. “It’s not fair to you?” The ghost laughed. “Tell me again about how it’s not fair to you. Tell me again about how you’re the real victim in all this.”

“I didn’t want any of this to happen,” Beryl said.

“Of course you didn’t!” Astria laughed again, and the sound send fresh shivers down Beryl’s spine. “You never do, do you? You never mean for any of it to happen. But it always happens anyway. Poor Beryl, patron saint of good intentions – none of it is ever your fault, but it always happens.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You left me defenseless!” Astria screamed. “You took away my power, and you left me at their mercy! You promised that you would protect me, and then you let me die! You watched Him kill me!”

“I didn’t mean to!” Beryl shouted back. She tried to grab Astria’s arm, but her fingers passed straight through. “I wanted to save you!”

“Dear Gods, help those of us who Beryl wanted to save,” Astria said, bitterly. “Because we’re all of us dead. And the only justice we’ll get now is that you’re dead, too.”

“That’s not fair,” Beryl said again, quieter this time.

“‘Fair,’” Astria repeated, and laughed. “There’s that word again.” She shook her head. “When was life ever unfair to you?”

Beryl exploded.

“You locked me in a room!” she screamed, balling her fists at her dead sister. “You locked me in a room, when I was eight years old! Eight! You took everything from me – everything I ever loved! You took my family, you took my name, you made it so that I never lived! You called me a monster, and then you turned me into one!”

“You were dangerous,” Astria said.

“I was scared!” Beryl said.

“You killed our mother.”

“I was eight!”

“I was thirteen!” Astria screamed back. “I was thirteen, and I was scared, too! I was on my own, in a city full of enemies, and I was scared, too! What was I supposed to do?”

“You weren’t alone,” Beryl said. “You had me.”

“I know,” Astria said. “And I hated you for it.”

Beryl’s next outburst died on her lips. In the distance, the drums were pounding louder than before. Her feet had sunk deep into the painted bridge. She had stopped walking. Something was ringing in her ears. Astria stared at her coldly.

When the ghost spoke again, all her malice was gone. Her voice was calm, and even – stating a fact.

“Our mother was the one who died, and you were the one who lived,” Astria said. “And I hated you for it. Do you think I didn’t know it wasn’t your fault?” She shook her head. “You were eight. I knew. And do you think I didn’t try to forgive you? That I didn’t try to love you anyway?” She shook her head again. “I tried. Gods know, Beryl, I tried. I tried every single night, after it happened. I tried to forgive you. I prayed to the Gods, for the strength to forgive you, because I knew it was what she wanted. I could see it in her eyes, in the moment before she died, that that was what she wanted – that she wanted me to forgive you. That she wanted me to love you. That she wanted you to know that she loved you, too.” Astria shook her head one more time. “And I tried, Beryl. Gods know, I tried. I tried to love you, the way she would have wanted me to love you. But I couldn’t. Because you took everything from me, and it was so easy to hate you. It was so, so easy to hate you. So I did what I needed to do. I did what I had to do to survive. Hating you kept me alive.”

Beryl closed her eye, and counted ten.

“I still loved you, Astria,” she said. “You know that, right? You know I never stopped loving you.”

“I know,” Astria said, quietly. “And look where that got me.” She re-tied her robe, covering the open wound. “Dead. Just like everyone else. Just like everyone you ever loved. We all end up dead.”

“No,” Beryl said, quietly. “Not everyone.”

“Maybe not yet,” Astria said. “But how long do you think it will be, if you let her keep trying to save you?” Astria shook her head. “Because that’s what she’s up there right now, trying to do: to save you. And it will kill her, Beryl. You know that. You know it will kill her. You know you will kill her. Just like you kill everyone else.”

Beryl’s mouth felt dry. She could feel the paint congealing around her feet. She tried to clear her throat, but couldn’t. She tried to speak, but the words came out like a cracked whisper.

“No,” she said. “I can still save her.”

The ghost nodded.

“Yes,” Astria said. “You can.” She nodded again, in the direction of the distant drums. “And you know what you have to do,” she said. “Don’t you?”

Beryl nodded back.

Then, once again, she began to walk.

Aloise had passed four different hills on the road leading out of Bailain, and none of them yet had hidden the cabin she was looking for. With each successive hill, Aloise had to fight that darkest demon of the human soul: fear. Had Fenella lied to her? Had she been mistaken? Or was the cabin of Mhairi just too far away? Was Beryl already…

No.

Aloise shook her head and hardened her face against the wind of the road. It wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be. Beryl was strong, and Beryl was brave, and Beryl, Aloise knew, was fighting. She was fighting for her life, for her soul. She was fighting for Aloise, and Aloise would fight for her until there was nothing left to give. And then Aloise would fight more, because that is the least of what Beryl deserved.

As the wagon rounded the next hill, Aloise finally saw the cabin. It was a simple structure, partially covered with large shrubs growing from the hill behind it. The paint on the door and the windowsills was old and chipped, and it looked like nobody had bothered with any sort of upkeep or mending for quite some time. The glass of the windows was all intact, but dirty and grimy so that she could not, at least from her vantage point, see in. Regardless, Aloise reined the horse to a halt and jumped down, almost slipping on the loose gravel of the path as she did. Undaunted, she spared only a brief moment to make sure Beryl had not started to lose color before sprinting up to the cabin’s door and pounding on it.

“Hello?” Aloise called. “Hello, is anyone here? Please, I need your help! Hello?”

There was no answer. Aloise waited there for a long, tense moment, debating with herself how to proceed. Torn between rudeness and desperation, Aloise bit her bottom lip and pounded on the door again.

“I know you’re in there,” Aloise called, which was not really the case, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it. “Please, I need your help. It’s an emergency!”

She paused again, and was just about to pound on the door a third time when she heard a harsh, female voice from beyond the door. “If it’s an emergency, then get ye to a healer or the constabulary! I’ve nothin’ to give ye and nothin’ worth stealin’!”

“No, wait, please! Are you Mhairi? I need the help of a woman named Mhairi, and I was told she lived here.” Aloise hoped she had the right cabin and the right hill.

There was a pause. “I don’t know who gave ye that name, but you’ve got the wrong house. I can’t help ye.”

“But are you Mhairi?”

Another pause. “Aye, I’m Mhairi, but that don’t mean I can help ye. I’m no healer, and I’m no guard, and I’m…”

“Please!” Aloise interrupted. “You’re the only one who can help her!”

“I told ye, I’m no healer. I can’t help-”

“But you’re the only one who’s been there and back!” Aloise yelled.

There was another long pause, and to Aloise, it almost seemed like the sounds of nature, and even Ceolré’s song, quieted as well. This time, though, the voice did not continue from the other side of the door.

“Mhairi? Mhairi, please, open the door.”

After another, mercifully shorter pause, the door squeaked open just enough for the old woman’s head to show. “So,” she said slowly. “Come to mock an old woman, have ye? Come to insult the Lunatic Lass of Loch Críoch? Well, get yer fill and get on with yer life, will ye?”

“What?” Aloise said, confused. “No, I’m here because Fenella said-”

“Fenella!” Mhairi exclaimed. “That painter woman? I should have known! Said she was ‘just curious.’ Said she was ‘lookin’ for paintings! Ha! Just another city lass wantin’ make a mockery a’ me.”

“No!” Aloise assured her. “She did paint the Rúndatollán! And I’m not here to mock you, really, I’m not!” Aloise was nearly in tears. “Please! You have to help her! You’re the only one who can.”

Mhairi shook her head and started to turn away, mumbling something to herself. Then she stopped suddenly, and her head snapped back up, sending a shake through her thinning, graying hair. “Wait. Help who?”

“Beryl!” Aloise said, pointing back toward the wagon. “Please!”

Mhairi eyed Aloise suspiciously, then opened the door fully and pushed past Aloise and walked with a limping gait toward where Beryl lay. The wagon was too high for the elderly woman to climb up into it, and the sides too tall for her to see over, so instead the old woman just stared at Beryl’s face, and then grabbed Beryl’s ankles lightly. She closed her eyes while Aloise just watched her. The moment seemed to drag on until, finally, Mhairi opened her eyes and stared directly into Aloise’s.

“Ye’d better hurry,” Mhairi said.

“I’m trying!” Aloise said with just a bit more edge to it than she had intended. “Please, tell me what I need to do!”

Mhairi lifted one wrinkled hand and pointed back toward the town. “Ye need to get to the Isle of Cailltinish,” she paused, then pointed to Beryl’s limp body. “Ye need to get her to Cailltinish, before, well, before she gets there.”

Aloise’s breath left her body as she looked back toward Bailain. All the way back toward Bailain, and across Loch Críoch to boot. And Beryl’s spirit had been walking the Rúndatollán for how long now?

“How…?” Aloise breathed, barely more than a whisper.

“What’s that?” Mhairi asked, holding one finger up behind her ear as if to point the ear in Aloise’s direction.

The planeswalker shook her head slightly. “How…how did you do it? How did you survive the Rúndatollán?”

Mhairi smiled slightly and shrugged. “I had a very good friend,” she said, almost dreamily, “and a very poor sense of direction.”

“I never thought that I would hope Beryl would get lost,” Aloise said, more to herself than to Mhairi, “but I’ll pray for it now.”

“I hope that yer friend also has a poor sense of direction,” Mhairi said.

Aloise’s face hardened again. “I’ll draw her a map straight back to me!”

She rushed back to the wagon’s driver’s seat and took up the reins, then twisted her body to look back at Mhairi. “Thank you so much. I need to hurry, but I owe you.”

“Ye can pay me back by not mentioning me to anyone back in town. I just want to be left alone. I don’t want to think about the Rúndatollán ever again, ‘til I walk it. One last time.”

“Thank you, Mhairi,” was all Aloise could manage before she found her hands cracking the reins again, and the horse, its driver, and the body it was hauling took off back toward Bailain, back toward Loch Críoch, toward Cailltinish, and toward Beryl.

The drums were growing louder. Beryl shivered as they echoed in her ears, and the walls of the impasto cavern seemed to shudder with every reverberation. The brushstroke rock seemed to stretch on forever, cast in their eerie, blended shadows that flickered in the carmine tint of the painted fires. Beryl had spent much of her life hiding from the flames, but this was the first time she had ever missed their heat.

Why did it have to be so cold? Beryl asked herself.

“Why not simply set the whole thing ablaze?” Astria’s specter asked her suddenly. Beryl shuddered, both at the words and their meaning. It seemed like an eternity since Astria had spoken, and Beryl had nearly managed to forget she was there.

“If I could go the rest of my life and never light another fire, I would.”

Astria laughed, and Beryl, despite herself, marveled at how the laugh somehow managed to grow crueler each time. “You have already gone the rest of your life, Beryl. There is no ‘rest of your life.’ And yet somehow,” Astria passed a single, translucent hand through one of the fires that seemed to almost hang in the air, “you still call the fire.”

Beryl shook her head mournfully. “I am the woman who fire will not burn.”

“Of course not,” Astria said with more than a few drops of venom in her voice. “You’re just the woman whose fire will burn the rest of the world.”

Beryl stopped walking and shut her eye tightly, forcing herself to breathe slowly through her nose. “I never wanted any of it, Astria. You know that.”

“I know that you say that. You say it a lot, don’t you? But that didn’t matter to Aliavelli, did it? I wonder if the city is still burning to this day. It certainly didn’t matter much to me, as my lifeless body burned to ash. And I can’t imagine it-“

“Don’t, Astria,” Beryl interrupted. “Just don’t.”

Astria’s lip curled up into a cruel snarl. “I can’t imagine it mattered much to our mother.”

Beryl spun around, feeling her heel dig into the painted cavern floor as she came face to face with her sister’s ghost. “I said ‘don’t,’ Astria! I have lived with what happened to mother for my entire life! Every night as I try to sleep, every nightmare when I am sleeping, I see her face! I have watched my mother die day in and day out for longer than I can remember! I won’t! I won’t let you throw it in my face now that I’m dead!”

“What you will or will not allow means nothing to me!” Astria screamed back in her sister’s scarred face. “I watched her die too, remember! I was in the garden that day right along with you. But unlike you, I had no agency there! Unlike you, I was the victim!”

“It was an accident, and you know that!” Beryl yelled. “I was a child! A scared, horrified little girl who had just lost the only person who had ever loved her. And instead of helping me, you took more! You took everything I had left and you tormented me with its shadow!”

“I made you strong,” Astria countered. “If I hadn’t made you what you are, you could have never become the scourge of House Dentevi. You could have never-”

“If you had just been my sister, I never would have had to.”

“You ruined my life, Beryl.”

Beryl opened her mouth to respond, but stopped herself. She took a few steps away from the floating phantom that was her sister, listened as the squelching of her feet in the wet paint briefly reached her ears beyond the distant drumming. She closed her eye again, and reached out to run the fingers of one hand along the smooth stone, running in the opposite direction of the brushstrokes that made it up. When she opened her eye, the streaks her fingers had made were still there, and the painted stone seemed to weep to fill in the crevices. Finally, after a very long moment, Beryl turned back to her sister, keeping her voice calm as she spoke.

“Why do we keep doing this, Astria?” Beryl took a deep breath, and exhaled it in a long sigh. “We just keep having this argument, over and over. We had it when you took my name. We’ve had it in my shop. We had it when I visited you to tell you about the Dentevi slave collars. And we’ve already had it two or three times here.” Beryl spread her arms wide and indicated the endless painted reality she had found herself in. “You’re dead, Astria. You’re dead, mother’s dead, and now I’m dead, too. If we’re all joined together in death, can’t we just pretend to be a real family?”

Astria’s acrylic eyes seemed to flare in the matte darkness of the Rúndatollán. “Families don’t kill each other.”

Strangely, Beryl’s anger did not flare at her sister’s words. They were expected now. Beryl looked at her sister and, in that instant, saw beyond the paint. She saw through the painted robe and the blotted wound and the vitriol and the hate and she forced herself to see Astria not as she was, and not as she used to be, but as she at one time could have been. She saw her as her older sister. She saw her as their mother’s daughter. She saw her as a soul, lost and in pain.

Beryl closed her eye and felt a single tear escape from it. She reached up to brush it away and found the tear streak across her face, just another drop of paint on the canvas of her fate. “I loved you, Astria,” she said, keeping her eye closed. “I loved you, and I still love you. I don’t want to hate you anymore. I’m done with it. I’m done with it all. If you’re you, and you’re truly my sister, and if you ever, even before mother died, had any feeling for me, than I’m asking you to just let it all go. And if you’re me? If you’re just my lingering impression of you?” Beryl forced her eye open and stared directly at Astria. “Then I forgive you.”

The ghost stared at her for a long, long time. Then, cruelly, she laughed. “You forgive me? If I’m you, you forgive me? Well, congratulations, Beryl. I’m glad you can forgive yourself for all your murders. I’m glad those seven innocents who died when you burned down that tavern mean nothing to you anymore. I’m happy that you can neatly wash my blood from your hands. I’m ecstatic that you can wave away our mother’s death like shooing away some irritating insect. But I do have one question for you.”

Beryl breathed out slowly. “What is it, Astria?”

Her sister’s ghost smirked. “Will you forgive yourself when Aloise dies? Because she’s running herself to death right now, all because you are selfishly dragging your feet down here. You say I took away everything you had left? Well, I’m not the one slowing you down, am I? This is your Rúndatollán. We’re going at your pace, remember? And Beryl? We’re wasting time.”

Beryl stared at Astria, her jaw clenched. Astria always knew how to hurt her, but in this case, she was right. The drums were echoing down the painted cavern, growing ever louder, beckoning her onward. There was so much more she wanted to say, and so many things she wanted to do. But all that mattered now was Aloise. Everyone else Beryl loved was gone, and beyond her ability to save. But Aloise still lived. And maybe, just maybe, Beryl could stop her from killing herself trying to save Beryl. The only way to save Aloise, she realized darkly, was if there was nothing left of Beryl to save.

Storm clouds had started to roll in with the first shadows of evening. By the time Aloise had regained the gates of Bailain, the first of the cool breezes had sprung up, forcing the planeswalker to brace against the unexpected chill. The first sprinkles of rain began to fall when Aloise was only two blocks away from the shore of Loch Críoch. It was not, mercifully, a hard rain, just enough to slow her progress that much more. Aloise pulled the wagon right up onto the sand and jumped down facing the loch.

With her hands on her hips, Aloise looked up and down the shoreline. She had expected to see lines of docks and piers, until she remembered that private boats were not allowed on Loch Críoch. Aloise shook her head in a moment of frustration, but it lasted only that moment before her eyes started to light up and a smile came to her face.

“Aloise, you fool!” She said to herself. “What do you think you spent all that time in the workshop for?”

Even as she was chiding herself, Aloise was gathering her mana. She reached into her pack, which she had left at her feet in the wagon’s driver’s seat, and pulled out the single sheet of metal that was her most recent magical triumph. The runes inscribed into its surface had taken her days to carve, and the magic behind them had taken her far longer to puzzle out. But locked behind their cryptic designs was the very thing that Aloise needed most.

A boat.

Aloise held out the sheet of metal and poured her collected magic into the object. She recited from memory the unique incantation that activated the spells, and then watched as the metal object levitated out in front of her. Despite the gravity of the situation, Aloise felt a swell of pride as her spells began to unfold and the hidden boat began to take shape. Metal folded out of metal, different sections of the vessel flipping into existence as if from nowhere. Of course, they did not come from nowhere. They came from precisely where Aloise had put them. Despite the danger, her eyes danced with the unfurling of the spell.

When the fully unfolded boat sat waiting on the shore, Aloise hurried back to the wagon and leapt up into the back beside Beryl. She took a quick moment to check her, and though she was still not breathing, her color had not yet started to fade. Still, there was something that Aloise could only barely feel, some thin thread that seemed to be slipping out of her hands. There was no visible difference in Beryl’s body, but somehow, some way, Aloise simply knew.

Beryl was running out of time.

Without wasting another instant, Aloise grabbed Beryl around the middle and turned her over, lifting Beryl up on her shoulders. Aloise scooted to the end of the wagon and then jumped down, the unaccustomed weight of Beryl nearly dropping the planeswalker to her knees as she hit the sand. Aloise’s legs burned as she carried the other woman to the small, two-person boat and laid her body inside. She exhaled sharply, shook her head, and then squatted down, both hands on the boat, and pushed as hard as she could until the boat finally made it into the churning waters of Loch Críoch.

Aloise jumped into the boat, nearly turning the thing over, and was forced to fight to regain the balance for fear of dumping both Beryl and herself into the loch. When she finally got the boat righted, she took a few moments to catch her breath from the effort of getting even this far. Looking out onto the loch, shrouded in the quickening drops of the evening rain, Aloise realized that she could not even see the Isle of Cailltinish from here. She had only her innate sense of direction and the capriciousness of fate to lead her to her destination. She just had to paddle in a direction and hope she was right.

Aloise’s eyes widened and she felt herself grow pale. Almost without believing, she looked down at her empty hands. They were shaking. Aloise’s bottom lip trembled as she realized her mistake, a mistake that could prove fatal. Aloise had no paddles. Her boat had no sail; it had been meant as a paddle boat, but she had not yet gotten around to puzzling out how to store them. The rain on her cheeks began mixing with tears as she plunged her hands into the waters of Loch Críoch and tried to paddle with her hands.

For the first few moments, it seemed like she was making progress. Then the wind whipped up, rocking the boat and forcing it back toward the shore. Aloise was drenched now, but she rowed furiously with her hands, willing the boat further and further into the loch. Whatever progress she made, though, was undone almost immediately by the elements. Her tears were falling faster than the rain now, and her arms were already beginning to burn with the effort. But whatever it took, Aloise would do it.

Then, Aloise noticed something that nearly stopped her heart. Looking toward the bottom of the boat as she paddled, Aloise saw a small stream of water seeping in through one of the seams of her boat. She shook her head, refusing to believe. Her work had been exact, her calculations precise, and her magic flawless. The boat, as it unfolded, should have pieced itself back together perfectly. Aloise went back to paddling. It must have been the rain water, she told herself. And she repeated it to herself until she saw another seam leaking, and then another, until the bottom of the boat started to fill, torturously slowly, with water.

In that moment, Aloise did something that she did not do often. She did something that she had not done in a very long time. In that moment, Aloise Hartley completely broke down.

“Noooooooooo!”

Aloise screamed as loudly as she could. She screamed at the boat that she and Beryl were sinking in. She screamed at the rain that was pouring into her eyes. She screamed at the loch and the wind, which seemed to be throwing her back to the land in defiance. She screamed at the unfairness of it all, at the fact that Aloise had tried everything in her power to save Beryl and it still wasn’t enough. She screamed at the Governess and her misplaced, ignorant sense of justice.

Aloise came back to her senses just about the time her boat dipped beneath the waves of Loch Críoch. Beryl’s head was just about to sink when Aloise grabbed her. She wasn’t breathing, of course, so drowning was not truly a concern, but that realization was slower to come than Aloise’s instinctive motion to save her. Aloise hooked one arm under both of Beryl’s and pushed off, expecting to have to swim hard back to shore. To her surprise, though, Aloise was able to stand. She risked a look behind her and saw that they had only made it a few yards from the shore.

It took the remainder of Aloise’s strength to drag Beryl’s body back to land, where she herself collapsed into the wet sand. She mustered all of her willpower just to keep her eyes open. The entire thing had to be a dream. She had never woken up that morning. She was still lying in the four-post canopy bed in the Governess’s mansion, she was sure of it. Fate would only be so cruel in nightmares.

Aloise tried to stand up but couldn’t. Instead, she settled for gathering the strength needed to throw an arm around Beryl. Her spirit might reach Cailltinish any moment, and if there was nothing Aloise could do about it, she could at least let her body know she was here for her. Only moments after she managed to get just a single arm draped weakly over Beryl, though, a figure stepped into her view. Clad in partial armor and sporting a stern expression underneath a shock of red hair, the woman leaned over her.

“The Governess would like to speak with you,” she said.

Moments later, several hands hauled Aloise to her feet and held her up. They did the same for Beryl’s body. Then the red-headed woman led them off, and Aloise was too weak to argue.

Beryl did not speak for a long time, instead concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. Her feet were stained an odd shade of anchor gray, and every step felt as though she were stepping through river clay. Behind her floated the specter of Astria, and even as the projection remained silent, Beryl felt those hateful, dead eyes on her the entire way. Although she would never admit it, a small part of Beryl relished that idea. At least it was something familiar in this otherwise alien landscape.

And it was cold. Somehow, Beryl could never manage to shake the cold. As they continued down the seemingly endless Rúndatollán tunnel, Beryl could not draw her bedclothes about her in any way that could warm her skin. She could not seem to summon the fire that she knew dwelled within her. All she could do was continue to march onward, toward whatever eternal destination awaited her.

In the distance, the drums and the pipes kept playing their mournful dirge. The sound was hardly comforting, but it was growing familiar to Beryl. Dully, as she walked ever-onward, she began to wonder if that music would be her eternity. She wondered if those drums simply beat on forever, with no drummer and no purpose besides inviting the dead onward. As much as she knew she needed to reach the end, as much as she needed that for Aloise and her safety among the living, Beryl found herself reluctant to discover the answer.

The other worrisome element to Beryl’s Rúndatollán was that the cavern had begun to split into numerous side tunnels. Whenever she would reach one, she would debate asking Astria which way to go, but she did not want to speak with her sister, or her sister’s spirit, or her interpretation of her sister’s spirit, quite yet. The entire circumstance made Beryl’s head spin. None of this made sense, and Beryl almost didn’t want it to. Because, she feared, the moment it all made sense to her was the moment it was undeniable. And Beryl wanted nothing more than deny that any of this was happening.

At first, these other tunnels seemed to intersect with or jut away from the main one. They seemed smaller, more claustrophobic, and it seemed clear to Beryl that these were not a part of her path. But then Beryl came to a fork of sorts, where the painted tunnels seemed to split in two directions, and neither one seemed better or worse than the other. She stood there for some time, wondering which way to go, but no answer came immediately to her mind.

She remembered from Fenella’s painting that the figure seemed guided by a light. Unfortunately, both tunnels seemed to have some sort of light at their ends, so that alone was not much help to her. Down one tunnel, the light seemed to be a flickering pastiche of golden bell orange and vermillion red. Down the other, it was a softer, whiter light. After a long pause, Beryl finally looked back toward Astria, whose ethereal arms were folded over her wounded chest.

“Which way do I go?” Beryl asked plainly.

“Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” Astria said with a sarcastic tone. “And here I thought you’d had enough of tormenting yourself.”

“And I thought that you would have wanted to be rid of me. I would have thought you’d want us both to be dead and forever move on.”

“Now that is a thought, isn’t it?” Astria said. “It is an interesting philosophical question. What does happen to us once you finally move on? Do I just cease to be? Do I fade away into eternity, never to be spoken of or thought of again? Or do I just return to Aliavelli, and forever haunt the ruins you created?”

Although it was not easy, Beryl ignored the barb. “You are my guide, aren’t you? So guide me already.”

“Now, whoever said that I was your guide?” Astria asked, her smirk returning. “You summoned me, remember? I didn’t volunteer for this. I’m just along for the ride, you might say. You’re the one who has to decide where to go.”

Beryl gave her sister a long look, then turned back to the tunnels before her. The tunnel on the left was the one with the flickering light, whereas the one on the right had the more solid, white light. She closed her eye and leaned her head forward slightly, listening to the music. The drum beat reverberated through the tunnels, thundering through the painted rock, and the lilting pipers’ song floated delicately above it. Both sounded stronger from the left tunnel.

Beryl nodded and, with her eye still closed, moved to take a step in that direction when she suddenly froze. Another sound, another song, drifted in just barely at the range of her hearing. It was a soft sound that tickled her ear in just the way she liked. It had been hidden beneath the much louder drumming and the more constant pipes, but it was there, and Beryl shivered – not from the cold – as she realized that she had been hearing it, without recognizing it, throughout her time in the Rúndatollán.

Hardly daring to move a muscle, Beryl squeezed her eye tighter and fought to filter out the other songs. She tried, as hard as she ever had, to focus in solely on this other sound, this low, sad song, that was somehow still hopeful, and full of life. Like pulling out threads from an unravelling tapestry, Beryl latched on to sounds and sensations that she did not want, pulled them out of her senses, and discarded them. She kept doing that until, in her mind, she could only hear this new sound.

It was clearly coming from the right-hand tunnel. It was a song, like almost everything on Ceolré, but it was unlike anything Beryl had ever heard. It was low, and slow, and contemplative, yet seemed to be somehow imploring at the same time. Beryl could not make out the words, but it was infused somehow with emotions, feelings of love and loss, of hope and desperation, of life and death. And while Beryl could not make out the words, her voice caught as she suddenly recognized that the song was sung in Aloise’s voice.

Beryl had taken half a dozen steps down the right-hand tunnel before she even realized it. She stopped when she heard Astria clearing her throat from behind her, further away than it usually was. Beryl opened her eye and turned, seeing Astria still floating where she had been, at the fork in the tunnel.

“You don’t actually think that you can get to her, do you?” Astria asked. “You don’t really think that there’s anything left of you for her to love.”

“I’m supposed to follow the light, Astria,” Beryl said with a small smile. “And Aloise is my light.”

“Your light is the destruction and desolation of fire, Beryl,” Astria countered, then indicated down the left tunnel, which was still flickering in its painted firelight. “You’re going the wrong way.”

At this, Beryl’s smile widened. “You’re not my guide, remember? My path is with Aloise.”

Beryl turned and took another step. Astria’s voice froze her in place again. “And so you want her to join you in death? Because she will die up there.”

Beryl felt a fire rise within her, and she felt her hands clench into fists. When she spoke, she did not turn around, but stayed facing away from the phantom of her sister. “No. No, she won’t. Because Aloise is strong. She is capable. She is amazing, and she…” As Beryl realized what she was about to say, she felt as though some massive weight had been lifted from her. When she continued, her voice was no longer hard and angry, but soft and content. “She loves me. Aloise loves me, and I love Aloise. She’s up there, fighting for my life, and she’s going to win. We’re going to win! I’m not dead yet, not until I give up, and as long as Aloise is fighting for me, I will never give up. Do you hear me, Astria? I will never give up!”

At these last words, Beryl swung back around to stare at her sister. The painted outline of her sister’s form seemed to lose some of its rough edges, as if a palette knife had blended her form with a more careful hand. And in that moment, while her face remained basically the same, the change in her seemed profound, and, in that instant, she did not seem like Astria at all. If anything, she looked like a reflection Beryl had once seen in a mirror. In that instant, she seemed just like Moira Trevanei.

The Governess’s guards placed Aloise in a covered carriage to protect her from the rain. Aloise, naturally, insisted on them allowing her to keep Beryl with her. And so, all the way from the shore of Loch Críoch to the Governess’s mansion, Aloise held Beryl in her arms, whispering softly to her the entire way there. Beryl had, of course, not moved or breathed all day. And yet, still, her body had not grown cold, her limbs were not yet stiff. The magic that seemed to infuse Ceolré was stopping Beryl from fully succumbing to death. Aloise whispered to Beryl the entire way there, imploring her to not give up.

When they arrived back at the mansion, the guards attempted to separate Beryl’s corpse from Aloise, but the planeswalker would have none of it. Before the guards could get physical with her, the Governess’s attendant arrived and spoke with the Guard Captain. A few moments later, one of the other servants arrived pushing a wheeled chair, and the guard helped Aloise maneuver Beryl’s body into it. Although the servant moved to push the chair, Aloise refused and instead pushed it herself.

She was led back to the Governess’s dining hall, where the Governess herself sat waiting. She was dressed in a lovely dress that was primarily pink, but Aloise did not waste her time studying the other woman’s attire.

“Please, you’ve got to help me. I know how to save Beryl, but I can’t get there by myself.”

The Governess stared at the other planeswalker for a long moment, then sighed and shook her head. “Why are you still fighting for her?”

“Because she deserves it,” Aloise said, barely fighting back tears. “Because she would be fighting just as hard for me! And you’re wrong, Governess. She’s not a monster. She’s one of the kindest, strongest, best people in the multiverse. Terrible things have happened to her. Terrible things have been done to her. And yes, she’s done things she’s not proud of, but-”

“That is precisely my point,” the Governess interrupted.

“No,” Aloise retorted, “that disproves your point! Monsters are proud of what they do. Monsters exist to cause grief, and torment, and all the other nasty things the multiverse throws at good people. Beryl’s not proud of any of those things! Beryl’s had to live with them her whole life. They haunt her in her dreams. I know. I hear her scream at night.”

Aloise could not hold back her tears anymore. Without another word to the Governess, Aloise dropped to a knee and threw her arms around Beryl’s dead body, pressing her head into Beryl’s arm. After a long moment, she felt a gloved hand on her shoulder. She did not look up, but after a few moments, the Governess began to speak.

“I understand that you are hurting, Ms. Hartley. I am sorry that I needed to be the cause of your pain. And your dedication to your love is admirable, as I said this morning.” The Governess paused, poignantly. “But I have seen the truth of this woman. I have heard her Truthsong. I know that hers is a heart of fire, and death.”

Aloise looked up at the other woman. She sniffled, once, and then spoke. “Tell me about this ‘Truthsong.’ What is it? How does it work?”

“The Truthsong compels those who sing it to tell of truth, as you might suspect. The song projects an image of what they see when they think of whatever they are asked about. Last night, I had my songmages ask the two of you about yourselves.”

Aloise reached up and gently stroked the scar tissue on the side of Beryl’s face. “You don’t know what Beryl was put through. You don’t know how she sees herself, when her guard is down, like in her dreams.” Then Aloise’s head snapped over to look up at the Governess. “Let me sing.”

“What?”

“The Truthsong,” Aloise clarified. “Let me sing it again, but ask me about Beryl.”

The Governess sighed again, and reached down to take Aloise’s hand. As she drew close to Beryl, however, she yelped suddenly and drew her hand back, rubbing it.

“She’s on fire!” The Governess said in shock.

Aloise furrowed her brow as she looked up. “Huh? What do you mean?”

“I mean, her skin is so warm she nearly burned me, and I barely touched her.”

Aloise looked over at Beryl, but she felt no different to her. “She’s warm, sure. But that just means that there’s still time to save her.”

The Governess stared for a long moment, and when she spoke, it was barely a whisper. “How does she not burn you?”

Aloise leaned back into Beryl, thinking back on everything they had been through, everything they had said to each other. “I promised her once that she would never hurt me. She was so afraid that she would, that she had no ability to stop herself.” Aloise’s tears were flowing freely now. “She’s been so afraid of herself for so long. That’s not a monster, Governess. That’s a good person, who just wants to love, and live!”

The Governess rubbed her forehead for a long moment, apparently thinking. “Aloise, please listen to me. What they want, what they say they want, and what they do are all very different things.” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “I was in love once. Very deeply, very fully. We were apart for a long time, and almost all I could think about was being back together. But then, slowly, I learned the truth. I learned what a monster my love truly was. That truth almost killed me, Ms. Hartley. If I am being honest, I suppose that in a way, it did. I know you love her. And I know it feels real to you. You are a good person. You want to see the good in her, too.”

“Please, let me sing. It will prove-”

“It will prove nothing,” the Governess said. “It will only prove that you are honest in your affections.”

“So you won’t let me save her by how I see her, but you’ll damn her by how she sees herself? If the Truthsong is that flawed, then how can you justify using it as evidence?”

“It’s not the Truthsong that is flawed. It is your perception of her.”

“And what about her perception?” Aloise said. “You have no idea what her life has been. You have no idea the things that have shaped her, the things that she struggles to overcome every single day.”

“I do not need to-”

“Her mother was killed in an accident she caused!” Aloise yelled, which stopped the Governess short. “She was eight years old, and loved her mother more than anyone in her life. But her magic flared, and her mother died. Then her sister locked her in her room, for ten years! Then she took away her family name, which meant everything to her, and kept her under her thumb until her spark ignited. And even after that, she fought to help, to save, her sister!” She paused, breathing heavily. “You tell me that’s a monster, Governess. You tell me that you, or I, or anyone else in the Multiverse, would have come out of that still caring about the world.”

The Governess was stunned into silence, and she just looked over at Beryl’s body, slumped in the wheeled chair for a long, long moment. When she looked back at Aloise, the younger planeswalker’s expression had softened.

“People aren’t monsters, Governess. Some of them do monstrous things, sure. Some of them are hateful, and bitter, and cruel. Some of them do everything they can to create monsters in others. But everybody can be saved. Everybody has the strength to be better. And if they regret the monstrous things they’ve done, then they are worth saving. You, Governess, did a monstrous thing last night.” At these words, the Governess’s head snapped upward, but there was no venom in Aloise’s voice. “But you can still fix it. You can make it better. You can save Beryl’s life, and give her the chance to be better than she thinks she is. She can be the Beryl I see every day. Please, Governess. Please help me save her.”

The Governess ran a hand through her blonde hair, and she herself seemed on the verge of tears. After a torturous moment, she turned away from Aloise and over to the drum set into the wall. She removed the club from the wall and hit the drum three times in succession. After just a moment, a servant entered and curtsied to her mistress.

“Yes, Governess?”

The Governess shot a look toward Aloise, then sighed, and focused again on the servant. “Send a runner to the docks and have my ship prepared to sail immediately. And tell my carriage driver to expect me in just a few minutes, with two guests.”

The servant nodded. “Yes, my Lady. Where shall we tell the captain of your ship you are sailing to?”

With one more look at Aloise, the Governess said, “The Isle of Cailltinish.”

Beryl wanted so much to talk to her mother, to hear her voice one more time. She wanted Moira Trevanei to sing to her, to tell her everything would be alright, to comfort her now, in her time of need. But the figure that floated behind Beryl now did not speak. She looked so much like Astria, just like the reflection had in that world of doors and mirrors. That was the only time she had ever seen her mother as an adult, apart from in her nightmares. Beryl wanted desperately to talk to her mother, but her mother only watched her, and smiled.

They had been walking for some time now. The sound of Aloise’s song wavered as she moved; sometimes it was strong and clear, other times it dipped so low that Beryl could only barely hear it. But always, it was competing with the pipes and the drums, which seemed to grow steadily louder as she moved onward. She came to two more forks in the Rúndatollán, and each time she forced herself to stop despite the chill and listen to the songs. The cold grew nearly unbearable now whenever she wasn’t moving, but she forced herself to stop regardless. She needed to hear Aloise. She needed to follow her light.

Each time Beryl stopped, she was certain that Astria would speak to her again, to insult her, goad her, or simply torment her. But the figure that floated silently there said nothing. More and more, Beryl became convinced that her mother had, in fact, replaced her sister, but she could never be sure. It would, after all, be perfectly like Astria to find a new and even crueler way to hurt Beryl. But every time Beryl looked back, she saw the figure watching her with strangely hopeful eyes, and a proud smile.

After a time, Beryl began to realize that something was different. With her long, exhausting walk through the Rúndatollán, it took her a while to realize exactly what it was. The walls of the tunnel were beginning to look more real. At first, it had been as though she were moving through the unseen areas of Fenella’s painting. Everything looked surreal, with brushstrokes in the stone, in the water, even in the air. But now, everything seemed solid. The walls looked like stone, the fires in the distance seemed made of light instead of color, and even her feet had stopped sinking into the ground as she walked.

Beryl shivered, although it was not entirely from the cold. Something was changing. She felt like her breath would be coming faster now, if only she were breathing. The two songs were growing in intensity, as if fighting one another for supremacy within Beryl’s ears. She struggled as she walked to keep Aloise’s song in her head, but the drums kept pounding, trying to drive it out again. As she walked ever onward, a small stream of tears began to pour from Beryl’s good eye. She could sense what was happening. She was nearly out of time.

As she rounded a corner, Beryl gasped audibly. In front of her was an opening, and beyond it, a bright light. She had reached the end. There were no more twists or turns, no more side passages or alternate routes. All the tunnels of the Rúndatollán wound up in the same place, she realized suddenly. It was inevitable. There was no avoiding it, no going back. Beryl had reached her end. The Rúndatollán was over. All that remained was for her to take those last few steps.

Beryl turned around to look at her companion, her guide, her family. She floated there, just staring at Beryl in the light cast by eternity. She was smiling fully now, and her eyes seemed to glow with an emotion Beryl had never seen on Astria. It was an expression of pure, empathetic joy, an expression of pride not in oneself, but in a loved one. In that moment, Beryl knew, with absolute certainly, who this was.

“Mother,” Beryl said, her voice little more than an exhalation of breath.

The apparition smiled even wider. “I am so proud of you, Beryl.”

“Why haven’t you said anything? I’ve felt so alone here, and you, you could have…”

Beryl trailed off, and Moira’s eyes softened in apology. “I couldn’t, Beryl. You needed to hear her song. I would have just distracted you.”

Beryl stared for a long moment, then nodded. She was already freezing, and somehow knew that she could not stay for much longer. “Can I hug you? Last time, in the world of mirrors, we couldn’t touch.”

Moira’s eyes grew sad then. “I’m sorry, Beryl. I’m not truly here. Neither are you, for that matter. And your time here is short. You belong,” the ghost pointed to the light behind Beryl, “out there.”

“Do you know what’s waiting for me?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t. I’m not your guide. I’m just someone who is here for you. That’s all I can be.”

Beryl sniffled, and brushed away a tear from her eye. This time, it did not leave a painted streak. “I love you, mother.”

Moira smiled brightly. “I love you, too. I always have.”

The cold was beginning to hurt Beryl now, but she lingered for another moment. “You know, Astria always knew how to hurt me. I think you’ve always known how to heal me.”

The phantom floated over to Beryl and extended her hand toward Beryl’s heart, passing straight through the planeswalker. “We are both always here,” she said. “We live in your heart now, and only there. Please try to forgive Astria, Beryl, for yourself, if not for her. And while you’re at it?” Moira smiled warmly. “Forgive yourself.”

Beryl nodded, but the cold was hurting her now. She could not stay in the Rúndatollán any longer. With a wave of regret, she turned away from the ghost of her mother and stepped forward into the light of whatever it was that was beyond. Her entire vision was subsumed in light, and the cold vanished as Beryl’s journey ended once and for all.

Aloise Hartley was on her knees, hot tears streaming down her face, as she cradled the still body of Beryl Trevanei on the coarse sands of the Isle of Cailltinish. It was still raining, as if Ceolré herself was weeping for the loss of the planeswalker. From the deck of her tall ship a few dozen yards away, the Governess watched her with a practiced lack of expression. The wind howled between the dead and dying trees that covered the island, and it sounded like spirits of the dead wailing in the night. Aloise had not been there long, and she was terrified that she was too late. She knew that there was nothing in the multiverse more dangerous than fear, but at this moment, she simply could not shake it.

Then Beryl’s eye shot open in the night, and her body lurched to fill her lungs with air. Aloise scarcely dared to believe, but she threw her arms even tighter around the other woman, and kissed her like there was no tomorrow. They both knew how close that reality had been.

Beryl and Aloise spent every moment together as they returned from Cailltinish. The Governess gave them privacy in her private quarters aboard her ship while she herself stayed on deck. The two planeswalkers spent the first half of the short voyage simply holding one another and sharing each other’s warmth. After that, they found themselves tripping over each other’s words asking if the other one was alright. Finally, when both had settled down a bit, they began telling each other the story of the past day and what each one went through.

Beryl, mercifully, seemed to have no lingering effects from her death. Her limbs were still sore and she was a bit light-headed, but otherwise, she was physically fine. Aloise, even despite her immense worry, marveled at the entire thing. She had heard of people on other planes, who had seemed to die but survived, and usually, their minds were never the same. But Beryl was her same old self, apart from the shock of what had happened to her.

Aloise apologized to Beryl no less than a dozen times before they made landfall back in Bailain. She apologized for bringing her to Ceolré. She apologized for not agreeing to leave when Beryl had wanted to. She apologized for convincing Beryl to go to the Governess’s mansion for dinner. She even, uncharacteristically, began to cry as all of the emotion she had struggled to keep in spilled out. Beryl held her, and caressed her hair, and told her not to feel badly. The words helped, but only a little.

When the ship arrived at the dock, the Governess had herself and the two other planeswalkers brought back to the mansion in separate carriages. Neither Beryl nor Aloise were in an emotional position to argue or question where they were going or why. When they arrived, they were again ushered into the dining hall. Both women took their seats, but the Governess, instead, paced in front of the fireplace for a long moment. Finally, she turned toward her guests, her eyes quavering just slightly.

“I owe you both a very great apology,” she began. “I cannot make up for what I have done. I still believe that the monsters among us must be excised, but my method for discovering them is, I can see, flawed. There is only one monster here, and I am she.” She bowed her head and shut her eyes, breathing in deeply. When she looked up at them, a tear had finally broken through the corner of one, blue eye. “I am sorry. Please forgive me.”

Aloise stood and walked up to within five paces of her host, but no closer. “You’re not a monster, Governess. It’s like I said. If you feel badly about what you did, then you’re no monster. But I’m not going to say that it’s okay, either. I almost lost Beryl today, and I am never going to be okay with that. I hope you don’t think it’s too rude if Beryl and I leave now.”

“Of course,” the Governess said, her voice beginning to even out. “I understand.”

“No, wait,” Beryl said, pushing herself away from the table and joining Aloise. “I’m not doing this anymore. I’ve had enough, and it’s time to change the script.”

“What do you mean?” Aloise asked, a hint of concern in her voice.

Beryl stepped forward and squared up to the Governess. “You did a bad thing last night. You killed me. If Aloise hadn’t done what she did, nearly killing herself in the process, I would be dead right now.” The Governess looked away as Beryl spoke, but the scarred woman did not back down. “Governess, please look at me.” Reluctantly, the Governess did so. Beryl took a deep breath. “I forgive you.”

“What?”

Beryl closed her eye, but she left it closed for only a brief moment before opening it again, staring hard into her hostess’s gaze. “I don’t want to collect any more scorn from across this multiverse of ours. I don’t want to leave things unsaid, only to fester in my heart, or someone else’s. I don’t like what you did. And I don’t like why you did it. But I don’t want it to eat away at you while we’re not here. I don’t want you to have a reason to come looking for us someday, unless it’s in friendship. And I don’t want it eating away at my heart, either. To many things have tried to do that already.”

Aloise took a few steps forward and silently grabbed Beryl’s hand, squeezing it just slightly to show her support. The Governess stared at Beryl for a long time, then shook her head. “I don’t deserve that, but I thank you.” She reached out a gloved hand toward Beryl’s empty one. “You are a remarkable person, Beryl Trevanei.”

Beryl reached out and shook the other woman’s hand. “Maybe someday, despite everything, we can be friends, Governess.”

“Well, maybe we can start with names rather than titles. Please, call me Annalee. Annalee V’ray, at your service.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Annalee.”

The two let go, and both managed a thin smile. The Governess took a deep breath. “Well, this might not be the most welcome invitation, considering the past day, but you are both welcome to stay another night. It might be best to not planeswalk in your current conditions.”

Beryl and Aloise shared a look, and this time Aloise bit her bottom lip. “It’s up to you, Beryl.”

Beryl thought for a moment, then nodded. “We will stay until the morning. Thank you.”

The three planeswalkers ate a large meal, although this time they politely refused the Ceolréan wine. After the meal, when the ice between the hostess and her guests had thawed a bit, the Governess took Beryl and Aloise on a tour of her mansion. It was a beautiful structure, and both planeswalkers were amazed by what they saw. But of all the wonders they saw, the most amazing thing to Beryl was found down a stone hallway in one of the basement levels when they came to a particular door. Beryl let out an audible gasp when she saw it.

“Beryl, what is it?” Aloise asked immediately.

“This door,” Beryl whispered, wide-eyed, but she did not, or could not, continue.

The Governess nodded. “This is certainly a mystery, to be sure. We are well underneath the hill now. I had the hill partially excavated when I first acquired this land because I liked the aesthetic, but as they dug it out, they found this door. I have tried several times throughout the centuries, but I have never found a way to open it. Even with all my skills in counterspells and counter-enchantments, it has remained steadfastly locked.”

Beryl’s bottom lip was trembling. “It’s heart-sealed.”

Both Aloise and Annalee turned toward Beryl. The Governess’s brow was furrowed. “Heart-sealed? What does that mean?”

Beryl looked her directly in the eyes. “It means I can open it.”

“Are you sure?”

Beryl glanced at Aloise, then smiled and looked back. “I’ve opened heart-sealed locks before. Do you want it open?”

Annalee’s mouth hung open for a moment before she realized her unladylike expression. “Yes. Please.”

The scarred planeswalker reached for the door, but before she could touch the door, the Governess grabbed her wrist lightly. “What…what is behind it?”

Beryl looked at her. “Unless I’m very wrong, just a quiet place to reflect.”

Annalee let go of her arm, and Beryl reached forward, feeling the magic within her swell, just as it had long ago in a dream when she opened the box that had contained her mother’s Fire Diamond. Her magic crackled and danced against the impossibly ancient enchantment, and for a long second, the entire plane seemed to hold its breath. Then, suddenly, a loud thundering sound emanated from the door, echoing down the hallway behind them. Beryl looked over at the Governess, and then over at Aloise, who was smiling an almost manic smile. Despite herself and despite everything that had happened that day, Beryl could not help but smile back. Then, she reached forward and opened the door.

Behind the door there was a dark bridge, and Beryl felt herself grow pale as she recognized it. She had stepped onto a similar bridge before, that one leading from the temple on Aliavelli to a world of doors and mirrors, a world that even now held the reflection of her mother, and the reflection of herself. Even more amazing was that the moment she opened the door, she heard the songs of Ceolré shift and change, and become a chant. It was a chant that she had heard before, sung out by the priestesses of the temple where her mother had once served. There was no doubt now. Beryl had found another bridge, and undoubtedly, another door.

“What is this?” The Governess whispered, her sense of wonder palpable as she spoke.

“That,” Beryl said slowly, “is a very long story.” She looked over at Aloise, who was staring through the door, where the Blind Eternities themselves roiled over and around the bridge like a massive velvet painting. Aloise noticed Beryl watching her and turned back, then smiled widely at the promise of a new adventure. Beryl turned back, and although she was speaking mostly to the Governess, she was staring out at the bridge. “Governess, I think we might need to stay an extra day.”

Pt.1:
-Oh, this looks all too perfect, that adjective itself is thrown around way too much not to be deliberate. Also, is it just me or "Cloud and Ember" (sky and fire) sounds a bit on the nose, given our main characters?
-A weird law preventing free access to a culturally significant place? I can't see it becoming relevant later, no sir.
-Uh-huh, Beryl's smelling something fishy. But how could it be, when powerful women reverting their aging are so commonplace? (Fenella's incredibly flat naming convention is adorable)
-...bells? Is there any canon significance to bells, aside from Cartrevard? I can't recall any magical creature being particularly sensitive to their sound. Weird. Also, the Governess' slight pressure into making them drink wouldn't be so suspicious if the setting didn't gave such strong Omelas vibes...
-Ooo, that's fun! One weird oldwalker completely refusing the mere concept of aging? As a human, a relatively short-lived race? *rubs hands together*
-Yyyyeah, calling in three sets of musician just after mentioning song-mages wasn't ominous at all, Governess... and what did you gleam from Beryl's song, old lady?
-The image of standing inside a painting-like scene is sooo good. The For Whom The Bell Tolls line popped in my mind. Also, my blood ran cold at the last line. You Better Not, Raven. I'm gonna riot, I swear.

Pt.2:
-Is that you, Annalee, your bitter bitch? I now feel like that flash fiction wasn't entirely random... I mean, as if there was a reason why she was close to your mind...
-Alright, Astria's sass is just what I was needing to cleanse the Governess' self-righteous aftertaste Damn, our gurl's brutal.
-That was in poor taste, Fenella. There's bound to be other ways to word that.
-Again, Astria is probably my favorite part of this story so far. Ooo, the poisoned talk of "saving" is everywhere, rhymes and reflections and echoes muddling everything. "Patron saint of good intentions", indeed.
-Oh, right, Mhairi's introduction brought up the loch again. No way the folding boat (lovely D&D reference btw) won't come in clutch. Edit: Ah, right on time.
-She HAD a good friend. Hm. Raven, I'm warning you AGAIN.
-Yeah, the supposed way out of the Death Walk is swapping places. Ugh. I wonder what will you do to make any third option meaningful: defying death while in its clutches can't be cheap, we both know that.

Pt.3:
-We know there's some kind of police force thanks to Mhairi - why's nobody stopping Aloise from breaking the law? She even went straight through Bailain instead of circling it.
-Ah, there it is. Didn't expect Aloise's boat to break down so easily, but I do feel like that was Annalee's magic meddling.
-Aw, the ghost-shift. So fitting, that the loving presence in her family/soul is the faintest, the harder one to remember. Nice symbolism.
-Yep, that's Annalee alright. Not sure her sacrifice will feel like enough either, if that's the angle you're working. She meant to kill Beryl for good, and... well, while her black-and-white morality and refusal to acknowledge the grey zone of the Death Walk (sorry, brain fizzles when I try to rewrite the actual name) mirror each other pretty well, allowing a way out of Annalee's simplistic morality through her simplistic view of death, that would still feel sold short, in a way. Like, "you can save your own life from Certain Death with no consequence if you just Believe"? Nope. Not after what happened to Denner. Yep, still bitter about that
Anyway, moving on.
-The imagery at the end of the Walk is beautiful, I'll give you that
-"Beryl, mercifully, seemed to have no lingering effects from her death." Yeah, **** that sentence. I've already explained why. Denner dying in Gale's hands, and Beryl outright resurrecting in Aloise's. Explain the difference to me, please. You even outright call it death, ffs.
-Yeah, Aloise, you're not the genre-savvy half of the couple, sorry you had to learn it like this
-(despite her mere presence often causing the story's genre to shift slightly. Lucky much? I feel like I can understand Alessa's perspective of her now, lol)
-Annalee getting character development, huh? That's nice. I still wonder about her immortality, though. More skeletons in your closet, dear?
-"nearly killing herself in the process"? Really? The hints were there, but Aloise never felt in physical danger, just panicking. I never saw how she was supposed to sacrifice herself by swapping places with Beryl. Was she willing to do that? Certainly. Did I feel like that moment was close? Never.
-Nice to officially meet again, old lady...
-Beryl's speech is nice, but in my heart it's tainted by the circumstances. Yes, there's trauma, but it's easier to forgive when you can move on and even pretend this never happened because nothing was lost for good. And maybe that's what I will do about this story in the future, at least from the Beryloise side of things - Annalee probably has more* interesting stories to tell. Or will this trauma play an important role in future stories? It'd be certainly warranted.
*as in "several", not "comparatively"
-"This door"? Why would Beryl- the mirror place?!
-"a quiet place to reflect"
-Ooo, I was right! That's so cool! And a nice, upbeat end to this story.

(post-reading: oh, I didn't remember Annalee wished for Aloise to leave as a friend after killing Beryl, that's a neat foreshadowing, in a twisted way I guess she wasn't the one meddling to enforce the loch ban? Could have fooled me, honestly.

Also, I wonder if Fenella will rename her new painting, seeing Beryl alive and well lol)

Yeah, this elicited very mixed feelings. There are some things that I wasn't too happy about, but must of them weren't that big of a deal. I didn't expect the folding boat to be so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, honestly, but that's alright. I would like some more info about how the loch and the entire plane works, though, it gives this too-good-to-be-true vibes and Annalee doesn't seem to be the cause of it, more like she ended up here to soothe her bitter heart and heal her... physical corruption* - I can totally see her as a morally grey, self-righteous and self-appointed guardian of this idyllic plane**. However, the place looks like a true heaven on earth, and the Omelas tale starts to ring out in my head... Still, I don't mind too much, since Beryloise seem to stay here for a while and there may be chances of clearing things out later.

*Not describing the new apparently available source of immortality in the M:EM leaves me a bit unsatisfied, which I hope you understand.
**Oh, I just realized how much fun Raiker would have, if he ever set foot on it... Aloise doesn't learn Annalee's name until the end of the story, but I think it wouldn't be that hard to surmise for a dedicated poet - though Annalee might be guarding her name carefully, knowing what happened in her home plane... oh, I just now remembered there might have been something about bells in Annalee's old plane. There was, wasn't it? Like her loving the sound of the many bell towers of the place before everything went to hell? (yeah, I could just look it up but... )

The imagery, on the other hand, is beautiful. I loved just about everything in Beryl's underworld journey. Annalee's bitter present is fitting, her summary and "kind" condemnation of Beryl is suitably atrocious and Aloise's tearing down her hypocrisy was top notch. Beryl dealing with the late images of her family and later unlocking a door to the Mirror Place (can't remember the name) is very thematically cohesive. Beryl forgiving Annalee after Aloise wants to hold her grudge is cool, shows even her has a limit to her Perfect Sunshine persona - which is entirely justified, by the way, she was hurt and Annalee was a piece of **** in this one, telling her to go **** herself is well within reason. It grounds Aloise's character, I would say.

And yet, how you just read...

The shiny happy ending left some sour aftertaste. It almost feels like Beryl and Aloise didn't suffer Denner's fate because they're more beloved, and have more stories to tell, while Denner had outlived its function. Yes, Beryl's almost-death is fairy-tale worthy enough to warrant some extra suspension of disbelief, but I do feel like the only thing Aloise needed to do was kicking Annalee's verbal ass and sticking around as Beryl learned to forgive herself and give herself another chance. Annalee effectively takes back her murder by giving Aloise the means to free-revive Beryl* and that's it. No long-term consequences, they make a new friend and find another adventure for them to enjoy, which feels a bit weird since Final Death breaths so close to their necks for so much of the story. If the underlying message is fairness doesn't count for much in the world, it would clash a bit with the happy-go-lucky ending, making it sound like good and bad things happen beyond rhyme and reason and the right thing is shrugging and enjoy the good breaks you happen to have. Pretty sure I'm overthinking this, but still... once you set a standard for Final Death, skirting uncomfortably close to that and getting out scot-free is bound to elicit questions. It almost feels like Denner and Aloise live in two different worlds, with different consequences to danger - I wonder if I'd feel the same rereading Paid In Full, where they're both also in grave danger, but I don't think so.

*why doesn't anybody else do that in case of untimely death, barring Annalee's (so far) unjustified ban on loch travel? Bring the "corpse" to the island, see if the soul wants another chance at life. Or does it only work for clean deaths like song-murder? Awfully convenient... I don't think this is just bitter nitpicking, though, because I don't think the stakes pay off as well as they could. EDIT: I guess I mean that there seem to be unique circumstances that allow Beryl to escape what is said time and time again to be certain death, but I can't see what those are - which factors make this resurrection something that wouldn't be available to most people in the same situation, creating a much bigger precedent for survival.

(I know I ranted a lot about this, but in the end the only thing I'm unhappy about is the climax; both the windup and the aftermath are more than fine outside their ties to the perceived unpaid price)

Despite my ambivalent thoughts, I was happy to read more about out fave sweethearts and reacquaint myself with Annalee, and I'm curious to see how their tale will continue. Thanks for sharing!

Edit:

Oh, you cheeky raven

(since you said this is a collab, I'm curious as to what parts were volunteered by who, which ideas... I'd gladly read about the whole creative process, so feel free to say a lot about it all I know I said a lot about it too, and I merely read it!)

Pt.1:

Yeah, I don't think Ceolré is quite as creepy/idyllic as, say, Pythdon in "Tales of the Dominia Cabal: Lucien," but I can see it having a sort of Lotus-eaters vibe like Pythdon did. And let's face it, if my name is attached to a story, people are bound to expect something darker than the surface indicates. As for the inn name, I sadly do not remember what my thought process was for coming up with "The Cloud and Ember," so I don't remember if I meant it as a sort-of connection to Aloise and Beryl or not. I feel like I just liked the name and it was maybe more of a subconscious connection than an intentional one. I do like the name, though.


My headcanon (for my own story and plane... ) is that this is a cultural thing, and the law/restriction probably predates the Governess, but I think there are several different ways we could play this if we ever further develop Ceolré. But yes, the note about them not being able to boat on the loch was certainly a moment of foreshadowing. I do love to foreshadow...


I had fun with Fenella as a minor character here. The naming thing came because I felt the first painting needed to be called ‘Rúndatollán’ because we needed to explain what the Rúndatollán is for the story to make sense. With such a simplistic name (to their culture, anyway), the second painting, 'The Governess Departs,' just felt right, and I ran with it from there.

Now I think is as good a time as any to explain the main inspiration for this story. The concept of the Rúndatollán is based off the idea of "The Low Road," as expressed in the famous Scottish song "Loch Lomond." The lyric "You take the high road and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland a'fore ye" refers, apparently, to an old belief that if a Scottish person dies outside of Scotland, their spirit will return via the "Low Road," meaning that the speaker's spirit will return before their living compatriot manages to return home in person. I love this idea, and so I tweaked it a bit for Ceolré (or, more accurately, the island/continent of Amhrantir) so that if anyone dies on Amhrantir, their spirit is drawn via the Rúndatollán to the Isle of Cailltinish. So, in that interpretation, that lyric would be pretty ominous if the "you" who is taking "the High Road" is trying to do what Aloise is trying to do, as the spirit is going to get there first, thus completing its journey into the Ceolréan afterlife. And of course, for Beryl and Aloise, the next line is particularly chilling: "Where me and my true love will never meet again."


I will come back to this later, when you bring up bells again, but this is, of course, significant to Annalee V'ray's backstory.


This is just one of the many, many, many reasons I wish Orcish were still around, because while her anti-aging process was my idea and design, a lot of the language Annalee uses here, like getting "age-corrected," was inspired by a story Orcish told me. Someone he knew (a grandmother, maybe?) used to dye her hair, but would never refer to it as that, because she would dye it her natural color, and therefore she was simply getting her hair "color-corrected." I loved that, as I love pretty much all of Orcish's little anecdotes.


I would LOVE to see a Dirge-mage planeswalker from Ceolré. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Orcish and I had a long(ish) back-and-forth about the nature of the Truthsong and what exactly it was the Annalee saw. The way I envisioned it when I first pitched the idea to Orcish was that the Truthsong revealed how you saw yourself, and thus played into many of Beryl's insecurities about herself and the things she has done. Aloise, of course, is confident in both her own goodness and Beryl's, so her Truthsong projected light. Beryl fears she is a monster, and so hers projected flames, and destruction, and death. To V'ray's way of thinking, that is the "truth," but of course she misses the very obvious fact that people do not always (or perhaps even usually) have the clearest picture of themselves.


The Rúndatollán is really the centerpiece of this entire story, and I am so, so happy with the way it turned out. Usually I would not specifically call out who wrote what in collabs, but Orcish deserves recognition for what he created with the Rúndatollán, so I will say he wrote several (though not all) of the Rúndatollán sections. And, even though it's very much the sort of line I would leave a section on, Orcish did, in fact, write that first section. To give myself some (hopefully) due create, the idea of the Rúndatollán appearing as a painting was mostly my idea from the original pitch, but Orcish leaned into it and I just love so much of the language that those sections are practically dripping with.

I recall Orcish being particularly taken with my description of Thatis's dreamscape in "Promises, Promises," and picturing them almost like a Van Gogh painting, and I think his descriptions of the Rúndatollán follow a similar thought process. We did it that way because Beryl's only point of reference for the Rúndatollán is Fenella's painting, so it made sense that her spirit would "paint" her journey that way. One thing I will add, because I think it was a brilliant touch by Orcish, was that in that first section, every time Beryl gets close to the realization that she is dead, she gets a sudden chill which breaks the narration in a slightly different direction, like she can't quite accept it. I thought that was great.


I remember mentioning to Orcish while we were working on this that I wondered how obvious it would be that the Governess and Annalee V'ray were one in the same. In my original plan for the story, Annalee uses her name much earlier, but as I was writing, it just felt better to push it off until nearly the end. It's ironic in a way that you got to this story after I posted those flash fiction pieces, because I have not mentioned Annalee all that often in the M:EM, so it would be interesting to know if it still would have come as readily to mind. I don't think it hurts the story one way or another, but it's an interesting bit of timing.


Ghost Astria was all Orcish, and I was surprised he went as ruthless as he did with her. But that is Astria, and more importantly, that is Beryl's recollection of Astria. I feel so badly for Beryl, that even in death, Astria won't let her up off the mat, so to speak.


I like Fenella...


And again, I miss the hell out of Orcish. I loved doing collabs with him because I always felt he made those stories so much better than I could have done alone. His Rúndatollán sections are just dynamite.


I do love foreshadowing...


So, these two points are fascinating to me, because swapping places is not at all what I was going for. I completely get why you see that, now that you point it out, and yeah, that does paint things in an even darker light than I intended, but I never saw it as a swapping thing. To me, the way it works is that if the dead person's body is on the Isle of Cailltinish when its spirit gets to the end of the Rúndatollán, the spirit goes back into its body and the person revives. If the spirit's body is not on Cailltinish, then the spirit is "released" into the afterlife. The reason Mhairi's good friend (probably a lover, but not necessarily) is referred to in past tense is because it was a long time ago and they have since passed on. But as I said, this is a fascinating interpretation, and I am sure Aloise would make that sacrifice if she felt she had to. Beryl, I think, would NEVER be able to forgive herself for that.


I thought of this more as a cultural taboo moreso than a piece of legislation, although it is described as "forbidden" in the text. Still, in my mind, this is less a "you'll go to jail if you try" and more a "what the hell do you think you're doing, sailing in our sacred loch?" sort of thing. I did not make that clear, though.


Okay, so here is a great place to talk about my main, overarching thought for the entire piece. See, in most Aloise pieces, I feel she comes across as a little too perfect, mostly due to the fact that both Ruwin and Orcish (may we always be found) tend to write her as the stand-in for the concept of optimism, which both have publicly stated is their preferred world-view, and because in Aloise's "recent" stories, she tends to be seen through Beryl's eye, and Beryl very much puts Aloise on a pedestal, even if Aloise says she does not want to be on one. But I don't like "perfect" characters (even if some of mine, admittedly, have things go a bit too well for them at times). So, in this story, Aloise is a bit off the mark from perfect, and it (and Beryl's belief in Aloise's perfection) very nearly get Beryl killed.

At the start of the story, Aloise is so focused on her project that she is somewhat neglecting Beryl. This is not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it's still Aloise being just slightly off the mark. When she 'walks them into Ceolré, she misses her mark, and they arrive a good distance from Bailain. She does not have the time to perfect her enchantments on the boat, and so here, when she needs it, she's not quite good enough. She has no paddles, and the boat is not properly sealed. Again, Aloise is intelligent and capable, but in this instance, she is just not quite enough, because I wanted to push Aloise. I wanted her to be tested. I wanted to bring her to the point of desperation, and see what she would do. That moment when she collapses on the shore, sore and exhausted, and all she has the strength left to do is crawl over to Beryl and throw one arm around her, to let her know she's not alone, is a powerful moment for me.

The moment that really stands out to me on that front, though, is when they first meet the Governess. You mentioned earlier the Governess sort of pressuring them to drink. I would like to share something that Orcish wrote to me after I sent him that section:


This is exactly what I was going for, in the story and in this scene, and I think it is very true. Beryl, from the moment the Governess sees them on that balcony with Fenella, wants to get the hell out of Dodge, and importantly, she's right. They should have left. but Aloise doesn't quite see the dangers that Beryl does. She isn't quite perfect. And she almost pays very, very dearly for it.


I absolutely love that moment.


This is a fair point, and I'm sorry it is a sticking point for you. I don't really have a good defense, either. They were in different circumstances, of course, both in their stories and in meta, but that's just the way things worked out. Denner was never the luckiest chap, was he?


Thanks! I was a little nervous, picking up the Rúndatollán scenes after Orcish left. As I said, I think his early scenes were so good, and I just wanted mine to live up to them. I feel like Orcish's would have been better (I also REALLY wanted Orcish to write the scene on the shore because I knew he would knock it out of the park, but I did what I could).


Again, I'm sorry this didn't work for you, and I do not have a satisfactory answer for you. I write and design stories in ways that "feel" write to me, and they don't always work out, or at least all of them. I am happy, at least, that in Denner's departure, he was able to do a great kindness to Gale. Beryl, I feel, still has work to do.


Yeah, as I mentioned above, this is a thing I very much wanted to explore.


It seems quite likely, with where we left her off in "Change of Heart."


Fair enough, and this just reinforces that the story probably would have been better had Orcish written the scene on the shore. Aloise very nearly drowns, and she collapses on the sand in a rainstorm with basically no strength left, but I probably didn't adequately convey any of that. Orcish, I think, would have done better.


Obviously, this moment, and all of Annalee's parts at the end, don't hit as hard to anyone who hasn't read "Change of Heart," but hopefully "The Governess" is a solid enough antagonist without needing the prior knowledge.


That's fair. Again, sorry the stakes didn't feel real enough.


So, I put this into the plan for the story from the beginning, largely due to a comment Orcish made on the story thread for "Change of Heart." He said:

That line about "hold the mirror up to her" got me thinking about what would happen if Annalee ever found herself in the Mirror World, and what her reflection or reflections might tell her. It's a chilling sort of thought, and I loved it from the moment I saw that comment. At one point, it was going to be Beryl's ability to open heart-sealed locks that was going to convince Annalee to change her mind and help Aloise, but that never quite worked out for the plot.


Sure. Like I said, I could have been clearer.


Good question!

Well, I'm glad they didn't ruin the story for you, at least.


The boat was a bit of a misdirection, granted, although I see it as very important, for the reason I mentioned earlier. It is a point of failure for Aloise, who is, frankly, not used to failing. Ultimately, she still succeeds, admittedly. But as it turned out, in this instance, Aloise could not have saved Beryl alone. It might be interesting to see how she deals with that, going forward.


Based on Annalee's comment to Beryl and Aloise about the plane's turbulent past, I suspect you are right. I suspect that Annalee selected the plane because of its natural beauty, and probably did some highly questionable things to make it as idyllic as it currently is. I don't know if this is the best place to mention this, as it's not really connected, but I do sort of look at this story as the M:EM's version of the film The Women, in that there are no male characters in this story. It is, of course, possible that there are men in the crowd or in the groups of musicians, but none are specifically mentioned.


I don't get the sense that the Youthsong is...cheap. I imagine Annalee pays handsomely for the service.


So, the thing with the bells was related to Annalee specifically, but not her home plane. She tried to prevent one of the Chimings on Cartrevard and failed, and then when she gets to the Bookshop near the end of the story, she grabs the shop's bell and crushes it. Hopefully, it implies that the sound of bells reminds her of Raiker, which is why she cannot abide the sound of bells. I don't know if I will ever put Raiker and Annalee V'ray in the same story again or not. But if it happens, it's going to be tense, that's for sure.


I'm glad to see all of this coming through, because it's all spot-on for what we were going for with this one. Incidentally, I do not think the Mirror World was ever given a proper name of any sort, so "Mirror World" or "Mirror Place" is all just fine.




Yeah, I won't rehash my feelings on this, but I understand why it doesn't suit you.


To me, this comes down to Fenella's reaction to seeing Beryl dead (and the healers Aloise visits off-screen, as well). It seems like at least some of the people of Ceolré (or Amhrantir specifically, anyway) know how things work with the Loch and the Isle, but there seems to be a sort of taboo against it. I look at it as a sort of "let the dead rest" sort of thing. My headcanon for Mhairi is that she had a lover who felt that Mhairi was just too young to die, or that they could not live without her, and so broke the taboo. The fact that Mhairi lives outside of town in a broken-down cottage might be a sign that she was no longer welcome in an otherwise welcoming town. I'm not sure I would go that far with it, but the locals, despite the knowledge of the legend of Cailltinish, seem to just accept death when it happens. That tells me it's a cultural thing.


Well, I'm glad to hear it. I've been a big believer in this story since I first pitched it to Orcish, and...

Oh! I should share my initial pitch for this story:


Surprisingly, Orcish still continued to talk to me for a while after that. I should also point out that the PM chain that Orcish and I used to exchange this story was one I named "The Joyous, Feel-Good Romantic Comedy of the Year." I am, perhaps, not a well man...




I figured you had not yet read this story when you posted that, so I figured I didn't want to just say "Well, about that..." mostly because Annalee was meant to be a bit of a surprise here.


I think I touched on most of the interesting tidbits. The basic outline of the story, the basic plot points, were all there from my initial pitch, but a few of the specifics changed. The visuals of the Rúndatollán were developed through conversations between Orcish and I. In my original pitch, Aloise convinces Annalee to change her mind and help much earlier, and it was Orcish's idea to push that off until late in the story.

Orcish's favorite moment, from what we had discussed at the time, seems to have been when Aloise wakes up and it slowly realizes that something is terribly wrong with Beryl. He said it was "agonizing" because he would just scream (mentally, I'm guessing) at Aloise to "just do something." But Aloise is caught between being her usual, perceptive self and her own extreme denial in what was happening. I was pretty happy with that scene, for that reason. He also noted that he really liked the opening scene I wrote, specifically mentioning two little moments. The first is that Beryl, as she worries about Aloise and decides to go check on her, does not even bother to mark her page in the book she's reading. That is a very telling moment, he felt. The other is when Beryl comes in behind Aloise in her workshop, and gently squeezes her shoulder to let her know she's there. He said that coveyed the closeness and familiarity between the two, which is of course what I was going for.

Anyway, thanks a ton for reading and commenting! This one was quite the endeavor. Hopefully, Orcish will some day swing through here and give his thoughts more directly. I admit that I'm starting to lose hope on that front, but I can dream. Orcish is an amazing writing and a good friend, and I miss him a great deal. This story is better for his working on it, and worse for him not being there to help me finish it. But I'm glad it was a story I was able to eventually tell.

Really? I'd say the opposite for the idyllic part, but probably the difference here the 'walkers are accepting the perfect facade at face value and that section is, I feel, quite longer than in the Tales. I didn't notice any negative detail about Ceolre either, outside Annalee's direct influence.


I mean, yeah if Orcish had presented it I might have been more focused on an impending clash between the plane's whole Thing and Beryl's character, which admittedly also happens.


Oh yeah, I get that


Ah, yeah. As it's also said in the piece, it's especially jarring because Beryl's character is so tightly linked to fire.


Not as quickly, I think But I liked it better this way! I wasn't actively thinking about those at the time, and I honestly thought the Governess could be a "new" face at first, so it feels like I just had a fair chance at recognizing her (Again, it's **** up how long ago some M:EM classics were written)


That's so wild to me, with all the Beryl talk of causing Aloise's death, and a very sour Mhairi living alone with the loud absence of her good friend that saved her - I felt like I was looking at a Beryl from a previous instance of the same story, tbh. As you say, she'd never move on from that.

Now that I think of it, Mhairi's section is a big factor that had cemented the certainty of some terrible price to pay in my mind, and I'm glad you see how it could be read that way. That... takes a lot of bitterness out of me, actually. Thank you for saying so, even if you didn't owe me that. I may have an issue or twelve about having my feelings delegitimized


Hm, the fuzziness of detail also allows a reader to assume the worst, especially when the situation is already dire.

The behind-the-scenes insight for Aloise is hella interesting, I had caught most of those details but not as neatly. Of course, with so many dark outlooks in the M:EM roster you have to carefully balance how to show the failings of the avatar of optimism as to not seem too much of an edgelord bashing on joy and sunshine And I think that was done quite well, though the lack of a paddle would have been enough for me in the loch section - for your love of foreshadowing, I didn't notice a hint toward the fact Aloise's work would have been sloppy, except maybe her overworking herself?


That's alright, Denner's death is a particularly sore spot for me because I encountered it in a particularly dark place for myself, rather than for any failure on your part.


For all his failings, he was **** not. Poor guy.


No shade meant, but... does she?

Didn't you explicitly write yourself out of portraying the struggle of getting back to shore? I mean about the sloping depth of the loch, rather than the distance - the currents being against Aloise justify the latter. Describing how the the few yards feel like miles, in her panic and weariness and difficulty in towing Beryl, would have worked just fine.

Anyway, I don't mean it as a slight but I do agree on Orcish being more suited for those kinds of scenes. I'm working out of memory right now and I didn't do a massive reread in a while, so don't quote me on this, but I feel like you're more suited for (and more experienced in) setting up a beautifully tragic scene and allow the reader to paint in (heh) the devastating feelings of the protagonist, rather than delving in the minute facets of their desperation - because you don't usually need to. Honest question: do you feel like you were trying to fill Orcish' shoes? Aside from completing the underworld section, I mean?


I think so, although without the depth of her backstory (showing how justified she is in her bitterness - she's not just lionizing some bad breakup, she was honestly traumatized by one of the greatest villains in the multiverse) I think she'd come off as more two-dimensional - but that's fine, and very fitting for the fairy-tale vibe of Ceolre, so no harm done either way.


Oh, I had noticed something along those lines at the beginning (and immediately thought about the JFB committee in the HS setting ) but the plot got me too invested to put much thought in that direction


The grudge match of the exes for the ages, honestly unless you count the Chessmasters


If you are, I feel you're in good company


You were right, of course, and I appreciate you bamboozling me in that instance


Oh yeah, that was pretty good! It's the classical horror moment where the reader is shaking the PoV to react to things because they know all too well the dire importance of it.


I may have a clearer picture of what happened to me, if you don't mind some more rambling; I think I have a nice visual for it too. Well, one you kinda offered yourself, but still

Just as you describe the piece as one lover taking the high road, and the other taking the low for the same destination, the moods also mirror that: Aloise refuses the worst case scenario at first, but her optimism starts to falter as the piece goes on, while Beryl basically start her journey hitting rock bottom and has to climb up. The two emotional journeys are meant to meet at the end, but the Aloise part just plummets if you interpret the ambiguous elements as I did; this means that while Beryl's upward journey fittingly ends up with her forgiving herself and thus allowing herself to live again, metaphorically and literally, Aloise's frantic research seems to be diving toward the Terrible Price scenario I mentioned, basically missing Beryl in its downward trajectory. This built up a tonal dissonance that couldn't be possibly resolved meaningfully, no matter the approach, and maybe since Aloise's part deals more in rules and logistics I was expecting that to be a stronger deciding factor because of my brain wiring.

All this to say, I'm glad I can now consider this just a difference in interpretation, so I'm feeling way better about this already (not that I was owed that in any way, but I feel it's only fair to share my... change of heart )

That's fair. It's more just how I visualize the place, I suppose. I do think that Ceolré is a pretty happy and peaceful place, overall.


This was, not surprisingly, my original intention. As this is a Beryl/Aloise story, I absolutely would have asked Orcish to post it. It is interesting to me how much that changes things for readers, myself very much included.





And that was another thing Orcish added that I loved, the little note in that second Rúndatollán section about how Beryl has "followed the fire [her] entire life. Why should [her] death be any different?" That is a great little Ghost Astria moment.


Agreed. It really doesn't seem like all that long ago.


Yeah, once you pointed it out to me, it makes perfect sense, it just never occurred to me while writing the thing. It's one of those things where my idea of how it works is so clear in my head that I missed a lot of the clues that would point others elsewhere. I always sort of took Astria's comments about Aloise killing herself to save Beryl as either a 'running herself to exhaustion' thing, or as a flat-out fabrication, as Beryl, who now does finally believe that Aloise loves her, might logically project that impulse onto Aloise. Beryl, we know, would move heavens and hells to save Aloise if she needed to, after all.


I'm not even necessarily saying her work is shoddy, so much as she has not truly finished it. At the end of the first section of the story, Aloise starts listing off all the things she still needs to test with the boat, and Beryl sort of asks her if she can do that later, so that the two can spend time together. I think, had Aloise spent another week or two on the boat before they go on their vacation, things might have gone differently (I mean, they would have anyway because they wouldn't have been in the harbor when the Governess returns, but you know what I mean...). But the point I'm making here is that Aloise's point could have been the solution, had she had more time to make it work. But, because of Beryl, she jumps past the testing phase. That makes it sound like it's Beryl's fault, which I don't mean to imply. I'm just saying it's another moment of Aloise being good, but not perfect.


I'm sorry to hear that. Obviously, I wanted Denner's death to have weight to it, but I'm sorry if it caused you any undue grief.


I am happy, at least, that he will be remembered fondly by Gale, Daneera, Antine, and others. Seeing Denner grow over his whole arc was gratifying to me.


I am fairly confident in my writing abilities, but we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and I just think Orcish, with all his ability to capture emotion and his deep knowledge of both Beryl and Aloise, would have absolutely crushed that scene. I think my version is alright, but I think Orcish's would have been amazing, just based on what I consider his strengths. I don't know if I think of it as trying to fill Orcish's shoes, necessarily. I just wrote the scene as I envisioned it. Orcish, had he written it, would have envisioned it slightly differently (as any writer would) and I think he would have hit closer to the mark. But I mean, I would read pretty much anything Orcish wrote, so...


Yeah, that definitely works for me. I like that knowledge of the M:EM provided that extra layer of depth to a story.


I wouldn't call it a major component of the story, certainly. Just a little tidbit, I suppose. But I'm glad the plot got you invested!


hehe


Interestingly (to me, anyway) we also have a very quick drop-in reference to Annalee in "Seeker's Point," when the name of the plane that eventually becomes Orms-by-Gore was apparently once "a world of flowers and courtships and whirlwind romances" and was called V'ray-by-Love. I suspect that was in the very early days of her planeswalkerhood, before she starting finding Raiker's works scattered across the Multiverse, but that is not spelled out in that story.


I have mentioned it elsewhere, I think, but I have a fascination with moments in fiction where there is a discrepancy in knowledge between the reader and the characters. Whether the characters know something the reader doesn't or that the reader knows something the character doesn't, I just find it very interesting to watch how texts resolve that discrepancy. If anyone else is interested in that sort of thing, I recommend the short story "Hunters in the Snow" by Tobias Wolff. I feel like he plays that game very well in that story.


Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. If you spend half the story expecting that the way it "works" is that Aloise is going to have to sacrifice herself for Beryl, then there are three main possibilities for a "satisfying" end: Beryl dies, Aloise dies, or they manage to rules-lawyer their way out of it in some clever way. Instead, what happens is everyone lives with no clever twist. I can absolutely see why that would be dissatisfying. In my mind, it was a race, and so the main possibilities were: Beryl gets their first, and dies; or Aloise gets there first, and Beryl lives. The tension in my version is one of timing, not one of puzzling out an alternative. It's so interesting to me, just because, as I said above, the swapping idea had simply never occurred to me. It just shows the tunnel vision we can get when working on our own stories.


I see what you did there.



Anyway, again, thanks for reading and commenting!