“I’ll go get the duke and bring him in to her.” Margaret left, taking the torch with her. Without it, the feeble glow of the lamp near the door was the only light left in the room.
Esme was still cradled in Rylan’s arms. Everything looked different. The stone walls looked softer, the tapestries more alive. She stretched out a trembling hand and caressed them, in love with everything, enamored of the very air.
Anne knelt next to Rylan, who laid Esme down gently.
“Are you feeling all right?” she asked.
Rylan stood and looked down at Esme, his shoulder brushing the bedpost. In the dim corner, surrounded by the dark bedclothes, panic clawed at Esme.
“Please bring a torch. Or a candle. Anything,” Esme rasped. “I can’t bear the darkness another second.”
“Of course. At once.” Rylan ducked into Margaret’s quarters and returned with a candelabra that bore enough lit candles to make Esme’s panic retreat.
Anne squinted at her. “So the curse is ended?” She handed Esme a cup of wine, which Esme sipped gratefully, though it burned her wounded throat.
“Yes. I mean, it must be. I’m here. There is light around me and on me and no one is attacking me.” Her eyes filled with tears. “It’s been so many years, locked in that prison. I never thought I would be free of it. I thought the darkness and sadness—dear God, the unbearable loneliness—I thought that was sure to be my destiny.”
“But now it is not. And I am here to help you take your rightful place in the light,” Rylan said, bending his knee.
“I am so grateful to you, Sir Rylan. And I am sorry to have seen your sword in such a damaged state. Though I must admit, I would be grateful not to have it used against me again.”
“Against you?” The question dropped from his lips.
Anne’s grip on her hand tightened.
“Indeed. If that monster’s soul hadn’t leapt from her the moment before she swung, I fear the outcome might have been different.” She smiled up at Rylan. “I did think, if it was to be my end, that I would be happy to have my last vision be something filled with so much light. Dying in that brightness would have been better than being trapped endlessly in the dark.”
Anne let out a strangled sound.
With great effort, Esme brought Anne’s hand up to her face and rubbed her cheek against it, gently. “Oh, Grandmother. I thought I would never get to see you—to speak with you. I could hear them talking about my mother, sometimes, while I was in the dark. I never understood why she forced me into that black prison. It was worse than death. I fought so hard to come back into the light. Back to you.”
Rylan gripped the bedpost. “You are . . . you are the shadow?”
Esme blinked. “I am myself. The shadow was my prison.” She turned and smiled at them both, radiant. “And finally, I have escaped.”
Saundra Mitchell
Now Bid Time Return
Dacey Shen had never won anything before. In fact, she hadn’t even told her parents she’d entered the contest until the sponsors called to congratulate her.
“It would have been nice,” her mother said as if they hadn’t already had this conversation several times, “to know about this ahead of time. Daddy and I could have gotten time off work. We could have gone with you.”
Clasping her hands, Dacey stood by and watched her mother rummage through her luggage. Again. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“We’re going to miss you.” Producing an industrial pack of crackers and cheese, her mom shoved it beneath the paperbacks. Just in case the plane crashed in Outer Mysteria, south of Nowherelandia—Dacey wouldn’t have to eat the other passengers. She had mom rations.
Dacey watched, counting off the minutes until their cab arrived. “I’ll miss you, too. But it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. And it’s going to look so good on my college apps.”
“Extracurriculars are important,” Mom agreed.
One week in Norway, to explore and discover and probably pose for a lot of brochure pictures. A student exchange program had sponsored the contest, and all it took to enter was an essay. Dacey had written hers in one afternoon.
If I could go anywhere in Europe, I’d choose Tromsø, Norway, so I could photograph the northern lights.
Like most essays written in one afternoon, it was fiction. She didn’t know anything about photography. The aurora was pretty, but she’d never thought about it much. It was Tromsø that interested her or, more specifically, polar night.
Everybody had heard of white nights, when the sun never goes down. It was kind of a kick to find out there were polar nights, when the sun never came up. Weeks of dark, with just a little twilight at noon to stir things up.
So she wrote the essay, sent it off, and forgot about it. Then she won, which meant dealing with her parents—they were cool with out-of-state camping trips, but across-the-ocean field trips? Not so much. But there were chaperones! Other juniors and seniors! A trip of a lifetime!
Finally, they gave in.
Well. Daddy gave in. Her mom was going to drag out the pain as much as possible.
Dacey shut up and endured the taxi ride to the airport, while her mother leaked anxiety everywhere: If you get arrested, don’t let them call the Chinese embassy! Make sure they call the American embassy! Then there was the long walk to security: Don’t make any jokes about bombs. It was good Mom couldn’t go past the ropes, because Dacey had already heard the TSA lament: Bare feet! Who knows what kind of diseases are on those floors?
There were kisses and tears and finally Dacey was off. Alone. To Norway. For a second, uncertainty engulfed her. Maybe it was too much to do on her own. Maybe she should just stay home? Heart thrumming, Dacey looked back one more time. Her mother waved in the distance, then put both thumbs up.
Okay, maybe she could do this.
After boarding, Dacey settled into her seat and nursed a flicker of hope. She was in 2A, and in 2B a grandma with silvery hair and a kind smile. Grandmas loved to talk. Plus, bonus, they usually couldn’t sleep, either. Which meant Dacey would have company on the long flight.
“Have you been to Norway before?” Dacey asked.
The woman smiled apologetically and answered in another language. No idea what it was, although Norwegian was a pretty good guess.
So much for a chatty granny, Dacey thought. Tightening her seat belt, she sighed. Eight hours wide-awake and trapped in her own head, while the other passengers slumbered around her. Whee.
The thing was, Dacey thought she should have gotten used to it—she barely slept anymore. It wasn’t senioritis or SAT anxiety, it was insomnia. Hideous little pockets of it, leaving her marooned at three a.m. Sometimes she played on the computer; sometimes she went for walks.
Sometimes sleep came in a dozing chain, or restless dreams that were worse than being awake in the first place. She’d dreamed about lying awake in bed, studying the cracks on her ceiling. They stretched for the walls, and it wasn’t until they touched the floor that Dacey realized they weren’t real. And then, oh so cleverly, she woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.
Insomnia sucked.
She was sick of sleeping pills and warm milk, late-night television and endless exercise, caffeine, no caffeine, bizarre herbal supplements and well-meaning advice from people who thought insomnia meant it took twenty minutes to fall asleep instead of twenty seconds. She was tired of worrying her parents, who took her to the doctor over and over.