All were intent on their dancing, wholly silent.
Talia and Wen wound through them, fighting against the tide to reach the edge of the Hall where the Billow Maidens sat. The dance flowed the other way, but the shadows let them pass, bony fingers whispering through Talia’s hair as they went. She held tight to Wen with one hand, and the pulsing Star-light with the other.
They drew close enough to the Billow Maidens that Talia could distinguish them from one another.
Their faces were various shapes, some round, others thin, some sharp and birdlike, some sleek, almost feline. They had long, lithe fingers, and their skin was speckled like stones. Shells and sea stars and threads of gold were woven into their hair, but they, like the dead, were clothed in gray. Their harps were intricately carved, each resembling a different creature: a winged horse, a lion, a griffin, a bird. The instruments seemed to be strung with strands of their own hair.
The Wave in the center of the sisters had seafoam hair and a harp carved like a dragon. There were burn marks on her face, and her eyes stared out into nothing, as blank and unseeing as the dead: Endain, blinded by Rahn for her rebellion, trapped in darkness for four hundred years, cut off from the man she loved. Her fingers slipped along her harp strings, and the saddest notes of the music seemed to come from her.
Talia’s heart broke for her many-times-great-grandmother. Her hand moved from the Star-light to the glass-and-iron casket containing the sliver of the Tree. She fiddled with the latch, undoing it and brushing her fingers across the wood. A blaze of power seared through her, and she clamped her teeth together to keep from crying out. The splinter felt the nearness of the Tree as her Star-light sensed the glory of Rahn’s Star, as a small part of her felt she belonged here, in the depths of the shadowy sea.
She and Wen were only a few paces from the Waves now—they had almost reached them. And then a tremor passed through the dead, and the light from the high dais grew so bright Talia had to screw her eyes shut against it.
A voice seethed through the Hall, and it sounded like iron and wind and raging sea. “There are trespassers in my Hall. Bring them to me.”
And then suddenly the dead were shrieking, skeletal fingers sliding over Talia’s shoulders, pulling at her arms, wrapping around her waist, propelling her toward the dais and that high, terrible throne.
They ripped Wen away from her.
“Wen!”
He craned his head around to hers, his eyes wide with terror.
She grabbed the Star-light from the knapsack and hurled it at him, light wheeling in the darkness. He reached out a hand to catch it—
And then the dead crawled over her, obscuring her vision, hurtling her on as if she was a stone caught in a horrible gray sea. She tasted shadow. The music of the Billow Maidens twisted into her, in and in and in, until she thought she would go mad.
And then a strong hand closed around her wrist, yanking her out of the mass of dead, beyond the reach of the unstoppable tide. She stood, shaking, and looked straight into the eyes of her mother.
Or the thing that once had been her mother.
Her face was waxen and gray, her mouth twisted into a soundless scream. Her skin was translucent as tracing paper, her hair white and ragged, hung through with brown weeds and bits of jagged seashells. She was clothed, like the other dead, in a shapeless garment the color of despair.
But her eyes were almost alive, and she was staring at her as if Talia were the ghost, and she the one being haunted.
“Mama,” Talia whispered. “Thank the gods. I’ve come to save you. Bring you back to the light.”
Her mother said nothing, just stared and stared, seawater rippling through her colorless hair.
A voice came from the thing that was her mother, but her lips remained frozen, her eyes unblinking. “What are you?”
She laid a hand on her mother’s arm, trying not to shudder at the feel of her skin, cold and dead beneath the tremulous sleeve. “I’m your daughter. I’m Talia.”
“Talia,” whispered her mother. This time her lips did move, half a breath after she spoke. The dead thing lifted her hand and brushed hesitant fingers across Talia’s face. “Talia. Talia.”
“Yes. We’re going home, Mama.”
And then her mother blinked, and a single silver tear slid down her ashen cheek. “But I am … but I am dead.”
“You saved me, Mama, that night on the ship. Now I’m here to save you.”
More silver tears ran down her mother’s cheeks. “I cannot go with you. I cannot be free. I am bound here for all of time, until the dead rise from the sea. But even then I will belong to her.”
“The stories say I can save you. The stories say I can bring you back to life.”
“The stories are wrong. I cannot be free. You must go or she will make you join the dance, too. Even now she compels me to draw you into the figures, to teach you the steps and hold you here until your life flees away and you become one of the dead. Please, Talia. You must go. You can’t help me.”
“I won’t leave you,” said Talia fiercely. “I won’t lose you forever. I can help you!”
She saw the change fold over her mother, the blankness crawl back into her face. “Dance with me,” her mother moaned, the words cold and dead and far away, the spark of life in her eyes entirely extinguished. “You must dance with me.”
And then she seized Talia’s arm and jerked her into the shadowy throng.
Chapter Fifty
THE MUSIC BURNED IN HER EARS AND the dead teemed all around, and her mother would not release her. Dead fingers bit sharp and cold into her arm. “Let go of me! You can come back. You can live again.”
But her mother didn’t hear. “It isn’t so bad,” she said, her mouth frozen once more into a silent, agonized scream. “Once you learn the steps, it is easy to be dead.”
Talia slipped her free hand into the knapsack still hanging at her hip, and took the Tree-sliver from its casket. “Let go of me,” she commanded, holding the shard up into her dead mother’s face. Power coursed through her, so strong it scared her.
Her mother screamed and released her, scrabbling desperately away from the Tree-shard. An instant more and she was lost in the tide of the dead, teeming dark, before Rahn’s throne.
Talia scrambled backward. The sea roared in her ears and the power of the Words pulsed in her skin, fading from her bit by bit. The Whale’s voice echoed in her mind: When the Words unravel, you will drown.
She curled her fingers around the Tree-shard and willed the Words to stay. Another surge of power flashed through her body. She lifted her head, still holding tight to the Tree, and walked toward the river of the dead.