The Light in The Locket

Sophie was running for the first time in her life. Not just escaping, running. She never believed it was possible to move so fast. Even so, the hounds were gaining on her.

In her defense, Sophie was a poor planner. She’d barely managed to scrounge up the loose pants that fit around her waist, or snatch the pair of shoes from the clergywoman before she left. In fact, she hadn’t really prepared for any of this at all. She much preferred to dream of escape rather than commit to it.

But this morning had been special. The delivery carriage had arrived quite early, and Sophie had smelled the sodden earth that clung to the horse’s hooves before she had even opened her eyes. When she crept out to see Sister Meredith receiving the parcel, she noticed the cloak hung in the foyer, soaked but warm enough to keep out the chill. And with it, the hat to hide her hair, so blonde it was almost white. The first thing she’d imagined they’d look for if she ever did leave the Church. In her head, she’d heard the thought. Go.

And Sophie listened. Though it was rare, she found things often worked in her favor when obliging the wishes of the dead. Of course, Light wasn’t exactly dead. According to the Church, he was a devil. But she much preferred the name the Union scientists had given to the mysterious beings that had descended along with The Desolation. The Ethereals.

Sophie dodged left through the heather, keeping the dark tree line firmly in view. She could feel Light flitting along her side, still urging the same thought into her head. Go, go, go.

The Ethereals had always been visible to Sophie, but Light was the only one that had ever come close enough to touch. She had found him attached to a gift she’d received, a locket for her seventh birthday. Sister Finola had given it to her three days before she fell to the Silent Sleep. It was silver, with a strange elongated heart that stretched to encompass a cross. After taking it, he had appeared, amorphous strands of silver and golden light that glided through the air like a fish through water. The name she had given him stuck quite nicely. Since that day, Light had been with her, trading thoughts and throwing out the drawers in her room for show when she got angry. Father Archel had stopped forcing her to the sermons then, and the discussion of her execution had begun. It was high time the Last Child be returned to God.

Help me, Sophie thought, loud enough for Light to hear. The hounds were closer, and she could hear the voice of Father Archel shouting commands at the trackers in the night.

The Ethereal whooshed past her, spilling his light over a break in the tree line. There. She scrambled towards the opening, nearly losing her footing as the beam of a flashlight passed over her head. Taking a strangled breath, Sophie gathered the last of her strength and burst out towards the beacon of escape only she could see.

- - -

The land was utterly bleak. Sophie knew this already, but after two days on the run, passing through empty towns filled only with fog and ghosts, she felt it in her bones. The skeletal remains of a world that had once been. As she traveled, Light drifted above the canopy, sending her brief mental flashes of the landscape beyond the trees. That was how they talked, in images and feelings rather than words. Sometimes the connection would get fuzzy, like the crackle of a telephone wire. As if it weren’t already hard enough for the Ethereal to understand her, and vice versa. But Sophie compromised. Even if he was not of this world, he could guide her through it.

After all, Sophie had learned little else in her short life other than to follow.

She spent that night in an empty wood shack on the far side of Bernath, listening to the distant wails of the ghosts whose bodies festered in their beds. That was the issue with the Silent Sleep. Once you were gone, there was nowhere else to go.

- - -

“Wake up,”

Sophie threw a hand over her ear. The ghosts were especially loud tonight. A sharp prod in her side sent her careening upwards. The boards of the shack splintered, some of them splitting off the frame in response to the terror cinching down over Sophie’s heart. They found me.

She leapt for the door, nearly stumbling over the crouching form of whatever henchman Father Archel had sent.

But the intruder had not been after Sophie, nor was he from the Church. He was a boy, aged sixteen, who had chanced upon her in the dark gloom of the country. In fact, Sophie had startled him almost as much as he had startled her.

Eyes stretched wide, he gazed after the blinking white flash of her hair as it bounded into the woods. Beside him, Sophie’s pack flopped forlornly down on to the damp floor.

The boy stayed in the shack for the rest of the day. Sophie watched him through the images that Light sent her. He had not touched her rations, nor her water. She gulped at the sticky dryness of her tongue, tilting her open mouth towards the sky in an attempt to capture some of the drizzle. When the hunger came, she decided it was well worth heading back.

Sophie approached him in a roundabout way, hiding behind scraps of junk and vegetation as if she couldn’t stand to be seen. The boy thought she might make the worst spy in the word.

When at last he spotted Sophie’s pale hand reaching for the pack just outside the edge of the door, he snatched it up before she could touch it. She jerked out of view.

“You’re a strange girl,” he said, his voice still plump with the resonant tones of boyhood. When she didn’t answer, he added, “You’re young too. Like me.”

“I’m fifteen.” Sophie answered. A pause. “Give me my bag.”

The boy contemplated the impossibility of this. He had never met anyone younger than him - there was no such thing. He shrugged.

“Come and get it.”

Sophie stepped into the doorway, her face a mask of caution. The boy only smiled briefly and handed her the pack.

“I just wanted to see what you looked like,” he said sheepishly, rubbing a hand over his dark hair. “I haven’t met anyone my age before.”

After a moment, Sophie’s shoulders relaxed. She’d never seen anyone her age either. She sighed, then sat carefully down onto the floor beside him.

“My name is Sophie.”

“Oliver.” The boy stuck out his hand. She clasped it, and thought she had never felt such warmth over the skin of anyone before.

- - -

Sophie told Oliver about Light, and how he’d come to her in the locket. It was one of the first things she ever explained to him, though it wouldn’t be the last. Oliver didn’t seem to understand the world in the way Sophie did. He didn’t know about the ghosts, or the how the Ethereals hovered around people that were meant for the Silent Sleep.

“That can’t be true,” he said the next morning, just after both of them began their trek through the woods. “The Sleep is a physical sickness. The Union will have a cure.”

The night before, Oliver had informed Sophie that he was headed to the ocean to find his father’s boat. She could have cried out for joy at that. Father Archel would never be able to catch her if she crossed the sea. And Oliver seemed more than happy to have her tag along.

“I don’t think there’s a cure for keeping them away,” Sophie nodded up at Light, and Oliver stared quizzically at the pocket of empty space above them. “But I think they only take you if you’re already weak.”

“Weak?”

“Unworthy. Light tried to explain it once, but we can’t really understand each other.” Sophie shrugged and ducked her head under a fallen branch.

“Then my father must have been weak,” Oliver contemplated, his eyes trained downwards.

“Maybe.” Sophie furrowed her brow, wondering. “I suppose there are many ways to be so.”

- - -

It took only a day’s travel to reach the grey expanse of the ocean. Oliver guided them up the coastline to Knast, where his father had lived as a boy, one lifetime ago. The houses there were painted white, making the broken windows and empty animal pens more skeletal than ever before. At the end of the docks, Oliver’s boat was tilted in the low tide, faithfully awaiting its passengers. He splashed down to it with an excited whoop.

“We found it!” he said, sweeping his hand over the faded paint on its hull. “He called it The Moortide. It's even written on the side.”

“Where will we take it?” Sophie asked.

“To wherever we can see the sky.” He said, glancing towards the blanket of grey that had settled over the world thirty-three years ago.

In that moment, Sophie found herself believing that such a place existed.

The Moortide was rickety and had an obnoxiously loud motor, but it chopped through the waves quicker than even Oliver thought possible. Sophie leaned out over the rails, smelling the hearty brine of the water that sprayed over her skin. Beside her, Light zipped across its murky surface, sending her snippets of elation. Sophie wished she could touch him. Oliver’s smile disappeared as he caught sight of her.

“Sophie – ” he warned, reaching for her coat collar. The ship struck the crest of the surf, and Oliver screamed as she tipped over the rim.

Sophie was cold. Her throat burned. The saltwater was sharp, choking – she could not breath. Light was distant, but she called to him anyways. And then he was closer, brighter than he’d ever been.

- - -

“Sophie?”

Sophie's fingers curled in the sand.

Oliver’s face was hovering over her, but she was looking past it. Light. He was brilliant, the strands of energy that made his body clearer than they had been before. Almost like sunlight.

We have been the beginning and you will be the end. Save them.

His voice. Sophie had never heard him speak before.

She shot up, and the sand swirled outward as a blast of wind burst from where she lay. Oliver covered his eyes.

I will arm you. I will watch you.

As Sophie retched up the last of the water stuck in her lungs, she reached to pull out the locket. She finally understood.

Light had not come in the locket. Before she’d received the gift, Sophie had nearly died from a seizure, and he had been invisible. He’d guided her since the beginning, though she hadn’t been able to truly listen until now.

Each time she dipped a toe into his world, they’d gotten closer. And it made her powerful.

There was a reason she was the Last Child to have ever been born.

Sophie turned to Oliver.

“I can hear him now.” Her voice was as hoarse as the surf that brushed up against the shore. “We can’t go yet.”

“What? Why?”

“Because Light finally told me what he could never make me understand before. The Desolation isn’t a physical plague, or virus. It’s a sickness of the soul.” Oliver moved away from her slightly, blinking as a wave of shock washed over his features.

Sophie tore the locket from her neck, passing it over the pad of her thumb longingly before placing it into the sand. She stood shakily, taking Oliver’s hand to pull him up beside her.

As she led him towards the forest, Oliver cast one last look at the silver glint of the pendant. A promise, forgotten in the sand.

A beginning.