Sleepless: Chapter Twenty-Six

The Only Thing Weighing You Down

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Something was wrong.

Margo’s vision slid out of focus, her mind still awash with images of werewolves and probably-very-accurate portrayals of everyday high school drama. The voices from the TV grew further and further as her consciousness sank into the couch and through the floor.

Her eyes shot open, finding herself lying on the stony ground somewhere with a pre-dawn sky stretching endlessly around her.

It was too early to be asleep again, wasn’t it? She’d barely been awake for a few hours.

For a moment, she considered the idea that she might be somewhere in the Citadel, with the way the sky encompassed so much of her vision, but looking around it quickly became clear that that wasn’t the case.

She was somewhere on the jagged spine of a mountain, a few clouds beneath her but many more patches where she could see through to the ground. This stone in particular jutted out from the mountain like the plank of a pirate ship over open water, leading to a sheer drop all the way to the grassy green fields below where little black and white specks dozed in a large group.

There were little thatch houses down there, sparse but dotting the countryside, no light shining through their windows at this hour.

Far, far in the distance, she could see the glinting shape of the castle, its gold and white spires stretching into the sky below her.

She propped herself up carefully, making immediate note of the paint on her arms and the tattered remains of her ballgown still clinging to her as best it could.

The scratches and scrapes were still fresh, as though it hadn’t been several hours since her last conversation with the Sunwalker… assuming “conversation” was any sort of word for it. Reflexively, she searched in vain for her connection with Carina, but couldn’t detect her anywhere nearby.

The fragile bottle of memories not her own remained off to one corner of her mind.

It rattled some as her thoughts wandered back to the ball. To the mermaid. To the nightmare. To the memories of Sunwalker, the tone of her voice. To the glimpses of her that she’d seen in these memories.