Beneath the Open Sky

The first time I saw Denis, he was standing in the middle of the footpath with his hands in his pockets, staring at the river like it owed him money.

I noticed him from the bridge. Not because he was remarkable. He wasn't. Tall, sure, but thin in a way that suggested he forgot to eat more often than he remembered. Dark jacket, dark jeans, dark everything. The kind of man who dressed to blend into the shadows and then got annoyed when people didn't notice him. But that's not what caught my attention.

It was the way he stood. Perfectly still. Not the stillness of a man at peace. The stillness of a man waiting for something he knew was coming.

I should have kept walking. That's what any sensible person would have done. But I've never been sensible, and the river was loud that morning, churning with the kind of urgency that meant rain upstream, and I had nowhere particular to be. So I stopped. Watched him.

He didn't move for a long time. Long enough that I started counting the charms tangled in my hair. Seven. The dried rosemary from the old woman at the market. The tiny bone whistle I'd found on the beach three winters ago. The copper ring that had belonged to someone I couldn't quite remember. My fingers found the black stone at my throat, warm against my skin despite the cold air.

Then he turned.

Not toward me. Toward the trees. His head tilted, listening. And I felt it, the thing he was listening for. A shift in the air. A pressure behind my eyes. The river's voice dropped to a whisper, and underneath it, something else. Something that tasted like copper and old grief.

I knew that taste.

I was already moving before I decided to. Down the bridge, along the path, my boots crunching on gravel that hadn't been there yesterday. The world does that sometimes. Rearranges itself when I'm not looking. I've stopped being surprised.

"You shouldn't be here," I said.

He didn't flinch. Most people flinch. I have that effect. But he just turned his head, slow, like he had all the time in the world, and looked at me with eyes the color of storm clouds.

"Neither should you," he said.

His voice was rough. Low. The kind of voice that had spent years learning to say less than it meant.

I stopped a few feet away. Close enough to see the lines around his mouth, the way his jaw was set like he was biting down on something he wanted to say. He had the look of a man who hadn't slept properly in years. I recognized it because I see it in mirrors.

"The river's wrong today," I said.

"Is that so."

"There's something under it. Something that doesn't belong."

He didn't ask how I knew. That was the first thing that made me pay attention. Most people ask. They want the trick explained, the illusion broken down. They want to know what kind of crazy I am so they can file me away and forget me.

But Denis just nodded, slow, like I'd told him the weather.

"I know," he said.

We stood there for a while. The river kept churning. The wind picked up, carrying the smell of wet earth and something else. Something metallic. I pulled my robes tighter, and the charms in my hair clicked together like small teeth.

"My name's Emana," I said.

"I know who you are."

That should have scared me. Maybe it did, a little. But fear and I have an arrangement. We coexist. I've learned to keep it on a short leash.

"Then you know what I do."

"I know what people say you do."

"And what do they say?"

He looked at me then. Really looked. His eyes moved over my face, my hair, the pendant at my throat. Not in a way that made me feel exposed. In a way that made me feel seen. There's a difference, and it's a big one.

"They say you see things," he said. "Things that haven't happened yet. Things that might not happen. They say you speak in riddles and half-truths and people either love you or want you dead."

"That's about right."

"Which one are you?"

I almost smiled. Almost.

"Depends on the day."

He made a sound. Not quite a laugh. More like the ghost of one, the shape a laugh leaves behind when it's been gone too long.

"I need your help," he said.

The river roared. A sudden surge, water crashing against the rocks below the footpath, loud enough that I felt it in my chest. And underneath, that voice again. The one that wasn't the river. The one that lived in the spaces between things.

I heard it clearly. Just one word.

*Run.*

I didn't run. I haven't run in years. But I took a step back, and Denis noticed.

"What did you hear?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"You're lying."

"Yes."

He didn't push. That was the second thing. He just stood there, patient, like he had all the time in the world and no reason to spend it on me. Like he'd already decided I was worth waiting for.

It unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.

"What kind of help?" I asked.

"I need to find someone. Someone who doesn't want to be found."

"That's not what I do."

"I know what you do." He reached into his jacket, slow, careful, and pulled out a photograph. Held it out to me. "But I think you'll make an exception."

I didn't want to take it. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to walk away, to leave this man and his problems on the footpath where they belonged. I had my own problems. I had visions I couldn't control and a past I couldn't outrun and a voice in my head that never shut up.

But I took the photograph.

A woman. Young. Dark hair, dark eyes, a smile that looked like it had been borrowed from someone happier. She was standing in front of a building I didn't recognize, holding a coffee cup and squinting into the sun.

"She's missing," Denis said. "Three weeks now."

"People go missing all the time."

"Not like this."

I looked at the photograph again. The woman's eyes were wrong. Not the color or the shape. The expression. There was something behind it. Something that looked back.

"She knew," I said. "Before she disappeared. She knew something was coming."

Denis didn't react. But his silence was answer enough.

"What was she to you?"

"Nothing." The word came out too fast. Too flat. "She was a client. I was supposed to protect her."

"And you failed."

He flinched. Finally. A small crack in the armor. I felt bad about it for half a second, then I didn't. Truth is truth. It doesn't care about your feelings.

"I need to find her," he said. "Before someone else does."

"Someone else."

"The people who took her. They're not the kind who leave loose ends."

The wind picked up again. The charms in my hair sang, a high, thin note that only I could hear. The river kept churning. And that voice, the one that lived behind my eyes, whispered again.

*He knows.*

I looked at Denis. At his cold gray eyes and his tired face and the way he held himself like a man who'd been broken and put back together wrong.

"What do you know about me?" I asked.

"Enough."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

We stared at each other. The river roared. The wind howled. And somewhere, deep in the trees, something moved that shouldn't have been moving.

"Fine," I said. "I'll help you."

He nodded. Didn't thank me. Didn't smile. Just turned and started walking, like he'd known all along I'd say yes.

I followed.

And that was the beginning of the end of everything I thought I knew about myself.