Then I caught myself, realizing the stupidity in letting myself get carried away with my ego. Perhaps she’s on the verge of offering up her own suggestion, her own solution to my predicament.

I humbled myself before her, and, gazing at her intently, asked, “Then… if I am not trying, will you enlighten me and tell me how to try?”

The oracle stood from where she had been perched on her stool, and, fighting to pull a straight face, she panned her head up to me.

“You need to stop being a coward, that’s what you need to do,” she said, planting her hands on her narrow hips.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” Rose blurted over the top of me, indignation flushing her cheeks. “My brother’s no coward!”

The oracle ignored my sister, keeping her attention on me. “I meant exactly what I said,” she replied. “You need to stop fearing what you must face.”

Is this oracle really so incapable of just giving me a straight answer? I realized how strange it must’ve been to my mother, sister and River to be listening in on what for them would look like a one-sided conversation—the oracle talking to herself. Then again, maybe that wasn’t so strange.

“What must I face?” I urged.

“The same that all ghosts must face. At least, those who are not numbskulls, or gluttons for punishment.”

I paused. The frustration boiling within me gave way to slow realization as to what she was getting at. “You’re… you’re telling me that… I need to go to the ‘other side?’”

“The penny drops!” she cackled, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“But how would that bring me back to my old life?”

“I never said it would,” Hortencia countered. “Though I never said it wouldn’t, either.”

Impossible woman.

“For the love of God,” I hissed, “will you just spit it out already? Is there any way for me to return to my old life, or not?”

“That is not for me to say, but for you to find out…” She snapped her face away from me, her focus switching back on the other three in the room. “Now, five minutes has long passed. Take your leave. I tire of your miserable auras.”

“Wait,” I growled. “You can’t just leave me hanging like this!”

“You see the future, don’t you?” River spoke up. “You know what’s up ahead of him. Please, tell us.”

As she’d disregarded my sister before, now she ignored River.

“Up and out, children!” she shrilled.

When the three made no motion to move, she strolled up to them and began grabbing their arms, pulling them out of their seats and bustling them to the door.

“It is rude to outstay one’s welcome.” She scowled.

My mother stopped by the door and refused to budge. “Hortencia,” she said, her eyes wide and desperate. “I thank you for all that you have told us, but please, will you just tell us something more? Anything more that could help my son. Please.”

“I have told him all he needs to know,” Hortencia replied, her lower lip curling. “And I have given him my advice—that he must stop trying to push backward and instead roll forward.”

As the oracle pushed the three women out of the door and moved to slam it in their faces, River stuck out her foot and jammed it in the door. She squeezed back through, her eyes traveling around the room wildly, as if in search of me again.

“Ben,” she called, her eyes bloodshot. “You have to find a way. You have to.”

The desperation in her voice shook me. I wasn’t used to River breaking down like this. I was about to respond again that I would try, but recalling the way the oracle had admonished me before, I thought better of it.

“I will,” I said, with confidence I did not possess. “I will, River.”

To my surprise, the oracle took it upon herself to relay my message without my asking… albeit changing my words in the process.

“He says he will stop being a coward.” And with that, the oracle shoved River’s foot away from the door and finally slammed it shut.

Now it was just her and me alone in the room. Though not for long. Before I could ask anything more of her, she moved to the dagger sticking out of the table in the center of the room and clasped her palms around its hilt. The next thing I knew, the same invisible force that had carried me here was sweeping me away, out of the oracle’s living quarters, out of her cave. I was whizzing so fast, I didn’t even get a chance to catch a last glimpse of River, my mother and sister. They might attempt to harass the oracle for answers some more, but eventually, they’d have no choice but to return to The Shade.

When the force finally relinquished me, I found myself back on the same snowy mountain plateau—just feet away from the portal.

Damn oracle.

I’d hoped to find enlightenment in that dingy room of hers, but now I only found myself more confused. The woman seemed to get more and more batty each time I saw her. What was I supposed to make of her words? What was I supposed to think?

The only conclusive thing she had said to me was just the opposite of what I’d wanted to hear. I already knew that ghosts did not belong in this physical world. I already knew that they were meant to pass on. That wasn’t what I’d asked her about—and yet that was the answer she’d thrust in my face.

She had never answered my question, because the idea that the solution I sought—a way to remain in the life I knew, with the people I loved—could be on this elusive “other side” was absurd.