And if he can communicate with me, Nick’s spell must be wearing off.
The speed of my return is breathtaking, and in a moment, I land lightly in front of him and his eyes meet mine. I can’t help myself, and I throw my arms around him. But he can’t reciprocate. He can’t move or speak yet, but it shouldn’t be long before he’s able to. “Sorry! I’m sorry!” I stammer, stepping back fast.
Sorry for welcoming an old friend back from the dead? No, child. Never be sorry for that.
“If I can hear you in my mind, the others should be able to hear me when I talk to them!” My excitement over this realization makes his eyes smile. “My father’s alive! But you already know that!” And soon he’ll hug me like he did when I was a child. “He’s inside with Nick and Chim. Be right back!”
I run to my father, who’s still motionless, and his eyes light up when he sees me. I throw my arms around him again, this time not quite as gently.
“Daddy! It’s me! I’m safe! And I’ll be right back. Nick and Chimney are farther in. They’ll be scared.” I feel like I’m five again. Or ten. He’ll have to wait for an explanation. How I hate to make him wait.
I hurry toward my friends, careful of my footing on the uneven surface as the passage darkens. My eyes adjust quickly, and I notice swirls of emerald glow that seem to surge in unison with the adrenaline I feel pumping through my body.
“Celeste?”
Chimney can speak! That means they’ll all be released and we’ll be out of the cave in no time, as long as we can keep Nick from using his power again.
“Coming, Chim!” I call to him. I see him turning in a slow circle, looking all around. He’ll be irked at Nick for stopping time. I remember him telling Nick “no more funny business” the last time Nick trapped him in time.
He sees me, or probably he sees the green glow from my feet—my feet have disappeared again into the light they radiate—and before I can say another word, Chimney closes the distance between us and just about knocks me over with his greeting.
I hug him, my quirky little buddy who introduced me to snoodles and brought me to his village, and I look over his shoulder, hoping with all my heart that Nick has recovered his senses and will recognize me.
“Chim?” I hold the boy’s shoulders and search his eyes. “Where’s Nick?”
~ 6 ~
“I DUNNO. I just got unstuck.” Chimney squints into the darkness behind him. “I wish he wouldn’t do that no more when I’m around. Feels like I’m totally disappeared. It scares me.”
“We’ll talk to him about it when we see him, okay?” I hug him again. A mixture of excitement, fear, and sadness contorts his innocent face.
“Things are still weird, aren’t they? And what if the ooze comes back? Could we breathe in it? Could we really breathe in water when we found you? How? How could we breathe underwater, and why are we here in this cave, and—”
“Celeste? I’m here, Celeste!” My father’s voice pulls me away from Chimney’s questions—I can’t believe Dad’s alive, and here—but where’s Nick? Do I call out his name? Or would he yell “stop” again? Can’t let that happen.
“My father’s calling me, Chim. Go to him and tell him I have to find Nick, okay? He’ll understand. He’s a good guy.” I turn to head back into the cave, but stop. “Oh, and Orville’s outside too, but he’s a man now.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says, as if I’ve just told him water’s not always blue. “Find him quick, okay? I wanna go home.” He ambles toward my father and I sense his hesitation to leave me.
“I will. He can’t be far.” Please-oh-please let this be true. “I won’t be long. Go say hello!” My father is already walking down the passageway toward Chimney. I have to be quick.
Nick must have released himself before his hold wore off of the others, but he could barely walk without my help. He can’t be far. Old Man Massive probably knows where he is, but I don’t want to ask him. His whispers rumble the surroundings and I don’t want to startle Nick again.
It seems I’ve gone too far when I turn a corner and duck under an obstruction, but there it is—Nick’s foot. I approach cautiously. He’s slumped against a boulder, eyes closed, breathing so, so slowly. I don’t want to wake him . . . and I don’t want him to die.
In my softest whisper I say his name. His eyelids flutter and he opens them against an unseen force threatening to hold them closed.
“Pipsqueak,” he says, and I can’t hold back my tears. “I found you.” His eyes close again and his head slumps onto his chest.
No, no, no, no, NO! “Nick, wake up. We’re going home.”
The space he’s crawled into is cramped, but I kneel and wrap my arms around him. His head rests on my shoulder and I feel his heart—still beating!—against mine. I summon the strength of Paloma, the girl inside me with the power to pull jaguars from fissures and turn lake water into raindrops.
He’s taller and heavier than I am, but once I get him to a place I can stand, I lift him in both arms and hasten along the passageway. Before I reach the light near the exit, I’m met by my father, Chimney, and Orville—who takes Nick from my arms. My father’s eyebrows arch as he studies me for a moment. The reflection of green glow from my footsteps shines in his eyes and he opens his arms to me.
“Daddy!” I’m a child again, choking on my tears with my head buried in his embrace. I don’t care about making a fool of myself. I don’t care the others might find this moment awkward. I only care that my father is alive and here and I don’t have to be the grown-up anymore.
“It’s all right, Little Bear,” he whispers, swaying softly with my sobs. And then Chimney squeaks, breaking through the heaviness.
“Hey, Celeste? People said your dad was loose in the noodle when he came to our village, but I always knew his crazy words were special and Orville did too.”
I lift my head from my father’s chest and shake off a moment of embarrassment. They’re all looking at me with concern in their eyes and I see Nick, a ragdoll in Orville’s arms.
Chimney’s words sink in.
“You’ve been to the village?” I ask my father.
“Yes, though I’ll admit I wasn’t in my right mind for quite some time.”
There it is again. Time. Quite some time.
“But we’ll have time to catch up once we get back and care for your friend there.” He nods toward Nick.
Will we?
“Mason—ah, your father—is right,” Orville tells me, and I notice his troubled expression.
“Can we get outta here?” Chimney digs his toe into a patch of gravel and looks toward the light outside. “And how’re we gonna get home?”
It’s the question troubling Orville. I see it in his eyes. Sure, he has wings, but how powerful are they? Are they powerful enough to carry an unconscious boy and another across an expansive body of water? And I can fly, but for how long, how far, before another flux might occur?
“Let’s go.” Dad takes my hand and Chimney’s and leads us out of the cave. Orville follows, and when I look over my shoulder I notice how carefully he carries Nick.
When we’re just outside the mountain, Old Man Massive speaks. “The dragonfly may return for you, but you must summon her, little Paloma.”
“She carried us here,” my father says, his eyes filled with optimism.
“Her name is Noor.” Orville looks at me expectantly.
“But she dropped me into the water!” I tell them. “I could have drowned!” I feel panicky and jittery and I want to run away. The thought of calling her makes no sense to me until I remember I didn’t drown, and she also saved me from Odin’s pursuing ravens. I march around the group in a small circle, watching as my feet kick up dust, trying to make sense of nonsense.
“She said I had more to learn, and I had to find and release her—the octopus.” I narrate the events as I remember them, not as an explanation to my father and friends, but as a way to trigger an idea that might help me do what I need to do.
> And I have to figure it out fast, before life runs out of the boy who makes me feel alive.
“Maybe you have to find her in the sky, Celeste,” Chimney offers. “You can see way far away when you’re up in the sky, right?”
“My daughter flies,” I hear my father whisper.
I look to Orville, who nods, and decide it’s worth a try. But first, I call her name.
“Noor!” I shout to the sky, and the others join me. We call and call, but our voices sound puny in the vast open space, and I can’t wait any longer. “I’ll find her!” I yell before lifting into flight. I’m far, far above them when it happens. The mark on the back of my head begins to tingle.
~ 7 ~
I HEAR HARMONY. Tingling gives way to something else, something familiar, and I hear her weeping.
I stretch impossibly thin—no, never again think impossible—dissolving into molecules in the atmosphere, and her voice resonates in me. I know it’s her because even though she weeps, there’s a lilting, childlike melody surrounding each sob. It makes me want to cry with her.
If only I could trust her, now that I’ve connected with her in some strange way, but I can’t get distracted. I’m up here to summon a fire-breathing dragonfly to help us return to the village.
Stretching, dissolving, it feels good, like a sun sneeze or an unabashed yawn. I’ve done this before in the water, slipping through the strands of seaweed in an underwater castle, escaping from the room in which the fish god held me prisoner, wanting with all my heart to return to an exhausted, beautiful octopus to stop her three hearts from their cruel, unnatural beating.
I was frightened then, afraid of being destroyed by the returning god’s surge toward me through the water, and in snapping back to my body, I was trapped and imprisoned once more.
In my body, I’m vulnerable. But what am I, if not a body expanded? A featureless body, but still somehow me.
Funny. I don’t question how I can hear things, see things, feel things in my new me, my unencumbered me.
She cries. She’s searching for the only father she knows, swimming around the island in which he’s trapped—trapped like he locked his brother in his sea-filled castle room, and like he imprisoned me.
The dry island cavern has rendered Kumugwe ineffective—I feel this too—but like his brother god, Odin, he won’t die. One’s strength is diminished out of water, the other’s, in it.
Maybe a taste of their own medicine will show them that powers like theirs, god-powers, shouldn’t be wielded carelessly. Maybe the gods can be made to learn what it’s like to be human.
To be vulnerable.
And so I’ll let Kumugwe’s sea child weep for him, swimming around the little island as a beautiful alabaster mermaid—I see this too—knowing they’ll be together again when the time is right.
When the time is right. There’s been nothing right about time for as long as I can recall.
Yes, she will swim around the island and—wait! She knows I’m here far above her! She treads water with her glimmering tail and strains her eyes to the heavens. She’s searching for me, though in my dispersed state I know she won’t see me.
“He’ll be okay,” I tell her in a way I haven’t done before. It’s as if a piece of me has detached and is inside her, a part of her, but not even that. More like I am her, and I’m still me too. It’s magical. It’s startling. It’s . . . god-like.
It’s frightening.
She knows I’m in her, talking to her, and she doesn’t know how to respond.
“Celeste! You’re alive!” She says these words aloud, looking all around her as if she’ll see me soon. “And the others? Your friends?”
The others. My friends. I’m supposed to be looking for Noor.
I detach from Harmony. She’ll have to be patient. I need to return my friends to a place called home—unless they, we, are already there. We could definitely rebuild on this side. My father knows construction. We won’t have to fly across the water again. We can—
“They’ll be completed soon.” Another familiar voice distracts me. It’s Blanche, but where is she? Still with the scientists? I’ll never understand how she was able to abandon Chimney, her only brother.
It seems I’ve stretched far enough to sense things on the other side, but Noor is nowhere in sight. Bits and pieces of voices and images hit me like I’ve just stepped under a waterfall and every piece of me vibrates. Blanche is still talking.
“Good thing we got our lab back. The kiddiwinks should be functional—”
What are kiddiwinks? They can’t be good things if she and the scientists are involved. Focus, Celeste.
Noor! My particles vibrate with her name as I try to block out the other voices, but I might as well be in the lab with them.
“It’s not your lab, Blanche, it’s theirs. And mine.” Another voice breaks through. “I just brought you along to help, you know. You’ll do whatever my parents tell you to do.”
It’s Sharon! She sounds even younger than she did when she appeared at the foot of my bed in the farmhouse. But then she cackles an old lady cackle and every particle of my being shudders. I sense chaos and hostility, a man whimpers, and a woman’s voice—harsher than any I’ve heard before—forces me to pay attention.
“Then, what are you waiting for, girls? Finish your work and get them prepared. There’s no time to waste,” the woman says, cackling again.
How horrible Sharon’s life must have been under that woman’s roof.
My thoughts of staying and rebuilding on this side vanish. We have to warn the villagers the scientists are still alive and up to no good.
But how do I find the fire-breathing dragonfly who appeared out of nowhere, or somewhere, scorching Odin’s ravens’ wings? I feel like I should be able to sense her in my transformed state in the atmosphere, but I’ve already summoned her like this, to no avail.
I’d need to gather my pieces into my physical body, my girl body, if I want to use Celeste’s voice. But it didn’t work when I was on the ground with the others. We all called her name, but Noor didn’t hear us.
Or she did, and chose to stay away.
I try to concentrate, but I can’t remember what I did to return to my human body when I was dispersed in the water. Fear snapped me back then. An intense, abrupt fear.
I focus on tightening all my muscles, but they’re hard to imagine in my current diaphanous state. Despite some mental confusion, though, I could get used to this physical form. It makes me feel like I could go and go and go, expanding my yawn until—
“Help me, Pipsqueak.”
Until he calls me back.
~ 8 ~
AN INTENSE RUSH snaps me back into my body when I hear Nick’s voice, and I’m nearly paralyzed by fear when I see my feet dangling below me in the vast expanse of space. I’ll never get used to being able to fly. Fortunately, I can breathe this far up in the atmosphere. I’ve done it before. I’ve lived in a realm even more distant from the planet below.
I twirl, leery of Odin’s great ravens, but like Noor, they’re nowhere to be seen. With Odin trapped in Kumugwe’s crumbled castle below, what will they do? What will his wolves do? I can’t worry about them. It’s Noor I need to find.
I close my eyes and summon her to me in something like a prayer. I did what she asked me to do. I guided Harmony to release Zoya from her agony. I learned things. I stood up to not one god but two, thwarting their attempts to keep me in their realms. What would keep her from coming to me?
But I’ve waited too long—I can’t stay in the heavens. Much like my escape from Asgard, I dart toward the planet where my friends wait. The speed of my flight thrills me—I’ve never flown so fast—and I laugh aloud until I remember why I’m speeding.
He’s calling for my help, but his voice is trapped in his mind. Even though I’m back in my human body, I hear him.
“Noor! Where are you?” Approaching the group below, I try calling her name aloud again, expecting her at any moment to swoop
alongside me, but—
“Hurry, Celeste!” It’s Chimney. He’s jumping up and down, scrunching his shoulders and squeaking. So much agitation for such a young boy. It’s not fair.
I land. Nick is ashen in Orville’s arms. Without thinking, I take him from my winged friend. There’s no time to wait, they know it too. I open my mouth to apologize but my father cuts me off before I can say anything.
“GO!” he shouts, and I’m off on a flight I’ve taken far too many lifetimes ago, though never at this astounding speed.
Nick feels light in my arms and I fear he’s leaving me, leaving his body.
“We’re going home,” I whisper close to his ear. Wind whistles past us and everything is a visual blur. The space around us warps and the village comes into focus before I lift my lips from his face.
My feet skid a distance on the village road—I’ve never made such a hasty landing—and a cloud of dust swirls around us.
“Ryder!” I call the name of the boy with healing powers, and before the dust settles, he’s running toward us. The whole village is running toward us, as if they’ve been expecting us. I sit where I am and cradle Nick in my arms. “Help him! Please help him!”
And then I sob.
~ 9 ~
RYDER’S EYES BETRAY HIM. He’s afraid. He stares at me as if he’s seeing a ghost, but the look on my tear-stained face directs his attention back to his friend, who lies limp in my arms.
I feel like he’s afraid for more than Nick, though.
I pull myself together. “You can make him better,” I say. “I stopped the bleeding, he hasn’t lost too much blood, but he froze time with this head injury and trapped himself too.” I don’t know how this will help Ryder, but I can’t seem to stop talking. “I can hear him in my mind, so I know he’s in there. Bring him back, Ryder. Please bring him back.”
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