“Gaige!”
I opened my eyes but saw nothing but light and shadows. They blurred and twirled around each other. The light pushed on the shadows and the shadows pushed back. I felt my stomach turn. Was it possible to get sick when dead? The light won the battle and sliced through the dark, cutting deep into my eyes.
“The beaver dam! I found him!”
I thought it odd that dead was a beaver dam. No fluffy white clouds. No burning brimstone. A beaver dam, pain, cold, and a numb that didn’t numb. That was it.
A shadow slid across the white. A form, I realized. A person. I opened my mouth to welcome the newcomer and offer my condolences. I couldn’t say for certain if anything came out. I didn’t have the breath to form words. Did the dead need to breathe or were they just not capable of speaking?
“Be careful,” a nearby voice urged.
It reminded me of my parents. When I was seven, I begged Dad to take the training wheels off my bike. He did. I was eager to hop on and prove I didn’t need them.
“I am being careful.” That was my dad, the shadow over me.
The bike tipped over ten feet down the driveway and I scraped up my knee. My left, I think.
“Gaige?”
A hand rested my shoulder. The touch pulled me from the memory. From the shadows. From the dead.
My vision cleared, blurred, then cleared again. Seanna knelt over me. Her long, blond hair poured around me like a waterfall of sunshine. I groaned at that particular metaphor my rattled brain had come up with in the moment.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, mistaking the cause of the groan.
I wondered at that. Was I hurt? I definitely hurt, but was I hurt? I worked my mouth but couldn’t manage more than a repeat groan. I took a watery breath and coughed. Once the fit passed, to my horror I saw drops of water sprinkled on Seanna’s face. If she felt them, she didn’t react.
I was thankful for the cough, though. My lungs still hurt but expelling more water from them at least gave the impression that I could take a halfway decent breath. I experimentally took one, which went in and out cough free, and realized I was staring at Seanna’s face. Those bright blue eyes looked down at me with concern and I couldn’t tear mine from hers.
“Can you move?” she asked.
Good question. Could I? I thought I might be able to if I was inclined to try. I wasn’t sure if I was. Inclined to, I mean. As far as I could make out, I was flat on my back on a beaver dam and I had more bumps and scrapes than I cared to take stock of. If I started counting all the places I hurt, I might not want to move. Ever. My feet were cold, too, worse than walking through the snow at the top of the mountain. I heard water from the rushing river splashing over them somewhere beyond Seanna’s sunshine waterfall.
“No,” I croaked. My throat felt raw.
“No?” Her delicate brows creased together above her nose.
“You’re blocking the sun,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Working on my tan,” I managed weakly. I laughed, except it came out as a cough. A long, racking cough that pounded on the inside of my skull and invited darkness to come in and swallow me whole.
***
“You’re an idiot. You know that, right?”
It took a few seconds to realize my eyes were open and staring up at Aoife sitting next to me. She leaned over me with a worried look in her eyes that betrayed her harsh words.
I tried to respond, but a wad of phlegm pushed its way into my throat and I croaked. I gagged and made a few noises to try to clear it away.
“Oh, that’s attractive. You’re an idiot,” she said again.
I finally cleared my throat enough to reply. “So, you’ve told me. On more than one occasion,” I added after a moment of contemplation. “What happened, anyway? I think I blacked out after I hit the water.”
“You nearly died, that’s what happened. Because you’re an idiot.” She shifted, moving farther away from me.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Got it. Idiot. Make me a name tag.” I tried to lift my head off the ground, but a hammer thumped against the inside of my skull. I squeezed my eyes closed against the pain and lay still until the throbbing subsided a bit.
“You hit your head in the river. You probably shouldn’t move.”
Shouldn’t move. Yeah, I figured that out myself. From what I could tell, I was lying on an open patch of green grass with trees around us that filtered out the sun, slashing long shadows across us. A shiver ran up my spine like my body just figured out it was cold. Speaking of my body, I rolled onto my side in spite of Aoife’s suggestion. I felt a few pangs of pain here and there, but nothing major. I’d had worse aches and pains after particularly hard football games. That wasn’t what surprised me the most, however.
“Uh, where are my clothes?” I lay on the grass in nothing but my blue boxers with cartoon penguins dotted all over them.
“They were soaking wet.” She indicated the soggy mass off to the side. “We had to get you out of them or you’d freeze to death.”
I watched her eyes flick toward my boxers. It was only a glance, but the corners of her mouth twitched. I opened my mouth to tell her my aunt had bought them for me. No way I would have picked them out myself. But she kept talking.
“That’s what Seanna said anyway.”
I ignored the hint of laughter in her voice. “Where’s Seanna?”
The humor drained from her face and she pulled her knees to her chest. “You were carrying the cloak and blanket. You lost them in the river.” She glanced my way briefly before looking off in the woods.
“Sorry,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster.
“You got lucky,” she said after a moment. “When you hit the water, you were separated from those cats. You were washed down a side stream while I…we think the cats went down the main river. You washed up on a beaver dam. That’s where we found you.”
“That doesn’t answer—” I started, confused by her answer. “Beaver dam? Why does that—”
“She’s gone,” Aoife interrupted.
“What? Those cat things were female?”
“How am I supposed to know that?” She glanced at me like I was stupid.
My head started to spin and not just from trying to figure out what she was talking about. I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asked without much concern in her voice.
“You said she’s gone,” I said with a deep breath. “Who?”
“Seanna. Didn’t you just ask me where she was?”
“Well, yeah, but…” What she said hit me and squeezed my heart. “What? Gone?” I sat up too quick. Darkness pushed in my head like a vice. I thought I was going to be sick.
“Yeah, gone,” Aoife said. “To get firewood. Calm down.”
I slumped back to the ground, taking in deep breaths. It took a few moments for the nausea to pass. I rolled back onto my side, curled up my legs, and wrapped my arms around my torso in an attempt to fight off the cold that was burying into my skin.
“You’re an idiot,” Aoife said again.
I opened my eyes. I felt my jaw tighten, my teeth clench. I felt an angry reply crawling up my chest like more river water desperate to free itself from my body.
She sat still with her arms around her knees, her chin resting on her forearm. Her face was covered in shadows. She didn’t glance my way, but something in the tightness around her eyes…
She turned golden eyes toward me and my thoughts scattered. It was only a moment of her looking through me before she turned away, making sure to pull her long, black hair from behind her ear to fall down the side of her face, effectively blocking my view. Apparently, it was perfectly fine for her to read me with those eyes, but if I tried to watch her for clues into what she was thinking, well, that was off limits.
“It’s not my fault those things climbed on the log with me,” I muttered. “Like I really wanted to fall into that river.”
“Not that, Gaige.” She pu
lled her legs in tighter. “Why are you here? Why are you so eager to follow her ? We shouldn’t be here, Gaige, and you’re an idiot for bringing us here.”
“I didn’t bring you here,” I retorted. Frustration crept into my voice. “You followed me here, in case you forgot. I don’t even know where here is! I don’t know how we got here or why, so why the hell are you attacking me?” I stretched out my legs and pushed myself slowly onto an elbow. Nothing like a little anger to warm me up like a kettle on a slow boil.
“Because you’re the reason we’re still here!” She stood and walked to the edge of the clearing. I couldn’t help but notice her jeans were covered in mud from her butt down both pant legs to her knees. “Why?” she demanded without turning back to me.
I opened my mouth to yell something back at her, but my brain shut down, leaving a blank canvas with no artist to paint a brilliant reply onto it. Such a simple question. One word but powerful when wielded with precision.
“Why?” she asked again, a small strangle to her voice. “Why didn’t you just turn around and go back through that cave? It was so simple. You could have just grabbed me and stepped back through before all…this.” She turned to me, rolled her eyes, and turned away again. “I can’t take you seriously while you’re wearing those.”
I glanced down at my penguin boxers. I sighed, anger draining out of me again. “I can take them off,” I said with a smile.
She didn’t bother to turn around or pretend it was even mildly humorous.
“I don’t know,” I sighed.
She did turn at that. I expected her eyes to glow gold, but they were their normal hazel color. She folded her arms over her chest. The sun sank further behind the trees. Night loomed.
“I don’t know,” I said again. “I just felt like I needed to be here.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. The movement caused a twinge of pain down my side. I lifted my left arm to find an angry, red welt slicing from the bottom of my ribcage, disappearing below the waistband of my boxers.
“Seanna’s work,” Aoife said. “Healing it, I mean. It was a lot worse.”
I poked gingerly at the line in my skin, wondering why she hadn’t healed it completely like she had the cut on my forehead. I ran a finger along my eyebrow, a habit I got into when I thought about my parents after their accident. After the gash I took on my forehead, I thought maybe I’d have that same break in the line my mom had. I didn’t. My brow was whole. Complete.
“I’m lost.” The words just slipped out. I hadn’t known they were bouncing on my tongue until they slipped between my lips.
“Of course, you are,” Aoife said. “We both—”
“No. I mean I’m lost. I don’t know who I am.”
“Did you hit your head harder than we thought?”
“I don’t know how to explain it,” I said. “What’s the most important thing in your life? If we were sitting at school and I asked, what would you say?”
“Family,” she said. “My family.”
I nodded. “Fifteen years and family is the most constant thing in your life. But what if that’s ripped from you? Your brothers, sisters. Your parents. Imagine them being there one day and the next…” I snapped my fingers. “Gone.”
“Your mom isn’t gone,” she said.
“She might as well be.”
“Gaige—”
“Save the lecture,” I interrupted. I really didn’t want to explode at her like I did at my aunt. I really didn’t want to start spilling the feelings I’d tried so hard to deny the past three years. “I already got it from Stacy.”
“But—”
“How would you like it if your mom was a drooling, barely thinking mess with the mental capacity of a one-year-old?”
I watched as she picked up a stick. She frowned at it, bending it in half without it breaking. She twisted it into a knot the shape of a pretzel. She shook her head, tossed it aside, and opened her mouth, but I went on before she could reply.
“It would have been better if she would have died with Dad,” I insisted.
“That’s a selfish thing to think,” she snapped.
“And what about Aunt Stacy? She gave up everything for us,” I snapped back. “She was on the verge of getting a bachelor’s degree and moving on to law school. She dropped out one semester short of graduating because she couldn’t handle the workload of taking care of Mom and me, school, and working to support us.”
“You’re family. I’m sure she was more than willing to give that up for you both.”
“Did you know she was engaged?”
She looked at me and shook her head, surprise obvious in her eyes.
“They got engaged a few months before the accident.” I shook my head. “They would talk about their wedding plans nonstop. I thought it was annoying at the time.”
I watched as Aoife opened and closed her mouth.
“He was a good guy,” I said. “At first, he tried to be supportive. But when it became clear that my mom would need care for the rest of her life, he began to see what his life would be like if he married Aunt Stacy. Needless to say, he tucked his tail between his legs and ran.”
“That’s a terrible thing to do, but what does—”
“She gave up her life for Mom and me,” I said. “She once told me her life would be meaningless if she had abandoned us for school, for her career. For him. You call me selfish, and maybe I am, but what I said is true. Would you want to live out the rest of your life being praised because you wrote your name? I know I wouldn’t.”
I took a deep breath, ignoring the pangs of pain in my lungs. I stifled a cough.
“Gaige—”
“That’s why I’m here,” I interrupted again. “I need meaning in my life. Call it being a hero. Call it whatever you want, but Seanna offered a chance to return my mom to normal. This”—I waved a hand around us—“doesn’t make sense to me. At all. But I have to take the chance, otherwise my life won’t mean anything.”
“A hero,” she repeated softly. It was a question and a statement all in one like she was trying to figure out exactly what being a hero meant. “Like in a movie?”
“Yeah, I guess. But I don’t know. I have to do this. It’s stupid. It’s reckless. It’s impossible to wrap my mind around. But I have to.”
After a long moment, she nodded once. “I understand.”
“Do you?” I knew I shouldn’t question her. Winning an argument with her never happened. Like, never . And I thought I just had, but her questioning worked me up and I never was one to think before I opened my mouth once my blood pressure elevated. “If I’m an idiot for being here, what does that make you? Why are you here?”
She didn’t answer. The clearing fell quiet besides the sounds of distant birds. I felt my simmering blood cool as I watched her unmoving form.
“When Seanna comes back, I can ask her to take you back. You have your family to think of,” I said.
She remained silent but shook her head.
“Why not?” I asked.
At that moment, Seanna pushed into the clearing with an armload of dry branches. Her step faltered as she glanced between Aoife and me. She stepped closer, set the wood on the ground, and began stacking it for a fire. She glanced my way again, her eyes flicking ever so slightly toward Aoife.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Cold,” I said.
“I’ll have a fire going soon.” She hesitated, piling the branches on each other with slow precision. “We made great time in spite of your little incident. I think we should get there tomorrow.” She glanced at me.
I could tell she thought I was going to ask where exactly our destination tomorrow was, but I didn’t. I nodded but said nothing, watching Aoife, the question I asked still hanging between us. I thought about asking her again. In spite of my little speech, I wasn’t quite sure I had myself convinced. The whole hero thing? Maybe that was true. Maybe not. All I knew was I had to take the chance on saving my mom.
When I made it back to Earth—if I made it back—I knew I’d be kicked off the team. That was obvious considering the way I blew off the postgame speech and then disappeared for, what, a couple days now? I always saw myself as some kind of football hero. I listened to all my coaches who insisted I was destined for the pros, but I was pretty sure that was gone. What else would be waiting there for me?
I felt a tickle on the back of my neck raising hairs like soldiers standing to salute. I lifted my gaze to find Aoife’s golden eyes on me.
“Because,” she said, a smirk on her lips. “Behind every hero is a girl saving his ass. I have to pee.” She stood and walked out of the clearing.
“What was that about?” Seanna asked, a length of wood in her hand paused over the stack.
“Nothing,” I said, watching Aoife disappear.
15
The Ashlings
The night turned out to be a miserable one. When the sun dipped out of sight below the mountain ridges in the distance, I began to shiver in spite of the fire Seanna had started. I huddled as close as I dared without setting my penguin boxers on fire. I sat with arms folded against my chest and watched the two girls over the flames. There wasn’t much talk at all, only the changing sounds of the forest around us. The calls of the birds gave way to a symphony of guttural croaks from what I could only guess was frogs.
As a black, starless night settled over us, Aoife’s face slid from miserable to terrified and back. I tried to feel bad for her, but at least she had dry clothes.
Seanna, on the other hand, watched over me with a noticeable look of concern, knitting her delicate brows. It made me uncomfortable, to tell the truth. It reminded me of the weeks following my parents’ accident. All the concerned looks like I would fall apart at any moment. Like I would break at the slightest provocation. I didn’t break then and I wasn’t going to break now. I felt like I should get pissed at her. That was my usual reaction when somebody paid too much attention to me like I was weak. But I couldn’t. Every time I glanced over the fire at her, I felt the knot in my stomach unravel just a bit when I saw her blue eyes on me.
A loud croak at the edge of the clearing caused Aoife, and maybe me a little, to start.
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