I closed my eyes and let the reality sink in—and the pain of the wall.
With no last thoughts, I lifted the steel rods…and my shadows split open.
Like black paint into water, the fog rolled out and curled over itself until it was no more. I pushed more of myself out—more black paint, more shadows—and my mind spun at the picture before me.
Every ink blot formed into a person. My shadow friends. The same ones who came to dance with the herd on a beach that no longer saw sunlight.
In their shapes, their silhouettes formed Floyd’s elongated arms, Maggie’s curvy hips, and even Blake, with his teddy bear. An additional soul arrived. Levi. Along with his obnoxiously curly hair.
Whether they were real or figments of my imagination did not make a difference.
They had always been real to me and would remain that way.
I lifted the city, and so did they.
The ocean floor sank as the sand swirled and the water twirled and all the buildings continued to sink anyway.
But we continued to push, and the world was forced to change, and everyone’s shadow slowly tore apart one at a time. First came Maggie, then Steven, then Jake and Blake. The entirety of the Northern Flock faded away, leaving me with Levi. Soon, I stood by myself.
I blinded my pain with a thousand memories.
I felt myself painting. I saw myself dancing. I heard Caleb’s violin. Mostly, I heard his voice. His secrets. His wishes. His daydreams.
I saw the sun, and all the other beautiful daylight things—the things I had never been allowed to see or enjoy before—and I felt the burn of enjoying the sunlight too long.
I’d enjoyed that freedom too long, because I’d mistakenly thought it was freedom at all.
Freedom was the ability to exist on one’s own terms. To be able to cry over citizens who weren’t supposed to exist in the first place or love someone who should’ve been dead. Freedom was friendship and pain and mercy and glory—and everything in between.
Freedom was the ability to lift a city.
I wouldn’t make shallow mistakes ever again.
As the final bits of me faded, I pushed the walls harder than I’d ever thought possible. When I got far beyond even that point, I screamed.
The sound could’ve broken Plato’s glass castle. Or Nuo’s violin strings. Or Serah’s smile.
But that reminder kept the city at bay. In fact, it laid the city back up on the bay, and though the wall shuddered back into place—with shadows holding it together like glue—I felt myself fall apart. I felt myself fade. But above all else, I let Serah’s words take me away.
A girl made of ashes in a glass castle by the sea
wore a weary dress of shadowy lashes and lit
the sky on fire.
I’ll hold it off as long as I can. Violet’s voice found me at the same time the sea did. Run.
Squalls of pounding rain fell down upon my head, and it took all my strength to claw my way back up the shoreline and toward the town. Behind me, blackness rose like a new wall, but this one wouldn’t last long. The surge would take me alive.
I’d never make it back to the Western Adoption House in time. But one place was closer than that.
I took off and dodged debris flying through the air. Still, the monstrous wind slammed my body against the brick wall, and my head spun.
Run, Violet had said. Run as fast as you can.
So I did.
My arms pumped, my legs burned, and though my heart ached, adrenaline shoved me forward.
Sideways rain added to the water level rising on the main road. But it was the howl of the wind—the gusts of angry air tunneling through the side streets—that terrified me the most.
The city seemed taken over by monsters.
Sidewalks cracked. Canopies flew away like beasts. And I splashed through a puddle, knowing it would soon become a flood.
I’d walked the western streets so many times that I couldn’t count the days, but I never thought I’d return to the one place I dreaded most of my life.
Cal’s apartment.
My dad’s home.
The surge hit the front steps at the same time I did, but when I yanked on the handle, the doorknob didn’t budge.
I almost fell off the stairs; then, I heard his voice.
“You think I didn’t think about you? That I didn’t leave an extra key on top of my door in case you came back?”
Calhoun dug his knuckles into my hair, and we’d entered the Western Adoption House where everything had started only weeks prior.
I shoved the guilt down while I jumped up.
My fingers found nothing the first time, and the water almost swept me away. The second time, I grasped onto metal that could potentially save my life.
The brass key meant life or death, and when I shoved it into the door, the lock clicked open. I leapt inside just as the stairs below me swept away. Still, the wind howled into Cal’s house; it followed me in.
I took no time to rest.
Instead, I rushed across the living room and hit the stairs.
Water followed me the whole way, just as it had in the depths of the Pits, but Cal wasn’t coming to save me this time. Violet wasn’t either. No one was. And right when I thought it couldn’t get worse, the ground below the western block lurched.
A loud bang—louder than any thunder I’d ever heard—echoed over the crushing winds and smacking debris and falling houses.
The wall, I thought. She got it up.
But my fear swallowed any hope I could muster, because the water level rose again. And again. Then much higher than ever before.
The outskirts had to take some of the hit, after all.
With scraped hands and bruised shins, I scrambled up the stairs. All the while, water nipped at my ankles and toes, and I kicked back as much as I yanked myself forward.
I barely made it to the top bedroom before the water seemed to level out—lapping up one last time in a threatening wave before dying out on the bedroom floor. I collapsed with it, gasping and shaking, until my heart calmed.
Still, the tears came. Or the water from the flood drenched me.
I didn’t know, nor did I care to decipher between the two.
They felt the same, and so did the floor of my bedroom.
In all the years I had been gone, Cal hadn’t changed a thing. The wood reeked. The windowless room remained dark. And a single twin bed took up most of the space.
As a child, I had spent days hauled up in that bed, refusing to move or come out unless it was daylight. I’d been terrified of the dark—and the shuǐ guǐ—and only when Adam came over did I voluntarily turn the lights off so we could play with shadow puppets along the walls.
Now, years later, I sighed at the night brought on by the hurricane, curling up on the bed I had missed when it had waited for me all along. Soon, sleep rushed into my veins. Exhaustion took over, but most of all, peace did.
For once in my life, darkness felt like home.
In the shadows, time stopped. During that time, I dreamed a poem of my own.
The Shuǐ Guǐ of the Shadowy Sea
On her seventh—or fifty-seventh—sun trip, a little girl saved a boy from drowning.
On her fourteenth—or sixty-fourth—year, a much-older girl drowned herself instead.
Sunlight streamed in through a break in the ceiling, a dusty beam of destruction, and I shielded my eyes from the sudden light.
“You all right in there?” someone shouted.
In the foggy parts of my brain, I realized I had woken up because they had shouted before.
I’d heard the question in my dreams. What I had dreamt of, though, I could not recall.
“Can yah hear me?”
The nameless man stood on the rooftop and peered down into my bedroom. A stranger checking on the survival of another stranger. Probably a neighbor. Their body was a silhouette against the afternoon sun. Beyond that was a bright blue sky.
The storm had ended.
&nb
sp; “I’m fine,” I croaked out, but the stranger didn’t move. I insisted. He left, his footsteps echoing across the rooftop where a storm once threatened cave-ins.
Now, the threat was gone, and a new one arrived.
Exposure, sickness, destruction.
Water dripped off the roof cracks and pinged off exposed metal and other furniture things.
I raised my hand against the sunlight, and it cut across my skin, leaving beads of teardrops braided on my soaked jacket. I shivered, but I’d never felt warmer.
At least some things stayed familiar.
As I moved my fingers, shadow puppets danced across my chest. When I turned over, I watched as the bunny I formed with my fingers found a place on the floor. I let it hop along the carpet, imagining Adam as a toddler sitting on the same floor, giggling. A ghost of a memory.
Was he alive now?
The sudden thought sobered up my exhausted mind. I sat up, and my whole world turned over again.
This was not my bedroom. Not anymore.
This was Violet’s, and the proof stared me in the face.
Water-logged paintings covered the walls, a colorful shadow of what they must have been before the storm. Still, I recognized the shapes for what they were—faces. Familiar ones.
Yasir’s glitter-gold cheeks, and Hanna’s beautifully bald head. Her portrait included her signature cross, but Violet had caught her in a rare moment of sadness. In fact, she’d caught everyone in a rare moment—with Nuo smiling against her violin, her eyes closed, and Ellen laughing as her paint-covered hands smeared colors across the glass wall.
Violet painted Plato while talking, and Levi while walking, and Frankie while sleeping peacefully. But Kat stared directly at the viewer, her golden-green eyes mischievous and alight.
The only people I didn’t recognize were strangers I identified right away.
Violet’s biological parents.
I could see her in them—her violet eyes in her mother and her petite features in her father—and they both smiled sideways. Behind them, a field of wheat. In front of them, a willow tree. She’d captured them in a way that immortalized them. But she captured everyone that way.
Without discrimination, Violet’s strokes of paint permanently stamped a person on the world, and the most striking portrait of them all made me lose my breath.
While I laid on the couch, limbs outstretched, Britney sat on the floor near me, singing, and Kuthun held my hand. Though he normally stood tall and defiant, he leaned over me in this portrait. His long, black hair was pulled forward like a curtain. It blocked the painter’s view, but his actions were clear.
Kuthun, kissing me.
I sat on the wet floor, unable to stand back up for a while. When I finally could, I pulled the painting off the wall, careful not to rip it any more than it already was. I dragged it through the air, hoping to dry it as much as possible, before I folded it and placed it inside my jacket pocket, near my heart.
It pounded as I struggled back onto my feet and made my way down the rickety staircase I’d climbed years before.
Maybe a lot had changed since I left. Maybe changes didn’t matter so much as long as love stayed the same. But one thing was for certain. Damage had been done—irreversible damage—and I had more questions than answers. Like, for one, where was all the water?
Shouldn’t a flood stay for days? Had I really been out that long? Or was I losing my mind?
I doubted myself until I trudged through the mud in the living room to get outside.
The stench hit me first, and then the image of the town did.
A couple of houses crumbled in on themselves, while other people pulled trapped individuals out of the wreckage. Many bled on the sidewalk, and others did their best to fix the injuries, but nothing answered my biggest question.
“What’s going on?” I asked the nearest stranger. “With the water?”
Her eyes lit up, and though I didn’t know the woman, I imagined she hadn’t smiled in days. “A bad blood,” she explained. “They’re capable of sending the water away. Been fighting the storm this whole time.”
My heart pounded.
Violet? Or someone else.
“Thank you,” I said, then dismissed myself by walking away.
A few people asked for assistance, and I helped when I could, but I had a group I had to check on first.
As I gathered up strength, I jogged as quickly as I could through debris, broken people, and shattered streets. Then, I passed the main square.
In all of Vendona, the main square—which rested between the western, northern, and southern outskirts—was the best place to see the Highlands. Now, it was the best place to see the lack of Highlands.
Entire skyscrapers had crumbled to the ground. Debris floated all around the torn-up city, and people rushed past where the walls once stood to help. Only one bit of wall remained. The western wall. It stood tall and wide, and it held up what could be saved.
Violet. She’d succeeded.
Now, it was my turn to succeed.
I picked up the pace and sprinted the rest of way. When the Western Adoption House came into view, I sighed at the sight of Daniel peeling away planks like cardboard. Kids of all shapes and sizes helped him, too, but it was Skeleton who spotted me first.
“Told yah he wouldn’t drown,” Skeleton—or Dante—said, and though Daniel normally scorned snark, he shouted out of joy.
“Caleb!” he screamed into the house. “He’s here.”
Before I knew it, Daniel wrapped his arms around me, and someone else joined in.
When I pulled back, I saw Calhoun and the similarities we shared.
Our hairline was the same, and so was the color of our eyes—a deep, dark brown—but he had rough features while I inherited my mother’s. At least one of my parents had survived.
“I broke into your house,” I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck. “Can’t say your apartment is doing so well.”
Cal shrugged his one arm and grinned. “Just glad you made it, kiddo.”
My heart lurched at the nickname.
He’d called Daniel that. And Adam that. And Violet that, too.
But I hadn’t heard it since I was a child.
“So many made it,” Calhoun continued, but his voice shook this time. “So many people are okay.”
“Serah will live, too,” Daniel added, but only then did I notice his red eyes, crazy hair, and shaky hands. “She might not walk again, but…”
“Where’s Violet?” I asked.
Calhoun didn’t say anything. Daniel didn’t either. And though others were milling about inside, I stuck my head in and saw no sign of her.
“She took a while to come out after the ambush…” Daniel started, but faking confidence had never been his forte, and covering up my emotions had never been mine.
Impossible.
I took off running again, but, this time, my legs felt like the very water that tried to drown me the day before.
Five minutes. Five minutes was all it took to reach the beach. Yet, five minutes felt like forever.
“Violet!” I screamed as I reached the shoreline, but the wind drowned me out. In fact, everything did.
“Caleb.” A voice spoke back. “Caleb.” The voice spoke over me. “Caleb.” The voice shook me.
Kuthun.
His hands held my shoulders. Soon, his arms wrapped around my torso from behind. With all his strength, he pulled me away from the ocean. Only then did I realize how the water reached my knees. I had nearly dived in to try to find her, but I had always seen the color of the waves. I’d seen it once before—once, when I almost drowned.
The ocean was black.
In all my years of living on the beach and seeing storms, including hurricanes, I hated to see such a color on the waves.
They looked like shadows. As if the night had taken to the waves, the sea had replaced the sky, and both had flipped the world inside out.
“No,” I argued with everyone, inc
luding the world. “I heard her,” I said, frantically searching the darkness only to realize the darkness was her. “I heard Violet.”
“I know,” Kuthun said, but he didn’t explain. “Come with me.”
When I took his hand, he held mine back, and we started walking through the settling waves and along the shoreline. Crowds of drenched kids—alive kids—watched us, but I saw them as the kids who could’ve easily been dead—the water their tears.
“It’s over,” Kuthun said, but the sun shone heavily down on my shoulders. When we reached the street, I took one last opportunity to turn around and see the reality before me.
The ocean may have been dark, but the tides and sand reminded me of one thing.
Violet’s hair and Violet’s eyes and Violet’s shadowy form, and now, her new form. One that had saved us and destroyed her in the process. Somehow, she proved it all with one last painting.
Black ink stained the shores.
Rebuilding never seemed to end. Though Adam remained the fastest worker Vendona had ever seen, some rebuilding took more than brute strength. Some fixings took heart and soul. And Vendona would need all the heart and soul it could muster.
With two million dead and another million displaced, the Highlands and the outskirts worked together to find solutions for everyone. Even Logan’s party chipped in. A party, it seemed, that refused to take Connelly back even when she snuck into the Highlands. Vespasien, however, disappeared. And without a face left to blame, Henderson came under fire.
For misdirected leadership. For unorganized retaliation. For the hazardous conditions the city had succumbed to.
But he had healed the city in one way—unification.
Travel between the Highlands and the outskirts was officially legal. After utilizing the secret paperwork Violet obtained through Connelly, Henderson reversed the separation laws and allowed bad bloods to attend any school or enter any hospital with the law on their side. Even better was how it was explained.
Fear and hatred didn’t keep us apart. Forgeries and lies did.
Most of us had been on the same side for a long time, but we had physical proof to live by for the first time.
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