Rebel Genius

by Michael Dante DiMartino

  “What’s all this?” Enzio asked.

  “It’s how you’re going to help me find the true Creator’s Compass,” Ugalino said.

  Enzio cast a wary gaze across the cave walls. “And how am I supposed to do that, exactly?”

  “Please stand inside the mandorla,” Ugalino instructed.

  “The what?” Enzio said.

  Ugalino pointed with his staff to the white almond shape on the cave wall. “There.”

  Enzio took a few hesitant steps and stood with his back against it. His body covered the almond shape between the two black circles. His head reached just above where the outlines of the circles overlapped.

  “Arms and legs out.”

  Enzio cautiously raised his arms and took a wider stance.

  “Hands at the centers of the circles, feet directly below,” Ugalino instructed.

  Enzio dropped his arms. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Take the stance.” Zanobius recognized the harsh tone in Ugalino’s voice, which meant, Don’t question me.

  Enzio followed Ugalino’s instructions, holding his arms out at an angle until his palms covered the center point of each circle. His feet covered the bottom of the circle, where it met the ground.

  With a sudden jerk, Ugalino pounded his staff on the ground. The diamond lit up and four bright rings appeared around Enzio’s arms and legs. He tried to pull away but found himself shackled to the wall.

  “What are you doing?” Enzio demanded.

  “You’re going to help me access the Wellspring. Giacomo’s not the only one who knows how to tap into the ultimate source of creative power.”

  “Let me go!” Enzio screeched. Ugalino made a swift circular motion with his staff and a band of light covered Enzio’s mouth, pinning his head to the wall. Enzio struggled against the bonds. Zanobius felt an urge to help the boy, but held back, confident that after Ugalino got the information he needed, he’d release Enzio.

  Ugalino closed his eyes and the diamond on his staff burned brightly. Then his eyes snapped open and he thrust his staff straight into the air.

  The lines of the outermost circles began to glow and crackle with energy, like tiny bolts of white, blue, and green lightning. A low-pitched hum filled the room. Enzio’s frightened eyes darted around as the trails of light made their way up across the ceiling and down toward him. The sparkling glow flowed into the black circles where Enzio was bound, then lit up the mandorla. Enzio went rigid and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. As the energy coursed through him, he shook and vibrated.

  The humming grew louder. Zanobius felt his body resonate with the sound. The cave, the symbols, the mandorla … it all seemed familiar, like this had happened before. Was it another memory lost to his blackouts?

  “Is he all right?” Zanobius shouted over the noise.

  “Quiet,” Ugalino commanded, then he lowered his voice: “Through the power of this mandorla, I summon the Wellspring, the source of all creation. Reveal to me the true Creator’s Compass so I may set the world free!”

  The glow intensified. In the center of the cave, above the map, the image of the Compass shimmered into view. It appeared as it had before—floating inside the rotating octahedron.

  Then in an instant, all the light and energy poured out of the interlaced designs and into the mandorla. The brightness nearly engulfed Enzio. The hum abruptly cut off and a beam of light shot out of Enzio’s chest, hitting the Compass’s shield, turning it from blue to white.

  Enzio thrashed against his bindings. Zanobius feared the boy wouldn’t survive. He refused to stay silent any longer. “Let him go!” he roared.

  Silence! Ugalino called back. You do not command me.

  A narrow shaft of light extended from the bottom tip of the octahedron to the map on the ground. The three-dimensional shape tilted and the ray cut across Zizzola, then paused.

  That’s where we are now, his master said.

  The octahedron leaned again, slowly drawing a line from the Cave of Alessio directly to the north on the map.

  Enzio continued to writhe, his face twisted in agony. It wasn’t right using the boy like this—like he was nothing more than a machine. If his master wasn’t going to end this madness, Zanobius would.

  As the light advanced up central Zizzola, Zanobius lunged, grabbing the staff from Ugalino’s hand and hurling it against the wall. With the connection severed, the beam of light vanished from the map. It emptied from the octahedron and coursed back through Enzio’s chest. The glowing mandorla faded, along with the image of the Compass.

  The bonds holding Enzio also disappeared, causing his limp body to wither and fall. Zanobius caught the boy before he hit the ground. A fury like he’d never felt before welled in his chest. He whipped around and glared at his master. “What did you do to him?”

  Ugalino snatched his staff off the ground and pointed it at Zanobius. “He was a necessary sacrifice.”

  “You knew he wouldn’t survive?”

  His master turned away.

  “Answer me!” Zanobius demanded.

  Ugalino lowered his head, his fist clamping tightly around his staff. “Humans can’t withstand the energy of the Wellspring,” he said. “The boy never had a chance.”

  Waves of heat pulsed through Zanobius. Normally, he could keep his feelings at bay, like a dam holding back water. But Enzio’s death had released them. The dam hadn’t just broken, it was obliterated.

  “FIX HIM!” Zanobius howled with a furious intensity, surprising both himself and his master.

  Ugalino spun around and marched toward Zanobius, pointing the staff’s glimmering diamond at his head. Zanobius felt a stabbing jolt between his eyes, and feared his whole head might split in two.

  I brought you into the world and I can as easily erase you from it. You will never command me again. Do you understand?

  It took all of Zanobius’s strength to nod even once. Ugalino lowered his staff. The diamond’s glow dimmed and the shooting pain in Zanobius’s head faded to a throb.

  “Bury him in the back of the cave, then meet me outside. We’re leaving.” Ugalino’s cloak billowed as he turned and strode out.

  Zanobius looked down at Enzio’s lifeless body, a feeling of heaviness overwhelming him. He wanted to shed tears for the boy, but his eyes remained dry. Another downside of being a Tulpa.

  Enzio wasn’t some armed aggressor, he was an innocent child who had been cast aside first by his own father, then by Ugalino. Zanobius knew how fragile human bodies were, but he hadn’t truly understood how vulnerable life could be until now. One moment Enzio had been on this earth, then the next, he was gone. But his body remained. So who was Enzio? The lifeless carcass Zanobius held in his arms? Or was Enzio something more?

  Zanobius found a narrow alcove at the back of the cave and lay the body inside. He covered the opening with rocks, to hide the boy from any hungry animals looking for easy prey.

  He was nearly finished entombing Enzio when the boy’s head jolted. He gasped, eyelids fluttering. Startled, Zanobius fell backward.

  “What … what happened?” Enzio’s voice was barely a whisper.

  “You’re hurt. Badly,” Zanobius told him. “I’m sorry.”

  Zanobius dug past the rocks and pulled Enzio out, placing him next to a shallow pool of water so he could drink. “Stay hidden. I’ll be back for you. I promise.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know … Soon.”

  “Thank you,” Enzio said weakly.

  * * *

  Zanobius left the cave and met Ugalino by the tree, where he was climbing onto his Genius’s neck. Zanobius knew that if he told Ugalino that Enzio was alive, he’d order him to go back and finish the boy off. Zanobius chose to stay silent, but his face must have reflected his conflicted feelings.

  “The boy is gone,” Ugalino said. “Grieving for him won’t bring him back.”

  Zanobius ignored Ugalino’s attempt at sympathy and changed the subject. “Where are we
going? We still don’t know where the true Compass is.”

  “No thanks to you,” Ugalino grumbled. “But before you interfered, the ray of light passed through Terra della Morte and was continuing due north. If we fly along that route, we should find what we’re looking for. And if we happen to cross paths with the Giacomo boy, all the better.”

  Zanobius jumped onto Ciro’s back, and the Genius heaved its wings. Though they soared, Zanobius couldn’t escape the sinking feeling that standing up to his master would soon come back to haunt him.

  16

  THE SINGING GROTTO

  Giacomo drifted in and out of consciousness. For how long, he wasn’t sure. It might have been hours, maybe days.

  During that time, music enveloped him, shrouding him in soft, warm notes. The music surged through his heart, sustaining him during the darker moments, when his body threatened to quit on him. The melodies soothed his angry wounds and convinced Giacomo to hold on a little longer. Just one more song, one more note might be all that was needed to pluck him from his hazy state and make him whole again.

  The part of him that still clung to life maintained an awareness of what was going on around him. He heard Savino insist they keep moving, despite Giacomo’s inability to walk. He saw Savino make a stretcher out of two long branches and a wool blanket. He watched with gratitude as Savino and Milena carried him while Aaminah started to play.

  At some point they stopped near a creek. Milena filled her waterskin, then held it to his mouth and poured the cool liquid over his lips. He tried to drink, but the muscles he needed to swallow wouldn’t respond. Drops of water trickled down his throat. Most dribbled down his chin.

  “Do you think he’s going to be okay?” Milena asked.

  “I’m doing everything I can,” Aaminah answered desperately. And for a moment she wasn’t talking about Giacomo, but about her mother.

  His mind was pulled to another time and place, where Giacomo saw Aaminah, a few years younger, with Luna hovering over her shoulder. A beautiful, brown-haired woman listened to Aaminah while she played the flute, the woman’s cheeks sunken and her skin white like it had been dusted with flour. Tears streamed down Aaminah’s face. Her mother whispered that it was her time to leave now. She had already sent word to Aaminah’s aunt in Virenzia. She would care for Aaminah now. Aaminah begged her not to go. Giacomo experienced it all so vividly: the sunlight streaming through the window above Aaminah’s mother’s bed, the light-filled notes that washed over her mother, the sound of her mother’s breathing weakening to a near-silent wheezing, Aaminah’s tortured sobs as her mother’s soul left her body, the crack of the flute as Aaminah threw it to the ground and cursed the Creator.

  Giacomo wanted to wrap his arms around Aaminah and tell her it wasn’t her fault her mother had died, but when he tried to open his mouth it felt like it had been sewn closed.

  It was so strange for his mind to still be active when his body had nearly shut down. Was this what it was like to die? Were his mental and physical sides so separate from each other that one could thrive while the other perished?

  But there was a third part of all this he hadn’t considered—his soul. He recalled Pietro’s words: “When two opposites are unified by a third element, a new entity is created.”

  Our bodies and minds are opposites, Giacomo realized. Our souls unify them and make us human.

  Floating in and out of a haze, Giacomo followed this train of thought. People inhabited a form for a certain amount of time, wore it out, and were forced to give it up, whether by disease, or violence, or old age. But when the body and mind died, where did the soul go? Was it like a circle, with no beginning or end, going around and around for eternity?

  And in a feverish burst of inspiration, it hit him—What if our souls go back to the Wellspring? What if all the whirling and howling and stabbing was actually the cries of a billion souls spiraling through creation until a tiny crack opened, just big enough for one of them to slip out of the chaos and bind to a human body and mind?

  And eventually, when the body and mind failed, whether in young age or old, the soul returned to its source.

  If this was true, his parents’ souls hadn’t been destroyed at all. They had simply retreated into the Wellspring when life in the physical world became unbearable. Which meant, in a way, they were still alive. Aaminah’s mother too.

  And what was a Tulpa except a physical home for a soul? That must have been why Zanobius had seemed so lifelike. He possessed a soul, like any human. Ugalino might have taken one out of the Wellspring and placed it in a protective shell. And how was that any different from a soul finding a human body to inhabit on its own?

  The parchment he’d found in the duke’s castle held secrets on how to build such a protective shell. If he could decipher it, maybe he could build his own Tulpas—one for each of his parents. He could welcome them back to the physical world and they’d be a family again.

  But to do that, he needed to wake up and return to his body.

  Aaminah’s beautiful playing wasn’t enough to draw him back, though. His body wanted to give up and let his soul return to the Wellspring, but Giacomo wouldn’t let it. He grasped the tether connected to his soul and held on to it with all his remaining strength. Aaminah would figure out a way to bring him back. She had to.

  “The music’s not strong enough on its own,” he heard her say.

  “I need a way to boost the sound…”

  Aaminah’s words could have been part of the same sentence or an idea she came up with the next day. Each moment weaved into the next, all separate threads that made up the tapestry of time. Giacomo was unraveling.

  The next thing he heard was Aaminah’s voice echoing:

  “Bring him in here … in here … in here…”

  He felt Savino lay him down and heard water drip into pools. Even though he couldn’t open his eyes, Giacomo was able to visualize the water reflecting off rock walls like wiggling strands of light.

  Aaminah plucked a note on her harp and immediately the music felt different. Waves of yellow leaped from Luna’s crown and bounced off the cave walls, growing bigger and brighter before crashing into Giacomo, sinking into his deepest hurts.

  Aaminah’s Genius projected circles, squares, and triangles through the cave, creating a dancing pattern of geometric shapes all around him. A circle hit the wall, split into three more, which hit other walls and multiplied over and over. Soon, the space was filled with hundreds of floating, illuminated shapes. The pools of water rippled in wavy lines, resonating with the music. High and low notes stacked one on top of another in a swelling, soaring symphony.

  The healing notes seeped into every part of his being. The tether slackened, and he pulled his soul back, where it entwined with his body and mind once again, uniting him.

  But as soon as his soul returned, so did the pain. It began as a stabbing in his big toe and wound its way up his legs, into his torso, and through his neck. It felt like a thousand tiny blades were scraping his skin and muscles from the inside. The stinging passed through the top of his head, then eased to an uncomfortable throb.

  Water splashed against his face and he peeled open his eyes. Mico floated in the pool next to him, fluttering his wings and kicking up droplets of water. A new layer of feathers had grown in where his wings had been torn.

  “Giacomo?” Milena leaned over him, looking relieved.

  Aaminah lowered her harp and the music trailed off, along with the multitude of glowing shapes. “You’re okay?” she asked, like she didn’t entirely believe he’d woken up.

  “I think so,” Giacomo said, slowly pushing himself against a rock to rise to his feet. He cautiously put his weight on his injured leg, relieved to find it could support him, though it still ached. All his cuts and scrapes had stopped bleeding. Pink lines indicated where the skin had healed. His body was tender, but it had survived.

  Giacomo smiled at Aaminah. “Thank you.”

  She stared back with a perplexed
expression, as if he were a stranger who had just wandered in.

  “What?” Giacomo said.

  “Nothing,” she replied. “I … I was so scared you weren’t going to make it.”

  “Yeah, we thought we’d lost you,” Savino said, slapping him on the back. He looked to Aaminah. “Brilliant thinking, using the cave walls to amplify your music like that.”

  Aaminah looked away and nodded silently. Her thoughts seemed to be somewhere else.

  * * *

  Later, Giacomo rested by the warmth of the fire. He perked up when Aaminah came to check on him. She handed him a few pieces of dried meat, along with some purple berries. “You should eat. You need your strength back.”

  Giacomo tossed the berries into his mouth, savoring their sweetness. “I want you to know,” he said, “when I was unconscious, I saw everything so clearly. You … your mother … I know you feel like you should have done more to save her, but I’m certain she’d be so proud of you right now.”

  “Thank you,” Aaminah said softly. “I wasn’t sure you could hear me when I told you the story.”

  “What story?” Giacomo asked.

  “About the day my mother died.”

  “Right … of course. I guess it must have sunk in somehow.” He’d been so convinced that what he saw was real, but his mind must not have been as clear as he’d thought. “Thanks for telling me about that.”

  “Catch,” Savino said, and Giacomo spun around in time to see his satchel flying at him. He reached out to grab it, but missed. The satchel hit the wall and fell on the ground. His sketchbook, papers, and art supplies spilled across the cave floor. “Sorry,” Savino said. “Guess your reflexes aren’t fully recovered.”

  Milena knelt down to help pick up the mess. Giacomo limped over. “That’s okay, I got it.”

  “No, it’s fine, let me—” Her words cut off as she glanced at the one thing Giacomo didn’t want her to find. In her hand she held the piece of parchment he’d taken from the castle. As she rose to her feet, her expression turned serious. “Giacomo?”