Hidden Worlds

by Kristie Cook

  I have never been so angry at her in my entire life. “Shut your mouth, Cora, before I shut it for you. You don’t know anything about any of this!”

  She actually laughs at that.

  “Way to finesse the situation, Cora,” Caleb mutters. But he knows this is just like her.

  So does Lizzie. She steps in between us. “Everyone, let’s discuss this rationally.”

  It’s my turn to count to ten—then to twenty—before being able to continue. “What are we talking about?” I demand. “How is any of this your business? Why are you so put out that I like Kellan?”

  But of course, Lizzie sidesteps these questions. “In a situation like this, with these boys … it’s totally understandable how you would be confused. They’re identical twins. You’re probably just transferring your feelings from one to the other.”

  Anger flares once more. What do they know about my feelings toward Jonah? Nothing. But what’s worse is the terrible surge of jealousy that pumps through me.

  They know him. They talked to him. He’s always been mine. My secret. My love.

  And now they know.

  “What did you think you were accomplishing today when you hooked up with his brother?” Cora yells around Lizzie.

  “I’d like the answer to that one myself,” Caleb murmurs.

  How do I even go about answering that when I don’t fully understand it myself? “I don’t know!” I yell in return. “For once, I just ran with what I was feeling. What’s wrong with that?”

  “People like us,” Lizzie says flatly, still positioned between me and Cora, “do not run with our feelings. We do not have that luxury.”

  The irony of that is too much to pass up. “Oh, that’s choice, coming from you of all people!” I snarl, and Lizzie steps away, wounded.

  “Nice, Chloe,” Cora snarks, but I’m done with all of this.

  So I unleash some words of judgment, too. “Wouldn’t you know that best, Lizzie, since you’re a master of bottling up those feelings, even if it means hurting those they’re intended for.”

  “Chloe, this is beneath you!” Caleb growls, but Lizzie waves him off.

  “I know what’s expected of me,” she counters. “I don’t delude myself into thinking or feeling things that cannot be.”

  I laugh bitterly. “Well, forgive me, but I felt something today, and I went with it. It was nice for once to do something for me, not because it’s expected or because I had to.”

  “Way to be responsible,” Cora snaps.

  There’s a roar in my ears, so loud I can’t even hear my own heartbeat. “How dare you.”

  Cora blinks, surprised.

  Take a breath, the little voice quickly urges.

  “Chloe,” Lizzie says, her eyes just as wide. “I don’t think Cora meant—”

  But the words keep coming. “I’m so sorry that I’m such a disappointment to you all. I fully realize what a pathetic excuse of a Magical I am, and how I embarrass the crap out of you all over how I don’t manage to fulfill my expectations—”

  “Chloe,” Caleb says, flying closer. “You need to calm down—”

  “Why? So yet another person can tell me how I’m an utter failure?”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Cora says quickly.

  I snarl. “Isn’t it, though?”

  A lamp in the room explodes and light bulbs in two others flicker and then shatter themselves. Things go blurry and all I can feel is such rage I don’t know if I can hold it all in anymore.

  Not responsible. Letting them down. Not fulfilling expectations. Not living up to potential. Always doing the wrong things, making the wrong choices.

  I am an utter failure in the eyes of everyone I know.

  “Calm down,” Caleb soothes again, but I don’t see him.

  All I can think of is how, yet again, I’m not doing what I should be doing. I wish somebody had given me a manual, so I could get something right once in awhile.

  “Just listen,” Cora says, more calmly. She comes back into focus when she approaches me like I’m a rabid dog—warily, hands up. Caleb blocks her from coming too close. “I surged with Jonah.”

  “You didn’t ask permission?” Caleb yells, strangely aghast.

  “I didn’t know,” she stresses. To me—“I mean, this guy literally steps out of your dreams and shows up a year later. You, of all people … I would’ve thought you’d want to figure it out immediately! Chloe, I saw your feelings for him, felt them. I just don’t get why you … I don’t know, ignored him! Went off and kissed his brother! Why did you? What happened?”

  They’re all waiting, but I don’t know how to answer them. Jonah’s disappearance last year had broken me. The fear over that event, and the pain that still lingered, was excruciating.

  I can’t live through it again.

  Cora sighs through her nose, frustrated. Caleb barks out another warning, but she doesn’t back down this time. “You’re being supremely stupid, Chloe.”

  “Cora,” Caleb says in a dangerously low voice, “enough. She doesn’t have all the facts yet, and may I point out, neither do you.”

  Throat constricting, I manage to whisper, “What don’t I know?”

  She glares at him before saying to me, “When I surged, I learned something.” She pauses, licks her lips in a weirdly defiant way. “Jonah knows you.”

  “Tell us something that we don’t know,” my Faerie friend mutters.

  “I’m not finished,” she says testily. And then, “I only got to see a brief flash before he locked me out, but it was there. Jonah’s here because of you, Chloe. For you.”

  Jonah knows?

  He’s here, for me? Just like I’d always—

  I stagger back, straight into Lizzie. She wraps her arms around me, like she’s shielding me from something.

  What had I just done? How can I ever begin to explain what I’d done with his brother? What I felt, still feel … ?

  There’s nothing to say. What could I possibly? Nothing. Nothing at all. Because my world has just turned upside down.

  chapter 12

  “It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

  I don’t bother to turn around when I answer Cora. “Yeah, it is.”

  She leans against the windowsill next to me. “I can’t believe we’re finally in Annar.”

  Both of us have wanted to visit the Magical city-state plane for as long as I can remember. And now that I’m finally here, the view in front of me surpasses anything that I’ve ever imagined. The architecture throughout the city is all done in gray sandstone flecked with quartz crystals that sparkle all day long. The streets are paved in small, smooth stones, the sidewalks in brick. Large trees provide generous shade over the roads, and everywhere I look, there is beautiful landscaping.

  It’s like no city I’ve ever seen before.

  Cora points into the distance. “That must be Karnach.”

  She’s referring to a rotunda, the most prominent feature as far as the eye can see. Its dome looms wide and large, a central focus that all other buildings lean in toward. Karnach is the Council’s domain. Every single Council member has an office there, and from what my father tells me, it’s also where they conduct all of their meetings.

  When I don’t acknowledge her, she says rather grudgingly, “Look, I’m sorry. I know that I sort of threw you for a loop yesterday, but I honestly felt like you needed a reality check.”

  I simply stare at her. To say I’m still annoyed by yesterday’s fight is an understatement.

  She’s genuinely flustered, which isn’t something she tends to be often. “Obviously you don’t want to talk about this with me right now.”

  “You’re right about that,” I say flatly.

  “But,” she continues, “I told you that Jonah and Kellan’s last name is Whitecomb.”

  All of a sudden, I’m reminded of a time when I was little. Caleb, ten years my senior, was trying to explain things my parents frequently neglected to teach me about. �
��Each species of Magicals have similar names,” he’d pointed out as I gathered up colorful leaves to make a collage back home. “Chloe, are you listening?”

  “Yep.” But as I was probably seven, I wasn’t really.

  “For example, Magical Faeries all have names that are things found in nature. For example, my last name is Windbrook. Caleb Windbrook. Get it? A brook is something found in nature.”

  A beautiful red leaf distracted me. I went to go get it.

  “All Magical Elves have surnames that are plants.”

  “Plants,” I’d repeated as I carefully placed my new find in a basket. He’d mentioned Goblins, Dwarves, and Gnomes, too, but I totally ignored him until he came to Humans. “Your kind all have similar names, too. Colors. Your last name is Lilywhite. What’s the color there?”

  “White?”

  He’d been relieved. “Exactly!”

  “My friend Greenlee has a color name!” I’d exclaimed. “Is she a Magical, too?”

  “No. That’s her first name. Human Magicals always have a variation of a color in their last name. That’s not to say that everyone with a color name is a Magical, though.”

  I can’t believe I didn’t catch it last night. I smack my forehead. “They’re Magicals.”

  “Yeah,” she says, smiling a little. “After he forcibly ejected me from his mind when I surged, I made a call to one of my dad’s old friends here in Annar, asked if they’d ever heard of any Whitecombs before, possibly a set of twins? And he had. Said they’re well known and that their father is on the Council.”

  You’d think that after all the surprises I’ve gone through in the last few days, another one wouldn’t affect me. But this does. “Magicals,” I repeat quietly. “But, they’re twins.”

  Cora lays a hand on my arm. “My friend said that, though they’re rare, there can still be Magical twins. I guess Jonah and Kellan are currently the only pair running around.”

  HELLO! I feel so incredibly stupid. It all makes so much sense now. Of course Jonah is a Magical. I dreamed about him most of my life! How could he have ever been anything but a Magical?

  The better question is, why had we never discussed this? And, had he ever suspected I was one, too?

  Forty minutes later, on our way to Karnach, my father is saying, “I expect you to be on your best behavior today when you meet the Seer.”

  I ignore the slight and instead focus on everything going on around us as. “Are these all Magicals?” I ask, motioning toward the throngs of people on the streets. A Goblin walks by, chatting on her cell phone, the first one I’ve ever seen up close. She’s tall and slender, with a pallid green complexion that reminds me of the Witch of the West, except she’s very beautiful, with short, wavy black hair. It surprises me because I’d always assumed Goblins to be short, fat, and ugly, like the stories tell us they are.

  “The majority of Annar is populated by Magicals of all the species,” my father says, sounding a bit bored. “But there is a small non population who works here who’ve primarily been recruited. Of course, they’re required to abide to a confidentiality contract to prevent them from ever revealing the secrets of Annar to their respective worlds.”

  He holds me back at a street corner as a group of Gnomes go bicycling by, all wearing tiny cycling spandex outfits. I am inappropriately amused by this.

  He pushes me forward once the bikes have cleared. “It’s a blood oath. You’ll be doing it later this afternoon. All Magicals perform the oath on their first visit to Annar.”

  “I have so many questions about this place,” I admit, warming to the idea that he might be in a sharing mood for once.

  “You have about ten minutes to ask away before we arrive at Karnach.”

  I’m a little girl in a toy store, not knowing which object to pick. I have to think about it for a moment. “Why are there no Muses on the Council?” This is something I’d learned from Lizzie, a fact that bugs her to no end.

  “They once were. For much of history, Muses took their jobs seriously, and the art world flourished in ways civilizations had never seen before. As an example, for our plane, look at the glorious Renaissance, or the Baroque period of music. Such advancements; the Council was so proud.” He pauses to clear his throat. “But art is a fickle place, filled with capricious people. It’s no wonder that the Muses followed suit.”

  A Faerie snarls at me to watch where I’m going as I almost run into him.

  “Think about many of today’s artists, Chloe,” my dad continues. “So many are incredibly vain. Shallow. That’s not to say they all are. There are many talented artists out there, enriching lives and cultures. But for every barrel of beautiful apples, there must always be a number of spoiled ones. It’s just how these things go.”

  “What does this have to do with the lack of Muses on the Council?”

  He says, “Over the last hundred years or so, artists have progressively become more and more self-important. Some of this is very well warranted. But many artists find themselves with egos filled with superiority and entitlement when it’s not truly warranted.”

  “And this is being blamed on the Muses?”

  “Yes, and rightly so. They’ve become bloated with feelings of self-importance. It seems as if all the years being around artists have altered who they are. Now, don’t get me wrong. We still have a good number of Muses doing their jobs properly. But there are many making a mockery of the arts. Roughly a hundred years ago, the Council had enough.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Several Muses were stripped of their crafts for not carrying out their duties properly.”

  I stop walking. “Magicals can lose their powers?”

  “Yes, although it’s not done often, and only after a unanimous Council decision.” He urges me forward.

  Even though I instinctually know the answer, I still ask, “Who has the power to do such a thing?”

  “Who else? Creators.”

  My stomach sinks. Of course.

  And yet, my father smiles, oblivious to my turmoil. Motioning to the beautiful building in front of us, he says reverently, “There it is. Karnach. Come now, it’s time for you to finally cross its threshold. After all, soon you will call this place home.”

  Karnach reminds me somewhat of the Pantheon in Rome. Intricately carved statues and gargoyles surround the marble building, as do curved stained-glass windows. Under a good number of these windows are ledges filled with flowers.

  It’s beyond lovely.

  My father abandons me at a map of the building off to one side of the front doors, an etched copper sheet hammered onto a large wooden stand, so he can chat with a colleague. The first floor houses the main Assembly Room, as well as business offices, a couple of museum-type rooms, and a library. Floors two through eight are reserved solely for Council office use. Scanning the directory next to the map, I note that there are two Creators’ offices on the fourth floor. One of the offices already shows my name.

  I wander alone into the museum rooms, which are filled with art from all of the planes. Some pieces look familiar, others so foreign in nature that they don’t make sense to me. But all are equally captivating.

  It’s something, though, to be finally standing in front of so much Magical history. I’m wandering around the library when someone asks, “May I help you?”

  I turn to find an extremely pale Goblin, his hair wiry gray. “Just looking,” I say, smiling.

  “You are the Creator, correct?”

  I blush. How’d he know? I stick out my hand. “That’s me. Chloe Lilywhite.”

  “Fraank Moutainhold,” he says. “I’m the current head Librarian.”

  He can tell I’ve never heard of his craft, because he adds with a small chuckle, “It’s like a cross between Intellectuals and Storytellers. We deal in books, inspire authors and such. But my job here at Karnach is to tend to the books, make sure Council members have what they need for research.”

  I look around. “Are there Magical histories here?”

  He giv
es me a rueful smile. “No, child. Only the Storytellers have that privilege.”

  My father finally makes his way over to where we’re standing. The Librarian says to him, “What a delight, finally meeting your daughter, Noel. So many people are eager to have the new Creator take her rightful place in the Council.”

  “Yes, well,” my father murmurs, studying me thoughtfully. “We have hopes for her yet.”

  He doesn’t notice the look of confusion on the Librarian’s face. I simply batten down the squalls of disappointment forming in my chest.

  In my father’s office, I’m forced to sit silently, either reading or staring into the distance as he works at his desk. I have my doubts he even remembers I’m in the room.

  Some things never change.

  I let approximately a half-hour go by until I clear my throat to remind him of my presence. His startled jerk tells me I was probably right in my assessment.

  I fumble for something to say. Anything, really, has to be better than this awful silence. “When does the Council meet next?”

  “This afternoon,” he murmurs, eyes drifting back to his text.

  “What are you guys talking about?”

  He frowns, as if this is none of my business. It’s frustrating, considering someday soon I’ll be on the Council, too. “There are no pressing matters for this particular agenda. It’s expected to be short, as there is a party tonight that all Council are expected to attend.”

  “A party for what?”

  He pushes at his glasses. “I don’t remember off-hand. Maybe it’s Elvin in nature. They like to throw parties.”

  “What kind of parties?”

  “Really, Chloe.” He plunks his book down. “I don’t know. Why is this so important? I have work to do, you know. I can’t entertain you all day.”

  My fingernails dig into my palms. “I’m sorry … I just thought, this being my first time to Annar, and to Karnach, that I—”

  “Yes, well, you will have more than enough time later this summer to acquaint yourself with Annar, daughter. But for now, I need to finalize some plans that need to be sent off to a team of Intellectuals on the Human plane before the end of the week. Show a little restraint, will you?”