by Everly Frost
My whole body trembled and I reached for the leaf, almost unable to see through my tears. The pain in my heart eased up. The weight of loss shifted enough for me to find my feet. I reached for the glistening droplet.
I dipped my finger into it and brought my finger to my lips. “Promise me, Snowboy. You won’t let me hurt anyone.”
“Always.”
My senses went wild as I swallowed the drop. The air, the tree, the boys, all of them changed, a boiling mass of energy, their hearts glowing brighter than any star.
For the briefest moment, the whole world was still. Then the first scorpion unwrapped itself from my wrist and I saw what it had done. Its shape was imprinted on me, a black tattoo adorning my wrist. The ink glistened, multi-faceted.
But I could sense the moment changing. My body began to warm and my breath caught. A warning rang in my ears.
“Snowboy!”
He glowed, icy cold as a winter storm, and grinned at me, appearing like the first time I saw him, a myth of ice and memory.
“Trust me,” he said, just as a wash of red lit the air around me and his entire form disappeared in flames.
The scream started in the bottom of my lungs, a high-pitched wail made up of incoherent words, all of them ripping out of me.
Outcast. Mortal. Fear.
Michael.
Death.
I dropped to my knees encased in flame, letting go of the tree in case I burned it.
Through the shimmering air, the boys’ forms emerged. The air was cooling and Snowboy’s grinning face reappeared. “You’ll have to do worse than that, Ava.”
For the first time, I felt hope. My light met his, alternating colors of orange and blue. But there was more and more blue as he moved closer, ice everywhere. Beside him, the other boys approached. Blaze a boiling, seething fireball, keeping his distance. Quake a barely controlled destructive force. Rift split into two—a shadow of him beside the tree like a shield and his real self next to Pip. But it was Pip who pulled forward first, ducking beneath the branch.
He knelt right in front of me, his eyes on mine. “Show me what you can do, Ava.”
I shook my head. “I only destroy things.”
To my surprise, he dropped his head to my heart, turning his ear to listen. “Not true.”
Tears dripped down my cheeks and dropped onto Pip’s head, but he wiped them away as though they didn’t scare him. He pointed to the magnolia tree beyond the black branch, which stood unharmed in Snowboy’s icy light. “Take a magnolia flower.”
I was afraid to move.
“Take it as fast as you can,” Snowboy said.
“Take it without making the leaves tremble,” Quake challenged.
“Take it without burning it.” Blaze met my eyes.
“Take it…” Rift’s shadow spoke, standing in front of the tree—in front of the flowers. “If you can.”
My eyes widened. I met his smile with one of my own, a slow calm spreading through me.
Pip scrambled to his feet, out of my way, as I plotted my path. I harnessed the energy bursting inside of me. I calculated my speed, softened my hands, and cooled my head. No point giving Rift warning.
My legs moved faster than they ever had before. One blink. I was in front of shadow-Rift. His eyes widened, first in shock and then with glee. He recovered in an instant and grabbed me, wrestling me away from what I wanted: a perfect, white magnolia.
But my own shadow waited for him to do just that. Scorpion-shaped, just like the ropes I’d sent out to capture the Starsgardians at the festival, my shadow took my place. I side-stepped and Rift was left holding a thing that I never believed existed—a thing I’d thought was only part of a hallucination. And yet, his hands were wrapped around it. His surprise gave me the moment that I needed.
I scooped a magnolia flower into my palm, breaking its stem using a tiny burst of flame that released the flower into my hand. I had it, but now the challenge was to keep the flower from burning.
I skipped away from shadow-Rift’s reach as he recovered from his surprise and let go of my shadow. He came after the real me, but I sent out another scorpion shadow to grapple with him, forcing him to the ground and pinning him there.
The flower began to wilt. I took a deep breath and concentrated. When I’d fought Seth on the train, I’d burned icy cold. I needed that now. But what had made it so? I’d felt so lost, so alone, so empty.
I’d lost Michael.
I drew on that feeling, the aching, bottomless pit and the memory of snow, of falling into it as the train crashed and I crashed with it.
The flower cooled and the air around me changed. I concentrated only on the flower, ignoring everything else—the shadows, the boys—until the magnolia was safe. Not too hot. Not too cold. Balanced.
“I am not death.” Finally, I held up the flower to them, showing them that I hadn’t harmed it. I’d taken it with speed and care and I hadn’t burned it.
Silence met me, but it was Rift who broke it, his shadow snapping back to him as my own disappeared into nothing.
“She’s a part of all of us,” he said. “Ice, fire, strength, shadow, and heart.”
Pip took my hand. “What name do you want to be called now?”
Stargirl. It hurt to say the name that Michael had called me. All I wanted was to hear his voice say it again. But maybe, the more I said it, the more I could keep a part of Michael with me in my new home. The more I could believe that I would find my way back to him. I wasn’t afraid anymore. Ruth had called this place a wilderness—a place where the earth crashed in on itself. I was part of it now, too.
I was part of the wilderness.
I was the wild.
“Stargirl,” I said, speaking it the way Michael had. And as I said it, I made a vow—I would see him again. Somehow. “That’s who I am now.”
Chapter Ten
“DO YOU think the branch is really from the tree of life?” I asked, peering into the branches. “I mean, the tree that people talk about?”
We sat with our backs to the tree trunk. Rift and Snowboy rested on either side of me, their heads back against the tree, with Blaze on the far side. Quake and Pip sat on the grass nearby, knees pulled to their chests, the younger boy seeming very small in Quake’s shadow until he reached out and ruffled Pip’s hair.
I placed my fingers in the shape of a square in the air, looking through them to the magnolia flower I’d framed. “There are whole communities in Evereach—faith communities—who believe that there was a tree of life at the beginning of time and that’s how people got their powers of regeneration.” There were also people who thought that human beings evolved over time, that regeneration was a matter of survival of the strongest. The Bashers were certainly trying to ensure that was true. Their hatred of slow healers knew no limits.
Rift shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it is the tree of life. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just a rare tree with strange sap. Sort of like how maple trees make maple syrup. Fruit trees make fruit. This one makes…”
“Super charged healing juice,” Pip finished for him.
Snowboy broke into the conversation with a laugh. “You know I don’t think it’s important what it actually is. What’s really important … is what people believe. If Seversandians believe that it’s the tree of life and this branch was part of it, I figure they were pretty angry when the branch was stolen. They probably still are, right?”
Rift and Quake nodded. I couldn’t see Blaze’s reaction until he leaned around the tree. “I remember songs about the tribes making pilgrimages to the tree every year.”
He began to hum, his voice remarkably clear. “‘Brothers and sisters, follow me to the midnight tree where the days begin and end.’” He cleared his throat and shrugged as the notes of the song floated around me. “It’s the first song we were taught. So, yeah, Seversand would have been pretty angry.”
“Let them,” I said boldly. “I’m not sorry it’s here.”
Each of my
brothers grinned at me. Snowboy brushed himself off and offered his hand to me with a smile. “Let’s go inside. We want to show you your new home.”
“I’m not sure if I should go in yet.” I checked my hands. They were fast becoming my yardstick for knowing if I was okay—or if I was about to turn into a human fireball again. My skin was cool, more silvery than anything else, but otherwise as normal-looking as I could hope for given that I’d taken a massive dose of nectar followed by another less than half an hour ago.
“You’re okay. Seriously, Ava, you’ve got this. And you need to eat. We all do,” Snowboy said. “Also, I’m dying to show you around.”
Together, we left the tree and continued up the path. Blaze and Quake stood on either side of the front doors, sentinels once more. The doors were opaque sliding doors. I couldn’t see through them and I wasn’t sure what awaited me on the other side. Judging from the state of the top of the tower, something cataclysmic had happened here.
Snowboy gestured me forward. “It looks worse than it is. C’mon inside.”
The doors slid open as we approached and I was momentarily distracted. “The hydraulics still work?”
“It took years, but we got most things working again.”
As the doors opened to their fullest, a gust of wind knocked into me. It was stronger than having my air print taken, although that was the first thing I thought of until I looked beyond the doors, across the broken space in the center of the tower, and straight through to the sky beyond.
The strong ocean wind gusted wherever it pleased because the back half of the tower was gone.
The entry room stretched out in front of me for several hundred feet. An open cavity and partial walls were all that remained of what must once have been a foyer with elevators and other rooms. Now there was nothing opposite. Instead, crashing ocean waves filled my ears and the open sky consumed my view. If I walked to the jagged edge, I would look down on the sea far below.
Quake ushered me forward as Snowboy took a step to the side.
“Looks bad, huh?” Quake said. “Don’t worry. We made it safe.”
“You don’t live in here, do you?” I peeked around for anything that looked like living quarters. The tower had sheltered the front path from the wind, but it whistled and blew with force inside the cavity.
“Nah.” He grinned, showing me his white teeth. He pointed to the far left, to what looked like the remains of an elevator shaft. “We live below.” He paused, smiling at the open sky beyond. “Do you want to see the ocean first?”
There was a time when I would have hesitated, judged the potential threat, and chosen the safest path. After all, he was practically inviting me toward a fall. But there was nothing in his stance but warmth and a reflection of my own curiosity, a complete lack of malice. I found myself tugging at his hand. “Show me? But don’t let me fall, okay? I’m guessing I won’t be injured right now, but I don’t want to have to climb my way back up here.”
He nodded and we walked through what had once been a glorious foyer, walls lined with sparkling marble, now cracked and marked. As we neared the edge, the sound of the waves below grew louder and Quake tugged me to a stop.
“That’s as close as you should go. We spent a lot of time fixing this up to make sure it wasn’t hazardous. Blaze is good with building things. But there are limits to what we can do.”
“What’s below us?”
“Nothing. It’s a cliff face. Whatever destroyed the tower blew half of the cliff off too. The ocean’s several hundred feet down. It’s a sheer drop, so don’t go stepping off the edge.”
I chewed my lip. “What did this? What destroyed the tower?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “We don’t know.” He raised an eyebrow, a twinkle in his eyes. “But it wasn’t me.”
I grinned as he inhaled the sea air, puffing out his chest and exhaling in a gust. I drew my own deep breath and tasted salty air on my tongue before he drew me away from the edge. We reached the elevator, where Snowboy waited.
“Let’s go downstairs. You need to eat.”
“Good thing I cooked a big breakfast,” Quake said. “It’ll be cold now, but I can reheat some of it.”
“Quake does all the cooking,” Snowboy explained as we stepped through the open elevator doors. There was a hand-sized box with a button on it to the right of the opening and Quake punched it, causing the elevator to descend.
“I’m guessing you don’t have electricity?”
“We have a generator underground, but we keep it well below the surface in case they set off an EMP. Believe it or not, the impact reaches all the way out here. We felt the one they used on the day you arrived.”
Snowboy grimaced. “Pip felt most of it. He burst an eardrum.”
I bit my lip. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Snowboy hurried to say. “Anyway, Blaze got the hydraulics working on this elevator and the one next to it. Don’t try the third one—it’s a pit all the way down.”
We traveled in silence for another five minutes until I was sure we were far beneath the surface—as far down as the hidden underground in Tower Seventeen. The doors opened into a small foyer. A few steps to the left revealed a surprisingly inviting living area containing a mismatched set of armchairs, a coffee table, and paintings on the walls.
“Whatever destroyed the top of the tower, it didn’t damage the underground,” Snowboy said. “We salvaged everything we could find, although we can only go a few levels farther down than this. There’s bound to be all sorts of stuff hidden farther below us, but we can’t get through the security shields.” He shrugged. “Nothing we can do about that.”
As he took me for a quick tour, I realized how much like a home they’d made the space. Opposite the living area was a dining room—it looked like it had originally been some kind of eatery, a sterile space they’d softened with a wooden table and chairs. The cooking area was through a door to the left. The most delicious smells wafted from it and the table was filled with fruit and fresh bread. I almost fell over myself because it smelled so good.
“Hungry?” Quake clapped me on the back and practically knocked me over.
He righted me as I said, “Suddenly, yes. I’m starving.”
Snowboy smiled. “I’ll show you the rest after you’ve eaten. Take a seat and tuck in. The others will be down soon.”
I chose a chair at the far side of the table and Quake brought in a bowl of boiled eggs, cold now, but I didn’t mind, as Snowboy chose the seat next to me. “We keep chickens on the surface as well as a goat and a couple of cows. Pip’s good with animals. He needs a bit of help wrangling the cows now that they’ve grown, though.”
The others filed in and Pip gave me a grin. Blaze and Rift took seats at the other end of the table and Quake slid the plate of eggs toward them.
Pip dropped into the seat beside me. “Do you like the eggs, Ava?”
“I love them, Pip.” But suddenly I was transported back to another plate of food and a boy who perched on the end of my bed with a spark of hope in his eyes—hope that maybe I’d forgive him.
I forced myself to eat the last mouthful and put my fork down.
“I’ll help you clean up,” I said, needing something to do, but Snowboy shook his head, turning to the others.
He said, “I know why the defenses are failing.”
Suddenly all eyes were on him. He looked directly at Rift. “You were right. The nectar’s spreading.”
Rift dropped his cutlery onto the table. He sat back in his chair, exhaling deeply. He began to speak, but his voice was drowned in the sudden hum of questions from everyone else.
Quake raised his hand for silence and then nodded at Snowboy. “Tell us, Snow.”
“Ava discovered nectar in the southern plants. Ava, do you still have the rose?”
I pulled it from the pocket of my jacket, which I’d slung around my hips. I passed it to Pip, who peered at it with interest before passing it along.
“That flower’s from the south,” Snowboy continued. “You can see the black threads inside the petals and trust me, it’s nectar. The marsh plant we gathered at the northern tower near the snow belt is the same—it’s infected too. At first I thought it was impossible. How could it spread so far? And then I realized that each time the trains drop leftover fuel into another marsh, the nectar spreads into whatever plants grow there too.”
The rose reached Rift. He looked from it to me, a cautious examination. He folded one of the leaves in half, breaking it, and smeared the black liquid across the back of his hand, touching it to his lips. “It really is nectar. I didn’t want to be right.”
He turned to me. “You know how I told you the tree’s roots are growing through the underground of this tower? Well, we noticed a couple of years ago that they’re spreading outward really fast. And really far. If you look for them, you can see them in the forest. There were threads in the walls of our cavern, but they were fine, not aggressive like this … And I began to think…”
“It’s sending out roots every way it can, trying to grow back to where it came from and connect with its other self.” Snowboy’s words were certain, but Rift seemed surprised.
“I thought you didn’t believe that.”
“I do now. It’s infected all the plants around here. Including the moss.”
There was silence and it was as though they were chewing their words, wondering which to speak first.
“We need to check the moss,” Blaze said. “Now that we know what we’re looking for, it’ll be easier to see if it’s contaminated.”
“I agree,” Snowboy replied. “The Council’s been freaking out about it ever since Ava got here.”
Blaze leaned back. “You know this changes everything. If the moss has nectar in it, then it won’t function according to its original purpose. Starsgard could be vulnerable for the first time.”
“We have to tell the Council.” That was Pip, his innocent eyes burning bright. “We can’t let Evereach in.”
“Or Seversand.” That was Quake.