Shine

by Jeri Smith-Ready

The following night Zachary was waiting in our encrypted chat room when I logged on with my excruciatingly long password.

  Him: I HAVE GOOD NEWS AND BETTER NEWS. WHICH ONE DO YOU WANT FIRST?

  Me: OOH! THE GOOD NEWS. SAVE THE BEST FOR LAST.

  Him: THAT’S MY GIRL. THE GOOD NEWS IS, I’VE FOUND AN APP THAT’LL LET US ENCRYPT VIDEO CHATS.

  “Yes!” I shouted. Then I held down the shift and 1 keys to rattle off a hundred exclamation points.

  Him: I’M GLAD, TOO. MY HANDS ARE GETTING TIRED.

  Me: I MISS YOUR HANDS.

  Him: HAH! CHEEKY MONKEY. I’VE UPLOADED THE VIDEO PROGRAM HERE.

  He posted a link to a secure file transfer site. It took forever to install, but ten minutes later, there he was on my screen.

  I dropped my pen. “Your hair! That’s where you went yesterday for a good cause?”

  “What?” He passed a hand over his head, where the dark strands were shorter now and nearly straight. “No. I got it cut today here. It was hideously long.”

  “I liked it.”

  “I needed a change, and this is more the style here. Does it look bad?”

  His face was more visible without the wavy bangs tumbling down his forehead. I’d never noticed how high and defined his cheekbones were, and his eyes now seemed twice as green.

  “It looks hot.”

  He gave me a crooked grin. “So, I went overnight to the Black Isle, up in the Highlands.” He slid a large white box in front of the camera. “I got this.”

  “A case of copy paper. Congrats.”

  He lifted the lid, spinning it in his hands, then withdrew a manila envelope with a red wax seal, like the seal on—

  “Oh my God! My mom’s journal?”

  “Aye. I saw Eowyn. She’s up north in a new safe house.”

  “Open it! Open it!” I bounced in my chair, then dove under my desk for the pen I’d dropped. “Start after January twentieth. That was the last date I read. After that I skimmed until the equinox.” When my mom had described her seventeen minutes of passion with my dad. Blech.

  Zachary scanned the sheets, hands trembling from fatigue or excitement or both. “I don’t remember this bit.

  “January 24

  Haven’t had time to write lately—out wandering with Anthony, down the streets of medieval towns like Slane and Kells and Trim. Since I pretend I’m walking alone, he does most of the talking.

  But I had to journal tonight. Anthony told me something odd, something he said he’s been holding back until he could figure it all out. He didn’t want to worry me.”

  Hmm. I was getting a better picture of my dad—a little protective, a little secretive.

  Zachary kept reading.

  “We were walking down the sidewalk in Kells, near the famous church and tower. Anthony said that the night of the solstice—after I’d been to Newgrange—he was haunting one of the local pubs. He overheard a middle-aged woman speaking with a young couple about something that had happened that morning at Newgrange. Not tourist-talk—this was serious.

  The older lady was speaking in Gaelic, and the young man (her son, apparently) was translating for his wife. The mother said, ‘The good god has done his work. The day will rise again, with the next return of the light.’

  I had no clue what that meant, but Anthony (ye olde mythology buff) said that ‘the good god’ was a name for the Dagda, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The TDD weren’t creator-gods, more like superhero wizard types that lived in Ireland way, way back.

  “Remember the Tuatha Dé Danann from our thesis?” Zachary pronounced the Gaelic, TOO-ah jay DAN-an.

  I nodded. According to legend, after the Celts invaded, the Tuatha Dé Danann literally went underground and now lived in the “Otherworld” in hills or mounds called sidhe (“shee”). Over time, sidhe came to mean faeries themselves. The Dagda has supposedly lived inside Newgrange all this time, which is why the locals were too scared to disturb it for thousands of years.

  Zachary flipped the page.

  “I asked Anthony what she meant about Dagda’s work. He had no idea, except that it had something to do with the solstice.

  Because of that, he started following this older woman. He found out her name was Brigit Murphy, and she lived in Rathcairn, a nearby Gaelic-speaking town, one of the few in eastern Ireland.

  Anthony said that after he left me around midnight last night, he went to Brigit Murphy’s house and found a group of people gathered there. It was like a cult meeting of the TDD worshippers. He said they wore robes like Druids, but weren’t real Druids. They call themselves Children of the Sun.”

  “Creepy,” I commented.

  “Aye, but how would your father haunt Brigit’s house if he’d never been there during his life?”

  “Before the Shift, ghosts could go anywhere they wanted.” I tried to avoid a “well, duh” tone.

  “Oh. Right.” Zachary scratched his forehead, looking embarrassed. “I forgot.

  “Their rituals—all in Gaelic—seemed to be about the light and the sun and the cycles of nature. But the translating son said that the cycle of the TDD was so old, no one had seen the real ending, which was now ‘imminent.’

  So Brigit got up in front of them and declared in Gaelic, ‘I have succeeded where my ancestors failed. The one who was filled with light will bring forth a new day.’ ”

  I covered my mouth. “Whoa. The one filled with light. That was my mom.”

  “And my dad.” Zachary kept reading, faster now.

  “When Anthony told me this, I stopped right there on the sidewalk. Thank God the street was pretty empty so no one saw me wigging out at thin air.

  I took him into the St. Columba’s churchyard, where the famous crosses are, so we could be alone. Then I told him how Eowyn had said she’d seen me filled with light inside Newgrange.”

  I held up a hand. “Zach, can you go back and read that part from the day of the solstice?”

  “Let me find it.” He shuffled through the pages. “Here we are. This is from twenty-first of December.

  “An American teenager with long blond curls told me the strangest thing—when I’d passed through the solstice sunbeam, she saw me lit up from the inside, like my skin was a lampshade.”

  “I remember now,” I said. “The tour guide told them they could step through the light.”

  “Eowyn said something about people making wishes, aye?”

  “Or hoping it could heal them.” Maybe it had. Neither my mom nor his dad were able to have children before they went to Newgrange. We were both kind of miracle babies.

  Zachary found the January 24 entry again and repeated the last line.

  “Then I told him how Eowyn had said she’d seen me filled with light inside Newgrange. He thought there’s no way that could be a coincidence, and if it’d really happened, then these crazy cult people might want something from me. He said to come back to the B and B and keep watch until he could find out more.

  I feel vulnerable as hell. Beating cancer made me feel invincible, but now, lying here in my room alone, it seems like something new has me in its sights, something more dangerous than any disease.”

  He set down the pages. “That’s the end of the entry.”

  “Part of that’s not right. Brigit Murphy said, ‘the one filled with light.’ But Eowyn told us that your father was filled with light, too. She called it the Shine.”

  “So either Brigit didn’t know that the light went into two people, or she knew and didn’t tell her followers.”

  “You mean, that she’d screwed up.”

  “They were probably expecting one person to walk through the light at the moment of the solstice, but both my father and your mother were there.”

  “What did she mean, ‘ I have succeeded’?” I wished I had the journal in my own hands. “How did she make it happen?”

  “Some sort of ritual? Hold on.” He flipped the page back. “It says that ‘the one who was filled with light will bring forth a new day.’
Is that the Shift?”

  I slapped my palms on the edge of my desk. “Zachary, it was us. ‘Bring forth,’ like give birth or conceive. Like a mother or a father.”

  “So we’re the new day? What the bloody hell’s that mean?”

  “Read that other part again. About the good god, the Dagda.”

  While he shuffled the pages, I thrilled that we were solving mysteries again. Some things, it seemed, we could only figure out together, as if we shared a brain, one that would malfunction without its other half.

  “It says, ‘The good god has done his work. The day will rise again, with the next return of the light.’ ”

  “Was something supposed to happen the next day?”

  Zachary shook the papers. “No, you were right! It’s about us. The ‘next return of the light’—the winter solstice the year after.”

  I gasped. “The day we were born!”

  “It’s got to be. ‘The day will rise again.’ ” He lurched out of his seat. “Be right back.”

  Luckily, Zachary only took about five seconds, or I would’ve exploded with anticipation. He sat down hard, already paging through a dog-eared book on the ancient Celts.

  As he flattened the book on the desk and ran his finger over the page, I saw that intensity back in his eyes. I had planned to press him again about what had happened in DMP custody, but now decided to save it for another time. He looked too happy, too alive.

  “Here it is. Óengus, the son of the Dagda. He was the personification of the day.”

  “Cool.” I rewound his words. “So these cult people wanted to raise a god out of Newgrange?”

  “Where else? It’s the gods’ legendary place of rest.”

  “That’s freaking crazy.”

  “Aura, they may have created the Shine and the Shift. That’s no less crazy.”

  I squeezed my head, as if to keep my brains from scrambling. “Keep reading the journal.”

  “Right.” He laid the journal pages atop the open book.

  “January 26

  Weirder and weirder! Anthony tracked down Brigit Murphy and her son, Padraig, at her house. Hoo boy, Brigit was tearing Padraig a new one. But it was all in Gaelic, so Anthony couldn’t make out much. He knows basic greetings and how to ask directions. And of course numbers, so he can ask how much things cost.

  Brigit kept shouting the words for ‘one’ and ‘two,’ and from what Anthony could tell, ‘two’ was really, really bad.”

  “Oh my God,” I interrupted Zachary. “You think they’re talking about the Shine? They knew the light went into two people instead of one.”

  He nodded but kept reading.

  “Padraig kept saying the Gaelic phrase for ‘sorry.’ Eventually he left. Anthony stuck around Brigit’s house to see if anyone else would come, but she just turned on the radio and ate dinner by herself. And I’ll never forget how he described this next part: Brigit began to weep quietly, letting her tears fall into her stew.”

  Zachary turned the page. “That’s it for that day.”

  I pondered the power of what we’d learned, how much the day of the Shine had meant to this Children of the Sun cult. If they’d only imagined what they would unleash.

  “It sounds like it was Patrick’s fault the light went into two people instead of one. But why?”

  “Maybe he was there at Newgrange on the solstice. And it’s Padraig, not Patrick.” He spelled the Irish version of the name for me.

  “Everything’s prettier in Gaelic,” I said with a sigh. “Go on.”

  “January 27

  No more word on Brigit—relief! I keep looking over my shoulder to see if someone’s following me.

  Tomorrow I’m going to ask Anthony why he haunted Gina after he died, to the point she was so grief-stricken she dumped her husband. Why did he let her ruin her life over him? If we’re going to ‘be’ together, whatever that means, I need to know. No matter how much it hurts.”

  I braced myself. Like most ghosts, including Logan, my dad must have had trouble letting go of his loved ones—even the ones who belonged to other people.

  “ ‘January twenty-eighth. I didn’t know ghosts could cry.’ ” Zachary lifted his head. “I’m sorry, Aura.”

  I rested my elbows on the desk and cradled my face in my hands. “What’s next?”

  Zachary went to the following page. “We’ve seen that.” He flipped through every sheet, front and back. “I’ve read all the parts we didn’t read in June. I’ll type up everything and paste it into our chat window tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.” I squirmed, wishing he would do it now, but at the same time I just wanted to talk to him. “What else is in that white box?”

  “Ah.” He slid it closer. “Eowyn’s research. As much as she could boil it down, anyway.”

  “Why did she give it to you?”

  Zachary ran his finger over the box’s top corner. “Remember I said she was in a safe house? That’s because when she rang you the day of my flight, the DMP traced the call.”

  “Damn it!” I pounded the side of my fist on the desk. “I was afraid of that.”

  “She’s done with the Shift, she says.” He looked sad. “Eowyn’s turning it all over to us.”

  “Now? When we’re getting close?”

  “She was offered a job teaching and doing research in Western Australia. It starts next week. That’s why I had to hurry up north to get the material. Much of her time she’ll be in the desert with no communication.”

  Australia. It felt like another planet. “She’s abandoning us?”

  “She left all this.” He patted the side of the box. “Together with what we know—what no one else knows—maybe it’ll give us the answers.”

  “Give you the answers.” My fingers itched to pore over the box of mysteries. “I’m stuck here, doing stupid schoolwork.” Zachary was finished with high school—in Scotland, they could start university a year earlier than in England and the United States. But since he would’ve had to apply to a Scottish university last fall, he was taking a “gap year.” In other words, a year without homework.

  “There’ll be plenty for you to do,” he said. “After I sort through this box, I’ll make a list of things for you to look up.”

  “So I’m your research assistant now?”

  He smiled. “Something like tha’.” Then he grew serious again. “Aura, mind your grades. If you keep them up, you can go to university anywhere you want, even—” He cut himself off, as if afraid to hope.

  I finished his sentence, but only in my mind. Even in the UK. I wanted it more than anything, yet it still seemed like a long shot. And what if we didn’t get accepted to the same colleges? We could still end up several hours apart.

  I caught sight of my chem notebook and remembered the equation I’d doodled in the margin: Me + Zachary → weirdness + happiness.

  Whether it was ancient destiny or simple chemistry, we would find a way to be together.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Tammi Teller’s memorial service at Ridgewood High took place the following night, on what would’ve been her fifteenth birthday. They’d decided to hold the ceremony on the front courtyard—partly out of respect to ghosts, who couldn’t get inside our BlackBoxed school, and partly because Principal Hirsch worried the candles might burn down the building.

  As I walked from the parking lot with Megan, Jenna, and Christopher, we saw four of the more familiar ghosts milling near the fountain behind the rows of seats.

  “I wonder if somewhere out there,” Jenna said, “another school’s having a vigil for the suicide bomber kid.”

  “They never did give out his name,” Megan said, “so his friends are probably mourning him, thinking he’s innocent.”

  “I heard they weren’t even sure anymore that it was that kid,” Christopher said. “Some people say that post online was faked, or that he doesn’t even exist.”

  “You and your conspiracy theories,” Jenna said. “Why else would they announce the day
after the crash that it was a post-Shifter suicide bomber?”

  I snorted. “Because they wanted to blame somebody.”

  “Hi, guys!” Amy Koeller stood near the fountain handing out white candles, the kind with paper circles to catch the wax. “Thanks so much for coming. Principal Hirsch wants to start in a couple minutes.” With each candle, she gave out a VOTE KOELLER 4 SENIOR CLASS PRESIDENT button.

  Christopher pocketed the button and said to Jenna, “Pre-Shifters were primed for something like Flight 346, something that would tell them that ghosts suck.”

  “But with so many new ghosts coming out of that flight,” I said, moving toward the fountain, “you’d think people would feel more compassion. They’d be reminded that they could be ghosts one day.”

  “Nope.” Christopher adjusted the stub of his candle’s wick. “Pre-Shifters see Flight 346 and maybe for a second think, ‘That could be me,’ but it freaks them out so bad that then they’re like, ‘No way, never. I hate ghosts.’ ”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I told him.

  He shrugged. “People don’t make sense.”

  “Still.” Jenna flipped her candle end over end and caught it. “No reason to join the bastards.”

  I turned to her quickly. “Who’s joining which bastards?”

  She nodded to Christopher. “Can’t resist free tuition.”

  Megan clucked her tongue. “Aww, Chris, no.”

  “What choice do I have?” he asked her. “Besides, they’re probably going to pass a DMP draft. Might as well sign up early and get placed where I want.”