by Dylan Peters
“No!” I yelled. “That’s not true!”
“But it is,” Kesia said. “Your weakness is its own self-fulfilling prophecy. The poor boy with the crippled mommy,” Kesia mocked. “The poor boy with no daddy to love him. It’s no wonder you found a kindred spirit with the crippled girl who tried to take her own life. The two of you reek of desperation and inadequacy.”
“You’re the desperate one,” I said with anger. “You can’t even figure out how to take the Everflame from me.”
Kesia bolted forward and slapped me across the face with the back of her hand. I felt the sting and the warm flow of blood from a cut across my cheek.
“Don’t think you are safe because you can protect your mind from me,” Kesia hissed in my ear. “You are not safe. Your friends are not safe. Your mother is not safe.”
“If you harm my mother, you’ll be sorry,” I said without thinking. Anger and fear dictated my words. It was almost as if I couldn’t control myself.
“How?” Kesia said with disgust. “I know you can’t use the flame, Arthur.”
But you don’t know everything, I thought. You can’t see what’s in my mind. Me and the shadow bear stopped you, and if I can just come up with—
And just that fast I knew what to say, I knew what story to tell to buy time.
“You’re right. I don’t know how to use the flame,” I said. “But the one who gave it to me does.”
“But Ah’Rhea saw—,” Kesia began.
“Ah’Rhea did not understand what she saw,” I said. “Not completely.”
Kesia paused briefly and considered my words. I had her where I wanted her. This was where I would weave my story, and I knew exactly which one to use.
“You were in Ah’Rhea’s mind,” I continued. “So you know the ancient stories of the earth. You must know the story of the young man she told to me before she attempted to take my life and take the Everflame.”
I had Kesia’s full attention now. Even the tendrils that surrounded her figure had frozen in place.
“You know the young man who possessed the Everflame was more than a mortal,” I said to Kesia. “So think about it. Why would I have the flame? How would it have come into my possession? Do you think it was just coincidence that I came to have it?”
Kesia had been right about one thing: I had used not having a father as an excuse for weakness. I had used it more times than I could count, especially when I was a young child. It was always a source of depression for me, and from that depression I concocted a dream. I never told anyone about it, but it was a story I told to myself when I was little, when I was feeling particularly down. I would tell myself that my mother had lied to me, and that my real father was, in fact, a superhero. He hadn’t wanted to leave me, but he had needed to because he was so important to the world. I thought about it all the time. I imagined that one day he would return to me, apologize, tell me how much I meant to him, and tell me that I was a superhero, too. It was a very childish dream, but I was a child when I thought of it, and it got me through a lot of bad days. It was about to get me through another one.
“Didn’t you wonder even once who might have given me the Everflame?” I asked Kesia. “Didn’t you wonder what powerful person might have such a thing, and why they would give it to me?”
Whether she realized it or not, Kesia took a step away from me. I seized the opportunity and pushed myself off of her table.
“My father gave me the Everflame,” I said, seething with confidence, “and I think you can guess who my father might be. He’s coming back for the flame shortly. You’ll be sorry when he returns.”
“You lie,” Kesia said, but her eyes were dark. Her fire was gone. “I have seen your mother’s mind. Your father was no special man, no ancient power, and certainly no possessor of the flame.”
“You didn’t think it was convenient that my mother told you I had no father?” I asked with a mocking tone. “You didn’t think it was a convenient story to say that he was a plain man who left us long ago? You didn’t think for one second that my mother had practiced that lie for years to protect her son from the truth of his father’s identity? Are you so arrogant to think your prying magic has never been fooled?” I scoffed at Kesia, and she bristled. “My father was gone for a very long time, and my mother kept his identity secret from me for many years. But he has returned, he helped me after the Demise, and if you hurt anyone we care about you will be sorrier than you can possibly imagine.”
“We shall see,” Kesia said with a snarl. “Bring her in!”
The door to the room opened, just like the door in the dungeon, and a mynah carried a woman inside. It didn’t take me long to see exactly who it was as the mynah dropped her down onto the stone floor and again left the room. I couldn’t help but cry out.
“Mom!”
She was cut, bruised, filthy, without her prosthetic, and still wearing the clothes she’d worn on the last night I saw her. My mother pushed herself up and shouted when she saw me.
“Arthur!”
“Let’s see what your mother thinks about your story, Arthur,” Kesia said and sneered.
Her eyes were fiery once again, and she raised a hand toward my mother. Green energy shot from her fingers as well as from the ends of the waving black tendrils. The force hit my mother and she cried out in pain.
“Stop it!” I yelled.
“Show me your mind!” Kesia commanded my mother. “Show me the boy’s true father. Show me who gave him the flame.”
“I’ve shown you everything,” my mother cried. She scrabbled on the stone floor, trying to escape the mystical energy and the pain.
“Show me the boy’s father!” Kesia commanded. She hit my mother with a fresh wave of energy and my mother stopped moving. She collapsed on the floor, motionless, her eyes rolling back in her head. Kesia was in my mother’s mind now. It was painfully obvious.
“Leave her alone!” I yelled. “Leave her alone!”
My face flushed with anger and I leaped at Kesia, but the evil woman swept me away with her free arm like dust in the breeze. I careened into the wall and crashed down to the floor in pain. Yet there was something swelling behind the pain. I could feel it take hold of my forearms, and then it constricted the muscles in my throat. I stood upright like a bolt and grunted. Everything inside of me screamed in rage, and then, suddenly, the thing swelling behind my pain came forth. He was born out of me, and now the shadow bear stood next to me. This was no vision. This was real.
Together we roared and rushed at Kesia, intent on tearing her to pieces, intent on destroying all that she was. We launched into her and she fell to the floor. Her energy was broken, and her mind was dislodged from my mother’s.
“Arthur,” my mother mumbled weakly.
I couldn’t help but go to my mother’s aide. As I did, the rage and the shadow bear left me, just as quickly as they had come. I knelt next to my mother and propped her up in my arms.
Kesia stood back up, but she was staggered and wide-eyed. She wobbled and looked down at where we sat on the stone floor. Her green eyes flared again, but this time they were brighter than I had ever seen them. It was as if they were being consumed; as if Kesia was being possessed. Then, in a voice that was not her own, in a voice that was deep and masculine, she spoke.
“What is this?” the deep voice said through Kesia. “What have you done?” The green eyes fixed upon my mother. “What have you made, Echo?”
The green flame in Kesia’s eyes faded. Then she abruptly turned and left the room, the metal door clicking behind her.
17
My mother threw her arms around me. She was weak, but not so weak she couldn’t hug me harder than I can ever remember. I hugged her back, but gently as I was afraid of how hurt she might be. I was also ashamed of how long I had been away and that she hadn’t been my absolute focus every minute until I had found her. Now she was a prisoner in the Starless Tower, and it was because of me. It was because I had the Everflame.
&nb
sp; “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t ask me why I was sorry, and she didn’t tell me she was okay. Those things didn’t matter to her at the moment. She was a mother, and right now she could only think about her child.
“I thought you were gone,” she said to me. “I feared you were dead, but then I met that woman who had seen you at Esteban’s, and… How are you here right now?”
My mother was visibly thinner than I remembered, and there were dark bags under her eyes. It made my heart hurt to look at her. She had been through hell, and it had made her seem so old and frail. Or maybe she didn’t seem old, but incredibly, wholly tired. I wondered if I looked the same to her. I wondered if time and the weight of existing in this new world had worn upon me in the same way. Did her heart hurt to look at her son?
My eyes welled with tears. Time was robbing us and wearing us down. It had separated us and would inevitably do so again. If we ever found normalcy in life it would still be something akin to how we were now.
‘Are you okay?’ I will ask.
‘I was afraid you were gone,’ she will say.
We would forever look at each other and see time, and wonder what was left of it. And what was left of it now? I didn’t know, but I knew I had to tell her everything I could.
It had been so long since I had been with her. So many things had happened. I wasn’t even sure that I was the same Arthur who had been with her on the porch that night. I had to tell her everything, and we didn’t have the time. We might never have the time again.
It was as if my mother were reading my mind while she watched me struggle with where to start.
“Just tell me the important parts,” she said.
So I began, but in the telling, I’m afraid the important parts were all left out. I told my mother about Jim and Kay, but I didn’t tell her that for the first time I was becoming friends with people who were different than me. I told my mother about Anna but didn’t tell her I had found someone who was important to me in a way I had never known before. I told her about our adventure through the Nullwood but didn’t tell her how I was learning more about myself all the time. I told her about Ah’Rhea and what happened at the dome of colored branches, but I didn’t tell her I realized that coming through the darkness showed strength I never knew I had. I told my mother about Kesia and the Everflame, but I didn’t tell her I learned how to use my dark strength, and although I was in the toughest situation of my entire life, I was fighting for life, not retreating from it. I told her about the story I’d fed Kesia about having a father, but I didn’t tell her that not having a father didn’t stop me from being able to think quick and act fast. I told her that after coming through the dark of the Nullwood I was okay, but I didn’t thank her for being there before I entered, or for being here now.
I didn’t say the important things, but thankfully my mother didn’t need to hear them to be my mother. She hugged me and told me how much she loved me. I told her I loved her, too.
“Now your turn,” I said. “What happened to you after the Demise? How did you get here?”
We ended our embrace and my mother pushed herself up to sit against the near wall. She had a haunted glassy-eyed look to her.
“I saw the birth of Kesia,” she said simply. “That sounds so insane when you say it out loud.”
In a world where I really didn’t think I could be shocked again, the fact that my mother knew how Kesia had come to be completely blindsided me.
“Just start at the beginning,” I said.
“Well,” she said. “After the night the skies fell, I woke up in the woods. You were nowhere to be found, and I had no idea where the house was, or how I had gotten into the middle of the woods, or how long I had been asleep. Honestly, I thought I was in a dream. But then I started finding other people who all told the same strange story I knew about the sky falling and then waking up in the forest. So we helped one another survive.
“Then, after a couple days searching the woods for a way out, we found the dome of colored branches you spoke of. It was so unbelievable. We tried to enter the dome but found that we couldn’t. That only made us more interested in it, really. We agreed that the dome was so different from the rest of the woods that it had to be special, it had to hold answers to our questions. So we made camp just outside the dome, hoping if we stayed there long enough the mystery might be solved.
“One morning we woke to find a deer inside the dome. We had scoured the outside of the dome over and over, and we were all positive there were no gaps in the branches large enough for a deer to fit through. Also, the deer wasn’t like any deer we had ever seen. It was green, and it’s hard to explain, but it just moved differently. We had foraged some roots, and one of the women in my group coaxed the deer to her by offering the root. As the deer came closer to us, and closer to the perimeter of the dome, we were all taken aback as the branches of the dome parted for it.”
“Ah’Rhea told me the dome needed a sacrifice to open,” I said, interrupting my mother’s story. “She had seen it work with me and the bear, and then it worked again when she tried to kill me.”
“Well,” my mother said, “she was wrong. You see, we were never able to enter the dome alone, but over the next couple days more animals came, and they were always able to part the branches. If we were quick, or lucky enough to have the animals trust us, we could enter with them, but never alone. I think that you were able to enter the dome the first time because you were with the bear, and I think on the second occasion—”
“Reego was closer than we had thought,” I guessed.
“That makes more sense, given the things I’ve seen,” my mother said.
Or maybe because of the fact that the shadow bear was within me, I thought. I shook my head, struck by the gravity of what Ah’Rhea’s mistake had almost cost me.
My mother continued. “And it wasn’t just that animals could go into the dome and we couldn’t. Something happened to them when they went inside, something magical. It was different for each animal. We observed a creature that looked like a peacock who became surrounded by swirling light in the dome. On another occasion, we noticed a large spider in the dome that seemed to be spraying the ground with a stream of water. Even the green deer I already mentioned; I don’t think it was green when it entered the dome. I think that maybe it grew green in there, as if it were growing like a plant.”
“It’s like Reego’s fire,” I said.
“Pardon?” my mother asked.
“Something I left out while telling you about Ah’Rhea and the dome,” I said. “Reego was wreathed in fire in the dome. Then he did it again when we were all in the dungeon, as if he could control it on command.”
My mother nodded. “Most of us had agreed that the smartest thing to do was stay put and study the animals. We were sure it was the key to understanding what had happened and figuring out what to do next, but…”
“Kesia happened,” I guessed, as my mother’s sentence trailed off and she stared into the room blankly.
“We woke one morning to find a green mist hanging inside the dome like a poison fog,” my mother said. “The animals wouldn’t go near it. We were confused, so we waited and watched. Then after a few hours, a woman came out of the trees and wandered into the basin. She was tall, pale, and nude. Some of us called out to her and offered help, but the woman looked at us so strangely. Once we saw her in closer detail, we realized that she wasn’t human. She was different. The way she walked was odd, and her hair seemed light on the air in an impossible way. As she came closer to the dome, we realized just how unlike us she was, because the branches of the dome parted for her.
“She moved into the dome like a timid animal wandering unknowingly into a trap, and walked among the green mist. We watched, unbelieving and silent. I can still remember the look on the woman’s face just before the mist took her. She was confused and terrified. She recognized the trap too late. The mist invaded her and took possession of her.
Within seconds she became something different, something terrible: she became Kesia.
“The rest of the story is all here in these walls,” my mother said. Her voice cracked, and I saw a tear in the corner of her eye. “Kesia used the power of the mist on us and invaded our minds. She gained control of the mynahs and had them bring us here. She tortured us, separated us, and I don’t even know if the other people in my group are living or dead. I’ve known nothing but fear, regret, and confusion since I’ve been here. I’m not sure if Kesia created this tower or if it came with the Nullwood.” My mother cried openly now. “And I’m sorry, Arthur. I’m so sorry I didn’t try harder to find you. I’m sorry I stayed with those people at the dome. I’m sorry for everything.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” I said. “You only did what we all did. We were just trying to survive one day to the next and understand the world we live in. That’s all. If you’re guilty, then I’m guilty too.”
“I don’t know how we can stop her,” my mother said, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “I don’t really know what the Everflame is or why it’s inside of you. I don’t understand anything about this world anymore. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said and gave her another hug. “I don’t completely understand it either, but I think I’m starting to understand where our help will come from. I think if we—”
Throw rocks, something said in my mind.
“Throw rocks,” I finished. “Wait, what? Did I just say that?”
“You said throw rocks, honey,” my mother confirmed and furrowed her brow.
Throw rocks, the voice said again.
“There,” I said and jumped to my feet. “There it was again. Did you hear it?”
“Arthur, are you feeling okay?” my mother asked. “You said you think we should throw rocks.”