“This isn’t an easy thing to say,” I began, “but people have called the cops on us before. More than once.”
“Okay,” said Alex.
“She’s been like this before. This was mostly before Ida, when I was small.”
Alex nodded.
“When they show up, they’ll restrain Mom. They’ll hurt her, whatever it takes. Then they’ll lock her up in a shitty hospital where they’ll give her medicine she can’t take. Medicine that makes her sick. Medicine that she’s allergic to, because they won’t listen to her. Meanwhile, I won’t know anything about it, because they’ll separate us and shuttle me off to some group home.”
“A group home?”
“Foster care. I’m not eighteen yet, remember?”
What I didn’t say was, What if they do a psychiatric evaluation on me? What if they throw me—the girl who participates in mantra knitting circles—into the same mental hospital as Mom? We’d be trapped there together forever. Who was going to come get us? Ida?
“Okay, I get it, but Van,” his voice filled my ear. “This is so fucked up—you need to get out of here. We’ll go back and let your mom and Marine figure it out here. Whatever it is. Do you think if Ida was awake, she’d let you go through with this plan?”
It was true. I turned around and took a deep breath, trying to smooth out the wild peaks of energy coming out of me.
“You’re right. You’re so right. This is so incredibly fucked up. But so am I, and so is my mom. I need to help her out of this. I’m the only one who can do it.” I believed it, as I said it out loud. “Please help me come up with a better plan.”
Alex sat up and looked at me in the waning sunlight. “Of course I’ll help you,” he said. “How could I not help you?”
• • •
All around, preparations were being made. Tents came down around where we sat, and the magenta-covered campers piled bins and bags and jugs of water onto carts. There was chanting and singing, too. They weren’t all singing the same song, but they definitely sang the same family of songs. Even when the songs bled out of their mouths and into each other, there was no dissonance. An eerie, unplanned harmony wove through the basin, one voice picking up a thread from another and binding a new song to it.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Alex asked. “It’s not too late to change your mind. We could stay here and wait for them to come back tomorrow.”
“I’m sure,” I said, getting restless waiting for whoever was supposed to come for me. Eventually, Marine and Ulrike found us. The sun at their backs was low in the sky, and their features were shadowed. They looked like twin statues that had climbed down from an ancient temple—with their identically tall, strong bodies, it wouldn’t be hard to believe they were both warriors.
“We have to go now. We’re already very late. Young man,” Marine said, without looking at Alex. “Please help Van with the tent. I have to check on Sofia.”
“Can I come with you? Just for a minute?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, Van.” Marine shook her head. “There’s no time. But don’t worry. Laurel tells me you’ll be walking out with your mother. It’s a very significant, private arrangement. You’ll get the time with your mom that you need. Maybe you can get through to her.”
“When does that happen?” Alex asked.
“Very soon. A few hours from now, only. When the full moon is up.”
“Oh sure,” Alex said. “That makes sense.”
Marine rushed away before I could answer. Alex reached a hand out to me, but before I could take it, Ulrike pulled a cart between us. It was the size of a small horse-drawn wagon, except it was Ulrike who pulled the cart along. She slung in our packed belongings and handed over a gallon of water to me.
“Water,” she said. “You follow me.” She took up her place at the front of the cart and led us away to where the rest of the camp was gathering beyond the basin.
I pulled on my backpack and Alex picked up the jug of water. We followed Ulrike and joined the others to wait for Laurel and Mom. The group began to move. I didn’t see Laurel, Mom, or Marine. After a while, I didn’t even see Ulrike. But we followed the others. Would I have done the same if Alex hadn’t been there? I wasn’t sure. I really wasn’t.
“Alex, do you have your phone?”
“Yeah, why? Do you need it?”
“No. Just checking.” I felt the anxiety build in my body. Little rivulets of it skittered through me, and I choked on gulps of air that didn’t feel right in my lungs. Bodies shifted and shuffled all around us. I took small, unnatural steps, trying not to touch anyone.
“Are you okay?” Alex asked.
I’d stopped moving without noticing. I wasn’t okay, not at all. I felt like I was walking into something, walking past the point of no return. Alex took me by the arm and we drifted to the edge of the group, letting the stream of human heat pass by where we stood.
“Van, look at me,” Alex said, gripping my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“I need a minute, I think.” I tried to pace my breaths by pushing down into my stomach in a rhythm of normal oxygen intake.
“It’s okay, we’ll just wait here. This is really—” Alex paused. I could see him wanting to yell for us to get out of there. I watched him tamp down that feeling. “This is really just an unusual situation.”
I opened my eyes as wide as I could and laughed a cool, gorgeous, screen-siren laugh. I don’t know where it came from, or who I was in that second, but I surely wasn’t Van.
“You can say that again,” I said, or whoever that not-Van was, who’d just taken over my body, had said. Maybe it was oxygen deprivation from all of the hyperventilating. “I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks for stopping. Let’s just go.”
“If you’re sure,” was all Alex said.
We walked toward the canyon wall for almost an hour, and when we reached the narrow pass, the campers in front of us trickled through the gap in the stone. I tried to look into the shadows beyond that opening, but didn’t see anything. Certainly not anyone or anything I recognized. We waited for all of the others to go ahead. I looked closely at the towering rock formations. They reached up to the sky like turrets of a decaying palace, the former seat of some great, forgotten civilization.
Then it was just me and Alex in the middle of nowhere—the stretch of empty earth behind us and this mountainous wall the color of the sun before us. I knew I had to go through that dark gap, and I knew something strange and wild was coming. I knew it was coming right at me.
“Let’s go,” I said, and nodded to Alex to go through.
He looked over his shoulder at me, hunched under the weight of the water jug. I waited until he disappeared into the shadows on the other side.
“You coming?” His voice floated out through the wall.
I finally stepped through.
Chapter Nineteen
The other side of the wall was not what I had imagined. It wasn’t filled with shadows at all. It was a bowl of gold light—gold from the stones and from the exiting sun. The gap opened onto a small mesa. The others looked like ants as they wound down the path deep into the canyon. It was like nothing I’d ever seen, like some giant god had cupped its hands to capture something earthly and beautiful. This Laurel knows what she’s doing, I thought.
“Whoa, right?” Alex said. His voice shook me out of the semitrance I’d been in.
I nodded.
We followed the others down and down. Shivers of loose stones fell around our feet. I was the last one in line, my eyes on the back of Alex’s neck.
The path ahead of us cut through a dense mass of trees. The other stragglers pushed through the piney branches, and Alex helped me through, holding back the fragrant boughs as we broke out into a clearing. Laurel’s team had been busy. Their work was evident in that basketball court–sized space. There was some low brush bursting up along the edges, but the ground was mostly clear. An enormous tepee had been set up in the center.
Othe
rs had begun to set up their small tents around the vividly embellished conical structure. The fawn flaps of the tepee had been painted with feathers and birds and faces. Under the very last light of the sun the magenta on the tepee looked especially sinister, like an incurable wound.
“Van! There you are!” Laurel had found me. She was dressed in billowing white robes. “We’ve been waiting for you. You’ll need to hurry now. The ceremony is about to start. Leave your things with your friend and come with me.”
“Is this okay with you, Van?” he asked.
I nodded, remembering that if I was about to see Mom, it would be better if Alex wasn’t there. I didn’t want him to see her like that, to see that genetic potential in me. I didn’t want him to see what I was going to say to her.
“Well, I’ll be close.” He pointed to a spot next to the tepee. “Within yelling distance,” he added.
Laurel put her hand on my back as a light breeze filled the canyon. Her robes billowed out and around us both. She guided me to the entrance of the conical tent.
“Now,” she said. “Do you have any crystals with you?”
“Um, no,” I said.
“Well, this is a problem. Crystals are an integral part of tonight’s ceremony. Perhaps Carapace can lend you one of his. Carapace!” Laurel called, like she was summoning an animal.
A thin, bearded man, maybe Mom’s age, scuttled up to us. Carapace, I thought, the man with the singsong voice.
“Please lend us the use of one of your crystals. Just for a moment—Van’s forgotten hers.”
I shrugged, trying to convey my generally sincere apologies to Carapace.
“Oh, of course,” he gushed, displaying a set of yellowed teeth. “It would be my honor.” He had a kind of utility belt wound around his bony hips, and unclipped a leather pouch from it. He poured the contents into one palm. Crystals clacked together like dice in his open hand.
“Well,” Laurel said. “Choose. You know, pick each one up, touch it, see if it speaks to your energy.” She paused a moment. “Have you seen Harry Potter?”
I nodded.
“Pretend you’re selecting a wand. Pick up each stone and give it a wave. See if you can make magic.”
Carapace let his hand hover a few inches from my face. I made a pincer with my fingers and picked up a small piece, probably the most gruesome-looking one, about the size of my pinkie nail. I pressed it between my thumb and forefinger, because I figured that was the way to test a crystal. I felt a sharp shiver up my arm, like a static shock. The weird thing was, I kind of expected it before it happened. I knew something was coming out of the hideous ruby scab for me. I tried it again, just to make sure I hadn’t imagined it, and felt that same little shiver. It wasn’t unlike the thrilling, near-discomfort that I felt holding down a power chord. I held my arm out in a somebody-take-this gesture.
“Ah,” Carapace and Laurel sighed together as though my choice had answered an important question.
“No, Van. You hold on to it. I want you to focus on the vibration of that stone and the vibrations of your own energy. I’ll do a quick cleansing before we begin the ceremony. Just hold still.”
Carapace held out a large breakfast-in-bed tray filled with all kinds of grubby odds and ends. Laurel floated her hands over it and chose a short, fat wand of dried plants tied together with string. Carapace set the tray on the ground, flipping out its little legs so that it was slightly elevated off of the sand. He pulled a miniature blowtorch from his utility belt, the kind that the Silver Saddle kitchen used on crème brûlées. Laurel held up the wand between them and Carapace lit it like a comically large cigarette. The end of the twist of dried leaves caught fire. Laurel spoke over it, softly, and blew out the flame, leaving the wand trailing plumes of fragrant, musky smoke as she moved it around.
She waved it over my head, around my shoulders, even down to my knees and feet. The smoke stung my eyes, and when I took a deep breath, I started to cough.
“That’s right,” Laurel said. “Reject the negative energy within.” She circled me a few more times and handed Carapace the smoking wand. “Now,” she said. “Inside.”
I pushed open the tepee flap slowly. Mom sat cross-legged in the center, underneath the point of the cone. She wore white robes that matched Laurel’s, and her face was still painted magenta and gold. Her eyes were sealed shut. Marine sat in the sand behind her. She looked right at me, her dark eyes pouring out a message. I stared back at her, but couldn’t decipher it.
Ida would never have let things go this far. She would have come with me and whisked Mom from Laurel’s campsite before anyone knew what was happening.
Laurel closed the flap and stepped in behind me. A few others were planted around the tent—drummers mostly, and two or three people holding some kind of maracas. Laurel stood directly in front of Mom and raised her arms. She began to chant, rhythmically and repetitively. I assumed it was another language, but really I had no idea.
The tempo and cadence were like the sound of a train—chug-a-chug-a, chug-a-chug-a, chug-a-chug-a. The drums began to beat and the maracas rattled along to the same rhythm. The sound was so thick, I felt as if I could see it floating in the air, like I could slice one of my hands through its layers and feel something there. Laurel waved her arms, conducting the swells and dips of the chant until she cut it off with a series of handclaps. In the silence, she reached down and lightly touched the top of Mom’s head.
“Here we go,” I heard someone say. And then a sharp intake of breath from somewhere inside of the tepee, like a person had been burned. Mom opened her eyes. Her gaze was ferocious; it was beyond. My vision blurred and my throat hurt, but I didn’t cry.
Laurel helped Mom stand and held her hands. Marine stood with them, a palm at Mom’s back. It was clear that they were leading her outside. I stepped out of the way. The drummers filed out next and took up the beat again. I went after them: last.
Outside, all traces of the sun were gone and the full moon glowed in the clear, dark sky. Millions of stars cast a milky light all around, and a bonfire blazed nearby. More drummers surrounded the tepee and the fire, banging along as the campers sang in a rising and falling rhythm, the sound wrapping us all around. I closed my eyes for a second, and it was like being in a little boat on the ocean.
Laurel led Mom to the front of the fire and waved out to the others. The music and chanting dropped off, and Laurel began to speak, holding Mom’s hand up to the sky.
“My brothers and sisters,” Laurel shouted out into the night. “My sons and daughters, my friends and my lovers,” she continued.
Eww, I thought.
“We have come to this sacred space on this night for a reason. Perhaps the reason. To learn why we are here. To learn from where we have come and where we will go.” I could tell she was going for a Southern Baptist preacher kind of delivery, but she wasn’t quite pulling it off. “All around us, in this canyon, there was once an ocean.” A swirl of chatter wound through the crowd as the others looked around. “In this very place we stand, creatures of the deep once splashed and swerved, lived and died. Millennia of pulses and billions of heartbeats fill the air! Can you feel it?”
A few shouts popped up out of the crowd.
“This is the sacred place we have chosen to send our prophet, Sofia. This is where she will receive a message from our Cosmic Masters, from the Spirits of the Earth and Seas.” Laurel let go of Mom’s hand and began to circle around her. “She is ready! She has fasted and meditated for three days and three nights. Our blessed committee will accompany her to the center of the Thousand Seas Energy Vortex, and there she will wait, under the light of this bountiful full moon, until the light of the sun is at its peak tomorrow. Our message, the message, will be delivered to her there.”
The beginning of a cheer stirred through the onlookers.
“When the prophet returns, we shall rejoice and feast, for the message will save all of mankind! Come!” Laurel raised her arms and the others raised theirs.
I definitely did not raise mine.
“Come!” Laurel reached for my hand and for Mom’s and started to walk, setting an awkward, jerky pace. A pack of people broke off from the crowd and followed us. Of course, there were plenty of drummers drumming, but there were also a few peripheral figures carrying lanterns and flashlights and bundles. The small pools of roving lights distracted my eyes from the lights in the sky. I snuck a look at Mom. Her eyelids were heavy, and she kept stumbling. She was definitely drugged, but I had no idea how, or what to do to snap her out of it. Or if I even wanted to snap her out of it. Drugged Mom would be a lot easier to abduct from Laurel’s production than fully sentient, wild Mom. We just needed to get through tonight, and with help from Alex and, hopefully, Marine, we’d get out of there.
The drumming was disorienting—it was as bad as the slot machines at the Silver Saddle. I couldn’t feel the shape of the night around me, couldn’t feel the way the wind was blowing.
“Here!” Laurel bellowed. She stopped abruptly and everyone slowed around her. “The vortex! It’s just ahead! Do you feel it?” she shouted into the wind. She dropped my hand and Mom’s and started to twist around and sweep her hands over her body and through the air. I was beginning to wonder if Laurel was on something, too. She hadn’t seemed this deranged earlier.
Carapace darted ahead and started to mimic Laurel’s bizarre dance. The drummers began that first beat I remembered, the chug-a-chug-a, chug-a-chug-a, and a woman’s voice spun out from the darkness.
Laurel danced a little farther off the path. Into the vortex, presumably. Mom and Marine stood beside me, the three of us still and quiet while the others roiled and shouted. Laurel hopped up onto a wide, flat rock and shot her arms into the air. One of the campers holding a flashlight pointed it toward her. The light was weak, so I could only make out bits and pieces of Laurel—a white curl of hair, a swish of robes.
“We are here, spirits!” she shouted, over all of the drumming and whooping. “We are here! Sofia!” She reached an arm out to Mom.
Carapace and a few others surrounded her, like a human raft, and jostled her forward to Laurel, who pulled her up onto the ledge. Laurel motioned to Carapace, who climbed up beside them carrying a jug of water and a rolled-up bundle. He put them down where the wide ledge met the canyon wall, and then he and Laurel settled Mom into a seated position on the rock. Two more campers started a fire in a ring of stones they’d made.
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