The Wake Up (The Seers Book 1)

by Angela Panayotopulos

  “That’s pretty good.” Lexi took a sip of the coffee, desperate for caffeine. “What are your views on relationships?”

  The woman smiled. “Don’t settle until you find the one who makes you want to say ya’aburnee.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Arabic for ‘you bury me.’ The hope that the person you love will outlive you so that you will be spared the pain of living without them.”

  “It takes Shakespeare’s better to have loved and lost to new levels.”

  “My views aren’t exactly conventional,” the woman said. “They’d stone me in Kurdistan. My husband calls me a terrible Muslim. Eh, he’s not so bad himself.”

  “Religion, bringing people together in a world torn apart by… religion,” Lexi quipped. “Jon Stewart for president?”

  The woman laughed. “I’m all for it.” She reached beneath the counter and grabbed a bottle of water, bagging it along with the pack of gum. “That’s on the house.” She shushed Lexi’s protestations. “Allah smite me if I let you take that stuff without water.”

  “You don’t even know my name.” Lexi glanced at the woman’s nametag: Behar. The pain pent up since the café bombing rose up through her chest and constricted her throat. Lexi found herself fighting to steady her voice. “If you knew the things I’ve done…”

  “Are they so bad, these things?” Behar’s dark eyes pierced Lexi’s. “I don’t know what you’re running from. You have that look—the look of all runaways. But I will tell you what I tell my children. The caged bird sings sadly and dies quickly. Your heartstrings are not shoelaces—they were never meant to be knotted. It is important to set things free. You begin with yourself. And maybe a tissue.” She slipped a packet of tissues into the plastic bag, her glaring eyes daring Lexi to reach for her wallet. “I don’t need to know your name, my friend. Sometimes it’s better to know less.”

  So Lexi picked up the bag and coffee with one hand, pocketing her receipt with the other. Her fingers brushed against the two shards she’d saved from her broken bathroom mirror. Careful not to cut herself, she extracted one of the pieces from her coat pocket and set it on the counter. The glass glittered beneath the artificial light.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

  “The best conversations happen in the dead of night.” Behar picked up the shard and hid it inside the cash register. She smiled. “Always choose the night shift. It might shorten your life, but you meet the most wonderful people.”

  30 / El Greco

  “Perhaps they are not stars but,

  rather, openings in Heaven,

  where the love of our lost ones

  shines down to let us know

  they are happy.”

  –Eskimo Legend

  Lexi skirted around South Astoria. She spared a glance for the townscape of jagged roofs and straggly tree branches, of rough edges that snagged the sky and made it bleed starlight. The snow glowed beneath the moon, transforming night into ethereal day. The other towns seemed less mystical in the moonlight, less surreal, less viciously attached to her heartstrings, more easily passed.

  She kept going.

  An hour later, Lexi reached the rollicking hills that marked her entry to the valley. There was the familiar winery, cracks of light outlining its shuttered windows. She switched off her headlights. The serpentine road took her where she knew it would, the pick-up’s tires shredding the earth’s snake-skin of snow. Trees flanked the road on both sides, some of them centuries old, some of them stretching their branches to greet this old vehicle and that familiar girl. The woods appeared ghostly and white-washed, streaked with shadows.

  And there was the factory.

  Lexi drove right up to the garage door and killed the engine. She sat for a moment in her seat, very still. Yang sat beside her, a statue with his ears perked to their fullest. Such silence. She grabbed her flashlight and got out of the truck.

  El Greco welcomed her the only way it could: with the mere reality of its existence. It reared before her, blackened and fire-eaten, patched up with boards and withered shrubbery. A war veteran strapped to his wheelchair of ground, mutilated and motionless. But when Lexi stepped closer, she saw the writing. A mess of languages, only some of which she recognized, covering an entire wall. Anarchist messages. Inspirational slogans. Poetic eulogies.

  Each phrase a reminder. Each word a riot.

  Lexi ran back to the pick-up and lifted the floor mat of the driver’s seat. Her fingers wrapped around the cold metal of her spare keys. It’d been years since she’d reached for them, yet the motion was so instinctive. The snow crunched under her boots as she ran back to the metal box pinned to the wall next to the garage door. Yang leapt from the pick-up and came to stand beside her. She didn’t have to go this way. The fire had eaten at the other walls; there were openings big enough for her to fit through.

  But it felt right.

  Lexi unlocked the box and pushed it once, gently. It recoiled, its little door springing open. She touched the black knob and twisted it. The metal door began to roll open as Lexi held her breath. Its parts creaked like the bones of a giant roused from his slumber, like a Lazarus that had hidden his flaming heart within fireproof walls, patiently sleeping as the comatose do.

  The smell hit her first. Mold. Dampness. Cold lifeless things.

  Within, there was a darker sort of silence, as if the building had been holding its breath for so long it had forgotten how to breathe. The moonlight shone down on the snow-shrouded undergrowth, scorched and rusty tools, and the glassmaking furnaces Lexi had never thought she’d see again.

  “Come on,” she urged Yang.

  Whoever burned the building was unaware or uncaring that Elias had designed the stone skeleton of the structure himself with all the logic and craftsmanship of a seasoned engineer. He’d made it resistant to earthquakes, lightning, and fire. The flames had smudged the stone floor, had blackened the two remaining mirrors of the ceiling fixed to metal beams, had befouled the iron furnaces and tools, and had obliterated most of the ceiling’s wooden rafters to let in the elements. The fire had burnt through most of the tables, the benches, and the wooden studio shelves. Luckily, before he’d shut down El Greco, Elias had disposed of every explosive chemical. He’d made a show of burning some notebooks in front of the employees, ignoring Marc’s protestations and Evy’s tears.

  Except it hadn’t been luck.

  It had been a show.

  And just as Lexi discovered—using a second key to unlock the basement storage room, crowing with delight—he’d hidden the most essential tools, ingredients, and books in airtight metal containers. She knelt by each box and wept with joy as she lifted the contents into the cold air, her fingers tracing each blowtorch and notebook reverently. At the bottom she unearthed a lumpy glass bowl.

  It was badly made, ugly as hell, and a twelve-year-old’s masterpiece.

  Lexi had thought her father had given up. She’d been sure of that, and she’d hated him for it. The containers stared up at her, broadcasting a different story. There were more boxes, too, filled with blankets and bottles of water and canned food. There were the resumes and portfolios of the artisans, sealed in waterproof bags. Elias had preserved everything they’d battled for. He never told his family he’d set fire to the place himself. He’d fought for the truth until it had killed his future, maimed his family, and deported him to the nation’s most solitary prison.

  It was her turn now.

  Part Six

  Fear is a question, really.

  What are you afraid of, and why? There’s a history to every horror. Fear is a training master whom you run from or you face. Defining your backstory is the prelude to the story. That’s how you solve fear.

  You rewrite it.

  31 / Companions

  “Poetry and painting are done in the same way you make love; it’s an exchange of blood, a total embrace—without caution, without any thought of protecting yourself.”

  –
Joan Miró

  They say you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

  Lexi found a sheet of ugly brown tarp in the basement and scaled the rubble to nail her plastic roof in place. It wasn’t large enough to cover the entire factory, but it covered one end, where the furnaces were and where she worked. It protected her from the worst of the snow and the rain in the day; at night she slept in the basement. She unearthed a ladder from storage, too, and began to scrub the walls and the mirrors. She gathered the ingredients from the containers. She even went to town, twice, wearing all her snow-gear and bundling half her face up with a scarf, and bought firewood and coals and lighters. In the dead of winter, her choices of purchase and of clothing caused no suspicions.

  It took her two weeks to revive El Greco.

  Thanks to her own stash and Elias’ underrated foresight, she wouldn’t be running out of food any time soon. She collected snow in bottles and Yang foraged for himself in the forest. She thanked God for her father’s stubborn insistence to add a tiny water-closet to the back of the storage room ten years ago; the fire had ruined the main floor bathrooms. She tempered the icy showers by drying herself before a roaring furnace.

  Lexi could be more useful—more dangerous—here than anywhere else.

  Her old life ended two weeks ago. Lexi sent a text to Pappou, telling him she’d accepted her friend’s invitation to spend some extra time touring that side of America while freelancing for her office. She regretted the text almost as soon as she’d sent it. She did not want to lie to him anymore. She should not have to.

  For his sake, though, she had no choice.

  Yang could not assist Lexi with lighting furnaces, but he bit the handles of tools and dragged them to her when she pointed at them. He could not mix silver nitrate and sodium hydroxide, but he sniffed out bags of ammonia and sugar. When Lexi donned her face mask and gathered silica sand, he learned to leave her with her chemicals and went to hunt rabbits. He sometimes brought her back a carcass. God knew she had enough ovens to choose from.

  The wolf was not her sole companion. She had her demons, too.

  You can’t run from them, as Lexi discovered. Changing cities doesn’t help, either; you carry them along inside you. You just wake up one day, fed up, and decide to snuggle with them instead. You invite them along as you go about your day, balancing them on your shoulders as you would a toddler, but with very strict conditions: You will not set fire to my hair. You will not take candy from strangers. You will not tie me up in chains while I sleep. You will behave.

  And Lexi’s demons, allowed to come close, sat on her shoulder. They waved to the angels perched on her other shoulder and struck up a conversation with Lexi.

  What’s that noise? her demons asked, sidling close to her ear.

  Oh that? Lexi massaged her temples. It’s the air whistling through the hole in my heart.

  You’re afraid, they taunted.

  I am, she admitted. Afraid of the sky falling. Afraid of the tight-rope snapping. Afraid I can’t dance well enough on the edge. Afraid there are no hands to steady my body. Afraid of hands that wish to cage my heart.

  Lexi learned things from these dialogues. It wasn’t so much that Dominic had left her, tearing a hole through her world as he exited; it was that fate had helped her escape from his retracting claws. How could it be otherwise since she could not now dream of captivity, did not want to be tamed, and no longer cared to be draped with selfish arms and empty promises?

  She looked at Yang sometimes and wondered. Wolves were never meant to be tamed. Why succumb to a human touch? Was there an innate gnawing of loyalty or a curiosity for submission, a newfound liking for cooperation and empathy? Or perhaps it was, simply, that wolves were not afraid to try.

  There are words that unbind people, Lexi realized also. Anger could drop like a guillotine between two bodies, severing heartstrings and soulmates. Anger fueled sometimes by lies and sometimes by truths. There were words that freed you, pushing you off the cliff, and sometimes you fell and sometimes you flew. You learned if you had wings of your own, of your need to defy gravity, and that heights were best appreciated after a plummet. Words were powerful things, giving life and taking it. Words written in the waves would be washed to distant horizons. Words written in the sands would disappear beneath the wind. Words written in stone could be pocketed and carried with you wherever you went.

  Coward, the demons goaded.

  Yet I dance. Lexi smiled as she stirred her alchemy of sand and soda. I’m a rebellious doormat. Our day comes too, you know. Our niceness dies a little. We roll up to trip the people who kick us. We realize that we don’t want to be doormats any longer; we reincarnate into something altogether different. We transform, like sand to glass. We become magic carpets.

  Magic carpets, the demons scoffed. Their laughter rebounded off the walls and caused the angels to clap their hands over their ears. Magic carpets!

  Magic carpets, Lexi agreed cheerfully. She added a dose of lead oxide to her mixture for the softness and the sparkle. Her eyes twinkled as she envisioned the completed mirror.

  The demons shriveled at her joy.

  32 / Tokens

  “But the world turns,

  and even legends change;

  and somewhere there is a border, and sometime,

  perhaps, someone will decide to cross it,

  however well-guarded its thorns may be.”

  –Robin McKinley, The Door in the Hedge

  Jerry parked in the lot between the university library and Sheffield Hall. The Hall, named after its donor, housed the offices of the campus’ chemistry and physics professors. Jerry wrapped his jacket and scarf more tightly around him as he got out, locked the car, and strode up the path towards the brick building’s main door. He smiled to see a few lights still burning in both buildings; one of the things he loved about this campus was the quantity of nerds who were happy to burn the midnight oil. The sense of others quietly studying and working around him, well into the night, comforted him with a vague sense of camaraderie.

  Granted, he hadn’t meant to work late tonight. He hated driving in snowfall and it had been a long day already. But Professor Fenwick had promised his students they’d be receiving their graded midterms in the morning. Jerry, as his teaching assistant, had to deliver. Jerry, as usual, had forgotten. So Jerry, as necessary, now strode through the empty halls of the dark building until he reached his own office to retrieve the stack of ungraded exams.

  Nearly having reached his department’s offices, he bumped shoulders with someone who rounded the corner of the hallway.

  “Sorry!” she said. The stranger hurried down the hall in the opposite direction before Jerry could voice his own apology. Despite the brightly lit hall, he didn’t get a good look at her face, shadowed as it was within the hood of her red coat.

  When Jerry reached his office, absentmindedly left unlocked as usual, he didn’t bother flicking on the lights. The light from the hall seemed plentiful enough, and he knew where he’d forgotten the papers. He strode to his desk, one hand outstretched towards the table, the other raised to his mouth to cover a yawn.

  The yawn never emerged. It morphed, instead, into a gape.

  In any other circumstance, that would have bothered him; it was like being unable to sneeze when you felt that you had to. Now, though, Jerry lost all inklings of tiredness. He rubbed his eyes, just to be sure. He pinched himself, wincing at the reassuring pain.

  Jerry remembered the last time he’d seen himself in a mirror. It’d been years ago. He’d been in El Greco, scribbling down a formula in his notebook, copying from Gabriel’s books. He had heard the factory would be shut down by the agents who’d visited them a couple of days prior, wearing their dark gray suits and their light gray eyes that glinted in the daylight like shards of ice. Jerry didn’t dare think of what they’d do to the notebooks. Elias had rushed into the factory that morning, unconventionally late, and began to smash mirrors and rip notebooks, roaring at the emplo
yees to leave. Jerry had caught one last look of his own face—many skewed repetitions of his face—in the mirror that had been closest to him, a web of bloodied cracks indicating where the mirror had just been punctured by Elias’s fist. Jerry remembered thinking how odd it was for Elias to make a scene. But perhaps would have been how he, too, would have reacted when faced with death threats towards his family.

  Jerry now edged closer to the small mirror as the little letters caught his eye. At the bottom right, where an artist would sign a painting, someone had written something in black marker.

  If Jerry had any glimmerings of doubt as to who could have created such a mirror—paired with the maddening recklessness of leaving such an object in an unlocked office in plain view—that inkling vanished immediately. He knew the handwriting. He understood the message. He picked up the mirror and tucked it into the folds of his coat.

  He forgot, again, the midterm papers on his desk.

  . . .

  Sia stilled in her chair when the knock came at her door.

  She stopped rocking. Slowly, so the wicker of the rocking chair would not creak, she stood up and walked to the unlit fireplace, picking up the fire poker. Well-meaning people didn’t knock on ex-journalists’ doors after midnight. Well-meaning people didn’t drop by without a phone call at all these days. Well-meaning people tended to leave her alone in her little-known Alexandria apartment.

  Someone knocked a second time.

  Maybe just an emergency, she reasoned. Maybe a neighbor got locked out of her apartment and needs to use my phone. Maybe somebody got a flat tire while driving by. None of those scenarios appealed to her but she could envision far worse ones. She’d been having nightmares lately of dark-suited men arriving at her door and ushering her into the gleaming jaws of their black vehicles. She had never told anyone she could See, of course. But no matter how well she hid, the truth would get out eventually. It always did. Her industry depended on it.