Nil on Fire

by Lynne Matson

  “He will,” Rives said with confidence. “He’ll set everyone on the right track. Have faith in him, Skye.”

  “I did,” I said quietly.

  But something had changed. Something had changed Paulo’s mind, changed his choice—and maybe changed Paulo himself.

  And I had no idea what this Paulo was doing now.

  Choose me, the girl had said. It was Nil. The island had forced me to choose once; now it was asking. It was giving me the chance—and the choice—to do what was right. To correct my mistake, and finish what I started.

  Regardless of what Paulo was doing on the other side, I had to block that gate. I had to be on the Death Twin on the Summer Solstice. I had to stop Nil once and for all.

  And I wasn’t meant to go alone.

  That revelation rushed through me like light.

  “I want you to come with me, Rives.” I grabbed his arm, speaking fast. “To the Death Twin on the Summer Solstice. You convinced Maaka once, and you might have to do it again. Or convince someone else equally determined to keep this crazy tradition going.” I knew Rives would loathe the idea of getting anywhere near Nil. “I know it’s asking a lot, after all you’ve been through. But I really want you to come with me. I don’t want to do this alone.”

  He smiled slowly, that melty Rives smile that made the rest of the world fall away, lighting his gorgeous green eyes from within. Only this time, his eyes burned a little too bright, as if there were too much emotion threatening to spill out the edges.

  “Skye.” He shook his head slightly, his voice rough. “You didn’t even need to ask.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  RIVES

  JUNE 10, NIGHT

  Nil nightmare round two had begun.

  Or maybe the first one never ended.

  The sick thing was, the latest installment of the twisted Nil saga had caught me completely off guard. You’d think by now I’d be used to the unexpected, but where Nil was concerned, I was more than a slow learner. It was like I had a Nil blind spot. I tended not to see the twists coming.

  Not a happy thought. Or a safe one.

  Thad constantly cautioned, Eyes wide open.

  Always, I’d think.

  But now? Now I worried that even with my eyes wide open, the blind spot was still there, keeping me from seeing the truth. Keeping me from seeing the danger. Putting all of us at risk. Putting Skye at risk. And that was the worst part. Skye was in danger, and I finally saw it, thanks to the roaring blackness in her head so large that my blind spot didn’t matter. Her dad knew it too.

  It was written all over his face as she outlined her latest plan to revisit the Death Twin on the Summer Solstice.

  “Let me talk to your mother,” he said quietly. Then he looked at me. “Rives, a quick word?”

  Skye crossed her arms. “Anything you can say to Rives you can say to me.”

  “Not everything.” Her dad’s expression didn’t change. “We need a guys’ moment. Father to boyfriend. We won’t be long.”

  Skye rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed.

  Pulling me into his office, the professor put his hand on my shoulder with a grip so firm that movement wasn’t an option. “Rives, I know Skye. And I know you do too. Which tells me that she’s going to that Death Twin, with or without us.” His jaw ticked. “Clearly you agree with me, because you’ve already agreed to go.”

  I nodded.

  “So we’ll go with her. Hopefully she’s right, that blocking the gate—that changing an islander’s mind—will end the vicious Nil cycle once and for all. But something tells me there’s greater danger on that Death Twin than Skye appreciates, and you’re the only one who can keep her safe. Promise me that you’ll watch out for my daughter.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  Skye’s dad studied me. “I hope you can keep that promise.” He sighed. He dropped his hand, then ran it through his hair. “And Rives?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Whatever you do”—his voice was dangerously quiet—“you keep her away from that gate. At all costs. You understand? Do not let her go back.”

  Ice shot down my spine.

  At all costs. Do not let her go back.

  Merde.

  Despite her denial, deep down Skye was considering a return trip to Nil. Her dad saw it, and now, so did I. Maybe Skye didn’t see it yet; maybe she wouldn’t admit it to herself. Hell, I’d barely considered the sick idea, because I hadn’t wanted to. But why else would she want Thad to look at the journal?

  And then it clicked.

  To save Paulo.

  That’s why she wants to go back.

  It was a miracle the Bracken house wasn’t full of stray dogs and cats; Skye’s urge to rescue things in distress had few limits.

  She’d even rescued me.

  But to go back to Nil? The idea shook me to the core.

  “Rives?” The professor pinned me with his gaze. “Promise me. Do not let her go back.”

  “You have my word,” I said.

  As I walked out of his office, I fervently hoped I could keep that promise. All I knew for sure was that I’d die trying. I just hoped it didn’t come to that. But where Nil was concerned, nothing was a given.

  Skye sat in the living room, a look of satisfaction on her face, her phone in her hand. My gut said her plotting had reached epic proportions.

  “Guess what?” She was beaming. “I just talked to Charley. Instead of meeting us in Seattle, she and Thad are going to meet us in Hawaii. They’re going to the Death Twin with us.”

  “You’re joking.” I stared at her, shocked. “Thad would never agree to that. And they can’t afford it anyway.”

  “He did.” Skye smiled. “And they can. They only have to fly from Seattle, remember? And they’re using money they saved for our summer trip. Charley and I have been talking, and she agrees with my idea. She thinks closure would be good for all of us.”

  Closure. I almost snorted.

  “And Thad actually agreed to this. He jumped right in.” My statement dripped disbelief.

  Skye had the grace to blush. “Well, at first he yelled something in the background that sounded like Hell, no, but then eventually he said he’d go. Well, specifically he said”—Skye made air quotes with her fingers—“‘There’s no way in hell Charley’s getting anywhere near Nil without me.’ He said they were a package deal.”

  I could relate on all counts.

  “A road trip, then.” I studied her carefully. “But Skye, listen to me. This trip ends at the Death Twin. No farther. We are not going back to Nil.”

  “You have my word,” she said solemnly.

  But her mind was closed, like her expression.

  She was up to something, and I didn’t like it.

  I had ten days to figure it out.

  CHAPTER

  21

  NIL

  MORNING

  Paulo stared at Hafthor, wondering what in the world this kid was doing. Scratch that, Paulo thought. He had absolutely no idea what this man was doing.

  Hafthor was a hulking beast of a person, crouched over a trio of small wooden houses crafted against a black boulder at the City’s edge, his blond hair falling into his eyes while he worked. Stepping back, Hafthor regarded the middle house intently. Broken white shells defined the houses’ open windows and doors, all facing the sea, all slightly misshapen, like the houses themselves. Both Hafthor and the tiny houses looked incredibly out of place, a man toying with a child’s playthings in a place where there were no children and never would be.

  “What are you doing?” Paulo flicked his eyes from Hafthor to the houses and back again.

  “Finishing the roof,” Hafthor answered. He tenderly placed another bundle of coconut husks on top of the tiny wooden structure, a giant holding fragile matchsticks.

  “I see that,” Paulo said dryly. “But why?”

  “Because it’s not finished yet.”

  Paulo rubbed his forehead, wondering how
he’d ended up stuck on the island with a person who not only had zero sense of humor, but who also might not be fully stocked in the sanity department either. Hafthor was a strange one. He hadn’t reacted when Paulo had given him the rundown about the island, the year deadline, and the only avenue of escape: gates. Daily ones, unpredictable and wild, and the equinox gate, still months away. Hafthor had simply nodded, then walked away to digest the information that Paulo had dropped on him.

  That had been weeks ago, and Hafthor hadn’t mentioned any of it since.

  With care, Hafthor adjusted the husk roof on the middle house.

  Paulo sighed. “Why the houses, Hafthor? There’s a ton of stuff for us to do. Like go find people who may need help, and hope. We don’t have time for playhouses.”

  Hafthor’s head jerked up. “These are not playthings. These are for the hidden people.”

  “The hidden people,” Paulo repeated. He took a small step back.

  Hafthor nodded. “My mother taught us the Icelandic legends, including tales of the hidden people. Hidden people are real, and you must do all you can to give them a home and make them happy.” Hafthor’s blue eyes clouded. “We are not alone here. There are hidden people; people here we cannot see. I feel them. And Paulo … the hidden people are not happy.”

  Paulo couldn’t argue with that. He stared at the tiny houses. They were roughly a foot tall, at most.

  “These hidden people,” Paulo said with curiosity, “they’ll fit in there?” He waved at the dwellings dwarfed by the black boulder.

  “The small ones,” Hafthor said, standing up to his full height. “I can do nothing for the big ones. The island is their home already.”

  An odd chill crawled down Paulo’s spine, an icy finger pressing against bone.

  “Are they—good?” Paulo hated the hitch he heard in his voice, the thread of fear. “The hidden people?”

  Hafthor shrugged. “They can be.”

  But not always, Paulo thought.

  He remembered the boy snatched in the field by a large cat; he remembered the boy fighting briefly and losing swiftly. He remembered other deaths at the hands of different predators, many of them strange. He recalled faces of people lost to the island forever, people stolen by the ultimate predator—the island itself. He never saw the face of the island; it was always hidden, cloaked in secrecy, cloaked in darkness.

  It is dark everywhere here, he’d overheard Michael tell Rives once.

  He felt the truth of that statement in his bones. He’d never spoken with Michael, but he’d watched him from afar, enough to be impressed with his intuition and strength. Michael had been dead right. Paulo had no interest in meeting hidden people if they were in fact here; the very idea of hidden people brought to mind dead people, perhaps people seen by his aunt Rika. Were there island ghosts here, too? The more he stared at the little houses, the less safe he felt.

  “Paulo?”

  He looked up to find Hafthor regarding him intently, his arms folded casually across his chest.

  “Most people are not all good or all bad, true? People are—” Hafthor gestured wildly with both hands as he struggled to find the word. “Complicated.”

  “This place is complicated,” Paulo said slowly. He thought of the island, of all the wild gates he’d seen in the past weeks since Skye left, all the wild gates he’d run like the wind to avoid. But his footing was surer now, as was his path. Ghosts or no ghosts, most things were less complicated than when he’d arrived—like the end date, a year deadline as unmovable as Mount Nil.

  Paulo knew exactly when his end here would come.

  This knowledge gave him a critical measure of comfort, a vital measure of control in a place where he had little. But it wasn’t his time, not yet.

  In this moment, standing beside Hafthor and his odd tiny houses at the City’s edge, Paulo felt an abrupt urge to leave, to go toward the Looking Glass Cavern and show Hafthor the carvings tucked inside. Perhaps this man with a history and culture and stories so different from his island ones—yet equally grounded in the unseen—perhaps this man could find something in the symbols Paulo could not. Perhaps Hafthor could see beyond the carvings, discerning something Paulo had overlooked that would help them all. Because Paulo still hadn’t figured out what happened to him that day on the platform, the day he’d failed Skye. The day he’d lost time. Maybe the carvings would give up a secret he didn’t know to seek, something to help him succeed where he’d once failed.

  Maybe Hafthor wasn’t crazy after all.

  “You’re right.” Paulo nodded. “The island isn’t happy, and I’m trying to figure out why. If you have a minute, there’s something I’d like you to see.”

  Hafthor stepped away from his houses. Perhaps he felt the urge to leave now too, because he followed Paulo without a backward glance.

  *

  It never occurred to Paulo that the urge to leave was not his own, which was precisely as the island intended it to be.

  The island watched, pleased, as the pair strolled north. It knew their destination, their intentions, it even knew their fears; all were found easily near the surface of their minds, all typically human. The male, Paulo, did not like closed spaces; he imagined the walls pressing in as he left the water and entered the Cove’s tunnel. The island had already catalogued this fear to use if needed. The male, Hafthor, was more concerned with what lay beyond the walls, a more rational fear. As those two crept through the narrow passageway, the island felt the thud of their hearts, the pulse of their electria flowing throughout their frail human bodies as water dripped from their skin. As tempting as it was, the island would not take them, not yet.

  But it would take a sip.

  Of them, of time.

  And so it would be.

  Delicious.

  *

  Paulo stepped into the Looking Glass Cavern, blinking against the sudden rush of light and space. He inhaled, drawing a breath so rapidly that a wheeze echoed throughout the underground chamber as his chest expanded and the grip of the tunnel loosened. He’d never tasted such sweet air in his life. He’d always hated when Maaka had brought him here, not because of the cavern; it was the horrible route he had to take to enter it. It didn’t matter whether he took the Cove entrance through the rock passageway above, or the water-filled passageway below. Regardless of his chosen route, his claustrophobia suffocated him to the point of near fainting. It seemed to be getting worse each time he attempted it. If he wasn’t mistaken, the walls of the passageway had narrowed as he walked. As his heart slowed a fraction, Paulo made the snap decision to exit via the underwater route. At least it was shorter.

  Hafthor stared at the walls coated in carvings.

  “This is why you brought me here,” he said. His stance wide, he crossed his arms, facing the wall, settling into himself with a comfort Paulo envied. “To see these carvings.”

  Paulo stepped forward, beside Hafthor. “What do you see?”

  Hafthor studied the wall methodically. “History,” he said softly. He glanced at Paulo. “What do you want me to see?”

  “I don’t know,” Paulo admitted. “A clue. Something I don’t, I guess.” As always, Paulo’s gaze went to the massive diamond, the one with the eye in the middle. It called to him, drew him in. Pulled him in. Time swirled through the cavern, wrapping around Paulo and Hafthor as the two boys stood still, each staring at the carving that spoke to him most, each lost in the moment. The moment passed, as did the next.

  *

  Time marched on, like the island, but the pair didn’t move.

  Around them, the island drank in the echoes of power, of time, faint but delectable, more a tease of what was to come than any true measure of sustenance. The island took what it could, until no echoes were left, until the island grew bored and then frustrated. It wanted more, but time demanded the island wait, at least for this pair. With supreme effort, the island looked elsewhere.

  As always, the island was drawn to the fighter, the female, Carme
n. Strong and predictable, the fighter did not disappoint. Perhaps today the island would disappoint her.

  *

  Carmen regarded Ace with thinly veiled contempt. He was more concerned with his abs than the stealth of his feet. Annoying, she thought. For the hundredth time, she wondered how, in this strange world, she’d managed to get stuck with him.

  Ace smoothed his hair back, tucking a stray strand in place.

  “Come on, pretty boy,” she said with a sigh, her hand instinctively brushing her hip. The metal blade butting against her side reassured her that she was the one in control, regardless of what she let Ace think. “Move faster and try to be quiet, would you?”

  She’d been here several weeks by her count, and so far, the only person she’d found was this fool, Ace. She’d seen lots of animals, strange ones, and more than once she’d had the disturbing thought she was an animal too, stuck in a cage for someone else’s amusement.

  But she was no one’s toy.

  And Ace was certainly not amusing. He wasn’t even entertaining. However, Carmen expected he would come in useful eventually, which was why she allowed him to cling like lint. Plus, at the moment, he was the only other living soul around.

  She didn’t want to think about the body she’d found.

  Thankfully there’d been no bodies in the abandoned settlement, just weapons and food. Located on the west side of the island, thatched-roof houses—huts so rustic they were almost charming—circled a firepit. People had lived here once, and not long ago. Recently enough that the chicken coop still housed birds, with a lovely cache of fresh eggs that Carmen had taken full possession of, along with rope, some knives and a sheath, plus clothes. Shorts and bandanas, the latter wide enough to wrap around her chest and bind it tight. She’d even found twine to secure her hair, and sandals to protect her feet.