Fresh.
In the stairwell, Derek carries me up three flights of stairs. Then he carries me to the dock where, with his eyes closed, he pulls the knife from my body. He doesn’t want the others to see it. I’m slack in his arms as he lays me in one of the Tètai’s Omnis. Underwater, he finds two black, battered, sunken mobiles—one belonging to Lucas and one to Kitaneh. In both pits, gray-haired skeletal frames. Time caught up.
Then . . . the Bone Vault.
My body arrives like a rainstorm no one sees coming. One minute the sky is fine. The next, everything’s changed. Under a vertebrae chandelier, Derek lowers my body down onto the stone. If I could feel, it would be cold.
There, he waits.
I watch as the Cloud pulls up to the dock, solemn. Aven hangs back in the boat with Benny, telling the others to go without her.
There is a part of me that rejects the in-between universe—that still thinks of life as mine—and hates myself for making Aven come here. It’s the part that still calls myself “I,” even when I don’t exist.
She wonders if she wants to see me at all.
Ter’s first through the canopy of clavicles. Oh, Ter. Still a teddy bear, even rocking those Blue fatigues. For some reason, I never thought of him as a brother. Maybe it’s because I had Aven. I just didn’t consider adding more to the list. Not until now, hearing him call me “sister,” do I realize how blind I’d been. Afraid.
Callum follows. His eyes are shiny from tears he’s not allowing himself. When he looks at my body, I hear every word he never said—his wishing that he’d tried to kiss me, just once, to see if I’d kiss back. In the void, I realize I would have, but then I’d wish I hadn’t.
My blood was too angry for his. Too volatile. I needed a mistake-maker. Someone who’d understand what selfish felt like. He stands over my body, with all his wishing, very still. He knows why he never tried.
Benny’s back in the Cloud, too weak to make it into the Bone Vault. He lays on the gurney and in his mind, calls me his child—an answer to a question I’d never been brave enough to think. In a dark corner of my heart, it existed only as a hope . . . that I could choose my father, same as I chose my sister.
Aven is last to cross the threshold. She’s trying not to imagine stepping inside a beast that eats other beasts, then swallows their bones whole. She stands in the shadow of a candlelit gaping jaw. It flickers against the wall. Ter tries to take her hand, but she’s limp, unable to hold him back.
She thinks I’ve betrayed her by leaving. She doesn’t want to feel that way; it doesn’t seem right. But she feels it nonetheless. In a whirlwind of white hair, she rushes for my body. Falls to the stone. The cry she makes must come from someplace else—it can’t be from her. It’s too wild, too monstrous and hurting. She’s only fourteen. She shouldn’t know how to make that sound.
Holding my hand to her cheek, I hear her yell, “She’s cold—” It shakes me even here in the nothing. “She needs a blanket!”
If my mother’s tears were my first rainfall, Aven’s are my last.
“How could you leave me?” she cries into my palm, kissing it over and over. Folding my slack arm around her shoulders, she lays on the stone beside me. Her voice is a whisper I hear through the universe’s ears, and not my own. “Come back? Please?”
I don’t have a beating heart to break.
Patient, the absence watches as I reach for the closed fist of this universe. Moments ago—days . . . years—I was given a choice. Wrestling with the fist, I howl, “I want my choice back! I’m cashing in now; you have no say!”
I wait for its answer, but the language of the universe is silence.
“Do you hear?” I shout again, and then I wonder . . . Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it isn’t even listening.
Maybe its eyes are still closed—
Its equal, yet opposite, reaction hasn’t been met.
Without a heart to break, I break the void instead. I claw toward the spectrum, scraping off the tunnel’s black like it’s a bad paint job. The absence doesn’t fight me, but my body does. Without the universe’s help—its eyes still closed to me—I have to do its work.
I have to put myself together, alone.
I crawl inside my body and find no blood. None but what’s left in the chamber of my unmoving heart. Still in this between place, this megacosmic corridor, I use its eyes, which are everywhere.
I look only for one thing: a single molecule.
I find it where the blade is no longer lodged. One droplet of springwater in my stomach’s viscera, waiting. I call it up through my veins, sailing it into muscle. Right vena cava, right atrium, right ventricle. Artery. I bathe the watery molecule in a pool of blue blood. Lungs, veins. Left atrium, ventricle.
Aorta.
Like a mother singing to a child, I sing to my own heart.
Rules unbreak.
The equal, yet opposite, reaction reacts. Black gives way to color, and the gravity of bodies and hearts and hands greets me. Absence and its tunneling vortex of nothing whorls away. It leaves me and my body for another time.
The Earthbound universe opens its eyes.
It does, and so do I.
EPILOGUE
AVEN
24 HOURS LATER
Blue and gold fireworks burst, splashing over the Milky Way and a clear, moonless night. In the Cloud, they arc over the strait from both coastlines—the Ward and the West Isle. Sparks fall over our heads like a wedding veil made of stars. No tricks, no tests. Just thousands of people and their wild rooftop rumpus.
Tomorrow, we’ll begin repairing the pipes in preparation for a five-year supply of Falls’ fresh. And next year, we’ll be piping off the Minetta Brook, so it’ll be ready before the contract with Harcourt runs out. Chief Dunn sent my recording to his own comm, in case the magistrate ever has second thoughts about the deal.
I poke Ren with my entire finger—almost. The fingernails never grew back, but I don’t mind. Their absence reminds me how much I nearly lost. “You want to watch?” I ask, but she’s dead asleep, curled in my lap.
I’ve been poking her every so often to make sure she’s not dead dead. Each time, she swats me away, and each time, immediately after, she grabs my finger. She falls back asleep just like that, without letting go. I’ve had to alternate poking hands.
A spray of brack fans over the Cloud, wetting everyone—Callum and Derek cover their heads. Not Ter at the helm, and certainly not me or Ren. We don’t even feel it. It could be snowing and I don’t think we’d care.
“You have arrived at your destination: 40°46'42.46"N, 74° 0'11.37"W” the Voice Nav announces. It’s a mouthful, even for a robot. Green froth churns against the Cloud’s hull as Ter slows the engine.
“We’re here,” Callum says, but he doesn’t look ready. “Derek, did Sipu comm you anything else?”
Derek shakes his head.
“We’re here,” I echo, tickling Ren’s ear. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”
Ren mumbles something not even I can translate. When she opens her eyes, the first thing she does is close them again. “We’re here?” she says, nestling closer.
“Here we are,” I answer, and I smush her nose. Ter cuts the engine. In the rough water, the Cloud bobs up and down.
Ren sits up like a bullet, remembering what we’ve come to do. Across the Cloud, she exchanges a nervous look with Derek. He’s in his all-black wet suit, rubber flippers on his feet. New silver streaks already shine in his copper hair. Kneeling, he pulls a vial from his backpack and drinks a sip. After this, he has only one more vial left.
“We’ll find the second bag,” Ren says. “She must’ve tossed it before the crash. Sipu wouldn’t have commed you otherwise.”
Derek nods, fixing his mask. He throws an oxygen tank over his back, and like a penguin in his awkward flippers, steps over the rail. Callum gives a hopeful pat on the shoulder as Derek drops into the strait.
Water splashes around him in an O—the underwater light strapped to his
tank looks like a sinking sun as he swims through bright turquoise. We watch until we can’t see him anymore, when Terrence turns to Ren.
He reaches into his pocket. “For you,” he says, handing her a crumpled envelope. “Miss Nale caught me at Benny’s as I was picking up the Cloud.”
The paper is old, stained brown with time. It reads: Renata in handwritten cursive letters. She tenses up, holding the letter and staring at it. I touch her elbow.
Shaking herself, she glances south down the strait.
The mourning barge is still burning.
Ren was awake to see Governor Dunn push it from the DI dock. She watched until her mother and father were no more than a hot blaze smoking up the stars.
“Tell me if it’s worth it,” she says, pulling soft, clothlike paper from the envelope and handing it to me.
It wilts in my hands like a dead plant. Holding it stiff, I read. By the time I reach the signature, Ever your loving mother, Emilce Voss, I’m crying.
“Good or bad?”
I nod, sniffing, and I wipe my nose.
“Jeez,” Ren says, rolling her eyes as she swipes the letter. “If you’re blubbering and it’s from my dead mom, I’m gonna be a train wreck. Who here has steel tear ducts they’d care to loan?”
Callum holds out his hand. She gives him a weak smile before passing the letter. “Thank you.”
“‘For you, Ren,’” he reads, softly looking at her once before continuing. “‘This story begins long before I was born.
“‘Hundreds of years ago, my husband’s ancestor wrote of a spring with miraculous properties. Hundreds of years later, my husband found that same spring. He left with enough water to prolong his life for decades, thinking he’d be able to return.
“‘But the Wash Out destroyed any trace of this spring.
“‘Many years later, I met this man, Harlan Voss. Young and in love, he shared his water with me. Knowing the spring flowed from an underground river, he believed he would find it again.
“‘Then came the assassination attempts. He was on the right track. The spring still existed, somewhere—but it was being protected. Harlan dreamed of eradicating death—he thought it was a disease. He wanted to “revolutionize life.”
“‘I became pregnant.
“‘My child, a baby girl, was born dead. The umbilical cord had wrapped around her neck, denying her air for twenty minutes.
“‘But her death was not permanent. . . .
“‘Screaming into life, she was returned to me. The water had changed her—that was the only explanation.
“‘I couldn’t keep my girl. . . . I didn’t trust my husband. Harlan Voss had become Governor Voss, a man who sought greatness for the UMI, power and immortality for himself, and me. But his supply of water was dwindling, and he was growing desperate. I didn’t like the things I heard him say—horrifying plans to force the Tètai’s hand and provide him with the spring’s location.
“‘I was afraid he’d keep my girl hidden away in a lab, unlocking the mystery of her rebirth. So I asked my stepsister, Ann—you know her as Miss Nale—to care for you. In your name lies the secret of your birth:
“‘Renata.
“‘“Reborn.”
“‘How cruel that I knew you’d be safer without us.
“‘As your mother, perhaps it’s selfish that this comes to you so late, but you must hear me: I have been in love with you from the moment you were a hope to the moment you were a truth. From the day you died to the day you came back, and every day thereafter.
“‘Ann tells me of your friend Aventine—how she keeps you grounded, and you raise her up. She worries because the girl has begun to look sick, and you’ve grown so protective.
“Renata, know this: death is not the end. You will meet your soul mates, and they will be with you even when the day comes that they are gone. That is how soul mates work.
“‘Do not fear Aven’s death.
“‘Do not fear your own either.
“‘Life is both a give and a take. The sweet and the bitter. Without either, the other cannot exist. I have learned that living forever is not as important as living well. So let life be the wondrous thing it is, with all its fullness and frailty, and yes, its horrors. Without those things, it is not life.
“‘I am sorry for everything that I know to be sorry for, and I am also sorry for the many things I don’t.
“‘I love you.
“‘Ever your loving mother, Emilce Voss.’”
When Callum stops reading, Ren’s eyes glisten but her face is tough. She takes the letter back and carefully, she stuffs it into its envelope.
“Good or bad?” I ask.
“Good enough.”
Again she looks south. Now the horizon is dark. The barge has sunk.
A circle of light rises from underwater. Derek’s head breaks the surface, brack rippling against the boat. He hoots, holding up a large, clear, waterproof sack.
He climbs the ladder back into the boat and lowers our buried treasure. It rolls a few times before coming to a complete stop. We circle around, frozen.
“She really did it,” Ter says softly. For a moment, we’re all quiet.
Sipu is gone, under the water, and we’re not. We can’t even say thank you. They’re homeless words.
Callum kneels. He undoes the clasp at the top of the bag and it folds open. Peering inside, he laughs. “It’s all here,” he says, awed, pulling out the smaller, individually wrapped sacks. “Rocks, algae, fungus, water.”
“Now you can make more?” I ask.
“I can.”
“So . . . what are you guys gonna do with it?” Ter lowers down, taking a look at the piecemeal ecosystem before Callum stuffs it back into the bag.
“We,” Ren corrects. She’s thinking something. “What if . . . we gave it away?”
Of course the others gawk at her. They don’t know what she means.
I do. Our eyes meet, brains firing off in exactly the same places, arriving at exactly the same conclusions.
“Callum, you’d have to get rid of the immortality phyto-things,” I say. “But you could make more medicine—lots of medicine . . . for viruses and for tumors. Or for people who lost limbs.”
Ren nods. She bites back a smile. “We’ll travel . . . not just to the UMI. We’ll go to the Mainland, Upstate. And we won’t ask for money.”
Derek laughs as he sits down, his wet suit pooling around him. “A new sort of Tètai . . . ,” he muses.
“We’ll come in the night,” Ren says theatrically, pretending to hold a sword.
I jump forward and I point to the sky. “Wearing masks!”
With a heavy gust of wind, Ren lowers her fake sword. “Naturally,” she says, glancing up. She loses herself, absorbed by the night.
“Whatcha looking at?” I ask, leaning against her shoulder.
She shrugs. “Just the black.”
Another gust sweeps the purple clouds from the sky, freeing Orion and a dozen more immortal warriors. They can stalk the night now. They’re watching us. Maybe Athena’s even there.
Stepping away from the rail, Ren curls her arms around me. We press foreheads. The old president on my copper penny meets the old president on hers—head to head, luck to luck, skill to skill.
“Can we really do this?” I whisper into her ear. “Can we keep it safe?”
Something growls in the sky. Millions of light years away, stellar dust shivers. Immortal beasts bare their teeth, protecting immortal things.
“The universe did not see this coming,” Ren says, grinning, but I’m not sure what she means.
The night wind shouldn’t taste like promise if it did.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There’s a saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Well, similarly, it took nearly the entire island of Manhattan (and some very special New Jerseyites) to help bring The Ward and The Isle into the world. Thank you, Lauren Frankel, my brilliant cousin, who set the ball in motion. She showed me he
r copy of The Hunger Games, and YA had me hooked.
To Claudia Gabel: Life changed in the most wonderful ways because of you. I’m forever grateful that I got to be in your MediaBistro class, and that you wanted to take a chance on me (and Ren!). You’re made of nothing but pure, Grade A fairy dust.
Thank you, Ben Rosenthal, for your editorial eye, and for your patience as I caught up. The Isle would be a cartoon without you.
Thank you to my agent, Ginger Clark. You continue to be my cloak of invisibility and my Excalibur all in one.
Carol Fitzgerald and Tom Donadio and everyone else at the Book Report Network, you taught me about the book world. This process would have been far scarier were it not for TBRN. Thank you! Rebecca and Jeremy Wallace-Segall, thank you for sharing Writopia with me—I am immeasurably better for it, in ways I’m continuing to understand. Linn Prentis, for showing me the SF/sci-fi ropes. I learned so much during our time working together! Thank you, Jaimee Garbacik, Elyse Tanzillo, and Frank Weimann, for taking a chance on a poetry grad. Jaimee, for your creative editorial support early on. And Elyse . . . Oh, Elyse. What would these books be you? You are my human deus ex machina, a miraculous fix from above swooping in at the last minute.
Thank you Ryan Elwood, Seastar, for living in the water with me. I love you, Adam Courtney, for my stellar website photos and for your esoteric knowledge on the habits of villains. You know far too much to be one of the good guys. Kurt Ritta, for your cabin in the woods; Amy Dupcek, for our “writing” dates—I REGRET NOTHING; Aurora Wells . . . for you; Lindsay Turner, for being my rainbow; Jenny Williamson, for being a brain I adore storming around with.
Justin Barad, you are my very own Dr. Justin Corey/Callum Pace. You deserve a medal and a real PhD for all the hours you spent on the phone with me, researching. Frederic Pryor, Senior Research Scholar of Economics at Swarthmore College, for discussing the economics of a water stress situation with me; Germán Mora, Department Chair of Environmental Studies at Goucher College, for a crash course in climate change; and Pat Rivera, of the Museum of Indian Culture in Allentown, Pennsylvania, for providing me with information about how the Lenni Lenape people lived in this area during the time of Dutch settlement.
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