by Cynthia Hand
He’s not here.
The weight of it hits me. This is my purpose, and I have failed. All this time I’ve only been thinking about Tucker. I saved him because I didn’t want to live on earth without him. I didn’t want that kind of pain. I’m that selfish. And now Christian is gone. He’s supposed to be important, my mom said.
There was a plan for him, something bigger than me or Tucker or anything else.
Something he was meant for. And now he’s gone.
“Christian!” I scream raggedly, the noise echoing off the blackened tree trunks.
There’s no answer.
* * *
For a while I look for his body. I wonder if it could have been burned into ash, if the fire was that hot. I circle back to the truck. The keys are still in the ignition. That’s the only sign of him. I wander the burned forest in a daze, searching. Then the sun is setting, a fiery red ball descending behind into the mountains. It’s getting dark.
The storm clouds that have been moving in from the east open up and pour like a faucet being turned on. Within minutes I’m soaked to the skin.
Shivering. Alone.
I can’t go home. I don’t think I can stand to see the disappointment on Mom’s face. I don’t think I can live with myself. I walk, cold and wet, strands of hair sticking to my face and neck. I hike to the top of the ridge and watch the fire burning in the distance, the flames licking at the orange sky. It’s beautiful, in a way. The glow. The dance of the smoke. And then there’s the storm, the black rumbling clouds, the little flashes of lightning here and there. The rain so cool on my face, washing away the soot. That’s how it always is, I guess. Beauty and death.
Behind me, something moves in the bushes. I turn.
Christian steps out of the trees.
* * *
Time is a funny thing. Sometimes it crawls endlessly on. Like French class. Or waiting for a fish to bite. And other times it speeds up, the days zooming by. I remember this one time in first grade. I was standing in the middle of the elementary school playground near the monkey bars and a bunch of third graders ran by. They seemed huge to me. Someday, a long, long time from now, I thought at that moment, I will be in third grade. That was more than ten years ago, but it feels like ten minutes. I was just there. Time flies, isn’t that what they say? My summer with Tucker. The first time I had the vision until now.
And sometimes time really does stop.
Christian and I stare at each other like we’re both under a spell and if one of us moves, the other one will disappear.
“Oh, Clara, thank God,” he whispers. “I thought you were dead.”
“You thought I. ”
He reaches to touch a strand of my wet hair. I’m suddenly dizzy. Exhausted. Wildly confused. I sway on my feet. He catches me by the shoulders and steadies me. I press my eyes closed. He’s real. He’s alive.
“You’re soaked,” he observes. He pulls off the black fleece jacket and drapes it around my shoulders.
“Why are you here?” I whisper.
“I thought I was supposed to save you from the fire.”
I stare at him so intently that he flushes.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was a weird thing to say. I meant—”
“Christian—”
“I’m just glad you’re safe. We should get you inside before you catch cold or something.”
“Wait,” I say, tugging at his arm. “Please.”
“I know this doesn’t make any sense. ”
“It makes sense,” I insist, “except for the part where you’re supposed to save me.”
“What?”
“I’m supposed to save you.”
“What? Now I’m confused,” he says.
“Unless. ” I take a few steps back. He starts to follow, but I hold up a trembling hand.
“Don’t be afraid,” he murmurs. “I won’t hurt you. I would never hurt you.”
“Show yourself,” I whisper.
There’s a brief flash of light. When my eyes adjust I see Christian standing under the burned trees. He coughs and looks at his feet almost like he’s ashamed. Sprouting from his shoulder blades are large speckled wings, ivory with black flecks, like someone has splattered him with paint. He flexes them carefully and then folds them into his back.
“How did you.?”
“In your vision, did we meet down there?” I ask, gesturing down toward Fox Creek Road. “You say, ‘It’s you,’ and I say, ‘Yes, it’s me,’ and then we fly away?”
“How do you know that?”
I summon my wings. I know the feathers are dark now, and what that will mean to him, but he deserves to know the truth.
His eyes widen. He lets out an incredulous breath, the way he does when he laughs sometimes. “You’re an angel-blood.”
“I’ve been having the vision since November,” I say, the words tumbling out. “It’s why we moved here. I was supposed to find you.”
He stares at me, stunned.
“But it’s my fault,” he says after a moment. “I didn’t get here on time. I didn’t expect there to be two fires. I didn’t know which one.”
He glances up at me. “I didn’t know it was you at first. It was the hair. I didn’t recognize you with the red hair. Stupid, I know. I knew there was something different about you, I always felt — in my vision you always have blond hair. And for a while that’s all I saw — I’d hear someone walk up behind me, but before I’d turn around completely, the vision would end. I never saw your face until I had the vision at prom.”
“It’s not your fault, Christian. It’s mine. I wasn’t here to meet you. I didn’t save you.”
My voice is loud and shrill in the emptiness of the burned forest. I put my hands over my eyes and will myself not to cry.
“But I didn’t need to be saved,” he says gently. “Maybe we were supposed to save each other.”
From what, I wonder.
I drop my hands to see him walking toward me, reaching out. We aren’t in the vision now, but I still find him beautiful, even wet with rain and smudged with ash. He takes my hands in his.
“You’re alive,” I choke out, shaking my head. He squeezes my hands, then pulls me in for a hug.
“Yeah, that’s good news to me, too.”
One hand strokes slowly down my wings, sending a tremor through me. Then he pulls back and lifts his hand in front of him, looking at it. His palm is black. I stare at it.
“Your wings are covered with soot,” he says with a laugh.
I grab his hand, draw my finger across it, and sure enough, come away with a mix of soot and rain. He wipes his hand against the sides of his jeans.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
“Let’s just play it by ear.” He looks into my eyes again, then down at my lips. Another quake shakes me. He wets his lips, then looks back into my eyes. Asking me.
This could be my second chance. If neither one of us needed saving. What else is there, but this? It seems like we’ve been set up on some kind of heavenly ordained date. We don’t need the fire. We could reenact the vision here and now.
“It was always you,” he says, so close I could feel his breath on my face.
I’m drowning. I do want him to kiss me. I want to make everything right again. To make my mother proud. To do what I am supposed to do. To love Christian, if that’s what I’m meant for.
Christian starts to lean in.
“No,” I whisper, unable to get my voice any louder. I pull back. My heart doesn’t belong to me anymore. It belongs to Tucker. I can’t pretend that away. “I can’t.”
He steps back immediately.
“Okay,” he says. He clears his throat.
I take a deep breath, try to clear my head. The rain’s finally stopped. Night has fallen.
We’re both soaking wet, and cold, and confused. I’m still holding his hand. I tighten my fingers around his.
“I’m in love with Tucker Avery,” I tell him simply.
He looks surprised, like the idea that I might be already taken never crossed his mind. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Please don’t be sorry. Anyway, aren’t you still in love with Kay?”
His Adam’s apple jerks as he swallows. “I feel stupid. Like this is all some big joke. I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Me neither.”
I drop his hand. I extend my wings and grab the air, rising from the top of the ridge and up over the burned forest. Christian stares up at me for a minute, then lifts off himself. Seeing him like that, riding the air with those beautiful speckled wings, sends a chill down my spine and a wave of confusion into my already shell-shocked brain.
You’re in big trouble, Clara, says my heart.
“Come on,” I say as we hover for one final moment over Fox Creek Road. “Come with me.”
* * *
We stand outside the front door for a long time. It’s dark now. The porch light’s on. A moth is hurling itself against the glass again and again in a kind of rhythm. I fold my wings and will them gone. I turn to Christian. Our wings are no longer out, but he looks like he would rather fly away now and never come back. Pretend none of this ever happened. That the fire never happened. That we don’t know what we know, and everything isn’t impossibly screwed up.
“It’s okay.” I don’t know if I’m talking to myself or to him.
This is my home, the beautiful, secluded log house I fell in love with eight months ago, but suddenly I’m a stranger here, darkening this doorstep for the very first time.
So much has changed in the last few hours. My mind is clogged with all I’ve seen, what I’ve survived, battles with evil angels, forest fires, and the implications of what I’ve done. Christian is alive, standing there looking as jumpy as I am, smoke-streaked but beautiful and so much more than I ever expected him to be. But I’ve failed at my purpose. I don’t know what will happen now. I only know I have to face it.
There’s a noise behind us, and both Christian and I spin around to gaze out into the growing blackness. A figure flies toward us through the trees. I don’t know if Christian’s aware of the existence of Black Wings, but instinctively we reach for each other’s hand, as if this could be it, our last moments on this earth.
It turns out to be Jeffrey. He lands at the edge of the lawn, wild-eyed like something’s after him. He’s carrying his backpack over one shoulder, curling his arm around it to keep it out of the way of his wings. He turns to look down our driveway. For a moment his back is to me, and all I see are his wings. The feathers are nearly black, the color of lead.
“Is that your brother?” asks Christian.
Jeffrey hears him and turns like he expects a fight. When he spots us on the porch he lifts his hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the porch light, squinting to identify us.
“Clara?” he calls. It reminds me of when he was a little kid. He used to be scared of the dark.
“It’s me,” I answer. “Are you okay?”
He takes a few steps forward into the circle of light from the porch. His face is a flash of white in the darkness. He smells like the burned forest.
“Christian?” he asks.
“In the flesh,” Christian replies.
“You did it. You saved Christian,” says Jeffrey. He sounds relieved.
I can’t stop staring at his dark wings. “Jeffrey, where have you been?”
He flutters up to the roof, landing gingerly in front of his bedroom window, which is wide open.
“Looking for you,” he says in an anxious hush before he ducks inside. “Don’t tell Mom.”
I look up at the starless sky.
“We should go in, before anything else happens,” I say to Christian.
“Wait.” He lifts his hand like he’s going to touch my face. I flinch, and then he flinches. His hand stops inches from my cheek, an almost identical pose as what I’ve seen a hundred times in the vision. We both know it.
“Sorry,” he says. “You have a smudge.” He takes a breath like he’s making a deliberate decision and his fingers graze my skin. His thumb strokes a place on my cheek, rubbing at a spot. “There. I got it.”
“Thanks,” I say, blushing.
Just then the door swings open and Tucker stands on the other side staring at us, first at me, his eyes sweeping over me from head to foot to make sure I’m all in one piece, and then at Christian and his hand, which still hovers near my face. I watch his expression change from something worried and loving to something darker, a resigned determination that I’ve seen before, when he broke up with me.
I jerk away from Christian.
“Tucker,” I say. “I’m glad you’re still here.”
I throw myself into his arms. He hugs me tightly.
“I couldn’t leave,” he says.
“I know.”
“I mean, literally. I don’t have a ride.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“She’s asleep on the couch. She seems okay, but kind of thrashed. She didn’t really want to talk to me.”
Christian clears his throat uncomfortably.
“I should go,” he says.
I hesitate. I intended to bring him home and sit him down with Mom, tell his side of the story, try to figure out what it all means. That doesn’t seem possible now.
“We’ll talk later,” he says.
I nod.
He turns quickly and goes down the porch steps.
“How are you going to get home?” Tucker asks.
Christian’s eyes meet mine for an instant.
“I’ll call my uncle,” he says slowly. “I’ll walk out to the road to meet him. I don’t live too far.”
“Okay,” says Tucker, clearly confused.
“See you later,” he says, and turns his back on us both and jogs down the driveway into the dark.
I pull Tucker inside before he can see Christian fly away.
“So you flew him out of the fire too, huh?” he asks after I close the door.
“It’s a long story, and I don’t even understand a lot of it yet. And some of it’s not mine to tell.”
“But it’s over? I mean, the fire’s over now. You’re all done with your purpose?”
The word still feels like a knife sticking me.
“Yes. It’s over.”
And that’s true. The fire is over. My vision is done. So why do I get the feeling that I’m lying to him again?
“Thanks for saving my life today,” Tucker says.
“I couldn’t help it,” I say, trying for funny, but neither of us smile. Neither of us say I love you, either, but we both want to. Instead I offer to take him home.
“Flying?” he asks hesitantly.
“I thought we’d take the car.”
“Okay.”
He leans in and tries to press a quick, gentlemanly kiss to my lips. But I don’t let him pull away. I grab his T-shirt and hold on, crushing my lips to his, trying to pour everything out of me into this one kiss, all that I’m feeling, all that I’m still afraid of, all my love, so strong it borders on pain. He groans and tangles his hands in my hair and kisses me enthusiastically, walking me backward until my back hits the door. I’m shaking, but I don’t know if it’s because of him or because of me. I only know I never want to let him go again.
From behind us Mom clears her throat. Tucker steps back from me, breathing hard. I stare up into his eyes and smile.
“Hi, Mom,” I say. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, Clara,” she says. “How are you?”
“Good.” I turn to look at her. “I was just going to take Tucker home.”
“Okay,” she says. “But then come straight back.”
* * *
Afterward, after I drop Tucker off and come back, I take a shower. I stand under the water and turn it up as hot as I can bear. The water runs through my hair and down my face, and only then do the tears come, pouring out of me until some of the heaviness in my chest lifts. Then I sum
mon my wings and carefully wash the soot from them. The water swirls gray around my feet. I scrub at the feathers and they come clean, although they aren’t as white as they were before. I wonder if they will ever be bright and beautiful again.
When the hot water runs out, I towel off and take my time combing out my hair. I can’t look at myself in the mirror. I lay in bed, exhausted, but I can’t sleep. Finally I give up and go downstairs. I open the refrigerator and stare inside before deciding I’m not hungry. I try to watch TV, but nothing holds my attention, and the light from the flickering screen casts shadows on the wall that spook me even though I know there’s nothing there.