The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series)

by Madeline Claire Franklin

  “He’s gone,” I tell her, tears streaming down my face, into the fabric of her shirt. “It’s gone. Everything. Just…gone.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, A. I’m so sorry.” Her voice quavers when she speaks.

  “It’s over,” I realize, understanding the hard expression on Trebor’s face, understanding why he didn’t even try to stop Raven from blinding me—from taking my magic. “We’re safe now. We’re safe. I can’t hurt anyone, and no one can hurt us.”

  Kyla strokes my hair, leans her cheek against my head, because no matter what words come out of my mouth, she knows I’m still dying inside. “Sure, yeah. We’re safe. You’re gonna be okay. Things will be fine.”

  I bite my lip and try as hard as I can to believe her. “But he’s gone,” I whisper. And I have no idea how to accept that.

  — 61 —

  I imagine that Abe has been up for three sleepless days, haranguing the police, the hospitals, Kyla’s absent mother. By the time Andy drops Kyla and me off in my driveway, my father is running on caffeine and desperation, and perhaps the thankless support of an unfamiliar woman.

  “Anastasia!” he roars as he bursts through the front door, leaping off of the porch to accost us in the driveway. His chest feels like an anvil when he collides with me, wrapping his tree-trunk arms around me, crushing me to him like he did the day we laid Karanina to rest. He still smells like char and smoke, as if the perfume of the fire hall will never leave his skin.

  I see a petite, curvy woman step onto the porch beyond his shoulder. She has dark hair and wide eyes, and everything about her is so unlike my mother it’s almost insulting. Also, she wears too much makeup, I decide.

  My father holds me away from him, scrutinizes me, lifts my blood-caked limbs and pokes at my clothes in search of an entry wound, of damage. “Are you hurt? Whose blood is this?” he cries, eyes wild and red, shining with tears.

  “Mine,” I whisper, straining not to cry. My eyes are already sore and dry as it is.

  “What? Are you hurt? Who did this? What happened?”

  My mouth hangs open. I don’t know what to say.

  He looks to Kyla, who shrugs and looks to me. Abe puts his hands on my shoulders, stares at me with my own bright blue eyes. “Ana, please, God, tell me what happened!” He shakes me when he asks.

  I stare back, but when the woman behind him moves, comes down the stairs to be nearer to him, I can’t help but focus in on her, see the concern in her eyes. Does she care? Does she want in on this fucked up family? Could she maybe love him and make him happy when I’m sure to bring him misery?

  My throat clenches, chest tightens—everything inside of me curls up and gasps in the agony of what’s been taken from me. I shake my head, look at my father with a grimace. “I…I can’t,” I tell him. “I can’t. I can’t!” The words have no time to linger, no time to achieve response, because I’m screaming, wailing, tearing away from my father’s grip, fumbling backwards, into Kyla.

  She pushes me into my father’s outstretched arms, and holds me there, arms wrapped around us both. “It’s okay, Ana. It’s going to be okay,” she whispers, and I feel her tears wet the back of my shirt.

  My father’s arms clamps around both of us. Between the two of them, I’m held upright, gasping, crushed under the weight of what I know. But their hold is tight enough that, when I finally collapse, I’m certain they won’t drop me.

  — 62 —

  I wake up in the hospital, listening to a laundry list of medical concerns being recited for my father. I pretend I’m still asleep.

  “She’s anemic, which might account for the fainting,” the nurse tells him, clipboard pages rustling under her fingertips. “Also slightly concussed, dehydrated, and her blood pressure is through the roof for a girl her age. According to her medical records that’s highly abnormal—she runs low.” The nurse sighs. “Seems like she’s been under a tremendous amount of stress, at the very least, but we won’t know what happened to her until she talks.” She hesitates. “There are two other things that we can’t explain, that we’d like your permission to run further tests on.”

  “What’s that?” My father’s voice beside my bed, exhausted, broken, crumbling. Scared.

  “Our first blood panel showed abnormally elevated platelet counts, as well as elevated white blood cell counts.”

  The silence in the room is suddenly heavier than the weight on my chest, the weight of the dark over my eyes, the weight of the secrets I’ve kept from my father and the lies I know I’ll have to tell.

  When my father finally speaks, his voice is barely there. It’s the smallest thing to ever come from such a big, strong man. “What?”

  “These are just preliminary counts, sir—no one is jumping to conclusions. As far as anyone on staff is concerned it’s a medical anomaly at this point, nothing else. The only real concern is that we know her mother passed from glyoblastoma, and the current theories in oncology dictate that your chances of developing certain types of cancer increase when one or both parents have had it. We want to run more tests, and if they’re still inconclusive we can bring her down to Imaging and Radiology.”

  My father’s breathing becomes deliberate, each inhale counted and measured against the exhale. He leans forward and takes my hand between his two bear paws, holding it so lightly, so gently, as if he’s afraid of breaking me. I can smell his aftershave, the salt of his tears, the grease in his hair. He’s falling apart over me.

  I can’t let him.

  I open my eyes. “Dad?”

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he says, leaning closer, resting his arms on the side of my hospital bed.

  “I’ll leave you two,” the nurse says, lowering her clipboard with a nod and exiting the room.

  My father forces a smile, but his bloodshot eyes give evidence to the strain inside of him. I struggle to sit up, and he stands to help me, grabbing the pillow from the empty bed on the other side of the room to support my back, fiddling with a button to make the bed fold up behind me.

  “There you go,” he says, lowering the remote. “Like magic.”

  I try to smile but it comes out all twisted and wrong.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Terrible. Weak. Exhausted. Hopeless.

  “Tired,” is all I say, watching the bog between us grow.

  “Do you feel like talking?” he asks, and his mask cracks. “Only, because…I was so scared, Ana. I was so worried about you.” His mouth presses into a thin line, holding something back as the crease between his eyebrows deepens. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  I suck in my lower lip and rake my teeth over it, wanting to seal my mouth forever so no one can expect me to tell the truth again, because all I have for them is lies. I don’t want to lie to him. But if I tell him the truth, he’ll never believe me, and if I tell him nothing, he’ll lose his mind.

  “I woke up in the hospital, after the car accident,” I tell him finally, trying to shut off the part of me raging against the falsehoods concocted in my mind. “And I couldn’t remember anything. I didn’t even know where I was. So I got up, and left. And I just walked.” I frown, suddenly cold, suddenly shivering.

  My father pulls the blanket up to my chest, stands and yanks the blanket off the empty bed beside mine and folds it over my shoulders, making a nest of blankets around me, held fast by his arm.

  “You just walked around the city? For three days?” He sits down in the chair again, leaning on my bed, already visibly relaxing now that his brain has something to wrap around.

  “Yeah,” I lie. “I was so confused, I kept walking in circles, and I’d see things that looked familiar, words and street names and shops, and then I’d reach for the memory, and lose it. I stole my clothes from a laundromat. I slept in a park a few nights. Eventually I remembered Kyla’s phone number, and I called her, and asked her to pick me up. Then when I saw her I started to remember everything else.”

  My father’s brow furrows. He holds my hand tightly, rough
knuckles curling over my fingers. “Where did all that blood come from?”

  “I don’t remember.” I frown, rubbing the cut on my forehead from the car accident, hoping he’ll draw his own conclusions. “I don’t remember everything that happened.”

  My father looks at me, and I see the moment when he chooses to ignore the facts because it’s easier to believe me than to doubt me. I was covered in blood when I came home. There is nothing I could say that could explain that, unless I told him I’d gone savage and killed a large dog with the same blood type as me while I was wandering.

  He smiles, wearily, sadly, and doesn’t tell me what the nurse told him. I’m glad. I want him to feel like he can protect me, even just a little bit longer. I wish it was true—I wish that he could. But the damage is already done.

  “Listen, Ana,” he says after a few moments. “You went through a real ordeal this weekend. I don’t know if you remember it, but when you came home you were screaming bloody murder. Even Kyla was scared, and we both know she doesn’t scare easily. The doctors would like—and I agree—to keep you here for a day or two for observation.”

  “Two?” I wonder.

  He nods, swallows. “Or three. We’d also like you to have a psychiatric evaluation.”

  I know the look that passes over my face is one of betrayal, but I can’t help it. “Psychiatric?” I bite. “Why?”

  He takes a breath. “You were saying things when I brought you here that were pretty alarming. To me, and to the doctors.”

  My heart jumps. Did I spew the truth anyway, without knowing it? “Like what?”

  “You said things like he’s gone, and they took everything from me, and…he had to die. There was no choice.” Abe swallows, and I assume he’s trying not to think of the blood on my clothes. “You said I’m empty, quite a bit. And you swore an awful lot. Words I didn’t even think you knew.” He looks up at me. “It was frightening, Ana, I can’t deny that. And I think, given the stress you’ve been under these past few years, and the concussion you sustained during the car accident, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure everything’s working properly before you come home.”

  I stare at him, hurt, scared…embarrassed.

  But a little relieved.

  “So I get to miss school then?” I try to joke. Because, quite honestly, a few days of not having to deal with trying to be normal sounds like a godsend.

  My dad smiles and nods.

  “Okay,” I agree, and watch relief flood through my father.

  “Good.” He stares at me, then leans forward quickly and kisses my forehead, the rough stubble on his unshaven face scratching my skin. “You’re all I’ve got left, Ana. I just don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. Not if I can prevent it.”

  My lower lip trembles, but I manage to coerce it into a smile, for my father.

  — 63 —

  “Cancer?” Kyla asks, leaning over the half-finished 500-piece hot air balloon puzzle in the psychiatric ward’s rec room.

  I nod, flinging a piece back into the box. “They ran a boat load of tests. All inconclusive.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  I shrug and lower my voice. “I think if Trebor healed me using his special brand of medicine, it’s still going to have a biological effect. I have no doubt that’s all it is. I just wish I could tell my father.”

  Kyla cocks her head. “Maybe you can.”

  I look at her, then around us. There’s a woman on the couch watching television who has been biting the same nail for the last ten minutes; there’s an older man pacing behind her, reciting elements from the periodic table in reverse alphabetical order; there’s a man who is compulsively stacking newspapers on the floor along the wall beneath the window; there are bars on the windows. “If I told anyone the truth, I’d end up in a place like this for much longer than a seventy-two hour observational period.”

  She purses her lips. “So you think you’ll get out tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.” I play with the jigsaw pieces, flipping them over from glossy to cardboard, cardboard to glossy. “I saw my file on my doctor’s desk during my last therapy session. Not much in it. Best case scenario, situational depression relating to adolescence and loss of the patient’s mother. Worst case scenario, post-traumatic stress disorder in relation to the patient’s recent car accident, or an alternative traumatic event the patient has previously repressed. Neither of those are things that usually require inpatient treatment, especially since I’m not hallucinating or anything.” I frown. “I don’t see anything anyone else can’t see. Not any more.”

  Kyla thinks about it for a second, then looks me in the eye. “He did it for you, you know.”

  I stare at her, feeling my heart crumple.

  “I know it sucks, but it was the only way.” She leans into the table. “By letting them blind you, you’re safe, for the first time in years. You don’t have to worry about the—them. He gave you a chance to lead a normal life.”

  “But it wasn’t his choice to make.” I scowl.

  “Would you have chosen differently? Because I don’t think you would have. If you escaped with him, you’d both be on the run, for God knows how long. And if that skin—” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “If the skinwalker ever got ahold of you, the rest of the world would suffer for it. And I know you don’t want that.”

  “I was getting stronger, Kyla,” I point out. “I was in control. I could have protected myself, protected Trebor even. Maybe.” My eyes burn, threatening tears. I throw the puzzle piece back into the box and swallow the tension jamming up the words in my throat. “I love him, Ky. So much, it hurts. So much, I was ready to believe in fate, and let it have its way with me.”

  “You would have had to leave me and Abe behind.” Kyla raises her eyebrows. “Are you ready to do that?”

  I swallow. Leave Kyla, who is going away to school in the fall anyway? Leave my father, who is falling in love with a new woman that will never be my mother? “It would have been hard, but yeah. I could have done it. You both would have been safer without me around.”

  “We’re safe now.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” I look at her. “What happened to you back there? Outside of City Hall? You…changed.”

  Kyla leans back in her chair, looks down at the card table between us, the peeling, black, plastic edges. “I guess I was being overprotective of the only person I’d ever call my sister.” She turns her eyes to me. “I don’t know what that was. But the thought of you dying…it triggered something in me—this kind of black-out rage I’ve never felt before. And I was scared that…” She shakes her head, closes her eyes. “What if that old woman was telling the truth, A?” When she opens her eyes, they’re so wide and full of uncertainty, I’m weakened.

  “But it doesn’t make any sense. How could you not have a father? What are you—Lesbian Jesus?”

  Kyla smiles for an instant, but it vanishes just as fast. “But it is possible your mother was one of the Zee.”

  I scoff. “No. My mother knew a few tricks, but she didn’t know real magic.”

  “She taught you the protection spell. She taught you about the Arcana. She knew all about the world we’ve just been excommunicated from.”

  “Shhh,” I hush her.

  She lowers her voice again. “And if that’s true, then maybe the old lady was telling the truth about me, too.”

  I look at her, study her eyes, her face. She looks like her mother, but not exactly like her. She’s not a clone, by any means. Someone—something—must have fathered her. It’s just not biologically possible for a human to reproduce asexually.

  “Maybe you should ask your mother,” I suggest.

  Kyla rolls her eyes. “We all know how that usually ends up.”

  “I know, I know. But maybe with a more specific question…maybe if you ask her the right questions, she’ll realize you’re ready to hear the truth.” I raise my head and sit up straight, hands on the table. “But until we see some pro
of, I don’t believe any of it.”

  Kyla slouches and shakes her head. “I don’t know, Ana. I have a bad feeling about all of this.”

  “Well, neither of us can see the Sura now. They can’t hurt us. The Irin and the Malakiim don’t care about us. We’re done with their worlds.” I shrug. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is our last chance to live normal lives.”

  Kyla sighs. “Yeah. Maybe. But what about the box I gave you?”

  “I still haven’t been able to open it. I don’t know if I ever will, if my mother was the one who closed it.”

  Kyla bites her lip, thinking. “And the key Trebor was looking for?”

  I tilt my chin up. “That’s the Irin’s problem now. Not ours.”

  “It will be our problem, if the demons find it first.”

  My eyes fall. I stare at the part of the picture that’s put together on the card table, abandoned halfway through with frayed edges—incomplete—missing more pieces than have been found. “Yup,” is all I say in response.

  I could have helped, if they’d let me. I could have been powerful—useful—if they’d let me.

  Kyla breathes deeply and leans in, unprompted, to peel my fingers from the tabletop and grasp them between hers. “I’m sorry, A.”

  “For what?” I raise my eyes to hers.

  She hesitates. “I’m sorry you lost him.”

  My heart flutters, not of my own accord, and my other hand rises to my chest, making me smile involuntarily. “I haven’t lost him completely. Not yet.”

  — 64 —

  · Midsummer’s Eve·

  It’s been almost two months since I was released from the hospital. Kyla graduates tomorrow afternoon, in an overlong ceremony that will undoubtedly be punctuated by too many speeches on the future, and what high school has meant to the graduating class, now done with it, forever.

  Meanwhile, just found out I failed Chemistry, and pretty much everything else, too. I passed gym class, surprisingly, but only because I joined track and field when one of the team members tore a ligament and had to drop out, and my gym teacher was impressed by my ability to sprint long distances. I enjoy the burn—it feels familiar. Almost nostalgic.