Nightingale, Sing

by Karsten Knight

  Jaro laughed. “I could have used more pupils like you when I still taught in the classroom.” He knelt beneath the tree, next to a flower that looked no different than any of the others. Still, I felt awe ripple through me standing in its presence. Like its protector, this plant had been on a far longer journey than I could expect in my lifetime.

  From the deep pocket of his overalls, Jaro produced a trowel and began to dig a wide swath of dirt around the flower.

  “So how does this all work?” I asked him. “I mean, how much is the dosage you need to take?”

  “One petal is always enough,” Jaro explained. “I used one petal during a cholera outbreak at the turn of the century, one when I became infected with Spanish flu in 1917, and again in the 1950s for polio. The rest have merely been to sustain my youth, one decade at a time. Fetch that pot for me?” He pointed to a terra cotta urn that was tucked away among the roots of an apple tree.

  I placed the pot beside him. “And you … eat the petal?”

  “Initially, I ingested it like that, yes,” Jaro said. “But for each dosage throughout the last sixty years, I’ve found greater pleasure in drinking it as a tea.”

  Jaro had dug a moat halfway around the Sapphire when he abruptly paused. Slowly, he lifted his head to regard the sky over the island behind us. As I followed the line of his gaze, I saw what had troubled him. For the second time since my arrival, Elderfield Hollow’s seabird colony had taken to the air en masse, a dense geyser of squawks and winged chaos.

  Underneath their raucous frenzy, I could hear the peal of wooden chimes.

  Jaro’s face hardened. “Did you bring any friends with you?”

  My initial instinct was that maybe Atlas had made an early departure from the hospital and followed me here. Worry wart that he was, though, he would have called at his first available opportunity to berate me for finishing the quest without him.

  Jaro didn’t wait for me to respond. He grabbed the hilt of the sword that was buried in the apple tree next to us. With a savage pull, he wrenched it free. “Be still,” he whispered to me. “I will see if I need to revoke someone’s invitation.” Then he slipped into the shadowed glade between the trees, his gilded irises receding into the darkness.

  The warning bells in my head told me to hide. But now that the Sapphire was within my reach, I couldn’t just leave it here, half-dug out of the ground. The trench that Jaro had started carving around it would be a bull’s-eye for anyone who’d come to the island seeking its magic.

  I dropped to my knees, snatched Jaro’s trowel, and resumed the quick yet delicate process of digging out the flower. After a while, I could feel the roots’ grip on the soil slacken. I wrapped my fingers around the base of the Sapphire and with a gentle pull, the flower popped free of the earth. It had a dense nest of roots that filled the entire pot as I lowered it in. Eventually I’d want to plant it in a bed of soil, but this was no fragile flower. If it could survive a transatlantic voyage in a burlap sack, it could hopefully handle a short trip to Boston.

  I had just started to pack soil around the Sapphire, when I was interrupted by the crunch of boots trampling flowers. From the darkness beyond, I watched a demon return from the dead.

  Horace Nox sauntered toward me through the orchard in a methodical death march. The flesh on his face was puckered with burns. Several of his fingers were broken and jutted out at weird angles. Despite his corpse-like appearance, he was one hundred percent less dead than I had believed him to be until this very moment.

  “You are very good at cheating death, Sabra Tides,” he rasped. He withdrew a pistol from the waistband of his tattered trousers. “But I am better.”

  Jaro launched out of the shadows, the sword raised above his head. In three rapid steps, he crossed the distance between him and Nox and brought the weapon slashing down.

  Nox saw the blow coming at the last second, and without time to step out of the way, he defensively raised his left arm to intercept the blade.

  I expected a gruesome scene to unfold, but what happened next was in many ways much worse. Years of exposure to the elements had dulled the sword’s edge, which Jaro had only ever intended to be a symbolic ornament marking the quest’s end. Even with all of his might behind it, the blade only cut half an inch into the flesh of Nox’s forearm, stopping at the bone.

  The blow should have been excruciating for Nox—but he didn’t even wince. He must have had enough Blyss in his veins to anesthetize an elephant.

  Jaro faltered, confused. That moment of hesitation was all Nox needed to whip his gun hand around and fire two bullets at point blank range into Jaro’s heart.

  I screamed in futility as the one man who had seen more history than anyone else alive crumpled to the bed of flowers, his impossibly long life snuffed out before he hit the ground.

  Vengeance urged me forward to make Nox pay for what he’d done, but to do so would be suicide. Already, the drug lord was swiveling his pistol toward me to finish the job.

  I had never been so desperate. I prided myself on visualizing escape routes from every tight corner I found myself in, an instinct that had kept me alive for the last week. Now I’d reached a cul-de-sac. With no alternatives, I played the only bargaining chip I had left: the truth. I backed up until I could feel the rocky edge of the cliff beneath my heels and held the flower out over the sea. “Listen to me carefully, Horace: This is the true Serengeti Sapphire,” I said. “The others around you are just powerless clones—only the original can save you.”

  “Then why don’t you step away from the edge,” Nox ordered, “and put my fucking flower down.”

  I shook my head. “Hear those waves crashing against the cliff? If you shoot me, this plant is going right into the surf. By the time you get down there, you’ll be lucky if you can pick the Sapphire confetti out of the water with a spaghetti strainer. Now, this plant”—I hoisted the Sapphire—“has eight petals. All I want for Echo is one. Just one. I’m sure it will regrow before you even need it.”

  “This isn’t the Oregon Trail—you don’t get to barter.” Nox beckoned impatiently for the plant with his free hand.

  I tried one last Hail Mary, in hopes of playing to any shred of empathy he had left. “I don’t care about avenging Jack anymore. I don’t even care what becomes of me. I only care about Echo. Don’t you remember what it was like to waste away your childhood, staring at the hospital door, waiting for someone to bring you a cure? The resignation that grew each day when that cure never came?”

  “Enough!” Nox shrieked. The gun trembled in his mangled grip.

  I extended the flower farther over the waves to remind him what was at stake. “While I can’t begin to comprehend what that feels like,” I said, “I do know exactly what your brother must have gone through. That has been my life for two miserable years. Every morning, I wake up in desperation, wishing I could trade places with her. Every day, I live in a constant state of anger, wondering what kind of unjust world would allow that disease to choose my sister over every other kid on the playground. And every night, I fall asleep with a cold hollow in my chest as I picture the possibility of a life without her. So when all this is over, you can chase me down to the ends of the earth and do your worst. There is no agony that you can submit me to, no hell that you could condemn me to, that would be even a fraction of the torture of losing Echo. All I ask is that you give me one petal and one day to change her life before you take mine.” My voice broke as I added a soft, “Please.”

  My appeals to Nox’s humanity had obviously made little impact on him, but it only took one look at his singed face to see the wave of logical calculations that his soulless inner CPU was crunching. He could shoot me and risk trying to fish the plant out of the water below, but the waves were still angrily slamming against the cliff wall. Even if he salvaged a leaf or two, that wouldn’t help him twenty years down the line when he needed another for salvation from whatever vice or disease tried to kill him next. No, he needed the whole plant alive to s
ecure his immortality.

  In the interest of self-preservation, Nox’s best option was to acknowledge our stalemate. “One leaf,” he conceded. “Take it, but the rest of the Sapphire stays with me.” I didn’t budge—there was no way I was going to take him on his word without a show of faith. Nox flipped the pistol in his hand around and then chucked it in a high arc, off the side of the cliff and into the ocean.

  While I still didn’t trust him, I had to make my gamble now. I pulled the Sapphire back to safety, delicately plucked one of the petals from the top, and set the flower down on the ground. With our transaction complete, I edged across the orchard, back toward the main island, keeping my distance from Nox. My eyes never left him.

  I’d only made it partway across the peninsula when Nox pensively scratched the stubble on his burned chin. “On second thought,” he said, “what if I come down with a really bad cold one day? I guess I’m going to have to ask for that flower petal back after all.”

  He reached into his waistband, drew a second gun, and fired, as I simultaneously tried to lunge out of the way.

  But I was too late.

  I heard the gunshot at the same that I felt the slug hit my stomach. The round kicked me back a few steps, and I reflexively clutched my belly. I stared down, stunned, as blood blossomed out of the wound, pouring over my fingers. A heat seared through my abdomen, spreading through my torso. A ringing crescendoed in my ears and I dropped to my knees. My brain was struggling to catch up with the bullet that had just ripped apart my insides. And when I couldn’t bear it any longer, I slumped over into the flower bed.

  With glistening, tear-filled eyes, I stared up as Nox sauntered over to me. In one last stand of resistance, I closed my fist around the Sapphire petal. Nox smiled and drove his boot down hard on my wrist. I screamed out a dry, hoarse wail as the bone snapped. The bastard leaned down and pried the petal from my bloodstained fingers.

  I was forced to watch as he pressed the glowing blue flower petal to his tongue and swallowed hard. He closed his eyes, reveling in this moment of salvation he’d waited so long for. “Of all the exotic game I’ve ever eaten,” he said, “I like the taste of resurrection best.”

  Then he stood up and walked toward the cliff, leaving me to die.

  As the darkness clawed at me, as hope drained from me, my bleary eyes spotted a familiar shape in the flowers only a few yards away.

  It was my knapsack.

  I remembered back to the events that had unfolded on Nox’s compound and took inventory of all the Hydrobane I’d used.

  One to set off that distraction fire in the fields.

  One to cut down the giant sequoia while Nox was holding us hostage.

  And one to rip a hole in the compound’s perimeter wall during our escape.

  Dec had given me four bricks.

  I rolled over, fighting through the agony and unconsciousness that threatened to take me. On my elbows, I crawled through the flower bed. Thorns scratched at my face. My broken wrist screamed out every time it touched the dirt. Still, I kept moving until my good hand seized the strap of the knapsack. I unclasped the top.

  At the cliff’s edge, Nox picked up the Serengeti Sapphire, a difficult task given his bouquet of mangled fingers. Eventually he managed to cradle the flower between his hands. The blue glow washed over his face. “It’s curious,” he said, though I wasn’t sure whether it was to me or to himself. “A plant nearly condemned me to death, yet years later, it was a plant that brought me resurrection.”

  With every last drop of adrenaline I had left, every will to survive for Echo’s sake, I launched myself out of the garden bed and charged at Nox. He was so fixated on his prize that he took stock of me too late. I flung the knapsack so that the strap lassoed around his neck and I slammed my shoulder into his gut. “Resurrect this,” I growled.

  Strong as he was, Nox was no match for my legs, which all those long nights pedicabbing had transformed into two powerful pistons.

  Four steps later, I shoved his body forcefully off the cliff, and he plummeted into the waves below.

  He resurfaced immediately, one arm astoundingly still wrapped around the Serengeti Sapphire like a broken wing. He stared up the cliff at me with an incendiary gaze and screamed, “What? Did you think a little water was going to—?”

  The ocean water filled the open knapsack, and after a deceivingly peaceful glow, the Hydrobane exploded.

  I had half a second to watch the blast tear Nox apart in a tidal wave of red, transforming him into a magnificent crimson smear against the cliff, before the ensuing shockwave tossed me backward. I landed at the base of an apple tree, just far enough from the edge not to tumble into the ocean as a chunk of the cliff collapsed. It rained boulders down on whatever remained of Horace Nox.

  I opened my hand reluctantly, expecting the worst. To my relief, a single petal of the Sapphire glowed in my palm.

  I had grabbed for the flower, right as I gave Nox the final push over the edge.

  My first instinct was to pull out my phone and call 9-1-1. Maybe there was still time for someone to rescue me.

  But the longer I stared at the cerulean petal in my hand, the more I grew certain that it was the wrong thing to do. I needed to know for sure that the Sapphire would reach Echo. If I lost consciousness before the medics arrived, there were far too many ways for the petal to get damaged or misplaced in the evacuation. And I couldn’t exactly explain over the phone to the emergency operator, “Now, when the rescue team comes, they have to make sure to keep track of my magical flower petal.”

  There was only one way to definitively know that Echo would receive the miracle I’d sacrificed everything to get for her.

  It was the easiest decision I’d ever made.

  I slipped the Sapphire petal into the pocket of my jeans. While I sat with my back against the trunk of the apple tree, I speed-dialed the phone I’d left with Atlas at the hospital. It went to voicemail after a few rings. He was probably still in treatment, or maybe being subjected to a lecture about the dangers of experimenting with drugs. When the phone beeped, I tried to keep it simple.

  “Hey, handsome,” I said. “I have a very long story, but very little time to tell it.” I swallowed hard as pain lanced through my belly. “I’m hurt, pretty bad, but under no circumstances are you to call nine-one-one. I know that as you listen to this, you’re probably already reaching for your bedside phone, but if you do, you will kill Echo. So here are the details you need to know: I am at Elderfield Hollow, leaning against a tree in the apple orchard. There is a single petal from the Serengeti Sapphire in my left jeans pocket. Come to the island as soon as you’re able, take the petal from me, and then you can call anyone you want. But you have to promise to bring the Sapphire to Echo for me—I trust you, and only you. I wish I could do it myself, but …” Another gut-wrenching pain. “Anyway, I guess this is the time when I’m supposed to make some grand gesture, some eloquent goodbye, but as you know, I’m not much of a softy, so I’ll leave you with this: You saved my life. I know it might sound ironic given the reason I’m calling, but you did. Echo’s going to live because of you, and without her, I am nothing. Look after her for me, will you? I love her so, so much. And for what it’s worth, I think I sort of love you, too.” Then I hung up.

  Light was spilling over the horizon, but darkness was coming for me, so I called the second number immediately: the direct line to Echo’s hospital room. In the age of cell phones, I still had that one phone number memorized, because honestly, it was the only one that ever really mattered.

  To my surprise, given the early hour, Echo picked up after three rings. I had kept it together throughout my call with Atlas, but the second I heard her groggy little “Hello?” I started to quietly sob. I covered my eyes with my broken wrist.

  I forced myself to find my voice again. “Hey, baby,” I whispered. “It’s your big sister.”

  Echo let loose an epic yawn. “Sabra? Why do you sound so weird?”

  I massage
d the bridge of my nose with my fingers. “I’m just tired, little one. Look, this is going to sound strange, but I’ve got a friend who’s going to bring you something from me. I know Mom always told you not to take candy from strangers, but I need you to trust me and make an exception this time.”

  She huffed on the other end. “Why don’t you bring it to me?”

  “I have a little longer on my journey to go, but I’ll be home soon.” Of all the lies I ever told, this one really broke my heart. “The boy’s name is Atlas. He’s going to bring you a cool-looking flower petal that I hope is going to make you feel a whole lot better.”

  “What does this boy look like?” As always, her mood could shift from pouty to intrigued on a dime. “How will I know he’s not an impostor?”

  “Ask to see his tattoo of the sparrows,” I instructed her. “And if he’s not very, very good-looking, then he probably is an impostor.”

  Echo scoffed. “Who’s to say that you and I even have the same type?”

  “The same type?” I laughed breathlessly, even though it hurt. “I really have to stop watching reality TV with you. You’re like a cougar in an eight-year-old’s body.”

  A white numbness was spreading through me, starting in my stomach and fanning outward. I would hold onto Echo as long as I could. “Hey, kiddo, I have an idea—why don’t you stay on the phone with me? I’ve been up all night, and maybe you can read me a story from that mythology book of yours, while I fall asleep. Just like Jack and I always read to you.”

  “The tides have turned, my friend!” she quipped excitedly. “Get it, since our last name is Tides? It’s a pun.” Again, I was forced to laugh. There was shuffling on the line and the flap of pages as she leafed through them. “I have the perfect story, a new favorite of mine about three siblings—two girls and one boy, just like us! There was Selene, goddess of the moon, and Helios, goddess of the sun, and each day and each night they’d race their chariots across the sky, only to plunge into the ocean. Their sister, Eos, was the dawn, and opened the gates in the morning to let Helios and his chariot out.”