Unearthly

by Cynthia Hand

  “Let me guess. You carried her off the field. And then it was happily ever after?”

  He looks away, embarrassed. “Something like that,” he says.

  And there’s the awkward silence, right on cue.

  “Kay seems . . .” I want to say “nice,” but I don’t think I can pull that off. “She seems like she’s really into you.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just stares up the course where somebody is coming down now on a snowboard.

  “She is,” he says thoughtfully, like he’s talking to himself more than to me. “She’s a good person.”

  “Great,” I manage. I don’t particularly want Kay to be a good person. I’m perfectly comfortable thinking about her as the wicked witch.

  He coughs uncomfortably, and I realize that I’m staring at him with my big owl eyes. I flush and look up the hill where the snowboarder is crossing the finish line.

  “Nice run!” Christian shouts. “Smoking!”

  “Thanks, dude,” the snowboarder calls back. He pulls off his goggles. It’s Shawn Davidson, snowboarder Shawn, the guy from the Pizza Hut who called me Bozo. He looks from me to Christian and back again. I feel his gaze on me like a spotlight.

  “I better go,” says Christian. “The race is over. Coach will want to break it down for us in the ski shack, watch the videos and all that.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Nice to—”

  But he’s already gone, tearing his way down the hill, leaving me once again to make it the rest of the way down the mountain by myself.

  In late March we hit a warm spell, and the snow in the valley melts in the space of about two days. Our woods fill up with clusters of red and purple wildflowers. Bright green leaves pop up on the aspens. The land, which has been so quietly pristine all winter, fills with color and noise. I like to stand on our back porch and listen as the breeze stirs the trees into a rhythmic whispering, the creek that cuts across the corner of our land gurgling happily, birds singing (and occasionally dive-bombing me), chipmunks chattering. The air smells like flowers and sun-warmed pine. The mountains behind the house are still white with snow, but spring has definitely sprung.

  With it comes the vision, in full force. All winter that particular tingling in my head has been quiet; in fact, it only came to me twice since the first day of school when I saw Christian in the hallway. I thought I was being given a little heavenly break, but apparently that’s over. I’m halfway to school one morning when out of the blue (poof!) I’m back in that familiar forest, walking through the trees toward Christian.

  I call his name. He turns toward me, his eyes a green-gold in the slanted afternoon light.

  “It’s you,” he says hoarsely.

  “It’s me,” I answer. “I’m here.”

  “Clara!”

  I blink. The first thing I see is Jeffrey’s hand on the steering wheel of the Prius. My foot is still resting lightly on the gas. The car moves very slowly to the side of the road.

  “I’m sorry,” I gasp. I pull over immediately and park. “Jeffrey, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “It’s the vision, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s not like you can control when it happens.”

  “Yeah, but you’d think that it wouldn’t happen during a time when it might actually kill me. What if I’d crashed? So much for the vision then, right?”

  “But you didn’t crash,” he says. “I was here.”

  “Thank God.”

  He smiles mischievously. “So does this mean I can drive us the rest of the way?”

  When I tell Mom about the return of the vision she starts talking about teaching me to fly again, using the word training so often that our house feels like it’s been converted to some kind of boot camp. She’s been in a funky mood all winter, spending most of her time in her office with the door shut, drinking tea and hunched in a crocheted blanket. Whenever I knock or stick my head in she always gets this strained look, like she doesn’t want to be bothered. And, truthfully, I’ve been quasi-avoiding her since that first day with Angela, when it became so clear that Mom’s intentionally keeping me in the dark. I spend a lot of afternoons over at the Pink Garter with Angela, which Mom doesn’t like, but as it’s technically school related (we’re working on our Queen Eliz project after all) she can’t formally object. And weekends, I’ve been on the ski slopes. Which is, I argue, Christian related and, therefore, purpose related. So it’s technically training, right?

  Only now the snow on the mountain’s getting awfully thin.

  Wendy takes the warm weather as an opportunity to convince me to ride a horse. So that’s how I find myself at the Lazy Dog Ranch sitting on the back of a black-and-white mare named Sassy. Wendy says Sassy’s a good horse to learn on because she’s about thirty years old and doesn’t have much fight left in her. That’s fine by me, although I instantly feel comfortable in the saddle, like I’ve been riding all my life.

  “You’re doing really well,” says Wendy, watching me from the fence as I ride the horse slowly around the edge of the pasture. “You’re a natural horsewoman.”

  Sassy’s ears perk up. In the distance I see two men on horseback, galloping toward the big red barn at the end of the pasture. The sound of them laughing floats toward us across the field.

  “That’s Dad and Tucker,” says Wendy. “Dinner will be ready soon. Better bring Sassy in.”

  I give Sassy a gentle kick and she starts toward the barn.

  “Hey there!” greets Mr. Avery as we approach. “Looking good.”

  “Thanks. I’m Clara.”

  “I know,” says Mr. Avery. He looks so much like Tucker. “Wendy’s been talking about you nonstop for months now.” He grins, which makes him look even more like Tucker.

  “Dad,” mutters Wendy. She walks up to her dad’s horse and rubs it under the chin.

  “Oh lord,” laughs Tucker. “She’s got you on old Sassy.”

  I promised myself that I was going to cool it around Tucker today for Wendy’s sake, no matter what he throws at me. No rude remarks. No comebacks. I’m going to be on my best behavior.

  “I like her.” I lean forward and stroke Sassy’s neck.

  “She’s the horse we put little kids on.”

  “Tucker, shut up,” says Wendy.

  “But it’s true. That horse hasn’t moved faster than a snail in about five years, I think. Sitting on her is practically like sitting in a chair.”

  Well, we’ll show him.

  “Good girl,” I say to Sassy, very softly in Angelic. Her ears whip around to listen to my voice. “Let’s run,” I whisper.

  I’m surprised by how quickly she obeys. In seconds we’re in a full gallop, whipping across the far side of the pasture. For a moment the world slows down. The mountains in the background glow a peachy gold, lit by the setting sun. I savor the cool spring air caressing my skin, the strong, dusty feel of the horse under me, her legs stretching out like she’s pulling the earth underneath us as she runs, the in-and-out huff of her hay-scented breath. It’s wonderful.

  Then a gust of wind blows my hair across my face and for one panicky moment I can’t see, and everything is going much too fast. I picture myself being thrown off and landing face-first in a pile of manure, Tucker falling all over himself laughing. I toss my head wildly, and my hair is suddenly out of my eyes. My breath catches. The fence is rushing toward us, and Sassy shows no sign of slowing down.

  “Can you jump it?” I ask, still whispering. She is, after all, a pretty old horse.

  I feel her gather under me. I say a little prayer and lean over her neck. Then we’re in the air, barely clearing the fence. We come down so hard my teeth clatter together. I turn the horse toward the barn, pulling back on the reins a bit to slow her. We trot up to Tucker, Wendy, and Mr. Avery, who are all staring at me with their mouths hanging open.

  So much for being on my best behavior.

  “Whoa,” I say, and pull up the reins until
Sassy stops.

  “Holy smokes!” Wendy gasps. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know.” I force a laugh. “I think it was mostly the horse’s idea.”

  “That was amazing!”

  “I guess she still has a bit of sass in her after all.” I glance triumphantly at Tucker. For once he’s speechless.

  “That was sure something,” says Mr. Avery. “I didn’t know the old girl had it in her.”

  “How long have you been riding?” asks Tucker.

  “This is her first time, isn’t that amazing?” says Wendy. “She’s a natural.”

  “Right,” Tucker said, meeting my gaze steadily. “A natural.”

  “So, have you asked Jason Lovett to prom yet?” I ask Wendy as we’re brushing down Sassy in the barn a few minutes later.

  She’s immediately the color of a beet. “It’s prom,” she says with forced lightness. “He’s supposed to ask me, right?”

  “Everyone knows he’s the shy type. He’s probably intimidated by your stunning beauty. So you should ask him.”

  “But maybe he has a girlfriend back in California.”

  “Long-distance relationship. Doomed. Anyway, you don’t know that for sure. Ask him. Then you’ll find out.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Wen, come on. He likes you. He stares at you all through English. And I know you’ve got the hots for him, too. What is it with you and Californians, anyway?”

  It’s quiet for a minute, the only sound the steady breathing of the horse.

  “So what’s going on with you and my brother?” asks Wendy. Completely out of the blue.

  “Your brother? What do you mean, ‘going on’?”

  “It seems like there’s something going on there.”

  “You’re joking, right? We just like to mess with each other, you know that.”

  “But you like him, don’t you?”

  My mouth falls open. “No, I—” I stop myself.

  “You like Christian Prescott,” she finishes for me, arching an eyebrow. “Yeah, I could tell. But he’s like a god. You worship the gods but you don’t go out with them. You only like guys like that from a distance.”

  I don’t know what to say. “Wendy—”

  “Look, I’m not pushing you on my brother. It kind of gives me the creeps, truthfully, my best friend dating my brother. But I wanted to tell you, in case you were interested, that it’d be okay. I could get over it. If you wanted to go out with him—”

  “But Tucker doesn’t even like me,” I sputter.

  “He likes you.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “In grade school, didn’t you ever have a boy punch you on the arm?”

  “Tucker’s a junior in high school.”

  “He’s still in grade school, trust me,” she says.

  I stare at her. “So you’re saying Tucker’s such a jackass because he likes me?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “No way.” I shake my head in disbelief.

  “The thought never crossed your mind?”

  “No!”

  “Huh,” she says. “I won’t stand in the way or anything. It’s okay.”

  My heart’s beating fast. I swallow. “Wendy, I don’t like your brother. Not that way. Not in any way, really. No offense.”

  “None taken,” she says with a casual shrug. “I just wanted you to know I’m okay with it, the you-and-Tucker thing, if there’s ever a you-and-Tucker thing.”

  “There’s no me-and-Tucker thing, okay? So can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure,” she says, but I can tell by the pensive look on her face that she has more she wants to say.

  Chapter 9

  Long Live the Queen

  “Can I get into this thing by myself?” I ask.

  “Put on as much as you can,” Angela calls back, “and I’ll help you with the rest.”

  I contemplate the gown and all of its many parts, which are hanging from a hook in the backstage dressing room at the Pink Garter. It looks complicated. Maybe we should have gone with the Angels of Mons idea.

  “How long am I going to have to wear this tomorrow?” I call, pulling on the silk stockings and tying them with ribbon under the knee.

  “Not long,” answers Angela. “I’ll help you put it on right before class and then you’ll wear it during the entire presentation.”

  “Just so you know, this may kill me. I may have to sacrifice my life for us to get a good grade on this project.”

  “So noble of you,” she says.

  I struggle into the corset and the long crazy hoops of the petticoat. Then I grab the hanger with the dress on it and march out onto the stage.

  “I think I need you to tie up the corset before I put the rest on,” I say.

  She jumps up to help me. That’s one thing about Angela: She never does anything halfway. She yanks the laces.

  “Not so tight! I still have to breathe, remember?”

  “Quit whining. You’re lucky we couldn’t find any real whalebone for this thing.”

  By the time she slides the dress over my head I feel like I have on every item of clothing at the Garter. Angela walks around me pulling on the pieces underneath to make sure they look right. She steps back.

  “Wow, that is good. With the makeup and the hair right, you’ll look exactly like Queen Elizabeth.”

  “Great,” I say without enthusiasm. “I’ll look like a pasty-faced tart.”

  “Oh, I forgot the ruffs!”

  She hops down from the stage and runs over to a cardboard box on the floor. She pulls out a stiff round collar that looks like the things you put on dogs to keep them from licking themselves. There are two more for the wrists.

  “No one said anything about ruffs,” I say, backing away.

  She jumps toward me. Her wings come out with a flash and beat a couple of times, carrying her easily to the stage, then disappear.

  “Show-off.”

  “Hold still.” She puts the final ruff on the end of my sleeve. “My mom’s a genius.”

  As if on cue, Anna Zerbino comes in from the lobby with a stack of table linens. She stops in the aisle when she sees me.

  “So it fits,” she says, her humorless dark eyes looking me up and down.

  “It’s great,” I say. “Thank you for all your hard work.”

  She nods.

  “Dinner’s ready upstairs. Lasagna.”

  “Okay, so we’re done with the fitting,” I say to Angela. “Get me out of this thing.”

  “Not so fast,” whispers Angela, glancing at her mom over her shoulder. “We haven’t done much of our other research.”

  She’s so predictable. Always with the angel research.

  “Come on,” I whisper back. “Lasagna.”

  “We’ll be right up, Mom,” says Angela. She pretends to fiddle with my collar until her mother leaves the theater. As soon as we’re alone again, she says, “I figured out something good, though.”

  “What is it?”

  “Angels—full-blooded angels, I mean—are all male.”

  “All male?”

  “There are no female Intangere.”

  “Interesting. Now help me get out of this dress.”

  “But I think that angels could appear female if they wanted to. I believe they can change form, like shape-shifters,” she says, her golden eyes dancing with excitement.

  “So they can become cats and birds and stuff.”

  “Right, but more than that,” she says. “I have another theory.”

  “Oh, here we go,” I groan.

  “I think that all the stories about supernatural creatures, like vampires, werewolves, ghosts, mermaids, aliens, you name it, could all be angel related. Humans don’t know what they’re seeing, but it could all be angels taking on other forms.”

  Angela has some wild theories, but they’re always cool to consider.

  “Awesome,” I say. “Now let’s eat.”

  “Wait,” she
says. “I also found something about your hair.”

  “My hair?”

  “The blaze thing you told me about.” She walks over to the table and grabs her notebook, flips through it. “It’s called comae caelestis. The Romans used the phrase to describe ‘dazzling rays of light emanating from the hairs of the head, a sign of a heavenly being.’”

  “What, you find that on the internet?” I ask with a stunned laugh. She nods. As usual, Angela has taken the nugget of information I’ve given her and turned it into a gold mine.

  “I wish it would happen to me,” she says, twisting a strand of her shiny black hair around her finger wistfully. “I bet it’s awesome.”

  “It’s overwhelming, okay? And you’d have to dye your hair.”

  She shrugs like that doesn’t sound so bad to her.

  “So what do you have for me this week?” she asks.

  “What about the concept of purpose?” This is a big one, something I probably should have gotten into a lot earlier, only I didn’t especially want to talk about purpose, because then I’d have to talk about mine. But now I’ve literally told her everything else I know. I even broke out the angel diary and showed her my old notes. Secretly I hope that she, in her infinite wisdom, already knows all about purpose.

  “Define purpose,” she says.

  No such luck.

  “First get me out of this thing.” I gesture to the dress.

  She moves around me quickly, loosening and unfastening all the laces and ties. I go into the dressing room and change back into my normal clothes. When I come out, she’s sitting at one of the tables drumming her pencil on her notebook.

  “Okay,” she says. “Tell me.”

  I take a seat across from her.

  “Every angel-blood has a purpose on Earth. Usually it comes in the form of a vision.”

  She scribbles furiously into her notebook.

  “When do you see this vision?” she asks.

  “Everybody’s different, but sometime between thirteen and twenty, usually. It happens after your powers start to manifest. I only got mine last year.”