Renegade Red

by Lauren Bird Horowitz

  Olivia smiled. “True dat. The imagination can be a dangerous thing. But then again…” she wiggled her eyebrows mischievously, “so can sleeplessness resulting from all-night rendezvous with jolly green strangers. Don’t think you don’t owe me deets, lady. I gave good alibi last night.”

  Noa furrowed her brow, trying to understand.

  “I know, I know, you don’t like me to call Callum that. But I have to find some way to make fun of that guy, otherwise he’s too Adonis-y for his own good. So how was the date? The whole Noa-in-Charge deal?”

  “I … I took him to Monterey,” Noa said slowly. “We kayaked and … ate saltwater taffy. There was an otter….”

  Olivia rolled her eyes. “Get to the good stuff. Any smoochies?”

  “No,” Noa said, remembering more clearly. “Not then, but later. Under the tree. And it was…” His face, the light, the electricity between them, hands upon hands upon leaves upon lips, something hers, only hers, always hers … “It changed the world.”

  “Whoa, Noa—”

  “I don’t mean to be melodramatic, it really felt—”

  “No, Noa!” Olivia leapt up, pointed to Noa’s chest. Across her white, wrinkled Oxford, a line of red was bleeding. “Did you cut yourself? What happened?”

  “It’s my scar—”

  “It’s bleeding everywhere!”

  Noa looked up. Red droplets were raining down from everywhere, now turning green—she looked at Olivia, at the green spots on her Harlow vest, but now it wasn’t Olivia, it was Marena, trying to look tough but failing, scared, and she was melting into greenest rain.

  “No!” Noa screamed. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to see this. She closed her eyes but still the vision lingered—

  Change the nightmare, Noa.

  Noa gasped. Her mother’s voice, not her mother-the-moon, but Hannah in full light, robust and round.

  Noa opened her eyes, and Hannah was standing beside the silently screaming Marena, the green rain making circles on her hair, her shoulders. Hannah was younger, the way she’d been when Noa had been small. When Noa had run into her mother’s room, night after night, unable to sleep without fear.

  “Go back in and change the nightmare, Noa,” Hannah soothed her. “That’s the way it can’t get you. Make it someplace safe.”

  Hannah’s eyes held Noa’s, sure and calm. Noa nodded. Someplace safe. She concentrated, and around them the green rain turned to swirling leaves, to grassy ground. And Noa was leaning against Callum beneath his tree, encircled and so safe. She wore the bracelet, the one that let them be and breathe together, the gift, the talisman….

  Noa lifted her wrist, let the tiny charm glitter in the sun. She laughed; it was so fragile, so frail, to have given her so much. A world of her own. A place that was hers, unbreachable by chaos, chance, even invisible things she didn’t know yet to fear. She turned to Callum, looking to see this happiness mirrored in his eyes—and lurched away. Because Callum had no face, his face was blank, and the talisman burned around her wrist.

  The talisman that was bad, not good, that had maimed his soul, let dark things in, let him be controlled—

  Change the nightmare, Noa. Make it someplace safe.

  Noa strained and made the grass, the leaves, grow tall and flat and lined with books. Lamont Library, a cocoon of words, but she looked around and saw she was alone. Cold, alone, afraid. Where was Judah? Noa remembered: he wasn’t here and neither was this place, it did not exist, it existed only in the Portal that had devoured them alive. The world that was meant to feel right but never had, not to Noa, never right and never safe. Not for her or Judah or anyone at all.

  She screamed.

  Change the nightmare! Make it safe!

  The room and colored book covers flickered, flashed, became a whirlwind of light and roaring sound. Noa went home, but waiting there was Isla’s loss, the cavern inside the cavern.

  She went to school, but she was inside the box, the commuter locker where she no longer fit.

  She searched frantically for Callum, because Callum had helped her breathe, had shown her air, had given her gills and wings. And she hadn’t had to take care of him, not like her parents or like Judah; even Callum’s lies had given her the gift of Sasha, her someone round and whole—

  —but Callum was nowhere, nowhere, nowhere. Not at the dock in Monterey, not in the bicycle surrey on the coast, not holding the taffies on the Salinas bus. He wasn’t next to her building the Neverland float, or enduring extra help with her in history. He wasn’t in the tree outside her window, watching over her to make sure she was okay. Those places were there, but Callum wasn’t; he was unraveling from the fabric of her mind—or maybe he was in the glass room, only in the glass room, his hands ever on Marena’s shoulders, melting her to green—

  Someplace safe!

  The Tunnels! Damp and dark, lost and alone, safe where nobody could touch her, where nothing could sneak in and change her mind. No touch, no loss, no change or love or lies. Aloneness. Perfect aloneness.

  Sasha.

  Not alone. Not even here.

  Noa would never be alone, could never be alone because Sasha was her heart. Sasha’s blood was Noa’s blood. Noa breathed because Sasha breathed. Sasha’s mess was Noa’s life.

  Sasha’s form shimmered, wavered, coalesced in Noa’s dream.

  “No, please, not here—it isn’t safe for you here—” Noa told her. Sasha could not know this deep, this dark. Noa would not let it learn the taste of Sasha’s sweat. “Go.”

  The ghostly image faded away, obeying Noa’s command before it even fully formed. Noa’s cheek fell back into the puddle—or maybe it was her dream-cheek, into an echo puddle in her mind.

  Noa turned her head, let her other cheek rest against the wet. The silence of the Tunnels filled down around her, and she saw Hilo, arm in arm with Judah, hiding something in one of their special places in the wall. Judah looked lighter, younger; Hilo looked at him with that special something budding deeper. Noa recoiled sharply, gasping, and Hilo turned toward her, glared directly into Noa’s face. Hilo’s face twisted in anger, confusion, disbelief—then the whole tunnel, the real tunnel, popped back empty, damp, and black. She was awake.

  She was alone.

  Noa closed her eyes again, prayed for dreamless oblivion—and finally she got her wish. She slept and slept, dreaming nothing, lying still in the puddle until her body chilled and her clothes were sodden. She didn’t dare to think, to move, until a hand grabbed and shook her roughly, forcing her to open her eyes.

  “Why,” Hilo hissed, eyes fierce in the dark, “were you walking in my dream?”

  • • •

  For a moment, Noa was paralyzed.

  “Answer me, Dreamwalker! How and why and now!” Hilo demanded, hair shock-white in anger like some alabaster demoness.

  “I-I don’t know,” Noa stuttered. Her palms slipped clumsily in the stagnant water.

  Water.

  “What about you?” Noa remembered angrily, emboldened by rage. “You tricked us, and we were captured! They took us to—they made us—because of you—” Noa didn’t want to remember it, couldn’t contain it, wanted only to punish the person, pixie, siren who had caused it all. She lunged at Hilo, claws out, hissing; she wasn’t Noa anymore, she was Isla, Sasha—no, Marena!—and she was biting and scratching and screaming like the girl-beast she knew she was.

  “Stop it! Stop!” Hilo cried, trying to cover her face with her hands.

  Noa felt a wave of something try to get at her, a cloud of helplessness and fear pressing its fingers toward her mind. She laughed aloud, ignored it; its thumbs were tentative and weak and blew away like so much smoke.

  Gift failing, Hilo hurdled into Noa instead and bowled her backward. She pinned Noa with her knees and talon-hands, eyes fierce and canines bared. Earthy and lethal, just like C
allum had said—except Noa couldn’t quite remember how he’d said it, couldn’t quite hear the timbre of his voice—

  “What’s with you!” Hilo shook Noa hard, slapped her across the face. “Where did you go just now?”

  “My head…,” Noa said slowly, skull suddenly thundering painfully. “My head hurts so much….”

  Hilo’s ferocity wavered; she pulled herself off Noa, eyeing her warily. Noa knew vaguely this was an opening to lunge back, but all she could do was put her hands to her hammering temples.

  Her suffering made Hilo look uncomfortable. “Here, I’ll make your limbic system relax, ease the pai—”

  “Don’t!” Noa spat. “No help from you, you traitor!”

  “I suppose letting someone explain isn’t something mortals do,” Hilo replied icily.

  “Not when honesty clearly isn’t something you do.” Noa’s headache suddenly eased again, as rapidly as it had come. She straightened up. “We could have drowned for all you cared!”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know plenty, and Judah—”

  “And you really don’t know Judah,” Hilo snorted.

  Noa resisted an urge to snarl.

  “Oh, you think I’m wrong?” Hilo laughed. “You think you have some special window into his soul?”

  Noa narrowed her eyes. “We’ve been through quite a bit together.”

  The humor vanished from Hilo’s eyes. “Oh, really? Have you ‘been through’ hearing him say he wants to die? Have you ‘been through’ listening to him plan the ways, and asking for your help, because somewhere, somehow, he was taught he wasn’t worth his life?”

  Noa looked down, but Hilo didn’t stop: “Were you there when he made the hollow cave to be his tomb? Were they your hands that had to help him dig it out, so he wouldn’t actually grave-dig himself to death? Were you there, Noa?” She wiped angrily at her eyes, her cheeks. “And when he explained there was no hope? Because what was wrong with him was so insidious and so invisible, it was deeper than any marrow, more basic than any genes, and would poison any way he tried to grow?”

  Noa trembled. “I wasn’t there, no, but Callum told me, and Judah—”

  “But you didn’t see it. You weren’t here, below. Not like I was.”

  “Yes,” Noa finally acknowledged, “you kept him safe—”

  “No! Don’t you see?” Hilo cried. “I tried, I failed! I helped Callum because I couldn’t … I couldn’t do it alone—” Hilo broke off, swallowed hard.

  “And your feelings for Callum?” Noa asked quietly.

  Hilo shrugged. “I was dazzled by him, we all were. The Blue Son. Even if you didn’t support Darius, it was impossible not to—” Hilo steeled herself. “But what I did, I did for Judah. I knew he would hate me for it but at least he’d be alive—”

  “What about now, Hilo,” Noa replied. “You informed on us, delivered us right to Arik.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Hilo said plainly, looking right into Noa’s eyes. “I would never cross over to Darius after what he’s done.”

  “You mean his oppression of the Colors?”

  “I mean the oppression of his son.”

  Despite herself, Noa bit her lip. Hilo was not trustworthy, she knew that, so why did she find herself wanting to believe?

  “The worst,” Hilo continued softly, shivering, “were the things Darius didn’t say. The subtext, the silence—Judah breathed it all in with the air. It got inside him, and he didn’t even know it…”

  Noa steeled herself. “But your silence hurt him too. You started the Fyre in the Training Center and never told him it was you. You let him believe he might have done it, killed his own sister. You could have spared him that but you said nothing.”

  Hilo looked away, wiped hard at her cheek. She stayed silent so long Noa thought she had finally done it, won this argument, proven Hilo was the villain—and for some reason, that made Noa want to cry.

  But then Hilo spoke, a whisper, her entire body trembling: “I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t say it. I-I loved Lily, too. And even more”—a little sob broke up her words, but Hilo pushed herself through it—“I loved that she made Judah feel loved too.” Slowly, painfully, Hilo turned back to meet Noa’s eyes, face wet with tears. “I couldn’t tell him I’d ruined that, taken that away. So I put it in a box—all of it—and I sealed it up and stuffed it down as deep as it would go, because there was no other way that I could live and breathe past it.”

  Noa’s hand found itself touching Hilo’s arm.

  “Lily didn’t die, Hilo,” she said gently. “You didn’t kill her. And even more important, what you did helped save her life.”

  Hilo buried her face in her hands, surrendered to her tears. Somehow, Noa’s arms fell around her and Noa was crying, too. They cried together, held each other, there in the damp dark. When the tears finished, they looked at each other, clean.

  As if they’d been baptized by truth and sorrow, tears and tunnels. As if they were united now, and the world had been washed new.

  • • •

  After that, and without saying anything explicitly, Noa and Hilo were no longer enemies.

  “How did you find me?” Noa asked as they began to walk together.

  “You found me,” Hilo replied. “You Dreamwalked in my dream—”

  “No you were in my dream,” Noa insisted. “I saw you laughing with Judah at the wall—”

  “That was my dream, Noa. You Dreamwalked into it. I saw you watching us, and I recognized where you were so I came to find you. I know these Tunnels just as well as Judah, don’t forget.”

  “Is ‘dreamwalking’ an Aurora thing?”

  “No,” Hilo said. She stopped, looked unhappy. “It’s a Red thing.”

  “A Red—wait, you mean a gift?”

  “An extension of the Red gift—reading minds, reading dreams—but it’s a really advanced skill.”

  “Then that’s not what happened. I’m mortal.”

  “I know,” Hilo snapped.

  Noa hesitated, but she was tired, so tired, of having to carry all her worries around alone.

  “I … I’ve also been having really bad headaches. At first they were just annoying, but now … they’re getting overwhelming. But they come and go really fast, like spasms.”

  Hilo’s face was guarded. “What else?”

  “My … memories,” Noa admitted, fears tumbling out too fast to stop them. “Especially when I try to think of Callum—it’s like I can’t quite see him or grasp onto him, or the way I remember him is unraveling—and the air here is too thick, and even the water has a taste, and the sun is so bright…”

  Something flashed in Hilo’s eyes, almost too quick for Noa to see.

  But she did see.

  Fear uncurled in Noa’s stomach. “Please, Hilo, just tell me.”

  “I…” Hilo gritted her teeth, as if not wanting to have to say it. “I think Aurora might be … killing you.”

  Noa exhaled slowly, her panic giving way, startlingly, to acceptance. Her heart had broken, after all. Why not her body too?

  She was surprised to feel Hilo’s hand on her arm. “You need to go back to your world,” Hilo said gently.

  Hilo’s gentleness, more than anything, made Noa know it was all true.

  Noa’s head fell. “I can’t. Not without Sasha. And … I can’t abandon the brothers. Not the way they are right now.”

  Hilo’s fingers tightened. “What do you mean, the way they are?”

  Noa sighed, so tired, so very tired … too tired to hold it back. She explained what had passed within the prison in monotone, barely registered how Hilo’s face drained even whiter than before.

  “So they not only have the Green and Blue Smoke now, they’ve found a way to harness Red.”

  Noa nodded, blinking away t
he vision of Marena, melting…. “They encased the talismans in red tubes. It must work the mind control.”

  Hilo closed her eyes, gritted her teeth. “That’s it then. It’s over.” She fell back against the wall, every inch of her lithe body giving up. “Just say goodbye and seek the Seer.”

  “What is that, some kind of slang?” Noa asked.

  Hilo smiled bitterly. “It’s what Fae say when there’s no hope left, just death. You ‘seek the Seer’ and never come back.” Her eyes glittered a little in some last gasp of amusement. “It means you go into the Tunnels as deep as you can go with no intention of coming back.”

  “Like a dog going off to die?”

  “Yes.”

  That single-syllable yes rebounded around the tunnel walls, pinging them with its final taunt.

  Many moments later—seconds maybe, maybe hours—Hilo spoke again, idle musings of the damned.

  “You’re a poet right?”

  Noa sighed, almost too tired to reply. “I guess. I was. Why?”

  Hilo shrugged, but there was something in her shrug—a spark. “I don’t know. Just that … you believe stories could be true?”

  Noa narrowed her eyes. “You mean that story about secret Tunnel Fae?”

  Hilo scoffed. “No. Even you aren’t dumb enough to believe that trash. Hidden heroes waiting secretly to save the day? That was something parents told their kids during the Segregation so they wouldn’t lose hope. No one lived in the Tunnels.”

  “Not until two confused brothers, a liar, and a helpless poet,” Noa replied, earning Hilo’s appreciative little laugh. “So what story then? The one you obviously want me to say could be real?”

  Hilo scowled. “Forget it. We’ll come up with something else.”

  “Hilo—”

  “It’s nothing! Happy thinking for hapless idiots!”

  “If it means a chance to save my sister, to get home—”

  Hilo growled a little, fighting herself, clearly regretting having begun this conversation in the first place. “Look,” she said finally, exasperated, “the expression ‘seeking the Seer’ came from a story, an old story. A whisper, a whisper of a whisper a really long time ago about someone maybe hiding really deep within the Tunnels.”