Noa fell back, laughing, crying, hugging, as Sasha climbed all over her, covered her cheeks and nose with kisses and with spit, with sweat and stick and warm. Noa heard herself sobbing, shrieking, shouting as Sasha pulled her hair, hugged her head, yanked on Noa’s shoulders to urge her to sit up.
Noa did but kept Sasha wrapped up tight. “You came for me, my love,” she cried into her curls, gulping that beloved Sasha smell. “I wanted to come for you, but you came for me.”
Sasha scrambled backward in Noa’s arms so she could look her sister in the eyes, her small face screwed up and annoyed. “I wait and I wait and I wait, I ask, I ask, I ask, and you never show me! Finally you show me!” she scolded. “Next time, show me faster!”
Noa bit her lip, tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t help it. There were the furious apple cheeks, the stern bow lips, right here in this room where Noa had dreamed and dreamed and dreamed her—
“Oh my God!” Noa cried in sudden revelation, staring Sasha in the eyes. “All this time—in the cave, in the Tunnels, in the White Province—all those times I saw you in my mind or dreams or remembered you and then made myself think of other things—I wasn’t remembering or imagining, was I? I was Dreamwalking—to you! And I kept chasing you away!”
Sasha nodded emphatically. Finally her big sister understood. Noa couldn’t believe how clear it all seemed now. “You kept me asking me where, and I kept pushing you back, putting you far away inside a box to keep you safe—until now, until here in this room when I couldn’t bear not to think of you, not to imagine, no matter how it hurt. So I pictured you here, over and over, you here with me—”
“And so I come!” Sasha squealed in delight. “I come to fix it!”
“And you did,” Noa cried, burying her head in Sasha’s hair again, that smell. “You did!”
Noa suddenly remembered Judah. This was his sister too. and this joy was huge, so huge it should be shared. She turned to him, heart bursting warm—and her stomach cratered.
Judah was watching, had been watching their reunion. Noa had never seen him look so lonely, broken-down, and lost. He saw her eyes and scowled, flushed, looked away.
“Do you remember Judah, Sasha?” Noa asked her sister gently, turning back to her because she could not bear to see Judah’s face that way. Sasha slid her eyes to Judah carefully, then looked back at Noa, burying her face in Noa’s neck, the way she sometimes did with strangers.
A cracking sound made them all turn to Sasha’s crystal wave of ice—panic flew through Noa as she saw, within their ice cocoon, blue light warming around Callum and Kells, causing tiny fractures to come up to the surface.
“They’re breaking through!” Noa realized, jumping to her feet. “Callum must be working his gift to set them free.” She spun to Hilo. It was happening for Hilo too, and Judah, who was scrabbling backward on his hands.
And then Noa knew. She knew.
Her plan would not work, could never work. And she could not have borne it if it did.
Noa let Sasha slide down her side to stand on the ground, though she kept Sasha’s fingers fast in hers. She turned to Judah, held out her other free hand kindly. “We have to go, Judah. Come on.”
Judah had slid away from Hilo and gotten to his feet, but he didn’t come toward her. He scowled at her outstretched arm. “You have Sasha. You don’t need me anymore.”
“But you have to come with us! Come on!”
“You hate me, remember? You always have. I accept it, it’s what you wanted.”
Noa’s heart sped in growing panic. “I know I said those things, but they were lies! It was all a lie!” More cracks sounded from the ice, and Sasha squeezed her hand, clearly eager to get moving. But Noa couldn’t wait either; she had to do this now, when the whole world was suddenly encased in ice and just as clear. Who knew how long that would last? As if an echo of her thought, chunks of ice began to fall from Kells, Callum, and Hilo.
“I was scared, Judah, I was scared and lost and I wanted to protect you, but you were right, you were right all along and I didn’t see it.” The words tumbled, jumbled together, inadequate to describe it right. “It’s you and me, together, I get it now, I can’t leave without you—” She was smiling, grinning, because finally she knew, she knew and she felt and she trusted! “We’ll figure the rest out, the rest I can’t even begin to tell you, but we’ll do it and we’ll find it and we just have to go right now—”
But he wasn’t smiling back; he wasn’t coming toward her; he wasn’t reaching for her hand. He was scowling harder, as if she were hurting him, making everything worse. His eyes filled with disbelief and suspicion, pain and angry unshed tears. Sasha yanked on Noa’s hand, urging her away, but Noa couldn’t leave, not yet—she had to speak until the words were right, until they were the poem that she needed:
“Judah, don’t you get it? We wake each other up. In the Portal we woke together, and in prison you woke for me, even when they had your soul and it meant pain! And at home”—tears of her own now, streaming messily on all the words—“at home after Isla died and I had nothing, not even dreams, you woke me. I thought it was Callum, but it was you—not to some fairy tale that wasn’t real, but to everything, every feeling, good and bad! Anger and happiness and frustration, confidence and daring, fear and I don’t know! Everything! Things that hurt, things that were messy, things that were hard—you woke me up! We wake each other, don’t you see? So you can’t stay here, I don’t care about the rest, come with me, let’s go somewhere else, let’s figure the rest out later—”
Ice was raining fast from Callum, Hilo, Kells—Hilo’s arms were free, and Kells’ legs up to the knees, and Callum’s entire torso, neck to waist. Sasha screamed in anger, yanking Noa so hard she stumbled in the direction away from Judah. Noa pulled back against her sister to reach again, desperately, toward the boy who would not reach back. He looked at her hand, face crumpling now, childlike, wanting so much to believe—
“Home!” Sasha yelled, voice booming so loud and strong it shook the room. Noa yelped as a blinding light stung her eyes and a thunderous crack shook the room and split the floor. Noa looked behind her: Sasha had ripped a vertical, wailing chasm in the air, bleeding radiant, blinding light like some trapped, exploding star—
“A Rip in the worlds,” Noa murmured in awe, in terror, as everything in the room heaved and shook. The Seer had warned her such a thing could be conjured only if one had all the powers intrinsically, like Sasha—but that it would last for moments only, then devour anything within—
Alarms were blaring in the hallway; shouts and footsteps thundered. Noa turned back to Judah, now on the other side of the cracking floor, the cavern between them growing wider by the moment.
“Come on!” she screamed, arm outstretched, above the roar and blare. “Jump!”
He called back against the noise, the rush, the air, “No time! … Have to go … without me!”
Noa turned to Sasha, desperate. “He’s your brother, help him, Sash!”
But Sasha was looking past Noa and glaring right at Judah. She made a little growl at him and yanked Noa hard away and toward the Rip—
Noa resisted, not understanding, whipping back to Judah one last time. He looked stricken, frozen, ashamed, was no longer trying to reach her. Ice kept falling; the thunder of boots descending the hall—
“Judah!” Noa screamed in terror, in panic. “Come on!”
“You were right to hate me!” Judah cried, face crumpling in tears. “Sasha knows, she knows and she’s afraid—”
“Judah, stop it—”
“I threw her through the Portal on purpose! Back in your world! To hurt you!” The confession tore him apart, loud within the noise with its terrible, terrible clarity. “I did it on purpose! Because I knew that it would hurt you! Because you said you didn’t love me! She knows, she knows!” Judah fell to his knees, burying his face as the last
ice fell from Callum, Kells, and Hilo and they sprang forward with battle cries, as Arik and a swarm of Guards blasted in the door. “I did it on purpose! I didn’t care! I didn’t care and I wanted to hurt you!”
Noa didn’t see them, didn’t see anything. She was so shocked, so devastated, hearing every word and knowing, terribly, terribly knowing, that every word was truth. She was paralyzed, struck dumb, and Sasha had to make her move.
Noa let Sasha pull her rag-doll body toward the Rip, but her button eyes remained on Judah, this Judah who was not her Judah at all, who was someone she had never imagined, never seen, but who had been there all along—someone so broken, so terribly broken all he could do was hurt you, someone who could be fixed and didn’t want to be. And Judah watched them go, his face so lost it would have broken Noa’s heart if she’d still had a heart to break. She thought maybe he mouthed something, threw something as Aurora swirled away to black, but all she could do was close her eyes,
and let Sasha guide her home
PART V: HOME, AGAIN
They walked out to calm and peaceful quiet. Evening. The cool clear crispness of Salinas. Noa breathed it in, drank the sharp, light air. Home.
Behind them, Sasha’s Rip simply swallowed itself away, sucking out with the faintest pop.
If only everything that had happened in Aurora could be sealed away so neatly.
Noa looked down at Sasha, helpless; Sasha looked back up at Noa and squeezed Noa’s hand three times. She smiled her rarest, secret Sasha smile—the shy one, just between them—and then started leading Noa forward, down the hill toward the cul-de-sac where they lived. The moon was full and round; it lit the air in concert with the stars. The road ahead was deserted, peaceful with all in bed.
Home.
Where Judah had not confessed, where Callum had not deceived her, where everything that lay undone was winked out behind her.
Noa’s body suddenly seized; her heart pounded. The silence suddenly felt empty, the calm lonely and narrow and alone.
Sasha squeezed her hand, three times. And then Noa saw them.
They had come to walk beside them in the dark. Noa and Sasha were not alone, for here was Isla’s ghost holding out her hand, and at her side, a glint of mischief in her eye and a cheeky smile on her lips, was Marena, whole and healthy, holding her spirit-sister’s hand. Noa took Isla’s other hand, and the four of them—Sasha, Noa, Isla, Marena—continued united, bound, girl-beasts too strong for fear.
When they reached Noa’s familiar house, Isla and Marena nodded goodbye and, with linked arms, faded into the night. Noa knelt by Sasha and hugged her tight. When she let go, Sasha handed Noa something from her pocket—something she had caught and kept just as they’d left Aurora. Something Judah had thrown into the Rip after them, that he’d wanted Noa to have, even after everything:
A silver chain, with a tiny silver charm, faintly glowing red, freed from its red tube. Judah’s talisman, part of his soul, which Kells had thrown away.
Noa’s heart tightened, but Sasha smiled, closed Noa’s hand around it. Sasha wanted her to keep it. So Noa tucked it away safe.
They were almost at the door when someone, two someones, hissed at them from behind Isla’s tree in their front yard.
“Noser!”
“Don’t freak her out!”
Olivia and Miles, hiding in the shrubbery.
Noa ran over with Sasha in tow, so tired and confused but overwhelmed with relief to see them alive and here and well, but knowing from Sasha’s squeeze that they were them and this was real. Noa hugged Olivia first, then Miles, unable to find the words.
“Jeez Louise, Noa, it hasn’t been that long. We saw you at school this morning,” Olivia laughed.
“What?” Noa asked.
Miles turned red. “We kind of followed you. To that gardening shack with Callum’s brother? Judah, right, Olivia? I’m a little sketchy on the details. My memory’s still kinda Memento-ing on me.”
“Wait … you followed me and Judah, when we went to see K—Mr. Green? In his shack? And that was … today?”
“This afternoon,” Olivia said, squinting at her. “We’re sorry for spying, but we were worried. We had to watch from kinda far away and didn’t see what happened inside, but then there was this huge exploding light, and, well…” She looked at Miles, who shrugged back at her. “Well, I think his memory thing might be contagious or something because then I had this really weird daydream, except we were all in it and Harlow was super bizarro, and neither of us remembers anything until like, a couple hours later.”
“Uh … wow,” Noa said carefully.
“But the point is,” Olivia barreled on, in her usual Olivia way, “when we did wake up in the field again, you guys were gone and that shack was like, demolished, so we came here and have been waiting for you to come home to make sure you’re okay. Which, clearly, you are.” She turned to Miles. “As I said she would be, didn’t I? I told you Noa’s a tough broad.”
Miles shrugged and smiled at Noa. “I worry about you. Hazard of my friendship. That I know, no matter how wonky my short-term memory may be.”
Noa looked at his earnest, eager face, that golden-retriever smile, his adorably rumpled hair. Miles was always looking out for her, he was always on her side, and he never stopped supporting her even when she let him down, again and again…. He was her Miles, her easy, adorable, loving Miles, he was someone she could be sure of, someone she could always trust, she had never appreciated that so clearly before—
“Uh, hello, Noa?” Olivia snapped her fingers in front of Noa, who was staring at Miles a little moonily.
Miles cocked his head. “You okay, Noa?”
Noa shook herself, blushing for some reason. “Yes, yes, I’m just so glad to have you guys in my corner.” She hugged Olivia again, then went to hug Miles, but they did a little awkward dance and Noa blushed again when they finally worked it out.
Olivia pulled Miles away, apparently noticing nothing. “We gotta hightail it back to school, or we’ll have a hard time sneaking back in, and I so do not need a curfew infraction to start next term. Good to see you’re fine and Miles is still nuts. See you tomorrow, chica!”
“Bye, guys.” Noa smiled and gave them a little wave as they ran off, no doubt to cross to the main road where they would call a cab to take them back to Harlow.
Once Olivia was out of sight, Sasha pulled Noa toward the door. She reached up to turn the doorknob, not letting Noa’s hand go, and together, they walked inside the house.
Noa paused in the foyer to let the familiar smell and air envelop her like a favorite threadbare blanket. She heard voices, and her mother laughing—laughing—in the kitchen; light shone beneath the door. Noa went toward the cozy, unexpected sound like a moth to warmth. It was manna after a long and terrible journey, a sound to dissolve all other sounds remembered and unwanted.
Noa and Sasha together pushed the swinging door into the kitchen and walked into the warm glow. There were Christopher and Hannah, smiling and laughing by candlelight around the worn circle breakfast table—the table of Noa’s childhood—and with them, joining in like oldest friends, were two people who cut the warmth like a knife down to the bone:
Lorelei, and Darius.
JOIN FAE NATION
POETRY APPENDIX
Girl
my lids close and your eyes open:
silt-rich and promise-thick,
chocolate pools for wildflowers
if I could only
stay
and
watch.
I blink—you ringlet up,
snail-curled inside your shell. A spiral
I can’t pick from
endless, shapeless sands.
But when I write—I feel you,
fingers small and fat in mine,
we ink each word together
Who are we, are we starfish?
Hand-cups sucked together fast?
I taste your salt
I smell your tang
Why
do
you
never
last?
TATTOO
Girl-Beast wake and wail with me
Pack your wounds with rocks and mud
Let growls rip betwixt your teeth
Be killer, hunter, fighter, thief,
Give no mercy, no relief,
Spill truth with flesh and blood!
MARENA
Mar is the sea
but not this sea
not these predictable currents
not these precise, breaking waves.
Mar is a riptide
the flow under the flow—
she sinks where they rise,
retracts where they push.
Beware swimmers, who use only your eyes
hypnotized by peaks cresting
and neat lines of foam.
Mar’s fingers are seaweed, the deep and the dark,
Mar’s whirlpools are hidden
spinning down coral shoals.
Seagirl stop stroking
in peak, crest, and fill—
See instead with your skin
with your scales
with your gills.
SANDPAPER PLACE, AURORA
I have been here before, in this Sandpaper Place,
I know these stones by chilling heart.
Sometimes they are ragged, slicing my palms,
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