by Seth Fishman
Suddenly I can see her, standing with my father on our porch watching the diggers at the well. Her head on his shoulder, his dirt-covered arms around her waist. She sits on my bed, listening to the clank of shovels. She walks out in the middle of the night, when the generator is blaring and floodlights blinding and she puts her hand on the controls of the drill and everyone stops while she walks to the hole and gets on her knees and wishes me good night. My mother packs my lunch for me, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and writes a note and lowers it into the well. Did she really add a note, or is that just here, in the source, in this nightmare? Why give it to me if I can’t read it? Why torture me so?
I begin to cry, which is a mistake. My body heaves and scrapes and the pain makes me cry out louder.
Then, suddenly, there’s a bright light. I blink, blinded for a moment, and stare up the hole. Usually I could see the sky above the well, a bright blue, but now the sun’s actually hitting my face, which I don’t remember ever happening. Some part of me knows that it must be noon. I look down, tilting my head to the left, pressing as hard as I can against the rock. I squint uncomfortably at the paper. There’s enough light now to read the words. It’s her handwriting, it’s really hers.
Mia,
I know you can’t read this, but it makes me feel better writing, so I’m going to do it anyway. It’s been over twenty-four hours now and I’m losing my mind with you down there. I’m lying in your bed right now, writing this. How silly is that? I want you to know that your daddy has been out there trying to get you the whole time. He hasn’t slept. He hasn’t eaten. He’s too worried about his baby Mia. Just like me. I wish I was down there instead of you. I wish it were me. And I hope that you see this letter, even if you can’t read it, and know that I wrote it, know that your mommy is thinking of you. See those stains? Those are tears—Mommy’s crying, but that’s okay. These are magic tears that will help you come home. They will help you forever. Come home, Mia. We’re waiting.
Love, Mom
My heaves subside but the tears keep coming, pouring down my cheeks. It’s uncontrollable, the pain of missing her sears my face, my stomach, my chest. Not even when she died and I watched her casket lower into the ground did I feel like this.
But something pierces my grief. As a four-year-old kid, I wouldn’t have been able to read the words. This note was for her, then. But it’s also for me, now. The source didn’t just send me here for fun, and the one thing out of place in my memory of the well is the note. Mom, I read the letter. I read it anyway. The sun’s path continues on its arc overhead and the darkness returns to the hole, but I’m not scared anymore. Magic tears, she said. I close my eyes and feel my eyelashes stick together. I let my tongue taste the cold air, then run it across my lips, drinking in the salt from my tears, the pain of my body and of her death.
This is the source. More than water. Something entirely my own.
I blink and am back in the eye of the cyclone. My arms and legs are free. There’s no sound, as if I’m in a vacuum. Beneath me is a thin layer of water, and below that, maybe stone—it feels like stone. It’s hard to tell through the dark water. I’m out of the well, but still inside the source. The cyclone spins around me, a shimmering blue cylinder shifting back and forth like a charmed snake. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and the mist instantly revives me and melts away the pain of the well.
I breathe in the air and feel a tingling, like an electric current. My mother wrote me a note thirteen years ago and brought me back. She gave me life. Far above me the eye of the cyclone is as blue as a clear day, the same thing I remember in the well, the first thing I remember at all. I don’t know if I would have been stuck in the well if I hadn’t read that note, if that was some kind of test, or if tasting those tears somehow counted as “drinking” the source. But a part of me knows that just as I’m now in the source, the source is now in me.
22
JO
JO WATCHES MR. KISH STUMBLE AND MIA STOP RUNNING, and then wakes up.
She must have blacked out, because she isn’t on the streets anymore or with Arcos. Instead, she sees Rob and Lisa kneeling over her, their faces blurred. They’re in a dark, tiny room. She can’t really move. Jo remembers fleeing Arcos’s tower, and getting separated from Mia and turning back and then nothing.
Nothing and the giant spear sticking out of her gut.
“Are you okay?” Rob asks. Jo realizes, vaguely, that he’s speaking to Lisa. They must not think she’s awake.
“Yes.” Lisa pauses. “Are you?”
“I’m fine, yeah.”
For a long moment they look at each other, and Jo watches, unable to speak up.
“We have to pull it out,” Lisa says in a whisper. Why is she whispering? There’s no one else here.
“You could kill her that way,” Rob says. “Why can’t we just put her in the water and then pull it out?”
Jo tries to say something but can’t; the pain’s like a vise on her mouth. Every breath, every movement tears open her insides. Like she swallowed an arrowhead and it’s now making its way through her gut. She moans and Lisa puts a hand on her head. The hand’s warm, it feels so good. Jo tries to tell her so.
“No, Rob.” Lisa says, “I know about this. If you give her water now, she will heal around the spear and then you would have to hurt her again to take it out.”
“Fine,” he says, and Jo realizes that he’s sweating like crazy. She’s not hot at all. She feels almost nothing except the pain. “But how do we get it out?”
“It is very not good that Jo has awakened,” Lisa says, glancing down at Jo.
Rob’s face seems to tighten, the skin along his jaw going rigid. Jo’s seen that face before. He makes it when he has to do something he doesn’t want to.
“Jo,” he finally says, his voice hushed, “this is going to hurt. Then it’s going to feel better, okay? You have to trust us.”
Jo makes out his words, but they come through a haze, echoing and fading and hard to understand.
Lisa physically turns Jo’s head sideways and her vision flares, almost goes black.
“I will take the spear, you hold her.”
“That’s stupid,” Rob says. “We should cut it to make it smaller. It will be easier to get out.”
“Hold her,” Lisa commands.
“Please,” Jo manages to croak. But they don’t listen. Someone grips her shoulder, locking her in place. And then she feels a tug, small at first, the spear inching along inside her.
“One—” Rob begins to count. But Lisa yanks right away, her long Keeper hands pulling hard and sure on the spear, bringing it straight out of Jo’s body. The feel of the wood as it slid against her innards was enough to make her vomit, and she curls on herself and spits up blood.
“You didn’t wait for three,” Rob complains.
Jo feels their hands pick her up and place her down into a puddle of warm water. The blackness at the edge of her vision fades, then so does the pain. She opens her mouth and drinks some water on reflex, and it feels like the water mixes with her blood and disperses all around her body. She coughs, and it only hurts a little. Her breathing’s slow and steady and soon she feels okay enough so to sit up.
“Easy, Jo,” Lisa says, holding her down, the Keeper’s plum eyes studying her. Jo cranes her neck and sees the entry wound, a two-inch circle in her gut. It’s still there, and still bleeding.
“I thought I was better,” she says, surprised at how strong her voice is. Her friends sit back, relieved. Lisa’s blue hair isn’t so spiky right now; she must have gotten wet in the pool. The room’s steamy, the walls are close.
“You will be. The water first heals the inside, then helps your body on the outside. This type of injury will take time.”
“We don’t have time,” Rob says.
“Do I not know that?” Lisa snaps, flicking her bl
ue hair out of her eyes. More than ever before, Jo decides she likes her.
“Where are we?”
“In the private pool of a clanmate of Arcos. After you were hit, there was much chaos. We had to save you so we broke into the first place we found. We left Arcos behind.”
“Where’s Mia?” Jo asks. She remembers something, seeing her somewhere.
Rob and Lisa exchange a look. “We don’t know,” Rob says.
“We have to find her.”
“We will, but first we have to find my father,” Lisa says. “We have to stop the fighting.”
“But, Lisa,” Jo says, her mind beginning to work clearly. “Mia could be hurt. She doesn’t know this place.”
“Forgive me for pointing your wrong,” Lisa says, her voice ice. “But Keepers are dying because Feileen’s clan wants the source. My father apparently fights because he wants me to be of the Three. Either way, a new Keeper must have the source to end the dying, and to help I need to find my father and convince him to let Feileen have their own member of the Three. We must fix this first, then Mia.”
“She’s right, Jo,” Rob says. Jo would roll her eyes if she could. Of course he’s taking Lisa’s side. “Mr. Kish wants the source too, and Mia will be with him.”
“Wait,” Jo says, suddenly remembering. “What about Brayden?”
Rob looks like he just swallowed a Sour Patch Kid. “He disappeared.”
“What do you mean? With Mia?”
Rob shakes his head. “He was running next to me then he wasn’t.”
“I never trusted him.”
“Enough,” Lisa interrupts. “You are healed of a sort, friend Jo. So we must hurry.”
“Will I be able to walk?” Jo asks, touching tentatively around the wound. She gasps. It feels like she’s prodding a burn.
Lisa pushes her back under the water. “We leave in three hundred heartbeats.” Then the young Keeper takes the bloody spear and cleans it in the water, like that’s something she’s done a dozen times.
The room is almost completely filled by the pool. There’re a few gas lamps but only one is lit. The entire room is painted in stars, surprisingly realistic. This is like the romantic Jacuzzi of a honeymoon suite, minus a window or a balcony.
Rob’s chewing the inside of his cheek, worrying about something, though Jo assumes the “something” is everything. His face is paler than usual, and there are bags under his eyes, which she didn’t think was really possible with the water lying around.
Lisa, on the other hand, is vibrant. Her eyes are tense, capable, like all those years stuck in a penthouse training for an imaginary life have paid off. For the first time, Jo imagines her at Westbrook. Lisa’s skin is as light as any of Westbrook’s East Coast girls, pre-bronzer; she’d probably start a trend of plastic surgery induced eye-widening.
Outside, somewhere, there’s a noise, the dull echo of thousands of voices screaming at once.
“What’s that?” Jo asks.
“That is, my friend, our way home.”
• • •
Jo leans heavily on Rob while Lisa leads the way, but with every step she feels stronger, the ache in her side more superficial. Lisa had cut a swatch of Jo’s shirt off, so that now her midriff is showing. Jo keeps checking her stomach, watching the hole fill in, like an inverted scab.
Two Keepers stand at the exit of the building, watching the streets outside like a couple might watch a parade. They are extremely thin, almost gaunt, and draped in gray cloth that hangs to their feet. Something about them seems different. They lean against each other, their large eyes curious, and they blink in slow, languid time.
One of them, the female, says something to Lisa in their language.
“She says they have waited a very long time to see a Topsider,” Lisa says, translating. The woman speaks again, and Lisa grins. “She says that you are weak and ugly, and she does not understand how you have survived so long.”
Rob laughs. “I will never forget the day Jo’s called ugly. Oh what a day.”
Jo, though, finally gets what’s different about these Keepers. They remind her of her grandparents.
“Lisa,” she says. “How old are they?”
Lisa doesn’t have to ask. “Many, many cycles. The Keepers from the beginning, most stay inside, in their pools.” She gives a look that seems part sadness, part disgust, part pity. “They do not move. They do not eat. This, seeing them here, is very rare. My father would be this way, if not for the source.”
Outside, a troop of Keepers in Arcos’s red bound by. The two elders step out the door, as if to follow them, but instead just begin walking down the street, like they are out for a stroll.
“Where are they going?” Jo asks.
Lisa squeezes her arm. “To watch their world get torn apart.”
• • •
They move through side streets, running progressively faster as Jo heals more.
“There are too many Keepers on the streets,” Lisa says, after stopping them to let a few Keepers in Feileen’s white and black run by. “We need another way to get to my father.”
Lisa veers toward the outer edge of the city, and brings them into a three-foot-wide alley that runs parallel to the wall. There are no torches here, so they run in the dark, glimpses of Lisa’s white skin their only guide. Sometimes they hit a break in the buildings, and a flash of light enters the alley, and just as soon they’re covered in darkness. Jo accidentally bumps the wall, scraping her arm, but she doesn’t really mind. This is the type of place, she realizes, where she needs to keep a grip on reality.
Ahead of them, another gap in the buildings. They run through, Jo grateful for any brightness, but they hear a shout. A trio of Keepers swerves their way. Without saying a word, Lisa picks up the pace. Jo tries to match it, but she’s not herself yet and she quickly falls behind. Her stomach begins to tear, and she can feel the warm blood of her insides leaking down her leg.
She can hear the Keepers behind her now. Risking a glance over her shoulder, she thinks she sees someone. The glint of an eye. Big shapes in the dark. She hears their feet and their grunts and she keeps thinking this is like a nightmare, being chased in the dark, unable to see, running out of options. She presses a hand to her wound and tries to ignore the burn.
They pass another gap between buildings, and in the light she sees them: the three Keepers in black and white, each carrying a short, crystal knife; their blades look like icicles.
Lisa and Rob are far ahead of her now. She sees them disappear into the next alley. Jo doesn’t stop, but when she hits the darkness again she feels alone. She has no idea how far they have to go.
“Rob!” she shouts.
Suddenly she’s snatched up, two big arms snaking around her and lifting her off the ground. She screams and bites on reflex, then is disgusted to feel muscle and skin give way between her teeth, like the first bite of a chicken leg. Blood, coppery and warm, hits her tongue and she gags. The Keeper holding Jo screams in pain and drops her. His body is just a shadow, but Jo can still make out his arms sweeping down to strike down at her.
A spear thunks through the Keeper’s chest.
Rob’s there, pulling Jo to her feet.
“Go, Rob,” Lisa says in the dark, her voice very close.
“No.”
“I said go,” she yells. Jo listens to Lisa and grabs Rob. Lisa’s shouting in her native tongue, screaming at the Keepers, maybe telling them who she is. Maybe a war cry. Who knows.
“We have to help Lisa,” Rob says, his voice desperate. It’s dark still and she can only see his outline, but even that twitches with energy and fear.
“With what?” Jo shouts. “She’s doing this for us. Now, run!”
He goes, resigned and reluctant. Jo manages to keep up with him. She spits out the Keeper’s blood as they run.
The
y hurry on, and suddenly the alley exits into the main boulevard that separates the city.
Down the street, far down toward the entrance to the city, there are thousands of Keepers facing off against one another, reds and yellows and blues and all. They swirl in a blur of vibrant colors and pale skin.
“Crazy,” Rob says at her side.
Straight ahead along the curve of the city wall is the tunnel. Twenty or more Keepers, all in Randt’s yellow and blue, stand in a semicircular formation around the entrance. They’re being pressed hard by the black of Feileen’s Keepers, who are trying desperately to get to the source. Jo even thinks she sees the twins from the Exchange, their bodies twisting and turning, their ribbons prettier than any weapon should be.
“They’re losing,” Jo says, watching Randt’s Keepers fall one by one. Oddly, though, they aren’t retreating into the tunnel. They’re holding their ground.
“That’s good, right?” Rob replies, giving it only a glance. His attention is backward, to the dark, and Lisa. He’s fidgeting, and Jo can tell he’s an inch away from diving back in.
“Rob,” Jo says, squeezing his arm, “she’ll be okay.”
Just then a small group of Keepers from a distant street hurries toward the tunnel. There are five of them, including Randt, who stands out even among his own, his clothing finer, his stature regal.
“Come on,” Rob says, and hurries in the Keepers’ direction.
“What are you doing?” Jo asks, catching up to him.
“Randt’ll save Lisa,” he says, his face determined. Jo feels a twinge of guilt—when she was injured, Lisa and Rob helped, but sticking around here is the furthest thing from her mind.
From the alley behind them, they hear a cry.
Everyone freezes, except for Randt. He knows that voice, it’s like a beacon. In a blur he moves, pushing aside his own men like they are nothing.
Lisa stumbles out of the alley, an icicle blade in her back. Behind her are two Keepers, one bleeding from a wound to his neck. Jo stands helpless, watching them catch up to Lisa. Even Randt won’t get there in time.