He’s furious with me and physically exhausted. I don’t need to read his mind to know he’s near the breaking point.
“You’ve already been told you’re the Chosen One. You’re going to have to take the lead when the time comes to confront the darkness. The outcome of the upcoming time of conflict will determine what the next phase of the Earth’s history looks like. It’s time you stepped into the role. As your Protector, I suppose I need to have faith in you. But quite honestly, you have to prove to me — and fast — that the world’s glass isn’t half-empty with you in such an important position.”
JADE
Seth takes my hand as we walk, and despite the building heat and humidity, his skin stays cool and paper-dry to the touch. This doesn’t help me at all, as the combination of the heat and my nervousness is turning my palm into a virtual waterfall.
“Are you okay to go to the Commons?” he asks. “I thought we could have a bit of …” He stops as a red flush springs up to connect his freckles. “Of a picnic. I brought some food and stuff with me. I hope that doesn’t sound stupid.”
“It’s sweet. But how did you know I’d be out here walking?” I ask. Really, it doesn’t matter what his answer is; I already know I want to hang out with him in Commons Park more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my entire life.
“I was going to go myself but thought I’d bring extra just in case. Call it a sixth sense.” He gives my hand a gentle squeeze as we begin to walk in the direction of the Commons, even though I haven’t agreed to go. Maybe he’s sensed how much I want to do this as well.
We walk in silence for a few minutes, just drinking in the early morning birdsong around us. The sun is already pressing down, heating the dried grass and exposed earth in the front gardens of the townhouses we pass. The park itself is filled with succulents and shrubs and dotted here and there with trees that’ve managed to survive the drought. The remnants of a large splash pad sit, unused since water restrictions started, as a sad reminder of the park’s past. A couple of old water fountains stand, pipes rusting, their water source having been shut off years ago. A faded sign above the fountains reads: Don’t waste a drop! Water is precious.
I think about Mayor Smith’s upcoming bottled water initiative and can’t help but wonder if it is a precursor to turning off the city’s taps — at least part of the time. It’s already happened in so many other North American cities.
Seth spreads his towel on a patch of brown grass hidden in the middle of a group of bushes. It gives us nearly complete privacy. We sit down and he begins to unpack his knapsack, taking out food I haven’t seen since before being abducted to the Place-in-Between. Large, ripe berries, slices of plump white chicken breast, and sunny, yellow wedges of lemon floating in glass bottles filled with water are spread out on the towel. It’s like a mirage.
“Where did you get all of this?” I ask, saliva filling my mouth.
Seth holds up his right index finger to his lips. “Hush. I have my ways,” he says playfully.
“But …”
No one can get this kind of food anymore, I want to say. Unless you’re someone like Mayor Smith or one of the other major city leaders, and even then …
Seth picks up one of the blackberries and holds it to my lips. The purple flesh of the berry is warm from the sun.
“You’re very special to me, Jade,” he says, placing the berry between my open lips.
I bite down, and the warm, sweet juice trickles down the back of my throat. It’s so delicious, I want to devour the entire container. I’d forgotten what berries even tasted like.
Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbles. Storms don’t usually start until early afternoon. The air is definitely shifting, though.
Seth leans forward and tilts my chin up with his hand. His eyes suddenly look very old.
Something’s not right. I can see ancient deserts in his eyes.
He leans in to kiss me.
Suddenly, I don’t want to be here at all.
“Jasmine might be the Chosen One,” he whispers, “but I’ve chosen you.”
I open my mouth to scream, to tell him to stop, but no words come out.
Then his lips meet mine, and images that I can only imagine are straight from Hell are unleashed into my mind. They are far worse than anything I ever saw in the Place-in-Between. My body collapses against his. I try to scream but am unable to move. I’m paralyzed.
This is what the fly caught in the spider’s web must feel like just before being devoured, I think.
Then the world around me slips away.
JASMINE
So I’m heading back to the Place-in-Between. Or at least I’m going to try to get there. After my telling off by Mr. Khan, I pretty much shut up. Even I’m not stupid enough to push things after someone has a go at me like that. And really, he’s right. I’ve screwed up enough. But what they’re proposing scares me to death. I mean, come on, if we’re being really straight up here, there’s a fifty-fifty chance it just might lead to my death.
At best.
And how many people would be clamouring to do something with odds like that?
The thing is, according to Noni and Mr. Jakande and the rest of the CCT’s intelligence-gathering, not only does the ring need to be back in its rightful place in order to give us a chance at winning in the Final Battle, but Smith — and maybe even some of the other city-state leaders — are planning a little mini-apocalypse of their own. The CCT, which, Noni tells me, actually stands for Climate-Change Transitioning, is just as hunted as we, the Seers. It’s just that they’re being hunted by Smith and the other governmental officials, rather than a bunch of scary-ass demonic creatures.
“You couldn’t find another acronym?” I asked. “I mean, it was pretty easy for Smith to twist it to make you sound like a terrorist organization, don’t you think?”
Noni leaned forward, elbows on the table, her slender, brown fingers intertwined. “Our mandate is to help humanity, as well as the creatures of the natural world, transition as equitably as possible during this time. There will be loss and suffering, but it needn’t occur on the scale it is at the moment. Economic and political inequality deepened in the early years of climate change, as soon as those in power, the elites, saw that the Earth’s resources could not sustain even half of us more than a few decades into the future. Our aim is to reverse that, to open the borders again, to try to expose governmental corruption and lies. We want a more socially just world as we transition into this new phase of the Earth’s existence.”
“Well, no offence, but that plan seems to have already backfired. Big time. So many countries are destroyed. You just need to look at all the survivors floating around the oceans. And here, at least in places like Los Angeles, your plan’s been a colossal flop. I mean, a lot of innocent people died on those buses and on the LA Metro when you bombed them. Doesn’t seem to make sense if you’re are all about social justice.”
I thought back to the footage of the riots in Los Angeles and the military presence called in by the mayor at the time. There were mass arrests and looting as people tried to take whatever they could, especially bottled water, in order to survive. California was one of the first regions in North America to really be hit by climate change, and those who weren’t incredibly rich but could still get out had already had left the state. That meant Los Angeles was filled with only the very wealthy and the very poor. When bombings began on the Metro lines and buses, the only way for the working poor to get around the city, chaos ensued. The military gunned down crowds of poor inhabitants for simply trying to gather water from wherever they could find it. Fires raged through the urban landscape, crossing the long-dried-up basin of the Los Angeles river and zipping up the hills to the wealthy enclaves, destroying everything in their path. The wealthy dashed, many of them to second homes in New York City or here in Toronto, and so the po
or were blamed and left to become ash, along with the rest of the city.
Then the executions of those arrested and charged with the bombings started. As active members of the CCT, they were convicted of treason without trial and immediately sentenced to death. Each death was broadcast live. A deterrent for others who might be contemplating joining the CCT, claimed the US president, the mayor of Los Angeles, and other politicians. Millions of people watched the executions. Those executions were the entertainment event of the year. It was rumoured that some people brought out chairs and sofas to lounge on and ate popcorn while viewing them.
“We had nothing to do with those deaths, Jasmine,” Mr. Jakande said, his voice quiet and calm. “We’re responsible for things behind the scenes, so to speak. The hacking of political email accounts to reveal corruption, the redistribution of wealth from a trust fund to a struggling farmer, or changing the computerized schedule of electricity blackouts to ensure a lower socio-economic area gets its share of energy.”
“I get your point,” I said. “But if you’re not behind the bombings and terror attacks, then who is? I mean, you’ve got people in all the major city states, don’t you? The ones that still have some resources? Like New York, London, Copenhagen.”
Noni and Mr. Jakande quickly looked at each other.
“We do have branches of the CCT in those cities and several others. We suspect the governments and the leaders of the world’s largest and still-functioning city states are colluding to keep citizens fearful and thus suffer less questioning of their policies and procedures. And we think they’re using vulnerable citizens, the ones who will do anything — even sacrifice themselves — to help with this. Of course, we know that Smith, with the help of Mr. Jawad, was able to recruit demonic souls to aid her. That was definitely not something we anticipated.”
“But why are they doing this?” I ask, my voice shaking with anger. “Why would they be blowing up their own citizens, including children? I thought the whole idea was to keep other people, outsiders, climate-change refugees, whatever they want to call them, out of the cities. What the hell? It makes no sense.”
“What their end goal is, we’re not sure of … not yet, at any rate,” Mr. Jakande answered.
“Jasmine,” Noni said, leaning toward me. “Please let us worry about Smith and the political situation. Because if you don’t get Solomon’s Ring back to its rightful place, and soon, none of this will matter.”
“Okay,” I said, sitting back and trying to digest the whole thing for a moment. “But someone needs to explain to me how putting the ring back in the Roman Wall in the Place-in-Between is the same as putting it back in the wall in the real London … the London that’s here and now. On Earth.” My thoughts were getting jumbled. I was way too tired for this. “Because isn’t the Place-in-Between a totally different place? And if it is, then it’s not really London, right? I mean, how can it be, if London is here? The real city is here. Right?”
“Again, it’s something we’re still investigating, hypothesizing about, really,” Mr. Jakande said. “But there seems to be a multidimensional aspect to it. Time is not linear in the Place-in-Between, but it seems, from all the textual evidence, that it is still London … in a manner of speaking.”
I’m lost. Completely lost. At the best of times, I’m not a mathematical, science-geek kind of girl.
Noni must’ve sensed my feelings. “Think of the two Londons as imprints of the same picture. They’re both the same, but not exactly the same … like identical twins. Despite being from one egg and sharing the same DNA, there are genetic variances in twins of the same genome.”
My head felt like it was going to blow apart. “What?” I asked, feeling like a complete idiot.
Noni smiled. “It means that twins’ genes are virtually the same, but with some differences. For instance, one twin may develop breast cancer due to a genetic predisposition, while the other twin may not have that variance in her DNA.”
“So you think putting the ring back to where it was hidden all those years ago, but doing it in the Place-in-Between, will be the same, or at least close enough, to putting it back in the wall here in London?”
Mr. Jakande folded his hands on the table. “We believe it will be,” he said.
He and Noni exchanged another quick glance.
“At least we hope so,” he added.
JADE
Though it’s Sunday, Mr. Khan has asked us to meet at Beaconsfield. So here we are, sitting in his classroom, the sun streaming in the windows. It feels strange to be here with the place so empty and quiet.
Everyone involved in what happened other night is here, except Fiona and Jennifer. That seems unfair, because I’m sure we’re going to get the lecture of our lifetimes right now, and they were in on everything the other night as much as the rest of us. The funny thing is this new Seer, Eva, is with us.
I look over at her. She’s sitting at a desk, looking out the window. I’m pretty sure she might be a year or two older than the rest of us. Her hair is tucked under a silk headscarf that she’s carefully wrapped around her head. According to Jasmine, she’s a climate-change refugee who lost her sister on the journey here. Now she’s staying with Ms. Samson until a family can be found to take her in.
Mr. Khan clears his throat. The skin framing his eyes is dark purple. I’ve never seen him look so exhausted.
“What happened Friday night with regard to all of you, aside from Eva, breaking curfew and chancing your lives, is inexcusable,” he says, his tired gaze stopping to rest on each of us. “But that’s not why you’ve been brought here today.” He pauses. “It seems a ring that’s been in Mayor Smith’s possession is being used to control the demons. The only way to get it back to where it belongs is either by crossing the Atlantic and somehow entering the UK, or…”
“Crossing the Atlantic?” Cassandra interrupts. “With who? The pirates that ferry the refugees around? If we even survived the voyage and got to land, which is totally unlikely, we’d just end up being turned away. Or worse.”
Mr. Khan nods. “I realize that, which is why we need the seven of you to get to the Place-in-Between and leave the ring there.”
My blood freezes. For a moment, the room spins around me.
“You want me to go back down there? Are you serious?” Vomit rises in my throat for the second time today, and I swallow it back down. It burns my insides. I fight the nausea that follows.
Mr. Khan nods, his face solemn and serious. “I’m so sorry, Jade. This is the last thing I want you to have to face. I can’t imagine what it will be like for you…”
“No, you can’t,” I snap. “That’s why I’m not doing it. There’s plenty of Seers who can do this with Jasmine. Seers who didn’t lose years of their life in that place.”
Jasmine glances over at me with a look of shock, but I think that’s more her surprise at me talking back to Mr. Khan in front of her and everyone else, rather than my reaction. I know she felt — at least partly — what happened to me today. She asked me if I’d sensed anything really weird as soon as she arrived home with Mr. Khan.
I lied and said no. Stupid decision, because she knows I’m lying. I’m just not ready to tell anyone about what happened. Maybe that’s because I’m not one hundred percent sure of what happened myself.
I got home minutes before Mom woke up. To say I was lucky is a huge understatement. My clothes were berry-stained, covered with dusty dirt and dried leaves, and my hair was a tangled mess. I’d just managed to shove my pole back underneath my bed and change my clothes when she came out of her bedroom.
“You’re up early,” she said with a sad smile. “Your body needs sleep, with everything going on.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I muttered, giving her a hug. What I wanted at that moment, more than anything else, was to rest my head against the warmt
h of her terry-clothed chest like a baby. If I could’ve had one wish at that moment, it would have been to turn back time, to turn it back to before the Earth was being destroyed, before I was taken, before Dad died….
Before whatever happened today.
A big part of me feels like it was my fault. I went out, alone, early in the morning, into a very secluded part of a pretty empty park with a boy I’d only met once before for a few minutes.
And I’d wanted — at least at first — to be with him. Then I didn’t, though I can’t remember why.
And though it felt like the images playing in my mind had lasted for hours, it turned out only minutes had passed when I came to.
I sat up, disoriented and alone, amongst squished berries that stained the towel like blood. My mind felt like I’d just been through some crazy shock therapy. I tried to piece together what had just happened to me.
Why had Seth left? Maybe I’d had some sort of seizure, something to do with the trauma of my abduction and my time in the Place-in-Between that was triggered by his kiss. Maybe that explained the strange visions.
If that was the case, I don’t blame him for splitting. For all I know, I could’ve been foaming at the mouth, eyeballs rolled back into my head like two boiled eggs that had just been popped out of their shells … yet something tells me that wasn’t really the way things played out.
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