Evanescent

by Carlyle Labuschagne

  This time, it was easier to tune into Maya’s frequency.

  I heard her voice, a little tenser and more pinched than before. “Ava was right. I know exactly how she must feel. I am bitter I let it happen for so long. Keeping things from someone to protect them, makes you a liar. You guys taught me that. You are not protecting me at all, you are protecting yourselves. All of you, hiding behind the prophecy like it’s the only sure thing!”

  “Maya,” Kronan warned her.

  “Don’t get me started on you. You, Kronan, are the biggest fraud of us all. You have the most to gain from this. You think that because you save lives, this will cleanse you of your broken blood.”

  He laughed.

  So did I, out loud, trying to imagine his face right now.

  “What are you doing?”

  My connection was shattered. My eyes shot open. Troy stood above me, scrutinizing my entire being. I swallowed. “I was just…”

  He cut me off. “What, plotting your take over? Or, were you listening in on someone’s private conversation?”

  “What?” I sat up. “It’s not any different to reading someone’s private thoughts.”

  “Yes, it is. Your intentions make the difference.” He smirked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Where have you been?” I asked, crossing my legs, all innocent like.

  He sat down on the rock beside me, and I was shocked at his sudden change of heart.

  “None of your business!” he snapped, resting his arms over his raised knees. His back and shoulders slumped back, like the very air was something holding him up.

  “Why are you here?” I asked. “You obviously still hate me.”

  “While you seem to give everyone the slip, I know you too well. Do you really think I am going to leave you on your own?”

  “Yeah,” I said, pulling on the pendant and enchanted silver chain around my neck, like it was handcuffs chaining me to a wall.

  There was a silence as he seemed to soak up the magnificent perfect scenery around us. The rush of the water carried down the ravine.

  “If you mess this up for me…”

  “I know. You will kill me,” I said into the night.

  He tilted his head forward, smirked into the gap between his chest and legs. “No. I will keep you alive, so you can watch everything move forward without you.”

  “You really hate me that much?”

  “I don’t. That would mean I feel something for you.”

  I studied him. He thinks he is so strong, some tough guy. I had broken those walls before, and I would again.

  “I am just here to make sure you do not go back on your word.” He shrugged.

  My mouth pulled tight, the same time my chest did. “As you said, I have nothing here, I’d rather die.”

  “That’s the problem,” he said, bluntly.

  “I am not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re thinking. I am not Ava.”

  He snapped his venomous angry stare at me. “You’d better remember that when you try to steal her life from her. Also, what Ava did, should not be judged by anyone.”

  “I wasn’t…”

  “Don’t finish that sentence, don’t you ever lie again. I want to trust you, so it will be better for you this way.”

  “You mean, easier for you.”

  “That, too.”

  I looked down at my fingers, twirling the small plants between the crack in the rock beside me. He was showing me vulnerability. So, there were two signs right there in front of me. I just had to push the odds in my favor. He either didn’t care at all, he didn’t want to owe me anything – or, he did care, he was starting to like that he wasn’t bound by anything when he was around me. He could just be himself with me, the girl who mirrored the one he cared for. A replica of the girl he wanted so badly, a girl he would kill and torture for.

  “What are you really doing here, Troy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t stay away, can you?”

  The silence between us drew our eyes to one another. We stared at each other, the moons perfectly illuminating our features. The sky was a thick, deep azure, velvet curtain, dotted and streaked with glowing stars. Trees rustled behind us, the wind pushed through the grasslands in a soft swoosh.

  “I look at you, and I see her.” He stood, welcoming the spray from over the cliff.

  “You blame me for this.” It wasn’t a question. I stood, lifting the golden material from the ground. I held it bundled up in front of me. I turned to look down at the sharp rocks and white gushing waters, the mist and spray painted the darkness in a white glow from below the cliff, as if we were drifting on clouds. Moonbeams danced in the water, shimmering fragments were swallowed by the river’s bend in the distance.

  He turned to me, hands finding my bare arms. Gently, he stroked them to life. All feeling on my skin erupted into gooseflesh rolling over my entire body, and in between. His fingers trailed the edge of my dress front, down into the cleavage below. They rested there, almost touching my skin. I felt like something inside me was about to erupt and swallow me whole. He lifted my chin with his fingers, the gentleness left me shuddering inside.

  “I do not want to blame you. I am sorry for that. You did not create yourself, but you lied to me, to us all.”

  “I’m sorry.” My eyes found the darkness behind him. “It’s hard,” I confessed.

  “Do you know how hard it is for me, not to just let go, to keep reminding myself that whatever this is, the chemistry between us; it is not real?”

  “It feels real,” I replied softly, and my eyes found his once again.

  His hazel gaze was wide and pleading, as if begging me to release him from a trap I had coiled around him. I didn’t want him to feel like I had tricked him, but I had and I would, to get what I wanted.

  He drew closer, his lips radiating heat over mine. All gravity centered around him, drawing me cruelly even closer. I sucked in all the air between us, as if that would pull him closer still.

  “This can never happen.” He let me go.

  The heaviness was like the entire sky falling down on me, a stifling cold sparked within my chest, and settled throughout my bones as I watched him walk away. And with him, he took the sensation of the wind through my hair, the breeze tickling my skin, the damp resting on my cheeks. I had to let him go, let my fake life tether away piece by piece. I wanted something real, or so I wanted to think. The only evidence of our moment was buried inside of me, a sick fantasy that could never be. Could I live without him? I had to find a way to live without any physical sensation. The only reason I could taste, or feel something was because of him. Once he was gone and the purification crystal burned out, I was on my own. A lonely, scary place. I had the furthest to fall in comparison to everyone around me. It sucked, truly badly and deeply, to be me. My desperation in wanting to see Legentium was growing stronger, tighter within me. I needed this torture to end. I scooped up my dress, and followed Troy silently. He wanted to trust me, and I wanted to trust myself. The only proof of my eternal conflict were the muscles that cramped in my hands from pulling them into tight fists. But, as we got to the camp, my hands almost seized. My body was changing.

  When I stared into my warped reflection on the traveling mirror as it came to life, my heart beat painfully in my throat. I had to be braver than I’d ever been, and ever would be. This is it for me, I will never come back the same. And boy, I didn’t know how true that thought would turn out to be.

  “Remember, if we are caught, you are Ava,” Kronan reiterated again. Because if I was killed, they would not be able to find Ava.

  I nodded numbly. If it went bad, I wasn’t sure I wanted to survive. However, I had given Troy my word and if anything, I needed him to trust me. I needed him more than he could ever know. I am, because of him. This was true to me and my prime, which only made it our existence.

  “Here, Arriana wanted you to have this.” Anaya placed something in my hand. I was puzzled as to why
Arriana would ever want me to have anything. Technically, she did not know me. I stared at the engraving carved around the runic edges, silver-leaf filigree encased a blue crystal. I stared at its minor imperfections, which only made it the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I looked up into Anaya’s eyes ridden with a sorrow that was so new and raw to her, it almost stripped her of her luscious glow. She had removed the bands from me earlier upon discovering the illusive secret of who I was. Now she gave them back to me. These were the gauntlets I had worn, the ones from the treasuries. They belonged to Ava, and that was why they had no power with me. But Anaya was holding on, grief was an ugly thing, regret tainted it even more. The dark in her eyes spoke of a dark fear that could only be replaced by a thing called faith. The Minoans’ faith in the prophecy – a prophecy many had died and lived for – just to free everyone from the Shadow’s dark rule, a disease that had ruined a place called Earth, and now Noxia. Noxia was the planet where Legentium resided. I had found out that Legentium was one of the first Elite Circle members. He was the prophet; the one who had written the prophecy that had brought all of this to light. He was the ruler of the Elite Circle of Souls. Legentium held all our answers. We could die finding these very answers, because Noxia was now the home of the three queens, the higher hierarchy of the Shadowing kind. Our kind was destined to live from one horror to the next. It was true that we were cursed – broken. Things like me, Ava, and Troy, were tools created in a war to stop all wars, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit used at times. I placed the gauntlets back on my wrists, looking up as Kronan and Tatos went through the distorted mirror first. Dave and Anaya bowed to Queen Thandiwe, sharing a faint smile with her high guard, Bongiwe, or Bongi to us, and left Troy and me with one final look at what we had to come back for. We both turned back, the devastation of the previous night’s storm evident in the debris scattered across the landscape. I heard the sound of Zulu villagers already at work, inspecting damage and looking for ways to use what nature had given them.

  Thandiwe smiled faintly, her hands shaky. “They thought our ancestors silly for building our huts circular,” she said, her smile growing as we stared at the sturdy, upright huts; the wind had scraped past, lifting only the straw roofs, leaving the round bases and walls untouched. “Now they know that design had a purpose.”

  She hugged me tight, her belly resting against mine. I gasped, pulling away when I felt that thing inside of her move. I stared into her eyes, sweat dampened her entire face. I held her shaky hand in mine. “You will make it through this thing, you know that right?” The memory of her trying to save Ava came flooding back, and then another of her at Enoch’s feet when they had been caught trying to escape the Zulu castle on the night of Ava’s devastating transformation, or infection as we saw it.

  She nodded, though not convincingly.

  “You’ve seen something, haven’t you?”

  She smiled dryly, shaking her head while slowly rubbing away at her pregnant belly. “I see no more. Perhaps this is the end.”

  I started to panic. What if her baby was like his father, and had the talent to take others’ abilities?

  “But sometimes I do not mind, because for once my mind has quietened and my heart is at peace.”

  I tightened my lips, hardening my stare on her. I hoped she was right, that she was not going to give into this ‘Change’. She had a better chance at surviving the effects as she had grown up outside the confounds of our facility, our school – our mind games. She knew how to control emotions, how to feel and be guided by her soul. Perhaps, due to her being less subjected to the brainwashing, she would be one of the first broken to survive giving birth.

  Troy pulled me by my arm, our time had come to leave. I stared into the crisp, amethyst of daybreak, took in the scent of a fresh storm, the tang of broken bark. I held on to it, the feeling of the possibility of a new home when I came back. I held on to my pendant, as if transferring my last memories into it. My hand glided away from the smooth, glass-like surface, reached into the freezing surface of the mirror starting to take shape as the silver and gold glowed. Troy held on to my other hand, as we took the step through. At the exact moment my body was halfway through, I wondered how long I would be able to be suspended in time before it tore my body in half. My heart froze as the pricking of my skin started to turn into one single, hot, and then cold frenzy. Being near Troy meant I could feel the good, and the bad. I let the past go as the remaining parts of my body climbed though the mirror, instantly freezing and cutting at my skin, at my insides. But, it wasn’t long before I stepped right through to this other land. I moved my hood from my eyes, taking in Noxia. I moved past David and Anaya, pushed Kronan aside to find myself in a place I could never have imagined, and never in a million years would I have imagined it like that. There was no way of telling if these lands were cursed. My feet dragged me closer to the side of a cliff. I held on to the green, mossy rock in awe. I saw the sun and the moon glowing at the same time, an eerie, foggy-yellow glow against a dark, blue-gray sky. I had never seen a blue sky before. It was the most beautiful skyline I had ever seen. Just like a picture, everything was frozen in place. It was almost like those depictions of Earth before the final days of WW3. Stars, sun, moon, and clouds on one perfect canvas. Trees, dark and lovely swaying in a gentle breeze. It was then that I felt the rock beneath my finger move. I jumped back, almost swearing.

  Laughter erupted behind me. I swung out of fright, my gray cloak hooking on a nearby branch, but when I tried to tug it free the branches of the bush clasped around the edges of the gray cloak and pulled me back. I screamed, staring into branches that threatened to eat my coat, pulling me over the edge. I screamed for Troy, because if I allowed myself to panic, to feel danger, it would draw the shift. Once I shifted, the three queens would immediately know I was there. They were just like me, only more evolved – Shadows, and we all know that those of Shadowing were bound to others of their kind. Unlike them, though, I had not turned fully to the disease, but each time I shifted it would take a little more from me. They warned me that because Noxia was cursed by the Shadowing disease, it would only take a moment before I was taken asunder by its power. I tugged my coat, but the claws of blackened branches kept pulling, sharp fingers piercing the material. Tatos released a shot that sliced through black, wiry branches, which caused me to take a step back and lose my balance as my heels went over the edge. Troy lunged at me just as I was about to slip over the brink of both the cliff, and the shift. He knocked the wind from my lungs as he pinned me to the ground, an eruption of all my senses kicked in like a blow to the head.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his body holding mine to the ground. I nodded, staring into his eyes. I saw my eyes reflect in his and looked away, feeling guilty for what I was going to do to make him love me. He gently pulled me to sit next to him when a chuckle escaped his lips. He started removing leaves and twigs from my tangled hair, and flicked dust from my cheeks with the tips of his fingers. When I felt the fire beneath his skin and mine, I kept my stare hard on his eyes. Was he seeing what I was seeing? Did he feel it too, the burn, the yearn, the hunger I felt for him? He cleared his throat and pulled me to my feet, tucking my hood back over my face, then drawing his hoodie over his eyes to conceal his concern. Faces stared back at us in disbelief. They had no reason to believe I was already using my Shadowing abilities to draw him in. Little did they know the dark powers had clawed its way into my mind already. There was no way I was going to let Troy leave here without me.

  He turned to the others.

  “This world has already begun to work against us, it won’t be long now before…” Kronan started to say upon reading the panic in Troy’s eyes.

  I still continued to stare at Troy’s eyes in awe. They were green – totally green, but it was what I saw inside them; a fire so pure in light it looked something similar to lightning. The same lightning I had seen in my very own eyes once before – just before my very first shift. I felt a tight pinch of the
claw of confusion closing in on me. Ava’s and my memories were beginning to blur together.

  Kronan gathered the others. “We need to find Legentium soon, he is hard to track. Anaya did you…?”

  She almost laughed and raising an eyebrow, said, “Yes, but of course.” Like he had been ridiculous for even asking.

  She reached into her cloak, took out a key and handed it to Kronan. Their hands folded over each others, the ornate key glowing between their fingers. A locating spell. How clever that the object to locate Legentium was a key.