by Jenn Polish
“Sadie!” Mom screams above the chaos, focused only on me. Her eyes are vivid in the haze, desperate. Her hands run all over my body, tears streaking tracks through the ash and blood on her face.
“Mom,” I groan, but stop when I realize how much my mouth tastes like vomit.
“Chew on this.” She shows something minty in my mouth, and I don’t question her, even as she ducks under the cascading roots that are wrenching themselves near apart to keep us safe. I try to turn my head again to see who is protecting us, but Mom puts a firm hand on my forehead to stop me from moving. She’s craning her neck every which way for a better view, her fingers testing the area around the arrow in me. She takes a deep breath and looks at me sternly.
“Sadie, I need to take this arrow out of you. It’s not going to be—”
She tightens her fist over the arrow and yanks. A sick squelching sound shoots through my veins as pain, worse than actually getting shot to begin with, wracks my entire body.
“Pleasant,” she says grimly when I finally stop screaming.
“A little warning next time,” I pant as she sutures my side with a prominently veined, wrinkled hand, the Energies contorting to help her around me.
“Anticipation makes it worse.” Her voice is casual, but her brown eyes are pure agony.
“No point in telling you to get yourself somewhere safe, is there?” she asks me. I just stare up at her face, streaked with my blood.
“One day, you two will listen to your mother and me,” she mutters as she pulls me up, half carrying me through the air, toward Jax and Aora and Kashat. We converge with Mama, surrounding Lerian, Aon, and Evelyn, away from the flailing bodies of the dragons Semad, Archa, Kamid. And Zaylam.
I scream her name but Mom won’t let me go. Her hand grazes my still bloodied side, and I gasp with the renewed pain.
“She’ll be all right, Sadie, the burns aren’t—”
“Zay!”
She’s just lying there, sprawled all wrong.
“She can’t hear you, Sade, but the burns aren’t deep—”
“She’ll suffocate!”
“I twisted the Energies around her face, all of their faces, she’ll be fine—”
I stop struggling and stare at Mom’s blood and soot-streaked face as her viselike grip on me tightens.
“Then why are you keeping me from her?”
“You just got shot, Sadie. If you—” I’m struggling again, and she shoves my back into Banion’s trunk as a spell from a Mach soldier burns into the Energies where I was just hovering. “If you’re going to insist on staying and fighting, I need to know you’re—” She and I nod at each other before sending a strong blast of Energies-twisting wind around the other side of Banion’s trunk at two advancing Mach soldiers. “—protected.”
I turn my eyes back across the Plains to Zaylam’s resting form. I squint through the haze. Her underbelly is rising, falling. Too weakly for my liking, but significantly. Jorbam’s trunk is scorch free. Thanks to her. I swallow vomit, nod, and shake my hands out.
“Do we have a plan?”
Gimla shrieks a warning above us and we speed up to him, combining our wing winds to quell flames heading toward a younger Lunavad sapling.
“I need your other mother—we can freeze everything!”
Relief floods through me. A plan. Maybe with a plan, the rest of my life won’t look like flames and smell like flesh.
My eyes water and Mom tugs me down. “Try to stay low—the smoke goes up.”
“Faye!”
Mama. We fly in the direction of her voice below us, and I almost choke when a wall of smoke clears and reveals her. She’s surrounded by three Mach soldiers, hovering protectively above Aon.
“What are you doing back?” Mom shouts at him as she and I both pick a soldier to get away from them.
“Now’s not a great time to scold me!” my little brother calls, and my laughter ignites the pain in my side but gives my spell the extra push I need to make the soldier I’m facing turn back. Away from Aon. He will not die like Blaze. I won’t allow it.
Mom doesn’t laugh. She spins to round on Aon, not seeing the Mach soldier she’s facing take advantage and pull his fingers back to yank the Energies into a spell at her. Before I can even call to her, the soldier drops down, unconscious.
Evelyn steps out of the smoke behind him, her forehead streaked with a thin gash of blood, her face set, steely.
“Thank you.” Mom’s voice is shocked, humbled. Numb.
Evelyn’s eyes meet mine. “You don’t leave people to die.”
She holds my eyes for a moment longer and then, without warning, she speeds off, away. Back toward the breach in the barrier.
“Told you it was a bad time to scold me,” Aon is saying as Mom scoops him behind her. I pull her into my arms, put my forehead against hers.
“I love you.”
And I take off after Evelyn.
Mom’s face is stricken, but she can’t object. She spins to send a gust of water at the nearest trees, at the nearest fire-wielding Hands.
I don’t look back.
When I catch up with her, Evelyn glances at me between sword swipes—someone must have passed her the weapon in the chaos—and her eyes linger too long on my bloodied side.
Then the Energies tug strangely around us. Not like a spell, not like something deliberate. It feels like a Dream, the way the Energies twist around someone when we Dream. But who could be sleeping right now?
The Commander of the Mach steps out from the smoke and raises his sword to meet Evelyn’s neck. Fast. The feeling of that Energy twisting intensifies. I ignore it and shout Evelyn’s name so she’ll pay attention to Reve. Their swords lock just above her forehead, her fleshy and powerful arms trembling but holding.
That sensation of Energy tugging redoubles, and I realize with a jolt that I’ve felt it each time Reve has been near me. Now; when he tried to invade the Underland; when Iema was bleeding in the snow.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t choose the wrong side to fight for, Your Majesty.” His lips curl menacingly.
I almost fall out of the air. Her Majesty?
Lerian’s eyes flash as she whips her face, gashed and bloodied, away from the scene.
“You got something you want to tell me about your friend over there?” she shouts.
“I have no idea,” I yell back. Her Majesty?
A few whistled notes rise above the fray, from the spot where I’d left my family. Its distinct pattern, lilting up on the last note, signals us all to rush toward it. Like young ones entering a racing game.
Lerian jerks her head toward the noise, and I tug on Evelyn’s arm, encouraging her to run with us. Toward my growns. Toward their plans to unlease a freeze spell on the Plains.
I lose my breath halfway there, and Lerian practically tosses me onto her back. She glares over her shoulder when I struggle, and she only lets go of me when we’ve joined a circle made up of Zeel, my growns, Jax, Aon, Kashat, a few others whose names I don’t know.
Mama lets loose the whistle signal again, and on the last note, we lock hands. With the next breath, each of us who can twist the Energies send everything buried inside of us, locked in our bones, out into the Plains. We unhinge ourselves momentarily from the primary Energies flying through us, and we send them out into the world.
An azure thread goes out from our joined, bloodied hands and weaves its way out from our bodies, stilling almost everything and everyone it touches.
We are freezing the Plains, as Mama and Mom did to that clearing the night we raided the weapons caravan.
The night I met the woman fighting for us nearby.
A small gap of silence, of stillness, rises around us.
I look back to where we left Evelyn, to where I thought she was following us.
Reve is only slowed by the spell, his sword in slow motion, midswing, slowed in time with the rest of his body. Some small fires near us stop flickering, their growth halted by the freeze
. But the azure thread flails and stops the freeze, too weak, too small; the Plains are enormous, and the rest of it is still at full speed, smoking, crackling sickeningly, full of agonized yells, of the nauseating scent of burning flesh, of vomit, of decay.
We need to freeze flame and force all across the Plains, not just the part immediately surrounding us. We need more power.
Evelyn, disentangling herself finally from her now slowed sword fight, runs toward us. Her entire body is shaking with the effort, but she holds a gentle, trembling hand out to my bloodied side.
When her skin touches mine, three explosions occur at once.
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE FIRST, A great wind tears across the whole Plains, freezing in its wake every flame, every invader, exactly as my growns had planned.
The second, an enormous wave of water emanates out from the spot where her fingers touch my skin, drenching and extinguishing the stilled flames and thoroughly soaking and jostling all of us in its wake.
The third, a tremendous boom inside my chest, my heart screaming with the impact of her touch.
Shocked silence fills the Plains. It lasts until the groans of the injured and the cries of the deads’ loved ones start rising up along with the falling boughs of friends that had, an hour before, stood healthy and unharmed.
The fluttering of wings and the treading of hooves of other Grovians who’ve come into the fighting start converging on us. P’Tal and Zeel gallop straight into Aora’s embrace, and Tamzel tosses an arm around Mama. Kashat flies into the open arms of his growns, knocking them back a few flutters with the force of his embrace. Other faeries and centaurs I don’t know so well find each other, embrace. Lerian, who’s settled in next to me, is looking everywhere at once, trying to account for everyone she knows, everyone she saw in the fighting. I know because I’m doing the same thing. She glances down at me and curls her fingers around mine. I squeeze back.
No one comes up to Evelyn, grateful to find her alive. Then again, no one’s coming up to me, either. She stands alone next to me, one hand on her thigh, breathing hard. Her other hand is still on my body. She looks up at me, curly hair plastered by water around her face. My heart swells and she smiles slightly.
We’re alive. And she’s touching me like she’ll never stop.
Osley—I don’t know when que slipped back into the fray—is beating out a message to my moms. I can’t catch it, too busy wondering whether the blood on quer coat is quer’s or someone else’s. I don’t know which possibility terrifies me more. But Mom agrees to whatever que’s saying, raising her voice to repeat it to all of us while her hands comb Osley’s body to check for wounds.
“The freeze won’t last long. Those of you who can, carry the Mach away. Take them to the edge of the Forest, scatter them. Distort their memories so they think they recall that they couldn’t get through the barrier, that their mission failed. Get the impression of the spell from someone if you need to.” A pause. “Go!”
The centaurs glance at Tamzel, who stares at Mama for a moment before nodding. “Do as she says,” she orders, her rank as leader of the Centauric Council carrying immediate impact, as centaurs pair up with faeries all across the Plains to gather the soldiers and take them away.
Lerian nudges her head against mine and looks me square in the face, her hand roughly falling on my cheek. “Got your back.”
I nod, tears stinging my eyes. “Got yours too, Ler.”
She scoffs and backs away, bending to toss two limp soldiers on her back. “No need to get all sentimental, faerie. Makes you even uglier.”
I grin and she returns it before tossing her head at E’rix, who follows her out of the Plains at a rapid pace. In twos, threes, and fours, every faerie and centaur that is able follows their example. I stay behind with Evelyn, my growns, and Jax, an odd tugging in my side reminding me that I got shot.
There’s a low, melodic groan off toward the side, and I start flying immediately.
“Zaylam.”
I speed to where she’s lying under Jorbam’s trunk, Evelyn’s footsteps behind me. Zaylam’s underbelly is ripe with silver blisters, and her eyes are closed. I collapse next to her face, slipping my forehead onto one of Jorbam’s bigger roots.
Jor starts rumbling immediately, a lot shakier than normal.
“She protected me. That’s how your Mama’s hatchling died. Xamamlee. Protecting. He dove into fire. Sadie, she protected me.”
“I know, Jorbam. I know. Mom says she’ll be fine, she’ll be…” I turn wildly to Evelyn, who’s hanging back, her face stricken. “She’ll be all right, right?”
She just stares, her eyes riveted on Zaylam’s angry blisters, her slack pose.
“Zay. Zay, it’s me.” I grip Jorbam’s root, hard, until my knuckles are nearly purple. She rumbles wordlessly now, because there aren’t any words for her terror. “Zaylam!”
I shove the top of her wings, wrapped around her lower belly like a shroud.
No need to shout so,
Sadie.
And quit rumbling so,
Jorbam.
One hatchling feels like an
Earthquake,
And the other sounds like an
Explosion.
I half hit at her, and half try to throw my arms around her. “You scared us, Zay!”
The hatchlings would slip
In and out of
Consciousness too, if the hatchlings
Were all burn-covered.
But I think Faye
Stemmed the worst of the damage.
Gimla, Harlenikal, Banion, the
Others?
Who lived?
I look around shakily. Smoke is still clearing across the Plains. I look back at Evelyn, and her eyes are brimming with tears. We don’t know who lived, not yet. But I know what Mom would do in the infirmary. Evelyn nods at me slightly.
“Everybody lived, Zay. It’s gonna be all right.”
Her snout twitches outward slightly, and I burl into an unburned length of her neck, keeping my face, my hand, rested on Jorbam’s root.
Good then. I think it’s time
To go back to sleep
Then.
“Sleep, Zay, yeah. I’ll heal you more while you rest.”
“Sadie,”Jorbam rumbles warningly as Zaylam droops back to painless unconsciousness. “Something’s wrong. With Banion. Sadie.”
A scream—one that rents my chest open and threatens never to let it close again—tears out of my mom’s throat, then. Evelyn jumps and grabs at my hand tightly. I look without wanting to. Back by my growns, Jax is bent over a faerie’s still body.
The body’s chest isn’t rising or falling.
I recognize it.
The dead body is Aon’s.
Chapter Twenty-Six
EVELYN CHECKS VAGUELY to make sure I haven’t broken anything, and then she runs again, this time away from Aon and Mom. I try not to feel betrayed that she’s left me at this moment.
I try not to feel anything at all.
Maybe he’s happy. Maybe he’s met Blaze, scattered in the Energies.
I doubt it.
I don’t register much until she returns. Jax trying to coax life back into my brother. Mama holding a screaming Mom while her own shrieks of agony tear into my soul.
Their screams are familiar. The way their bodies writhe, the way they’re reaching out, touching his body, screaming his name, like saying it with enough despair, with enough love, will be enough to bring him back.
Their grief is familiar.
Blaze’s growns.
I feel nothing.
I don’t even know what happened. I can’t see too much blood on his body.
Mama is screaming. About how it must have been while we were trying to cast the Freeze spell. Surrounded by his family and no one noticed. No one noticed our little boy dying right next to us.
He must have been so scared.
There is so much screaming.
I am immobilized.
Why haven’t the Plains exploded?
Why are my growns still yelling his name? Why is Jax is even trying? Why am I breathing?
Evelyn steps back in front of me and I want to scream at her for leaving my side when Aon is dead. When the world is over.
But she passes me and approaches where my moms and Jax are splayed over Aon. She kneels next to Jax smoothly, and I dimly register that her body starts…glowing. A soft golden hue, tinted with green.
I want to scream, ask what she thinks she’s doing. I want to tell them all to leave his body alone, to let him rest.
He just wants to be with Blaze.
They should let him. They should stop messing with his body; they should let him be with Blaze; they should let me go next.
I don’t understand why Evelyn is glowing, why golden threads are now streaming from her fingertips into Aon’s chest and back again, forming a double loop between them, back and forth, back and forth, the golden threads getting thicker and thicker, brighter and brighter, the longer she stays bent over him.
Mom and Mama’s eyes widen, and Jax backs his away on his hands. My growns, too, back away from their dead son, like they’re in a trance. The grief is retreating from their eyes, being replaced by something that looks like hope.
My wings, of their own accord, drag me off the ground and fly me forward, toward the strange scene.
“Evelyn, what…” But she doesn’t answer me. No one does. Her eyes are glowing solid golden, the amber ring sometimes visible around her pupils replacing her usual brown color entirely. She places both of her hands on Aon’s glistening chest, bringing the double looping golden threads with her, before sliding them underneath him to stroke his wings. A deep red glow, like the sunset color of his wings, slips out of his body and moves into hers.
“Mom, what…” I try again. But it’s Jax’s voice that answers me.