by Natale Ghent
“Except Timon,” Kenji added. “He’s the founding father of our little glee club.”
“And he’s all right,” Francis said.
Kenji shrugged. “For the most part.”
Skylark blinked back at them. They were making her dizzy. “You just look like Guides to me.”
“Is that so?” Francis stood, his hands at his sides. With a slight tremor, he slipped from his human form. He beamed back at her, silver hair and beard flowing, his skin and robe glowing. Skylark straightened in her chair, mouth gaping, and turned toward Kenji. He, too, had changed into an ethereal being. They were just like her! He smiled when he saw the look on her face.
“What are we?” she asked.
Francis winked. “We’re a whole lot of confusion, it seems. We have a set ethereal shape, like a Spectral, but we can slipstream our form and hold it like a Guide. That makes us pretty special.” He leaned toward her. “I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to have found another one of our own. That makes four of us now in the City of Light, including Timon. And I think you’re even more special than the three of us combined. I just feel it.”
“Where are your totems?” Skylark asked.
“I never had one,” Kenji said. He pointed to Francis. “He lost his.”
“Don’t go there,” Francis warned him. “You know that’s a tender bruise.”
They reverted back to their human forms. Francis took her hand. “We wouldn’t expect you to start right away. You’d have to train. You’d have to familiarize yourself with the way we do things around here.”
“You could get hurt,” Kenji said.
Skylark frowned. What did she have to lose? Anything would be better than trying to fit in with the Spectrals.
Kenji and Francis looked at her hopefully, waiting for her answer.
“I’m supposed to be a Warrior,” she said. “I suppose I could get hurt either way.”
Francis glanced at Kenji. “True, true. But we’d have to get approval from your Frequency.”
“I don’t think that’ll be too hard. They don’t seem to know what to do with me anyway.”
“So, they won’t mind then,” Francis said.
Kenji pushed himself from the wall and stood in front of her. “We should at least show her what she’s going up against.”
“Oh, yeah.” Francis sat back down in his chair. Concentrating, he projected a holographic image into the room. It wavered in the air, taking form. The image sharpened and Skylark gasped in disbelief. It was the well-dressed man—the one with the ice-chip eyes. The sight of him made her scarred arm spike with pain.
Francis enlarged the image. “We call him the Speaker. I won’t lie to you. He’s one mean desperado. This guy’s been messing things up since time immemorial. He didn’t start out so tough. He was small potatoes. But he’s been getting dirtier and meaner with every offence. Timon had an inkling about him from the beginning—call it a gut feeling. No one else cared about him around here so they pretty much let us do what we want. Anyway, we’ve been watching him for a very long time. And Ol’ Slippery Tongue’s picked up all kinds of fans on earth over the years. We’re getting close though. Real close. We’ve got intelligence now—good sources.”
A series of scenes scrolled by and Francis narrated. The Spanish Inquisition. The slaughter at Nanking. The Chicago fire. Hitler’s armies. The Salem witch trials—hundreds of tragedies across time. Scene after scene, the Speaker was there, his frosty eyes gazing indifferently upon the altar of human suffering. Skylark gripped her bad arm, the pain growing with every image.
Francis rattled on. “He’s got a neat trick he does with his voice.” He zoomed in on the picture. “Watch this.”
The Speaker raised a small, intricate metal funnel to his perfect lips. Skylark watched in horror as the demon moved his mouth and a dark tendril wormed from the end of the funnel into his victim’s ear.
“I’ve turned the volume down so you can’t hear him,” Francis said. “He uses his words to convince people to do bad things. When they do bad things, the Light diminishes on the earth plane.”
“Which gives the Dark a chance to take hold,” Kenji said.
“He gets up real close to his victims,” Francis continued. “He uses that dark tendril to transmit his ideas into people’s heads. He trades in hopelessness and despair. Madness and greed. He feeds off the vulnerable and power-hungry in equal measure, preying on those who have fallen into the grips of desperation or moral corruption. We’ve noticed the tendril is getting longer the stronger he gets. Who knows how far he’ll be able to reach. Maybe he won’t even need it if he keeps going.”
“He’s a soul collector too,” Kenji said. “A trophy hunter. He keeps the souls of all his victims trapped in little glass vials—thousands of them. For every vial he keeps, there’s one less soul in the universe. One less flicker of Light.”
Skylark thought she would swoon. It was all so dreadful. “What happens to them … the trapped souls …?”
“Well …” Francis scrubbed his beard. “They’re lost between the frequencies. They stay there, unable to evolve or see the Light.”
Between the frequencies. Skylark shuddered. She’d been there. During the initiation ceremony. What a wretched, lifeless place. She winced, the pain in her arm blistering. What did this demon, this taker of life, want with her?
“I’ve seen him before,” she confessed, her voice a whisper.
“What?” Francis turned his head so quickly, the image was lost.
The pain in her arm thankfully left with it.
“I’ve seen him before,” she said again.
“Where?” Kenji demanded.
“On the earth plane.”
Francis and Kenji exchanged looks.
“Could you find him again?” Kenji asked.
“I think so … I don’t know. I found him by accident … during a jump. There’s some connection between us—something from my past. I just don’t know what it is.”
Francis took her hand. “We need to talk to your superiors right now, get things arranged. Can you take us where we need to go?”
“I can get us to my dorm. My totem’s there. He may be able to help.”
“Your totem … right.” Kenji screwed up his face at Francis. “You know how I feel about working with animals.”
“He’s not that bad,” Skylark said. “He’s just a mouse.”
Kenji looked skeptical. “It’s not the size that worries me. It’s the moralizing.”
“He’s a bit boring,” Skylark said. “Other than that, he’s okay.”
Francis pursed his lips at Kenji. “What do you think?”
“I guess we can work around him.” He took Skylark’s hand. “Ready to rock and roll?”
Francis stood and took her other hand. “Let ’er rip!”
Skylark called up an image of the dorm building. The roaring started, and she saw Francis and Kenji exchange split-second looks of horror before the blast. All three came hurtling down in a heap in the middle of the practice field. They were nowhere near the dorm. Kenji adjusted his glasses and looked sardonically around.
“This is all very pretty, Skylark, but …”
She scrabbled to her feet, slipped back into her human form, and began picking the grass from Francis’s beard. “I’m so sorry. Do you want to try again?”
Francis stood and offered Kenji a hand. Kenji accepted it with a measure of reproach.
“Try to get us in the right ballpark, Skylark,” Kenji said. “And go easy on the rocket juice.”
Skylark concentrated again, this time imagining Sebastian inside her room. There was the roar, and the flash, and they crashed down on her bed, Sebastian leaping to the desk in terror.
“Please! Watch where you’re going!” he shouted.
Kenji eyed the mouse with amusement. “Nice totem.”
Sebastian stood on his hind feet, his pink nose twitching. “I see you’ve made some friends.” He sniffed in disgust. “You smell
like the bar.”
Kenji smelled the lapel of his jacket. Francis clumped down from the bed. He approached the mouse, getting in close.
“We’d like to talk to you about Skylark.”
THE MARK
Hex and Red entered the cabin. She wore sunglasses and a brown silk scarf tied over her hair. In her hands she carried a thin grey river stone, the shape and size of a dessert plate, and a brown leather pouch tied with a cord. They greeted no one, moving quietly into the shadows to wait. Poe sat beside Caddy.
“They’re here for the ceremony,” he said.
The eyes of the woman next to her flashed with hope.
“What do you mean?” Caddy asked.
Poe pointed to his arm. “It’s time to choose, Cadence.”
He was talking about the mark. He wanted her to be tattooed. Had he known all along this was coming? Was that why he’d confided in her? To gain her trust? The blood pounded in Caddy’s ears. How dare he single her out and make her choose like this? Everyone in the room was staring at her. She didn’t want the mark. She wasn’t ready to make that commitment—she might never be.
“I don’t want to do it, Poe.”
“It’s a great honour to bear the mark. The Dreamers need you. We can’t survive without you.”
“No, I don’t want it. I don’t want to end up like the rest.”
Poe persisted. “You’ve seen what we’re up against, Cadence. These people have been holding the dream for generations. If we lose this, if the link is broken, your vision of the future will become reality.”
Caddy stared at the floor. Maybe she was being paranoid. Maybe she was just afraid. She wished she could share Poe’s conviction. But his intensity paralyzed her. “I can’t.”
“You don’t have to stay,” he said. “You can leave if you want.”
This made her angry. Stay and be marked, or go—were those her only options? “You keep saying that. What do I have to go back to? My father’s missing. There are Company men everywhere. I’ll be killed like Meg.”
His eyes clouded at the mention of her name. He didn’t need to be reminded that his girlfriend was dead. Surely the guilt he carried was deep, even if he hid it well. For her, it was crippling. “I’m so tired.”
He took her hand in his. “I know. We’re all tired. But we must keep going.” He drew her close, and she allowed herself to rest her head against his chest. He held her in his arms, speaking softly in her ear. “I know how hard it is. It’s too much for one person to bear. That’s why we have to stay together, so we can help each other carry this burden.”
She shook her head. “All those arms … I can’t stand the idea of it.”
“That’s what the Company wants—to scare you, to break us apart. The mark connects us and makes us stronger. It’s what the Company fears most.”
He held her closer. She could hear his heart beating and smell the river on his clothes. Could she trust him? Could she trust anyone? She wanted to. She wanted to let go, to surrender to the tide and let it take her so she wouldn’t have to make choices. The truth was, she was terrified of dying alone. Better to belong than not belong and be forsaken. Raising her eyes, she could see the dark curve of his lashes against his cheek. She clung to him, her resolve waning. He squeezed her hand.
On some imperceptible cue, the Dreamers created a circle around them. Hex kneeled in front of her, holding the stone and leather pouch. Red lurked in a corner of the room, watching. Poe left her, taking a seat with the others.
Hex placed the river stone on the floor and removed her glasses, the empty socket a dark shock against the life in her sky-blue eye. Unwinding the leather cord, she worked the pouch open with her fingers and extracted a handful of wood shavings, setting them in a neat pile on the stone. She produced a needle, a spool of thread, a box of matches and a smaller fabric pouch that glistened as though sprinkled with fairy dust.
The Dreamers hummed, the note pulsing rhythmically down Caddy’s spine. Her eyes grew heavy. Hex drew a measure of thread from the spool, threaded the needle and twisted the strand around the length of it until only the tip was exposed. She struck a match, lit the wood shavings, and pulled a penknife from her pocket, running the blade back and forth through the flame.
“Give me your hand,” she said, the fire dancing in her good eye.
Caddy felt hypnotized, transfixed. Somewhere deep in her mind, she didn’t want to do what Hex asked. Yet she was powerless to resist, as if the note and the expectation of the Dreamers were controlling her through some form of witchcraft. She inhaled sharply as Hex made a quick cut on her finger and squeezed several thick red drops onto the stone. Caddy held the wound to her lips to stem the flow of blood then cradled her hand in her lap. The Dreamers’ voices ascended. Hex opened the small fabric pouch and pinched a bit of shiny dust from inside, sprinkling it over the blood.
“Roll up your sleeve.”
Caddy removed her jacket and rolled her sleeve to her elbow. Her skin looked so pale and vulnerable. It made her want to cry. Against her volition, she offered up her arm. Hex slapped it several times to numb the skin, sterilized the tip of the needle in the flame and dipped it in the blood and powder mix. Caddy caught her breath when the needle punctured her skin. Hex worked, evenly, methodically, and the mark took form. From the depths of her trance, Caddy struggled in vain to free herself. The humming mounted, pushing her deeper and deeper beyond the shoals of her will. She could hear Hex’s voice hissing faintly inside her head.
“You will contact your father,” she thought she heard her say. “You will bring him to me.”
Hours later, Caddy surfaced from the murkiness of a troubled dream. She was lying on a blanket in the middle of the cabin. Her head was heavy. How long had she been out? Had she even gone through with the marking ceremony? Her eyes darted to her left arm. It was wrapped in a clean cloth bandage. There was a faint red outline where the mark had bled through the fabric. She looked around the room. The Dreamers were sitting quietly. Hex and Red were gone. Poe saw that she was awake and came to her with water in a wooden cup. He helped her to a sitting position and held the cup to her lips. She gulped. She was so thirsty. He brushed the hair from her face.
“We are forever bound, now,” he said.
And so it seemed to be true. Caddy could feel the bond between them, an energetic cable from him to her—to all the Dreamers.
“Can you stand?” he asked.
Taking his hand, she stood and followed him to a corner of the cabin. The Dreamers beamed at her. She sensed their gratitude. And their relief. It made her feel important. Poe helped her to the floor, carefully, and sat beside her, her head in his lap. His energy flowed with hers.
“I can feel you so close to me,” she said.
“Now I can never hide from you.”
He laughed and to her delight, his happiness rang inside her. It was so intimate, so personal. It made her want to stay like this with him forever. She tried to decipher her emotions, to rationalize her feelings. Was she falling in love with him? Was the feeling real? Did she even care? After all the fear and misery of the last few days, this joy was a welcome drug. She reached up and touched his lips. “In the Emptiness, there is no laughter.”
He kissed her fingertips, sending a shiver through her body. “It’s a place beyond the vibration of life.”
“Why would anyone want that?” she whispered. “How could we ever allow it?”
“So many have given up. People have lost their way. There is very little hope in the world.”
“Is that the source of the Emptiness?”
“Yes, in part.” Poe sipped from the wooden cup and passed it to her. “There is a Darkness that abhors the Light and the life in it. It has existed since the world began.”
“If it’s always been here, why destroy the earth now?”
“We’re at a crossroads. The Darkness is taking advantage of the hopelessness.”
Caddy let her mind linger over this and was suddenly moved by a
revelation. “They’re the ones who are scared. They’re afraid of us.”
Poe smiled. He was so beautiful when he smiled. “Yes. The balance could tip in either direction. The veil over human consciousness is lifting. We are only just realizing how powerful we are.”
She was elated by the idea. Anything was possible. Then she looked at the Dreamers lying on the floor and her euphoria faltered. They seemed so tattered and worn. Several were coughing. What could a handful of terrified people do against such powerful forces? The joy in her heart waned and doubt crept in its place. She could hear Hex’s voice, telling her to contact her father. Telling her to bring him here. Had she really said those words? Or had Caddy imagined it? She hadn’t considered the danger to him when she’d allowed herself to be marked. She could see now that it was a mistake. Maybe this is what Hex had wanted all along. Maybe she’d even used Poe to trick her …
Outside the cabin, the sky darkened with gathering clouds, and there was a muted sound like someone weeping.
“Do you hear that?” Poe asked.
Caddy held her breath and listened. “It’s starting to rain.”
The drops fell, tapping lightly at first—then pounding on the roof in a fury of fists. Caddy withdrew into herself, resting her head on her hands. She felt so tired again. And the mark on her arm was starting to burn.
THE SPEAKER
“The Council was more than fair,” Sebastian said, clinging to Skylark’s hair.
“Fair?” Trust the mouse to take their side. “They said I couldn’t come back if I decide to work with Kenji and Francis, and that I’m no longer a member of my Frequency.”
Kenji snorted. “Those guys are about as fun as a bag of knives.”
Francis clomped backwards in front of her. “Slow down, honey. What are you so angry for? You said yourself you didn’t fit in with them.”
Skylark crossed her arms. “I can’t believe they were so happy to dump me.”
“They didn’t know what they had. We appreciate what you are.” Francis pointed at her feet as she walked. “Look how good you are at that now.” He turned to Kenji for support.