Vane
Page 25
He lay on his back, Ava’s bag behind his head, his gaze reaching up past the swaying leaves and to the Floridian sky. It looks so still from here. But really it was just as tumultuous as the sea. The waves of air current pushed and pulled whoever dared to brave them. It was cold, the air at the same time frigid and fluid. The vapor clung to the fine feathers along his hide, stuck to his rider’s hair and clothes, and threatened to weigh them down.
But there was something pure and good about braving danger to find purpose in the open sky. To be close to Ava, to feel his core burst with life, to send out a column of fire and watch it curl through the clouds.
Ava dropped her last pile of dry branches to the ground and wiped at her forehead, amazed at how quickly Cale had gathered his share. “This would be way easier if you’d let me will the bonfire, Cale.”
“It makes you sick.”
“So you can make yourself sick worrying about things you can’t change? But I can’t rub two sticks together with my mind?”
“I’m not worrying. I’m thinking.”
She sat down and assembled her assortment of foliage, preparing to have Cale light their evening fire. She was getting used to camping out in the woods. They seemed to do it more and more everywhere they went. Still, Cale’s moping was unusual for her. But she figured he wanted his space, so she let him be.
“Ava?”
She looked over at him. He was still on his back, starfish style, as if he didn’t want to hold himself upright. “Yeah?”
“What is this pearl? And how do we get rid of it before Slate or Sirce get it?”
She stopped, resting her hands on the rough bark of branch. “You…want to find it too?”
“What do you mean…too?”
She sighed. “Nothing.”
He sat up, moving towards her with urgency. “No Ava, tell me. What do you mean?”
“It’s just…it seems like everyone is drawn to this pearl. Everyone. Either to use it or to destroy it.”
“I guess that makes sense. But I’m not like the rest of them….”
“No. You’re not. But there’s something about the pearl that draws people towards it. Like it locks on to people’s desires, and pulls. As if it’s some sort of magnet.”
Cale thought about that, chewing on his lips. “What does it want from us?”
Ava shrugged. “That’s the wrong question. Maybe everyone wants something from the pearl. Something only the pearl can give.”
Cale, startled, looked up at his rider. She was glowing again, a swirling, fluid gold. He thought maybe she didn’t notice, but when he really looked, he was sure he could see her muscles tense, her lips tighten.
Pain. Ava felt pain that he couldn’t share with her. And she’d do her best to keep it a secret from him. Because she doesn’t think I can handle it. And she was right. It hurt him. He felt like he was carrying the whole world on his wings, but still he was failing. He couldn’t save Onna from joinging up with Slate, and he couldn’t help Ava be free from her phoenix curse.
“Ava,” he asked, his voice hushed, “what do you want from the pearl?”
She frowned at him, trying to think past the burning in her arms and legs. “Nothing, I guess.”
Cale stood straight up, knocking Ava off balance. “You don’t want anything.” He stated it instead of asking. “Ava, you don’t want anything.”
She stood up, dusting off her pants, staring at her dragon as if he was crazy. “Okay….”
“Ava you don’t want anything. You don’t need anyone. You…you’re the only truly independent entity ever. You’re the only truly free being.”
“I wouldn’t call this free.”
“Maybe you’re a slave to that freedom. But you don’t need the gifts the judges pass down to us, you don’t need pain or sorrow or hate, and you don’t need happiness or peace or love either. You’re free.”
Ava thought, her eyes roving the forest ground. “Is that…good?”
“It’s invaluable. That’s why Sirce wants the phoenix. That’s why Slate wants the phoenix. Because you are impervious to the balance. You’re a wild card. You are the only thing, in the whole world, that isn’t drawn to the pearl.”
“So, why is that exciting?”
“You can find it. You have objectivity that none of us have. It won’t hide from you, Ava. You can find the pearl before anyone else can.”
“And do what with it?”
“You decide.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to.”
Cale thew his arms. “Ava, you don’t want to do or feel anything.”
“That’s not true.” Her eyes flashed. “I wanted to fight. Even before I met you, I wanted to learn to protect myself. And then I did meet you. And I wanted to help you—”
“Help me do what?” he began to argue.
“Pardon me.” A buzzing little voice hovered down to them. “I must interrupt you.”
Cale and Ava were both shocked to see Sylphie. She was magnificent in the setting sunlight. Her wings caught the rays of orange light and sent them shooting through as she fluttered. But even more beautiful was the sound the wind made as it met her tiny frame. She was a hundred sailing whistles, as if her body itself had been created to let the air pass through it.
“Sylphie? Why aren’t you at the grey court?” Cale asked.
“I need to talk to the phoenix. It’s urgent.”
“Go on,” Ava said, choking back her relunctance.
Sylphie wrung her hands as she talked, as though she knew she was breaking the rules by being so far from home. “I am to tell you that there is a way to be free, Your Immanence. You need only use your will to stop your hatching. You can bend the truth. And then you’ll be able to have your freedom.”
“Sylphie…do you mean freedom from Cale, or freedom from the curse of having to be a phoenix. Which one comes if I stop the hatching?”
Sylphie’s eyes widened. “I only know what I was told, Your Immanence.”
And just as quickly as she came, she zoomed away into the dusk.
Ava pulled everything she felt inside herself, then froze. It was all too confusing, all to hard. No, Ava. Feel. Be brave.
She willed herself to let her walls down. They were like iron gates inside her that fell one by one, and with each, she felt more and more, until she had to clutch at her chest to keep from doubling over.
She gasped, forced herself to stand upright. “I can’t help how I am, Cale. I’m cold and broken. Maybe I’ll never work right. Maybe I’ll always be a liar. Maybe it will never be easy for me to open up. But I won’t be sorry.” She had to cry, silent tears that fell from her strong chin onto the dry soil below. “And I’m always going to choose you.”
She went to him, whether he wanted her to or not, because she did want something—him—and touched his hand. It was the very best she could give him at that moment, even with her walls down. And she prayed he could see that. “Wait for me.”
She held her ground until she heard an answer from him.
“Sarai….” he swallowed against the lump in his throat. “I want things for you. I want you to be beautiful. I want you to be yourself. I want you to be free.”
He held her, pressing her tight to him, feeling her heart beat against his chest, and he met her lips. He kissed her forehead, remembering all of her, every moment of Ava Johnson. “If you could ever find it in you to love me,” he whispered, “you’ll do this for me. You’ll be free.”
She laughed, a dizzy sort of laugh, still drenched in tears and other hard things. “Then I’ll be free.”
And he let her go.
***
“Ixora!”
Ava’s voice bellowed across the rolling ocean of her ownworld like a thunder god calling out over her domain.
Her will was so strong that Ixora appeared before her, off-kilter. Her white skin and lumiscent hair were still immaculate, but her eyes were wide, as if she’d been brought to Ava’s ownworld involuntarily.
“No.” Ava’s words cracked the sky, leaving a jagged lightning bolt of nothingness across the stormy blue clouds. “Lead me to it. But I’m not going to hatch. I won’t do it.”
“That’s not possible, Little Egg.”
“Lead me to it!”
Ixora tried to laugh. “You don’t understand.”
“I didn’t ask for an explanation.”
“There’s nothing desirable in what you seek. There’s nothing the other way. You will hatch. There is no other option. And if you resist, there will only be torment. I can’t let you do that to yourself.”
“I’m taking the other way.”
“You can be free of this, all of this. No more hurt, Little Egg. If you just let me show you—”
“I’m not going to be a phoenix!” Ava shouted. There was no way Ixora, who had been immortal for so long, would ever understand. If Ava had never met Cale, she would have been the same as her—filled with light and liberation.
“I have to stay with him, Ixora. I can’t be a phoenix.” Ava’s will surged, the waves beneath her feet foaming with rage.
Ixora blinked. “So strong….” Her smile fell from her radiant face. “You are nothing like your mother, save for that.” She lifted her hand, beckoning Ava to follow her, and ascended further into the sky. “She was beautiful, your mother. Not my friend, of course. We have no friends in our lives. But she was so beautiful.” Ixora’s color drained as she directed Ava. “Will your world away, Little Egg.”
“Why?”
“Because we are going between worlds. And that is where a phoenix must hatch.”
The idea sent a shiver through Ava, but she fought it back. She could feel her time running out, her will bursting inside of her, the pain tearing through her. She willed herself to leave ownworld, and in an instant, she was in complete darkness.
“Ixora?”
But the phoenix was gone. The only sound Ava heard was her own voice, folding in on itself in the emptiness. The air she thought she needed to breathe vacuumed from her lungs. She recognized the place by the stop of her heart. Between worlds. She was in the void.
Ixora was gone. She knew she was alone because it was the truest solitude she had ever endured. How do I find my way? There was nothing. No light to guide her, no little blue sprite to lead the way. She knew if she let Cale fill up her thoughts, her will would take her back to him.
“I want to be free,” she said to no one. She thought maybe if she stated her will out loud, it would happen. “I want to feel, I want to know life. I want to break past the curse of being untouchable. I want to be free. I won’t hatch. I reject the gift of the phoenix.”
But nothing happened.
And then everything happened.
The void swallowed her up, darkness pulling at her limbs, wrapping around her face, tightening until she was trapped inside. It pulled and pressed her, snapped her bones as it tried to take all of her away, tried to force the gift on her.
She wanted to die. She wanted the pain to stop. She wanted it to be over.
Yet, she couldn’t die. Because, even though the void tried to make her kneel to her destiny, even though it changed her, there was one part of her it couldn’t touch.
Because, even when her will was gone, Ava loved Cale. Even the void couldn’t change that.
Sixteen
Hatch
The earth shook when she broke through the clouds, and Cale ran from the splinters of trees along, taking refuge with the animals who were losing their homes due to the madness. He cringed from the heat her impact gave off. Until there was the pang in his stomach that meant it was Ava. She was alive in that chaos.
He stumbled into the devastation, fighting through the smoke until he reached the gaping hole in the earth where she fell. The ground itself smoldered, still red hot and smoking along the edges of the crater. But Cale didn’t hesitate. He jumped in, hoping his skin would heal as it burned—so he could get to her.
Ava. Curled into a ball on the crater floor, her arms wrapped around her knees.
Her skin—seared, every inch as black as midnight, caked and cracking. Her eyes were closed, her face so expressionless she looked as if she had never been alive at all. She was stone. She was an ancient, ruined tree.
She wore nothing, but Cale didn’t care. He couldn’t see past the fear…the fear that Ava was worse than dead.
He held her to him, lifting her stiff body, feeling her against his chest. She was alive. And it hurt him more than her dying, more than her leaving, to think of the pain she felt. So much pain that she didn’t move.
What can I do? What can I do?
He barely noticed the flash of white light, the trail of gold as a being he’d never before beheld knelt beside them. Her perfect face was porcelain as she frowned. “Oh Little Egg,” she said. “What have you done, Little Egg?”
“Heal her,” Cale said. He didn’t know who the woman was. Maybe an angel. Maybe a goddess. But he held Ava’s crisp body in his arms and didn’t care. “Please,” and his voice broke under the pressure of a thousand sorrows, “heal her.”
The woman looked so deeply into Cale that he had to stare back at her. She was like Ava. He could see how strong the woman was. But she was different. So different somehow. “She rejected her gift, Little Dragon. I cannot heal her.”
Cale wanted to cry, but his eyes were too dry, filled with smoke. “Ava said she’d be free. That’s all she wanted. Why would you do this to her?”
Ixora shook her golden head. “I did nothing, Little Dragon. I warned her. We are free. But we must be who we are.”
“This? This isn’t Ava. This is not who she is.”
Ixora touched Ava’s head, but there was no compassion on her beautiful face. “She is strong, Little Dragon. And now, in her own twisted way, she is hatched. Perhaps, you will learn to forgive her.”
And she left.
Cale was glad she was gone. He kissed his rider’s forehead. Her skin was dry, rough—like sand against his lips. I’m so stupid. I’m so stupid for not kissing her sooner. He stroked her cheeks, willing them to soften, praying that her eyes would open. All the time. I should have kissed her all the time.
She inhaled. A hard, ragged breath forced its way into her lungs. Cale held her even closer, hearing her pain and wishing he could feel it, so at least he could know.
Because if he couldn’t feel her, maybe she couldn’t feel him. Maybe she never felt him at all. And he had expected her to understand how he felt, when what she felt all along was…nothing. But she’d tried, for him. She did it all for him. Because, dspite what she’d always thought, Ava loved Cale better than he loved her.
“Ava, I see now,” he whispered in red tongue. “I see how you fight for me.”
She inhaled again. Sharper that time. And she opened her eyes.
Cale gasped. They weren’t the same. The eyes he fell in love with—steady eyes, unmovable eyes—were gone. Instead, her irises danced in a flickering, swirling flame of red and green.
Cale let go of her, and with careful moves, made it to the other side of the crater. His heart shook inside him when Ava sat up. She was slow, as if readjusting to her charred bones. On all fours, she coughed, kept coughing until there was no way she could take another breath.
And then she stopped.
Her head turned to him, her neck snaking as she stared. Cale had no words. It didn’t look like Ava. Didn’t feel like Ava.
She closed her eyes again. And coughed out the ash that lined her organs as her burnt skin crumbled, falling to the dirt like singed snowflakes. She groaned, scraping her arms as if the skin hurt, as if she needed it gone. She scratched at her face, her legs, but she
couldn’t do it fast enough. No words left her, but at last, she looked to Cale, holding her arms out.
She groaned. She wouldn’t stop groaning. She stretched her arms out to him, her blackened fingers trembling.
“Wh—what do you want?”
With unsure steps, Cale went over to her and knelt beside her in the ash. He fought the urge to run and hide as he took her crusted hands in his. She wasn’t warm to the touch. He wished she was. She would have felt more real, more alive.
“You want it…off?”
Her eyes swam, the colors mixing as she stared at him. She wanted to tell him what to do. But it hurt. Everything hurt.
Cale rubbed his thumbs across the ruined flesh on her wrists. Warm. She should be warm. He took his hands away.
He cleared his throat and breatged out the smallest of flames, letting it sit in his palm. He hoped she would hold her hands over it, but instead she stared. The wild spinning of the flames mirrored her eyes, until Ava reached out her hand and touched one finger to the fire.
It caught her up in itself as if she had been drenched in oil, spreading over her skin before Cale could yell for her to stop. He lunged for her, meaning to save her, but she kicked and pushed until she was free of him.
The flames spread, sizzling over her flesh and hair. Cale took off his shirt and tried again, throwing it over her and wrapping her up in it to smother the fire.
But, beneath his shirt, she stopped moving.
He got off her, out of breath, his head pounding. He’d never been afraid of fire before. It had always been a beautiful constant in his life. And yet it had the power to consume what he loved in moments.
“Ava?”
She sat up, holding his singed shirt to her undressed body. The burns were gone, and her skin was alive again. But she was without the golden glow Cale had come to know. Instead, that skin swirled with a strange darkness, in waves that came and went. Her curls, though they used to be brown and laced with light, were touched with darkness.