Fearless

by Tracey Ward

  I snicker. “Party dressing no pigs?”

  Nick shakes his head in disgust. “For a smart guy he’s a friggin’ idiot sometimes.”

  “Just because he’s a genius doesn’t mean he has to be working problems in quantum physics all the time. It’s okay to have a little fun now and then. To relax. I think that’s what your real problem is. He made a great point the other day. I think I’m stuck with my ability. I don’t enjoy it, and I’d be better at it if I did. You think you’re blessed with your ability and that you need to use it to its potential every single second, but you don’t have to. It’s okay to just enjoy it sometimes. I think that would help you find the line. When it crosses over from being fun to work, that’s when you need to start checking your gut for whether it’s right or wrong.”

  He methodically shreds the pine needle down nothing, not saying a word until it’s completely gone. Until the last tiny bit tumbles from his fingers into the dark. “It’d be a lot easier if you’d just tell me.”

  “Then I’ll tell you. If you’re getting too extreme, I’ll let you know. But only until you learn to see the line yourself.”

  “Deal.”

  “Good.”

  “Can I tell you what I’m planning,” he asks slowly, his eyes carefully fixed on the river, “and you can tell me if you think it’s going too far?”

  I don’t like the feel of this question. It’s strange for Nick. Even after the conversation we just had and the agreement we reached, this feels weird. It feels suspect.

  “Don’t try to Slip away and do this with Liam and not me,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t respond.

  I knew it!

  I let my head roll back, groaning in frustration. “Come on, Nick.”

  “It’d be safer for y—”

  “Stop right there. No.” I raise my head to glare at him. “I’m tired of hearing that. I’m tired of hearing how you’re going to keep me safe and it’d be better for me to stay with Campbell. Quit trying to solve the world’s problems on your own. I’m strong, do you understand that?”

  He nods. “I do. I know that. I’ve been saying that all along.”

  “Then stop treating me like I’m fragile. Like I’ll break.”

  “I hate what you saw in that room,” he says abruptly. I’m startled by the pained expression on his face. It’s so raw for him, so much pure emotion, it takes me a second to recover from it. “That killed me. I’ve seen it before, I’ve trained endlessly to deal with it, and I don’t have the emotions in place to process it. Not like a normal person. Not like you. I never wanted that for you. I never wanted anything like that to come near you.”

  I swallow past the bile rising in my throat at the memory. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you?”

  “I will be,” I amend. “You have to give me time. You can’t assume that everything will ruin me. Sometimes I’ll crack, but I’ll heal.”

  Something flashes in his palm, stark white and shining. It’s the stone. The boat.

  “I would protect you from everything if I could,” he says, his voice deep.

  “But you can’t because you’re not God, remember?”

  “Vaguely.”

  I jut my chin toward the stone. “You’ve been saving it for the Boss Battle, haven’t you?”

  He turns his head to me slowly. “Are you using gamer terms?”

  “I’ve been spending a lot of time with Campbell.”

  “I’m sorry for that.”

  “Me too.”

  “No, I mean I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I let him take me.”

  I smile slightly. “I wondered about that. I couldn’t imagine a world where Liam was able to overtake you.”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “So you left on purpose.”

  “We weren’t getting anywhere without him.”

  “I know.”

  “You were still mad, though.”

  “I was worried. I don’t know if I was mad.”

  “Either way, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry I insisted we hunt people down. It didn’t really get us anywhere.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. It got to us where we are right now. It got us the people we’re with.”

  “Maybe. But I’m still sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  We sit silently for a long time listening to the water rush down the river.

  “I thought love was never having to say you’re sorry,” Nick eventually says, sounding annoyed.

  “Oh,” I laugh, “and your movie knowledge fails you!”

  “That was a prime chick flick quote. I shouldn’t even know it. How did it fail me?”

  “That’s a crap line. It isn’t true,” I explain. “Love means having to say you’re sorry. It means swallowing your pride and owning up to being wrong. Would you apologize or explain yourself to anyone else in this group?”

  “No.”

  “The difference is you love me.”

  “I do.”

  I nudge his leg with my foot. “And I love you, you know.”

  He grins, pushing back against me. “I know.”

  “All right, so how are we going to do this? What’s the plan?”

  Nick holds up the boat for me to see. He angles it so the river is rushing behind it, giving the illusion it’s floating along it. A tiny vessel on a massive current.

  “With this,” he answers.

  “It’s staying a boat?”

  “Yep. The bird stayed a bird, the boat is staying a boat. You make great weapons.”

  “That’s oddly flattering. So we’re all storming the castle in a rowboat?”

  “I’ll beef it up when I make it bigger, but yeah. You and Liam will Slip us to another island in French Polynesia, I’ll work my magic on this thing until we can all fit inside it, he’ll give me the coordinates, and I’ll pilot us to shore.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then it gets a little wild...”

  He tells me the plan from start to finish, using me as his moral compass to make sure he’s not going too far, that he’s not going to ask too much of any of the people waiting back inside the cabin. It’s a sorting out of roles for the people in our group, but also for us. We’re not what we used to be. We’re something different, something we’re still figuring out as we sit along the water that isn’t our water. It’s not ours because ours has been tainted. It’s gone. He’ll never take us back, I know it. I’ll never sit with him at the end of that dock again. It’s sad but it’s all right. We’ve grown past it. We’re moving beyond it, finding our way. Looking for that new place that isn’t mired in who we used to be, but can encompass who we are now. Who we will become. Together.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Nick

  It’s a beautiful day for sailing.

  I imagine any day in the South Pacific is good for it. Unless you have a hurricane—which, come to think of it, I could have made. Although that might have been an idea Alex would deem as going too far.

  She and Liam spent the morning transporting Brody, Campbell, Beck, Naomi, and me to the island of Moorea, just northwest of Tahiti. We found a remote beach with no one on it and now here we all stand waiting to go to war. Only one last thing to do, and it’s my favorite thing. I remember to take Alex’s advice and have fun with it. To enjoy what I’m doing.

  It’s an easy thing to love.

  They all stand behind me in the sand as I throw the white stone into the ocean. I feel it when it hits the water, warm and welcoming. It makes it so easy to expand it, like the ocean wants me to do it. I build it up, up, and up until breaks the surface, where it’s barely the size of a real rowboat.

  I push it harder, building from the center and expanding out. The shape begins to change. To elongate. It gets wider, thicker, more durable. The pure white color begins to fade a little. The glossy sheen leaves it, fading to a duller matte. I give it more texture, making it more porous. More rough. More aggressive looking.

&nb
sp; The angles begin to take harsh shape. It no longer floats on the top of the water—it cuts into it. It lances the surface with a razor-sharp edge that runs the length of the ever-expanding keel. There are only seven of us, but this boat could hold a hundred. In its day, it would have. It would have housed over a hundred soldiers sailing to war.

  The ship takes its final shape and stands as a harsh white beast against the brilliant blue sea. It’s intimidating as it is, but it’s missing something. I don’t want intimidating. I don’t want awe-inspiring. I want terrifying.

  I dip deep into my memories. Into my nightmares. My fears. That’s where I find him waiting.

  There’s a harsh snap followed by a series of ear-splitting cracks. I feel it when the group falls away. They hurry back up the beach, away from the boat. The mast explodes out the center of the hull. It reaches high into the sky in a series of interlocking pieces like the spine of a giant that billows at the top to stream down into a tattered, waving white sail.

  Another crack, more pops, and the exterior of the ship protrudes with jagged, disjointed pieces of bone—legs, arms, tiny talon-tipped fingers. A long, whipping tail. The chaotic pattern runs the rim of the hull, where it meets at the bow and bursts into a giant bone figurehead.

  It’s the skull of the Jabberwocky.

  “Whoa, Carver,” Campbell calls, his voice muffled by the divide between us, both physical and ethereal. “What have you made?”

  “It’s a Viking longship,” I reply, my voice sounding strange and resonant in my own ears, “and I built it out of the bones of my enemies.”

  I’m met with silence. Silence from the sea, from the ship, from the group of superheroes standing a safe distance behind me. It’s deep and dark, the silence. Heavy in its understanding of the weight of the moment. Of the terrible task at hand.

  “How do we get on?” Alex asks curiously.

  Shit.

  ∞

  Turns out the way you get on a Viking bone ship is you climb it. You grab a femur and a hip bone and you hoist yourself up the outside of the hull.

  I sink it into the sea enough to make it easier for everyone to climb, but in honesty I don’t make it too easy because it’s a freaking Viking bone ship, and if you can’t clamor your way up the side of it at least a little, you don’t deserve to ride in it.

  Sailing it is a lot like flying the bird—all-encompassing. I am the ship. I feel the water break against the bow. I feel the wind whip in the sail. I feel all of the hands and feet on the deck and rails. I’m so immersed in the ship that I’m a little startled when Alex comes to stand next to me.

  “You doing okay?” she asks.

  “Is it wrong to say this is one of the best days of my life?”

  “I’d be right there with you if you were sailing us anywhere but where we’re going.”

  “Can I keep it when we’re finished?”

  Alex chuckles, surveying the ship. “Where would we put it?”

  “Where wouldn’t we put it?”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Sorry, I’m not very witty right now. My brain is kind of split in half.”

  “Yeah, let’s have you stay focused.” She pats me lightly on the shoulder. “You’re doing a great job.”

  “Hey, Blackbeard!” Brody calls down from the Crow’s Nest. “Land ho! Course correction to the left!”

  “How far?!”

  “It… about a… I think a skosh. A skosh to the left.”

  “What’s a skosh?” I whisper to Alex.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “It means a tiny bit!” Brody calls, able to hear us even over the wind.

  “Thank you!” Alex shouts back.

  I correct our course a skosh to the left.

  “We’re almost there,” I say loudly, addressing the entire group. “Everyone at the ready!”

  The plan is simple: Alex will enter Naomi’s nightmare-fueled mind, pick a monster (any monster), and bring it to life in the waking world, just like with the Jabberwocky. Then she’ll send it onto the island to do our dirty work for us. Once chaos reigns and the guards are distracted, she, Campbell, Beck, and I will go ashore, kill the wizard, and win the day.

  Easy.

  How could any of this possibly go wrong?

  “Is Naomi ready?” Alex asks Liam.

  “Yeah, she’s good. Wide open and broadcasting to let you in,” he replies.

  Beck looks at the girl anxiously. “I can feel it.”

  “Makes you nervous, right?” Campbell asks. “Not a great way to feel going into battle.”

  “She’ll shut it down once I’m done Trick-or-Treating,” Alex promises them, though she doesn’t look any more sure than they do.

  “We’re closing in on the island,” Liam tells Alex. “We’d better begin.”

  “Okay,” she answers nervously.

  I want to tell her ‘good luck.’ I want to let her know she can do it, that I know she can, but I’m delving down too deep into the ship now to speak. Their voices and bodies are blurred into a rush of sound that I can’t understand. All I know are the waves against the hull and the rising ocean floor coming up to meet me as we near the island. I have to do this right. I have to hover us perfectly near the shore, just far enough away to avoid being fired on but close enough that Alex can launch our first strike.

  Through the haze I see the single small mountain of the island standing in front of us. It’s a misshapen green mass with a black cap at its peak. I can’t see it clearly but I know exactly what it is.

  King Koopa’s Castle.

  “She’s under,” Campbell says from somewhere near me. “She’s going in. I’ll stay with her. Don’t worry about anything but what you’re doing, all right? I got her.”

  I think I nod in reply, but I don’t know for sure. I feel the movement but it may have been the ship pitching, rolling with the waves. I hold steady to our location just off the shore. It’s a weird balancing act, like trying to stand on top of a ball. Keeping the ship afloat, holding our location, and not allowing myself to fall too far into the stone is taking all of the concentration I have.

  All of it is almost completely blown out of the water when a scream cuts through the fog.

  It’s Alex. I know it is. I don’t have to see her or hear her voice. Some part of me finds her, feels her through the hull of the boat as she scrambles across its deck. There are others shouting, but the cacophony of their voices pales in comparison to her single scream.

  I begin to rise from the fog. From the ship.

  In response, the ship begins to sink.

  “Carver!” Campbell shouts angrily. “Stay at your post! Do not leave your post!”

  Gunfire. I hear it everywhere in a muffled mass. It’s coming from the Crow’s Nest. From the bow. From the island.

  Another scream cuts through the air. This one is not Alex. It’s not Naomi. It’s not even Liam.

  It’s definitely not human.

  My brain explodes in white-hot agony. It’s coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once, bearing down on me until I worry I’ll slide under the surface of the water to the absolute darkness of the ocean floor. It takes me a minute to dissociate myself from the ship enough to realize the pain is coming from my body—my physical, live, fleshy body.

  I’ve fallen.

  A warm hand is holding mine.

  They’re crying, their tears falling on the deck underneath me.

  “Hang on, Nick,” Alex whispers shakily. “Please hang on.”

  “The ship is sinking!” someone cries. “We’re going down!”

  The pain is too much to work through. I can’t keep the ship afloat and on course. Not like this. Not aware of my body. But if I come out, if I abandon the stone, we’ll all be dead.

  I do the only thing I can. The one thing I was trying so hard not to do.

  I dive deeper into the stone.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Alex

  Inside Naomi’s nightmares
was the worst experience of my life. It wasn’t even really her nightmares—it was just her mind at cruising speed. The things she feels, the things she’s constantly plagued by… I would have ended myself a long time ago if it were me. She’s tougher than I can ever dream of, simply because she’s still standing.

  I respect her, probably more than ninety percent of the people I’ve met in my life, but I’m also scared to death of her.

  When Nick told me last night what he wanted me to do, I was shocked. He hates the idea of me getting burned by bringing out anything like the Jabberwocky, but it was the first thing he suggested. Liam was against it. He didn’t want me fiddling around in his sister’s brain, and fair enough, but the group consensus—Naomi’s vote included—was that I do it. I was supposed to go in, find something extra freaky in the corners of her mind, and bring it to full 3-D, heart-stopping life.

  And I did. It worked. Almost too well.

  I brought it out—a shapeless mass of black whirling vortex nightmare cake—and it immediately started trying to attack me. What it planned to do to me I do not know, but I had no interest in finding out. I Slipped off the boat to the shore, calling it after me. I nearly got shot doing it, too. When the nightmare came after me and left the ship behind, I Slipped away again. It wasn’t long before the screaming started, but I had other things to worry about.

  Nick was shot.

  It’s in his stomach, which even I know is bad news. It’s an ugly injury, it’s incredibly painful, but the upswing is it takes a really long time to die from it. But while you wait for death, you are in constant agony.

  “Campbell, what do we do?” I plead.

  He’s already in motion. He’s pulled off his shirt to wad it up and press it against Nick’s stomach. Blood surges out around it, making me sick. I don’t know how much he can stand to lose.

  Somewhere on the island, people are screaming.