by Sara Etienne
I gripped the dagger hidden in my sleeve, covering my intentions with words. “Can’t you smell death on the water? Can’t you see the wrongness of Holbrook? A forest wrapped in razor wire trying to pretend like nothing is wrong. Maya was right from the beginning: people just close their eyes and keep gobbling.”
“No. I wasn’t.” An aggressive tension still ran the length of Maya’s narrow body, but there was no bitterness in her words now. “We have friends here. Some of us have family. And, Faye, so many are still voiceless.”
“Someone has to care, right?” I threw Maya’s words back at her. “You think, like I did, that the Harbinger wants to destroy the world. But I don’t. I care more than you could ever know. Enough to do what must be done.”
“We can’t just slaughter them like lambs,” Zach said as they took another step closer. The change in Zach was shocking. His shoulders were thrust back and compassion tinted his voice instead of doubt.
I steeled myself for what was coming, hiding my thoughts from them. “You have to believe me, there is no other choice.”
“Faye, you chose to give me that talisman. You wanted someone to stop you.” Kel touched my cheek again, sending a shiver through me. I rested my head against his hand, shifting my balance. Then, with a swift sweep of my arm, I brought the dagger up to his throat.
Kel froze, his body rigid as the sharp stone blade touched his bare skin. This was how it happened the first time. This is how I killed him. All of them.
“Now, get out of my way.” I held Kel in front of me, edging backward, toward the wall of the pit.
But the Family stood rooted where they were. Their circle trapping Kel and me.
“Can’t you see?” I tightened my hold on Kel, the dagger poised at his throat. “This is where The Circle has brought us.”
“No,” Kel whispered. “No, this is where you brought us.”
So be it. I didn’t know if I was powerful enough to finish the ritual alone. But I had to try. I would walk The Path. Even if it meant going against them all.
Even if it means losing Kel.
I readied the dagger, and images flooded into my mind. Slashing the blade across their necks. Warm blood spilling over my hands and soaking into the ground. The rest of them had gone willingly, but the boy who was now Kel . . . who I’d loved more than life, but not more than the world . . . he hadn’t agreed with The Path. He’d fought me, professing that I wasn’t a killer. But I’d proved him wrong.
And now I had to do it again. But I couldn’t bear to have more of his blood on my hands. So my thoughts stretched out into the air, pulling in the energy and power I needed.
Maya reached out to me. “Don’t do this.”
A bolt of electricity shot out of my other hand, striking her in the stomach. Maya’s eyes went wide with surprise as the current held her.
Then the bolt fanned out on either side of Maya. A lethal thread connecting me to Maya to Damion to Nami to Zach. The eerie silver gleam lit up the night.
“I’m sorry,” I said, dropping the dagger from Kel’s throat.
Kel and I faced each other from inside the crackling circle. Electricity coursed through me as I held the others suspended in its current. Burning me from the inside out. Tears spilled over, sizzling and steaming as they hit my skin. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Kel’s eyes softened; I could see myself in his eyes perfectly now. There was nothing missing. No void. No Harbinger. There was just Faye.
“You can’t do this, Faye. You don’t have it in you.”
All I could think of was laying my head against his chest and breathing him in. “You’re right. I can’t.”
But the Harbinger can.
I leaned in as the electricity surged through the others. I tasted Kel’s lips just as the current reached him, completing the circuit. The fire consuming us both.
I clutched him closer, kissing him hard. Grateful for the tears that made it impossible to watch the last bit of green burn out of his eyes.
Then I let go.
33
KEL DROPPED TO THE GROUND.Like puppets with their strings cut, they all collapsed.
This had all happened before. The five bodies lay in a circle. Only Rita was missing.
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to step over his body. To climb out of the hole. To walk away.
From Kel. From my Family. From Faye.
I was only the Harbinger now. I needed to get to the mountain. I’d been waiting four thousand years. There was no more time to mourn.
The mob of students gathered at the edge of the cliff, staring mesmerized across the glowing bay to the island. The tide was coming in fast now, and they shuffled restlessly in the dark. Hurry, Hurry. It’s time. Hanging low in the sky, over all of it, the moon crept into shadow. The eclipse had begun.
I rushed back down the path, to the beach. The lights from the dormitory gleamed through the trees. But when I reached the shore, it was empty and dark. The gate still locked tight.
I threaded my fingers through the chain-link fence and closed my eyes. I felt the pure metals hidden in there, before they’d been ripped from the ground and diluted. Chunks of iron ore formed in the Earth’s core when humans were no more than a glimmer in a microorganism’s eye. If they had eyes.
Veins of zinc wandered deep underground. The elements separated from each other and my body felt like it was being torn apart. Then a rich metallic flavor resonated in my mouth, and I knew what it was like to be old. So much older than the trees, older than this hillside I was standing on. Ancient and primal. A force unto myself.
My eyes opened. The fence around my hands had melted, leaving a hole big enough to climb through. Drops of molten steel glowed and then solidified into harmless lumps on the ground. I pushed aside what was left of the wire and squeezed through.
I ran across the pebbles, tar sticking to my shoes. Waves glistened blue as they broke on the shore. The island, less than half a mile away, was surrounded by the same dim glow. A shimmering line cut across the black water, connecting the two places.
I squinted at it. Out of all the strange things that had happened tonight, an incandescent, magical path leading to my destiny seemed the least likely of them all. Then I laughed, a short bark jabbing the darkness, as I realized what it was.
Not magic, but toxic algae. It lit up as the waves crashed against a narrow sandbar. A ridge that had once run the length of the valley.
Can I make it across before the tide closes over it? I pulled my shoes off and, one foot in front of the other, I hurried out onto the thin slice of land surrounded by glittering waves. Water sprayed against my legs, and I winced.
Aunt had told us that touching the algae wasn’t supposed to hurt you, but I guess there was no “supposed to” anymore. Toxins seeped out of the murky water and into my skin, poisoning me. I could feel the tide’s hunger as I ran, wanting to drag me down and suck the life from me.
“I am the Harbinger!” I shouted. But the lethal waves simply crested higher.
The current tore into the sandbar. The path was only a foot wide now, and I was only a third of the way across.
I ran faster and the blood pumped through my skull. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. My feet slammed down, pounding out the rhythm. I had to get there before the land bridge was swept under.
I heard the drums again. Chanting their chorus. Hurry, Hurry. Halfway there.
The strip of sand was now hardly big enough for my bare feet side by side. Seagulls shrieked and dove around me, fighting to get the last mussel shells before the tide stole them away.
I burst through the flock. Flashing wings batted against my face. Angry squawks trailed me.
Foam filled my footprints and my feet splashed through the seeping water. It burned like acid against my soles.
The tide is high. The moon is full.
My foot slipped and I fell down hard. My jaw smashed into the wet sand, my face on fire with the stuff. The salt of blood and spiked seawater mixed in my mou
th. I felt the poison dragging at me, making my limbs heavy. Waves clawed my hands and I gagged on the stench.
I forced myself back up and raced the glowing waves. I had to do this. Everything depended on me making it to the island. I sucked in great lungfuls of stink. I was closing the distance. Twenty-five feet. Twenty. Ten.
But the tide wouldn’t let me go so easily. Its eagerness trembled through my feet as a huge swell began to build. Icy fingers strained forward in the moonlight, ready to rip into me. I wasn’t going to make it.
I hummed, calming myself down, like Kel had that first day in Solitary. I wish I had a river so long.
I focused on the water flooding agonizingly around my ankles. It rose and curled. I wish I had a river so long.
The huge wave crested the sandbar and came at me, threatening to capsize me. Instead, I let its savage energy fill me. Turning my song into a chant of power.
I would teach my feet to fly!
My hands blazed silver as I pictured the seagulls, soaring out of the water. The waves pushing them up into the air. Wings catching the wind.
And I leapt.
The ocean leapt with me, carrying me high into the dark air as it swallowed the last of the sandbar. The wind gathered behind me, thrusting me forward those last few feet, to the safety of the beach.
Shells scoured my body and gravel filled my mouth. But I was across. Even as I lay on the beach, scraped up and spitting sand, the blunt violence of the tide thrilled through me. I shouted wildly up at the sinking, disappearing moon.
“I am the Harbinger!”
But the sea was still rising. I crawled across the beach until my legs were strong enough to hold me. Then I started climbing. Even though it was dark, even though most of the mountain had been swallowed by the sea, I still knew my way to the peak.
The large pockmarked boulder was waiting for me when I reached the top. Stars still dusted the sky, but the iron meteorite was purpley gray in the first hint of morning. And, there, illuminated by the blood-red moon and the emerging dawn, was the mark of The Path.
It was a bird balancing on the wind. It was a mountain rising out of the water. It was a compass arrow pointing the way.
I reached out to touch the symbol I’d engraved here, so long ago. A shock stung me and I snatched my hand away. Blood pounded in my ears. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
Remember, you are the Harbinger.
I touched the boulder again and my feet reached deep into the bedrock, into the beating heart of the planet. The connection that’d been reawakened over the past few days was nothing compared with this. The vitality of the universe poured through my arteries. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Uncontrollable tides. Molten lava surging through the Earth’s core. Wind that galloped across the land. It lived inside of me.
The Earth spun and, standing on this island, I spun with it. Planets wheeled in cosmic circles around me, and I danced with them, through tawny rings of ice and faithful asteroids. A blaze of stars hit me, and I basked in their heat.
There, seeing into the shadow of space, I watched the sun and Earth and moon spin into alignment. Sitting in the middle of the perfect row, the Earth blotted out the sun’s light. Drenching the moon in darkness.
In the dark of the pregnant moon. With the sun as midwife, Autumn will be born in an ocean of blood.
From both sides of this smog-shrouded planet, the sun and moon called to the ocean in unison.
My voice called with them, “Rise!”
The ocean boomed its answer. Rearing up, the tide climbed the island’s slope. Coming to me, so I could join with the waves. The wind gusted to spur it on.
As the bay drained, seagulls teemed across the exposed seabed, feasting on fish and scurrying crabs. I summoned the ocean from its chasms and depths. A towering swell rose up before me, and my voice soared above the eager waves. Telling them the next chapter of the story.
“Together we will wash the beaches clean. We will reach into the greedy heart of man and squeeze till it stops beating. We will make a new Path, and all that survives shall follow it and grow strong.”
My instructions were drowned out by the harsh screams of gulls. Suddenly, hundreds of birds descended on me. Beaks jabbed at my face. Claws scrabbled at my scalp, tangling in my hair.
This isn’t right. The birds shouldn’t be fighting me. Straining to hold the waves with my mind, I snatched a seagull. Ripping it from my hair.
Clutching it in my fist, I felt its heart quivering. Its madness driven by panic and fear. And power.
Kel. I felt his feet walking across the earth again.
I tasted him on the air.
34
I TURNED INTO the fury of feathers and wings. Reaching out into the wind, I felt for the spaces between molecules. I gritted my teeth as I dragged the atoms together, compressing the air. The diving birds slowed, their muscles straining against the dense atmosphere. Their lungs struggling to breathe. One by one, they plunged from the sky.
Now I had a clear view of Kel down below. He strode toward me across the empty stretch of sand that used to be the bay. Wind pulled his hair back from his face, and I swore I saw sparks, blazing green, in his eyes.
“Harbinger!” Kel’s voice boomed across the dawn. Flanking him on either side were Nami and Damion, Maya, and Zach. Evidently it would take more than a shock to stop them.
Calling to the wind, I pushed the heavy air down on them. The dense cloud dropped, trapping them in a bubble of unbreathable air. Zach fell to his knees in the damp sand, hands clutching at his chest.
Then they were all down. Tears welled up in my eyes, but the wind dried them before they could hit my cheeks. I turned my concentration back to the great waves. Anxious to join them and be done with this.
But my ears popped, the pressure changing. Down on the sand, the air around Zach rippled. Excited molecules hurtled around him, bouncing off each other like bumper cars. The hair on my neck prickled in the charged atmosphere. Standing, Zach raised his arms, warming the air. Allowing the Family to breathe again.
“Faye!” Kel, Maya, and Nami were back on their feet.
Only Damion was still kneeling, stone-faced, his hands flat against the ground. The sand underneath him seethed and roiled. And a noise keened in my ears. A billion grains of sand rasping against each other.
Kel and the others struggled to keep their balance as sand filled in under their feet, lifting them into the air. The ground swelled up beneath the Family as a giant sand dune rose out of the middle of the drained bay. Bringing them to meet me.
Now the five of them faced me from a tall bluff, just two hundred feet away. Kel stretched out his hand, heat shimmering in the air between us. “Stop this before we all get killed.”
“Why do you make me hurt you?” My words drifted across the gap to Kel. My legs trembled. I knew how this was going to end.
But they wouldn’t stop. Nami grabbed a handful of sand. She swirled it with her finger, whispering to it in her cupped palm.
Sweat dripped down my face. “Don’t you get it? Whether I do this or not, we’re all dead. Let me salvage what I can.”
The gathered waves began frothing like an attack dog as they absorbed my growing anxiety. They crested higher and higher, rising far above my peak. But I kept a grip on them. I hadn’t completed the final step of the ritual.
I’d waited four millennia. I could be patient. Pressing my hands deep into the iron meteorite, I braced myself just as Nami opened her fist.
The sand around her took flight, sparkling on the hot air. Infinitesimal grains of rock, glass, and plastic whirlwinded into a glittering sandstorm. A beauty brutal enough to blind me and shred my skin.
Self-preservation took over and I threw a tiny fistful of waves into the air. I concentrated on the memory of wet, winter mornings. Snow days and icicles. Breath turned brittle in my lungs as frost crystallized around the roaring sandstorm.
As the water condensed on the hot dust, it froze and plummeted from the sky. Huge chunks of h
ail pelted the Family, but they stood their ground. Cradling their arms over their heads.
Too late, I saw what I’d done. My cold air slammed into their searing dust cloud and churned into a dense fog. Mist poured in around us, hiding Kel and the Family’s sand dune from sight.
“Faye, I love you. But I will not let you destroy us all.” I heard Kel’s voice, but all I could see was five dark shapes in the fog. They’d just been waiting for me to make a mistake like this.
Above me, purple storm clouds materialized out of nowhere. Wind tore at my hair and tried to chop the massive swell into puny whitecaps. I clutched at the water, holding it together.
Thunder snarled. Lightning lit up the sky behind the Family. As one, Kel, Damion, Nami, Maya, and Zach all threw their arms into the air. A white-hot spear of lightning flew out of the clouds toward me. I threw myself out of the way and the bolt smashed into the boulder. The great chunk of iron cracked in two. Molten metal raining down around me.
The force of the blow rumbled through the peak beneath me, opening a jagged rift across the mountaintop. Gravel spewed as part of the steep slope crumbled away. Trying to keep my balance, I lost my grip on the wave. Vast sluices flooded back into the bay. Kel’s eyes went wild as an oil tanker careened toward the shore. Then his sand dune folded in on itself, sinking into the water. The Family clawed at the mound as it sucked them under.
I dug my feet into the seesawing ground and reined the sea back in. “Wait for me. We must do this together.”
I managed to stop the charging tide before a rock slide sent me tumbling. My fingernails tore at the ground as I slid, and I caught an exposed root. Just before I went over the edge of the peak.
Clinging to the root, I fought to regain control over the world. I froze underground springs. Melted and re-formed the fractured bedrock. But the island was too unstable, and it shattered again.