Blood matted her hair, but the gash on her temple was gone.
“What have you done to me?”
“I don’t get it. Your leg was stuffed up. You would still be flat on your back with no hope of getting out of here. A little gratitude would make more sense than this.” He waved a hand at her as if she were wearing an outfit woven from bad attitude.
“Let me ask you this. How much do you know about the one who gave you this power?”
“It’s not like that. I don’t have any power in me. It all comes from Him and it just flows through me.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
They marched in silence, walking easily by the light from inside Kai. They emerged from the mountain on a high pass overlooking a broad flat that stretched far off into the distance.
Kai stared, his gaze drinking in the sights all around. The light inside him lit up the surroundings the way Zee did in full glow. Not only was everything bright as noonday, but the colours left him giddy. Dull grey had been replaced by dazzling shades and hues of more colour than he’d ever seen before. Squinting against the brightness, he tried to get his bearings.
Bree sat on a rock with her back to him, sulking as only a two-year-old or a teenager could. She wouldn’t talk to him and kept scrubbing at her leg as if ants had moved in under her skin. It was completely baffling.
There were many trees dotted throughout the flats below, but one caught his attention. It wasn’t just the size that made it stand out, though it was three times larger than any of the others. Even from this distance, he could see movement in the tree. Monkeys? Too big, yet the whole scene seemed familiar…
He checked the disc in his pocket—flat grey that deepened before his eyes. Runt was nearly out of time. With a deep breath, he closed his eyes and surrendered, drawing from the Source. When he opened them, he was clothed in army fatigues and the light inside him had dipped. Kai was getting his stuff back and he was doing it undercover.
~*~
TrisTessa sipped black coffee. Weary, she drooped over her cup like a fern.
Evazee pushed yellow, eggy bits around her plate with her fork.
Both had deep rings below their eyes. Neither had much to say, and the silence felt awkward.
Eva scooped up a forkful. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
“Enough. You?”
It was frivolous to speak of dreams at a time like this. She should really just ignore them, but they spilled from her lips anyway. “I keep dreaming.” She set her loaded fork down. “About Kai.” She risked a glance at the older lady sitting opposite, and then dropped her eyes. Way to go, Evazee. The poor woman hasn’t seen her son for eighteen years. He’s dying and all you can talk about are your dreams of him.
TrisTessa straightened, cleared her throat, and flicked her gaze up to Eva’s. “Purple trees?”
Eva pushed her plate aside and leaned on her elbows, voice dropping. “Yeah, how did you know?”
“Tell me more.”
“It’s weird. Each dream sort of follows on, but with big gaps in between, almost as though it carries on when I’m not there. I always find Kai, and he’s always in some pickle. He never listens to me even though I seem to know what I’m doing when I’m there.” The sense of frustration that every dream carried overwhelmed her, and she smacked her palm on the table. “He is so stubborn.”
TrisTessa choked back a laugh. “I wonder where he got that from?” Her chuckle faded. “I’ve seen him there too.”
“Serious? That is so weird. Maybe it’s more than a dream.” Eva squirmed in her chair.
“Do you think so?”
“I know it’s weird. There has to be more to this.”
“It’s just a coincidence Eva. Maybe there’s an advert on TV or something that we both watched without realizing it. That’s the sort of thing that always crops up in dreams. What else could it be?”
Eva squirmed, not knowing how to put the strange notion into words.
TrisTessa threw some money on the table. “I want to get back. Take your time.”
Eva pushed her eggs aside. There must be somebody who could help her figure out what she was sensing.
~*~
Kai lay flat on his belly in a patch of soft grass the colour of egg yolk. Even with his light dimmed, he brought colour.
Bree was tucked behind a tree to the left of where he hid. She deliberately stayed out of his bubble of influence, choosing to remain in grey and not speaking more than two words the entire trip down from the plateau. They’d crossed the stubby marshlands, dotted with patches of glass-grass—see-thru and razor sharp. Kai learnt early on to avoid those. They’d hiked through a long, narrow strip of forest that brought them to this clearing and the tree, home of the monkey-boys.
The boys were spread out on rough platforms hammered crudely in between the gnarled branches. The trunk itself stood twisted and ancient as if its roots drank deep of sour lemon, puckered contortions captured in the wood. The boys were exactly as Kai remembered them, bickering and snapping, cowering when their leader came close. Forcing himself to be patient, he stayed put, watching them fight over food, compete for the highest branches. Their world was small, insignificant. Zee’s bag was hooked on a branch on the highest level, the sight of it enough to make him jump up and run. But he knew he had to wait for the right moment or they’d vanish again.
Commotion broke out on the lowest level. One at a time, five of them were singled out from the bunch and pushed off. They hit the ground rolling and found their feet in a blink.
From his hideout, Kai watched them swagger towards the river. It was the same spot where Zee had bathed Runt. His throat tightened at the thought.
By the time they reached the edge of the water, all swagger was gone. They were out of sight from those in the tree and there was no more pretending. These boys were scared.
Kai bit his lip and tried not to laugh—they were terrified of the river.
The four taller ones huddled together whispering, then shoved the smallest one towards the water.
He knelt and dipped the tip of his pointing finger in. It came out dry.
One of the bigger boys smacked him on the head, snarling with his teeth bared.
The smallest boy did it again, dunking his finger in a bit further this time. It came out glowing. He slapped his cheek leaving a glowing handprint. Scooping up a palm-full, he poured it over his head. He stood up, glowing faintly.
The others followed, their reactions to the water varied only in the level of fear they felt. There was no mistaking their distrust.
A strange sadness crept over Kai. How he’d love to tell them that the water was good, and there was nothing to be afraid of.
Sudden cold crept over him, radiating from his pocket. The disc was frozen over, a shade above black, Runt was fading fast.
They had to move now.
Kai leopard crawled on his belly, elbows gouging holes in the yellow grass.
Bree flinched as he got closer, but bent down when he motioned to her.
“I need a distraction. Got to get that bag at the top.”
Bree nodded once and slunk off into the foliage to the left of the big tree.
Kai counted slowly, impatience burning through him. A loud yelp echoed around him, coming from the direction Bree had gone.
Don’t get yourself into trouble, Bree.
Another yelp, louder this time, as if the animal was in pain. Whatever it was, it had the attention of every monkey-boy. They took off as one, clambering down branches, some climbing to the very end, their weight lowering the branch until it nearly touched the ground. As they jumped off, the branch whipped back with force, dropping some stragglers like over-ripe fruit.
The end result was better than Kai had hoped. The tree stood empty. He breathed for a moment and let the shoes vanish with a pang of regret. Then he was up, hauling himself to the first platform, then the second. The gnarled bark provided easy footholds and a thrill passed through him as he
hauled himself over the edge of the fifth. He reached for Zee’s bag, feeling a century older than the last time he’d seen it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Bash stepped out from behind the trunk, cracking each of his knuckles in turn, his face twisted into something that might have been a smile.
Kai couldn’t really tell. “I’m just here to fetch my bag. Thanks for keeping it safe.”
“Your bag?” Bash laughed. Apparently, his laughing skills were as dismal as his smiling ones.
Kai sighed, put his hands on his hips and weighed up his enemy. The boy was a head shorter than him, a wide block of knotted muscle. His broad nose took up too much space on his face and his feet were bare and dirty. Looking at him hauled out memories of the St. Gregory’s bully. Even the sneer on his face was the same. One thing had changed though. Kai was no longer afraid of him. He took a step closer to Bash, testing it out. Nope, nothing. He laughed. The effect on Bash was bewildering.
He glared at Kai, but took a step back.
With a wide grin, Kai stuck out his foot. “You want to see a cool trick?”
Bash grunted.
Kai breathed deep and held out his foot. He kept his eyes on the bully as he felt shoes knit around his feet. He held up both hands, a magician with nothing up his sleeves.
Bash growled at him.
Kai almost felt sorry for him. But then he thought of Runt. “I’m taking my bag.” He stretched up and unhooked it.
Bash launched himself. He hit Kai in the ribs throwing him sideways and landing on top of him knocking the air from his lungs for the second time that day.
As Kai lay there pinned, stuck, and unable to draw breath, panic gripped his throat.
Kai, think.
Feathery blackness crept into his vision. He shut his eyes tight. He wouldn’t last much longer like this.
Bash grabbed him by the throat.
Kai heard cartilage creak. With all my LifeLight inside, is there any space left for lungs? Kai stopped fighting for breath. He stopped trying to breathe and instantly the blackness left, his vision cleared.
Bash still straddled him, fat fingers squeezing so hard he was red in the face. Sweat ran off his brow, washing the smeared-on light into melted runs.
Kai tried to shove him off, but it was like pushing a mountain.
An image flashed through his mind, the monkey boys at the river, terrified of the water. Was it the water itself, or the light it contained? There was only one way to find out. Locking eyes with Bash, he let go of all the Life he’d been holding in check. The light danced patterns across his skin, threaded off him in glowing curls that grew. Everything the light touched, switched into brilliant techni-colour. It pulsed out of every pore, glowing heat and light.
Bash stopped growling and threw himself backward. His hands shot up over his face and he clawed at his eyes as if he’d been using acid for eye drops.
Kai hauled himself backwards, away from the bully’s thrashing legs. He picked up the bag, waved at Bash cringing on the floor, and flung himself over the edge of the platform. As he climbed down his heart was in his throat, but the cold radiating from his pocket wouldn’t let him stop. By the time his feet hit ground, his light was dim once more.
14
Evazee’s gran sat propped up on stiff hospital pillows, her twig arms clasping a pocket edition Bible to her chest. She was desperately thin, her forearms looked as if they might snap if one shook her hand too hard. She brightened up as soon as she saw Eva and called her close. “Here, love. Take this for me, won’t you? They’ve started checking my bin.” She handed over a packet which smelled suspiciously of chicken. Inside, the contents were wrapped in tissues.
“Gran, don’t tell me this is your lunch?”
“Shhh! Put it in your bag. There’s a bin down the hall. They’ll never know.”
“You really need to start eating some of this, Gran. Soon, there’ll be nothing left of you.” She stowed the packet in her bag, hoping it wouldn’t leak.
“I just feel like soup, butternut soup. I’d eat that.”
Eva grinned at her, “I’ll see what I can organise. Gran, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot. I’m listening.” Her body was frail, but her mind darted fresh and sharp.
“There is a guy here in hospital who was hit by a bus.” Eva watched Gran’s eyes widen. “He didn’t die. In fact, he’s in the room just opposite yours. That’s how I found him.” Eva moved on quickly, avoiding deep questions. “He’s in a coma and getting weaker. The weird part is, I keep dreaming about him. No, it’s more than just a dream. I meet up with him, we talk—argue even. Every night the dream seems to carry on, with him getting more deeply involved in whatever strange world that is there in the dream. In the meantime, his body stays here, getting weaker.” Eva fell silent, not even sure what she was asking. “That’s kinda weird, isn’t it?”
“But you don’t know how to put into words what you’re feeling.”
Eva nodded.
“And you think it all sounds a bit nuts, so you don’t know who to talk to.”
Eva kept nodding, her nose crinkled.
“I think I know what’s going on.”
~*~
Kai tapped the rolled-up scroll in his palm, wondering if he should give it to Bree to read. Getting it back had seemed so important, but now that he had it in his hands, all he could think of was how blank the inside had been the first time he’d tried to read it. They had crossed the river with Bree on his back to avoid touching the water, and ran hard to put space between themselves and the monkey boys.
They’d found a hiding place in a hole in a tree trunk just wide enough for them to crawl in next to each other. They were shoulder-to-shoulder in the small space, their feet leaving footprints in the fine sand on the ground.
Bree sat pixie-like, blending in with her surroundings as if she’d grown up in this forest, living off berries and shoots.
“Here. You read it.”
“No way. I’m not touching that thing.”
“It’s just paper. Stop being such a baby and open it.”
Bree snatched it from his hand with a death glare. Kai closed his eyes, hoping against hope that she’d find something inside the curl of paper. Instructions for rescuing Runt. How to get out of this place. Anything. Right now he’d even take a stick figure and an arrow.
“I hope you didn’t pay for this. If you did, you got ripped off.”
Kai sighed, “Still blank?”
Bree shrugged and handed it to him. He took it from her, laid it out on the dust at his feet, and ironed it with his hands. Bree was right. There was nothing. Zee had been wrong all along. His hand brushed over the top right hand corner. A faint silvery flash rippled across the page.
“Did you see that?”
Bree leaned back on the trunk and closed her eyes. “See what?”
“Look at that!” A shimmery, silver music note lit up the right corner where his hand had touched.
“You’re seeing things. There’s nothing.”
Kai squinted. It was definitely there, pulsing with life. He picked up the paper and held the note between his thumb and forefinger. Faint lines shot through the page, squiggling across the emptiness.
“Can you see the lines?”
Bree said nothing, but her raised eyebrows suggested her doubts about his sanity.
“I can’t believe you don’t see anything. It’s incomplete anyway.”
“How are we getting them back?” Bree hunched forward, resting her head on her knees. For a moment the feisty cover was gone and she looked young and scared.
Kai tucked the scroll away, the cold on his chest a reminder that time was running out for Elden and Runt.
“We need a map. How much do you know?” He pressed his legs hard against the bark, making a space on the dusty ground.
Bree shrugged, but sat forward and moved her legs out of the way too.
Kai drew a cross with his finger. “We are here. Behind us,
the river.” A long, squiggly line appeared. “The monkey boy tree.” He carried on drawing, backtracking each step of the long journey they’d walked. He filled in the mountain range, the shallow rocky bowl. In the bowl he wrote DH and drew a big rectangle around the letters. DarKounds. Nasty things. Before long, he’d mapped out everything he remembered.
“Do you want to add anything?”
Bree eyed him, then quickly filled in the slums around the OS, the seedy part of the City of the Dispossessed. The place she’d been living for too long now. She’d grown quieter, withdrawing more into herself every moment since she’d been healed.
It baffled Kai completely. Seeing her so small, so vulnerable, caused a fierceness to burn in his belly. He drew a line from where they were, marked as an X on the map, to the OS.
“Are there darKounds between here and the OS?”
“They move around. It’s impossible to know where they’ll be.”
“What are they?”
“Hunters. They hunt for the Soulless. It just takes one bite. The infection does the rest.”
“You get sick?”
Bree stared at her hands. “Not really. You just…lose yourself.”
Kai felt the whirlpool of emotion hiding behind her words. He spoke gently, knowing he was digging into a sore place. “How do you know? Bree?”
Bree reached up and picked off a piece of bark from the opening in the tree. She turned it in her fingers, bending it back and forth. “My dad. He was full of light, just like you. But when the darKounds came, that meant nothing. The Man of Light is a liar. There is no power in the light you carry, Kai.” The bark snapped.
“But your leg…”
“I didn’t ask for it.” Bree’s eyes were dark, nearly as black as the berries made them.
He had to get her back to Elden. Bitterness was eating her up. Keeping her away from him would do no good. He stood, ducking out of the tree and held out his hand. “Come, Pixie. Let’s go get your brother.”
She ignored his hand, pulled herself out of the hole in the tree, and marched off, looking every inch of her sixteen-year-old self.
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