Shatter (The Children of Man)

by Elizabeth C. Mock

  "By casting it with black," Sheridan concluded with a despondent sigh.

  They sat in silence not looking at each other. Faela curled into herself next to Kade, watching and waiting.

  Finally, Sheridan levered herself to her feet without a word and aimed a swift kick at his outstretched left shin. "You bloody idiot!” she yelled and kicked him again. “You and Evelyn sure make a pretty pair, you know that? Why do I keep hearing everyone around me saying that they had to do anything? Why?"

  In full rant, she threw her hands in the air. "I swear the next time I hear someone say 'I had to,' I'm popping them into the nearest river and I am not fishing them out."

  Kade opened his mouth, but no one heard what he was going to say, because Sheridan interrupted him. "No, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear your wonderfully convincing rationale for why you had to make that decision. You didn't have to do anything, Kade. You chose to. You chose. So, don't waste my time and your breath."

  She turned back around and kicked him in the opposite shin. "Idiot!"

  "You're right, Sheridan," he said with a crooked, sad smile. "It was a choice and it was mine and I was wrong."

  "Blah, blah, blah, you just take those excuses and shove–" Sheridan stopped with her finger pointing up and looked back at him. "Wait. Did you just admit that you're wrong and that I'm right? I mean of course I am, but did you just admit it?"

  Kade nodded. "Don't get too used to it."

  Sheridan narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Why?"

  Rubbing his palms on the tops of his trousers, he turned to face Faela. "Because I saw what happens when someone believes that anything can be done as long as the desired result is achieved."

  Faela's face drained of all color, even her lips. For a moment Kade feared she may faint, but she didn't. She just drew her arms into her chest. He leaned over and took hold of one of her hands. He licked his lips and looked into her eyes. It was easy now, like breathing her in like air. He didn't have to speak the words aloud, but he did so for Sheridan's benefit.

  "Even justify taking the life of a child," he said as he replayed the images from Ianos' offices.

  When she saw Eli reach his hand into the bassinet and the snap that preceded that awful silence, Faela screamed and tore her hand out of Kade's. Crimson light rippled out from her hands that clutched her head as her cries of denial devolved into a shriek and deep scarlet light pulsed out from her like a wave, which flung Sheridan hard into the wall, but Kade remained unmoved and untouched.

  He crawled closer to her and put his arms around her as she rocked back and forth howling in pain. She threw off his arms and struck out at him. He caught her wrist and she glared at him her eyes wild and filled with burning hatred and raw grief. Snarling, she struggled in his grip, but he would not let her go, though his cheek bled where she had struck him.

  He locked eyes with her and pushed her arm back down to her side. His eyes glistened with tears as well. He reached into the tempest of her mind, his own grief plain for her to see.

  He put a hand to her cheek forcing her to see him. "I tried," he whispered. "I tried to stop it. Even though I knew I could do nothing. Even though I was only watching shadows, I tried. Rafaela, it wasn't enough. I'm so sorry; it wasn't enough."

  "He can't be," Faela said in a fierce voice. "I would have known. He can’t be." Shaking, she just kept repeating those words to herself in a chant.

  Kade pulled her in toward him by her wrist that he still held. This time, she collapsed into him without a fight. Burying her face into his neck, she laced her arms under his, gripping the back of his shoulders. An arm encircling her waist, he held her close and brushed her hair back from her face.

  "I should have known," she demanded in a muffled voice. "I should have known that something was wrong, that he was in danger. I should have known."

  Stroking her hair, he rested his cheek on the top of her head. "I know," he said in a soft voice. "I thought the same thing once. You see, I had a little brother named Liam. Everything was a competition with us, because we were only a year apart in age, I guess. Who could run faster and further, even who could eat more.

  “Typically I won, except when it came to tinkering. He was always taking things apart to see how they worked. I could take them apart well enough, but when I put them back together they never worked right. Until Liam fixed them, then they worked better than before. He had a gift.

  "When we were tested for the Orders, he had no discernible gift for magic. So, I was sent away from home to train. During my eighth year, he was apprenticing, doing a job at the mines in Tillywhel. Their steam pump had broken, but it was winter and the shaft was frigid and damp – nasty place. He caught a fever. It went to his lungs fast. Fast enough that by the time my parents called for a Tereskan it was too late. He died."

  Kade looked straight ahead, but still ran his fingers through the waves of her hair. "The war had been going on for years by then. People were losing family every day. But I didn't lose Liam to the war; I lost him to a fever. He was only fourteen. He was my own brother and I didn't know for weeks until the post came from my father. I had no idea. Before I learned of his death, nothing had felt different in those weeks after he had died. I had no idea that anything had happened to my little brother and he had been gone for weeks.

  "I questioned whether I had loved him enough for a long time, because if I really loved him I should have been there. I should have just known somehow. I could have done something. That's what I kept telling myself. I should have known."

  He slid his face down to her ear and whispered, "But I did love him, just as you love Sammi and you always will."

  "He shouldn't have been alone," she managed to say around the sobs. "I never should have left him. I never should have gone to find Tobias and the blasted Shrine. I never should have left."

  Feeling her guilt wash over him, Kade knew better than to argue with her. He just continued to hold her as the sobs shook her body, making further conversation impossible. While she cried, her eyes made their way to the bloodstains on the wall, the floor. Her home, this was her home. Death was a fact of daily life at any Tereskan temple, but this was different. Ghosts now filled this place.

  "They're all gone," Faela managed to whisper, “just taken away."

  "Who's gone?" Kade asked his voice still quiet.

  "Everyone," she whispered back. "I don't have a home. It's gone. They're gone. Ianos is gone. Sammi is gone. They all left me behind. Now it's just me."

  Kade didn't have to feel her emotions to hear the boundless despair in her voice. Though she had never admitted it aloud to him, Kade knew she had left to find the Shrine for Sammi's sake. It was clear from the first days that Kade had met her that she had little regard for her own welfare. She had tended to his wounds leaving no energy to heal herself. When she had fought, it was with a fierceness of necessity not the survival instinct he typically saw. She had left chasing Lusican legends for the chance to give Sammi a life untainted by his mother's mistakes, but now he was gone.

  Kade tightened his grip on her instinctually as if she would slip from his hands that very moment. Lifting his cheek from her head, he looked down at her small body clinging to him. Nothing held her here any more. She had nowhere to go and if he let her, he knew she would just fade away and never return. But he had no intention of letting her go, not without a fight.

  Looking at the light smattering of freckles along her forehead, he combed her hair back. Faela looked like a wet ragdoll in his arms. She had stopped crying. She had no tears left. She just stared ahead sightlessly sniffling. Untangling her arms from his back, he drew her into his lap. She burrowed in close and rested her cheek on his chest.

  Sheridan pushed herself up off of the floor, shaking her head. Blinking, she rotated and met Kade's eyes over Faela's head. She limped toward them and sank to the ground across from Kade with a wince. Sheridan raised an eyebrow significantly at Kade and Faela as she held her hand to her ribs on the side w
here she had landed. She had never seen Kade look so openly hurt, not even after Liam had died.

  Kade gave Sheridan a grim smile and returned his gaze to Faela. This caustic and lethal man had few acquaintances that he could tolerate and fewer friends. His life was a life of duty and sacrifice. It was a hard life that left little room for anything else and he had believed he wanted nothing else, until that day, more than a month ago, when this woman had stood in his way.

  Though he knew this strong, yet tragically fragile woman could never be his - not the way he wanted - though he knew he could ask nothing of her, he also knew he could not change what had happened to him. He had willingly given her his respect, his trust, and his admiration knowing the consequences, knowing they could have no future together. But he had decided. Regardless of how much pain it would cause him, he would stand by her. He would help her find a reason to keep going.

  Reaching for her hand, he knit his fingers with her own as he rested his face against her hair. It tickled his nose as he breathed in. It still smelled of dew. "You haven’t been left behind," he whispered, "you're not alone."

  *****

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jair paced. He had paced in the same five-yard patch of scrubby grass since Faela, Kade, and Sheridan had left hours ago. They should have returned. If everything were fine, they should have returned by now, but they hadn’t. With Eve and Haley, well Lucien now, leaving during the night and Faela's frenzied departure, Jair felt like a swarm of butterflies had decided to take up permanent residence in his stomach. Mireya had tried to persuade him to eat, but he had refused. Instead, he just paced.

  “Jair, will you please stand still?” Mireya asked looking up at him from the grass. She sat cross-legged with her chin in her hand. “Pacing constantly won’t bring them back faster.”

  “Something went wrong,” Jair said rubbing the back of his neck. Letting his hand slip down to his side, he kicked a rock with his toe sending it flying out of sight down the rise of the small hill. “I can feel it. Something went wrong.”

  Though it was faint, like the resonant echo of a voice, not a voice itself, he felt the fading vibrations of pain in his chest. The emotions felt like the vestiges of a nightmare dissolving away as consciousness returned to his mind, always just out of reach.

  Mireya bit her lip. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Jair that everything was fine. Watching Faela, who had always appeared so steady and guarded, completely lose control like that had scared Mireya. They had seen her lose control only once before, but it had not compared to this. Oakdarrow had paralyzed her defenses; this time whatever it had happened had nearly shattered them. What those defenses restrained frightened Mireya, though she would never admit that to Faela.

  “They left because something was wrong, Jair. Faela wouldn’t have–” Mireya cut off before reminding Jair of Faela’s frantic state when they had departed. “It was serious. They wouldn’t have gone otherwise. We just have to be patient.”

  “Patient?” Jair asked his voice cracking with stress. “They’re thousands of leagues away and I can’t do anything to help and you want me to be patient?”

  Trying to steer the conversation away from the obvious strain Jair felt at the separation, Dathien asked, “With Haley, I mean Lucien, gone what’s our next move, Mireya?”

  Mireya shrugged her shoulders in an exaggerated fashion. “I’m not feeling a nudge to go after him, so besides sit here and wait for those three to return, I couldn’t say.”

  Thumbing through a book, Dathien leaned against the cracked and fallen log where Lucien had done the same the night before. When he reached the page he sought, his index finger ran across it as he read.

  He grunted as he found the passage for which he searched. “Here it is. When the twins and Lucien showed up you gave the same prophecy again. I’m not sure we interpreted it correctly.”

  “Well prophecy doesn’t exactly come with clear instructions,” Mireya said her face contorted with exasperation. “There’s a lot of room for error and misinterpretation.”

  Dathien nodded. “Right, listen to these lines: Twin branches extend, a choice here resolved, / Either shall end betrayed or absolved. We just assumed that Lucien was the catalyst after we saw he was a Gray. I think it may have been Sheridan and Eve. You prophesied when Sheridan showed up, not when Lucien did.”

  “What?” Jair asked stopping in his latest round of pacing. He sounded particularly testy.

  “Call it a gut reaction,” Dathien suggested as he continued reading. “I’ve read a lot of the Nikelan chronicles, which give not only the prophecies, but their possible interpretations and the historical events tied to each. Trying to interpret the prophecies too literally can be as dangerous as ignoring them. Prophecy is a slippery thing and our choices make it even trickier. A choice was made last night and I don’t know how it will effect what is coming.”

  Mireya twirled the silver ring Sheridan had given her on her thumb. It was too big on her small fingers. It fell loose even on her thumb, but something about this ring entranced her. She kept following the liquid lines of the metal weaving over and under each other. In the firelight, the metal sparkled and danced, as though it were alive.

  “That’s the problem with prophecy,” Mireya said with a sigh. “It doesn’t provide any answers, not really. All it does is provide questions to wrestle with.”

  “I’ll say,” Jair snorted finally sitting for the first time in hours. His eyes were ringed with dark circles and though he sat, his fingers drummed in agitation. He was too tired to keep up the pacing. “I question any prophecy that has the bad taste to include me.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Jair,” Dathien said with his slow smile. “We all have roles to play in life. This is just another you’ll have to shoulder, but like Mireya said prophecy doesn’t give us the answers, it just prods us into searching for them. You’re not a puppet, Jair. You’re a person with the ability to choose and your choices matter. Sitting here with us proves that.”

  “Yeah, sitting here doing nothing,” Jair said throwing some grass he had torn up into the fire. Each blade curled in on itself in lines of flame.

  Mireya breathed out gustily. “Try not to think about it, okay?”

  Jair began to protest when sapphire light began swirling in the clouds above them. Standing up, Mireya lifted her head to the sky to get a better look. “What is–”

  She never got a chance to finish her question before the blue light struck the ground like lightning. Mireya screamed, but the cry cut off abruptly. The blue fire engulfed Mireya, suspending her in its light. Her arms fell behind her as her chest pulled up toward the sky. The light seemed to be coming from within her, glowing beneath her skin.

  An intense force seemed to press down on Jair and Dathien keeping them flat against the ground. The pressure seemed to resonate with a low rumble that could have been words, but Jair couldn’t make out anything that resembled any spoken language he had ever heard. Then Mireya shrieked in pain as the column of fire evaporated like steam in a single instant.

  Collapsed like a discarded marionette in the dirt, Mireya lay unmoving. Dathien found his feet before Jair did and twisted Mireya onto her side. Brushing back her dark mass of hair, Dathien saw her breath pushing the dirt away from her face. She was alive.

  Blinking, Mireya looked up at Dathien everything a watery blur. He put her head in his lap. Her head felt like it was stuffed with straw. She knew Dathien asked her something, but the words refused to make sense. There was too much inside of her. She felt like she would burst out of her skin. Then she heard the voices, too many voices inside of her head, each demanding she listen to them.

  Sitting upright, Mireya held her head between her hands and screamed. The roaring vortex inside her mind quieted, each voice dropping away until a single voice remained.

  It was firm, yet gentle, a voice that Mireya knew well. Two alone will fail, but three will stand strong. To pierce darkness’ veil, they must learn the
light’s song. As the voice faded away, she heard. Fare well, Mireya. We are sorry.

  When she opened her eyes, her sight no longer blurred from the trauma. Fat tears fell onto her collarbones in wet splotches. She turned her head to Dathien and threw her arms around his neck.

  “Rivka’s gone,” she said as she hiccupped from crying. “She’s dead.”

  The lines around Dathien’s eye deepened as he rocked Mireya as she cried. Jair sat with a blank look on his face unsure of what he had just witnessed or what to do next. The fire still crackled as the logs broke in half as the ash ate through the wood. The wind still whistled through the small grove of trees rustling the leaves in counterpoint to the sounds of the flames. The thick cover of clouds dissolved as they dissipated to reveal the pinpricks of winking stars against the black sea of the sky. The moor had returned to the night as though nothing had happened.

  “They’re inside me now,” Mireya told Dathien pulling back from him. “I can hear them all.”

  Dathien let her go and knelt on one knee in front of her laying his closed fist over his heart. He bowed his head; the fire threw dancing shadows across his cheek as its light glinted off his dark hair.

  Lines of blue light cuffed his wrists and ran up his arms encircling his neck before they covered his face. “To you I pledge my service and my life, Mireya Rosemary Pascal, the 33rd Scion of Nikela.”

  ###

  About the Author

  Elizabeth C. Mock grew up with a passion for stories and writing as well as exploring wardrobes. She currently lives in Cincinnati, OH where she teaches philosophy and continues writing The Children of Man trilogy as well as an urban fantasy series of short stories, The Noctunarum Vows. From time to time, she still investigates suspicious looking wardrobes.