Echoes

by Chambers, V. J.

  “Hey, are you okay?” she said.

  Lute shook his head. “I think Sawyer and I broke up.”

  “Oh, no,” Maddie said. “What happened?”

  “It’s just been everything,” Lute said. “It’s like I don’t even know him anymore. He’s turned into this crazy person. He barely showers, he runs around mumbling to himself theories about how Owen is the Kraken or something. I’m sick of it. And so finally I told him I was sick of it.”

  Maddie wrinkled up her nose. “You’re right. Sawyer has been a little out of it lately. But I’m sure that if you guys talk to through, that you could make it work. Sawyer adores you.”

  Lute shook his head. “Sawyer doesn’t adore me. Sawyer adores Nora.”

  “You said that before, but I’m sure it isn’t true,” Maddie said.

  Lute shrugged. “Maybe. I wanted to tell him something. It might even be important to that Nora-Owen business, but he was so worried about how Nora and Owen had sex, that he couldn’t—”

  “Nora and Owen had sex?” Maddie felt her heart began to pound in her chest. An overwhelming wave of revulsion went through her body.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I saw them outside her tent. It was pretty obvious. Sawyer saw too. He lost it.”

  Maddie swallowed. “Oh gods.” She ran out of the dining room and searched for Sawyer.

  He wasn’t in his tent. He wasn’t near the fire pit. He wasn’t in the tree house. She eventually found him in the woods, sitting on the ground, holding his knees to his chest. She sat down next to him. He looked up, and she could see his face was tear stained.

  “Sawyer…” Maddie held out her arms.

  He threw himself into them. “I could cry more if I had any tears left,” he muttered into her shoulder.

  She wrapped her arms tight around him.

  And they just held each other.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After that, they stopped watching Owen. Sawyer lost his taste for it. He lost most of his motivation for anything. He spent all of August in a fog, barely managing to get out of his tent or go anywhere. The only time he left was to go to the bathroom and to make routine trips to the wine and spirits enclave. When it hurt too much, he drank.

  Maddie came by several times, trying to get him out of his funk. Sawyer didn’t see what he had to live for anymore. Near as he could tell, Owen had won. He had conquered Nora—nobody knew what he was up to or how to stop him. Sawyer had been the only one who cared. Everyone else was too busy doing their own things.

  Maddie disagreed with him when he voiced these concerns. She said that she wanted to help just as much as he did. And Agler did as well. But she said that they had no idea what to do. At some point, Maddie said, Sawyer had to recognize that they were just tweens. For years, they’d run around acting as if it was their job to save the world. But the things that they could do were limited.

  At one time, Sawyer might’ve argued with her about that. He might’ve pointed out how it had been them that had found out Dirk was letting in the Influence, and that it had been him who had fought with Loki, and that they had tangled with Owen multiple times.

  But he didn’t have the energy for an argument.

  By the time September rolled around, he found he had a bit more energy, but he funneled it into drinking, nothing else. Occasionally, he saw Nora and Owen together, and they seemed sickeningly close. He couldn’t handle it. The sight of them was only slightly better than the sight of Lute. He saw Lute rarely, thank the gods. Their tents weren’t close anymore, and Lute seemed to spend all of his time in the music enclave. Now that Sawyer thought about it, it wasn’t much different than before. He and Lute had been drifting apart. He simply hadn’t noticed it.

  Sawyer felt despair. This was easily the worst period of time in his entire life. He couldn’t believe that he’d let Lute go. Lute had been the love of his life. He never felt that way for anyone before. Stuff with Nora had been friendly, not the deep passionate adoration that he felt for Lute. Now Lute was gone. It was all his fault. He had known that they were in trouble. He had seen where things were heading. And he had tried to stop it, but he failed. He had let Lute get away.

  Sometime in October, Sawyer finally felt up to going back to the fabric enclave. He hadn’t been there in… gods, it felt like eons. Even before the business with Lute breaking up with him and Nora losing her mind, he’d been avoiding the place. He’d been spending a lot of time looking for evidence of Owen’s guilt. He’d barely been there the whole year.

  He made a skirt. It was a simple skirt. In the past, would’ve taken less than an hour to whip it up. But because he hadn’t been there in so long, he was out of practice. And also, he wanted to take it slow, to savor the feeling of it.

  Creating.

  It was funny. He had raged to Lute about how people needed to stop creating, and start solving the problems of Helicon.

  But as he really allowed himself to give in to the creative process, he felt almost as if a healing spirit began to grow deep inside him. It was a warmth that started below his belly button and begin to spread throughout his body throughout all his limbs.

  It felt good. It felt right. He felt, for the first time in a long time, that he was doing exactly what he was meant to do.

  And so he came back the next day, and he made another skirt.

  And then the next day, he came back, and that day, he made a skirt and a shirt. And then the next day he came back again, and that day, he got seriously started on a big project. A quilt. A huge patchwork quilt.

  At first, he didn’t know why he was making it. It just seemed to call to him. But then, the more that he put together, the more he realized that this quilt with his apology gift to Lute. He was making it, he realized, out of pieces of clothing that signified important events of their life. Pieces of the shirt he was wearing the first time they had met. Pieces of the skirt he was wearing the night that they kissed the first time. Pieces of the outfits that they had worn to various balls together.

  He wanted Lute back. Now that he was creating again, he wasn’t going to take this lying down. Lute was the love of his life? Well, he was going to get his life back.

  By the time Sawyer finished the quilt, it was nearly Halloween. That meant that he hadn’t spoken to Lute in months. The last time they had spoken have been that morning in the woods when Lute said they needed a little time.

  Sawyer hadn’t been ready to approach him earlier, but now he was. He felt rejuvenated somehow. He knew that hardly made sense. After all, it wasn’t as if things had become different in the Nora-and-Owen situation. In many ways, that was worse. But he felt as if he had acquired a bit of distance from the situation. That had given him some perspective. And returning to create made him whole again. He now understood why Phoebe harped on the fact that the muses needed to create. He wasn’t himself if he wasn’t creating. He needed to take the time to create in order to have the energy to fight. Because he was a muse, creating was integral to his being.

  He wouldn’t make that mistake again. No matter what came at him, he wouldn’t let himself get this far gone again.

  The other thing that he knew was that he needed Lute. And he knew that he needed to tell Lute that.

  Sawyer knew where Lute’s tent was, and he waited there after dinner for number of hours, holding the quilt. He was nervous. He paced, mumbling under his breath what he might say. Each time he practiced, he had the niggling suspicion that the last time he’d practiced it, it had come out better. He wondered if he should have taken notes or something.

  Finally, Lute showed up.

  Sawyer had been seized with terror that Lute would come with someone else, perhaps a new romantic interest. But he was relieved when he arrived alone.

  Lute was obviously surprised to see Sawyer. “Hi there.”

  Sawyer tried to smile at Lute, but inside he was panicking, because all of the speeches that he had practiced had just flown out of his head immediately. He thrust the quil
t at Lute.

  “This is for you.”

  Lute examined it. “It’s very nice, but—”

  “I need you,” Sawyer blurted. That was what he’d come to say, after all. No matter what his speeches were, this was what he needed to lead with. “I need you. I didn’t realize it. I thought that I needed to be focused on the problems in Helicon. I didn’t understand that I’m not able to solve problems when I’m not whole. And you do that. You make me complete. Without you, and without…” He gestured at the quilt. “Without creating. Without those things, I’m not myself. That’s what happened to me. This year, I lost myself. And once I lost myself, I also lost you.”

  “I think you’re right about Nora and Phoebe,” Lute said.

  Sawyer’s eyes widened. This wasn’t how he thought Lute would respond.

  “I mean I don’t think you’re exactly right,” Lute said. “What I think is that Nora and Phoebe are doing some sort of sting operation on Owen. Nora’s pretending to be in love with him in order to get information from him. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think that’s the only thing that could possibly explain the conversation that I overheard between them.”

  Sawyer squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “What conversation? What are you talking about?”

  Lute rubbed his forehead. “I should’ve told you. I tried to tell you the day that we argued. But then you told me to leave. And then I thought I’d tell you the next day. But I never saw you. You were all moping around. And then I thought I’d tell you the next week. But then I was angry, and I didn’t want to come and see you. I thought, if I came to see you, I’d have to apologize. I probably should have apologized. Because it was the worst time in the world for me to do what I did. And…”

  Sawyer held up a hand. “Okay, we’ll get to this business about Nora and Phoebe. It’s important, and I need to know about it. What’s more important is that we focus on us. Our relationship is the most important thing.”

  Lute took a deep, shaky breath. And then he let it out. “Well, it’s kind of connected. Because if you’re right about Nora and Phoebe, then you were right to freak out the whole time. And I should’ve understood that. I shouldn’t have thought that you and Nora… That you wanted to be with Nora again—”

  “I don’t want to be with Nora. Not that way.”

  “No, I know that.”

  “Maybe you do know, but it would have been hard to believe it, because I was never around. And she was all I talked about. And I wasn’t giving you the time that you deserved. The time that we deserved. I was letting our relationship go to the wayside.”

  “But I should’ve been more understanding.”

  “I didn’t make it easy.”

  “I should have come and talked to you before.”

  “No, I wasn’t ready,” Sawyer said.

  Lute looked down at the quilt. “Is this a piece of the skirt you were wearing the first night that we kissed?”

  Sawyer smiled slowly. “Yeah.” He pointed. “And that’s from the Harvest Ball last year.”

  “This quilt… this is gorgeous,” Lute said.

  Sawyer scuffed his toe against the ground. “You really like it?”

  Lute kissed him.

  * * *

  “Hold up,” Maddie said. “She really said, ‘How far do you want me to go?’”

  “As far as I remember,” Lute said. “It’s been a while since I heard the conversation.”

  They were all sitting up in the tree house.

  “Yeah,” said Agler, “why is that? I get that you were annoyed with Sawyer, but couldn’t you have come to and told either Maddie or me?”

  Maddie cringed. “He did try to tell me the morning after the Science and Math Gala,” she said. “But I didn’t give him the chance. I rushed off to find Sawyer.”

  “No, you’re right,” Lute said. “I should have said something to somebody. I kept thinking about it. I don’t really have an excuse.”

  Sawyer rubbed his back. “You were upset. Things were bad between the two of us, and you weren’t dealing.”

  “Besides, it took me a while to really figure out what I thought it all meant,” Lute said.

  “Well,” Maddie said. “Sounds to me like she was telling Nora that she should have sex with Owen.”

  “Yeah, why would she do that?” Agler said. “Unless they really are shape shifters, or under some sort of spell, or something.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Lute said. “Look, we know Phoebe was going around all last year asking people if they knew things about Owen. She went to the security enclave and talked to Alexander Night. And then she went to talk to the fairies. She was worried that Owen was doing something.”

  “Yeah,” Sawyer said. “She was worried that Owen was stealing powers. Power from the gods. Or, from what we learned from Ned Willow, from the Influence.”

  “Okay,” Maddie said. “So Phoebe was worried about Owen. She let him back into Helicon, though, and why would she do that?”

  Lute raised his eyebrows. “Well, if she wanted to know what he was up to, what better place to keep her eye on him than here?”

  Maddie was stunned. “You think Phoebe brought him here because she doesn’t trust him?”

  Lute nodded. “That’s exactly what I think.”

  Agler slapped himself on his forehead. “Oh gods. Of course. If you want to find out what your enemy’s doing, gain his trust.”

  “And who would be better to gain his trust than Nora?” Sawyer said. “Nora knows him better than anybody.”

  “So, all this time,” Maddie said, “Nora has just been pretending to be in love with Owen?”

  “I think so,” Lute said.

  Maddie shook her head. “That would be horrible for her. But if that’s the case, why couldn’t she just tell us that’s what she was doing?”

  “Well, that’s the part I can’t figure,” Lute said. “But maybe she thought that it would be more believable if we didn’t know.”

  “It’s really the only thing that makes sense,” Sawyer said. “But we can’t be sure, can we?”

  “We need to find a way to talk to Nora,” Maddie said.

  “She’s always with Owen,” Agler said.

  “Well, we need to get her separated from Owen,” Sawyer said.

  “Gods, if it’s true…” Maddie shook her head.

  Sawyer massaged the bridge of his nose. “And I yelled at her like that. Man. Poor Nora.”

  * * *

  The day of Halloween dawned with a chill in the air. Maddie awoke to sweater weather. Leaving her tent, she saw that all of the trees had turned to yellow, orange, and red. She skipped off to breakfast, unable to keep from feeling excited about the fact it was celebration time in Helicon again.

  She looked around for Nora, as was now her habit. She figured that any chance she got to catch her friend alone, she’d pounce and start giving Nora the third degree on what the hell was going on. Was it true? Was she, in fact, playing a long con and leaving all of them in the dark? If so, why? And how could she stand it? How could she pretend to be into Owen? How could she possibly sleep with him?

  Maddie shuddered just thinking about it.

  Nora was there, but she was in the company of Owen, and they were sitting at a crowded table.

  That was something strange that Maddie had been noticing recently. Nora and Owen were quite popular. As recently as July, they’d always been alone at breakfast, sharing a table just the two of them. But now, every day, more and more people seemed to want to be around them.

  It was suspicious, Maddie thought. Owen was definitely up to something.

  If Nora was actually a double agent, then she’d know what it was. But the question was, how long would Nora keep pretending to be on Owen’s side? When would she reveal her true colors and stop him?

  Ugh, there was too much to know. Maddie wanted to grab Nora and beg her to spill it all.

  But that hadn’t worked thus far, had it?

  Maybe if
they confronted her with what they knew, Nora would give up the goods.

  Still, they wanted to do that as far away from Owen as possible. No use in messing up all of Nora’s hard work.

  Doing it at breakfast was out.

  Maddie went by the visual arts enclave later, thinking that maybe there was an off chance that Nora might be there, working on last-minute decorations. But Nora wasn’t around, as usual. Maddie had been checking for the past few days, and she never saw her friend.

  To get her mind off of everything, Maddie volunteered to help carve some pumpkins. Apparently, the visual arts enclave was short a few dozen. During Halloween, jack-o-lanterns needed to be positively everywhere.

  Maddie’s carvings were simple—just a few scary faces with triangle eyes and gaping, toothy mouths.

  Some of the other pumpkins looked like actual sculptures. They were carved into the countenances of werewolves and witches. Some depicted night scenes, the full moon covered by a cloud. Still others, black cats yowling. And there were even a few spooky-looking castles carved into the pumpkins.

  After carving, Maddie headed back to the tweens and rebels enclave. Fallen leaves crunched under her feet, and her nose got a little cold. She could smell the apple cider brewing in the food enclave.

  Some tableaus had been set up already. She walked past one where a full-sized sculpture of a man with crazy eyes was feeding the legs of a hapless victim into a machine that shredded him. Everything in the tableau was blood spattered and gory.

  Maddie made a face. She liked the creepy stuff, but she could do without the buckets of fake blood.

  The tween and rebels enclave hadn’t been much decorated, unless you counted the cobwebs that someone had put up on the archway. Most tweens who had an interest in that kind of thing had lent their talents to other enclaves.

  She found Agler in their tent. “You find Nora?” he asked.