The Serpent's Coil

by Christy Raedeke

  Woodbury, Minnesota

  The Serpent’s Coil: Prophecy of Days—Book Two © 2011 by Christy Raedeke.

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  For Hank

  Just as they had wished the death of Seven Macaw,

  so they brought it about.

  They had seen evil in his self-magnification.

  —Popul Vuh, Mayan Book of Creation

  AN ASSESSMENT

  Here’s what I’ve got: a monkey who communicates with origami, a prophetic poem with my name in it, and a mission. I’ve got a boy, I think. Alex and I haven’t actually spoken since our first kiss but we’ve traveled more together than some people who are actually married. I’ve got a best friend who has proved she’d do anything for me. I’ve also got Bolon, my … Well, I’m not sure what he is. Guide? Mentor? Friend who consistently puts me in harm’s way? And of course I’ve also got the Fraternitas Regni Occulti, the worldwide Shadow Government wanting to stop me and what I represent: freedom from their control.

  What I don’t have: Uncle Li, my long-time family friend and main confidant, because he betrayed me and took off with some ancient books that were apparently important to my success. And I don’t have a lot of time to carry out this prophecy to unite the youth and overthrow this Shadow Government so that we can be free—the Fraternitas is working hard to keep us so repressed that the shift in evolution and freedom cannot happen. And I don’t have a home since an “unknown arsonist” (a.k.a. the Fraternitas) set fire to it while I was being chased by dogs through lava caves and flying in a Vimāna. But that, as you know, is another story.

  When I assess my life this way, it looks like things are not weighted in my favor. But I can’t give up. Not yet. Because when Uncle Li betrayed me, essentially leaving me to fail at my mission, I realized nothing can stop me. I have to fulfill this prophecy. I have to take the world from the elite few and give it to the kids.

  The Maya call it the fall of Seven Macaw, the vain and false ruler. I call it the fall of the Fraternitas, the Shadow Government. Either way, if something doesn’t happen soon, we’re doomed.

  ONE

  Sometimes it takes being away from a place to make it seem like home. Before I went to Easter Island, I only considered San Francisco home. Now, having arrived safely back in Scotland, I can also look at Breidablik Castle as home. This fact is really comforting considering our old house is now gone. Burned to the ground.

  I’m purposely keeping this information distant. I don’t want to see pictures of the damage; I don’t want to sift through old photos with charred edges or try to salvage damp and ashy stuffed animals or inhale the smell of burned and melted things. I realize that losing something material like a house shouldn’t matter in the bigger scheme of what’s happening, but I know if I saw it I’d be devastated. So I keep it abstract—like something that may have happened to a distant relative or to me in another dimension of some kind of weird String Theory.

  This is why I am not going back to San Francisco with my parents to deal with the disaster. Once it becomes real to me, then I have to take full responsibility, which I just can’t do right now. Not if I’m supposed to continue down the path of helping fulfill this prophecy.

  My parents understand. I think if they didn’t have to deal with it they’d rather keep it abstract as well. But for insurance purposes they have to go. They have to sift through the wet charcoal remains of What Was Our Life. Their plans to leave were made just hours after I’d returned back to Breidablik Castle.

  Waking up in my own enormous bed on the Isle of Huracan after so many nights in weird places—a warehouse floor, planes, trains, even a Vimāna—is divine. Last night I bolted the door and shuttered the windows, then closed my purple velvet bed curtains and used four pillows around me to make the perfect nest. I must have gone deep; the clock shows I slept for eleven hours but when I wake, I am in the exact same position I fell asleep in.

  I’m not certain of anything when I first open my eyes. My life comes into focus like Google Earth—the big picture is fuzzy and colorless but with each second that I zoom in, more things become clear. Except in my case it’s not the leaves on trees and street signs that come into focus, it’s the aches in my body and the realization that nothing will ever be the same again.

  My parents are packed and ready to go by the time I get to the kitchen for breakfast, which at that time should really be lunch.

  “I was just coming to wake you, Caity,” Mom says, handing me a toast-and-bacon sandwich. “We’ve got to run to catch the ferry. Will you keep us company on the drive?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” I lie. I would rather stay home. It’s not that I don’t want to see them off, it’s just that there’s something infinitely sadder about seeing your parents sail away than seeing them drive away.

  The three of us sit together in the back of the Land Rover, with Thomas up front like a proper chauffer. Dad’s arm is over my shoulders and Mom’s hand is on my leg. I’ve barely been home, and having to say goodbye again is making my throat feel swollen and dry.

  I try to remember every sensation of the moment: Being bookended by my parent’s warm bodies. Their voices. Mom’s Cristalle perfume, Dad’s tea-tree shampoo. The comfort of being together.

  My future is starting to look like a series of farewells that I’m not ready for.

  I hold it together until they get aboard, but watching the ferry head out into the sea, with the water black and cold even at mid-morning, I can’t keep my emotions in any longer.

  I put my sunglasses on and drop my head, hoping to conceal my breakdown from Thomas, but it’s no use.

  “Ah, Caity, I know ’tis hard to say goodbye, but they’ll be fine,” Thomas says, arm around my shoulders like a parenthesis at the end of a sentence.

  Thomas may be the only one I can be completely honest with. The onl
y one I can freak out in front of. The only one who knows the whole story.

  “It’s just—”

  “I know, lass. I know,” Thomas says. “You haven’t had an easy time of it this go ’round, have you?”

  “Until this summer, life was great. Well, boring, but great,” I sniffle. “It’s this place that changed everything.”

  “What’s happening now has been in the works for centuries, for millennia.” Thomas turns me so I have to look at him. “I reckon you’re just going to have to endure, press on, make do.”

  “I know,” I answer. “I’ll pull it together.”

  And I do. Driving silently to Breidablik Castle, I remind myself of what’s at stake for our future as well as what atrocious things the Fraternitas has done in the past, and my problems start to look miniscule.

  Once back, I go to the kitchen to get Mr. Papers. He puts both arms around my neck and holds tightly. When I was on my trip I missed him so much it literally hurt inside my chest; I vow that from now on I will take him everywhere.

  As I turn to leave, Mrs. Findlay walks toward me with a basket of large manila envelopes. “These came whilst you were traveling, dear.”

  I see fancy crests above the return addresses that can only mean one thing: boarding schools. Mom must have sent away for them even though I thought that conversation was over. I roll my eyes and take them from her.

  “So is Alex around?” I ask as casually as I can. Since I left Easter Island earlier than he did and took a much faster ride back to Scotland, I doubt he’ll be back until later today or tomorrow.

  “He’s off the coast fishing with a friend. Should be back soon, I reckon. But his mother has hired him out to old Cormag, the butcher. He’s redoing the shop and needs help, what with all those dead beasts dangling about.”

  I try not to look disappointed. “Oh, okay. So will that take all summer?”

  “Nae, just a fortnight or so. With your folks heading back to deal with the … situation, and not wanting to take any guests for a few weeks, Alex was available for other jobs.”

  “Makes sense,” I say, though it makes me profoundly sad.

  “I can have him over for dinner when he gets back if you’d like,” she offers.

  I decide not to play this one cool. “Definitely,” I say, without any hesitation. “That would be great.”

  TWO

  Back in my room, I set the basket of boarding school packets on my desk and sit down to check email. Mr. P grabs the fancy Mac Fireland silver letter opener and like a knight with a giant sword, he starts neatly opening the tops of the envelopes and pulling out the folders and brochures.

  They all look pretty much the same. Sturdy gloss paper, solid old fonts, high-quality photos. All the photos fit neatly into five categories: Academics (students looking at a teacher with the kind of intensity that’s only really seen on the faces of kids playing the last level of a first-person-shooter video game); Inclusiveness (attractive students wearing uniforms and walking together in very large groups as if there were no such thing as cliques or dorks); Long History (beauty shots of buildings that look like they were built in the Middle Ages); Fresh Air and Exercise (snaps of students playing obscure, expensive sports not offered at public school); and Lifelong Power Networking (beautiful white boys in ties with their arms around each other).

  School mottos? Select three words and translate to Latin: Conquer, Honor, Knowledge, Excellence, Character, Faith.

  School colors? Pick two and combine: burgundy, gray, navy blue, forest green.

  They all just seem like fancy storage units for kids.

  All of the brochures are so similar that only one stands out from the rest. Mr. Papers hands it to me as carefully as if it were the Shroud of Turin. There are no photos of intense students, no classroom shots, no old stone buildings gracing the cover—there is only a gold twelve-pointed star and some writing in the bottom right corner.

  ¡Siga la Chispa!

  La Escuela Bohemia

  On the first page there is the gold embossed star and this small block of text:

  The motto of La Escuela Bohemia, Siga la Chispa (Spanish for Follow the Spark), is resonant in everything we do. Students drive curriculum with their personal interests or sparks. Teams of research and curriculum professionals work to build courses of study around these sparks. Finally, our world-class Pedagogues then teach and guide the students as they follow their sparks of interest around the globe. With a ratio of one Pedagogue for every two students, the learning is intense and tailored specifically to each student’s learning style. Our methods are not for every student; our classroom is the world at large.

  I immediately pull up their website to see if this could really be true, and it is. It’s a school based on travel—exactly the kind of place I need. Suddenly Mom’s cruel alternative to the local school seems like the perfect way to do what I need to do. But the only way I would possibly go is if Justine went, too.

  I do the time-zone math and realize she may still be awake.

  I dial and she picks up immediately.

  “So, I drove past it today,” she says even before a hello. “It’s grim, Caity. I cried like a baby.”

  “Is it, like, gone?” I ask.

  “Do you really want to hear about it?”

  “Do I?” I ask.

  “No,” she replies quietly. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything at all. Your parents are taking care of it, right? Anyway, what’s up? Everything okay?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. I just need to ask you a question.”

  “Of course,” she says. “Anything.”

  “If it were possible for you to help me more, would you?” I ask. “I mean, would you ever take on more of a … like a partner role with me?”

  “Hello? I tried to get into the Fraternitas offices in the Transamerica Pyramid, I helped you steal a briefcase and almost got killed on the streets of San Francisco, I slept in a warehouse and then went to Machu-freaking-Picchu for you! I’d say I was pretty committed to helping you already.”

  “Okay, you’re right. You’re totally committed. But this next step I’m talking about? It’s big.”

  “What do you mean by big?” she asks.

  “I mean monumental big.”

  “Well, if Machu Picchu isn’t monumental big, I don’t know what is,” she replies. “Lay it on me.”

  “Well, it’s about school—next year. Would you ever, uh, move schools?”

  “Like move to your island? You said they had a crappy little school.”

  “No, I’m talking about a boarding school.”

  “You know I love you, Caity, and I’d do most anything for you, but boarding school—um, no. Academy of Cruelties may live up to its name, but at least I have a lot of freedom. I don’t want to be locked up in some brick dorm and live with snobby kids who will more than likely torment us.”

  “What if it wasn’t that kind of school? What if the whole goal of your education was to learn through travel?”

  “Ha! My parents would never let me go to some offbeat school that didn’t count toward college, you know that. If I don’t get into Brown, they’ll freak.”

  “The school is totally legit, and would for sure get you into the Ivy League, Justine. It’s a school in Buenos Aires called La Escuela Bohemia and the whole point—”

  “Buenos Aires? As in Argentina? No way would my parents let me go to school in South America—you know how image conscious they are.”

  I knew this would be a factor. Justine’s parents are all about image. “According to the school’s website, Buenos Aires is the Paris of South America. Seriously, you have to check it out; it really looks like a European city.”

  “But do you really want to live there, Caity?”

  “No, but you don’t have to live there. The whole point is that you travel all the time. You’re paired with another student and one teacher, and you plan your own curriculum.”

  “That’s kind of cool.”

  “I
know! Seriously, imagine how fun it would be. No pressure, but I can’t really see doing this with anyone else.”

  “Right! ‘I can’t save the world unless you go to this weird school with me, but you know, no pressure at all.’”

  She’s right, of course. I’ve put her in a bad spot.

  “Look, I’m kind of open to the idea, but I can tell already that my parents would not be that crazy about it.”

  “So let me arm you with statistics: In every senior class, 99 percent go on to college. The average SAT score is 2100. But the real kicker—which will make your parents sign you up immediately—is that it’s one of the three most expensive boarding schools in the world! Seriously, no one loves paying too much for something more than your dad. Isn’t that the whole reason you’re supposed to go to Brown?”

  “Actually that would be the thing that tips them to the pro side, for sure. Dad could easily work that fact into conversation daily.”

  “It would be so fun, Justine. Just think about it—we would be able to go anywhere, do anything, as long as we can justify it with some ‘lesson’ from school.”

  “Wow. I’ve never really thought about moving from San Francisco. But it’s not like I see my parents much anyway; I think I’ve had more dinners with Esmeralda than with my parents.”

  “Yeah, why sit around and be raised by your crabby housekeeper when you can go to Buenos Aires with me?”

  “Send me links and I’ll print out my arsenal for the ’rents,” she says.

  “Done.”

  “Wait, how can you be sure I’ll get in?” she asks.

  “Our GPAs easily qualify us. It just comes down to the cash; if you have the GPA and can afford it, you’re in.”

  “Being one of the most expensive schools in the world must narrow down the possible pool of students. But again, that will totally appeal to Dad.”

  “I’ll email you all the info about the school,” I tell her. “I’ll even send links to some of its alumni—Middle Eastern and Russian royalty, world leaders, and heads of international corporations. Your parents will eat that up.”