Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy)

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  Now it was time to do what I could for the dirty clothes. Scraping off the yogurt, I balled them up tightly and debated jamming them into my backpack. And that had yogurt on it, too! I was going to miss my entire class for this. After pulling out more paper towels, I worked on my backpack. The dispenser was almost empty.

  Someone was whistling outside. It was Zakia, coming over to clean up the third incident in one week. He deserved a raise. Starting at the top for a final check over, I inspected every inch of myself front and back in the mirror. Clean. Despite my best efforts, I still smelled of strawberries. Maybe that was coming from my discarded clothes. Taking out the bun, I sniffed my hair. It stank. I combed it out and planned to shower the instant I got home.

  It was at last time to leave the restroom. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and stepped out. Zakia was hosing down the walkway, and quickly turned the hose aside so he didn’t wet me. I slipped in a puddle on the pavement, though I never landed on the ground since he dropped the hose to catch me. Gripping him tightly, I had almost pushed his mole into his arm. “Sorry.”

  “Didn’t hurt,” Zakia said.

  I circled the mole with my thumb. “You didn’t have this as Jaden. Is it real?”

  “It’s real.” Picking up the hose, Zakia squirted a stream of water at one last clot of strawberry on the walkway. It floated away. “This week, Jessa. It just doesn’t stop. Someone threw a container of yogurt, as you probably saw on your way to the restroom.”

  “I know. I got nailed with it from head to toe,” I said with a gesture to the filthy clothes in my hand. They would get the inside of my backpack messy and stinky, so I had decided to drop them off in my locker. On Monday, I could bring a plastic bag to school and load them in there to go home for a proper washing.

  Since the yogurt was mostly in the rain gutter, Zakia unscrewed the hose from the faucet and hefted the loops of it over his shoulder to go back to the janitor’s shed. We walked down the hallway together and he asked with hope, “Does this mean you’re buying me another sundae?”

  “I will have to owe you one,” I said. We split at the end to go our separate ways. The parking lot was nearly empty. I checked the time through the window of a barren classroom. Fifth period was less than twenty minutes from ending. That was all right. I typed so fast that it would take me no time to make up the work next week. Since I didn’t trust Ms. Crane to not have marked me absent no matter what Kitts said, it might be wise to go to the office, explain the situation, and get an official note of excuse.

  At my locker, I spun the dial on the padlock and opened the door. Pushing my textbooks to the side, I wedged in the dirty clothes. “Jessa?” a girl asked behind me.

  I didn’t turn around, since the ball of clothes was unraveling. Catching it in a wet spot, I grimaced and balled them back up. “Yeah?”

  A hand closed hard over my shoulder. The nails were long and manicured. I turned in confusion to see who had a hold of me. It was Zofia.

  Chapter Fourteen: The Capture

  A cruel smile played upon Zofia’s lips, and her eyes glowed with triumph. Her ugly wings were out for anyone to witness, but no one was around. The little bit of sun to come under the overhang made the burnt orange points at the edges of her lilac feathers glitter. Locks of her long honey-blonde hair were woven through them.

  Acting on instinct, I threw her hand off my shoulder and ducked away with my heart in my throat. I started to run down the hallway, my backpack falling off and hitting the ground with a thud. She dropped in front of me, and I stopped short to avoid her grip. Backing away frantically, I turned and put my hand on the doorknob to a classroom. Students were laughing inside while a teacher called for everyone to focus on their group assignments.

  “I wouldn’t,” Zofia said in warning. A ball of muddy blue and yellow fire balanced above her palm. Pulsing from the archus was a cold so deep that it felt like the blood in my veins was turning into ice. Suddenly, I could no longer move my fingers on the doorknob, not even the little it would take to twist it. I jerked away in pain and caught my frozen fingers within my other hand to warm them. Staggering back from her, I heard a growl. But nothing was there to cause it.

  “You can come with me, or I can unleash a few anemoi in that classroom,” Zofia said. “I don’t think you’d like me to do that.”

  “You would kill a bunch of people? You can’t change their threads to suit your liking. Won’t it attract the Thronos?” I asked, taking another step back. This wasn’t a threat she could carry out, and her expression changed to annoyance that I had not been so frightened as to take her threat at face value.

  A second growl echoed down the hallway. Zofia closed her fist and the ball of freezing fire vanished. “But your thread should have ended, pathetic young mortal. So it does not matter what I do to you.” She smiled once more, her beautiful features made ugly by what she was. “And what the others do to you.”

  The material of my jeans pressed against my leg as an almost invisible wolf brushed by. It looked like little more than shimmers in the air. I yanked away from it and hit the lockers. Zofia loosed a lock of her hair from her wing and said, “Japheem believes that there must be something very special about you, Jessa Brynne Bright. I don’t think so, but he does. He wonders why the fallen angel spared your life from the cliff, yet did not keep you? Why did he return you home, and commit this breach of the grand tapestry?”

  “For pity,” I whispered.

  “But he could have kept you. What fun he and the Graystones could have had with you, as something to break up the tedium of eternity! Yet he sent you back to your dismal little life and continues a dismal one of his own to last the ages.” With an insolent shrug, she said, “And since he did not claim you as his own, Japheem does.”

  “No!”

  “You think that what you want matters, but it hasn’t since the true end of your thread,” Zofia said, and caught my wrist in her hand. I wrenched away and sprinted from the overhang to the parking lot with a scream for Adriel. It was useless, since he was in his classroom two buildings away and couldn’t possibly hear me . . .

  But I couldn’t help the screams tearing from my throat. I would not go quietly with this Ripper! Laughter followed as I jumped off the curb to the parking lot. Zofia said, “Get her.” Howling began, like I was the moon to which the wolves were baying.

  People. I had to be around people. That was the only place where she could not get at me. I dashed for the road. It was so far away but cars traveled it steadily. I would run out and make them stomp on their brakes, see me so she was unable to swoop in . . .

  “Jessa!” It was Zakia, who was running from the janitor’s shed to the parking lot. A ball of fire flew in his direction. I screamed in warning and he dove down to the grass to save himself from being incinerated.

  Shimmers streaked past me, wolves formed out of streams in the air. Circling around to block me from reaching the outlet, four or five of them stalked forward to box me in. Growls rattled from their throats.

  Zakia scrambled to his feet and jumped off the sidewalk to rush to my side. He turned around, hearing the anemoi, and put out his arms to shield me. Zofia strolled over the pavement and said, “This is none of your concern, cut one. Walk away and I will spare your unnatural life.”

  “You aren’t taking her,” Zakia said.

  “But you see, that’s being a Ripper,” she said, looking at him with distaste. “We don’t get many opportunities for humans, so we don’t waste the ones to come our way. Japheem wishes to have her, and Japheem gets what he wants. So come along, Jessa, or I’ll have the anemoi tear this zombie of yours to shreds.”

  “No!” I cried as the growling increased. My breath rapid from panic, I spared a look over my shoulder and saw them still encroaching.

  Zakia put his arm around my collarbone and drew me back to him. Pressing his head against mine, he whispered, “Get to my car and lock yourself in. It’s the last one in this row.”

  “Zakia-�
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  “Now!” He shoved me away with inhumane force and turned with a tremendous roar to the anemoi. One leaped for him. Catching it in midair, Zakia hurled it at the Ripper. Blood poured from a laceration on his arm where a claw had sunk in.

  I sprinted over the empty spaces in the row, going so fast that I feared I would topple and land on my face. There was his car, a straight shot only ten or so spaces away. Wolves barked and snarled and I could not look, not now when I absolutely had to get to that car. Arms pinwheeling, I set my eyes to the handle of the driver’s side door.

  The tree in the divider beyond the station wagon burst into flames and disintegrated, icy ashes blowing into my face. A scorch mark was left along the roof of the car, and then a gash appeared in it. Even with the doors locked, she would pull me right out of that growing hole in the roof.

  “Keep going! Keep going, Jessa!” Zakia screamed. I dodged the car and spared a glance back, unable to help myself. He was on the ground with the shimmers of wolves encircling him, and his bloody shirt was rent to shreds. Zofia was looking over to the school, and then out to me. Her wings began to beat.

  Kicking one away when it jumped for his back, Zakia got up and leaped for the Ripper. His big hands closed over one of her wings and she cried out. I kept running as they fought. Beyond the parking lot were a minimart and gas station, a daycare, and any of those places I could hide.

  The wolves were snarling and muddy fire blew over my head. Its cold pierced down to the marrow of my bones. A car disintegrated twenty feet in front of me. I reached the last aisle and darted through the vehicles there. The fence at the end of the lot was made up of only three wooden bars, not hard to climb. Through the trees and bushes on the other side were cars parked at the minimart.

  Zakia screamed. The scream was followed by the crash of something massive striking a car. Feeling like I was running at this great speed though somehow moving in slow motion, my feet kept taking strides even when the Ripper lifted me off the ground by my upper arm. I fought, scratching her hand to force her to let go while the floor tilted under my feet to move me horizontal to the ground.

  “Do you want me to drop you?” Zofia shrieked. We were soaring east over the parking lot, twenty feet over the earth and I did want her to drop me! That was better than being taken to live with the Rippers. I writhed in her grasp, causing her to spin to keep hold. Zakia was upon a collapsed car roof.

  He looked up dazedly and shouted, “Jessa!”

  “Let me go!” I screamed. Her wings darkened, transforming us to one of those dark streaks of smoke. We lifted to crest the trees on the periphery of the lot. She turned south and the celestial chords pulled at me. That stilled my fighting, the music of the heavens resonating deep in my body and lulling me to complacency. But I had to keep my wits about me, or I was going to be taken to Japheem as his personal human! I sank my teeth into the flesh of her arm and she slapped me hard.

  A syringe appeared in her other hand. She plunged it into my neck. Almost at once, I was overcome with impossible heaviness. My arms and legs did not respond to my mind’s commands to move, and then my mind lost the ability to even think about movement, let alone struggle. Hearing a faint cry of my name from far away, I looked dully down to the earth rushing below us and passed out.

  ****

  He was with me at the ocean, the sunlight sparkling off the gold threads woven into his blond hair. Waves crashed into the shore as his wings curled around my body. Within the soft feathers, I felt the pulse of his soul. These blue eyes had seen so much, and were going to see so much more. But for now, in this slim moment of time, they were only upon me.

  Yet it was cold, so cold, and his feathers were losing their softness. With his wings about me, I shouldn’t have been trembling so hard. A biting wind blew through them like they weren’t even there. He smiled to me and it was sweet. Still the feathers were changing, the white growing dirty and the gold at the tips taking on a jarring yellow sheen.

  “Adriel, what’s happening?” I asked. One of the feathers slashed across my neck as he moved his wing, and I gasped from the pain of my skin being split apart. His feathers were razor-sharp now. What I felt from them was not the gentle spirit of my fallen angel, but something dull and furious. The wind gusted through and I shivered, each tremble cutting me further on the blades of his feathers.

  “I’m becoming a Ripper, my love,” Adriel said. I screamed and tried to back away, yet the wings held me fast.

  “Let me go!” I demanded. But that wasn’t what a Ripper did, let a human like myself go. He had caught me, he had claimed me for his own, and the barbs of this trap were turning to iron . . .

  I woke upon an uneven rock floor, my throat parched from thirst. Wind blew hard and relentlessly into my face. Salt was carried within it, along with the sound of roaring. Slowly, I lifted my head and put a hand up in front of my eyes to block the blazing of the sun. The splash of the yogurt . . . the restroom with Kitts . . . the fight in the parking lot . . . the Rippers . . .

  I was within a cave high in a cliffside, whose mouth opened to the ocean below. Waves beat against the rock down a plunge that would kill me. I turned around in the shallow pocket of the cave and almost screamed to see a skeleton along the far wall. One bony hand was splayed out, and the other just ended with nothing attached to the wrist. Beside the skeleton was a slim crevice to go deeper into the cave. Wind and light and noise blasted in around me. Laughter came from the crevice.

  The skeleton had been here for so long the bones were bleached shock-white. I didn’t want to go any closer to them. There had to be a way out of here, so I cautiously extended my head from the edge of the cave and looked to the sides. To the south, the rock went out in an unbroken line. It was a straight vertical climb to the top of the cliff, at least fifty feet above my head. To the north, the rock went out a little ways and then ended in tall beach grass. It was impossible to climb over to that since there wasn’t anything on the face of the cliff to hold. I put a hand tentatively to the rock and felt for a place, any place at all to grip. What looked like a solid protuberance flaked away under my fingers and plummeted down to the waves. I yanked away.

  The drop to the ocean was a hundred feet to my best estimate, and the waves smashed upon rocks jutting out of the water. That wasn’t a direction I could go either. So what now? I stared up to the sky, hoping to see the dazzling gold that had once flown up to rescue me. Yet there was nothing but a pink and orange sky around the setting sun. They had gotten me. I should have gone to the underground compound and thanked the Kreelings for the opportunity. They weren’t going to look for me now, and this didn’t seem like a place that one just happened to stumble upon.

  I had done this to myself. Feeling like the greatest fool to walk this earth, I sank down against the rock and turned away from the opening to catch my breath. Wind was coming in furiously. When it pulled away for a moment, the laughter replaced it. I knew those voices, and my stomach filled with dread.

  In time, I crept closer to the crevice to listen. The skeleton just lay there, crumpled over onto its side, and I had adjusted to its presence. Why be afraid of a skeleton? It belonged to an adult, although not a very large one. Perhaps it was once a woman. The Rippers were far more threatening to me than a heap of bones.

  Music played. It sounded like it was coming from a radio. Then the music stopped for commercials and a man’s voice called cheerily, “We’re high in the sky and you’re down on the ground so we’ll give you a look-see to the roads ahead! This is Darren-Says-What? on FLYZ Santa Cruz!”

  Santa Cruz. I was two hundred miles south of Spooner. Feeling along my sore neck for the puncture wound, I wondered if it was the same day. I guessed it was. Zofia had snatched me around one in the afternoon and now it was evening. I had no memory of the flight, and Adriel had no idea where I was. If he’d followed, he could have easily plucked me up from this cave and whisked me away without anyone the wiser. So I was alone.

  There had to be a way ou
t of this. There was a way out of everything so I couldn’t let myself fall into despair. The Rippers were moving around very close to me, feet scuffling along on the rock, and Zofia said, “I flew all afternoon! Why should I do it?”

  “Well, see if the girl is awake. That’s what she’s for,” Makala said with a hiss in her voice that was either pain or impatience. “I don’t care who does it, Zofia, I just want it done!”

  I backed up from the crevice in a rush, searching for somewhere to hide even though I knew I wouldn’t find one. Zofia appeared and looked down to me in dislike. “It would have been a lot easier to get you here if I hadn’t had to lug you as a deadweight.”

  What did she want? For me to say sorry that my kidnapping hadn’t been convenient for her? I had just enough self-control not to blurt that out. Her ugly wings were away for now; she looked like a supermodel in a very bad mood. I motioned to the skeleton and said, “What did you do to that poor person?”

  “Before my time,” Zofia said. “Get up. You’re making dinner.”

  I had no choice but to stand and follow her back through the crevice. It led to a much larger cavern, with light spilling down into it from a crack in the rock above. Solar lamps glowed around the room. Japheem was stretched out upon an old gray sofa with sagging cushions. He was wearing only a pair of jeans, one leg of which was severed at the knee. Bandages covered his skin from knee to ankle. He brightened to see me, and I took an involuntary step away as that strange, jarring music began to tear within my body.

  Makala was laying face down upon a recliner. One of her legs was also wrapped, although not as extensively, and her muddy wings were spread so Barasho could check over her feathers. A few singed ones were on the ground, and they were very small. The archus had burned the big feathers and the ones growing in beneath them as well.