by Dan Jolley
Gabe wrapped his arms and his legs around his mother and buried his face in the side of her neck. He had so much time to make up for. So many long, sad hours spent missing her—missing the memory of her. Missing the thought of her. He’d forgotten the sound of her voice long ago.
Gabe hugged his mother tighter, and she chuckled. “You’re such a strong little boy!”
Over his mother’s shoulder, Gabe saw his dad grinning. He looked just like the photos Uncle Steve had shown him, except for one thing. His eyes were fire.
This . . .
. . . this isn’t real.
Gabe barely even remembered his parents. How could they be with him now? Tears squeezed out of Gabe’s eyes. Hot tears. Burning tears.
Heat washed over him as a ring of white-hot flames sprang up around the three of them. His mother’s arms tightened, tightened, and her grip grew harder and harder, as if her arms were made of steel. Gabe tried to pull away from her, tried to see her face, but he couldn’t. She held him locked in place and whispered in his ear, “We will always be a family.”
The flames rushed inward. He felt them climbing his mother’s body, and he knew the exact moment when they engulfed him, too. He was burning, they were all burning, skin and flesh scorching and charring, but it didn’t hurt. In that moment, Gabe understood: the fire had taken everything.
And it wanted still more.
His mother loosened her grip just enough for Gabe to lean back and look her in the eye. Her face was already blackened, her skin cracking, and fire danced in her hair, but she smiled, and the pent-up love Gabe felt for her hurt as much as the flames. “No matter what, Gabe. We will always be a family.”
Gabe’s eyes opened, but just barely. His eyelids felt like they each weighed at least a thousand pounds, and it took every shred of strength he had to pry them apart. A roaring sound echoed through his ears, and after a few long, confusing seconds, he realized it was the sound of his own blood coursing through his veins. His arms and legs wouldn’t move at all. It amazed him that he could even breathe. Panic threatened to overwhelm him, and he let his eyes close again while he fought it down.
I’ve been drugged.
Another slow, laborious exertion let him take a look around, even though his eyes were the only parts of him he could move, since his head refused to turn. He was in the back of a van, lying on a hard, cold metal floor. Whoever had taken him didn’t care about how pleasant his trip was going to be.
Whoever took me . . . He knew exactly who. Thinking back, he remembered the sensation of the abyssal bats’ talons, hooking under his limbs. But before that . . .
What had happened? Back on the yacht—the leviathan. One minute he was incinerating abyssal bats, and the next . . . Nothing. All dark.
Gabe might not have been able to move his body, but he could still use his mind. He let his eyes close again and concentrated. He tried to recall the sensation he’d felt there on the deck, the grasp of molecular motion. The beauty and symmetry and understanding of the world that had let him summon the fire.
I can’t move, but I can still burn this van to cinders!
He reached for his power and immediately suffered an excruciating crash, as if his mind had just slammed into a brick wall. His pathway to fire had somehow derailed and thudded to a dead stop.
What is this? What’s happening?
Panic reared up again. Gabe reached out with his mind, tried to touch the fire . . . and couldn’t. As if from a great distance, he became aware of a burning cold around his wrists, a cold so intense he could imagine it destroying his skin. Suddenly he was glad he couldn’t move his head to see what shackled him.
The Dawn had clearly done something to him to prevent him from using his elemental power. Anti-elemental chains? The thought terrified him. If they can cut me off, then they could do the same thing to everybody else! Their elements were the only tools he and his friends had that gave them even the slightest chance of defeating the Eternal Dawn. And now he discovered that they could just be neutralized? Gabe shuddered.
As he pulled back on his attempt to summon his power, the cold on his wrists faded as well. Growing desperate, Gabe concentrated on what else he could feel and hear, in the hopes that he could learn something—anything—that might be useful.
Okay, I can tell we’re moving. And I can hear traffic, so we’re not on Alcatraz. Where are they taking me?
A voice spoke from the front of the van that chilled him in a completely different way than the shackles. He hadn’t heard it many times before, but he felt as if he knew it as well as he knew Brett’s or Kaz’s or Lily’s voice.
Cool and businesslike, Primus asked, “How much longer?”
Gabe’s head was close to the front seats, with his feet pointed toward the van’s back door, and Primus’s voice came to him from over his left shoulder. So she was in the passenger seat. Another female voice answered her from the driver’s seat—one Gabe didn’t recognize. The speaker sounded younger than Primus. Must be one of her followers.
“We’re about twenty minutes out.”
“Think of it. How close we are! Soon we shall change the world!” An ugly kind of joy filled Primus’s words. “The possibilities are endless, literally endless. The things we will accomplish with magick unbound!”
“Dvai shviunta,” the driver said, and the words made Gabe’s ears buzz and itch as if they were suddenly filled with ants. “Two worlds!”
“Yes. Two worlds combined into one perfect utopia. Once Thorne returns, and Arcadia and Earth are merged, can you imagine the praise we’ll receive? The gratitude the rest of humanity will show us, once they realize what we have accomplished? The true Eternal Dawn will illuminate the world forever!”
The driver paused, and Gabe got the feeling she had turned to look over her shoulder. “And we’re sure this boy is one of Jonathan Thorne’s direct descendants?”
“Yes. That’s not an error we’ll make twice. We’ll use him to remedy the mistake we made with his uncle, and finally return Lord Thorne to us. Now that we have the Emerald Tablet, the combined sacrifice will fulfill our destiny. Our struggle over the last century will finally bear fruit!”
Gabe’s insides shriveled. They were going to sacrifice him just like Uncle Steve, return their deranged founder back to San Francisco, and then merge this world with the hellscape of Arcadia.
So is this it? Gabe wondered. All this, and we’ve failed?
No! He couldn’t accept it. Couldn’t even let himself think it.
“Um.” The driver paused again. “I’m sorry . . . ‘combined sacrifice’?”
Primus spoke with what sounded like a rare bit of patience. “Yes. The boy and the Tablet.”
“You mean, we’re sacrificing the Tablet, too? Mom, you can’t be serious!”
Mom? The driver was Primus’s daughter?
Primus sighed. “You’re new to the Dawn. And I make allowances where I can. But you must learn to have faith in my direction. All right?”
“It’s not that I doubt what you’re saying, Mom, I’m just trying to understand. The Dawn’s been searching for the Tablet forever, right? And now we have to give it up? It’s . . . I thought it was irreplaceable. All the wisdom it contains! All the power!”
“It is true that the Tablet will be destroyed as part of the ritual. But it isn’t irreplaceable. Everything casts a shadow, Eva.”
Eva. Gabe filed the name away.
“I . . . um.” Eva seemed to be choosing her words very carefully. “I thought the Tablet didn’t cast a shadow, though.”
“Not in this world.”
“So you’re saying there’s a second book of power?” Wonder filled Eva’s words. “And it’s in Arcadia?”
“There is. Yes. A shadow tablet for a shadow city. The Mirror Book.” Primus’s voice brimmed with excitement. “It is easy to forget how vast and strange the universe truly is, Eva. Just imagine the wonders Lord Thorne will show us when he returns! Doesn’t it fill you with joy?”
/> Utterly helpless as the van sped to the site of his sacrifice, joy was the last thing Gabe could imagine feeling.
12
“I don’t understand,” Noriko Smith said for the fifth time. “You’re an . . . an elementalist, like your friends, and you’re facing a doomsday cult that wants to combine San Francisco with some . . . other dimension called Arcadia? And that’s supposed to end the world? Kaz, I don’t understand!”
She and her husband, Taylor, sat perched on the edge of the couch in their living room, while Kaz paced back and forth in front of them, rubbing the stubble on his scalp and making repeated false starts in his efforts to explain what was going on. Kaz’s younger sisters, after loud and lengthy protests, had been sent upstairs to their rooms.
“I don’t know what I can do to help you with that, Mom.” Kaz stopped and knelt in front of his mother, taking her hands in his. “Listen, nobody knows better than I do how totally, utterly bonkers this all sounds. But you’ve got to believe me. You’re in danger. The whole city’s in danger. You need to take Kira, June, and Carlie and go somewhere a long way from San Francisco. Like Chicago. Or maybe London. Do you know anybody in Australia?”
“But it’s just ridiculous!” Mr. Smith shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re asking us to believe things that are patently impossible! I don’t know what that thing was that looked like you—I suppose it must have been some kind of, of robot, and yes, that was very impressive when you hit it with rocks, but—son, you’re talking about other dimensions! If even the scientists at the Large Hadron Collider haven’t been able to prove anything like that, do you see where it’s a little difficult to just take the word of my twelve-year-old son and his friends?”
“Right.” Mrs. Smith sniffed. “It could’ve been holograms. I know about holograms. They’re getting very advanced these days.”
“It’s not holograms or robots or even mutants or clones, okay? Trust me on this!” Kaz looked desperately from his mother to his father.
“Well, whatever it is, why are you involved?” Mrs. Smith asked. “How could this have happened? And if the city really is in danger, then you have to come with us! You’re just a child, Kaz!”
Lily watched from the doorway of the dining room as the Smith family tried to make sense of what their son was telling them.
Good luck. I barely understand it myself, and I’m a way bigger part of it than you guys. She’d volunteered to help explain the situation to the Smiths, but Kaz had said he spoke the same dialect of science nerd as his parents and thought he’d have a better shot at doing it himself. Lily certainly understood how important it was for Kaz to convince them, but impatience was about to eat her alive. Who knows where Gabe is now? Who knows if he’s hurt? They needed to be out looking for him, not having a family meeting.
Brett sat at the dining room table, about as far from Jackson as he could get while still being in the same room. He stared out the big picture window, wiggling one foot propped on the opposite knee. He looks as anxious to get out of here as I do. Jackson drifted around near Lily, occasionally glancing into the living room.
“The man is right about one thing,” Jackson grumbled. “This is ridiculous. We should be on the move.”
Softly, Lily said, “Just give Kaz a little time. It’s his family. He owes them an explanation.”
In the doorway, Jackson hissed, “Ugh, what a family of dolts.”
Lily spun around to face him. She wasn’t sure if it was Jackson’s sheer lack of sympathy or the fact that she’d actually been starting to feel bad for him earlier, but his callousness made something inside her snap. She grabbed a big handful of Jackson’s shirt and half-pushed, half-dragged him into the kitchen, where she pinned him in a corner in front of the microwave. As they went, Jackson squirmed and said, “Unhand me! This is an outrage!”
Looking around to make sure no one had followed them, Lily kept her voice low but put her nose close to Jackson’s. “What is your problem?”
Jackson frowned but had the good sense to match the volume of his voice to hers. “I’m sure I don’t know of what you speak.”
Lily let go of his shirt but didn’t back off. “Of what I speak is the fact that you constantly go out of your way to be as big a jerk as possible! You insult us, you make fun of us, you call us stupid. You just . . . you just suck! You don’t have to be a creep, Jackson! What gives?”
Jackson’s eyes had gotten wider and wider as Lily spoke. When she finished, he straightened his shirt and moved to step around her. “I have no obligation to explain myself to you.”
Lily raised one hand, and a small, concentrated burst of wind blew Jackson right back against the counter. He winced at the impact and his eyes glimmered gold, but when he saw the expression on Lily’s face, he stopped resisting. Lowering his gaze, he gritted out, “You wouldn’t understand.”
Lily let the wind fade. She stepped back and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m a straight-A student. I won the science fair last year. I understand lots of stuff, Jackson. Try me. Is it because you miss your friends? Never got to say good-bye to your favorite pet? What?”
Jackson’s gaze darted around as if looking for an escape route, but only halfheartedly. He sighed. “All right . . . all right. Since you insist so stridently.”
Lily stood there waiting for a good ten seconds. “Well?”
Jackson looked up at her. At first she didn’t recognize the emotions she saw in his eyes, but finally she realized he looked scared. She’d never seen him show an ounce of fear before. The closest he’d ever come was irritation.
“Miss Hernandez, when I was eleven years old, my father . . . my own father drugged me and chained me to a stone slab, and then he allowed a man named Jonathan Thorne to plunge a silver dagger into my chest.”
Lily heard herself gasp. “Thorne, that’s the guy who founded the Eternal Dawn.”
Jackson nodded. “Killing me was the blood sacrifice Thorne required to create Arcadia, but Arcadia was not where I arrived. Instead I was sent to the Umbra, a realm outside of this reality. I was alone there, Miss Hernandez, with nothing but my mind and the tricks it played on me. I was trapped there for eleven decades.” He exhaled a long, slow breath. “You cannot imagine what it was like. The isolation. Staggering, overwhelming isolation.”
She blinked. That struck a chord in her. It reminded her of all the time she’d spent trapped indoors before they’d gotten her asthma under control. All the days she’d spent staring out the window, while Brett and Kaz played tag outside and threw a battered Frisbee back and forth.
“Jackson, I—”
He shook his head, cutting her off. “I could sometimes hear sounds. Occasionally even see people, and eavesdrop on their conversations. But this was another torment, for I could do no more than observe. So I watched. Through the dense fog of what ethers separated us, I watched everyone I had ever known or loved grow old, wither, and die. And these were only glimpses, you understand? I never saw enough to feel as if I were a part of their lives. The world left me behind. How much has civilization changed in the last hundred years, Miss Hernandez? The night Thorne sacrificed me, I rode in our horse-drawn carriage. And now . . . now!” His lips spread in a terrible, joyless grin. “I emerge into a world I can barely comprehend. Your technology, your culture, your speech. I may as well be one of Mr. Wells’s Martians for all I understand about the world around me. And do you know what the best part is?”
Lily shook her head, overwhelmed by this massive, unexpected outpouring.
“The absolute, very best part is that I still look like a little boy. I look younger than you, Miss Hernandez, and yet I cannot help but see you as the tiniest of children! Imagine, if you would, your grandfather, no, your great-grandfather, in a body eleven years of age. Imagine how he sees the world; imagine all the experiences he has had. Imagine his mind. Now picture him cavorting about dressed like this”—he plucked at his T-shirt—“and try to understand how he would feel.”
&nb
sp; To her own surprise, Lily felt tears welling up. She thought of her late grandfather, her abuelo, with his deeply wrinkled, dark-brown skin. How he’d always smelled of the most delicious pipe tobacco, and how he’d strummed his guitar and sung her Mexican lullabies every time she was sick. The image of him in Jackson’s place . . .
“Jackson, I hadn’t thought about it like that. About any of it. I never thought of you as . . .”
“As an old man? No. And yet that is the cruelest joke of all, because I am not. An old man would have lived a life. An old man would have grown, and perhaps received an education, and secured gainful employment. An old man would have made friends, and fallen in love, and had his heart broken. Maybe even more than once. He would have started a family, and raised his children, and witnessed the birth of his grandchildren. He would have embarked upon a career, and tried his best to leave a mark on the world. . . . But what did I do? Nothing. Nothing. I was trapped. A prisoner. All that experience, all that . . . growing up . . . I never had that. Never had any of it. I see how you and Brett and Gabriel and Kazuo relate to one another, and . . . and I want—I would like—to be a part of it. But I may as well be of a different species for all I understand it.” He covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders trembled. “What am I? I am no boy, yet neither am I a man! I have no one, no family, no means of support! No knowledge, no understanding of the world around me!” Jackson’s hands dropped to his sides, but he kept his eyes closed tight. “All I have is a hatred of Jonathan Thorne and the Eternal Dawn for inflicting this hell upon me. That is why I am unpleasant, Miss Hernandez. I have had a very, very long time to perfect such feelings, and . . . and not much chance to try any others.”
Lily wiped the tears away from her cheeks with her sleeves and, just as Jackson opened his eyes again, she pulled him close to her and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m so sorry, Jackson,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
What if she had been locked away from her mother and father? Worse than that—betrayed by her father and sentenced to the kind of torment Jackson had struggled through? What if she’d been torn away from Brett? Lily’s family hadn’t just supported her . . . they had shaped her. Once she could manage her asthma, it would have been easy to remain the strange little girl who never went outside. But her mother had pushed her—gently, with love, but definitely pushed her—to break out of the habits that had been forced on her. Without her mother’s encouragement, and her father’s pride in her, would she ever have started running track? Would she ever have discovered her own strength? Who would she be if she hadn’t been able to grow like that?