“Wait,” he says abruptly, breaking my trance. “I have to tell you something.”
I open my eyes. Ezra’s face is ashen; he looks sick. “What?”
“Watchers and Trues exist on different sides of the gate now for a reason,” he rushes out, “at least they’re supposed to. It’s dangerous for a True and a Watcher to associate until a Watcher passes on. Their allegiances should be to the Ancients, not each other.”
I stare at him, bug-eyed. “Ezra, why are you telling me this now?”
“Because your mother probably will. And if you are True …” he stops and stares at the ground, rubbing the back of his head.
“What?”
“Watchers and Trues used to share sort of a symbiotic relationship until a Watcher killed a True and let half the Otherworld out.” He grimaces. “It’s common knowledge. We’re selfish bastards who’d rather escape to Ottomundo than do our jobs here on Earth. And we’d do anything, including charming the pants off a True to get there.”
“Ezra!” I gasp.
“I mean, it’s not like it’s documented history. And it was thousands of years ago. And it may have been an accident.” He stares at me, obviously mortified. “I could never hurt you, Ruby.”
“I don’t even know what being True means,” I say, dumbfounded.
“It means you’d be part of something bigger once you leave this world. Until then,” he shakes his head, “everything I’ve ever learned says Trues are born in, and die in, Ottomundo. All I know for sure is that you’re not an appointed True. Not yet. Maybe you’re a True-in-waiting or … something like that. Whatever the answer, you are an opportunity. There are things in Ottomundo that won’t think twice about using you, hurting you if they think you can get them out. Part of my job now should be protecting you from that. It’s just one of a thousand reasons I don’t think you should do this.”
My jaw clenches, reminding the rest of me to stay strong. “I don’t care what my mother says about you or us. Because I finally trust myself. But we need to find out, Ezra. I need to find out who I am … what I am.”
“Let’s go back, Ruby.” His solid voice is soft and pleading. “We’ll figure it out some other way.”
Ezra is genuinely worried about my safety. But beneath that I see a different kind of fear. He’s scared to lose what we’ve managed to salvage between us. “Ezra,” I reach out to him. “Everything we know is folklore and stories passed on through your family. You’re not even sure how much of it is real. But no matter what I learn, I’ll still love you.”
Ezra pulls me in for a hug, and I bury my head against his chest, breathing in wood shavings, and pine, and lavender along with his laundered shirt. As he stands there looking forlorn, I push away from him and close my eyes again. I’m anxious and sad he may be right and try forcing it all out of my head.
Around me, not one thing stirs—not a leaf, or the wind, or even my heartbeat. The forest and every atom of its fabric is inert. In an instant, the sky sheds its color, draining fast like a tub. For one brief moment, the day is so bright I only see Ezra’s outline. Then the sky burns out and trees glow beneath the same bluish, luminescent chain of orbs I saw over the mountains last time.
“What the hell!” I yelp.
I told you not to come back.
At the sound of my mother’s voice, I whip around, gawking at the same yellow dress she wore the night we went flying. Her voice is a singsong gust, but it comes out sternly, brushing my ears and cheeks like a cold breeze.
“Well, you’re supposed to be dead.” I swallow, suddenly panicking. “And you’re here.”
My mother’s grave face breaks into a smile. It grows deeper when I put my hands on my hips, trying to convey my frustration.
I am dead. She puts her hands on her hips, mimicking me.
I take a deep breath and hold it in, counting silently until it feels like I might explode. Yeah, you are. “I need to ask you something.”
You need to go.
I shake my head. “Am I True of Heart?”
True of Heart, she repeats in a singsong voice. Yes.
“And that means?”
It means you must go back to Earth until your time’s up.
“That’s not very helpful.” Her convoluted answers are about as informative as a dagger through the eye. Perplexed, I take a deep breath, trying to make sense of her words. “Is that why I can open the gate?”
One day, you’ll have a place here. That’s all I can tell you. Until then, stay far away from the ruin—away from the Otherworld. Leave it for the Watcher. You can’t come here again until you crossed over naturally.
“Am I … in Ottomundo?”
You’re in Tamoanchan: The Otherworld’s skeleton, the Underworld, the Land of the Dead. Where souls come first before moving on. Her diaphanous body explodes in a crackle, pulsing to life in a rainbow shower of color. The Ancients have a plan for you. But you must stay away from the ruin until it’s your time.
“What plan? What if I don’t want to be True of Heart?”
The choice isn’t yours. But you have a long life ahead of you. What you do with it now is for you to decide. On Earth at least, you have free will. Unless the Descended find you, the Ancients are the only ones who can affect your ultimate destiny.
“Find me?” I choke out, feeling faint. “The Descended?”
Her mouth opens in an extended yawn. Cipactli, Tiamat, Mictilan, Omacatl. Until you cross over, you’re not impermeable to irreversible spirit death. If the Descended find you, they’ll use you to open the gate. And if they see fit, snuff your soul. Without you in the picture, the chain will break. Earth will be closed to the Otherworld, and the gate will remain sealed until the Ancients find their next True of Heart.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard, balling my fists at my sides. It feels like every atom of oxygen has been sucked from the mountainside. My lungs shrink and I fear I may start hyperventilating. “Trues open and close the gate from your side?” I garble out.
They’re the only ones who can.
“And Watchers protect the gate from Earth?”
That’s enough, Ruby. It’s time to go back.
I shake my head adamantly. “Not until you tell me why you did it.”
Did what?
“Jumped. Off the pier. It’s pretty clear from your letter it wasn’t an accident.”
Letter?
“The one you gave to Liddy last year. The one Liddy gave me before my eighteenth birthday.”
Her face softens around her sad eyes, but she just floats in front of me, silent.
“Mom?”
Mom lowers her eyes, and my skin prickles. I feel a sudden shuffling in my head, like something, or someone, is picking through it. When she looks up at me, she smiles, but her face is more like a mask of my mother’s.
I choke on the air, tasting bile. “You’re not my mom, are you?”
She shakes her head.
“Oh, god.” I cover my mouth with my gloved hands, breathing heavily.
Think of me as your guide. It’s easier this way, Ruby.
“But why?” I near sob. “And why Mom?”
You trust her. She’s in your heart.
“Is she there with you?”
She shimmers against the blue night, rippling in waves. She loved you. It wasn’t her intention to hurt you. She traded her life for yours. To keep you safe. So you’d have the opportunity to live out a full life.
My body feels weightless, like it might float away. I step back toward a tree and grab a branch, breathing erratically. “I don’t understand.”
You will one day.
“But … but how … how did she even know about the Otherworld?” I stutter breathlessly.
She shimmers, blotting in the middle as her sides spill out in diaphanous tendrils, but she doesn’t answer.
“Please,” I beg.
She turns quickly, blending into a smudge that suddenly shoots above the trees, spreading like a gossamer curtain over
the plateau. She hovers for a second, then in a flash pulls back, dropping down in front of me.
You must go!
My heart beats so fast my eyes blur. “And Ezra?”
You can’t trust him.
“But last time you said he can protect me.”
He can, if he’s not entangled. Your will is your own, Ruby. But that doesn’t mean it’s what the Ancients want.
“That doesn’t make sense. They gave him his face back.”
Mom 2.0 shoots forward. She locks a cold but concrete hand around my wrist, tugging me toward the ruin. Their lesson distracted him from his most important job; he’ll protect you better if he’s not whining about his losses. That you feel for each other is unfortunate happenstance. Though not entirely surprising. Watchers and True share the same universal cloth, and on this side, at least, have always walked a dangerous road together. That’s why it’s law here now. Watchers aren’t to mix with True of Heart. He’ll protect you, Ruby, but if you let him get too close, he’ll also tear your heart out. It’s in his nature.
She pushes me toward the center of the ruin, and I shiver so hard my teeth rattle. “He won’t!”
You think that now. But you can’t be certain.
“I am certain. He’d never do anything to hurt me. I’d bet my life.”
If you stay with him, you are betting your life. I don’t know the Ancients’ intentions. But I do know that Watchers live in the shadows. They hide their true heart. They’re the opposite of everything you are, Ruby. Whatever you think now, you’ll never know him entirely.
From the bushes behind us, something screeches, sending a flock of huge birdlike creatures from the trees. I cough, choking on my spit as if it contains thorns. Whimpering, I wrap my arms around my waist as my heart speeds up, then down, then up again, beating hard enough so that I hear it outside my body.
Behind Mom 2.0, tall pines bend at an angle one by one, groaning under unseen weight. A brilliant magenta flash lights up the sky as their tips pop forward like springs, rustling discordantly in the distance, igniting a vortex of swirling color above the mountain.
Go, now! It won’t take them long.
“Please, tell me what to do,” I sob. “Now that I know, how am I supposed to live my life?”
Look inward to find the answer. Even here, there are no guarantees, love.
The sky bubbles above the trees, popping holes in the night that look like celluloid melting in the atmosphere. For a moment, I can’t see her, and then she’s there in front of me again, only this time more light, than matter. She rushes me, pushing me back, then grasps my shoulders and shoves me toward the ruin’s stone altar.
I hold my hand out to her, desperate to hold on. “Until I die, what’s the point of being True of Heart?”
Her diaphanous body explodes in a crackle. But she doesn’t answer. All I hear is, They’re watching you both closely, Ruby.
I squawk, throwing my arms out to find purchase. Around me, the sky’s purplish cast fades to eggshell. The sky is so bright I cover my eyes, screaming over the growing roar that surrounds us. As everything fades, a creature the size of a car pushes through the trees, mowing them down beneath its flowing gunmetal body. It cuts through the forest just as my fingers start to burn like someone stuck them with hot pins, and the searing rips through my arms.
The creature’s low-timbered gurgle shakes the ground, throwing me off-balance. As it leaps high into the air, sailing at me in long ribbons like a jet stream, I fall backward. It soars over me, baring rows of teeth the size of lawn stakes, and then suddenly it’s gone. Everything disappears. I hang suspended in a void, weightless, unable to feel my own body.
“Ruby!” Ezra shouts.
As I hit the ground, a huge rhino-like creature bounds out of the empty sky. It cuts through the air, crashing to the earth so hard my teeth rattle. I scream for Ezra and scramble behind a ruin wall, gasping for breath.
In a flash, Ezra shifts. He jumps at a creature so enormous Ezra looks like a kitten beside it. Off to my side, he backs the creature against a tree, pushing into it with his skull. I scream again, and in my head hear Ezra yell at me to run.
My legs are like tree trunks rooted to the ground. But it doesn’t matter; the creature can tear me to shreds for all I care. There’s no freaking way I’m leaving Ezra.
The creature moves stealthily, breaking free of Ezra’s hold, its grotesque silver eyes glowing in its head. It mews a low guttural mew that rattles the trees around us, knocking Ezra back, laying him flat so fast the creature has time to pounce. Pinning Ezra to the ground with a tire-sized paw, it rips at his shoulder with its teeth. As Ezra’s golden fur turns red, I scream, and the creature lifts its streamlined head, opening its mouth to reveal sets of long serrated teeth set in a massive, pointed jaw.
The creature pauses for a second, long enough for Ezra to get it together. As it stares at me, Ezra twists himself around its muscular haunches, burying his teeth into the hollow near its ankle. The creature snarls and steps back, and Ezra springs at it so quickly he’s a blur. He jumps and lands on the creature’s back, scratching thin lines of blood into its oily sides with his paws.
The creature flings Ezra about wildly, whipping him around like a chew toy. My stomach revolts, and I double over, certain I’m going to vomit. I’m so afraid if I look away for even a second, he’ll be gone.
Ezra holds on until the creature rolls over, pinning him under its body, screeching so violently my ears pop. I cover them and close my eyes, feeling like my eyeballs might explode. In my head, I call out, shouting, No, no, no! above all the noise. I feel Ezra inside me. I hear his thoughts and feel what he feels as he fights. He isn’t scared for himself, only of what the creature may do to me if he loses.
As I listen, Ezra’s voice peters out.
Ruby, he says, run!
Piles of rocks cover the ground near my feet. Without thinking, I grab the largest and rush the creature, yelling in a pitch that matches its strange mewing. The rock collides with its rubbery leg, bouncing back, sending my arm flying so far behind my head I feel my bones protest. I scream again, or at least I think I scream, and then the clearing goes black. For what seems like the thousandth time, I hit the ground. My head smacks a rock, and I lie in the dirt, inert, deaf, and sightless.
“Ruby!” Ezra shakes my shoulders, rattling my teeth and skull.
“Cut it out,” I swat at him.
All around, everything falls into order: the ruins, and pines, and setting sun.
“Ruby!” Ezra yelps. “Jesus, you stopped breathing.”
I shoot up frantically. “Ezra! Are you all right?”
He lets out a long breath, looking into my eyes. “Yes. I think so. If you are.”
I try sitting up straighter, but my head pounds inside my skull. “I’m fine,” I lie.
“You’re as white as a ghost.”
“What happened? Where’d it go?”
He swallows, obviously shaken. “You dropped, and it just …” he shrugs, making a question mark with his body. “Disappeared. Ruby, I heard you shouting something inside your head. I think you willed it back to wherever it came from.”
“Oh, Ez, I went there. To … to Ottomudo … to the Otherworld.”
Ezra looks dumbstruck and tremendously worried. “You just … you hit the ground. I mean, you closed your eyes and fainted. When you came to, that thing flew out of nowhere.”
“I met my mother, and I saw … god …” I rub my eyes.
“You saw God?” he squawks.
“No … I mean, like god, I can’t describe what I saw because it’s completely indescribable. God, I don’t even know if what I saw was real.” I realize I’m doing a mixture of babbling and hyperventilating and slow down, gasping for air. “It was crazy. But not as crazy as that … thing.”
Ezra’s eyebrows come together in the center of his forehead. He wraps an arm around my shoulder and pulls me closer, wincing as he moves to support my frame.
“He
y.” I push him back, searching his chest. There’s a huge red stain on his jacket near his right shoulder. “Ezra!”
“Flesh wound,” he grimaces.
Ezra pulls me closer, surrounding me with shaking arms. He holds me like we’re about to face Armageddon.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, unsure if anything will ever be okay again.
“It’s obviously not.”
“If I stay away from the ruin, it will be. My mother said.” My mother. Not my mother. But he doesn’t have to know that.
“Are you True of Heart?”
When I don’t answer, he stiffens. He holds me rigidly, breathing rapidly in my face while his eyes shift colors.
I try smiling, as if a giant, Otherworldly hellhound attacking us is the most natural thing in the world. But like everything else about my body right now, it hurts. I run a hand down his arm and tilt my head back, brushing my lips against the tip of his jaw. “It just means I can open the gate, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” He pinches the bridge of his nose, inhaling deeply. “A thing the size of a bus followed you out, and you say, ‘That’s all’? It’s obviously enough.”
“She told me to leave the moment I got there, but I didn’t. I refused until she answered my questions. It’s my fault.”
Ezra shakes his head like he’s shaking off a thousand pounds of doubt. He presses his lips together, and digs his fingers into my shoulder, tightening his grip. “Liddy could have moved you anywhere, but she brought you here. Now that we know, it can’t be a coincidence.”
I remember Mom’s letter. How in retrospect, she must have known before checking out that my fate would travel this path—a path apparently only she understood. “All I know is if I stay, Mom said you can protect me.”
“You asked her about me?”
I want to tell Ezra everything. But I know better. If I say she thinks he’s a danger to me, he’ll do something crazy. Besides, I don’t accept what she said. I may be True one day, but here on Earth, I’m not. There’s no real reason to believe Ezra and I shouldn’t be together. “Yes,” I tell him. “She said the Ancients have their eyes on us. Guess we better be good for a while.”
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