“Seven years ago I was taken from Garth with the other nine people you see around here. An older man planned our escape and brought us out into the woods. Back then I was only ten years old, like many of the others. Mio and Cinder are the only two adults and they basically raised all of us. The man who brought us all out here told us that in seven years a girl named Adaline will arrive here and that when she does we had to help her.” He stops suddenly and I know he’s leaving something out.
“Cooper,” I say, trying to figure out my own question. “Who was the man who planned all this? Who brought you here and told you about me?”
“Adaline.” There’s a long pause before he continues, “It was your father.” He takes in a deep breath and says, “Our father.”
Part 2: The Truth
Chapter 11
“Wait, what?” I ask, probably more forcefully than necessary. Instead of answering me I watch as Cooper reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small folded piece of paper. I watch as he unfolds the paper and I realize that it’s actually a photograph. He hands me the wrinkled photograph and I gently take it and examine it. It’s a picture of a young kid who I can only assume is Cooper. He is sitting on a couch next to a man I instantly recognize as my father, even though only half of him is in the photograph. Both of them have been captured in mid-laugh. I take my finger and run it along the ragged edge of the image where my father sits.
Something seems oddly familiar about this picture, and then I make the connection. I reach into my own bag and pull out my own photograph of myself, Titus, and my father. When I hold the two next to each other I see that they make a perfect match. I can feel Alexander tense up next to me as obviously shocked as I am.
“You’re my brother?” I question, barely audible. Cooper just nods and lets me continue, but all I can manage to say is, “What?”
“It’s a pretty complicated explanation, Adaline. Maybe you want to eat something before I get into it,” Cooper stumbles over his own words.
“No,” I force, tears brimming the edges of my eyes. “I want to know everything. I’m tired of not knowing anything. No more half-answers. I want the whole story. Every single detail,” I say, frustration building inside of me. Mostly because of everything I have been left out of, my father’s elaborate secret group waiting for me in the forest for example. But I’m also frustrated because no matter how hard I try I can’t ever remember having a brother, besides Titus.
“All right,” Cooper continues, coughing to clear his throat. “Our father, Derith, dedicated his life to helping people with gifts escape Garth. This way they wouldn’t be taken in by King Renon. Mother and Father were both Future Holders, and so the odds of them having a child with the gift was very high.” My skin tightens at the knowledge that my father was also a Future Holder. Both of my parents had an enhanced sense of sight.
“Before we were born, Dather was ruled by King Renon’s Father, King Lexon. He, similarly to King Renon, took in children with gifts but was much more secretive about it. When he passed away rule fell to his son. King Renon tripled the number of gifted prisoners in just a couple of months. That’s when Derith decided he had to find a place of freedom for people with gifts. There was an underground operation that had been going on for a while where gifted people were being smuggled out of Garth and to an island known as Libertas.” I nod my head connecting the memory I had about my father calling that our new home.
“Our father joined the operation and began to help move other families to Libertas. We were born about a year apart and when I turned ten years old we confirmed through the testing process at the castle that I did not have the gift.”
“They took you in to be tested?” I ask confused. If he did have the gift he would have been targeted and hunted for sure.
“We knew before based on our mother and father’s visions that it would be you who had the gift. They needed me on record to keep suspicion away from our family while our father continued to work for Libertas,” Cooper explains, and I realize how precise and detailed this entire plan really had to be.
“During one of Derith’s journeys to take another gifted family to freedom, he ran into a group of King Renon’s guards. Father managed to escape and make it back home, but he knew that the guards had identified him and they would be there by morning. So that’s when he made this plan.”
“Why didn’t we just go to Libertas?” I ask and Cooper raises his hand to calm me.
“I’m getting to that,” he says gently. “The journey to Libertas is hard. It’s a minimum of a three day hike from Garth. You have to get through Sard and then survive at sea for another two days. It was too dangerous to make the journey with so many kids. So, our father decided he needed to hide us.”
Alexander clears his throat, “Where do I come into this?”
“Right,” Cooper says and rubs his face with his hand. “I’m sorry it’s so confusing.” He takes a minute to collect his thoughts and says, “Our father and your mother, Marin, were good friends growing up. When our father went undercover to work for Libertas Marin joined him.”
“She had an enhanced sense of touch didn’t she?” Alexander asks and Cooper nods.
“Your father, George, had seen visions of you with similar powers to Marin and they knew they needed to protect you too,” Cooper explains.
“So our families worked together,” I say, trying to hold on to what seems real because I am still struggling to even remember Cooper’s existence.
“They did and when our father was caught they knew they needed to hide all of us until the time was right to move to Libertas. So, they put us where King Renon would be least likely to look,” Cooper says and glances between Alexander and myself.
“In his own castle,” Alexander processes out loud.
“Correct. Then he put together a group to wait in the woods until we would be old enough to make the journey together. He took me with him and we went around the village asking families to send their children with us,” Cooper begins to explain but I stop him.
“And they just did?” I ask.
“We explained to their families that we needed their children to come with us so we could have a group waiting for you when you escaped the prison. If their families agreed to send their children with us they would be considered as possible candidates to reside in Libertas. This in itself was enough for the parents to agree because only people with gifts had been allowed to make the journey away from Garth.” Cooper pauses when he sees me open my mouth to say something but I close it and just shake my head, not sure what I should even ask now.
“After we had gathered the other kids we met up with Mio and Cinder, both of them have helped Derith and Marin with previous journeys,” Cooper begins to explain faster and faster spilling out the details of that night. “Father said he had one more family to talk to before he was ready to leave. So we all went with him to this house outside the village. A man and a woman came and talked to our father in hushed voices. I’m not really sure what they said, but then this kid walked outside and I remember the older woman telling the boy to go back inside. It was you, Alexander. She said, ‘Alexander go back inside’ and then my father said ‘Marin we have to go now. You should go and say goodbye and grab whatever you’re bringing with us. You both know the plan and if we just keep doing everything according to the plan it will all work out.’”
“Wait,” I interrupt him again and he lets out an exhausted breath. “If you’re really my brother then we would have grown up together. You talk about Alexander and his parents like you don’t know them, but as far as I can remember they were like family to us,” I say, trying to keep straight what I can remember about my childhood and what Cooper is telling me.
“No, Adaline we never talked to Alexander or his family before. Just our father had, secretly on trips to Libertas,” Cooper says, confusion in his voice.
“But don’t you remember that one summer when I was eight I came home from building forts with Alexander in th
e forest and I had gotten poison ivy so bad I had to stay in bed for a week and Alexander basically lived at our house. He insisted on taking care of me because it was his idea to build the forts in the poison ivy.”
“No, that was me, Adaline,” Cooper says defensively. “I told you that was the best spot,”
“Because we could see our intruders from all angles,” I say, finishing his sentence and the memory finally comes back to me clearly. I see Cooper up on top of a hill and he’s yelling down to me that this is where we should put our fort. “It was you,” I say confused.
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Alexander says. “Because I remember myself being there.”
“I get it,” Cooper says suddenly and Alexander and I look to him to continue to explain. “Father told me when we left that mother was going to take away all your memories of me, one of the many things Future Holders are capable of doing. She must have substituted all of the memories with me in them with Alexander in my place.”
“But why?” Alexander asks.
“That way Adaline would trust you as soon as she saw your face when she ran out of the castle. She would instantly think you were her childhood friend and then you would go with her to Libertas.”
“Continue the story,” I say after a moment of silence because I’m starting to realize that everything I thought I shared with Alexander was actually a lie. I don’t even know the person sitting next to me.
“We waited as both of Alexander’s parents went inside, and then Marin came back outside and said she was ready to go. So we left. We hiked through the woods until we got to this point. Derith told Mio and Cinder to set up camp here and that if everything goes as planned Adaline and Alexander would be here in seven years. Then our father and your mother left and headed to Libertas.” Cooper stops speaking and the questions start pouring out of Alexander and me again before we can stop ourselves.
“Why didn’t my mother just take me with her?” Alexander asks.
“For the same reason our father didn’t take Adaline or me. We were too young to survive the journey.” Cooper explains.
“Well, I’m pretty sure I could survive some boat ride!” Alexander says back, floored at his mother’s decision.
“But it’s more than just that,” Cooper argues with him. “The sea is full of the atomic energy from the asteroid shower years ago and that has filled the waters with these inhumane creatures. They are similar to the animals that inhabited the sea before the shower, but they are far more deadly. I’m not even sure we could survive them now.”
“Okay, but I’m confused about why our father brought all these kids out here into the woods to what? Just wait for us?” I ask.
“The idea behind this was that if guards found us Mio and Cinder were supposed to tell them that we were just sick kids from the village and that we were sent out here because they wanted to lessen disease in the village. The reason we had to do this was because we couldn’t keep moving camp around to keep away from the guards. We had to stay in this exact spot so that you would find us. Plus, the guards had no good reason to bring a bunch of sick kids back into Garth. We made sure all of us were non-gifted and not wanted by the King,” Cooper says.
“So you’re telling me our father put a camp of children in the woods with Mio and Cinder to just wait seven years for me to show up because there was a good chance I’d have the gift according to their visions?” I ask, unable to believe his story.
“Yes,” Cooper says sharply. “Look, he was right wasn’t he?”
“Okay, so father knew that mother, Titus and I would get thrown in prison? He knew mother and Titus would die? Alexander and George going to work in the castle was all part of this plan to help us get to Libertas once we were old enough?” I ask, bewildered by the thought that my entire life is some plan.
“It was a fairly good plan. In the dungeon no one would see your green eyes to know you were highly likely to have the gift. Our father never mentioned the fact that mother and Titus would die. I don’t think he ever knew that would happen,” Cooper stops, letting his eyes drop.
I realize that he never even got to really meet our little brother. He probably doesn’t even remember what our mother looks like or what her voice sounded like. I reach and grab his hand, and a sense of belonging rushes through me. Like I finally put in the missing piece of a really messed up puzzle. Cooper looks up at me and I can see the tears forming in his eyes, those caramel colored eyes.
“You have his eyes,” I say. “You and Titus had the same caramel colored eyes.” I smile slightly, remembering Titus and how alike they really are.
Cooper gives me a slight smile before I pull my hand back and he continues. “Since Alexander worked for the castle, King Renon didn’t need to capture him for his gift. You were already following his orders.”
“But something still doesn’t make sense,” Alexander says, “Why did my father flee from the castle and leave me behind?”
Cooper clears his throat before continuing. “I heard Derith and Marin discussing it the night we came here. Since George was a Future Holder he had seen a time where King Renon had ordered for him to go through a mental restoration. It’s a process that would allow King Renon to take all of the visions your father has had and put them into his own head. It also would have resulted in your father’s death. After King Renon takes all his visions and disposes of his memories it leaves the body brain-dead, so George left once you were old enough to fend for yourself. If King Renon would have gotten hold of George’s visions of the future then he would have seen all of this. The plan would fail and we all would have lost our lives.”
“Well have you seen him since then? My father?” Alexander pleads.
“No, I’m afraid not, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t make it to Libertas,” Cooper adds shortly. “I don’t know what instructions Derith gave him.”
“Why do you have to have the gift to get into Libertas?” I ask, realizing I hadn’t thought it to be weird at first, but now I see that all these ordinary people wasted seven years of their lives living in the woods just to get a chance to go to Libertas. And there were more guards that fled with Alexander’s father, not all of them or maybe any of them had gifts. An act like that would get you killed if you were caught. “All of these people who don’t have gifts are risking their lives helping Alexander and I get somewhere that they aren’t even allowed to live in?”
“I don’t know much about life in Libertas, but when people first started to flee to the island it was known as a place of freedom for people with gifts. But that’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows really. People who go to Libertas and make it there don’t come back unless they are helping others escape to the island.”
“But that doesn’t make sense, why would all these people risk their lives for our freedom?” I urge.
“Well, what would you do if a group of Future Holders got together and told you that if you helped get their children to freedom the future would be much better for your kids?” Cooper says simply.
“I mean, I guess I would have to believe them,” I agree.
“Their only alternative choice is to continue living under King Renon. I think I’d take my chances in the woods too,” Alexander agrees.
“Have you heard from our father since he left?” I ask Cooper, finally finding the question I’d been wondering this whole time.
Cooper is silent for a while before he forces out the answer, “No. We have connections living in Sard that said they arrived. Usually, groups stay overnight with our sources in Sard before heading out onto the ocean. A couple of days after they left Sard someone said they’d found washed up remains of what seemed to be a boat.” Cooper senses my body tense up and he reaches over to put a hand on my shoulder.
“We don’t know for sure if it was their boat. Our father has made that journey dozens of times, right?” I ask him and I’m finding that I don’t know if I really want my father to be dead. I spent all this time hating him and wishing he we
re dead, but now I don’t know if that’s what I really want.
He drops his arm and pulls out a gold chain from his pocket. My heart tightens at the sight of it. My father’s gold compass. Cooper doesn’t have to say anything, and he hands the heavy metal memory to me. “They found this in the ship wreckage.” My father would never go anywhere without it. I hand the compass back over to Cooper, haunted by its past. From the distant look in Cooper’s eyes I know that, just like me, Cooper has had to accept the fact that our father is gone and out of our lives. At the confirmation of my father’s death, I’m surprised relief and joy aren’t what I feel. Hadn’t I wished for this? Just the other day in the woods I begged the universe to let it be him instead of my mother.
I look up to Alexander and see the blank expression on his face. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
He shakes his head and says, “It’s okay Adaline. She’s been gone a long time, this doesn’t change anything.”
We are all quiet for a moment. I try to process all the information that has been poured out to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Alexander processing all of the information as well. We look at each other for the first time and hold each other’s gaze. Who is he? I can’t even answer this question anymore. When I look at his face I still see him with me as my neighbor. I still see him running through the woods and the town. I still see him as the boy who sat behind me in class, who could finish my every thought, who came over with his family for Christmas and Thanksgiving. All the birthdays we celebrated together, all the school projects and presentations we did, every memory I still see his face. I try to make myself picture them with Cooper instead.
No Alexander wasn’t at my 5th birthday party where we dressed up as princesses and princes, that was Cooper, my brother. And as soon as I make myself make this connection I feel as though a string holding the bond between Alexander and I snaps, and it physically hurts my heart. I’m torn between not wanting to lose him from my memories and wanting to know the truth about my past. But I’m not the only one whose memories have been infused with Alexander. I remember that Zavy believes that he was just as good of friends with her as me. Was it really Cooper in all those memories?
The Markings Page 12