by N. D. Wilson
But Mr. Ashes smiled. Even as his body slowly dissolved into ash, muddying the pool, he spun the cane around and placed the tip against his heart.
“Laughlin for Laughlin,” he whispered. With the last of his beastly strength, he plunged the tooth-cane all the way through his chest and into Oliver’s. The bamboo snapped, and his body collapsed into ash and sank into the water around Oliver’s body.
The river-side wall was fire. Wood crackled and burned. Diana ran to her brother where he lay collapsed on the floor. Nolan was beginning to move, and the Captain had managed to sit up.
Cyrus and Dan stood over the body of Oliver Laughlin. The tooth was buried in his chest, bamboo sticking out from between his ribs.
Then Oliver opened his eyes.
Cyrus and Dan stepped back as the boy sat up and tore the tooth free. His eyes were dark. Gills fluttered on his neck.
“Smiths,” he said quietly. The voice was Oliver’s, but now it drawled. He looked down at Gil and over at Enkidu. “Would you like me to end these dragons for you before I go?”
“Oliver?” Cyrus said.
In a flash, Oliver lunged forward, slashing at Cyrus’s neck. Cyrus threw up his arm and took the cut across the wrist. Oliver was already running for the burning hole. Dan and Cyrus chased after him.
Oliver jumped. Two steps later, side by side, the Smiths both did the same. Across from the door, hovering in the air above the river, there was another airplane.
Antigone was in the pilot’s seat. Rupert was beside her.
As Cyrus tucked into his dive, he stopped caring about the tooth, about Oliver and Phoenix and Gil and the Ordo bloody Draconis. He felt free, light enough to fly, even while falling like a stone. And when the water pounded his skull like a hammer, when his left eardrum broke and blood gushed from his nose, he kicked up, and broke the surface laughing.
twenty-two
WAKE
ROBERT BOONE WOULDN’T STOP offering explanations, which meant, in his own way, that he was apologizing.
“Phoenix always was a runner,” he said, standing at an oversize flame grill on his patio, sipping iced tea, overlooking his black mountain lake. “And that’s the truth, as Rupe can testify. Always a runner. Didn’t figure him to stand and fight like that.” He shook his head and exhaled something that was part relief and part embarrassment. “Sent my kids in there. My girl. Can’t believe it.”
“Pa, it’s okay,” Diana said, putting her arm around her father’s waist. “We’re alive.”
“Don’t let him off easy, Di!” Sadie yelled from the open kitchen.
Boone shook his head. “Shoulda been me in there.”
But nobody was listening. Meat was coming off the grill, and everyone was happy to be alive. Mostly.
The small basement cellar was cool. Jars of jam and jars of apple sauce and jugs of moonshine lined the shelves. Between the shelves, lying on the cold concrete floor, there was a pine box six and a half feet long.
Cyrus sat on one side. Antigone and Daniel sat on the other.
Three memories shared a single past. Wordlessly, they wandered the same coast, the same house, they looked into the same eyes and listened to the same laughter. The same man and the same strong arms swept them up off their feet and slung them over the same broad shoulders. The same games. The same jokes and stories and tasks. The same woman smiling the same smile from the safety of an embrace they could all still feel.
Antigone didn’t bother to wipe her eyes.
Finally, Dan slid one arm around Antigone’s shoulder and stretched the other across the box for Cyrus. Cyrus clasped it.
And then they spoke—those three souls sprung from two. What they said to each other in that cellar, they never shared with anyone, and they never said again. They never needed to. The words were etched deep, down in the heartwood and in the roots they shared.
Later, Dan and Cyrus and Antigone sat together, their backs against a stone wall and their feet stretched out in the meadow grass. They had come up into the sun, but in some way, they were still gathered around that simple pine box in the Boones’ coolest cellar.
And they always would be.
The others came by one at a time. The first was Arachne.
She sat down in the grass with her bag in her lap. She had mended the rips, but the bag was much smaller now, and Cyrus could see the grief in her impossible eyes. It was strange, grieving for spiders, but Cyrus understood. Finally, Arachne spoke.
“Daniel, your heart …,” she said. “I can’t fix it. No one can. Not all the way. But I can make it stronger.”
“How strong?” Antigone asked. She tugged at the pearl silk visible at her waist. “This strong?”
Arachne smiled. “No. But strong enough for years of drumming.”
“How many years?” Cyrus asked.
Arachne’s smile faded. “Not many,” she said sadly. “Sixty. Seventy, maybe.”
Dan laughed. “Deal. That’s old enough for me.”
“By the way,” Antigone said. “How do I get this Angel Skin off?”
Arachne raised her eyebrows. “You don’t. It is skin. It will grow into yours, and its charms will seep into your soul.”
Antigone blinked. Cyrus and Dan stared. Then Arachne giggled like a girl who had been terribly funny. “I’ll show you later,” she said. “When we’re alone.”
Little Dixie Mist was the second to come by. Sadie Boone had insisted that she and her father stay with them as long as they liked. Cyrus thought they might like for a very long time. Alfred was thin, weak, and underfed. He’d spent the flight to Kentucky with Dixie on his lap and tears on his cheeks, rocking in place, whispering in his little girl’s ear.
Cyrus hadn’t been able to watch.
Now Dixie sat down cross-legged at Cyrus’s feet, blocking his view of the lake. Her brown eyes were very serious.
“Your name is Cyrus Smith,” she said simply.
Cyrus nodded.
“The man in the pool,” Dixie said, “the man One Hand was going to bring back, he was your father.”
Cyrus nodded again. It was easier than talking about it.
“We thought he was lost in the ocean,” Antigone said. “But Phoenix—One Hand—had his body the whole time.”
It was Dixie’s turn to nod. She did so very seriously. “The girl, Diana, told me. One Hand was a devil. I’m glad you killed him.”
Cyrus didn’t correct her.
“You could have had your father back,” Dixie said, “but you chose mine instead.” Her cheeks were wet.
“Not really back,” Cyrus said. His throat was tight. He bit back his words and looked at the sky, at the distant mountains, kissed by the sunset.
Then little Dixie’s arms were around his neck, and his chest was shaking, no matter how hard he fought it. He sniffed and blinked and wiped his face, but it did no good. And then Antigone’s head leaned onto his shoulder, and Daniel’s hand grabbed his knee.
Dixie held on tight. When Cyrus exhaled and his body calmed, she let go, smiled at him, and bounced away, back to her living father.
Looking up, Cyrus saw Rupert Greeves standing beside him, his big arms crossed. Cyrus wiped his face again and blew out a long, level breath. “Embarrassing,” he said.
Rupert shook his head. “Cyrus Smith, there’s not a thing embarrassing about it.”
And Cyrus sat and sat, with his sister leaning on him and his brother beside them. And as the sun dropped and night fell and the Kentucky stars spun across the sky, Boone lit a fire, and Sadie brought out blankets even though the night was warm, and Jax worried about his animals, and Dennis wondered aloud what Hillary Drake might be doing, and Alan Livingstone told stories about Africa, and George winced when he laughed because of his burns, and Silas tried to explain exactly what had happened on their end of the factory, and Alfred and Dixie Mist paid no mind to anyone. Neither did Horace. He was eating.
Robert Boone apologized some more, and everyone knew he wouldn’t have felt so badly if
he’d actually managed to catch Oliver, who was now Phoenix. He explained that men with gills are hard to catch when you’re expecting men in boats. The trap was wrong. No one really wanted to hear him explain.
For a while, Diana sat with the Smiths. She didn’t say much, but what she did say was nice. And Nolan sat with them for a while, peeling his skin. What he said wasn’t nice at all, and was all about how he hoped Cyrus would start training for real now and maybe read a book—not that it would do any good. But it was nice to hear him say it, and Cyrus couldn’t help laughing at the grouch who lived in the Polygon.
And finally, when the voices and the fire were drifting toward sleep, Cyrus looked at his sister, and then at his brother.
“Something’s missing,” he said.
“Mom,” said Antigone. “I know.”
“Rupert says we can’t go back to Ashtown yet,” Dan said. “But we’ll see her soon.”
Cyrus looked around. “Where’s the bird?” he asked.
Antigone sighed. “It freaked out,” she said.
“It?” Cyrus asked. “Not she?”
Antigone nodded. “It was at the factory. We were hovering over the river, watching Horace blow up a boat and wondering what was happening, when that fireball blew out the side of the building. A minute later, the bird went nuts, flapping around the cockpit, scared of me, scared of Rupert, scared of everything. When we landed and opened the door, it took off.”
Eventually, Sadie showed all of her guests to their rooms. Everyone except Cyrus. Diana took him to the Captain. They found him in the basement.
Gilgamesh was sitting on a couch with his head in his hands. His wrists and ankles were heavily chained. Enkidu and two other transmortals had been immobilized in another room. Arachne was sitting beside Gil, holding her bag. Ponce, the skinny Spaniard in the dirty pink shirt, sat on her other side.
Pythia was in the corner, half hiding in her hair, half listening to Nolan and smiling as he demonstrated the use of scissors on his own messy crop.
The Captain, still in his breastplate and filthy clothes, still with his blackened face and charred beard, was pacing. The sword was back in its sheath on his belt.
As soon as he saw Cyrus, he stopped and cleared his throat.
“Now, Gilgamesh,” he said.
Gil looked up at Cyrus with his huge cow eyes, his thick purple lips, and the short beard that climbed his cheekbones.
“I’m sorry,” Gil said.
Cyrus shook his head. “Not interested. I just wanted to find the Captain.”
“Not interested?” the Captain asked. “Become interested, lad. Ye’ve received the apology of a gentleman.”
“He threatened my mom,” Cyrus said. “And he tried to murder me and my sister more than once in the last week. I’m not interested in anything Gilgamesh of Uruk has to say. Ever.”
Gil’s head sagged. The Captain nodded. “Fair is as fares due, Gillie lad. You’ve a debt owed. Without this lad, ye’d have been ox slaughtered, your life given to another, your carcass left as char for hungering flame.”
To Cyrus, he said, “Do ye still hold the golden ring of Radu?”
Cyrus shook his head. “I lost it in the river. That’s what I wanted to tell you. And also, about your chain … I didn’t realize what it was for. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. I’m sorry I broke it. Cutting you down seemed like a good idea.”
The Captain lowered his brows and eyed Cyrus, his left hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
“Fret not, son of Smiths,” he said finally. “ ’Twas done, and done with vigor. Sorrow wins no wars. Now I play at jailer and nursemaid for your Avengel, but soon I shall be loosed upon the world. I’ll be hunting dragons. Perhaps you’ll join me.”
Diana laughed. Cyrus shrugged. “Maybe. That will be up to my Keeper. And thanks. I didn’t mean to make things worse.”
He turned to leave with Diana, but the man in the pink shirt stood up and held out his hand. When Cyrus shook it, he said, “Ponce de León, your friend and servant, Señor Cyrus, since the day Maxi was made to depart the earth with a tooth in his temple.” He sank back into the couch, smiling. “And my thanks, señor, for your courage today, as well. But of course, the sweet Arachne was my guardian angel. She gave me a spider to keep watch.” He crossed his legs and slapped his knee. “When I was taken, I knew she would come. She assembled quite the rescue, yes?”
Ponce slid his arm around Arachne’s shoulder.
“Don’t touch her,” Gilgamesh growled, and Ponce’s hand jumped back into his lap.
Arachne smiled.
The house slept, but Cyrus went back up to the patio. Rupert had invited him to a council of war first thing in the morning, and Horace had asked Cyrus if they could discuss Skelton’s hidden holdings, but Cyrus’s mind was elsewhere. He sat in a chair and stared at the stars and the fireflies and lost himself in memories of his father.
Diana curled up beneath an ancient Boone quilt in a chair just at his feet, and she fell asleep.
Cyrus pulled Patricia from his neck and let her cold body wind around his hands and through his fingers, and he plucked her tail from her mouth so often that she gave up and coiled in his palm, content to glow.
North and east, in the bright flashing city where Liv had wearily gone to bed without so much as a massage or a shower, complaining loudly to her servants about fanatics, a man stepped onto a sidewalk.
He was tall, very tall, and his robe dangled loosely over his belt, and a dragon the color of old blood was curled on his chest. Broken chains hung from his wrists and ankles.
Barefoot, he walked the bustling streets of New York City with long, easy strides. Some tourists looked at him in fright and hurried away. Others raised their cameras. Still others felt drawn to him. They wanted to follow him and be where he was, and be what he wanted them to be, even if it killed them.
And Radu Bey marveled at the works of man and laughed, because he knew they would be his.
On Forty-First Street, he threw a policeman from his horse and jumped into the saddle.
He rode toward the brightest lights.
North and west, on the shores of Lake Michigan, Ashtown was quiet in the darkness.
In a hospital room with white walls, where a curtain slowly stroked the back of a lake breeze and a ceiling fan ticked quietly in the darkness, there was a woman on a bed, breathing low, wet breaths.
The breathing stopped. The curtain floated. The fan ticked. And then the woman’s ribs quaked with a long, long breath, like she was inhaling her own soul.
Because she was.
Katie Smith’s eyes opened, and she looked around the room.
GRATITUDE
Jim T. for trekking
Knox A. for devouring
Aaron R. for stomping
Sisters for insisting
Parents for believing
Rory for waiting
Lovely
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
N. D. WILSON is the bestselling author of the 100 Cupboards series and Leepike Ridge. Once, in the fourth grade, he split his buddy’s arrow while shooting at a mattress from twenty yards. Now he writes at the top of a tall, skinny house, where he lives with a blue-eyed girl he stole from the ocean, their five young explorers, two tortoises, and one snake. For more information, please visit AshtownBurials.com.