by Lisa Beeson
“I got you, Skylar. You’re safe now…I got you,” a wonderfully familiar voice crooned, and she immediately felt safe and secure.
“Ari…” Skylar whispered, as she clutched onto the girl that she considered her big sister. “You saved me. You came back and you saved me from the monsters. I knew you’d come back.” The wishing worked! She was so happy that Ari was actually here with her again that all her fear seemed to melt away. No monster could ever stand a chance against Ari.
Ever since Soren had been gone, Skylar had become more sensitive to other peoples’ feelings, which was another reason she liked staying on the roof with Enzo. Up here, she didn’t have to deal with everyone else’s anger and worry. And now, being held in Ari’s arms, Skylar could feel Ari’s happiness, but there was also a painful sadness. Also a deep, heavy tiredness that Skylar couldn’t quite understand. It was as though something had changed in Ari, and some of her light-ness, her Ari-ness, had dimmed.
Skylar didn’t want her to be sad. Ari was special. Ari was the one who made everything better.
Skylar clutched onto her tighter, knowing that it was now her turn to try to make things better. “Don’t be sad, Ari. You’re with me now, and I love you forever and always.”
Skylar felt Ari’s chest rise and fall in a deep shaky breath, and then there was a kiss placed atop her wet head. “Thank you, Skylar. I love you too…forever and always.”
Skylar smiled from ear to ear. Ari’s heavy tiredness was still there, but at least some of the sadness gave way to love and gratitude.
Skylar drew away from Ari’s embrace, eager to ask her about her adventures fighting the darkness that Alvaro had seen in his visions. But four gigantic, orange and white fish were “swimming” above them inside Old Enzo’s dome. They were playing follow-the-leader while weaving in and out of the trees and around Enzo’s house, as they would in a real fish bowl. She recognized them as the ones that should have been in the pond instead of the sea monsters, except now they were the size of dolphins.
Ari curiously glanced up at them too, then brought her attention back down to Skylar’s open mouth. “You lost your tooth,” she said with a small, amused smile.
“Uh huh…a couple days ago.” She absently tongued the empty slot where her front tooth had been as she watched the giant fishes’ progression around the dome. The moon was now so big and bright that it covered everything with a magical shimmery glow.
“What else has been going on at Scion’s Keep since I’ve been gone?”
Skylar wanted to answer her, but it was too hard to concentrate with the fish swimming right over the top of them. Too excited to stay still, Skylar jumped out of Ari’s lap. As the last fish swam by, Skylar reached her hand up and stretched on her tippy-toes. She was just in time for the tips of her fingers to skim the shiny belly of the fish. Gold and copper scales showered down around her.
Skylar danced and twirled with glee as the sparkly scales floated in the air like fairy dust settling to the ground. It seemed the more she twirled the drier her clothes and hair became. So she spun round and round until she was almost completely dry. But then, Ari was suddenly kneeling in front of her and gently holding onto her shoulders so she would stop spinning and look at her. Ari was so tall that even on her knees she was almost eye to eye with Skylar.
“I need you to focus for me, okay minion?”
Skylar looked into Ari’s pretty, clear blue eyes and saw the seriousness in them. Skylar nodded and tried to ignore everything else. “Okay, I’ll focus.”
“Thank you,” Ari said with one of her dazzling smiles that made Skylar feel like she was lighting up inside. Even with the scars that ran across her face, Ari was the most beautiful person in the whole wide world. It gave Skylar hope that one day, even with the red birthmark on her face, that people might think that she was beautiful too.
“I need you to give Cam a message for me.”
Skylar’s shoulders drooped. “I can’t. He’s gone.”
The smile immediately fell from Ari’s face and her feelings of fear and crushing disappointment strangled Skylar’s heart with a painful squeeze.
Uncontrollable tears sprung from Skylar’s eyes as a silent sob knotted her throat. She felt like her world was crumbling into tiny pieces. But before she could start wailing, the feelings vanished as quickly as they appeared, and the only feelings Skylar felt were her own. It was as though there was an emotional shield around Ari now, and her face had become almost as emotionless as a mask.
“Sorry about that,” Ari said, with a glint of curiosity in her eyes as she gently wiped away Skylar’s tears. She didn’t know that without Soren, Skylar felt everything. “But what do you mean he’s gone? Where did he go?”
“Everyone went crazy after you disappeared and Val and Soren got tooken by Anax…Anaxy-manner…” Skylar said with a sniff and a swipe at her leaky nose.
“They took Val too?”
Ari sat back and started breathing slowly through her nose while she held her head as if she had a massive headache.
“Uh huh,” Skylar said softly, not wanting to cause her anymore pain. “Grandma Mara and Gordon were super angry that you all left Scion’s Keep. All the adults were yelling at each other about how to find you and how to get Val and Soren back. Then, Alvaro had a vision of Cam and him talking with your friends in some cemetery. So they decided that some of us would stay here, while some others would go with Cam and Alvaro to meet up with your friends, and Grandma Mara and my uncles would go after Val and Soren.”
“How did they know that I wasn’t taken by Anaximander?”
“Enzo saw it. Alvaro told him that you and Val were in trouble, so he hitched onto his bird, Armand, and made him fly after you guys. He saw you disappear right before the bad guys in black suits got Val in an alleyway. Then Enzo followed their car and saw them take Soren too – he had gone after you when Alvaro said you were in trouble. But then the bad guys drove too far away, so Enzo couldn’t see where they took them ‘cuz the connection broke between him and Armand.”
Ari closed her eyes and took another long, deep breath.
Skylar couldn’t feel her emotions anymore, but she could tell that Ari was upset. She sat down next to Ari and held her hand to comfort her, then leaned against her strong, warm side to get some comfort from her as well. “Enzo says that every day the sun rises is a good day. Some days the clouds get in the way and you have to search harder to find the good, but it’s always there.”
After a long sigh Ari said, “Enzo is a wise man.”
“Yeah he is,” Skylar agreed. “And when Soren first got tooken-”
“Taken…” Ari corrected absently.
“…taken,” Skylar amended, “I could feel how scared and confused he was and it made my heart hurt so bad that all I wanted to do was cry for forever. But then, one morning, the fear was all gone, and instead there was a warm hope, right here...” Skylar tapped over her heart and looked up at Ari with a reassuring smile. “And I found ‘the good’, because he’s being brave. I can feel it. So, if he can be brave where he is… then we can be brave too, right?”
Ari smiled down at her and nodded. “Yes we can. I’ll bring Soren back to you, I promise.” Her voice was firm with determination.
Skylar nodded back, feeling much better, because she knew if Ari said it then it had to be true. Ari would rescue Soren, and they could be a little family again.
“So Cam left to meet up with my friends?” Ari asked quietly as she looked up at the bright, twinkling stars.
“Yeah. But before they left, he came up here to say goodbye to me and he promised that no matter what, he’d find you and bring you home.”
“He came up here to say goodbye to you,” Ari asked with a smile, as though the thought of it made her happy.
Skylar smiled and nodded. She liked Cam. He was really funny and nice, and he always made her feel like she was special. “He gave me a big, squeezy hug, and said that George, Myles, Joshua, Hugo, Wyatt, and Rand
all were going with them too, so that they’d be safe.” She ticked all the names off on her fingers to help her remember who had gone. “Cam said that the adults didn’t want Joshua to go at first, but he insisted and said that he had to help find you. So Hugo said that he would go too, and Gordon made both Randall and Wyatt go with them so they’d be super safe. But that’s all I know, because I’ve been up here and George was the one telling us everything.”
Ari turned to look over at Skylar’s tent. “You’ve been staying up here with Enzo this entire time?”
“Yeah. Before Soren went after you, he told me to stay here with Old Enzo. So that’s what I’m doin’ until he comes back,” Skylar said as she plucked a blade of grass from the ground and began rolling it around between her hands. “Marin and Gordon tried to make me come back down stairs. But I took off my cuff and put it with Soren’s in Enzo’s house and went invisible every time they tried. They never found me, ‘cuz I’m the bestest at hiding and being really quiet. After a while they gave up and put the tent up here for me to sleep in, because there’s really no room for me in Enzo’s house.” She rolled the blade around and around in her hands until it became a little ball. She liked the way it felt between her palms.
“Promise me that you’ll make good choices and do what Enzo tells you to, okay?”
“I promise.” Skylar held up her open hand and flicked the little green ball she’d made in a high arch far off into the distance – way farther than she’d ever been able to do before. A thought occurred to her that caused her to turn back to Ari with an excited gasp. “Now that you’re back, Cam and the rest of them can come home and everyone can help you go after Soren and Val!”
Ari shook her head with a sad, regretful look on her face. “I’m not really back at Scion’s Keep, Skylar. This is just a dream.”
A dream…? Now that she thought about it, it would explain the fish and the monsters.
Skylar studied Ari. She seemed different from the other people in her dream. She seemed more real, and Skylar had been able to feel her feelings. She hadn’t been able to do that with Enzo, when he’d been playing for her earlier. “I know it’s really you, so … you’re uh… here…but not really here…?”
Ari nodded. “Sometimes I can visit people in their dreams.”
“That’s kinda like what my mommy can do. But she did it in real life, not in dreams.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mommy’s body can be in one place, and a copy of her, like a ghost, can go someplace else. But, only the people that she wants to see her copy, can see it. Kinda like what I can do with my real body.” Skylar scrunched up her face as she tried to remember. “Whenever she did it, her body looked like she was sleeping. Her eyes didn’t go all white and scary like Enzo’s do when he’s hitching onto animals.”
Ari seemed to be mulling the information over, but Skylar didn’t want to think or talk about her mommy any more. It still hurt her heart that her mommy’s copy never visited them at Scion’s Keep, and the sea monsters were still too fresh in her mind.
“So if you’re not here, then where are you really?” Skylar asked as she picked a daisy from the ground that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“Well…” Ari began, then let out a soft chuckle as she shook her head. “Let’s just say I’m in a safe place where no one will be able to find me. I’ll find a way to come back as soon as I’m strong enough.”
Skylar began plucking the white petals off the daisy, but no matter how many petals she plucked the amount of petals didn’t seem to get any less. “So you were able to get away from the darkness,” she asked, as she continued to pick the never-ending petals. “Alvaro said you were surrounded by evil darkness.”
Ari nodded, but she seemed sad about it. “I got away from the darkness. But, before I could, it hurt my friends, Adam and Jean-Baptiste, very badly. And it made me…um… sick,” she said as though it was hard to find the right word to describe it. “So, I did what I had to do to get us away, and I lucked into finding a place where we can heal.”
Skylar didn’t want Ari to be sick. “Are you and your friends feeling better?”
Ari nodded with a small smile as she brought her arm around Skylar’s shoulders.
Skylar smiled with relief, but then Ari’s head turned to look at a space beside Enzo’s house.
Skylar’s heart began to race, fearing that the sea monsters were back. She forced herself to look too, but there was nothing there. “What are you looking at,” she whispered.
Ari lifted her into a tight hug. “I have to go now, minion.”
“No. You can’t. I don’t want you to go…” Skylar wrapped her arms around Ari’s neck, hoping that maybe if she held onto her tight enough she wouldn’t be able to leave. “Please stay with me. It’s nice here. We could stay here together for forever.”
“I wish we could, but you’re waking up,” Ari said while rubbing Skylar’s back in comforting circles. “I promise that I’ll come back to you in real life as soon as I can. But until then, we have to be brave like Soren, alright?”
Skylar reluctantly nodded against Ari’s shoulder.
Ari gently pulled her away so she could look her in the eyes. “If you see Cam before I get back, please tell him that I’m safe, and that the Shades won’t bother anyone ever again.”
“Okay.”
“And if he doesn’t believe you, say: Transit umbra, et lux perstat.”
Skylar looked back at her blankly.
“Say it back to me, minion. This is important.”
Skylar didn’t want to disappoint Ari, so she used all her mental strength to remember the phrase and remember it correctly. “Uh…transit umbra…eht lucks purr staaht…?”
“Close enough,” Ari said with a smile. “I love you, Skylar.”
Skylar felt the warmth of love surround and radiate through her, making her feel much better. “I love you too, Ari.” Almost as soon as the words left her lips, Ari disappeared with a whoosh of air.
Finding herself all alone, Skylar slumped down onto the grass in a boneless heap, letting the suddenly pedal-less stem of the daisy fall from her hand. She didn’t have long to feel bereft, however, before she heard a voice call her back to consciousness.
“Skylar...” the voice urged in a whisper. “C’mon little sprite, wake up.”
Skylar opened her eyes to see Enzo crouched in the opening of her tent, gently shaking her left foot by her big toe.
When he saw that her eyes were opened, he put a finger to his lips to make sure she stayed silent, then beckoned her to come closer with his other hand. Quickly brushing away the cobwebs of sleep, Skylar eagerly obeyed.
When she was close, he whispered in her ear, “Whatever happens, stay invisible until I say otherwise. You hear?”
Skylar was confused and worried, but she was determined to be brave, and she had promised Ari that she’d do what Enzo told her to. Without a word, she gave him a single nod of understanding and promptly disappeared.
Chapter 3
Ari’s consciousness went directly from Skylar’s dream into one of her vivid lost memories.
“Rise up, pakiue,” Rysura urged as she shook little Sennah awake.
Sennah rubbed the sleep from her eyes then obediently sat up without complaint. For, even though she could see that the sun was far from rising, the fact that Rysura had called her “pakiue,” a word that meant “favored student” in her Naraakan dialect, meant that Sennah had an important lesson to learn. “Yes, Jahtiue,” she answered, using the word for “revered teacher”.
Rysura handed Sennah some clothes. “Dress quickly. Then you will follow me.”
Little Sennah obeyed as expediently as she could. Once she was dressed, Rysura helped wrap her pale hair into the coil of a dark cloth. As Rysura wound it around her head and fastened it in place, Sennah envied the way Rysura’s hair naturally changed color in darkness. Sennah’s hair stood out no matter what kind of light there was.
When Rysu
ra was finished, she grabbed Sennah’s hand and led her into her adjoining room.
“Where are we going, Rya?” Sennah whispered, as Rysura opened the secret panel that led from her room to the hidden corridors within the walls of the temple.
After Rysura ushered Sennah into the dark passageway and closed the door behind them, she answered, “Into the low forest.”
Excited, Sennah asked, “Why?”
“I spoke with High Sage Emmon of your dream,” she whispered, while she led Sennah down the dark passageway – her Xanarhii eyes perfectly suited to navigate in the darkness.
Sennah followed the light of Rysura’s xjaasa, as she wondered what her dream had to do with leaving the temple grounds. She also wondered why her caretaker would bother telling a High Sage about her dream. She hadn’t seemed concerned the previous morning when Sennah had told her about it immediately after waking.
“What did High Sage Emmon say about my dream?” Sennah asked while hurrying to catch hold of Rysura’s cloak so she could keep pace with her strong, swift strides.
“He said that it was only a dream and we should do nothing,” Rysura answered without looking back, continuing to move surefooted down a set of spiraling stone steps.
Though confused by her caretaker’s words and actions, Sennah continued to jog obediently behind Rysura while she expertly led her through the secret corridors. She trusted her beloved caretaker completely, and even if she didn’t understand the lesson now, she knew that it was sure to be revealed in time. It always was.
As they traveled down more stairs and through rocky tunnels, Sennah thought back to her dream. It had begun with the giant Nahullo soldiers of the Anasaru chasing her away from the temple and through a dark gateway that led into an immense maze. Once inside the maze the soldiers had stopped pursuing her, but she had become completely lost in the twists, turns, and constantly moving pathways. She could not find her way back out no matter which way she took. She was lost in the maze for so long that by the time she had finally found a way out she had grown almost to adulthood. Weary and battle scarred, she eventually found her Oan waiting for her, but by then they were strangers to each other.
