by Ashia Monet
“Little bit!” Blythe yells, and slams the gas.
Blythe summons all of her will and magic as the needle climbs. Her grip tightens on the wheel.
Take us to the Tempore, take us to the Tempore, she thinks.
A horn honks on their left. Daniel screams as the van crashes through the trees.
The tires bounce, catapulting them into a forest of shadows and snow.
Blythe smirks at Cordelia. “You were saying?”
Cordelia is glaring at her. “I hope your driver’s license gets revoked.”
“Joke’s on you,” Blythe smirks. “I don’t have one.”
“T-That was a really obvious use of magic, w-w-we’re not supposed to do things like that!” Daniel shouts.
“We’ll be fine,” Blythe says, but only because she doesn’t want thoughts of the Erasers to linger in her mind. She may have scared them off before, but there’s no guarantee she’ll be able to do it again.
In the haunting emptiness of the Tempore, they are free to drive as quickly as they’d like, as long as the windshield wipers are on a high enough setting to slap away the snow.
Cordelia raises the compass in the moonlight; it is golden and white-faced, engraved with swirling textures and a sparking wand.
“Do you happen to know how to get to California from here?” Cordelia asks.
The compass wand twitches.
Blythe narrows her eyes. “Say that again.”
“What? No.”
Jesus. Blythe reaches over and snatches the compass. “California! California!” she shouts. The wand wiggles. “Uh…San Diego, California!” It twitches west, then snaps back into place.
Realization dawns in Cordelia’s eyes. “Didn’t Katia have a…”
She snatches a whole laundry list of things out of the cloak: water bottles, a hair clip, fistfuls of change.
Finally, she reaches a slip of paper and unfolds it. “25 Maple Drive, 91932!”
“25 MAPLE DRIVE SAN DIEGO CALIFORNIA 91932!” Blythe shrieks.
The wand spins to the east: and there it stays.
“Holy shit, I did it!” Blythe shouts
Cordelia looks like she’s about to burst a blood vessel. “You did it!?”
“I-I feel like it was more of a group effort,” Daniel stammers.
Blythe laughs, because either way, with this compass, their journey is set. They don’t need to study the ins and outs of the Tempore for years before they can use it. They have a cheat code.
They drive with the windows up to keep out the cold. Cordelia puts on the heat, draws her knees up to her chest, and gets on her phone.
“What are you doing?” Blythe asks.
Cordelia doesn’t look up. “Handling my business.”
Blythe sighs. “Okay, even you have to admit this is stupid. We’re both going to Electric City, we could help each other.”
But Cordelia does not speak. She is holding her secrets tight in her perfectly manicured hands.
The line of seven trees appears in their path not long after three A.M. It is too late to appear on anyone’s doorstep, let alone to even be awake, so the three of them agree to spend the rest of the night just outside of the darkness. If something tries to attack, Blythe can stomp on the gas and have them out of the Tempore in no time.
“Have you got any blankets in here?” Cordelia asks.
“Are you going to show me what you’re doing?” Blythe asks, which makes Cordelia sneer and turn her back on Blythe, making herself comfortable without blankets.
Blythe glances to Daniel in the back. “I could give you a blanket. Consider it a consolation prize for not being an asshole.”
Daniel brushes the curls from his face. “Oh, n-no thank you,” he stammers. “I-I-I don’t sleep. I haven’t slept in four days.”
“Christ!” Blythe gasps. “Why not?”
“I—” Daniel swallows hard. “The song could come back.”
Sometimes Blythe forgets that she is not the only one who heard the song that night. The roof incident is not only her trauma. And it’s selfish to think so.
She should tell Daniel about the shard—it might be reassuring to know that the Trident Republic can no longer control them.
But perhaps it’s safer to keep that information to herself for now. There’s still no telling what kind of trouble that shard will get her into. What if Daniel gets in trouble just for knowing where it is?
“I’m sorry, Daniel,” Blythe says. “But I…have a feeling it won’t be coming back soon.”
If Daniel senses anything off about what she’s said, he doesn’t mention it.
“There’s food in the cooler if you get hungry,” Blythe adds. “Wake me up if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” Daniel says.
Blythe shifts to her side, facing the ice crawling up her window. Sleep is just beginning to overtake her when Daniel’s voice reaches her ears.
“Blythe?”
“Hmm?”
The world is silent and still around them. Daniel’s voice is as soft as a breeze. “Thanks for not leaving me.”
In the rearview mirror, Daniel’s eyes are set on her. He has the expression of someone who fears being seen as expendable.
“Of course,” Blythe says. “I’m glad you’re here, Daniel.”
She falls asleep not long after, entering a world of fitful dreams.
The Full Cup explodes.
She’s driving down a road and it’s too dark to see.
Someone is screaming. Screaming. Screaming.
Blythe jolts awake as soon as she realizes she is hearing her own screams.
Cordelia is still asleep, her head against the window and her hand over her eyes. Snow has piled on the window and Blythe’s skin shivers with cold. She checks the heat, but it’s on.
The backseat door is open.
A couple yards away, Daniel is kneeling in the snow. Blythe checks her phone: seven thirty in the morning. It’s a good enough time to wake, especially since they are in no position to waste time.
Blythe opens her door and, shuddering from the numbing snow leaking into her sneakers, wanders over to Daniel.
His grimoire lies open on his lap. Blythe’s not sure what she expected the book to contain, but the pages are cramped with notes in handwriting too small and fine for Blythe to read. There are complex sketches and diagrams, one of which Daniel is currently creating with a fountain pen.
Daniel jumps, looking wide-eyed over his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Blythe apologizes. “It’s just me.”
Daniel’s breath escapes in a cloud. “I-It’s alright. Hello.”
He does not return to his work. Instead, he stares in front of him, as if he meant to write alone.
But Blythe’s nosy, so she lingers anyway. “What are you doing?” she asks.
“Recording notes.”
“On what?” Blythe asks. Maybe a better question would be “for what”.
The sketch on the cream page is strikingly similar to the plant in front of Daniel. They look like blueberries, if blueberries grew in the hearts of silver-petaled flowers. Daniel’s sketch is less like art and more like a scientific dissection.
“These flowers here,” he answers. “They thrive in the cold and their bulbs form edible berries. The petals and stem are edible as well, but most of the nutrients is found in the…” He stops. “Sorry. Y-You probably don’t want to hear about that.”
“No, no, it’s cool,” Blythe says. “I mean, I love talking about space and the stars, y’know, all that NASA type stuff but most people…do not. And I don’t want to bore them. So, I feel you.”
Daniel moves his fingertip along the petal’s edges. The flower grows toward his palm, the stalk stretching higher and the leaves reaching toward him.
“You can make plants grow,” Blythe whispers.
“Just small ones,” Daniel says. “I-I’m not very good yet.”
As she watches the flower patch shake off its snow and glow in the moonl
ight, Blythe realizes that these are the moments she imagines when she thinks of magic. Perhaps Daniel is a junior thaumologist.
“It’s still cool,” Blythe insists. “What’re you looking at these flowers for, though? Just for fun?”
Daniel is quiet. Blythe wonders if he’ll even reply. “No,” he finally says. “I…need them.”
“For what?”
Daniel has gone silent again. He folds his hands in his lap, staring at the flowers as if they could give him advice on whether or not he should speak.
“I’m…” he begins. His gaze trembles along the ground. “I’m making something.”
“What is it?”
Daniel’s blonde lashes brush his cheeks. He closes his book, tucks it under his arm. His face is beet red. “I-I’d rather not say.”
“That’s fair,” Blythe relents. She can’t push him to say any more—not without feeling incredibly guilty, at least. The last thing she wants is to make him uncomfortable.
Daniel faces her head on, squinting against the falling snow. “The people who attacked us took your family, didn’t they?”
Now it is Blythe’s turn to swallow. But this interrogation is only fair.
“Yeah,” she agrees.
“Do you miss them?”
“Every second.”
Daniel hesitates. It is almost as if he does not want to speak. “What happens if we can’t save them?”
The question weighs hard on Blythe’s chest. Those words have lingered in the back of her mind since she left her house.
“I’d rather not say,” she says.
They wake Cordelia, but she insists on changing her clothes and redoing her makeup.
(Blythe’s never seen Cordelia wearing anything other than pastels, and she has perfected the natural glow of “no makeup” makeup. Blythe would never say this out loud, but it’s very cute).
Meanwhile, Blythe runs through their supplies; thanks to the money Cordelia stole from Katia, they’re in pretty good standing.
When everyone is ready, they buckle up and drive straight into the darkness behind the trees.
And, just like that, they have entered California.
The van stops in a park. Gone are the piles of snow and numbing cold. The land is flat enough for Blythe to see for miles.
The breeze carries the scent of the sea, palm trees sway beneath a crystal blue sky, cement paths twist through green grass, seagulls caw and car horns sing.
It’s all such a contrast to Broughton; that town had small streets and small shops, while San Diego sports towering buildings, long highways and tangling streets.
And, of course, on their right, the beach holds hands with the ocean.
“I love it, we’re staying forever,” Blythe blurts.
Daniel frowns. “T-This Guardian lives in a park?”
“No,” Cordelia grumbles. “Katia said the Tempore accesses groups of trees. It’d be safe to assume that this park is as close as it could bring us. I’m just worried we’ll get in trouble for driving in here—”
Blythe slams the gas and they rip forward, shooting through the park and bursting out onto the street to a flurry of panicked honking.
“Nyoom,” Blythe teases, grinning.
“Every time you get in a good mood, you nearly kill us!” Cordelia screams.
Blythe laughs; it’s hard not to, with the sunlight bathing warm on her skin and hot, shirtless guys skateboarding down the sidewalk.
“Calm down, we’re in California, we’ll be fine,” she says.
Daniel takes one look out of the window and instantly pales. “I-I’ve never…” he stammers. “Those buildings are huge…”
“Welcome to the city, Daniel,” Blythe says.
Daniel shakes his head, curls bouncing. “I-I want to be un-welcomed.”
“Oh, that reminds me, you still need a phone,” Blythe says. “We can stop at a Zadis store on our way to this kid’s house. What’s their name?”
“Antonio Torres,” Cordelia answers. “And Zadis phones are far too expensive.”
“Fine, Mom, we’ll get him an Android,” Blythe says. “Sorry we had to do this to you, Daniel.”
Using the GPS on Cordelia’s Zadis, they navigate to an air-conditioned mall where they’re most likely to find an Android store.
Cordelia immediately departs to buy clothes. “You don’t need clothes,” Blythe says.
“By splitting with Katia, we’ve doubled the length of this trip to a duration I did not accommodate for while packing,” Cordelia retorts. “So yes, I do need clothes.”
She flips her hair and walks off, while Blythe calls, “You just want to be able to say you shopped in California!”
“Sorry, Blythe, I can’t hear you!”
“You’re ten feet away and my voice is a public disturbance!”
Cordelia just keeps going.
Daniel and Blythe manage to purchase a phone without her, and as they head out, Blythe asks Daniel if he knows how to use it.
Daniel is mesmerized by the piece of technology in his hand. “Not at all.”
Blythe runs him through the basics and adds in herself as one of the contacts.
“Do you remember your parents’ numbers?” She asks.
“W-We had phone landline at our house…could we try that?”
“Sure!”
Daniel punches in the number. He actually looks excited.
“I hope someone answers,” he says as he raises it to his ear. Moments later, his expression fades. “Oh…”
“No one answered?” Blythe asks.
Daniel studies the dark screen. “N-No,” he stammers.
Blythe tries to tell him he can try again later, but he has gone back to his usual resigned silence.
Cordelia waits in the van. She has amassed three shopping bags, a pair of Black shades, and a Starbucks iced tea.
“It’s eight in the morning,” she says from the passenger seat. “Tea will put me in a better mood.”
“What do you mean ‘better’? All your moods suck,” Blythe snorts as she climbs in. “Here, add your number into Daniel’s phone. Oh, and mine, so I can make a group chat.”
Cordelia arches an eyebrow behind her shades. “Blythe, how desperate are you to have friends?”
“Fine, don’t add your number. Then, if you get kidnapped, I won’t even have to bother trying to find you.”
Cordelia sighs, but she does it. The first notification appears instantly.
BLYTHE FULTON has named the group chat GUARDIANS
And then Blythe’s phone buzzes.
CORDELIA DELEON has named the group chat NEUTRAL GC NAME
“You’ve just put the identities of three Guardians in one place and named it Guardians,” Cordelia snaps. She has a point. But still.
“‘Neutral GC name’ isn’t less suspicious,” Blythe retorts.
Her phone buzzes again.
DANIEL QUINTON: Hello.
Behind them, Daniel gasps. “Oh my, it works.” His earlier pensive attitude has been replaced with wonder as he leans into the front seat to see Blythe’s phone. “And you can both see it?”
Blythe is about to explain when she gets the sensation that her body is no longer hers.
Her muscles seize. Her foot hits the gas and the van flies toward a palm tree.
The hood slams into it. Hard. Blythe rips forward. Her forehead bounces off the wheel and throws her back against her seat.
Her thoughts are a broken record of oh God oh God oh God.
This couldn’t have happened. It couldn’t have. She has the shard—the Trident Republic can’t control them without the shard.
If anyone outside noticed them, they haven’t come to help. The radio plays as if nothing is wrong. The airbags haven’t even deployed.
Cordelia’s tea has sloshed over the dashboard. “What was that?!” she shrieks. “Did you just—”
“No,” Blythe says. “It wasn’t me! But that was…that was different! It was different this time.”
<
br /> The force felt as if it were controlling her limbs like a puppet on a string. It was not the all-encompassing, internal warfare the Trident Republic brought upon her.
Sobs echo from the backseat. Daniel has curled forward, his face in his hands.
“Daniel?” Blythe calls. She can’t stop shaking. “Daniel, it’s okay, we’re alright.”
He looks up at her with eyes rimmed red. “No, we’re not! We’re not okay, I’m not okay! It was different, I know it was different!”
“We’ve all been through this before,” Cordelia growls. “We all know the Trident Republic is trying to kill us. That’s not new.”
There is no way Blythe and Daniel are both wrong. It had to have been new. Blythe looks toward the trunk.
“What are you doing?” Cordelia asks as Blythe crawls over the seats. She searches through the bags and boxes of snacks until she spots the Fruit Rollup box.
She dumps it out on the van’s floor. The last thing to plop out is—relief washes over Blythe—her beanie.
“Please tell me there’s something other than Fruit Rollups in there,” Cordelia says.
“It’s a shard,” Blythe answers.
She explains the situation as best she can; how she stole the shard from the men before meeting Katia, how the Trident Republic can’t mind control them without it.
“Which means that control must have been something different,” She finishes.
Daniel is still pale white. He doesn’t keep eye contact with Blythe.
Cordelia snorts. “And when were you going to tell us this?” she snaps.
“If I didn’t have to? Never,” Blythe retorts. “I shouldn’t have this. I’m pretty sure the guys I took it from are going to pull a lot of shit to get it back. The less people who know about this, the better. But you see what I mean, right? The Trident Republic has no way of controlling us. Not anymore. It had to have been different.”
An idea clicks in her head. “Wait, you’re the Guardian of the Mind though, right?” Blythe asks. “You could do something about this, can’t you? You broke out of the mind control before. Maybe you could…”
Cordelia is gaping at her. It is not the shock of someone who is having an epiphany, but the shock of someone who has just been ridiculously offended.
