Mythos (The Descendants, #1)

by Vrinda Pendred

  * * *

  They window-shopped for the next hour before getting back on the bus to Itzy’s house. They walked up the path splitting her front garden into two halves and Itzy fished her key out of her pocket.

  ‘I hear voices,’ Devon said.

  ‘You should get that seen to,’ Itzy said as she put her key in the door and turned the handle.

  But Devon was right. Inside, someone sat on a chair at the dining table at the end of the kitchen, across from a very tired looking Myra. They had mugs of tea: one had a peeling image of Mickey Mouse, from a trip to Disneyland Paris the family had taken back in the days when Stephen was still around; the other was from Madam Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors.

  ‘Mum?’ Itzy started. Then she saw who was drinking out of the Chamber of Horrors mug.

  Seth put the mug down on the table, some of the tea splashing out, and he beamed a smile at her. ‘Hey, Itz!’

  Devon leaned in to her friend and whispered, ‘Isn’t that…?’

  Itzy nodded. She lunged for the table and glued her eyes to him. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Itzel Loveguard,’ said Myra. She placed her hand over one of Itzy’s. ‘Where are your manners?’

  Itzy pulled away from her mother and rolled her eyes. ‘Sorry. Excuse me, why are you here?’

  ‘I was waiting for you,’ Seth told her. His eyes were particularly blue under the sunlight that streamed through the oversized window above the table. Something fuzzy and brown was on his lap.

  ‘What are you doing with Parson Brown?’ Itzy demanded.

  Seth looked down and laughed. He picked up the bear and sat it on the table, like he wanted it to join in the conversation. ‘Well done,’ he said.

  Itzy couldn’t help herself. She grabbed his hand and yanked him to his feet. ‘Sorry, Mum. He’s coming with me.’

  He followed obediently, Devon in their tow. Seth looked over his shoulder and called back, ‘Lovely chatting with you, Mrs Loveguard!’

  Up in Itzy’s room, she slammed the door shut and leaned back against it, her arms, like her mood, crossed. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she barked at him.

  Seth’s face was all innocence. ‘I told you: I was waiting for you.’

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ she said. She stomped angrily across the room and sat on her bed, next to Devon. ‘I mean with the bear. Talking about it in that cryptic way, right in front of my mum.’

  Seth plopped himself down on her desk chair and spun it around in a circle twice, before setting his feet down on the floor and stopping himself so he faced the girls. ‘Like you’re doing in front of Devon, you mean?’

  Itzy flushed. ‘That’s different. She…she knows.’

  ‘Ah.’ His strong hands flashed through the air and Parson Brown dropped into his lap. Devon gave a little gasp, and he chuckled. ‘Bit different actually seeing it, isn’t it?’ he said, obviously enjoying the impression he was making. He tossed the bear from hand to hand, like a juggling ball, before suddenly throwing it at Itzy. She jumped and caught it and he looked pleased. ‘Nice reflexes,’ he commended.

  Itzy scowled. ‘Am I meant to be flattered?’

  ‘You can be whatever you want to be,’ he said. It was hard to tell if he just wasn’t bothered or if his words carried some deeper meaning.

  She allowed herself a moment to take him in. He wore navy blue track bottoms and a fitted blue top that showed off the contours of his chest. But as chiselled as his body was, his hands were slender and looked like they were made to hold a paintbrush or a conductor’s wand.

  He indicated her t-shirt, the one that read Heartbreaker, and asked, ‘Is that supposed to be a warning?’

  Itzy chose to move things along. ‘Why were you waiting for me?’

  ‘Training.’

  She groaned and fell backward. The top of her ponytail dug into her head as she hit the bed.

  Devon took that as her opportunity to reiterate her earlier question: ‘So what are you training for?’

  Seth raised one of his golden eyebrows. ‘You’re quicker than your friend,’ he noted. On the bed, Itzy threw her hands over her eyes and groaned again. ‘The fact is,’ he said to Devon, ‘if I told you, Oz would kill me.’

  Itzy sat up. ‘My brother? Why does he care?’

  ‘More importantly,’ Devon broke in, ‘what’s he hiding?’

  Seth regarded her coolly. ‘I’m guessing you didn’t tell her everything?’ he said, his eyes never leaving Devon.

  ‘I thought maybe I’d leave out all the crazy stuff,’ Itzy told him in a dry voice.

  He grinned in that maddening way of his. ‘The crazy stuff,’ he repeated.

  Devon turned to her friend. ‘Itz. What’s he mean?’

  ‘Hrmph,’ said Itzy as she flopped back on the bed once more. Why oh why couldn’t she rewrite this scene? More precisely, why couldn’t she take herself out of it?

  ‘We’re descended from aliens,’ Seth announced just as easily as if he’d been telling her he was taking swimming lessons.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Devon, ‘and I’m from the future. Can’t you tell from my fashion sense?’

  ‘I like her,’ Seth told Itzy. ‘She has a better sense of humour than you.’

  ‘Great,’ Itzy mumbled. ‘Remember to invite me to the wedding.’ She turned her gaze to Devon. ‘Dev, he actually thinks he’s being serious.’

  ‘Rather worryingly, I gathered that. So, aliens, huh?’ Devon said.

  ‘Not ET,’ Seth said. ‘Ever heard of Atlantis?’

  ‘You mean the Disney film?’

  If anyone could make a shake of the head look patronising, it was Seth, and he did so now. ‘No. I mean the actual lost city of Atlantis.’

  Devon’s eyes lit up. She looked down at Itzy, who had grown quiet and still. ‘Hey, didn’t your dad used to talk about that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Itzy said, not moving, waiting for Seth to continue.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Devon said, turning back to him. ‘I remember, now. He had a book on it. He left it here and we found it once and looked through it. It was all about some myth that aliens had come down to Earth and mated with humans and formed some city called Atlantis. But it sank under the ocean and the aliens went back to their home planet and lots of people have been trying to find the city, since then. Isn’t there even a theory that Christopher Columbus was searching for it?’

  Seth gave her an approving look. ‘Very good,’ he said. He sounded like a teacher. ‘Well, it’s not a myth. Atlantis is very real. It’s where my ancestors first landed, thousands of years ago. Though we weren’t the first ones to come here. There were others here before them, all over the world.’

  Devon smiled. ‘Right. And then they went back home, yeah?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So Itzy’s dad wasn’t reading about it because he was an archaeologist. He just wanted to learn about his family history.’

  Seth grinned. ‘You catch on quickly.’

  Devon looked at her friend. She took her by the hands and pulled at her. ‘Itzy, get up.’ She did, and they stared at each other. ‘How much of this do you believe?’

  Itzy shrugged. ‘Dunno. I mean, you’ve seen what he can do. I’ve told you what I can do. That’s strange enough. Who knows about the rest?’

  Devon considered this carefully. Then she let her eyes rest on Seth again. He had resumed spinning around in the desk chair. There was something too confident about him even then. It made Itzy wish she could do something to break his cool exterior and see if something more lay beneath. She thought something must, because she’d caught a glimpse of it at the funeral. But since then….

  ‘So why are you telling me all of this?’ Devon wondered.

  Seth stopped spinning and shrugged. ‘Itzy trusts you. That’s enough for me.’

  Itzy had no idea what to do with that, so she stood up with new determination and said, ‘Okay. Le
t’s start training, then.’

  Seth’s eyes twitched and he stood too. ‘Fantastic.’

  In three swift steps, he was standing face to face with her, while Devon sat on the bed and watched them like the latest film craze.

  ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘now think of something you want to happen. But not anything likely to get us attacked by cuddly toys,’ he warned with a reprimanding shake of his forefinger. He turned to Devon to explain. ‘Last night, she made her bear try to kill me.’ He shook his head as if to say, What’s our Itzy like, eh?

  Itzy tried to ignore the astonishment on her friend’s face. ‘I’m not sure what to do,’ she said.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be big,’ Seth urged her along. ‘Start small. Something like….’

  ‘Ooh, I know!’ Devon cried, raising her hand like they were in school. Her companions turned in her direction, waiting for her to reveal her great idea. ‘Turn the lights on and off. Just by blinking. That would be so cool. You’d be like Bewitched.’

  Seth returned his gaze to Itzy. He had an expectant look on his face. ‘You heard the girl. That’s your first request, so come on, get to it.’

  Itzy looked up at the lamp shade that hung from her ceiling. It was cream-coloured and painted with Chinese lettering. She wasn’t certain, but she believed it read, Peace. She had bought it once to inspire her toward a more stable mental and emotional state, but it hadn’t done anything more than protect her from the glare of the light bulb.

  It was off, now, because it was bright outside, the sun streaking into the room. But Devon was already fixing that by climbing to her knees on the bed and drawing the curtains closed, plunging them into heavy shade. Then Devon resituated herself on the bed, waiting for the magic show to begin.

  Itzy swallowed. She felt very on the spot. ‘Remember,’ she warned, ‘I might not be able to do this.’

  Seth shook his head with impatience. ‘Stop it.’ He drew his arms together in an X and then swept them apart. ‘Stop being so negative about yourself. You know, I once read a story about a man who fell in love with a planet, and he decided he would never be happy unless he was with it. So he went to the top of a cliff and jumped off, thinking he could fly to the planet. But in the last second, he thought, This is impossible, and he fell to his death.’

  Itzy blinked at him in bewilderment. ‘Is that meant to be inspirational?’

  Seth laughed. ‘The moral of the story is: there’s no such thing as impossible; there’s only the belief that something is impossible. Aim for the stars and you might reach them - as long as you never doubt yourself.’

  Itzy thought that was easy for him to say. In many ways, he was perfect; she had to give him that. He was handsome and strong and had an easy way about him. She realised that despite how annoying he could be, she was coming to like his company.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘Aim for the stars.’

  ‘Or in this case, the light bulb,’ Seth joked.

  But when Itzy closed her eyes, she found that the stars and the bulb were similar. They were both fiery illumination in her mind, heating her inside. She could see the shadows of scarlet letters dancing against the backdrop of space, waiting for her to drag them out and be seen.

  She reached out in her mind - yes, it was as if her mind had arms - and tried to grab hold of them, but she couldn’t seem to touch them. Every time she moved toward them, they stepped aside, tricking her and sneaking away.

  She tried again, but they just kept leaping out of the way. It was frustrating, because she was so close to them, they were right there, and yet they slipped away from her like eels. Her head swam with thoughts - distracted thoughts, not about light, but about other things too, like Ash, and Seth, and Myra downstairs having one of her rare lucid moments where she felt she had the right to talk to Itzy like a mother just because Seth and Devon were there. But she never seemed to do it when it was just the two of them. Myra was very like Stephen, in that way. They both made an effort when they felt they had to perform for an audience, but they never thought Itzy needed to see that performance too.

  She felt herself grow angry, until it was full-blown rage and the space in her head shifted from red to black. The stars disappeared and the letters glowed hotly, asking to be held. She thrust her mental hand around them before they could escape her again and she forced them violently into words, words into sentences, and when she thought she was done, she added the full stop.

  Then she opened her eyes and noticed Seth looked nervous.

  ‘What -’ Itzy began, but she was interrupted by the sound of smashing glass.

  She looked up, just in time to see the light bulb drop down over her head. She wanted to move out of the way, to avoid it, or even just to turn her eyes away, to protect herself in some way, but she couldn’t get her body to work. It felt like everything was moving in slow-motion.

  She heard Devon shriek, and suddenly she was torn aside. Time sped back up to its normal rate and she watched as the glass fell to the carpet, bouncing in all directions. A piece landed in Parson Brown’s ear. He was having a very bad time of it, indeed.

  Then Itzy became aware that Seth was standing just behind her, his hands gripping her arms. She could feel his chest against her back, and the way his elevated heart rate made it rise and fall too quickly.

  ‘That was close,’ he breathed. He released her and knelt down on the floor, picking up a bit of glass and examining it from every angle. He whistled. ‘That’s some power you have.’

  ‘You did that?’ Devon cried in amazement. ‘You actually did that?’

  Itzy stood stunned, unable to answer. So Seth said, ‘Yes, she actually did that.’

  He sighed heavily and pushed himself back up so he was standing. He wiped his hands through the air, making the smashed glass vanish. Parson Brown silently thanked him. Seth looked up at the now defunct lamp shade and drew a circle in the air. He popped his fingers in the direction of the shade and a new light bulb appeared within it. He flicked his fingers and the room burst into brightness.

  Devon looked starry-eyed with incredulity. ‘That’s so cool,’ she said.

  Seth shrugged. His attention went to Itzy, who now looked miserable.

  ‘I’ll never be able to do what you do,’ Itzy told him. ‘I’m like the worst comic book character you’ve ever seen.’

  Seth smiled at her and shook his head gently. ‘No, you’re not. If anything, it’s my fault. I’m going about this all the wrong way.’ He ran his fingers through his hair, considering something. ‘Alright, new plan,’ he declared.

  He stepped forward so he was face to face with Itzy once more. He placed a hand on each of her shoulders and leaned forward so their foreheads touched, sending an involuntary shiver down her spine, which she desperately hoped he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.

  ‘Shh,’ he said softly. ‘The trouble with you is you only seem to be able to summon your power when you’re angry.’

  ‘I thought my trouble was I didn’t know how to control my anger.’

  ‘There are a lot of things about you that are trouble.’

  It was hard to tell if he was joking.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you all day,’ he said, startling her even more. ‘I think you freed Parson Brown this morning because you were annoyed with me for not helping.’

  She didn’t disagree.

  ‘But we can’t go making you angry every time we want you to use your power. That would be cruel - and, as we’ve learned, dangerous. You need to learn how to summon that energy from good feelings, too.’

  ‘I - I don’t have many good feelings,’ she said so quietly, she thought he hadn’t heard her.

  He had.

  ‘Then we need to work on that too,’ he said.

  Seth was disarmingly un-self-conscious. Despite Devon’s presence, he slid his hands down to Itzy’s arms and she f
elt her body loosen. It reminded her of the cool-down sessions at the end of the yoga classes she and Devon once attended.

  She felt heat emanate from Seth’s forehead and flow into her own. It made her think of something she’d read about once, called reiki. Supposedly, you could learn how to heal people by holding your hands just above their bodies and directing your energy at them. She could feel Seth’s energy now. It was intense, the way she felt when she was in one of her rages. Except she felt anything but angry. It was incredible to think that same energy could be found alongside such a feeling of peace.

  Peace. Had she really just thought that?

  Yes, she had. She felt a richer sense of peace than she’d ever known in her life. His body heat washed over her and filled her muscles, her organs, her blood with stillness. Her mind went blank, and it was beautiful.

  ‘What are you doing to me?’ she said under her breath, forgetting they had an audience, forgetting where they were, and almost forgetting who she was.

  ‘Shh,’ he said again. She could feel the air pushing away from his lips. ‘Now try to see the words.’

  The words? Oh, yes. The words. The letters swam up into her vision. They weren’t dancing or spinning the way they did when she was angry. They just sort of hung there, waiting for her to do something with them. Because for once in her life, she had tamed them.

  Itzy felt a tremendous sense of control in her head. She wasn’t outside her body this time; she was part of the black in her head, and it was part of her. She was there to guide it, rather than let it run amok like an unruly toddler in the throes of a fit.

  She could see the phantom hands of her mind arranging the letters into words, the words into a sentence. When it was finished, she added the full stop. All at once, the sentence glowed brightly, like a halogen light being switched on at night time. It burned itself into her mind’s eye, scaring her with its resolution: it would be real.

  Seth kissed her. His lips brushed hers, sending another shiver down her back. Then she felt his hands leave her arms, his head leap from hers, and she heard him step backward.

  Her eyes fluttered open, the room not quite looking real yet. Seth wore that same expression she had seen on him the night before, after she’d gone into her trance. All his usual arrogance had drained from his face and been replaced with something akin to awe. But this time, she thought there was maybe a little fear mixed in with it too. All he needed was a cross and she could have been the vampire he was warding off.

  ‘What happened?’ Devon broke in breathlessly.

  Itzy couldn’t take her eyes off Seth, who had stepped away from her again. ‘I - I don’t know.’

  ‘Well,’ said Devon, ‘did it work? I didn’t see you write anything.’

  No, she hadn’t. It was just like Seth when he drew in the air. The writing had been in Itzy’s mind. All those times her head had been ravaged with migraine, the letters swimming and sinking in her vision, they had been waiting for her to do something with them. It had happened that morning too, with the bear. But this time she had been in conscious control of it.

  ‘Seth,’ she said.

  He shook himself like he’d just caught a chill, and resumed that more familiar look of condescension. ‘Well done,’ he congratulated her. ‘Though if you’d wanted to kiss me, you could’ve just asked. I hate to see a girl drive herself mad with longing.’ He winked at her, destroying the perfection of the previous moment.

  Itzy glowered at him.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘Oz will want to see this.’

  Devon asked, ‘Why?’

  Seth looked like he’d just remembered something. ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? He’s the one who trained me.’

  ELEVEN

  Oz wasn’t home when the trio arrived. The girls settled themselves on bar stools at the countertop that ran along the length of the kitchen wall, while Seth moved his hands in a flurry through the air.

  ‘Catch,’ he said, and a great wooden bowl of salad fell out of the air and into Itzy’s hands. She almost missed, and he smirked at her.

  When dinner was laid out on the dining table, they sat around it, Seth on one side and the girls opposite. Through the windows, they heard the soft pattering of rain. It seemed the sun had gone in after its brief run over the last few days.

  Some time later, the front door opened and a telltale head of black hair shook itself dry, splashing rainwater all over the walls. Oz removed the leather jacket he was wearing and slung it over his arm, following the sound of voices. When he saw them, he stared.

  ‘Welcome home,’ Seth said, mischief playing in his cloudy eyes.

  ‘Why is she still here?’ Oz asked.

  Seth grinned. ‘She’s not still here. She went home and now she’s back. Besides, she’s my pet. You said I could keep her, as long as I remembered to feed her. So here. I’m feeding her.’

  ‘I see,’ Oz said through gritted teeth. He threw his jacket over the spare chair and sat down at the table with them, next to his housemate. ‘What is this stuff?’

  ‘Burritos,’ Seth told him. ‘In honour of Itzy.’ When Oz looked like he didn’t understand, Seth explained, ‘They’re Mexican. Like Itzy’s name.’

  Oz rolled his eyes. ‘I seriously doubt the ancient Mayans ate burritos.’ He served himself one and took a bite, chewing it thoughtfully. ‘Not bad,’ he mused. He gave Devon a cursory glance over the top of the burrito in his hand. ‘Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’

  ‘I never told it to you.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, remembering. ‘Itzy was too busy telling me off for eating, instead of throwing myself on the floor in hysterics.’

  Devon gave him a stern look and made as if to say something smart in return, but decided it wouldn’t do any good; Oz would think what he wanted. ‘Anyway,’ she moved on, ‘it’s Devon.’

  Oz nodded but didn’t say anything, choosing instead to munch on his food.

  ‘Itzy has something to show you,’ Seth announced, impervious to the tension in the room. He sounded like a proud parent ready to tack his child’s finger painting on the fridge door.

  ‘Oh?’ Oz said around a mouthful of burrito.

  Itzy shifted shyly and looked down at her nearly empty plate. She, Devon and Seth had already mostly finished their dinner. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said.

  ‘How can you say that?’ said Seth. He turned back to Oz. ‘She made me kiss her.’

  Oz choked on his food and dropped the burrito on his plate. ‘Please don’t show me that.’

  Seth sighed dramatically and gave him a whatever will we do with you? shake of the head. ‘You don’t get it.’ He lowered his voice and said gravely, ‘She made me do it.’

  Some underlying meaning to Seth’s words seemed to take control of Oz’s head, slowly lifting it. ‘Oh,’ Oz said heavily. And then again, ‘Oh.’

  He glanced at his sister with what might have been fascination, except his eyes were empty. Itzy felt like an animal who had forgotten how to run in the face of an oncoming car. Or maybe a heavy goods vehicle. Would he swerve? Or would he gun the engine and run her down for fun?

  ‘That was fast,’ he finally said.

  ‘Unbelievably fast,’ Seth affirmed. ‘I think now’s the time I say I told you so.’

  Something appeared to be happening between the two boys that was beyond the girls’ awareness. They were sharing something, the memory of a private conversation. Itzy got the impression that perhaps what Oz and Seth had was like what she had with Devon.

  ‘I guess it is,’ Oz admitted. Then he resumed eating, like they hadn’t just had that bizarre exchange. ‘I take it Devon’s seen your little magic tricks,’ he spoke to his plate.

  ‘Psh.’ Seth waved one of his painter’s hands. ‘She’s Itzy’s friend. I don’t see what’s the big deal.’

  It was the wrong thing to say. Oz’s shot him a black look through his periphery, though his head did
n’t move. ‘You should do something about that memory problem.’

  Seth closed his eyes and exhaled softly. When he reopened his eyes, he said, ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘No, you just think you can’t be hurt.’

  Seth gawked at him. Frankly, so did the girls. Oz shoved his plate aside and slunk back in his chair, making the legs creak. ‘I’ve lost my appetite.’

  Seth’s right hand whipped across the air and everything on the table disappeared. Oz started, looking faintly disappointed that his dinner had vanished. Seth looked at him knowingly. ‘Don’t have a tantrum if you don’t want me to call your bluff.’

  Oz jumped from his chair and huffed into the lounge to brood alone on the sofa. The girls’ eyes followed him, and then turned back to Seth, who shrugged.

  ‘What was he on about?’ Itzy asked when he’d gone.

  Seth pinched his forehead with his thumb and forefinger and massaged the tanned skin. ‘Oh, Oz has this idea someone’s spying on us.’

  ‘Why would he think that?’ Devon asked.

  Seth removed his hand from his head and placed it on the table in front of him. ‘He’s worried about that message Itzy’s father wrote.’

  Itzy couldn’t help herself: she leaned in. ‘Does he know what it means?’

  Seth shook his head, his blond hair fluttering. ‘But he’s been going through your dad’s old papers - we drove over and got them this morning - and I think it’s making him paranoid.’

  Itzy felt like they should be whispering. It seemed wrong to talk about someone when he was in the next room. ‘How?’

  ‘Well,’ Seth said, his eyes on hers, ‘for one thing, he spent three hours online reading about 2012.’

  Devon wrinkled her nose. ‘You mean like that Mayan prophecy thing?’

  ‘Like father, like son,’ Itzy muttered.

  Seth looked at her, interested. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh. Dad was always going on about that. He went to Mexico when I was eight and he came back with all these pictures of the pyramids. It was really boring, to be honest. Who wants to look at someone else’s holiday photos?’

  ‘Why didn’t you go?’ Seth asked.

  ‘He wouldn’t let us come with him. He never did. Always insisted on going alone.’

  Itzy remembered a time when her mother had dared to go somewhere on her own. That hadn’t gone down well. It seemed that rule only worked one way. Sure, there had been beach holidays, and Disneyland, but those never meant anything to her father. He always seemed distant, remote, like his mind was in another country only he could see. Those trips had only been for show, to give the impression that they were a normal family. Mexico had been different.

  She noticed Seth was watching her. Was that sympathy in his eyes?

  ‘I thought only nutters believed in that 2012 stuff,’ said Devon.

  Seth smiled. ‘Maybe. But there’s more to it than you’d think. A lot of…us…were waiting for 2012 a long time. It was said there would be great change at the end of the year.’

  ‘The end of the world as we know it,’ Itzy spoke as if in a dream.

  He nodded at her. ‘Exactly. But not for normal people.’

  ‘Normal?’ Devon repeated, clearly sensing he meant people like her.

  ‘You know.’ Seth shrugged in apology. ‘Anyway, that end of the world stuff was only meant to affect the Descendants.’

  ‘Of the aliens,’ Devon filled in. His head bowed in acknowledgment. ‘But the world didn’t end. 2012 came and went and everything’s fine, right?’

  Seth inclined his head in Itzy’s direction, waiting for her to jump in.

  She turned to her friend and explained, ‘The world was never meant to end. Like I said, it was just supposed to be the end of the world as we know it. Everything was meant to change.’

  ‘But not all at once,’ Seth added. ‘It wasn’t like, snap -’ he snapped his fingers ‘- and everything’s different. It was just the end of that era, and the beginning of something new.’

  ‘So what happens in this new era?’ asked Itzy.

  ‘That’s just the thing. No one knows. The Mayans disappeared - or maybe they just went home,’ he mused, ‘and no one’s been able to interpret the old prophecies properly. There are all sorts of theories, of course. That World War Three would break out and we’d all die horrible radioactive deaths like something out of On the Beach. That all the volcanoes around the globe would erupt and the Earth would be encased in ash, blocking out the sun and initiating the next ice age. You name it, they’ve thought it. There was even a theory that after 2012, the Descendants would start to think in unison.’

  Devon blinked. ‘You mean, like as one organism?’

  Seth’s blue eyes lit up. ‘Precisely. You get a gold star.’

  Itzy shuddered. ‘That’s creepy.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Because it’s like losing control and becoming one of those cybermen off Doctor Who.’

  Seth grew ponderous. ‘Hm. I hadn’t looked at it that way. Well, anyway. I’m sure it’s all nonsense. Whatever is happening, it’s probably more connected to our powers.’

  Devon’s eyes widened with excitement and she clasped her hands together. ‘Ooh, you mean like it’s heightening them somehow?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Seth. ‘More like…it’s causing them. Mine only started in 2012. Same as Oz.’

  ‘But that doesn’t work,’ Devon told him. ‘Because - ow!’ She turned to Itzy, who had kicked her under the table. ‘What’d you do that for?’

  ‘Yeah, Itz,’ Seth said, grinning at her. ‘What is it you don’t want me to know?’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ Itzy growled at the girl who was supposed to be her best friend. She turned to Seth, who was waiting for her patiently. ‘It’s just…the first time I can remember writing one of my…stories….’ She swallowed. ‘I was ten.’

  Seth folded his arms on top of each other on the table and leaned forward, exhaling. He smelled peppery. It wasn’t unpleasant. ‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘And might I enquire exactly what you wrote?’

  Itzy felt trapped. Seth had a way of looking at her that felt like iron shackles had been clamped down on her wrists, pinning her down.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Oz’s voice startled them.

  Seth eased back and was all smiles. ‘The prodigal son returns.’

  ‘Shut up. Itzy,’ Oz said, nodding to her. ‘I have something to show you.’

  Without a word, she got up and pushed her chair under the table. Devon put out her hand and held her friend back, just for a moment. There was a look in her eyes that said, Will you be okay on your own? Itzy moved her head almost imperceptibly, to reassure her. Devon gave her arm a squeeze before letting go and turning back to Seth, who had taken to drawing coloured balls out of the air and catapulting them around in perpetual motion.

  Itzy followed Oz up the stairs, into his room. Just like his sister, Oz seemed to despise blank space. One of the pale blue walls had been covered in star charts with pins stuck in them, as if he were tracking something. Another wall was half-covered with a bed, while the top half was filled with photographs of, and newspaper clippings about, crop circles.

  The third wall framed a wide window. Under that was a large table, instead of a desk. It was heaped with thick books and the air was speckled with their dust. Papers lay strewn all over the floor. It was a disaster zone, but something about that was comforting, in an otherwise showroom-looking house.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ he threw over his shoulder as he closed the door. ‘I didn’t know we’d have guests.’

  Itzy pointed to the papers. ‘What’s all this?’

  He bent over and started gathering them up into a messy pile. ‘Just some bits and bobs I’ve been working on.’ When Oz had picked everything up, he dumped it on the table, along with the musty old books. ‘I was listening to you, downstairs, you k
now.’

  He spun around and leaned back against the edge of the table, his ankles crossed over each other. His black hair brushed his sandy forehead and made his dark eyes stand out boldly.

  ‘I thought so,’ said Itzy. She remained standing; there was nowhere to sit down and he didn’t seem about to fix that.

  ‘You look so much like him,’ Oz commented.

  She knew who he meant. ‘So do you.’

  ‘Have you ever thought that was strange? That you take after him so much, but not your mum?’

  Itzy shrugged. Except actually, Oz was right. She’d always thought it was weird, and frustrating. Stephen Loveguard wasn’t exactly the sort of person she wanted to emulate, however unintentionally.

  ‘It’s because we’re Descendants,’ he told her. ‘It’s a dominant trait in the gene pool.’

  ‘Why didn’t he just find other alien spawn to marry?’ Itzy asked, unable to believe she was sort of being serious.

  ‘We’re hard to find,’ he said. ‘Well. We were hard to find.’

  ‘But now people are starting to have powers.’

  Oz nodded.

  ‘Look,’ she began. ‘There’s something I’ve always wondered. And I don’t know if it’s the right time to bring it up, but….’

  ‘There you go, not finishing your sentences again,’ Oz said. She was surprised to find he was smiling, like he was pleased with himself for managing to identify one of his sister’s idiosyncrasies.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ She rolled her eyes at him and flicked her long ponytail over her shoulder.

  He rotated his shoulders once and said, ‘Sorry. What did you want to know?’

  Itzy frowned, now unsure if what she was about to say was such a good idea, after all. ‘I don’t know how to say this delicately, so I’m just going to say it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She paused. ‘Did our dad ever…hit you?’ The light in Oz’s eyes went out, making them look like black pools. But Itzy caught something in them. ‘He did, didn’t he?’

  Oz didn’t answer. He had a look on his face like he’d been struck by a murderous vision he wished he could block out, but couldn’t.

  Then he snapped out of it. ‘Something you have to understand is that those mood swings? They’re all part of being a Descendent.’

  Itzy’s brow went up. ‘What do you mean?’

  Oz eased away from the table and stood straight. It made him look like a university professor.

  Like our father.

  He launched into his lesson. ‘Think of it like…there are two lots of DNA that make you who you are: there’s the human DNA, and then there’s the alien DNA. And sometimes, they don’t mix very well. Your brain starts splitting. It gets confused, frustrated. You lose your mind.’

  ‘You down a whole bottle of pills and write crazy messages to mess with your kids’ heads,’ Itzy finished in a bland voice.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that message was meant to mess with our heads. I think it was a very serious warning. He was trying to help us.’

  Something inside her shattered. ‘How the hell was that helping us? Do you have any idea what I went through, growing up? Do you really?’ Itzy barked at him. When he didn’t answer, she went on. ‘Most little girls spend all their time playing with Barbies, or creepy Bratz dolls, or whatever. They dress up and do each other’s hair and ogle boy band members in magazines at slumber parties. And okay, yeah, sometimes that was me. Sometimes,’ she repeated. ‘But most of the time, do you know what I was doing? Hiding. Making up stories where things were better than they were in real life and wishing I could just run away.

  ‘Except I couldn’t. And do you know why? Because I was terrified if I left the house, I’d come home and my mum would be dead. Dead. Devon was the only friend I had for years because I was too scared to let anyone else in, after everything I’d been through. I was so lonely.’

  She was breathing heavily. Now she’d got started, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. ‘The worst part was I couldn’t hate him. And not just because he was my dad, but because he wasn’t always like that. Sometimes he was really nice. I mean, really, really nice. Then he’d get, I dunno, possessed, and he’d lose it over something stupid. He’d be screaming, my mum would be screaming, finally I’d be screaming and begging them to stop. He’d have her hair in his hand and be dragging her across the floor, ramming her head into the wall like he couldn’t hear me.

  ‘Then one day, he decided I was old enough to take some of the heat myself. He threw me into a table. I ripped my arm open on a loose screw. I still have the scar. See?’

  Itzy twisted her arm around so Oz could see the white mark just by her elbow.

  ‘So I wrote a story. It…it was about a man who was married, with a little girl. But one day, they discovered the man already had a family, from years before. He had abandoned them when his first child was just a baby, and the mother had hunted him down so she could bring all the secrets of his past to light.’

  She glanced at Oz, to see his reaction, but his expression was unreadable.

  She swallowed. ‘I didn’t think it was any different to the stories I had been making up all my life - but it was. I literally wrote him out of our lives, because I couldn’t stand to be around him anymore. My own father. Except when he was gone, I missed him.’ She shook her head. ‘But not really. Not all of him. I missed the person he sometimes was, and what he could have been. I missed all the things I had hoped for and knew were impossible.’

  ‘And now,’ Oz finally spoke, ‘you’re not really mourning his death, but…the death of your dreams. If he’s gone for all time, there’s absolutely no way he can ever change. You never thought he would, but now you have no choice but to accept it. And it’s killing you.’

  Itzy stared at him in disbelief, her eyes stinging with hot tears. Her heart skipped a beat and she seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. She wished there were somewhere in that messy room for her to fall.

  ‘How did you know that?’ she whispered.

  Oz sighed and stepped toward her. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘it’s how I’ve been feeling, too.’

  His words exploded like a bomb in her chest. Her head filled with her oldest childhood memory. She was hiding in her wardrobe with the doors shut, her hands pressed to her ears to block out the sound of the screaming downstairs. And in her head, a prayer repeated itself over and over: I wish someone out there understood what I’m feeling.

  And here he was, in the flesh, like a dream come true. Someone had answered her prayer, after all.

  Realisation struck her like lightning. ‘You don’t resent me,’ she said. ‘You’re just…worried I might be too much like him.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Because you were scared of him.’

  He nodded again.

  Itzy’s mouth felt parched. ‘What…what was it you wanted to show me?’

  Oz blinked himself into remembering. ‘Oh yeah.’

  He turned back to the table and dug around the books and papers, searching for something. Finally, he yanked out a notebook covered in a pattern of black and white splotches. He handed it to her.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked. But as she ran her hand over the cover, she realised she recognised the book.

  ‘A journal,’ Oz said. Then he added quietly, ‘It was our father’s. Open it.’

  She could feel him watching her, waiting for her to do it. It was odd, but she was terrified of opening that book. It felt like an invasion of Stephen Loveguard’s privacy, the first moment when she would be privy to his secret thoughts. It made it even realer that he was dead, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he’d been thinking.

  Oz’s hands were on hers, making her open the book. The action was too easy; it didn’t match the momentousness of what they were doing. She threw her hand over the first page, hiding it, but her brother gently pried it off, revealing the b
lue ink strokes.

  The writing didn’t make sense. Instead of words, she saw dots, lines, numbers.

  ‘They’re coordinates,’ Oz explained.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Stars.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Why was he charting stars?’

  Oz put out his hand and flipped through some of the pages until there were sentences, scrawled out in that delicate cursive their father always used. Itzy felt a stab in the heart at the sight of it. How was it possible to miss someone who frightened you and you only ever half-knew anyway?

  She read what it said:

  Wednesday. Finally, after all these years…contact.

  Itzy lifted her head to meet her brother’s eyes. ‘Contact? With who?’

  Oz inhaled. ‘Just keep reading.’

  She did.

  After all these years? What am I saying? More like millennia. They disappeared, left us behind with no guidance. The Ancients took the Wisdom to their graves and left us in an era of dark ignorance.

  But surely they knew what was coming! They must have. How could they not have seen the change we would all face? How could they not have predicted what it would do to us? Even I…I’ve felt its effects for many years.

  Sometimes I wake up and I’ve forgotten who or what I am. I can’t even remember my own name. It’s like being drunk all the time. Then, when it passes, I’m racked with guilt, but I can’t think what I’ve done. All I know is people - everyone I love most - are looking at me with hatred, and I know something terrible has happened. Not just happened - I caused it. I did it. I’ve done terrible things. To her. To her mother. To him. To his mother. To myself.

  But I know I’m not the only one. It’s happening to all of us. One day, the Wisdom will be gone forever. I can’t let that happen.

  There was a break in the writing, and then Stephen had resumed further down the page:

  I just read what I wrote and it made me laugh. Here I am again, trying to justify my actions. I wonder how I’ll be judged when it’s all over.

  Itzy felt faint. Her brother seemed to notice, because he placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her. Then he turned the page so she could read more.

  They answered. After all our searching, I found them. I called them and they answered. I know it was them. It had to be. The pattern they left…it was just like the lines at Nazca. That was no ordinary circle. It was them.

  Itzy slammed the book shut on her late father’s paranoid ramblings. She’d read enough for one night, thank you. There was just one thing.

  ‘What’s Nazca?’

  Oz looked at her like she’d just stepped in gum. ‘He never told you about that?’

  She shook her head, feeling ruffled.

  ‘It’s in Peru.’

  ‘Oh. You mean those drawings on the ground that only make sense if you look at them from the sky?’

  He smiled now. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And they happened again, somewhere?’

  Oz turned back to the table and pulled out a sheet of paper. It was a print-out of a search result on Google Images. It was filled with repeated photographs of crude drawings of animals in a field in Wiltshire.

  ‘When did this happen?’ she asked as she took the paper and examined it.

  ‘Last month.’

  It was uncanny. Of course Itzy knew about the lines at Nazca. Stephen had a poster of them in his study when she was nine. She’d just forgotten what they were called. There had been a large bird with its wings outspread asymmetrically; a monkey with its tail curled into a tight spiral; a spider with wiggly legs; and other mysterious geometric figures, all carved into the Peruvian soil thousands of years ago. No one knew how they had been made, for you had to be flying to see the pictures. Itzy dimly recalled the alien landing theories she had once discarded as absurd.

  And these drawings in England were exact replicas of them, pressed into a field of leafy green maize like an enormous child had been playing with a box of stamps. An inexplicable chill shot through her.

  ‘And he thought these were…a response…to what?’

  Oz inhaled and exhaled deeply. ‘I’m not sure how he was doing it, but before our father died…well, earlier in the journal he says he was sending messages into space. He was trying to contact our ancestors.’

  Itzy didn’t know why, but Oz didn’t sound like he was pleased about that. ‘Is that bad?’

  He looked grim. ‘I don’t know.’ He dragged his fingers through his coal-coloured hair. ‘See, no one knows why the Ancients left Earth in the end. But there are legends. Stories about how they grew disgusted with the alien-human hybrids. They thought the gene pool was being diluted and they didn’t want it to continue. They tried to kerb it, but failed, so in the end, they just left, and they took the Wisdom with them.’

  Itzy’s head pounded from the onslaught of indigestible information. ‘Wait, slow down, please. What is this Wisdom, anyway?’

  ‘No -’

  ‘No one knows,’ she interrupted. ‘Okay, I see the pattern.’ She noticed a long column of silver on the windowsill. ‘Is that a telescope?’

  Oz looked in the same direction. ‘Yeah. Our dad gave it to me for my -’

  ‘Ninth birthday,’ she filled in.

  He raised one of his dark eyebrows at her. ‘So you can’t finish your own sentences, but you can finish mine? How did you know, anyway?’

  ‘Because he gave me the same thing for my ninth birthday,’ she told him. ‘May I look at it?’

  Oz had grown very pale. It made him look almost ghoulish, under his black hair. ‘Er…sure.’

  Itzy stepped around the table, bumping her leg into one of its own and toppling a book down to the floor. Oz hurried to pick it up, but didn’t remark upon it. She reached the wall and ran her fingers along the spine of the telescope. The metal felt cool and nostalgia rushed through her hands, up her arms, into her head. A solitary tear fell from her right eye, without warning.

  ‘I used to stay up late every night just staring up at the stars,’ she said, her gaze glued to the instrument. ‘I remember asking him if there was life on other planets.’

  Oz drew up behind her. ‘And he said, What a silly question. Of course there is.’

  She smiled to herself. ‘Yes. That’s exactly what he said.’

  She swivelled the telescope on its base so it was pointing at the moon. It was only 7pm and very bright outside. The clouds had finished breaking and had left parts of the sky blue once more, so the moon was a white array of splotches and haze in the distance. She leaned down so her eye could see through the telescope.

  She expertly adjusted the focus, the zoom, until she could see the satellite clearly. Its rabbit marks jumped out at her, just a hint of the craters that marred its rocky surface. She remembered her father telling her you could never see the dark side of the moon, because its orbit was so tied with the Earth’s; the moon rotated along with the Earth, rather than spinning independently around it. And she remembered thinking her father was a little like the moon; he, too, had a dark side lurking just around the corner.

  And perhaps so did she.

  She turned to see Oz was watching her. It gave her a sudden sense of stage fright. ‘Was Seth worried I was going to turn out just like him? Is that why he came rushing over to train me?’

  Oz nodded. ‘Something like that. You are my sister, after all. It’s only natural to suppose we might be similar.’

  His words were like threads of tinsel floating through the air. She tried to catch them, hold them. ‘Did you have those rages, too?’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘Why do you use the past tense?’

  ‘Then….’

  ‘They hit me all the time. But I’ve learned to control them.’

  ‘But Seth said you trained him. So who trained you?’

  Oz’s eyes expanded and he grinned at her. ‘I did.’

  Itzy was
knocked back with surprise. ‘How?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure what finally did it. But I got into meditation, that sort of thing. The Buddhists have something called mindfulness. It’s where you stop fighting the emotions and just accept them. You stay with them, instead of against them. Half the problem, and the reason the anger consumes us so much, is that we try so hard to make it stop because we think it’s bad. But it’s really just another emotion, like happiness. And we need it, or we wouldn’t protect ourselves, or even understand when we’re happy. So I practised and practised until, one day, I realised it had started to feel easy. I sort of….’

  ‘Owned the emotions,’ she concluded for him.

  He smiled again. ‘You sound like Seth.’

  Itzy blushed in spite of herself.

  ‘But you have to understand,’ Oz said, ‘that process took me years. It didn’t just happen overnight. And Seth…well, it was easier with him, sure, because I already knew what to do. But it still took a long time. But you….’ He looked at her like she was some sort of rare bird he hoped wouldn’t fly away. ‘Apparently you’ve already mastered it. Overnight.’

  There was a question lingering in his words, but Itzy wasn’t sure what it might be.

  ‘Um….’ Itzy fumbled for the right thing to say. ‘Do you think it’s because of that 2012 thing? Am I part of the change?’

  He considered the idea. ‘Maybe.’ He didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘So when are you going to show me what you can do?’ she changed the subject.

  Oz laughed. ‘Not now. Really, I’m not trying to be mysterious. It’s just…not something I can show you here.’

  ‘Here in your room, or…?’

  ‘Anywhere near houses. Or people.’

  Curiosity strangled her, but she could see Oz wasn’t going to tell her any more.

  ‘So when are we going to see those crop circles?’ Itzy asked.

  His forehead leapt up into his hair. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Fine, crop animals. Whatever.’ She stepped back around the table so she faced her brother. ‘When are we going?’

  ‘Who said we were going there?’

  Itzy crossed her arms and leaned back on one heel. ‘Don’t be coy. I know that’s what you’re planning, and I’m going with you.’

  Oz sighed. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to make you change your mind?’

  ‘Hey, it’s not my fault,’ she said. She released her arms and upturned her palms in a What can you do? gesture. ‘You brought me up here and showed me that stuff. What did you expect?’

  His mouth was straight and glum. Oz scratched his head. ‘You’re right. I had to know you’d figure it out.’

  The door opened then, and Seth and Devon came into the room. ‘Were you planning on leaving us forever?’ Seth questioned. But his tone of voice said something else. Something like, Just what have you been telling her?

  ‘What the hell,’ Oz declared. ‘She’s coming with us. And so is Devon, I guess. Anyone else you’d like to bring?’ He shot an accusing look at his sister.

  ‘Sounds like you’re the one sending the invites,’ Itzy replied.

  ‘Wait,’ said Devon. ‘Where am I going?’

  Seth’s eyes flashed, the colour of the sky outside. ‘Road trip! Fantastic. But,’ he pointed a finger at Oz, ‘we are not listening to your music.’

  Oz looked appalled. ‘What’s wrong with my music?’

  ‘Come on. Classical? No.’

  Itzy studied her brother. Classical music. Just like their father. He’d had a thing for Beethoven, who was also supposed to have been moody. Maybe he was an alien, too.

  ‘Again,’ said Devon, ‘where are we going?’

  ‘Wiltshire,’ Itzy told her.

  Devon whistled. ‘Ooh boy, lucky me.’

  TWELVE

  That night, Oz dropped them home again in the Ferrari, but this time they made it all the way to Itzy’s house.

  ‘It’s nice,’ Oz commented flatly as he looked at it.

  She wondered what he was thinking. Perhaps, So this is where he lived all those years when he didn’t live with me. It couldn’t have been easy to see it. She was starting to see what Oz meant about having his own constant mood swings. This seemed to be Detached Oz. At least it wasn’t Angry Oz.

  ‘Thank you for the ride,’ she said.

  He nodded to her as a you’re welcome, but said nothing. She stepped out of the Ferrari and closed the door, watching as he turned the car around and drove back home.

  When she was inside, she called her mother’s name, but got no reply. The lights were out and the house felt desolate and abandoned. Itzy flicked on a light switch and squinted in the illumination. It was an energy-saver bulb, so the room looked yellow at first, gradually brightening as she moved through the house.

  She was halfway up the stairs when her phone rang. She pulled it from her jeans pocket and read the name on the screen: Gwen.

  She eagerly answered the call and dashed up the stairs to her room, shutting the door behind her and flopping on her bed.

  ‘Gwen!’ she said.

  ‘Itzy,’ her aunt said, her voice evidence of a smile on the other end of the phone.

  It was still so strange to think Gwen was all the way across the world. Itzy remembered when Gwen had lived in England. Itzy had been just a little girl, then, and Gwen had come down to visit them every few months. Each time she stayed with them, she would take Itzy out. Gwen had introduced her to the joys of making sand castles on one of their long drives together up the eastern coast; she had taken Itzy on a boat to see seals lounging on the rainy beach; she had bought her books about dinosaurs and space, puzzles of ocean scenes, and taught her to make friendship bracelets with embroidery thread.

  Stephen and Myra’s divorce rocked Gwen almost as much as those directly involved, something Itzy had always wondered about. It had changed Gwen. She moved to London and swept in like Itzy’s second mother, to take care of her while everything fell apart around her, but her former light-heartedness had gone.

  Then one day, when Itzy was thirteen, Gwen had come by the house to say goodbye. But she sent postcards and she never forgot Itzy’s birthday the way Stephen always had, despite witnessing the birth, or the way Myra had done ever since she’d been seduced by the charms of a man named Jack Daniels.

  ‘You alright?’ Itzy asked now.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Gwen told her. ‘But more importantly, how are you?’

  That was Gwen, always thinking of her, worrying about her, even from across the Atlantic.

  Itzy wanted to tell her she was fine too - that she was doing better than she expected, because she had distractions, friends - that she had lived for seven years without her father, and she could make it through the rest of her life without him too. But she was horrified to find that, instead, what came out was, ‘Why didn’t you tell me we’re Descendants?’

  There was a sharp, audible intake of breath down the phone line as Gwen tried to think how to answer this. Itzy waited. She knew any hopes for a normal conversation were gone.

  ‘I’m glad to hear you’ve been spending time with your brother,’ Gwen finally remarked. She sounded like she meant it. Then she sighed. ‘Oh, Itz, I always thought you should know. It was your father who wouldn’t hear of it. I think he was afraid your mother might take you from him if she found out he was filling your head with that sort of thing.’

  ‘Because she’d think he was mad?’ Itzy guessed.

  She leaned on her side, sandwiching the phone between the bed and her head, so she didn’t have to hold it. She reached behind her head and yanked the band out of her hair, letting it spill thickly over her back.

  ‘Is that what you thought when Oz told you?’ Gwen asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now?’

  It was a loaded question, because now, Itzy didn�
�t know what to think. Her head swirled with thoughts that conflicted with every idea she’d ever had about life, the universe, everything.

  ‘I trust Oz,’ she said at last.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Gwen. ‘He’s always been a good kid. He reminds me of my brother - when my brother was in one of his better moments.’

  Itzy felt tears swell in the backs of her eyes. Gwen seemed to be the only one she could cry around, and now she felt perhaps she needed that. She was carrying too much. She was only seventeen. She shouldn’t have had to deal with such weight.

  I killed him, Itzy wanted to shout. I wrote a story and it came true! She wanted Gwen to tell her how horrible she was, that she was a deplorable creature with no right to happiness, after what she’d done. She wanted to be punished.

  But instead, she said, ‘I wish you were here.’

  Gwen let out a long, deep breath. ‘Me too.’

  ‘I miss him,’ Itzy told her. ‘Or…I miss part of him, anyway.’

  Gwen sighed again. ‘I do too, Itzy. Whatever else he was, Stephen was my brother, and I can’t help that I loved him.’

  Itzy closed her eyes, imagining Gwen was in the room with her, instead of sitting in some foreign house in Toronto. ‘What do you think his note meant?’ Itzy asked that figment of her aunt.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gwen said, her voice weary. ‘Your father was always more interested in these things than I was. Our parents - your grandparents - were both Descendants. They had a tempestuous marriage, to say the least. In the end…well, this is another thing we’ve never told you before, but your grandfather took his own life, too.’

  Itzy gasped sharply, but Gwen carried on speaking. ‘I always knew about our past. It didn’t strike me as outlandish until I was a teenager, because I was just so used to the stories. I mean, I wasn’t about to rush out and tell everyone, of course, but in my own way I always believed.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Itzy. ‘It was only stories, right? They couldn’t show you anything to prove it, could they? What if they were all just part of some deranged cult?’

  Gwen laughed. ‘I suppose that’s a possibility. But some things…you just have to reach into your soul and feel the truth in them.’

  ‘Like faith,’ Itzy decided.

  ‘More than faith,’ Gwen corrected. ‘You feel it, too, don’t you? You want to laugh it off, but it speaks to something core inside you and you’re scared to admit you believe.’

  Itzy squeezed the emotion out of her eyes. ‘You’ve always known me too well,’ she said. ‘So you don’t know what he meant,’ she returned to her earlier question.

  ‘No,’ Gwen said. ‘I’m sorry. I really wish I did.’ She fell silent. The space between them filled with unanswered questions.

  Itzy’s emotions broke out of her in a torrent, deafening her aunt on the other end of the phone. But she didn’t hang up. Gwen simply sat on the line as her phone bill rose, and listened to her niece’s outpouring, until the waters ran dry and Itzy lay messily on her bed, with no accurate sense of time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice nasal from congestion.

  ‘Don’t be,’ Gwen said softly. ‘You have every right to be upset. And I know you, Itzy - please don’t hold it all inside and pretend everything’s fine, while you secretly fall apart. Remember there’s strength in being able to admit when you can’t cope on your own.’

  Itzy sniffed in response.

  ‘I should let you go,’ Gwen said.

  ‘Okay,’ said Itzy, her eyes still shut. ‘I love you.’ In her mind’s eye, she could see her aunt smiling at her.

  ‘I love you too,’ Gwen said in her ear, but in Itzy’s head she came forward to hug her. The illusion was shattered when the image moved through her, missing the embrace.

  ‘You know you can ring me whenever you want,’ Gwen reminded her.

  Itzy nodded, her eyes still closed. ‘I know. Thanks.’