Poisoned Garden

by Tracy Korn

  "Where did you go?"

  "To a cave until I could figure out what was happening to me. But a few days later, Sylvie showed up out of nowhere and told me about this place where others were like me—others who had beaten the trickster—and how I'd been chosen to lead them."

  "You just trusted her?" I asked, remembering my own suspicions about Eden's Bluff.

  "What choice did I have, Halsey? I thought I'd kill everyone I knew."

  "And they fixed that here?" I tried not to sound like I doubted him or disagreed with his choices.

  "They taught me it was just the dragon, and they taught me how to let it out safely. Once it came out, the hate and anger turned into…I don't know, just…power, I guess."

  "Have you been able to tell your mom? Your family?" I asked. "I mean, do they still think you're living in that cave?"

  Leo shook his head and studied the ground again as we walked. "They aren't worried about me anymore."

  "How do you know?" I asked. "Maybe you could queue them?"

  Leo narrowed his eyes at me and gave me a flat smile. "The medicine men don't exactly put in communication chips for people in the villages, Halsey," he said, letting the flat smile turn upward. "I didn't get one of those until I came here."

  "OK," I raced to think of something else. "A package? Maybe you could send them—"

  "No addresses. They're not part of the system there," Leo answered, then gave me a quick, hesitant glance. "And, Halsey, even if they were, we can't connect to anyone from that world now. At least not in that way."

  "What are you talking about?" I asked, slowing our pace as the fog seemed to get thicker all around us. My heart started pounding against my ribs. "Are you saying we can't go home?"

  He stopped and turned to me, lowering his eyes to meet mine. "We were all furious when we found out. It was right after we first got here too. We've been trying to find the tear in the veil ever since, and we're finally close now," he said, taking my hands. "There's a path home, or at least somewhere close to home for each of us somewhere through the tear." Leo glanced over my shoulder toward the direction we'd just come. "We didn't know about The Fold, though. We've never gotten this far." He looked back at me with hope in his eyes. "Bryce has been researching it for the last few years—ever since we found out we couldn't leave. The tears are like doors, Halsey. We just have to find the ones that open up to where we're from, and we can go back and forth. We can put things right."

  I stopped walking and pulled my hands from his. "What do you mean?" I asked, shaking my head. "Why won't they let us go home the normal way? My aunt and uncle will want to know why I'm not queuing or coming back for holidays…Leo!" I shouted when he only looked at me.

  He took a deep breath, then sighed. "No, they won't," he said, lowering his voice. "Right about now, they're being told your helicopter disappeared somewhere off the coast of Florida en route to Eden's Bluff," he said calmly, then took a deep breath and sighed. My mouth fell open, and it felt like my blood was turning to ice.

  "No, they can't—"

  "It's just what they do, Halsey. They get us here, isolate us, and then they make us forget where we came from because it's easier than letting us go back and forth. Humans can't know about us."

  "But I didn't forget—you and the others didn't forget, Leo. Why can we remember?" I felt my chest tightening with every word, and it was getting harder to breathe.

  "The water that first night was supposed to make you forget everything about where you came from, but it didn't," Leo said. "You wouldn't have kept asking all those questions, and you wouldn't have tried to queue home there in the bathroom if the water had been working. It was the same for me. That's why they started training me to be a transition assistant."

  I suddenly started to feel dizzy, so I sat down. The ground was rocky, but dry, and I pressed my fingers into the cool, rough, stone surfaces.

  "They all think I'm dead…" I said out loud, though not to Leo. "Max…" My voice cracked, and burning tears began flooding my vision.

  "I'm sorry, Halsey," Leo whispered, moving to sit next to me. He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me in, and for a second, the campfire smell of him was comforting. But then I remembered that he was the one who gave me the water back in the dining room my first night here. I pushed his arm off my shoulder and got to my feet.

  "You were the one who gave me the water!" I shouted. "You knew it would make me forget everything about where I came from!"

  Leo flinched and held out his hands to me as if they could stop my accusations in mid-air.

  "And do you know how much I hated that? Do you know what it's like to watch someone's face go from terror to peace, but only because they've just left behind an entire life there on the floor?" Leo pressed his lips into a hard line and pulled in a quick, sharp breath. His hands moved to his hips, and his eyes once again found the ground. He shook his head. "I was so happy when you wanted to call home, Halsey," he said, risking a glance up at me. "It meant you were like us…like me."

  My head was spinning and my chest ached. "Rhea—she gave me that water again. You told her to bring it."

  "Because I knew if the water didn't work before, it was never going to work. I told her to bring it because it does reverse a shift. You saw that happen, Halsey."

  Leo started to walk toward me, but I stepped back and held up a hand, stopping him in place.

  "Why didn't Alita say anything to me about this?" I asked, waiting for the lie I knew I could catch him in if I just kept asking questions. The lie that would somehow be the excuse I could use not to believe anything he said.

  "The water only mostly worked on her," Leo answered, scrubbing his hands over his face, then pushing them back through his dark hair. He heaved a breath, and in that moment, let his arms drop to his sides, seemingly exhausted. "She remembers where she came from, but only on the surface. She doesn't remember her family, her friends, nothing personal. We just keep watching her to see if something will leak back in, but so far, it hasn't. Not like you."

  "Why, then? Why do I remember? Why do you and the others remember? Does Uri know about all of them?"

  "OK, slow down." He smiled. "I want to answer your questions. We're on the same side." Leo raised his palms toward me again as if he was trying to get me to lower a weapon. "Uri only knows about me. We've been keeping Alita close so he doesn't find out about her," he explained. "As for why the water didn't work on us, we don't know. But I've brought most of the students to this island, and you've been the only fully lucid one aside from the ones up on that cliff with us."

  "This is too much," I said, shaking my head and turning my back to him. I started walking again, trying to process it all—that Red Fever had activated some strand of DNA in my body that wasn't even human, then hearing what Uri was saying about killing Eve…actual Eve from The Garden of Eden. And now, not only were my family and best friend being told that I was dead, but I was never even supposed to remember any of my life before coming to Eden's Bluff.

  I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach. My throat felt like it was closing up.

  And then, I was falling.

  Chapter 25

  I heard Leo call my name from far away, and then I heard Rhea.

  "They're here!" she called, and a second later, I was yanked upward by an arm around my stomach. My arms and legs were dangling, but I couldn't even turn a fraction of an inch in the vise grip to see anything other than the whitecap waters reflecting the moonlight below.

  It seemed like I only had time to blink before I was falling again, but this time only a few feet. I rolled a few times before coming to a stop in the cool grass.

  "Damn, Rhea—she's not even shifted!" Bryce yelled.

  "If she's hurt, she'll heal. I need to go back for Alec."

  I looked up with enough time to see the back of Rhea's red and gold wings arc wide, then bend in as she darted out of sight. She quickly reappeared after Leo in the night sky, barely visible save for his silhouette in the moonlig
ht, the light and shadows outlining the curves of his wings and the outline of his cheekbones, chest, and shoulders. Alec had hooked his arms over Rhea's, letting go when his feet were close enough to the ground.

  Leo's wings collapsed and folded in immediately when he saw me, then ran to kneel next to me. "Halsey!" he looked me up and down. "Are you OK? I saw Rhea grab you. Are your ribs—?"

  "She's fine," Rhea sighed and rolled her eyes. "What happened? You both just fell into, and then out of the fog. Did you find the tear in the other side?"

  Leo turned to her, then to everyone. "No. We got stuck somewhere called The Fold. It was like, a neutral space or something—just all fog in every direction—but the other tear had to be close by."

  "Are you sure?" Alec asked, pushing his hands through his wet hair. "There was nothing in the water except for rocks." I couldn't help but watch the intricately woven muscles of his torso move as he put on his dry clothes—there wasn't even an ounce of fat on his entire body.

  "A raven messenger was in there with us," Leo answered. "That's where it said we were—in The Fold between the worlds."

  "What's a raven messenger?" Alita asked, hugging her knees.

  "Kind of like a living map," Leo said, turning to Alita. "A guide that tells you where you are…if you can figure out what it's saying."

  Leo went on to tell the others that we'd overheard Uri talking to Ghob, who was now going by the name Luz. He explained that they were talking about Eve—the actual Eve—and how Uri intended to make Leo one of the generals in charge of killing her.

  "Wait, Uri is Uriel? The archangel?" Bryce laughed, incredulous. "Uriel…who guarded the gates of Eden after Adam and Eve were kicked out?"

  "How do you even know that?" Alita asked, surprised.

  "The professor is a wealth of knowledge," Rhea grinned. "How many times have you ready that Bible?" she asked, glancing at Bryce.

  "It's research." He leveled his gaze at her. "And this is serious."

  "Why would he just let Lucifer in?" Alec asked, now totally dry somehow. "And how is Eve still alive?"

  "I don't know, but Uri is working with Ghob to kill her. They're talking about a war," Leo answered.

  "And how convenient that you're one of the generals in that war," Bryce said accusatorially.

  Leo glared at him." You think I asked for this?"

  Bryce put his tablet down and got to his feet. "Why else would Ghob want you instead of a Gnome?"

  "She wants a Gnome too," I interrupted before they could escalate anything. "Ghob said she needed one of each Elemental type. That's why she wanted another Sylph when they wrote Ian off for being too supportive of humans. There have to be four, plus whoever Knox Ryder is," I insisted. "She said he was the fifth general, and they seemed to think he was the one who could lift the veil."

  Alec laughed out loud. "If that veil comes up, there will be no more separation between the Elemental world and this one. Not to mention whatever else is locked behind there."

  Bryce shrugged and shook his head. "Would that be so bad?" he asked. "Then we wouldn't be stuck on this island. We could go anywhere we wanted without having to hide what we really are."

  "Wait, five generals for five continents," Leo said to himself, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the conversation. "So Ghob and Uri must be the other two," he added, then finally looked up at the rest of us in realization. "They're going to start a world war."

  "Or a war on the world," Rhea added a few seconds later.

  "Then we need to find Eve before Uri does," I nearly shouted. "Ghob said she had somebody named Knox Ryder, and that she'd lured him off her boat in Portland." I cleared my throat when everyone's eyes fell on mine. "I'm from Portland, and I think there's another tear in the veil there. It's in the woods near my house."

  Alita nodded and forced a laugh. "Oh, our Citadel complex has woods too."

  I shook my head at her before I turned back to the others. "I meant if there's supposed to be a tear close to each of our towns, I think I know where the one in Portland is. I think I know where to find Eve."

  I stopped feeling so confident in my information with everyone staring at me. Maybe I was just in shock…had I babbled any of that?

  "Even if you do know where Eve is, so what?" Alec shrugged. "It's not like we can get there. Once again, there's no gateway underwater. Leo and Rhea can't take on Uri and Ghob alone, and they can't carry all three of us through the tear you just found."

  I glanced around at everyone to see if they agreed, but no one's expression changed. "I…could carry someone," I finally said, and now everyone except Leo started laughing again. "I can do it," I insisted, which, to my surprise, stopped their chuckling. "I just need some time to learn."

  They all stared at me blankly until Leo spoke up. "I'll work with you up here at night then." He nodded, then turned to the others. "She'll be ready."

  "Whatever," Rhea said, which seemed to set the tone for everyone else, who also unceremoniously agreed.

  "Well, if everyone is done leaping off cliffs for the evening, I'm going to go see what I can find out about The Fold," Bryce said, picking up his tablet and slipping it into his bag. "I'll let you know when we have enough information to try again."

  Alita got to her feet and dusted off to follow him. "See you at home," she said to me, which made my chest ache all over again. This place wasn't home, even if she couldn't remember why.

  Alec slipped an arm around Rhea's waist and nuzzled her neck, then said something about hitching another ride. She elbowed him in the ribs and laughed as he feigned injury all the way down the hill.

  This left Leo and me standing in awkward silence. I didn't know how to remedy that since my options were either to scream at him for deceiving me, or run into his arms for saving me, so I left him standing there and started the long walk back to my dorm. If I were to take a clinical look at everything, I'd have to start with a baseline of what was known: I wasn't completely human, a war between worlds was coming, and if I ever wanted to go home again, I needed to learn how to fly.

  ***

  I'd skipped breakfast the next morning mainly because I just couldn't bring myself to get out of bed, despite Alita's nauseating enthusiasm about waffles. It felt like my mind was still rejecting everything that had happened since I left The Grind, even though I didn't need any more proof it wasn't a Red Fever coma dream, and none of this had been a hallucination. If I was ever going to get home again, I needed to start playing by the rules of this reality.

  I made my way to my honing session the same way I'd gone before, but this time I wasn't talking with Ian and could pay attention to the impossibly surreal plants and insects that lined the route. Flowers with dark green stems and leaves that curled in on themselves, the buds a deep red with bright blue plumes in the centers. Not even a few feet farther up the path, magenta butterflies with long, feathered antennae fluttered over another patch of flowers, these like carnations, only purple and orange with variegated leaves.

  But it wasn't until I saw the tail end of something climbing up the white, birch-like bark of a tree that I stopped, completely in awe. An armored, bright yellow snake with actual horns appeared from behind the thick trunk, and I nearly fell backward when I saw that it wasn't a snake at all. Whatever this was, it had arms and legs like a lizard and red and gold flowing wings like something in a fantasy drawing. As it made its way up the trunk and onto an extended branch, I realized it must have been at least six feet long with the girth of a softball. Each of its armored plates caught the sun as it moved, reflecting hypnotizing, iridescent rays in its wake.

  "Wow…" I said under my breath, mesmerized by how beautiful it was.

  "That's a Djin snake," Leo whispered, which was ironically more startling than it would have been if he'd just used his normal voice. I sucked in a quick breath, fortunately managing not to scare the animal in the tree away. Leo took a few slow steps toward me and stopped at my side. "I don't think it's a student either—no one really moves int
o their full shift unless they don't have to come out of it for the day. And everyone is doing something now during honing week."

  "A Djin snake…" I repeated, then remembered this was what Bryce had called Rhea that first day in the dining hall. This was her shift. "This is what Rhea becomes?" I asked, glancing at Leo.

  "If she wants to," he answered, his eyes widening as the snake-like animal unfolded its wings in the rays of sun falling over them. "But she doesn't like it—says it feels too confining—so she usually shifts just enough for her wings to come out."

  "That's why her skin turned into the armored plates, and her hair…" I trailed off, amazed all over again as I remembered.

  "This is the serpent Lucifer pretended to be in the Eden story with Eve."

  I remembered what Ghob had said about them all being punished for it—they'd lost their wings, arms, and legs—and I was suddenly struck with anger.

  "Why were they all punished? It wasn't their fault."

  Leo shrugged. "It's just the way it was," he said, tilting his head to admire the glittering wings as they soaked in the sunlight. "But they're in their original form here, since this island is basically a replica of Eden. You won't see them like this anywhere else in the world."

  We started walking towards the honing grounds, and I felt something light inside me. This injustice was no different from the power dynamic in The Grind where the innocent were punished and the guilty—the ones who were really guilty—went free.

  I had to learn to fly. I had to find my way home to my family and Max. And I had to warn Eve.

  Chapter 26

  Leo walked me to the Sylph practice field, still apologizing the whole way for trying to make me forget where I came from. I didn't know if I forgave him yet, but whether I did or not, we had to move past it so we could find our way home.