“But you—shit,” Leo interrupted himself. “Hold on!” The wind picked up again, and the pressure on my stomach and chest made the sharp pain worse.
“Leo!” Rhea yelled, and in the same second, everything was quiet. The wind had completely stopped, and the pressure on my chest was gone. The pain was still there though, and I was sure we’d stopped moving.
“What happened?” I asked as Leo put me down, and pain ripped all the way up my side again. It was foggy and damp, and all the beautiful flowers and foliage, not to mention the ocean, were gone. “Where are we?” I said, clutching at the sharp stabs over the left side of my ribs.
“I think we’re inside the tear,” Leo whispered, then turned to me. “Your eyebrow is bleeding,” he said, then sighed. “It must have happened somehow when I caught you. Does your side hurt,” he asked, glancing at the way I was holding my ribs.
I nodded. “Feels like I swallowed a stick or something.”
“That’s probably my fault too… When I caught you. The cut through your eyebrow is on the same side.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head at him, which made me dizzy. “It’s not your fault. You saved my life. I shouldn’t have jumped, but I was just so sure,” I added, marveling at how wrong I was. And that could only mean one thing… This really wasn’t a coma dream.
Leo angled his head toward a collection of large, jagged rocks. I was sure they were the ones I saw from the top of the cliff, but none of this fog was surrounding them ten minutes ago. “You need to relax to heal, and then we’ll try to find our way out of here,” he said, moving to my injured side and putting his arm around me.
“Where’s Rhea?” I asked, remembering her calling to him.
“She must not have made it through.”
“How did we make it through?” I turned toward him and immediately winced.
“All right, just a few more steps,” he said. “I think you have some broken ribs, but they shouldn’t take too long to repair. Just try to relax.”
We moved into a little cove of rocks, jagged all around. They butted up against two flat pieces, the arrangement made the whole damp, dim place seem like a secret fort a kid might build.
“These look like the rocks at the bottom of the cliff,” I said. “But where’s the water?”
“Don’t think about any of that right now,” Leo said, then ran several fingers through my hair. “Just lie back for a few minutes so everything can heal.”
I lay on the flat rock and closed my eyes, listening to the absolute silence. How could anything be this quiet? Not a bird, not a frog, nothing.
My heart jumped when I realized this was the same kind of complete and utter silence that happened in the eye of the forest back in The Grind. Was that spot another tear in the veil? Midori said there were several around the world. As I let myself wonder, the pain in my side started to dissipate, and I sat up.
“Leo, I think—” I started, but he stopped my words with a finger raised to his lips. It was then that I heard the voices in the silence. Uri’s voice, and another I didn’t recognize, though the accent was similar to Sylvie’s.
“She ain’t been seen in Jordan fer centuries,” the woman said. “And dat Cave of Wonders dried up centuries before. Nah, angel. She on da mainland now. Lured Knox Ryder straight off ma’ boat in Portland. Who ya got searchin’ der?”
My eyes flashed to Leo’s, which were wide with surprise.
“She’s mortal, Ghob. She doesn’t have the power to do that. Jordan is her last known record,” Uri said. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“What I say ta call me, angel?” The woman, apparently named Ghob, said, her voice slow and full of contempt.
Ghob…was that…? No. It couldn’t be, I thought.
Uri sighed, exasperated. “Luz… I’ll have a trained team as soon as honing week is over and the new bloods aren’t constantly in their shadows,” he started.
“Who ya got fer me den?” she asked. “Which of dem first-year babies all grown up now and ready ta bring me dat woman?”
“Leo Red-Cloud is ready.”
“Dat the boy who killed yer hunter?” Ghob—er, Luz said, which made Leo’s previously surprised expression harden into anger and intense focus.
“Yes, he’s the one,” Uri said. “Ian MacTavish is also strong enough now, but his Sylph nature gives me pause. He leans toward the humans’ plight.”
“Den we need anodder Sylph. We gotta have one each of da four Elementals.“
“I have another Sylph in mind, but I need more time to see which way she leans,” Uri added. “She’s already the strongest in this wave.”
“See dat she gets schooled up in a hurry, den.” Luz started laughing after several seconds. “All dem wild bloods can pick da low-hangin’ fruit fer now. But we gonna have five continents needin’ generals soon, and Eve has my fifth!” Luz barked, all traces of laughter gone from her voice as it reverberated all around us.
Uri cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice was steady and ominous. “I’ll find Eve. She’ll be sent back to the dust to join that prating Adam once and for all,” he said, grinding the words through his teeth. “If she’s hiding Knox Ryder, we’ll find him.”
“Ya betta, angel,” Luz said, the deep laugh returning to her voice. “Because if ya don’t, my sista gonna cook ya in yer soulless skin when I tell her who got her snakes stripped of der eart’ly plumes… When I tell her who’s ta blame fer dem bein’ made to crawl on der bellies… When I tell her it was you, Uriel, who let Lucifer into my Garden.”
The silence returned, but the fog didn’t lift. The searing, sharp pain I’d felt had finally subsided, though, and I started to get to my feet. Leo crossed to me shaking his head, then took a seat at my side as he stared past me into nothingness.
“Stay here until we’re sure they’re really gone,” he whispered, his normally tan complexion now pale. I looked over his shoulder beyond the jagged rocks, but all I could see was dim light through the dense fog.
“Leo, are you all right?” I asked, wondering why he wasn’t moving.
“Uri called her Ghob at first,” he said quietly. “The Gnome queen.”
“She’s the one who turned on Adam and Eve, and was then kicked out of Eden with the water queen?”
“Necksa.” Leo nodded slowly until he pushed his hands back through his loose, black hair and took a deep breath, still not meeting my eyes.
“Eden…wait,” I said, remembering what Ghob had said. “Leo, she said Eve from The Garden of Eden was in Portland. And Uri is—”
“I know—just give me a second, OK?” Leo interrupted me, his voice clipped and tight. After a few more seconds, he sprung to his feet. “We have to get out of here first. Wherever here is.”
“You are in the fold, fire child…” a low, male voice said, but there was no one else around. The beating of quick wings sounded somewhere above, but we couldn’t see anything flying.
“Who said that?” Leo asked the opaque sky above, then he sucked in a gasp when a huge, black bird swooped into view from the fog. “You’re Raven…” he whispered with what sounded like the last of his breath.
“And you’re in The Fold between the pages of this world and that,” the raven said, soaring and diving in and out of the fog. “The neutral ground. The meeting sky…” it said, its voice now echoing in every direction.
“Show us how to get back!” Leo shouted to the bird.
“It’s not the same now,” it answered. “Not for you. Not for the moth in the flame—go between the empty places.”
“What does that mean?” I shouted, but Leo just shook his head. “He’ll only talk in riddles if you ask for clarification. The only thing you can do is listen. Or sometimes, tell him what you need, and he’ll give you a message…a warning or a blessing.”
“And that was a warning?” I asked hesitantly.
Leo nodded slowly as he searched the cloudy sky again, bu
t the raven seemed to be gone now. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “That was a warning.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Leo and I walked through the fog in silence for what seemed like an eternity without going anywhere. We could only see about ten feet in front of us, above us, behind us, and wherever the light source was coming from, it had to be far away.
Leo’s shirt hung from his back pocket as he walked with his thumbs hooked in his back belt loops. If I were to glance at him quickly, it almost looked as if he were being marshaled somewhere by a Sweeper droid.
I had so many questions, but I didn’t know if he was ready to give me any answers. I risked a glance at him and looked away quickly when he turned to me at the same time.
“I didn’t have a choice,” he said after a few more seconds, surprising me. I knew he was talking about the hunter he’d apparently killed. I wanted to ask him more about it, but I also didn’t want him to feel obligated to tell me.
“Leo, you don’t have to—”
“I’d been gathering wood,” he continued, ignoring my protest. “I had it packed in a few bundles on my back and just needed to cross through the woods to get to my village on the other side.” Leo took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “As I got closer, I felt something out there. I couldn’t hear it, but I knew it was watching me. Have you ever felt that…where you just knew someone was watching you even if you couldn’t see who it was?”
“Yeah, definitely,” I said, knowing the feeling exactly from the eye in the woods back in The Grind.
“Anyway, I grabbed one of the branches I’d broken up, just in case, but I still wasn’t ready for as hard as it hit me. I thought maybe it was a bear, but it was something else. Half a bear, or maybe a wolf, and the other half was a man.” He lifted the back of his hair and showed me several dark, shiny scars evenly spaced from each other at the base of his neck. “It tried to bite my head off,” he added, laughing humorlessly. “I ran the stick through its chest, which was just stupid luck since I couldn’t see anything, and we both fell to the ground. I got to my feet trying to see what the hell it was. But it was just…gone.”
“What? How?” I asked almost immediately.
“I don’t know. When I got back to my village, they sent a hunting party out for the bear they were sure it was based on the bite mark, but they came back the next morning with nothing.”
“Oh my god, Leo…”
“I know I killed it though—whatever it was. I felt its life slip away, you know? All the anger and hate it held,” he said, then turned to me, his dark brows drawn together. “I felt it slip into me, Halsey.” He looked away again and after a few more seconds, he cleared his throat. “My mother said I was asleep for three days, so the village elders sent for medicine men from three different tribes, and after trying everything they could to wake me up, they all said the same thing…that the lives of my ancestors had swallowed me. That the Red Cloud had come for me, and I would never be the same.”
“That sounds terrifying,” I whispered.
“The people in my village had mixed ideas about it. Some of the people who knew my father’s family said it was a blessing. Others said it was a curse. All I knew after I woke up was that my blood felt like it was boiling, and if I didn’t leave, I was going to hurt people. So I left.”
“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 too—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 three 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 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 the 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 jumped up and held out his han
ds 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, I want to answer your questions, all right? 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.”
Academy of Magic Collection Page 70
