She hesitates, looking from me to Nick and back to me again before nodding. “Okay. But what do I tell him if he wakes up?”
“First, tell him you’re sorry for scaring him like you did and you’ll never do it again. Then, tell him I’m getting Old Man Massive to help. He’ll understand.”
“Okay,” she whispers, and walks over to sit by Nick’s side.
“I’ll return soon and everything will be okay. Okay?”
“Promise?”
She’s just a child.
“Promise,” I say.
With all my heart, I hope the mountain spirit is awake and can do what I need him to do. If not—no, I can’t think about that. I leap into the air and am over his crumbled profile in an instant.
~ 18 ~
OLD MAN MASSIVE collapsed himself to prevent Nick, Chimney, and me from crashing into his wall, and I hardly recognize him in the rubble. I land on his nose, ever prominent in the heap.
“The boy. Did he make it?” The mountain spirit opens his great eye as soon as my feet touch down. The boom of his voice shifts loose boulders into new places and for a moment I flinch, ready to fly to safety if one of them tumbles my way.
“Yes! We all made it, thanks to you.” I want to hug him, but how would I hug a mountain?
“You have come for help, yes?”
“Yes again. And I hope someday not to have to disturb you from your slumber. I’d really enjoy a boring visit with you at some point. Not that you’re boring! That’s not what I meant! What I meant was—”
“I know what you are saying, little dove, and I am honored. Good that you have come. I would not release the water god until I was certain this is what you would want. I fear, however, it may be too late.”
“No! I mean, yes, it’s what I want, and no, it can’t be too late! Why too late?”
“The wailing of the child, though glorious, has grown louder while the raving of the god has stopped. Tell me you will be safe and I will open the island to the sea.”
“I’ll be safe. Kumugwe has no control over me anymore, but wait! Nick and Harmony are on the island.” I explain what’s just happened, and Nick’s condition.
“He endangers himself yet again. He is true.” Old Man Massive whispers the last words, and I feel guilty for having put Nick in another predicament. As if sensing my anguish, Old Man Massive continues. “As you have been marked to endure countless trials, so too is he destined for a future unknown to us. You are not responsible for his actions.”
“But if it weren’t for me, he’d be safe right now.”
“Would he, though? This, we cannot know. Return to the island, child, and shout my name to the sky. I will hear you, and I will release the sea god—however he may fare—back to his realm.”
“This is another sad goodbye, then, because I’ll have to return quickly to the village on the other side once the gods are back where they belong.”
“Why sad, little one? Does not your father wait for you?”
“Yes! He’s there! Sorry I questioned you when you told me it was him. But he and my friends are still in danger. Tell me, old friend, has the planet always been in turmoil?”
“My answer will not matter. Go, and call my name when you are prepared. I will be here when you return, whenever that may be. Remember who you are, Celeste, and remember what you have learned.”
Have I learned anything? Of course I have. I’ve learned that in an instant, lives can be torn apart for no sensible reason. I’ve learned there are people on the planet who do stupid things because they’re afraid, and people who do horrible things because they’re horrible.
But there are people—not just people, other beings as well—who do extraordinary things too. They’re the ones who need to be stronger than the bad beings. They’re the ones who need to work together to survive, to rebuild, to overcome challenges that might never make sense.
I’m one of those, and I’ll use every power in this ever-changing body to help these new survivors defeat those who want them to suffer more than they already have.
“I’ll remember, Old Man. And I won’t let you down. You’ll see me again. Listen for my call soon, and thank you.” I kneel down and plant a kiss on his enormous, dusty nose. I thought it might feel silly, but it doesn’t, and the mountain spirit moves his cracked stone lips into a gentle smile.
Flying back to the island in the cool darkness, I experience a feeling I can only describe as euphoria. I tingle, I glow, and the air surrounding me feels electric.
When I get to the island, Nick is just starting to move and Harmony is humming a quiet melody by his side. She’s a beautiful girl, really; her long pink hair falls in waves down her back and her copper skin glows softly. She jumps up and runs to me when I land.
“Will your friend help? Will he help us find my father?”
“Yes. He’s just waiting for me to call his name.”
“What are you waiting for?” Harmony pulls at my dress. “Hurry!”
I run to Nick and jostle him. “Nick, wake up.” He’s groggy. Harmony paces in tight circles looking over to where I’m shaking him, and then she stomps her feet on the ground.
“Hurry!” she shouts.
Her voice hurts my ears and the ground she stomps upon rumbles. She starts to grow in size, though she still looks like a child, and I don’t know what she might do next.
“Wha . . . what the . . .”
“Nick! Get up! And Harmony, calm down!” I turn around to see her looming over us, a giant of a child, and I put my hand up to stop her. From what, I’m not sure, because she’s just standing there looking petulant, but then I see Nick’s face changes and I can’t let it happen again.
“No! Nick, it’s all right. Do not stop time! You’re with me and we’re going to release Kumugwe. You’re okay. Now, get up!”
He finally focuses on me, I’m glowing so he can see me, and he stands up.
“Not cool, Harmony,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “So not cool. Why would you do that to me?”
I look up at Harmony and see she’s about to cry.
“I just want my father back. I’m sorry!”
“She’s just a little girl, Nick,” I whisper to him. He gives me a look that says he doesn’t care how old she is, she shouldn’t have threatened his life as she did.
“Hey, don’t cry,” he says. “And promise me you’ll give me a little warning next time you’re about to kidnap me, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, stifling her sniffles. “But could we please get my father out of this island now?”
“Yes,” I say, squeezing Nick’s hand. “I’ll call him, but we shouldn’t be standing on the island when I do. You go back to the water, Harmony, and Nick? Hold on.”
We wrap our arms around each other and lift into the air. Harmony dives from where she stands, and I see her resurface a distance away. She’s child-size again, with a little opalescent tail.
“Ready?” I ask, though none of us knows what to be ready for. “Block your ears,” I whisper to Nick, and then I take a deep breath and call his name.
“OLD . . . MAN . . . MASSIVE!” My voice startles even me.
And then the rumbling begins.
~ 19 ~
WE CLING TO ONE ANOTHER above the splashing water, and although he can’t see what’s happening below—it’s too dark for his eyes—Nick senses the turmoil in the atmosphere. I see what’s happening. I feel his heart beating rapidly. Mine remains steady.
“Sounds like Harmony’s throwing another fit,” he says. “What’s going on?”
“It’s not her.” I glance down at Harmony, who propels herself from the water over and over as the waves rise and fall in massive surges beneath us. She looks scared, but she’s in her element. I’m not worried about her. “It’s the mountain,” I tell Nick. “He’s tearing the island apart to release Kumugwe.”
The boulders making up the island vibrate and I watch as they start tumbling into the water, and in the distance where the precipice
has crumbled, I see the dark outline of his mountain range rising.
“Holy moly! Old Man Massive is rebuilding himself!” I watch boulder upon boulder rising from the sea. The rumbling continues and continues until there’s barely anything left of the island below. The mountain range to the north has grown substantially, and finally, the waves settle.
“Whoa! I see it!” Nick says. “And I thought we had powers!”
In the nearly imperceptible brightening of the sky just before the first rays of sunlight break the horizon, we look to what remains of the island. On it rests a colossal, motionless shape.
It’s him.
Harmony swims to the island and regains her legs just as I land with Nick in my arms. We’re not eager to let go of one another, and I see him looking at the hulk on the ground with some trepidation.
“Is this really a good idea, Celeste? He doesn’t look too good. What if Chimney’s right and he gets angry?”
Before I can answer, Harmony’s cry pierces the atmosphere. We hurry over to where she’s collapsed on the ground and see the reason for her despair.
Kumugwe is a shriveled shell of the god he once was. His chest is sunken, as are the cheeks of his broad face, and what remains of his skin is stuck to his bones. The fins encircling his enormous head hang open. They look like burnt layers of paper, and his tail, his glorious tail, lies flattened against the hard ground. His eyes are closed. I can’t imagine them lifeless.
His beautiful spear rests alongside him in the open palm of his right hand. I’m tempted to touch it.
“Father!” Harmony howls. “I’m here! Your little music-maker is here! Open your eyes, father! Wake up!” She tries to shake him awake, but she’s so small and he’s so . . .
I have an idea. “Harmony.” I take her gently by the shoulders and lift her away from him. She looks so helpless, but I’ve seen what she can do. “Will you grow yourself big again, like you did when Nick was asleep and you walked up onto the island? We’re going to carry him back into the sea, but I need your help.”
His lifeless form is many times larger than Thunder was when I pulled him from the fissure wall, and Kumugwe’s body looks so frighteningly fragile.
Also, I need to stop Harmony from crying. Nick stands behind me pressing his hands against his ears, and my head aches. When she’s cried in the past, her sorrow has sounded hauntingly beautiful. This, though, is excruciating.
“Okay,” she pouts, “but why? He’s gone, isn’t he? Where will I live? What will I do? How will I—”
“We need to return him to the sea.” I stop her from spinning back into a frenzy. “It’s the right thing to do. Your questions will have to wait. Now, help me please, will you?”
Nick scans the length and bulk of the lifeless god as if looking for a way to help. He walks over to where the spear lies loose in Kumugwe’s palm, and with both hands he closes the god’s fingers around it. Then, he squats down to gather the hand and forearm in his arms before standing up. Beads of sweat drip from his forehead. “Let’s do this,” he says.
Harmony’s cry softens to a sob and she grows herself large enough to wrap her arms around Kumugwe’s ribs. I wrap my arms around the narrowest part of his tail near his flukes and together, we lift his body and move in step toward the water.
The sea is surprisingly calm. The three of us tread water around his floating body, which bobs gently in the subtle swells reflecting the rising sun. We watch. We wait. And wait.
“What now?” Harmony’s ready to cry again, I can hear it in her tone.
What do I tell her? Do I say, “I thought the sea would bring him back to life”? Do I say, “He’s happy, back where he belongs”?
I did think the sea would bring him back. I did think the cells in his body would rehydrate once he returned to his natural element.
“I’m sorry, Harmony, I don’t . . . wait!” Something in Nick’s eyes reminds me of what I saw when Ryder was healing his brain. When Ryder and I were healing his brain. I wondered then if I could have done it on my own. It’s time to answer my question. “I’m going to try something, Harmony. Don’t be frightened, okay?” I swim over toward the top of Kumugwe’s head. “I’ll need you to hold his eyelids open for me.”
“But why? He’s gone! He’ll never see again. He’ll never see me again!”
“Please, Harmony, and I won’t ever ask you to do anything you don’t want to do again.”
“Why don’t you sing a nice song like you did while I was trying to wake up,” Nick suggests. “It was beautiful, and I wanted to open my eyes to see who was singing.”
His kindness touches me. Harmony nearly killed him, and now he’s giving her strength. She smiles at him.
“You can look away if you want, but I need to look into his eyes. Can you help me do this?”
Reluctantly yet gently, Harmony lifts Kumugwe’s multiple-layered eyelids from his eyes and looks away quickly. She starts to hum an entrancing tune, softly at first, and then with growing conviction.
I mouth the words thank you to Nick, and his smile warms the chill I feel when I consider what I’m about to try.
I position myself so I can look directly into Kumugwe’s filmy eyes. The mark on my head tingles as I focus, and I feel my glow warm the water around us. I can’t tell if I’m dissolving, but some of my particles have crossed the physical boundary between me and the water god, and I understand what’s happened to the cells in his body.
They’ve closed down on themselves like deflated balloons.
Instinctively, my body soaks up water until my cells are saturated. It’s almost like how I felt when I absorbed the liquid from Nick’s brain, but this time in reverse.
Harmony’s song is a soothing, distant echo.
What a bizarre feeling. When my particles can’t hold anymore, my cells constrict and force the salty sea-water into Kumugwe’s collapsed cells. This happens again and again—I’m like a pump—and the cells in his body respond. Tiny glimmers spread through his body as each cell comes back to life.
It’s working. I know it is. And I sense an awakening.
Slowly, painfully slowly, the film clears over Kumugwe’s eyes. When I feel I can neither absorb nor release any more water, when every cell in my body feels ready to collapse from fatigue, Kumugwe’s pupils constrict and I snap back into myself.
“Whoa!” Nick says, and Kumugwe’s right hand twitches.
~ 20~
NICK LOOKS AT ME with raised eyebrows, drops Kumugwe’s arm, and swims around the god’s rejuvenated body toward me.
“Father!” Harmony calls to him, swimming to his side, but he’s not all here yet.
“Celeste! Are you all right?”
I notice how natural Nick looks in the water. He swims like he was raised in it.
“I’m fine!” When he’s within reach, I pull him toward me and feel grounded again, though we’re bobbing on the surface of the water.
We watch as what started in Kumugwe’s right hand spreads until the twitching encompasses every awakened muscle, raising rippling waves around us.
“You, ah, you kinda disappeared a little bit, like you were, I don’t know, coming apart.” Nick studies me like he’s never seen me before.
“Yes, I did. It’s something I learned to do in Kumugwe’s castle. Don’t worry, though, I can control it.” I downplay what just happened. I can’t tell him I was starting to feel lost in Kumugwe’s brittle body before his cells began to respond.
“This is gonna sound crazy, but while I was holding his arm, I think I could feel your pulse in his body. Is that possible? Because . . . wow!”
“You felt it?” It thrills me to imagine he experienced what I was doing in my transformed state. “Yes! It’s possible!” Did the time I spent in Nick’s brain somehow connect us more closely on a physical level? Wow, for sure.
Harmony calls to me, interrupting my moment of happiness. “Why won’t he talk to me, Celeste? Look in his eyes again and tell him to talk to me! I’ll hold them open
again for you!” Her words come out in sobs, and this time her song is sonorous. I feel drawn toward her as if pulled by an unseen hand.
“Keep singing, Harmony!” Nick reminds her.
“Give him time!” I say. “He’ll wake up soon!”
And then, something mystical happens.
“Whoa! What now?” Nick glances around us and I understand his exclamation. For as far as I can see, and in every direction, the surface of the sea splashes turbulently as underwater life forms of every imaginable type converge on us.
Tentacles rise and fall gracefully as the octopuses arrive, sea lions bark, schools of fluorescent fish turn the water around us into a glowing ring, and the monsters of the sea circle slowly beyond them all.
“That’s my cue for getting out of the water,” Nick says. “I’m not too keen on us looking like shark bait. Let’s go.”
I start back toward the island with him, but just as we approach what’s left of it, a deep reverberation from the floor of the sea startles us and we watch as it sinks from sight. Its sudden disappearance sucks us underwater and into the void it has created.
Nick grabs my hands and looks at me with confidence and trust as we’re pulled below the surface. Together, calmly, steadily, we breathe in the sea, and wait.
Under the surface, we’re surrounded by an abundance of life forms thick in the water and expanding in concentric circles around Kumugwe’s body, which starts to resurface as the rumbling settles to a stop. He appears to be fully fleshed and the twitching has stopped. The sea creatures are silent and the water is surprisingly calm. They wait too.
When we resurface, I notice the stark line where Old Man Massive meets the sky has raised just a bit higher, and I swim with Nick through the slippery silent bodies until we’re back with Harmony.
“Wake him up, Celeste. Please wake him up.” Her chin quivers, and I want nothing more than to hug her.
“Come here, child,” I address her as I’ve been addressed most of my life, “and let’s wake him together.” I release Nick’s hand and open my arms to a girl who has experienced hardships beyond even my own. When she’s in my arms, I feel a sense of peacefulness permeate my being and I dissolve, just a little, into her—or maybe she dissolves into me.
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