Storm of Ash

by Michelle Kenney

  The insomnia was consistent at least, and when I did sleep, there was no Max to wake me from the vivid North Mountain dream that had returned these past few weeks. A barn owl hooted a few trees away. Somehow it seemed to know that the worst part was waking to a shame so intense I could barely force any thoughts past it.

  I’d taken to sitting in Grandpa’s study when sleep eluded me. Partly so I didn’t disturb Mum, who was a light sleeper, but also because it was the one room that could offer some comfort. There were too many memories elsewhere – my window was too empty; Eli’s makeshift animal nurseries still swung from the beam in the living room; and Jas’s bed was neat and cold. I thought of the moment Eli had brought Jas home as a tiny, abandoned snow-leopard cub. The two of them had an unbreakable bond and she’d grown up to become one of the best and most loyal watch-cats in the world, even finding a way over the Mountains to Octavia’s research centre in the Dead City. The moment she saw him incarcerated inside the canister haunted me, as did the moment she squared up to Brutus, a molossus hound more than four times her size. Where was she now? I closed my eyes.

  Only Grandpa’s room offered some semblance of peace. He was gone but his scent still pervaded the enclosed space, and if I closed my eyes tightly, I could hear his whisper.

  ‘Come what may, nature finds a way … We take what we need to survive, nothing more, Talia … All life has its place within the forest, including us …’

  I contemplated the flickering floor, trying to forget the dream that left too many aches in places I never knew even existed. It was nearly three months since August left with the legatio, though my head seemed determined to replay that night above everything else. It was taunting me, lest I forget the consequences of letting myself feel anything. I could only be grateful that Unus had returned to the cave with armfuls of firewood before we’d had time to give in completely. I flushed at the memory, at the way we’d pulled apart, aching and sober, before he shuffled back inside our tiny cave.

  I’d considered disappearing. And yet I was the last carrier of Thomas’s biological control, which both isolated and trapped me simultaneously. I was different, and not Eli different. Even though my twin had also possessed Thomas’s bloodline, Cassius had already hinted the control wasn’t as effective in the male line. Which left me.

  By Thomas’s own hand I was no longer an Outsider or an Insider.

  I was tainted.

  And inexorably linked to the mother of all mythical creatures, a genetic hybrid far older than the Roman civilization and with the soul of a young girl who’d never seen the world. Lake’s double-lidded serpent eyes flickered through my head, and I knew she was searching.

  Did she know she had the power to change everything?

  August had made me promise I wouldn’t look for her without him. Even the lower slopes of the North Mountains were treacherous, without happening across an unstable chimera with a chemical attraction to my blood. And yet, he must have known I couldn’t not try. I was drawn to her, as I knew she was to me. A darkness, like Cassius himself, had been poured into our cells. I could feel him growing closer, like the night, crossing my sun. Dark to dark. Dust to …

  ‘Talia?’

  Mum’s cracked voice broke the still air and I raised my head to spy her fragile frame, silhouetted in Grandpa’s doorway.

  ‘It isn’t dawn and you’re not on shift. Why aren’t you abed, child? You should sleep. The day’s long enough for us all … long enough … I’ll wake your brother – he’ll know what to do … Eli?’

  She shuffled away, and the knot in my stomach tightened. She’d been anxious for a while, but Eli’s death had hit her hard and most days it seemed as though she lived in a world that had died along with Grandpa and Eli. I’d stopped trying to wake her. What point was there in making her live a reality she hated? And truthfully, part of me was jealous of the escape she’d created for herself. Leaving me out in the cold.

  Her bedroom door creaked closed again and I sighed in relief. She’d get up again in a couple of hours and have forgotten she ever saw me.

  Quietly, I climbed to my feet. The night air was warm and the forest was sleeping, which meant there was no one to convince I was the same old Tal. I slipped through the open doorway and stepped across towards the trapdoor that opened into the forest below. Our home had provided shelter to generations of my family, yet tonight it was too full of ghosts. With a final glance at Jas’s empty bed, I swung down to the forest floor and paused. It was one of my first lessons from Grandpa.

  Listen to the forest, Talia. Sense what kind of mood she’s in.

  But it was one of those nights. Ambivalent.

  ‘Tal …?’

  I hesitated, cursing under my breath.

  Unus’s stilted voice was unmistakable as it reached out from the gloomy trees. His was the first shelter of its kind in Arafel, a floor-house, although more had been added since the arrival of the new Outsiders. It was where he spent his nights, as no treehouse could be expected to support the weight of a ten-foot Cyclops, and until now I’d taken comfort from his proximity.

  ‘Tal, no sleep?’

  He shuffled out across the milky clearing, care written all over his one-eyed pudgy face. He still looked so out of place in Arafel, and yet his skin had developed a warmer glow over the past couple of months, which suited him.

  ‘Yes … no … I just need to … to be …’

  ‘Alone?’ he finished, dropping his club hand.

  I nodded, the old rock in my throat preventing any words from escaping. I didn’t deserve any sort of comfort, not even the shoulder of a best friend.

  I forced my feet into a run, and was among the topmost branches before I could think. Not pausing to look down. Not allowing Unus’s kindness to turn into self-pity. And hoping so hard he understood. The forest stroked my cheeks with early summer, and showed me the swiftest path. I still hadn’t grown used to running without a shadow, but when I finally glimpsed my destination my thoughts were calmer than they had been in a long while.

  I dropped as the trees thinned, calmed by the way the silver fingers of the bathing pool beckoned through the shadowy branches. The lake had always held a special significance. Ever since the day Max had frozen behind the cascading waterfall, paralysed with fear. It was the only time I’d known him to need help, and Eli and my acrobatic rescue had prompted our lifelong mantra.

  Even now, as I watched the white water being swallowed mercilessly by the wide black lake, I could hear his grudging admiration.

  ‘What took you so long? Why run when you can fly, hey … crazy apricot-queen!’

  My smile tightened as I stepped through the cool night grass towards the water’s edge, remembering how Max and Eli would race to be first in the water, naked and sun-kissed. I’d felt no shame watching their fresh-toned, youthful bodies glimmer in the dappled forest light, until our expeditions to the lake became known to Mum.

  ‘I don’t mind the swimming, but wear your slip and change separately.’

  She never explained why, but it was the first time I realized things were changing.

  Tonight though, I just wanted to be a child again.

  I cast a look around the shadowy trees, which were rustling as though they too were reminiscing. The water was opaque and strangely inviting. It would help me forget – at least for a while.

  Swiftly, I stripped off until the only thing warming my skin was my memories. I wasn’t cold but the anticipation of the swim was real now, and something else besides. There was a ritualistic feeling to what I was about to do.

  I stepped across to the edge of the dark rippling lake, and looked at the waterfall spilling silver life into the void. Our distant voices reached across the water as clearly as though they were here now.

  ‘I can’t move! It’s not funny … One of you needs to climb up.’

  It was one of the rare occasions I’d heard real fear in Max’s voice – that and the time we ran into the Minotaurus in Ludi Pantheonares. I closed my e
yes briefly. The desperation in his forest-green eyes had pierced deeper than the Minotaur’s horns ever could.

  ‘Now, Tal?’

  But I hadn’t let him speak, and that was how he’d met Cassius’s arrow, thinking I didn’t care when nothing could be farther from the truth.

  I gritted my teeth, forcing myself past the raw memory, and back to the peace of this childhood place.

  ‘We could always leave him there … do him good to need us for a change.’

  I recalled Eli’s nudge and wink as we realized Max was stuck. He always considered Max had it too easy. Life had tipped the scales in his favour, whereas Eli, silent from birth, had to rely on his twin sister for everything.

  And I’d never underestimated my animal-whispering brother – yet he’d surprised me more than anyone. He’d sensed the griffin’s weakness in the Flavium, and brought the ravenous vultures when we most needed them in the cathedral.

  All while possessing the gentlest soul I’d ever known.

  I gazed at the spray bubbling up around the edge of shadowy water. I could see him signing now, teasing Max and winking at me.

  ‘C’mon … I was only kidding … We’ll be able to reach him more easily from the top.’

  And I was there too, eyebrows raised and with a wide grin. Always so much older than my thirteen years, and usually the peacemaker. Back then I hadn’t realized the conflict between Max and Eli was so complex.

  I dipped my toes and created a ripple of my own. It was curved and symmetrical. Like a story. And as mysterious as the night around me.

  Carefully, I waded out into the black. Its still cool penetrating my skin, and soothing the rise of emotions there. I breathed out slowly. This felt good. I could imagine Max and Eli diving beneath the cool night water, almost feel their warm smooth bodies gliding past mine. I thrust my arms forward and let myself slide into the water, kicking my legs the way my father had taught me. The water lilies felt like tiny arms, reaching out to caress my limbs. I sank my face further into their soft tendrils, which hooked around my ears and toes, securing me in their dark world. And although I knew I was too deep to touch the bottom, and there was a strong undercurrent near the cascading falls, I didn’t feel threatened. Not by the black, not by the depth, and not by the tiny hands all over my body. Touching me, healing me.

  I had no idea I’d floated out to the centre of the pool until the noise of the falls forced me to open my eyes. And for a moment I was unsure whether I’d slipped into a dream world entirely. I kicked out with my arms and legs but they felt oddly heavy. The moonlight was playing with me, darting with the tiny silver fish just beneath the surface of the lake. Only it couldn’t be moonlight, I fathomed, because the moon had gone behind a cloud and the light was beneath me. Shining up. Not down.

  Which was when I saw I was surrounded.

  Not by the lilies or any kind of plant life, but by eyes. Huge black ovoid eyes, and strong iridescent tails that had stolen the moonlight and painted it into their scales. There were too many to count, touching me, immobilizing me. But for some reason I wasn’t scared. Because I knew them. And last time they’d taken away all the pain.

  ‘Oceanids,’ I whispered into the night air, closing my eyes and submitting to the fate of the hands completely. Perhaps this was the end, perhaps it wasn’t. What did it matter?

  Then a moment of clarity.

  ‘Oceanids?’ I repeated with more conviction, striking out in vain.

  ‘Where are you?’ I struggled, as the hands suddenly became stronger, pulling me. Downwards.

  Reality flooded my frozen body, filling me with fresh, choking fear.

  ‘Where are you? Eli! Aelia!’ I yelled between mouthfuls of icy water.

  ‘The Oceanids are loyal only to themselves … They’re the only chance we have left,’ August whispered as we watched Eli and Aelia slip beneath the glass water.

  But how could the Oceanids be here in the middle of Arafel’s forest? And why would they come now?

  I was losing. The water that had seemed so calm and inviting was blurring my sight and stealing my breath. I tried to kick but the ovoid eyes were taking me down, despite my fight. Was this what it had all come to? Some kind of ceremonial drowning because I’d failed on the prophetic journey they’d envisaged?

  Then just when the outside world began drifting away, I rose from the surface as though snatched from the waves in a storm. My chest tightened as I bent over to retch and rid my lungs of the black water, and only then did I snatch a glimpse of my rescuer. It was dark, but I knew him. Somehow.

  I reached up to touch his jaw, before jerking my fingers away again. He was icy, angular – and one of them. He lowered his gilled head to focus his ovoid eyes directly on mine, his white chest rippling like sand dunes in the emerging moon. His nape-length hair hung like tendrils of bladderwrack, while the ivory-white shell strung around his neck proclaimed his regal status as loudly as a bugle.

  ‘Talia.’

  His whisper filled the air, though his lips were sealed. Then snatches of eerie forgotten music reached through the water as though from the depths of an old shipwreck. It was the same soft and haunting music I’d heard in the tunnels when I was so close to death. Back then I thought it was the call of heaven; now I knew it was the pull of the underworld.

  ‘Eli?’ I forced through numb lips. ‘Where is he?’ My voice came in gasps, fierce and uneven.

  He stared down intently, allowing me to glimpse him. Eli, reflected in the black ovoid surface of his fathomless eyes. He was smiling, holding out his hands towards me or to another. To the one holding me now?

  I stared, dumbfounded, feeling a spark fire within me.

  ‘What have you done with him?’ I raged, pummelling my fists against his rock-hard chest.

  His gills opened, releasing a soft outpouring of freezing mist that stopped me in my tracks. I stared into his black eyes, praying fervently they would show me again.

  ‘You know me, Talia. I am Prince Phaethon, Son of Clymene.’ His whisper clung to the air. ‘I come to you in peace.’

  My mind was whirling through the pages of Grandpa’s book of mythology, until it reached the page I was searching for – heavily inked with a dark, stormy ocean, and eyes that watched as you read. A memory stirred, and Grandpa’s voice whispered through the trees.

  Clymene was an Oceanid nymph loved by the sun god, Helios. Together, they had seven daughters and a son, a prince named Phaethon, who was killed when he tried to drive his father’s chariot of the sun across the sky, scorching the land and its people for all time.

  ‘Phaethon?’ I echoed, my frozen lips barely able to form the word.

  An intense stare was my confirmation.

  ‘Eli … my brother …?’

  The water stirred around us.

  ‘He is safe …’

  I exhaled, feeling the fractures in my heart flood with fresh pain, forcing open the scars.

  ‘Then where is he?’ I burned. ‘Is he here? Why can’t I see him? And Aelia!’

  ‘You brought them to us with barely any life. But we accepted them, as we accepted you and the Commander General …’

  ‘Where are they, Phaethon?’

  And then I glimpsed it, buried in the place where things are supposed to be forgotten.

  A huge rambling city, concealed by an underwater garden, its bioluminescence gleaming like a million candles.

  It was a world I’d chosen to forget. My breath rattled the cool night air, and the shapes beneath the black water darted faster and faster – as though they knew it too.

  ‘Now you claim a right, despite this world doing all it could to end them,’ his ovoid eyes challenged, showing a glimpse of Eli and Aelia’s pale, waxen faces as they slid into the glass river, ‘so, my question to you is, what will you do for my kind in return?’

  His imperial face was as still as stone, the strength coursing through his arms as old as mountains.

  For all revivals the Oceanids demand a payment of sorts
: either an equitable trade or promise of recompense.

  I tried to steady my breath. Hadn’t August and I paid the heaviest price already?

  Fresh zeal flooded my veins.

  ‘I can pay,’ I forced through gritted teeth. ‘There can be a trade. Give them back; give Eli back. Stand beside us against Cassius – and I will pay in blood. For the Oceanids, for the Prolets, for Arafel, and for every last misbegotten creature who has suffered at his hand – I will watch Cassius draw his last breath before burning his dark heart until there is nothing but dust.’

  Another memory stirred, only this time it was Atticus pleading with me to spare his father’s life in the cathedral. Was it prompted by Phaethon? Some kind of test?

  ‘This time I will have no mercy,’ I swore.

  ‘Find Hominum chimera.’

  Prince Phaethon’s words faded into my skin as a myriad of illuminations reached up through the water. I stared down, glimpsed them floating somewhere between sleeping and waking, their hypnotic lullaby growing louder all the while. I could see they were coming, all of them, a thousand pairs of fathomless eyes powering towards me and reaching for my innermost thoughts.

  It was beautiful, terrifying and magical in the way only ancient worlds understood. I wanted to sleep, to let their bewitching song engulf me, to take me to them. Perhaps never to return.

  But instead the surface broke one last time and a familiar silhouette reached out of the water beside me. A gentle face, grey-blue eyes and longish sandy-brown hair. He smiled, and for the first time in months, I was conscious of a knot releasing somewhere deep inside.

  Chapter 7

  I was alone. Save for the rustling trees, and the ground beneath me which was as dry as a bone. For a second I stared upwards at the protective canopy of branches, entwined over my head as though to protest, ‘She’s one of us … a land creature … not of the water.’

  Adrenaline fired my limbs into action and I bolted upright, a million thoughts misfiring. I could see the silvery gleam of the lake through the trees, yet somehow I was dressed again – and as dry as though I’d never been swimming at all.