01 Unearthly

by Cynthia Hand

  He’s out there. On a horse. Away from phones or radios or news.

  The sky is turning that familiar golden orange. The fire is coming. I have to get back to Fox Creek Road. I know that this is it, the moment of truth. I was meant to come here to check for Tucker, but that’s all. When I go back to Fox Creek Road, the silver truck will be there. Christian will be standing there waiting for me. I will save him.

  Suddenly I’m in the vision. I’m standing at the edge of the road, looking at Christian’s silver Avalanche, about to go to him. My hands clench into fists at my sides, fists so tight that my nails cut into my palms, because I know. Tucker is trapped. I can see him so clearly in my mind, leaning against Midas’s neck, looking around him for a way out of the inferno that has overtaken him, looking for me. He whispers my name. Then he swallows and bends his head. He turns to the horse and gently strokes its neck. I watch his face as he accepts his own death. In just a few heartbeats, the fire will reach him. And I’m miles away, taking my first steps toward Christian. I am so very far away.

  I understand it now. The sorrow in the vision is not the grief of a Black Wing. This sorrow is all mine. It strikes me with such force it feels like someone has struck me in the chest with a baseball bat. My eyes flood with hot, bitter tears.

  Tucker’s going to die.

  And this is my test.

  I jerk back to Lazy Dog, sobbing. I look up into the sky, where storm clouds are gathering in the east, a bit of hell spilling over onto Earth.

  You are not a normal girl, Clara.

  “This isn’t fair,” I whisper furiously. “You’re supposed to love me.”

  “What did the fish say when it hit the concrete wall?”

  “What?”

  “Dam!”

  I love him. He’s mine and I am his. He saved me today. Loving him saved me. I can’t leave him to die.

  I won’t.

  “Damn it, Tuck.” I throw myself into the air and streak toward Idaho. My instincts tell me that he’ll be at Palisades, at his land. It’s a starting point, anyway.

  I fly straight to Palisades, and that’s when I see the other fire.

  It’s huge. It has burned right up to the lake line and now it’s eating its way up the mountainside, not moving along the forest floor but higher, in the trees. The flames shoot up at least a hundred feet into the sky, curling and crackling and tearing at the sky. It’s a literal inferno.

  I don’t think. I fly right at it. Tucker’s land is hidden somewhere back in those trees. The fire is making its own wind, somehow, a strong steady stream of wind that I have to fight against to go in the right direction. There’s so much smoke that it’s hard to keep my bearings. I fly lower, trying to get below the smoke to see the road. I can’t see squat. I just fly, and hope that my angel sense will somehow guide me.

  “Tucker!” I call.

  My wing catches a stray branch and I lose my balance and spin toward the ground. I right myself in the nick of time, jolting down hard on the forest floor but managing to stay on my feet. I’m close, I think. I’ve been to Tucker’s land maybe five times this summer, and I recognize the shape of the mountain. Then the smoke drifts for a moment and I can clearly see the road snaking its way up. It’s too hard to try to fly, too many obstacles, so I sprint onto the road and hurry up it.

  “Tucker!”

  Maybe he’s not here, I think. My lungs fill with smoke and I start coughing. My eyes water. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’ve done all this and he’s over at Bubba’s getting an early dinner.

  It’s my first moment of real doubt, but I quickly squash it. He’s close, he just can’t hear me. I don’t know how, but I know this is where I’ll find him, and when the road turns and I come up to the clearing at the edge of his land, I’m not surprised to see his truck parked there with the trailer attached.

  “Tucker!” I call again hoarsely. “Tucker, where are you?”

  No answer. I glance around wildly, looking for some clue to where he’s gone. At the edge of the clearing is a trail, very faint, but definitely a trail. I can make out hoofprints stamped in the dust.

  I look down the road. The fire has already swallowed up the road at the bottom of the ridge. I can hear it coming, branches crackling as they burn, this loud popping and snapping. Animals flee before it, rabbits and squirrels and snakes, even, all running away. Smoke moves toward me along the ground like an unrolling carpet.

  I have to find him. Now.

  I can see much better now that I’m ahead of the fire, but still not great. There’s so much smoke. I glide above the trail yelling his name and peering ahead through the trees.

  “Tuck!” I call again and again.

  “Clara!”

  Finally I see him, coming toward me on Midas as fast as the horse can go on such steep terrain. I drop down onto the trail at the same time that he slides off the horse’s back. We run toward each other through the smoke. He stumbles but keeps running. Then we’re in each other’s arms. Tucker crushes me to him, wings and all, his mouth close to my ear.

  “I love you,” he says breathlessly. “I thought I wasn’t going to get to tell you.” He turns away and coughs hard.

  “We have to go,” I say, pulling away.

  “I know. The fire’s blocking the way out. I tried to find a way over the top but Midas couldn’t do it.”

  “We’ll have to fly.”

  He stares at me, his blue eyes uncomprehending.

  “Wait,” he says. “But Midas.”

  “Tuck, we have to leave him.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “We have to. We have to go. Now.”

  “I can’t leave my horse.” I know how this must be for him. His most prized possession in this world. All the rodeos, the rides, the times when this animal felt like his best friend in the whole world. But there’s no choice.

  “We will all die here,” I say, looking into his eyes. “I can’t carry him. But I can carry you.”

  Tucker suddenly turns away from me and runs to Midas. For a minute I think he’s going to run away and try to make it out with the horse. Then he unfastens the horse’s bridle and throws it onto the side of the trail.

  The wind shifts, like the mountain is taking a breath. The fire is moving quickly from branch to branch, and any minute the trees around us will catch.

  “Tuck, come on!” I yell.

  “Go!” he shouts at Midas. “Get out of here!”

  He hits the horse on the rump and it makes a noise like a scream and darts away back up the mountain. I run to Tucker and grab him tight around the middle, under the arms.

  Please, I pray even though I know I have no right to ask. Give me strength.

  For a moment I strain with all the muscle in my body, arms, legs, wings, you name it. I reach toward the sky with everything I have. We push off in a burst of sheer will, rising up through the trees, through the smoke, the ground dropping away beneath us. He holds me tight and presses his face into my neck. My heart swells with love for him. My body tingles with a new kind of energy. I lift Tucker effortlessly, with more grace than I’ve ever had in the air before. It’s easy. It’s like being carried on the wind.

  Tucker gasps. For a few seconds we see Midas running along the side of the mountain, and I feel Tucker’s sorrow over losing his beautiful horse. When we get higher we can see the flames pushing steadily up. There’s no way to tell if Midas will make it. It doesn’t look good. Below us Tucker’s land, the little clearing where I first showed him my wings, has already been engulfed. Bluebell is burning, sending out thick, black plumes of smoke.

  I turn us in the air and then move away from the mountain, out into the open where I can fly more smoothly and the air is clearer. Three green fire trucks are tearing up the highway toward the fire, sirens blaring.

  “Look out!” yells Tucker.

  A helicopter shoots past us to the fire, so close we feel the force of its blades cutting the air. It pours a sheet of water onto the flames, then circles back
toward the lake.

  Tucker shudders in my arms. I tighten my grip on him and head for the closest place that I know will be safe.

  When I come down in my backyard, I let go of Tucker and we both stumble and fall onto the lawn. Tucker rolls onto his back on the grass, covers his eyes with his hands, and lets out a low groan. I fill up with a relief so overwhelming that I want to laugh. All I care about in this moment is that he’s safe. He’s alive.

  “Your wings,” he says.

  I look over my shoulder at my reflection in the front window of our house. The girl staring back ripples with power the way heat shimmers over a sidewalk. I can suddenly see part of that other creature in her, like the one behind the Black Wing. Her eyes are shadowed with sorrow. Her wings, half folded behind her, are a dark, sweet gray. It’s clear even in the hazy reflection of the glass.

  “What does it mean?” asks Tucker.

  “I have to go.”

  At that exact moment my mom pulls up in the Prius.

  “What happened?” she asks. “I heard on the radio that the fire just passed Fox Creek Road. Where’s—”

  Then she sees Tucker kneeling in the grass. The smile fades. She looks at me with wide, stricken eyes.

  “Where’s Christian?” she asks.

  I can’t meet her eyes. The fire has been at Fox Creek Road, she said. She crosses quickly over to me and grabs me by the wing, turning me so that she can get a good look at the dark feathers.

  “Clara, what have you done?”

  “I had to save Tucker. He would have died.”

  She looks so fragile in that moment, so drained and broken and lost. Her eyes so hopeless. They close for a moment, then open.

  “You need to go find him now,” she says then. “I’ll look after Tucker. Go!”

  Then she kisses my forehead like she’s saying good-bye to me forever and turns toward the house.

  Chapter 22

  Down Came the Rain

  I’m too late, but then I knew I would be.

  The fire has already been here.

  I land. The place where I usually start my vision is scorched and black. There’s nothing alive. The trees are blackened poles. The silver Avalanche is parked on the side of the road, smoke still rolling off it, charred and gutted by fire.

  I run up the hillside to the place where he always stands in my vision. He isn’t there. The wind picks up and hurls hot ash into my face. The forest looks like the hell dimension, the land the same as I knew it, but burned. Empty of everything beautiful and good. No color or sound or hope.

  He’s not here.

  The weight of it hits me. This is my purpose, and I have failed. All this time I’ve only been thinking about Tucker. I saved him because I didn’t want to live on earth without him. I didn’t want that kind of pain. I’m that selfish. And now Christian is gone. He’s supposed to be important, my mom said. There was a plan for him, something bigger than me or Tucker or anything else. Something he was meant for. And now he’s gone.

  “Christian!” I scream raggedly, the noise echoing off the blackened tree trunks.

  There’s no answer.

  For a while I look for his body. I wonder if it could have been burned into ash, if the fire was that hot. I circle back to the truck. The keys are still in the ignition. That’s the only sign of him. I wander the burned forest in a daze, searching. Then the sun is setting, a fiery red ball descending behind into the mountains. It’s getting dark.

  The storm clouds that have been moving in from the east open up and pour like a faucet being turned on. Within minutes I’m soaked to the skin. Shivering. Alone.

  I can’t go home. I don’t think I can stand to see the disappointment on Mom’s face. I don’t think I can live with myself. I walk, cold and wet, strands of hair sticking to my face and neck. I hike to the top of the ridge and watch the fire burning in the distance, the flames licking at the orange sky. It’s beautiful, in a way. The glow. The dance of the smoke. And then there’s the storm, the black rumbling clouds, the little flashes of lightning here and there. The rain so cool on my face, washing away the soot. That’s how it always is, I guess. Beauty and death.

  Behind me, something moves in the bushes. I turn.

  Christian steps out of the trees.

  Time is a funny thing. Sometimes it crawls endlessly on. Like French class. Or waiting for a fish to bite. And other times it speeds up, the days zooming by. I remember this one time in first grade. I was standing in the middle of the elementary school playground near the monkey bars and a bunch of third graders ran by. They seemed huge to me. Someday, a long, long time from now, I thought at that moment, I will be in third grade. That was more than ten years ago, but it feels like ten minutes. I was just there. Time flies, isn’t that what they say? My summer with Tucker. The first time I had the vision until now.

  And sometimes time really does stop.

  Christian and I stare at each other like we’re both under a spell and if one of us moves, the other one will disappear.

  “Oh, Clara,” he whispers. “I thought you were dead.”

  “You thought I . . .”

  He reaches to touch a strand of my wet hair. I’m suddenly dizzy. Exhausted. Wildly confused. I sway on my feet. He catches me by the shoulders and steadies me. I press my eyes closed. He’s real. He’s alive.

  “You’re soaked,” he observes. He pulls off the black fleece jacket, which is only slightly less damp, and drapes it around my shoulders.

  “Why are you here?” I whisper.

  “I thought I was supposed to save you from the fire.”

  I stare at him so intently that he flushes.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “That was a weird thing to say. I meant—”

  “Christian—”

  “I’m just glad you’re safe. We should get you inside before you catch cold or something.”

  “Wait,” I say, tugging at his arm. “Please.”

  “I know this doesn’t make any sense. . . .”

  “It makes sense,” I insist, “except for the part where you’re supposed to save me.”

  “What?”

  “I’m supposed to save you.”

  “What? Now I’m confused,” he says.

  “Unless . . .” I take a few steps back. He starts to follow, but I hold up a trembling hand.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he murmurs. “I won’t hurt you. I would never hurt you.”

  “Show yourself,” I whisper.

  There’s a brief flash of light. When my eyes adjust I see Christian standing under the burned trees. He coughs and looks at his feet almost like he’s ashamed. Sprouting from his shoulder blades are large speckled wings, ivory with black flecks, like someone has splattered him with paint. He flexes them carefully and then folds them into his back.

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “In your vision, did we meet down there?” I ask, gesturing down toward Fox Creek Road. “You say, ‘It’s you,’ and I say, ‘Yes, it’s me,’ and then we fly away?”

  “How do you know that?”

  I summon my wings. I know the feathers are dark now, and what that will mean to him, but he deserves to know the truth.

  His eyes widen. He lets out an incredulous breath, the way he does when he laughs sometimes. “You’re an angel-blood.”

  “I’ve been having the vision since November,” I say, the words tumbling out. “It’s why we moved here. I was supposed to find you.”

  He stares at me, stunned.

  “But it’s my fault,” he says after a moment. “I didn’t get here on time. I didn’t expect there to be two fires. I didn’t know which one.”

  He glances up at me. “I didn’t know it was you at first. It was the hair. I didn’t recognize you with the red hair. Stupid, I know. I knew there was something different about you, I always felt—in my vision you always have blond hair. And for a while that’s all I saw—I’d hear someone walk up behind me, but before I’d turn around completely, the vision would end. I ne
ver saw your face until I had the vision at prom.”

  “It’s not your fault, Christian. It’s mine. I wasn’t here to meet you. I didn’t save you.”

  My voice is loud and shrill in the emptiness of the burned forest. I put my hands over my eyes and will myself not to cry.

  “But I didn’t need to be saved,” he says gently. “Maybe we were supposed to save each other.”

  From what, I wonder.

  I drop my hands to see him walking toward me, reaching out. We aren’t in the vision now, but I still find him beautiful, even wet with rain and smudged with ash. He takes my hands in his.

  “You’re alive,” I choke out, shaking my head. He squeezes my hands, then pulls me in for a hug.

  “Yeah, that’s good news to me, too.”

  One hand strokes slowly down my wings, sending a tremor through me. Then he pulls back and lifts his hand in front of him, looking at it. His palm is black. I stare at it.

  “Your wings are covered with soot,” he says with a laugh.

  I grab his hand, draw my finger across it, and sure enough, come away with a mix of soot and rain. He wipes his hand against the sides of his jeans.

  “What do we do now?” I ask.

  “Let’s just play it by ear.” He looks into my eyes again, then down at my lips. Another quake shakes me. He wets his lips, then looks back into my eyes. Asking me.

  This could be my second chance. If neither one of us needed saving. What else is there, but this? It seems like we’ve been set up on some kind of heavenly ordained date. We don’t need the fire. We could reenact the vision here and now.

  “It was always you,” he says, so close I could feel his breath on my face.

  I’m drowning. I do want him to kiss me. I want to make everything right again. To make my mother proud. To do what I am supposed to do. To love Christian, if that’s what I’m meant for.

  Christian starts to lean in.

  “No,” I whisper, unable to get my voice any louder. I pull back. My heart doesn’t belong to me anymore. It belongs to Tucker. I can’t pretend that away. “I can’t.”

  He steps back immediately.