by J B Cantwell
Somewhere up there, beyond the blue-gray skies of Earth, across vast oceans of stars, the Corentin stared back, searching. I knew it. Could feel it. Could he see me now? Had we moved fast enough to lose him?
Finally, a whimpering sound came from the heavy blanket I had wrapped around Cait, and she emerged from the ball, her face bright red and miserable. She stared around the landscape, and whatever hope had remained in her eyes was washed away in an instant.
“Where are we?” came her tiny voice.
Wind whipped through her hair and over my skin. I blinked the brightness of the sunlight away, came back to myself.
I sat up and looked around. Behind us, the west side of the Rocky Mountains loomed, enormous and green. Before us, nothing but flat, barren earth. And in the distance, somewhere far away and out of sight, another set of mountains rose from the desert floor. Our destination.
I turned back to take in the range we had just tumbled out of. There, the last of Earth’s treasures stood, still clinging to life miles up into the sky. There, somewhere within the endless folds of rock, was my mother. Left behind. Again.
Something about the thought, about imagining her anger, her fear, brought me back to myself. I could not despair. I hadn’t made the choice to leave so that I could quit, shriveling up beneath the desert sun after barely having left.
“We’re somewhere in Utah, I think,” I said.
The words meant nothing to her. She stared around, her face despondent.
“You okay?” I asked.
Her breath caught in her chest, and little cries started coming from her. I crawled closer to her and gathered her into my arms, rocking her slightly as we caught our breath.
Had it been real? Had the black I had seen in my mother’s eyes truly been the Corentin reaching out for her? Or had it just been a figment of my imagination, my fear making things up as we had fled?
I wanted to tell myself that it didn’t matter, that if it had been real it had only proven that I had made the right decision to go when we did.
But it did matter. If he really had possessed her in that moment, would the Corentin release his hold on her and come looking for me? Or would he latch onto her mind and continue tormenting her for the fun of it?
More tears rolled hotly down my cheeks. Cait slowly calmed, and I was relieved to find her eyes still clear when she looked up at me again.
“What’s happening?” she asked, fearful and shivering despite the heat of the sun.
I hugged her tighter, desperately wanting to protect her, but unable to decide if withholding the truth would do that, or somehow put her in greater peril.
“You know how you get when you find something you’re looking for?” I asked. “When you find something using your power? How you sort of go into a trance?”
She stared at me, her face blank
“When it happens, it’s almost like you’re not really here, not entirely. Like sleepwalking.”
She nodded, understanding.
“Rhainn-y used to sleepwalk,” she said. Her voice caught at the memory of her brother.
“Well, you sort of get that way, when you’ve almost found something. Like when you found the gold in that mine. And that’s what happened this morning. Only it was the Corentin doing it to you, not your power.”
Her eyes grew wide with fear at the mention of the name.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“It’s like he’s using you to talk to me,” I said, trying hard to make the whole thing sound less scary than it was.
Her gaze shifted, and she stared into space for several long moments.
“How do I make it stop?” she finally asked.
“Stop?” I asked. “I don’t know if you can.” But then the thought occurred to me that maybe she could. If she couldn’t halt the possession completely, I wondered if she could take some sort of control over it. “What does it feel like when it happens? Do you remember it?”
“I get sort of tired,” she said. “Like the way it feels right before you fall asleep. It gets dark all around, and I want to lay down, but I don’t because of the noise.”
“The noise?”
“The scary man is always talking so much that I can’t sleep,” she said, furrowing her brow in irritation. “Even though I want to.”
The scary man.
Was that what it felt like for Jade, too? For my father?
I turned her to face me.
“If it happens again, if you start to feel that sleepy feeling and the scary man it talking, can you try something for me?” I asked. She looked up tentatively, not ready to promise anything. “Try to stay awake. Try as hard as you can to stay awake. Can you do that?”
“I guess,” she said, shrugging. “But what if I want to sleep?”
“You can sleep during normal times,” I said. “But if you hear the scary man talking and you start to feel sleepy, I want you to try as hard as you can to stay awake. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
I hugged her to me again, gripping tightly to the one person on this planet that I still had by my side. Even if part of the time she was the Corentin’s puppet. It was a risk I had to take.
Maybe it was possible. Maybe she could fight it. Everyone I had ever seen possessed by the Corentin had always seemed too far gone to fight. But Cait still had her wits about her most of the time. Maybe, with a little help from me, she stood a chance against him. Maybe we both did.
I wished I had thought to tell Mom the same thing.
Finally, when we had held each other for many long minutes, she let the blankets fall away from her shoulders and stood up, stretching her arms high above her head.
Immediately, I wished to do the same. I had traveled like this, jump after jump, not long ago, but I had never been able to put my finger on just why it was so uncomfortable to do so. Cait groaned as her muscles stretched out, releasing the tension packed tight within them from the jumps.
I got to my feet and stretched my arms up, too. It seemed I could feel every fiber of muscle slowly releasing, and the relief was palpable. Immediately I felt better, more cheerful. Or at least, less weighted by my decision.
When we had both stretched out, we stood, staring around.
There was nothing here. Hot wind blew against our faces, unnatural for this time of year. I knew that, in another time, this place would have been vibrant and green. Or maybe even white with a dusting of snow. Now, there was nothing left. The rains had stopped coming decades ago. It was a wasteland.
“Wanna walk for a while?” I asked. I knew that the sun would grow hotter as the day dragged on, knew that we should get moving, but I couldn’t bring myself to jump again quite yet.
Cait nodded, looking down at the blanket she had emerged from, a question on her face.
“Just leave it,” I said. “We won’t need it.”
Kiron’s blanket had been enough to keep me insulated in three feet of snow, had kept Cait safe beneath poisoned rain. I counted on it now to keep us warm if the heat in this stark desert suddenly disappeared.
We walked for a time in silence, relishing the feeling of no longer being constricted by the jumps. Cait skipped alongside me, occasionally kicking rocks that cropped up in her path. I was amazed by her lack of argument about our current situation. Not to mention the fact that she seemed to have gotten over her fear of me so quickly. I wondered if she was able to fight off the Corentin, she might fight off the memory of her dreams as well.
“What do you dream about?” I asked, kicking a rock, myself. “I mean, when you have your nightmares?” I remembered the dream I had been having about Jade screaming just before I had woken up to find it was Cait.
She didn’t speak, and I noticed that her skipping walk and rock kicking ceased.
“Cait?” I pressed. “You should probably tell me. We’re alone now, and I need to know what to do if it happens again.” My hand lifted absently to my neck, still sore from where she had gripped her little hands around
it.
Her gait slowed, and eventually she came to a stop. She looked around us, at the ground, at the mountains in the distance, at the sky. Anywhere but at me.
I knelt down, forcing her to meet my gaze.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Nothing’s going to happen to you just for telling me.”
Finally, she willingly looked into my eyes.
“You don’t know that,” she said.
I wondered what it was like for her, to be experiencing so much misery at such a young age.
She had been a favorite of the Coyle, if only because both myself and Rhainn had tried so desperately to free her from him. The fear she felt towards him still hovered over her.
And we both knew the truth. That neither of us understood for sure just how far the Corentin’s actual powers could reach.
Finally, she made her decision. She took the chance. She told me.
“In my dreams, you’re him,” she said. “And you’re…” she struggled to think of the right word, “…dead.”
“I’m him?” I asked. “What do you—” But the question died on my lips.
I was playing the part of the Corentin in her dreams?
“I don’t understand. How can I be the Corentin?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But in the dreams, you are.” She tore her gaze away, stared at her feet. “No glow.”
No glow. No life. No goodness in me at all.
I sat back into the dirt, sighing.
“What do you mean I’m ‘dead’?” I finally asked.
At this question, her eyes fell, and he lower lip began to tremble. She didn’t answer.
“Do you know it’s not real?” I asked.
She looked up.
“But it is real,” she argued, her voice quiet.
“No,” I said. “It’s just a dream.”
But as I said the words, I remembered the black cloud that had covered her irises just hours ago. All of this was all too real. For her.
“He’s trying to manipulate you,” I said.
“What’s manipu—?”
“He’s trying to trick you,” I explained. “He’s trying to make you think I’m dead, or I’m him, or anything horrible that he wants you to think so that he can control you.”
But my words were too much. I knew they were the truth, and I didn’t have a good lie to tell her anyways. But the difference between the truth and what she needed to hear were two very different things.
She’s just a kid.
Suddenly, guilt flooded through me. Here I was, forcing this little kid to accompany me on a journey that could very well mean the death of us both. That had never been my intention. I had meant to bring Cait here to protect her, to leave her with Mom back at the farm so that I could ensure her safety.
Now, I was dragging her along, and there was no protection for her out here except the tiny bit I could offer. Yes, the point was to fix it all, to balance the fold, to use her talents to lead me to the destination I so desperately needed to reach.
But I was using her.
Just like the Corentin.
Now I was the one fighting back tears.
“You don’t have to come with me,” I said. “I can take you back right now. I’ll leave you with Mom and Grandma. Maybe you guys can stay with Lily for a while.”
Her face brightened at the sound of her new friend’s name, then fell again.
“No,” she said. “I want to come with you.”
“You do?” I choked. “Why?”
“Because you’re the brightest one,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Your glow is getting brighter.” Her face was matter of fact. Honest.
“Brighter?” How was that possible? “Aren’t you mad I took you along?” I asked.
She looked up at me, her eyes big and thoughtful.
“You’re Rhainn’s friend,” she said. It was the first time I had heard her call him by his real name, not the sing-song nickname she usually used.
And something inside my chest seemed to break at her words. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to cry or scream or deny her, tell her that she had been wrong.
I had failed Rhainn so badly.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said. “I told Rhainn I would go back for him. I told him I could save you both. But the Coyle got to him before I could. It’s my fault he’s gone.” The words came out in a rush of tears as the weight of what I was facing, what I had faced, bore down on me.
“Did you lie?” she asked, looking at me sidelong, searching for the truth in my face.
“No, but—”
“I don’t like it when people lie,” she said.
I shook my head.
“I didn’t lie.”
“Then it’s not your fault,” she said. “He’s still there.” She looked up into the gray above.
I looked up, too. The sky lacked all color. Our world was now nothing but haze and sand.
Was Rhainn still alive, then? Could she feel him now?
I let my chin fall to my chest. I still had so much I needed to do, so much that seemed I was the only one able to do. But I had felt on the verge of falling apart for so long, I wondered if I would be able to even take another single step along the road I’d been traveling. A road that, with every bit of progress I made, made me feel more and more sure of the danger that awaited me on the other side.
My father, already possessed, was my destination.
Would I ever find him?
Suddenly, she was the one comforting me.
“Don’t worry,” she said, patting me on the cheek with her fat little hand. “We’ll find your Daddy.”
My breath caught in my chest, and I found I couldn’t breathe at all anymore. In that moment, my mind had been filled with demons and gold and Jade’s black eyes. But Cait’s vision had pierced through it all, right to my heart.
“I can see him now,” she said. “We’re a lot closer than we were.” She looked around again, trained her gaze westward.
Her magic knew. Her entire being knew. She knew it, understood it, accepted it.
She wrapped her arms around my neck and lay her head on my shoulder.
I hugged her, laughing and crying at the same time. Until that moment I had felt so lost.
Now I was found.
Chapter 20
We spent the next few days alternating between walking and jumping. Using the link became harder as we pressed on, not because it was losing power, but because of the toll it took on our bodies. Occasionally, I would become tense, suddenly eager again to make our destination as quickly as possible. I always felt that the Corentin was right behind us, that he would discover us at any moment and somehow wrench Cait, my only friend in this lonely place, from me. During these fits of worry, we would jump for hours, covering hundreds of miles as I tried to put distance between us and the mountains, the last place I had truly sensed his presence.
And the farther we got from the village, the better Cait seemed. Her nightmares hadn’t returned, and I hadn’t so much as seen a single wisp of black around the edges of her eyes since that first morning we had jumped away. I wondered if we had truly cast the Corentin off our trail.
Or if he knew precisely where we were and was just biding his time until the moment to strike was right.
This feeling of foreboding increased with each passing day, with each step we took. But gradually, the urge I felt to rush dissipated, turning to caution. A sort of calm started to settle over me, and I began to accept the fact that I couldn’t control whatever it was that was the Corentin was planning next. Maybe it was the starkness of the terrain. Maybe it was the respite from attack. I felt, though, that the inevitable would happen, with or without my panic.
Cait grew quieter as the days passed, too, more focused. Whatever trail it was she was following seemed to take up all her attention, and instead of making the chatter I had become so familiar with, she now walked along in silence, her gaze locked on
the horizon.
Finally, five days after our departure, a vast range of mountains rose up before us in the distance. Cait saw them first, probably right at the moment they had become visible through the haze. The silence from her lack of footsteps brought me out of my thoughts, and I turned to find her staring past me at the destination beyond. I walked back to stand beside her, kneeling down so that I could try to see the terrain from her level.
“That’s where he is,” she breathed. Her face was calm, but had an odd sadness about it I didn’t understand.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She looked at me, her face so full of pity that it sent a pang of foreboding through my center.
“I don’t think he’s…” she began, turning again to face the mountains.
She did not finish her thought.
“What?” I pressed. “What is it?”
“I think he’s sick,” she said.
Sick?
Was she seeing the same madness I, myself, had known so many years ago?
My fear was starting to bubble to the surface again, threatening the calm I had been building inside my mind. I shoved it back down, unwilling to face whatever truth would greet me when we finally found him.
If he was sick, then I’d just have to take care of him the best I knew how.
But the memory of Cait’s black eyes still ate at me. The list of people needing help seemed to be growing, piling up in my wake as I went from place to place, pursuing the one goal I knew the Corentin wanted to keep me from attaining.
I changed the subject.
“How do you know where to go?” I asked, standing back up. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, it was that I was curious.
She glanced at me, clearly trying to wipe the pity off her face as she looked at me, then began walking again.
“I told you,” she said. “I just see it.”
“Okay,” I said, giving her a playful nudge on the shoulder. “What does it look like then?”
Her face cracked into a smile, the first one I had seen from her in days. I returned it, noticing how oddly at ease it made me feel just to allow myself to smile. She stopped walking again, beckoning for me to kneel down to her once more. I did so, and together we stared out across the last of the flat plains between us and my father.
