Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  But then she was there, rolling me onto my back, her eyes completely clear. And that, of course, could only mean one thing.

  The Corentin was dead.

  And Jared.

  And Father.

  And Dad.

  It was over.

  I stared into the sky, watching in wonder as Earth hurtled towards us. In the end, we would all die.

  Jade was digging through my pockets for reasons I couldn’t understand. Then, the ground beneath us trembled once again as she lowered herself into the last chamber.

  In moments it was done. This last piece of gold, its resting place protected by the giants for millennia, was now home.

  And the shaking stopped.

  I wondered whose power it was that had done the Corentin in in the end. The giants? Had they weakened him enough to allow our attacks to gain purchase? Father? Had his power what had finally overcome him?

  Or had it been Dad? In those last, final moments, had it been him to unleash his own hidden power? Was he the one who had found, finally, his own voice?

  It could be true. The tiny flicker of hope that had left me as I watched him go over the side of the cliff flared again, just barely.

  It had been Dad, then, I told myself. And, in the end, the power within him had been enough to take down the man, the beast, who had haunted us all for as long as we could remember.

  Jade stood over me, her hands working furiously in the air, calling stones to her aid.

  But her eyes were clear as a mountain lake. They had been the same beautiful green that I had come to know many months ago, before the blackness of the Corentin’s wrath had ever touched them. So when a single stone landed in her hand, the fear that I felt drained away. This time it had required no effort at all. She had simply willed it to come to her, and it had obeyed.

  She crouched over me, murmuring, holding the jade-green stone over my body. As she worked, the pain in my stomach eased. With the stone she drew it out of me, and a long sigh escaped my lips as the pain receded.

  My eyes still stared above. I reeled from the events of the last hours. Kiron, Finian, both tossed over the side of the precipice, just as the giants had been. Were they even still alive?

  Something flickered around the edges of my mind, like an idea forgotten, fighting to come to the surface.

  I turned away from the view as Earth began to encompass the whole sky above. And when I did, I found Jade gone. Had she fled? Perhaps she was too ashamed and embarrassed by what had happened.

  I stared over the side of the mountain. Far below, the sea stretched away from the land, and the first rays of sunlight glinted on the waves. Riverstone stood, as it always had, at the very edge of the water. This would be as good a place as any to die. Upon the precipice. At the end.

  Jade ran back up the stone staircase, and then to my side. Her tattered robes flew behind her in the increasing wind.

  “Aster, we have to get out of here!” she yelled.

  She tried to sit me up, but I refused. Didn’t she understand? Didn’t she see that there was no point?

  “It’s too late,” I said, pointing up. “It’s too late for all of us!”

  Behind her, Kiron was dragging himself along the stone towards me.

  My heart flooded in my chest, and my throat ached and contracted.

  He was alive.

  “Finian?” I asked.

  “He’ll be okay,” she said. “Come on, we have to move!” She was struggling to pull me upright by the shoulders, but I was deadweight.

  Kiron held my gaze, and I saw in his eyes a desperation that I had never seen before.

  “Use the girl!” he yelled, looking up at Jade and then to the sky.

  I struggled, trying to understand him.

  “Come on, boy!” he shouted. “Don’t prove you’re a fool now! Use the girl!”

  I looked up where his finger was pointing. My body still ached, but it was more exhaustion that kept me pinned to the stone. Earth was coming, pushing the wind around us erratically, like some huge hurricane descending. One thing I knew for sure: when that big rock collided with Aria, it would obliterate us and everything these worlds had ever known.

  That big rock.

  My home planet. So huge. Undeniably going to destroy us all.

  That big rock.

  And suddenly it clicked into place in my brain.

  Earth, it was a planet. A giant one. Made of rock. Jared been the one to pull it deeper into the Fold. He had done it millennia ago, and now again. With his rock power.

  I rolled over, pushing myself up to sitting. Jade was clawing at my arm, trying to get me up and moving away from the danger.

  “Stop!” I yelled over the wind. “It’s you! It’s been you all along! You are the one who is going to save our worlds. You are the champion!”

  He of the line

  Pure of heart

  “What are you talking about?” she screamed. “We have to leave! Now!”

  Lost in the wilds

  From the start

  I looked down at Kiron. His face had relaxed with the knowledge that I finally, truly understood. He grappled with my pack and drew out the last of the gold stones.

  Untouched by flame

  He ventures through

  In our world, untamed

  To find the true

  “Look!” I yelled, pointing up.

  “Yes, I know!” she screamed. “Now why won’t you come with me?”

  The last hope of men

  He seeks to reverse

  To find the end

  To end the curse

  “You are the one who can fix this whole thing!” I said. “Jared did it ages ago, and today he’s done it again. He pulled the Earth to him, to us, using his power. His rock power.”

  She stared around, confused, trying to figure out what it was I was trying to communicate.

  Then, her eyes grew wide, wider than I’d ever see them.

  “You’re crazy!” she wailed. “I can’t do that! I could barely get the jadestone for you from Riverstone, and you want me to repel Earth? I can’t do it!”

  I got to my feet then, trying to hide the wobble in my legs, and gripped her by the shoulders.

  “You’re the only one here who can do it!” I yelled.

  And she could do it. I felt certain of that. Everything had led to this moment. All the months of travel, all the efforts to defeat the one man who had caused all of this suffering. Without that journey I don’t think I would have understood what I did now.

  If she didn’t try, we would die for sure. But if she did, then we, all of us, had a chance at life.

  “I don’t want to die up here, Jade! We’ve come too far! I know you can do this! You just have to believe. All along you’ve thought you weren’t good enough, that you were undeserving of our attention. Our friendship. But you are deserving of all of it. You can do this! You know you can!”

  Jade was looking back and forth now between Kiron, Earth, and myself. She muttered something inaudible against the rushing wind, her face twisting with the doubt she felt.

  I grabbed her by the shoulders and whipped her around. Then, when she made no effort, I raised up her arms from behind, tried to put her hands in the right position.

  Kiron tugged on my pant leg from where he had dragged himself to and passed me the gold.

  “You can do this,” I said into her ear. I placed the remaining stones into her hands, two in each. She looked down at them, surprised. “You must do this. It’s no more than bringing us the jadestone from Riverstone. It’s no more than drawing the rocks to us on the surface of the ocean. It’s no more than making one of your stone tornadoes.”

  She stood still, staring at the gold as if she couldn’t believe what she was being faced with.

  “Jade, please!” I begged. “Please try!”

  She looked back at me, eyes clear and green and finally free. And I saw just a trace of a smirk on her lips.

  “Get back,” she commanded.
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br />   Kiron and I moved away from her as she raised her arms over her head.

  The first bolt knocked me to the ground, and Kiron nearly over the side of the precipice again. He backed away further, dragging his body in a backwards crawl down the steps.

  But I stayed.

  She tried again, and this time launched an enormous, magnificent jet of power. The gold acted as a catalyst, strengthening the innate power she already held within herself.

  And the jet grew.

  It grew to encompass her entire body. Up above, the bolt hit the side of Earth, scattering in all directions as it met with the massive planet.

  There had been legends about Jared, that he had died from the force of his power when he had drawn Earth closer into the Fold. These stories tortured my mind now as I watched Jade, the power overtaking her. The myths about Jared had been false; he had survived his encounter with Earth. All I could do now was watch and wait, and hope that Jade would survive just as he had.

  For what felt like a long time, her bolts seemed to have no effect. Then, suddenly, her power grew. The ring of light that encompassed her extended outward, and I backed away from it as if it were an open flame. The fireworks show above grew larger, too.

  Had the planet stopped moving towards us now? It was so obscured by her power that it was impossible to tell for sure.

  Then I noticed the wind.

  When just minutes before it had been howling in our ears, now nothing more than a slight breeze ruffled my hair.

  It worked.

  I wanted to shout with joy. I had been right about her. For once.

  But with my excitement came doubt. Jade was completely engulfed now, and this time real fire was flickering around the edges of her magic cocoon. I got to my feet, moving as close to her as I dared.

  The sound of the lightning was deafening, and I could barely hear my own voice over the crackling of her power.

  “Jade!” I screamed. “You have to stop!”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Jade!”

  She didn’t stop, and a moment later I saw why.

  She stood as still as a statue, frozen by the her own beam of electricity. Only her eyes moved back and forth, and slowly her mouth twisted into a look of great pain.

  The ground beneath us began to crack, and I stepped back as the pebbles at my feet bounced upon the stone.

  Jade, unable to stop. The mountain already shaking. Only one thing could be coming.

  I raced to the edge of the precipice and found Kiron at the base of the stars. Below, Finian was sitting upright looking dazed, but very much alive.

  “Get out of here!” I yelled as loudly as I could. “It’s going to break up!”

  Kiron paused, just for a moment, resting his crystal blue eyes on me. These long months we had spent, sometimes together, sometimes apart, but always seeking the same thing: to destroy the beast that had been intent on ruining our worlds, our homes. We had forged an unlikely alliance that had grown into friendship.

  A loud crack came from where Jade stood, and I looked back at her, surprised. When I looked back down to shout once again to Kiron to leave, he had already fled. He was to Finian in an instant, dragging him up from the ground. Together the two of them flew down the mountain staircase, and all I could do was hope that they would survive.

  Because the truth was beginning to dawn on me. I wasn’t getting out of this alive.

  I had left Jade once, when I was too weak to recognize my own power. When I was too scared to face her twisted, demented psyche. When I was more concerned about saving myself than putting up a fight to save her. I had told myself that I’d had to do it, that I would’ve died if I hadn’t left her in that Riverstone tower to fight her demons on her own.

  But it was a lie. I had known it all along. We had already agreed that we had each failed the other in different ways, that our circumstances were impossible to navigate.

  But I would not leave her now.

  I turned to her, hoping to find her somehow back in control, hoping that there still might be a way out of this for both of us. She was just as trapped as she had been moments before. The power coming out of her now shot from her entire body, her entire being. Above, the Earth’s momentum fought to bring it closer, to deal the final death blow that Jared had intended. The jet now burst across the surface of it, ever growing. I wondered if the people back home could see the fireworks show in the sky, or if it was bursting forth only along the surface of the Fold, and not in Earth’s atmosphere.

  The wind picked up again, this time with a sucking motion that drew her hair straight up into the air. The look on her face intensified, and I realized what had happened.

  The mountain cracked again, and for a moment I lost my footing, falling to the sharp shards of rock that were breaking apart from the precipice. I ignored the sharp pain in my right knee and climbed for her.

  “Jade!” I screamed. “You have to stop!”

  I scrambled for the top, the footing uneven and slippery. I was barely able to gain purchase amidst the loose stones. When I finally did, what I found terrified me.

  Jade’s body was changing, thinning. As she released the fury of her power onto Earth, her own power seemed to be drawing her life force out of her. I hesitated for a moment, wanting to grab her, to shake her out of the trance she seemed to be in, but worried that the force of her power would knock me back, or would kill me outright.

  This is the end either way. Do it.

  I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the impossible: that there was a chance we would make it off this rock, that one day soon we would find a happiness that had eluded us for as long as we could remember.

  Yes, it was possible. It had to be. There was always a chance that the dangers we had faced for our entire lives were able to be overthrown.

  I opened my eyes and plunged my hands inside her circle of power, gripping her arms.

  It was like fire and ice and wind and rain all at the same time. I howled with the pain of it, certain that my flesh was melting off my bones.

  “Jade!” I screamed. “Stop!”

  The pain continued, and her eyes seemed forever fixed on the looming planet above.

  I opened my mouth to scream again, but found that my voice was nothing but a howl of pain, unable to form sound into words.

  Her eyes flickered at my cries.

  I screamed some more, but without purpose any other than to protest the pain in my arms.

  Jade! Stop! You have to stop!

  Her eyes flickered again, but I shut mine then, too absorbed in misery to look at the world anymore. I had died once before, and come close several more times since. Is this what death would ultimately feel like? Would I go out in a blaze of pain and misery?

  The world fell away then. The mountain cracked, and the only thing keeping us upright was her power. But we fell just the same. The precipice crumbled into a pile of rubble as the enormous crack in the stone raced down the mountain. My eyes flew open despite the pain now. The sensation of falling swooped in my stomach, and I found us going down, down into the abyss of the chasm opening up beneath us. I forgot about my arms, the pain. I forgot about everything as I watched the great stones of Mt. Neri take us down into its depths.

  And then we hit. Were it not for Jade’s power, we would have been crushed against the jagged rocks that had once been the summit of the mountain. But when we were a half second away from breaking our bodies against the stone, we stopped in midair, and then floated the rest of the way down as if we were light as air.

  Her light extinguished, releasing my arms.

  And her power was gone.

  The great sucking air seemed to want to pull us to the top of what remained of the mountain, and our hair stood on end with the force of it.

  “Jade?” I croaked.

  My hands were still gripping her arms, which were too thin now. Was she alive? My arms burned with the contact I had just made as if I had laid them in a fire to roast. But I found the
m unblistered, unmarked by the trauma they had just endured. I dropped my hands, inspecting them. Then I reached out for her face.

  She lay as quietly as if she were sleeping, her body folded like a baby in utero. Beside us, our packs and the staff had fallen into the chasm with us.

  I ran one hand down her cheek, trying to rouse her, but she didn’t move.

  “Hey,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

  Around us the mountain was still coming down, boulder after boulder falling into the pit where we had landed.

  “Jade, wake up,” I said.

  When she didn’t move, for a moment I thought the worst had come to pass. Then, she drew one long shuddering breath and her eyelashes fluttered. She looked up at me, her face blank.

  I burst out laughing.

  She’s alive!

  “You did it,” I whispered. “You saved us.”

  Though our salvation might only last for a few more minutes before we were crushed beneath the remains of the mountain.

  The outer corners of her mouth upturned slightly, just for a moment. Then her face went slack again. Her eyes were wide, and I saw in them her exhaustion, her depletion.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said, coughing. “I don’t think those stones will stay part of this mountain forever.” I looked up nervously. “Can you get us out?”

  Her mouth moved, as if she were trying to form words, but no sound came. I leaned over her, putting my ear a centimeter away from her lips.

  “In my pack,” she said.

  I tried not to jostle her as I crawled over her towards the pack. I opened it to find nothing inside but the Kinstone. She had carried it, and nothing else, all this way.

  “Ok, then,” I said. “Use it. Get us out of here.”

  “No,” she mouthed.

  “Why?” I asked, confused. When I saw her struggling to speak, I leaned over her again.

  “You use it,” she said, “when I’m gone.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “The only way I can use the Kinstone is if you—if you—“

  “I’m dying, Aster,” she whispered. “The stone will follow you now. Use it to escape. Use it to take yourself home.”

  Dying?

  “No,” I said. “I won’t. You’re not going to die. You’ve had a shock. You’re just in bad shape. We can fix that.”