The Bargaining Path

by T. Rudacille

  ***

  We continued on, moving in grids that Elijah had devised mentally. Because we all wanted to avoid the inevitable consequence of splitting up (which was that we wouldn't be able to find each other), we were constantly shouting to one another when we ran off in different directions. All around us, the deer were dropping down into the dirt to hide from us, and the birds, which I could see perfectly even though it was dark, were poking their heads up over the sides of their nests and looking down at us almost angrily.

  “Sorry.” I murmured to a particularly scary looking vulture that was perched over top of me in a tree. Its small eyes blinked at me, and its mouth opened as though it wanted to squawk in a loud, echoing reprimand but instead, it simply turned around so that its feathery butt was facing me. My eyebrows wrinkled, and I said, “Well, screw you, too.”

  Abruptly, it turned around, screeched loudly at me, and with a start and a small exclamation of horror, I turned and ran further up my designated grid-path. I could hear it clucking behind me; the sound almost made me think it was laughing at me.

  As weird as it sounds, I immediately believed that I had just seen a sign. If you're familiar with all that I've written up until this point, then you know that Alice was the more faithful of the two of us. I tended to stay grounded in logical reality at all times. But a vulture is known as a bird whose life depends on death, and a part of me wondered—and dreaded almost to a point of sickening desperation—if that bird was trying to tell me that the girl I was searching for was already gone; my efforts were funny to it because it knew the truth.

  “No.” I said out loud, just to make those thoughts go away. “She's out there.”

  “You are right.” Her very weary voice agreed behind me. I jumped, exclaimed, and thrashed my hands backwards as I whipped around to face her. She dodged me by walking backwards several steps more quickly than she seemed capable of.

  “Brynn!” I exclaimed with a sigh of relief. She was bruised, bloodied, and her clothes were torn, but she was alive; there were burns on her, too, but she had not been burnt up completely by the fires in the city. She looked and sounded so tired, but the reason for her exhaustion was draped around her shoulders, struggling to remain alert.

  “He is very sick, Quinn.” She paused. “Sorry. I forwent a traditional greeting, or at least one that is similar to your exultation. Quinn!”

  Even her sass and overly in-depth sentences were lacking. I could forgive her for that, obviously. I laughed somewhat hysterically and hugged her.

  “Believe it or not, I would embrace you back, but my hands are otherwise preoccupied holding this poor man up.”

  “Oh, right! Sorry.” I peeled Adam's arms from around her and pulled his weight onto me. Instantly, I stumbled several feet and crashed into a tree. “Whoa! Brynna, how were you carrying him?”

  She was doubled over with her hands resting on her knees; through her long hair, I could see that her eyes were closed. From the way she was biting her lip, I could gather that she was in some pain, but until she stood up and actually whimpered, so softly that I barely heard her, I realized that it was severe.

  “James! Eli! Nick!” I shouted as loudly as I could. Adam gave a start beside me but didn't open his eyes. I did think that I heard him mutter Brynna's name. I couldn't be sure, but apparently, Brynna had heard, because she zoomed forward, fell into us both, and, after she had gathered herself together, grasped his face in both hands.

  “I'm right here.” She whispered, and the gentleness of her tone shocked me to a point that I actually grimaced. Her eyes met mine, and she read my expression, but after looking thoughtful, she didn't offer an explanation. “We found them. You are going to be alright. Just like I promised.”

  His head came forward and rested against her shoulder. Her trembling arms embraced him, and she whispered to him again that she was right there with him, that no one had taken her, that she was alright, too...

  I was very confused, so I wanted to ask her why the hell she was suddenly being so nice to Adam. Instead, I could only focus on the fact that a knob in the tree was cutting into my back, and Adam crushing me was beginning to make it hard for me to breathe.

  “I'm kind of in some pain here.” I interrupted her when she continued to talk to Adam.

  She seemed genuinely irritated to be interrupted, but then, her senses returned to her, and with a great heave, she pulled him off of me. When she stumbled back a few steps, I grabbed onto one of his arms and took some of his weight. Together, we were able to hold him up.

  “His fever is really high, Brynna. And that wound smells like its rotting.”

  “It is rotting. I've done everything in my power... One minute he's fine, then he gets sick again, and I do what I can, and then he gets sick again... I found a stream, and he said it was sacred, but the water healed him, only he didn't get enough, and that's why he's still sick... He was fine for several miles, and now, he's right back to where he was. He died once, I think...”

  “Alright, alright...” I told her gently. “It's okay, Brynn. Just relax.”

  “I cannot relax!” She gasped out. “I can't. I just need to get him to a doctor, Quinn. I need to get him help.”

  “We will. I promise. James! Eli! Nick!” I called again, and this time, they came to us.

  “Oh, my God...” James rushed forward, and in a blink, he pulled Brynna from under Adam's arm gently. Nick ran forward just in time to pick up her slack, and it was a good thing, too, because I had nearly fallen sideways again.

  When he had first pulled her away from Adam, Brynna had thrown her arms around James and buried her face in his neck. His own arms grasped her with the same protective strength that I would use if I had not seen Alice for days and had dreaded the possibility that she had died. He ran his hand down the back of her matted hair, and kissed her cheek every few seconds. They were talking to each other, but Nick and I both turned our hearing to the noises of the forest, so as not to eavesdrop. I only heard one thing that James said:

  “I'm sorry.”

  And that was when she pulled away from him. That was also when Elijah appeared behind us.

  “Hey, Brynn.” He said with even more relief than I had had in my voice when I had first seen her. She hobbled towards him and embraced him, too. I have to say, that even though she was clearly relieved and ecstatic to see him, there was something less passionate about the way that she hugged him in comparison to the way she hugged James. Obviously, that sounds weird to say, but I don't mean it in a weird way. I just mean that she seemed more “teary,” we'll say, when she saw James for the first time than when she saw Elijah. Maybe she knew that Elijah was alright, and she had been unsure about James. Maybe while she was out in the woods, she was thinking about how they had parted on such bad terms, and she had known that if she died, she would never be able to hear his explanation, and maybe forgive him in the end.

  “Penny and Violet?” She asked.

  “They're fine. They're mad worried about you, but they're back at the house, and they're okay.”

  She refused to let Elijah or James carry her back. When they kept insisting, she shook her head vehemently, and said:

  “I have walked this far, and I will walk the rest of the way.”

  And she did, though Elijah had to guide her along.

  “Do they have a place where they put people who are sick? Like a hospital?” I heard her ask as we crossed over the circle of black ash that surrounded the village. For the first time, I noticed that even when the wind blew, the ash stayed put. I wanted to reach down and touch it, to see if it was held together by a gel or something, but if I bent down, Adam, Nick, and I would fall.

  “They have an infirmary.” Nick told her, “Once we get him inside, I'll go get one of the doctors.”

  “I'm going with you.” She said, as though that should have been obvious.

  “No, you're not.” Elijah told her in a tone that was the perfect mix between gentle and firm. “You need to go to sleep
, Brynna. You've been out there for three days, and you've been carrying him. Look at how you’re walking. You look like a hunchback.”

  “That is really rude, and it is irrelevant, and I am going with Nick and Quinn, and Violet and Penny are probably sleeping.” Her brows furrowed slightly, and she looked up at Elijah. “That sentence was very long and stupid. I am tired.”

  “See? It's proof. You need to go back to the house and go to sleep, Brynna.” James chimed in.

  “No.” She insisted, “And don't pretend that you actually think I should do that! You're only saying that to get back on his good side! And... yeah!”

  She stormed ahead of us, leaving Elijah and James to hiss furiously at one another that he (meaning Elijah) didn't need him (meaning James) to help him, and he (meaning Elijah) would handle the “situation” (meaning Brynna being so frustratingly stubborn, as always) by himself, and how he (meaning James) didn't care what he (meaning Elijah) said, he (meaning James) was going to be there for that “situation” (and he said that last part very sarcastically, which should come as no surprise.)

  “Do you even know where you're going, Brynna?” Nick called up to her.

  “No. But I can hear you two behind me, so I know that we're going in the right direction.”

  And we were. When the infirmary came into view, so did the many stairs that led up to it. Nick and I managed to glance at one another, and we frowned. How we were going to get Adam up the steps, we didn't know. When we tried to lift him onto the first step, we just couldn't do it.

  “Move, you pansies...” Brynna muttered irritably. She shoved us out of the way and took one of his arms around her neck. “Just stay behind us so we don't fall backwards down these stairs, please.”

  “Whoa. You actually said please.” I told her. “You must be tired.”

  “Shut up, Quinnevra.” She grasped Adam's face again, and turned his head so she could whisper into his ear. “We have to get you up these steps, Adam. We're at the hospital, but none of us can carry you. I need you to try to step up.”

  He gave her an almost imperceptible nod of the head, and his leg lifted up enough that he could walk up the steps.

  “Almost there, honey.” She whispered to him at one point. “We're so close.”

  Nick and I looked at each other in shock and also, a little bit of horror. It was just so weird!

  When we reached the landing at the top, we were all huffing and puffing. Brynna's back was against the wall of the building, and Adam was rested against her front, with his head buried beneath hers.

  “Are you 'roiding out, Brynn?” I asked.

  “No.” She muttered as she turned Adam and walked him through the door that Nick had pushed open. “I'm determined. Both of you go get one Pangaean doctor and one of ours.”

  “Why?” Nick asked. “Why can't we just get one or the other?”

  “Because the blade that he was stabbed with was poisoned with something, so we will need a Pangaean doctor's knowledge on how to counter the poison, and our doctors need to see how to deal with it. Should this ever happen again, and they have to cure it, they need to know how. Go!”

  “Brynna...” Adam muttered, and his eyes opened.

  “Oh, yeah, what a convenient time to wake up!” I exclaimed as I headed out the door.

  I scrambled down the stairs and down the main pathway of the village until I reached Dr. Terry's door. Nick was going to get one of the Pangaean doctors. After I had told him what was happening, and he went on his way to the infirmary, I turned and headed back to my house. We had only been out for several hours, and I couldn't imagine what it had been like for Brynna to be out there, responsible for both her life and Adam's for three days.

  More than anything, though, I wondered what had happened between them. Something told me that she hadn't just saved his life. By the way she was acting towards him, I could guess that either they had become friends, or maybe, something more.

  Whatever it was, Alice would probably know, so I hurried up the steps to ask her.

  Violet

  “I miss Brynna. I want her to read me a story.” Penny cried to me as I laid her down in bed. Her room in our new house was too spacious for a girl her age. The size of the room would have been alright if it weren't for the fact that she had no toys to play with, or even paper and crayons to color with. I wondered how I would keep her entertained if the worst had happened to Brynna. I wondered far too many things, and not all of them were in regards to Penny, when I was thinking, dreading, that Brynna was gone.

  “I'm sorry, honey.” I told her, “She'll be back soon, and she'll tell you as many stories as you want.”

  “I'm scared that she's not going to come home!” Big tears fell from those round eyes that were identical to our sister's. While stifling tears of my own, I pushed her soft brown hair away from her face and kissed her forehead.

  “Don't worry about that, Penny. She'd never leave us, not for anything, okay? She's probably on her way now.”

  “But when will she get here? I need to know exactly when, Vi!”

  I couldn't say that I didn't know, as that would alert her to the fact that my own hope in Brynna returning was dying out. So, instead, I gave the first answer that popped into my head.

  “The day after tomorrow. That's what James said.”

  I almost grimaced; now I had implicated James in my lie. He would be the one she blamed if and when Brynna didn't show up.

  What I said got the desired effect, even if it was a lie. Penny's tears stopped, and she smiled up at me as she wiped the dampness from her cheeks.

  “Well, if James said it, then it must be true.”

  The irony of it was that if James said it, it probably wasn't true…

  I had definitely forgiven him for what he had done. Actions speak louder than words, to quote the old cliché, and though he had had many chances to turn on Brynna, he hadn't. Adam had to have grown impatient and his threats had to have gotten more severe, but James hadn’t given in. I knew that he genuinely loved Brynna, despite what Maura had said.

  Maura. After Penny dropped off to sleep, I went into the living room of our house, plopped down on the plushy white couch, buried my face in my hands, and started to cry. The guilt was on a level that I never could have expected. I had promised her that I would keep her safe and that she was coming with me to a better life than the one she had with my father. I had promised that no one would hurt her, and Don had killed her. It had not been painless, nor had it been quick. She had suffered all the way to the end.

  Then again, I didn't know what had happened in her absolute, final moments. I hadn't gotten a chance to ask Brynna, as the Bachums had attacked and burned the city to the ground. I didn't know if I would ask when I saw her again. If I saw her again… A part of me knew that she probably wouldn't tell me anyway, because her last conversation with Maura was a private moment meant to be kept between the two of them. I decided that I wouldn't ask anything except whether Maura had still been in so much pain, or if as she died, she had miraculously felt nothing. It was childish to believe that the latter was possible, but it was also strangely comforting, so I didn't question it.

  When the first knock on the door came, I had just sat down, and my eyes had just begun to tear. I drew in slow, labored breaths and fanned my face, hoping whoever it was would go away. I couldn’t afford to be seen as weak by the Pangaean people, as I was Brynna's sister, and the rumors swirling around were that Don had made her his second-in-command, whatever that meant. If it was one of our people coming to offer their condolences, I couldn't bring myself to pretend that I was alright. More than anything, I would not be able to tell them that I would forgive Don or those two men who had been with him, whom I knew had helped him kill Maura.

  There was no peephole on the door, so I had no choice but to open it. Honestly, I believed it was James, coming to check on us. Or maybe it was Nick, even though I had told him that I needed some time alone. Maybe it was Alice, coming over to comfort me
because she knew, unlike Nick, that my insistence on being alone was bullshit, and I needed a friend or my boyfriend more than ever. But no, it was none of them.

  Trouble arrived on my doorstep that day, to put no finer point on it. It was trouble in the form of Caspar Elohimson. I kid you not, down below us on the ground, there were women staring up at him. That shouldn’t suggest that he had a gaggle of giggling girls (pardon that awful alliteration) following after him, but it should suggest that there were girls walking by, looking up at him as they passed. Either that, or they were looking up to see if my face was a grotesque mask of tears and other bodily fluids, but that’s unlikely, despite our people’s shamelessly voyeuristic tendencies and their love of witnessing other people’s pain.

  “Oh.” His gorgeous green eyes blinked, and his perfect features went from a blank slate to one of surprise, though what had surprised him, I didn’t know. Maybe it was that my face wasn’t a mess of tears and other bodily fluids. Whatever it was, his handsome face showed absolute surprise, though he was trying to hide it. After a moment, he smiled and reached out for my hand.

  “Violet Olivier, I presume?”

  He outstretched his hand to me, and when I took it, he brought it to his lips and kissed it.

  Is it totally disgusting that a shudder passed through me when his lips met my skin? Or when I realized that his Pangaean accent, which was a mix between British and something else, was so amazingly alluring? Or when his light green eyes met mine again? Or when he asked with a slight laugh at the awkwardness of the situation if he could come in?

  “Yeah. Yes.” I corrected myself, and I moved aside so he could come in. “But my sister is asleep, so we have to be quiet.” My heart plummeted when I realized how that sounded. “Not that anything is going to happen.”

  That sounded even worse!

  “I mean, not that I thought anything like that when you came here. Just, we have to be quiet talking because she’s asleep, and she’s had a really hard time.”

  “Ms. Olivier…”

  “Violet.” I corrected him, my face burning and red. Never before had I sounded so stupid in front of a guy.

  “Violet, it is alright. We will be quiet, I assure you.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, trying to divert the attention away from me and all my awkwardness.

  “I am Caspar.”

  Caspar. I liked it.

  “Caspar Elohimson.” He said, “And you are Violet Olivier, the sister of Don’s second-in-command. Has she arrived?”

  “No. But her boyfriend, James is going out to look for her.”

  “Yes. We have met.” He said, and I wondered if I had heard distaste in his voice, but knowing how James was when he was on a mission, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had rubbed Caspar the wrong way when they had met for the first time.

  “I was sent here to inquire about how you are settling in.”

  “Fine. Well.” I corrected myself, “We’re doing well. Penny is already asleep, and I will go to sleep, too. Maybe. Probably not. But the house is amazing, and I’ll thank the leader of the village for his hospitality.”

  “Her hospitality.”

  “Oh.” I said, “The leader is a woman.”

  “Yes. Janna. Queen of Shadow Forest. Wife of the king. All of that.”

  “Where is the King?”

  “Who knows? Lost, as so many others are. But that is not of our concern now. I heard from your leader all about what occurred in the city. I am very sorry about your nanny.”

  “Thank you.” I said, and I crossed my arms over my chest at the thought of her.

  “Are you cold? Would you like me to make you a fire?”

  “No. I can do it. You just have to make a flame, and it lights on the log.”

  Oh, my GOD! I was a hot mess. I didn’t know why I sounded so stupid! I never got flustered around guys. He chuckled softly, and I could not mistake the mischievous glint in his eye. It was not hard to believe that he was used to having such an effect on women, but it seemed to me that my having that reaction was particularly entertaining, for whatever reason. Self-consciously, I pulled the two sides of my sweatshirt closed and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. It is not that I felt threatened, it was just that I felt somehow… exposed? That is actually the right word for it: I felt extremely exposed around him.

  The strangest part was, it wasn’t a completely unpleasant or uncomfortable exposure. It’s crazy, but it was kind of exhilarating. He was bad news, and I knew it the moment I met him. But like so many other’s before me—men and women alike—I was immediately entranced by the bad boy. My eyes traveled down, taking in his wardrobe. He was wearing dark jeans and a white button-up shirt—not exactly bad-boy attire. But he was also wearing a leather jacket, which, if I thought back, was bad-boy attire, at least if we’re talking about the stereotype. So, he had a little bit of both: a little bad and a little not, at least in terms of his clothes. In terms of the way he carried himself, with all of that arrogance (and it was arrogance, not confidence) and self-importance and old wisdom, he was all bad.

  “Do you want to sit for a minute?” I asked him, almost against my will.

  “Certainly, because you want to talk.”

  “Do I?”

  “You do. Otherwise, you would not have very randomly asked me to sit.”

  “It was random, wasn’t it?” I asked, and he nodded, smiling slightly, almost knowingly. “So, who are you?”

  “I am Caspar Elohimson. I told you.”

  “Obviously, you’re one of Adam’s people.”

  “I suppose. Yes. But then, I like to think that I am my own person. The Rexprimus of Purissimus likes to think he has a monopoly on all those under his rule, but he does not.”

  Uh-oh. I hope I wasn’t talking to some leader of a resistance effort who was dancing for joy on the inside because Adam was still among the missing.

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.” I said, and he laughed openly.

  “I am sure that you did. If you are anything like your sister, and rumor has it that you are, you are very keen and observant. Even being minimally keen and minimally observant would allow you to see how he is. I am also sorry that he tried to kill all of you the first several nights after you landed. Honestly, and do not repeat this, he was simply trying to scatter you all. Make your large group divide. Scatter the sheep, if you will.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all. But I won’t repeat it. Have you ever been to Lumiere? Or do you spend all your time here?”

  “Oh, I have been. I lived there when I was not here aiding my mother. A nearly flawless city. I am saddened to know that it is gone forever, destroyed by the sun harness.”

  “Yeah, what is that?”

  “A sun harness?”

  “Yes.”

  “It harnesses the sun.”

  Despite how stupid his joke was, the way he grinned after he said it and the fact that he was joking with me so readily, like we had known each other for ages, made me smile, too. After a second, I laughed softly, covering my mouth to hide it.

  “You are allowed to laugh at my cheekiness. I was being cheeky only to make you laugh.”

  “Well, you succeeded. I can’t believe I didn’t ask you this, but do you want anything to drink? We have…” I gestured over my shoulder to the kitchen as I talked, trying to call to mind what we had in our freezer before realizing that I was in a completely different house, in a completely different place, and I had no idea what we had, or if we had anything at all.

  “It is fully stocked. I ensured that myself. For all of you.” Suddenly, he moved closer to me, and before I could become accustomed to his new close proximity, his hand was over my hand. “I know that you are very worried, and I am sorry that I can do nothing to absolve you of that worry.”

  “It’s alright.”

  “I saw you when you came in, and you were crying. You may believe me to be lying when I say this, or that I am trying to gain your good favor, but I am instantly
besieged by the most undeniable urge to assist when I see a woman crying.”

  “I was alright. I am alright. She was gone for a long time, and now I just have to get used to it again.”

  “Your nanny was gone for a long time, or your older sister?”

  I realized that both answers fit. When I looked back at my life, I realized that most recently, Maura had been gone; she had left us for over a year to live with my father in the Bachum camp. But Brynna had also been gone for a very long time, from the time I was thirteen to the present, when she had begun to warm again.

  “Both.” I answered, “But Maura is gone forever, and Brynn might be, but I don’t think so. I don’t think even a sun harness could kill her.”

  “You are right. She is an Athene, and she would have known to leave the city before the blasts.”

  “They knew that we were there. They knew we were all there, and they tried to kill us all. But they killed even the ones who weren’t involved, Caspar. The people in the city weren’t fighting with us. But they had already burnt down our house, so they knew we would all go to Adam’s city. Where else would we have gone? So they destroyed it. They eradicated it. All those people…”

  His grip on my hand tightened when I looked off, out the window at the moon hanging like a strange, all-knowing face in the sky; I had to look away from it almost immediately.

  “It is utterly tragic, you are right.” He said, and for a moment, I thought I heard the threat of tears in his voice. But when I looked at him, his face was expressionless, though his eyes were dimmed by grief. “They knew many things, I have been told. There were Old Spirits in your camp.”

  “There still are. I’m sure of it.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because they know that we can’t ferret them out. And they know that having spies here worked. They almost killed all of us.”

  “Yes.” He said, “I am sorry that you had to witness that. I cannot imagine how you must feel, though I can, somewhat. I have never been attacked by those using the many solar-powered weapons, but I have been in combat many times. My father…” His tone darkened at the words, “…ensured that I would see combat as soon as I was old enough to be sent away for training.”

  “You’ve fought the Old Spirits.”

  “Yes. Many times.”

  “I came from their camp. Well, it is the Old Spirit camp and the Bachum camp. Tyre rules over it, but Rich Bachum has a lot of power, too.”

  “Yes, he and a man named Paul ‘run the show,’ as your lot says.”

  “Paul?”

  “Yes. Now he is a very bad man. Far worse than Rich Bachum, I am told.”

  “How can anyone be worse than Rich Bachum?”

  I shuddered as I remembered the look in his eyes the last time I had seen him, when he had lectured me on morality. There was something unhinged, like at any moment, the fragile grip he had on his anger would fail him, and I would see the full extent of what he was capable of doing. When the house had begun to come down, I could see that he wanted nothing more than for God to smite me right there on the spot. Maybe I am victimizing myself a little bit here, but I was an eighteen year old girl, and he wanted to see me dead, all because I had spoken against his way of life. Brynna would tell me later that his kind didn’t care about age or innocence, because if you spoke against the pious and their Gods, all they cared about was avenging the name of their God you had so insulted, to show Him that they were willing to fight, because they had faith. Or something like that. By now, you know how she talks; things get lost in translation sometimes.

  “Have you spoken to anyone about all that happened to you in the north?” He asked gently, and when his hand covered mine again, I looked up at him, realizing that I had not spoken for a very long time. Immediately, self-consciousness took over me, because I must have looked so strange, just sitting there, not talking for a long period of time because I was so deep in my thoughts.

  “It’s alright.” He told me, as though he had read my mind, “We all do it. You will notice as your immortal life goes on that those moments of silence are required for the upkeep of your mind. Without them, you would have no way to cope with all the darkness in our world. I told you that I am a soldier, but I did not tell you extensively the effects such an occupation has on me. They are very similar to what you just exhibited; my mind often shuts out all external information so I may sufficiently wallow in the internal. It is painful when I am looking within, but when I return, I feel lighter, somehow. So, please, do not feel embarrassed for having slipped away briefly. From what I heard, your time in the north was utterly traumatic, and I am sorry for all that happened to you. And then, for you to come home, and lose the woman who has been an ever-present force in your life from the time you were born… I am sorry for that even more, Violet Olivier.”

  “Thank you.” I said awkwardly, even though his speech was so beautiful and showed his deep understanding of all I was going through. “I’m telling you a lot of things that I didn’t think I would ever say. It’s weird, that you’re having this effect on me. I have realized over the past day or so that no matter what I say, no one understands. But you seem to really understand.”

  “I try.” He said, with a slight smile, “Like I said, I saw you, and I could not sleep until I came to see if I could assist you in any way. Even your boyfriend does not understand? Even your friends?”

  “No.” I said, shaking my head. “It’s weird that they don’t, because Allie and Quinn lost both of their parents violently. The Shadows were on Earth, and they killed their parents trying to get to Allie and Quinn. And Nick… God, both of his parents died on the ship after taking this sedative they had given us for the take-off. I mean, he had a really bad relationship with them, but still; they were his parents. You would think that he would understand what I felt. And you would definitely think that Allie and Quinn would, but they just don’t. They’ve all moved on from it, I guess. And I mean, maybe I will, too, someday, but not right now. Not for a really long time. She was in so much pain, Caspar.”

  His grip on my hand tightened, and my fingers, by their own will, tightened around his.

  “I don’t care about anything that happened to me in the north. Really, I don’t. She suffered awful things for the entire year that we’ve been here, and my dad let it happen. They say she was stubborn. She wouldn’t break. She wouldn’t apologize for all she had done in her life. I feel like I should be saying that she should have apologized, because she did a lot of bad things, especially to my sister, Brynna. But who are they to tell her that she has to apologize? Who are they to torture her until she apologizes?”

  “Well, they are those willingly possessed by the old spirits of this land, the spirits who act by the will of God. The angels. They know what the One God wants, and they will murder and torture with no fear of retribution because it is all in his name. It is all for the greater good. You do know that, Violet, don’t you? You realized that during your time up there? They truly believe, despite how utterly foolish it is, that they are acting in the interest of the greater good. They are only trying to save us.”

  “I know.” I said, and for some reason, tears rushed into my eyes. Furiously, I swiped them away, but he saw them.

  I had spent only two days in the north with the Old Spirits, but that had been enough to witness all their brutality but also, to see that Caspar was right: they truly believed that they were going to bring good to the world through brutal means. It would have been so easy to hate them and subsequently kill them if they were simply sadistic dictators causing pain for the sake of causing pain, whose worship in their violet God was merely the superficial reason they gave for their violent acts. But the Bachums, their followers, and the Old Spirits truly believed that the world was corrupt and broken, and in order to cure it, to fix it, they had to break all people of their sins and force them to repent. Their God demanded pain, because only pain would make all of us sinners see our own sins. If they enjoyed it, they
believed they enjoyed it because God demanded it; they would never cause pain if it weren’t God’s way, if people weren’t so stubborn. They only wanted to help, and if violence was the only way to help, then so be it. The world needed them. Otherwise, Purissimus would fall, the same way that Earth had fallen.

  His hand was on my face, and he was wiping away the many tears that had fallen from my eyes. I had lapsed into silence and deep thought again, and when I resurfaced, I wondered immediately how long I had been gone.

  “It was only a few minutes.” He answered, before I could even ask.

  “Are you an Ares?”

  “No.” He answered, with a slight smile, “Why do you ask?”

  “Because you have an uncanny ability to make me talk to you. Look at me, I’m crying now, and I look stupid.”

  “You most certainly do not look stupid.” He said, “And I do not want to make myself sound more skilled at comforting you than your boyfriend and your best friends, but all you needed, Violet, was someone who would only listen, not talk. Did they try to reassure you? To tell you that you would be alright in a few weeks, or months?”

  “Yes. And I didn’t know why at the time, but it made me angry. I feel terrible about being angry, because I know they were only trying to help. But they just don’t understand. They’ve lost people, but they don’t understand. And for some reason, even though I only just met you, you’ve gotten all this stuff out of me, and I know that you do understand.”

  “Well, even though I am young, I feel as though I have been around for a very long time. Age yields wisdom, however minimal that wisdom may be, and mine is very minimal. If you need anything at all, I live with my mother on the first street, at the very end, overlooking the forest falls. Please, do not hesitate to send word to me. Any of the villagers will seek me out for you. All you must do is give word.”

  “Alright. I might actually do that, Caspar. I feel a lot better now.”

  “I am glad.”

  We stood up, and I walked to the door, silently marveling at the fact that I had been so open with him, despite not knowing him for any more than an hour. I was shocked at the new lightness in my chest. Though the grief was slowly returning, and I knew it would make a complete return the second he was gone, for the moment, my heart was weightless again. Somehow, he had cured me of my grief for Maura, my fear of the Bachums, my undeniable urge to keep looking back, reliving all that had happened in the north. When he turned around on my porch, my eyes met his, and I could not help but notice that they were dark green, like grass. For a long time, I stared at him, thinking that I had seen strange green eyes somewhere else, but suddenly, I could not remember on whom I had seen them.

  “Anything you need, Violet Olivier, do not hesitate to send for me. Alright? Do you promise that you will not hesitate?”

  “I promise.”

  “Alright.”

  He took my hand, and my face turned to the darkest shade of red imaginable when he kissed the back of it. As I bit my lip to stop the huge smile from spreading across my face, he grinned up at me.

  “Until we meet again, Ms. Olivier.”