Madeline’s face was like stone. “And the rest of you?”
“Released,” he said. “They only wanted Allison.”
Yenil came running in, her hair loose and wild. She wore a dress Madeline’s mom had recently bought her, but it was buttoned incorrectly and made her look more wild, more out of control than in her regular clothes. She didn’t see the priest, just threw herself into Madeline’s arms and said, “Maddie, can I play in the garden?”
Madeline’s face lit up when she saw the girl. “Of course. Faerie village?”
“Yes! I found some rocks last night, and I’m going to make a new house.”
“Wonderful.”
Shula unlocked the back door, and the three of them watched her run through the sun-dappled garden until she came to the small pond where the faerie village stood. Shula noticed the priest’s troubled expression as he watched the girl.
“You brought a Scim girl here?” he asked at last. “But how? And why?”
“She was . . . in need,” Madeline said, then looked to Shula. She didn’t have the strength to tell the story right now.
“The girl was Madeline’s magic source,” Shula said.
The priest’s eyes grew wide. “You found her? The Elenil told you?”
“Another human found her and told Madeline. That’s why she is back here. She broke her agreement with the Elenil.”
His eyes wandered to the tattoo on Shula’s wrist. “But you have not broken yours.”
“No.”
“I’ve never heard of someone defying them in this way. Madeline, they must be furious. Are they trying to kill you?”
Madeline laughed, actually laughed, at that, until the coughing stopped her. “No need,” she said. “They only . . . have to . . . wait a little bit.”
“Incredible. No one else has done this in a hundred years or more. Far Seeing must be in an uproar.”
“Now,” Madeline said, “tell me the rest.”
“The rest? I’ve told you all I came to say. The Aluvoreans are dangerous and not to be trusted.”
Madeline’s face hardened. “Tell me the rest,” she repeated.
His face fell. “You have to understand, we saw terrible things. It wasn’t like we expected. It wasn’t good times and beautiful animals and sunshine. It was war and terror, and things happened that . . . things happened that changed us. They were twisting us into something else, something worse. Broken, terrible people.”
“Spare me,” Madeline said. “That girl,” she indicated Yenil, out playing in the garden. “Her parents were . . . murdered . . . because of me. I’m still . . . here.”
Shula couldn’t sit and watch this anymore. “You can give Madeline what she asks or leave. She does not have time to play games with you, priest. You priests claim to have power, to speak for God, but what help are you? Where were you when Madeline was taken to the Sunlit Lands? Where were you when my family needed help, before they were killed? You were in your church, preparing the wine and bread. You did not have time for us outside your walls. You were praying and not doing. We do not need you.”
The priest raised his hands in surrender, leaning away from the onslaught of Shula’s words. “You are right, Shula—everything you say is correct. I was at the hospital when Madeline was taken, and I couldn’t stop it. I was in the hallway when your young friend Jason was searching for Hanali, stood there frozen while he struck a deal, and I could not stop it. But I am doing what I can now. I’ve found you both, and I’ve come to help.”
Madeline’s face contorted in anger. “So do something . . . helpful. Tell me . . . the rest.”
The priest sighed, and his whole body seemed to collapse in on itself, as if revealing what he was about to say would be to remove a pillar that held his body up. “We were seven, as I said, when we entered the Sunlit Lands. Two were killed. One remained. Four returned home.” He paused, shifting uncomfortably on the couch. “Of those four, three chose to have their memories . . . removed.”
“How?” Shula asked.
“There is a fruit in the Sunlit Lands called the addleberry. It is sweet and purple, and it creates, in small doses, minor pleasure by removing unhappy memories. Small ones. An unkind word someone spoke to you or that you spoke to another. A minor loss. A small disappointment. But in larger doses it is used in magic for larger transformations. If you wish to change shape, for instance, to become another person, you must first forget who you are. Your history, your family and friendships and so on, must be removed. Three of us chose that. They thought that if they could forget what had happened in the Sunlit Lands, and if they could forget what we had done, that they could be happy again here, on Earth. So they drank a potion, an addleberry wine, until all was forgotten. They chose to forget those we had lost in the Sunlit Lands and one another and also . . . to forget me. Not that I blame them.”
“But you remember?” Madeline leaned forward in her seat, looking at him intently.
“Yes, God forgive me, I remember it all. Everything we did, everything we said, the sacrifices we made and the sins we committed.” He looked at his wrist, at the pattern of scars that looked uncomfortably like the tattoos that Shula had on her own wrist, or the complicated mass of scars that spread across Madeline’s whole body. “With age, sometimes the others . . . their memories return in small bits here and there too. The Elenil told us this might happen. So someone who owed me a favor in the Sunlit Lands has given me a small bit of magic to reinforce their forgetfulness. When needed.” He looked at Madeline for a long time. “It seems your trip to the Sunlit Lands has worked some memories loose for your mother.”
Madeline fell back in her chair, her face white. “Of course,” she said. “Of course.”
“Wendy was with us. Your father, Kyle, was with us too. The Elenil couldn’t understand how Wendy and Kyle remembered each other. No matter how much they forgot, they remembered that.”
“That’s why,” Madeline said, “they’ve been so . . . strange. About me . . . being gone.”
The priest ran his hand through his white hair, distressed. “Yes. They have to come up with another story. They can’t come to the conclusion that you’ve been in a fantasy world, even if you were to say it to them outright. Even though you disappeared for months at a time and came home with a Scim child. They can’t ask questions about those things, because they can’t be allowed to remember their own time in the Sunlit Lands.”
“Hanali,” Madeline said. “Hanali did this.”
Father Anthony closed his eyes, blinking back tears. “I can’t deny it, Madeline. We knew him in our time there, so long ago.”
“This happened . . . when you were . . . teenagers.”
“Yes.”
“And Hanali . . . didn’t want . . . you to leave?”
The priest shook his head, unable to speak.
Shula asked, “What does this mean?”
Madeline was getting up out of her chair, painfully. Slowly. “It means . . . Hanali has been . . . responsible . . . for my messed-up family.” She paused, angry, struggling for breath. She took a painful, deep inhalation and rushed her words out. “My mother absent because she can’t be reminded. My father a workaholic because he can’t be reminded. Because I remind them.” She gripped the back of the chair. “They can’t be around me because of Hanali.”
“Your parents love you,” the priest said.
“I know that!” Madeline yelled. Her shout rang against the walls of the living room. It held such fury that Shula immediately knew it was not purely in response to the priest—it was a distillation of everything that made her angry these days. Her illness, her past with her family, her separation from Darius, the injustice of the Elenil to her and to the other people of the Sunlit Lands. Anger that this man would enter her home and reveal a secret from her parents, then have the gall to follow it up seconds later with a reminder that they loved her. Shula felt her own anger rising. Who was this man to come into Madeline’s home and create such anger in her?
Why couldn’t everyone leave her in peace, even for a day?
Shula moved next to her. She put Madeline’s arm around her own shoulder and held her up. “It is time for you to leave, Father Anthony.” When he did not leave, she glared at him, then at the door. “You know the way.”
He paused halfway to the door. “Madeline, I tell you these things so you’ll know . . . it’s too dangerous. The Aluvoreans will kill you.”
Madeline let loose a sharp bark of laughter. “The Elenil . . . already have.”
“What do you mean?”
“I get sick, no family history.” Her breathing was coming in short, staccato bursts. “Every transplant list I get on, something happens. They lose my place in line. Something falls through. No treatment works. All so I would be vulnerable. All so I would say yes to him when he came to the hospital.”
The priest’s head dropped to his chest. “I fear you are right. Hanali made you sick so he could bring you to the Sunlit Lands.”
Shula stood beside her friend in mute horror. Hanali—the strange but kind Elenil who had invited both her and Madeline into the Sunlit Lands—had purposely made Madeline sick? And he was killing her with this disease? She thought back on her own situation and the murder of her family in the fire. Could Hanali have been involved in that as well? She shuddered.
“Good-bye,” Madeline said, and motioned for Shula to help her get to her room.
They made their way down the hallway, Shula watching over her shoulder to make sure the priest let himself out. They passed out of sight of him before he made it through the door. Shula laid Madeline down on her bed, then helped her get elevated.
Madeline pointed to her closet. “Sturdy boots. Walking boots,” she said. “Start with those.”
Shula looked at the closet, confused, then back to Madeline. “What do you mean?”
“We’re packing for my trip,” she said. “Back to the Sunlit Lands.”
“No,” Shula said. Everyone she ever came close to, she lost. She knew she would lose Madeline in time, knew the disease would take her, but could not bear to lose her faster, to the Sunlit Lands. “We do not even have a way to get there.”
“The Aluvoreans . . . want me to come,” Madeline said.
“They will kill you,” Shula said. “The priest, did you not hear the priest?”
“The Aluvoreans or the Elenil,” Madeline said. “If I stay . . . Hanali kills me . . . with this sickness. Go there . . . maybe he can fix it. Or maybe I make him . . . pay. For this.”
Shula stood at the closet and hesitated. She had lived in the Sunlit Lands long enough and knew the Elenil well enough to know that a healing was unlikely . . . and that even if it was possible, it would come at a price Madeline had already refused to pay. “Madeline, you have no strength. You cannot breathe. Maybe it is time to let this go.”
Madeline coughed for a long time. When she could speak again, she said, “I was . . . settled . . . before. But I . . . know more . . . now. I told the . . . Aluvoreans . . . I would help them . . . once. I can’t let . . . what happened to me . . . happen to someone . . . else. I am going . . . back.”
“But—”
“Sturdy. Walking. Boots,” Madeline repeated.
Shula found the boots, and then, following Madeline’s instructions, she filled a backpack with water, rope, granola bars, a pocketknife, a spare inhaler, a change of clothes. She didn’t understand what had set off Madeline. A chance at healing? Not much of a chance. She did not seem focused on revenge, no matter what she’d said. But something about the priest’s words had given Madeline a new fire, had caused her to want to go back to the Sunlit Lands. Maybe Madeline didn’t know herself. Shula checked on Yenil from time to time, playing in the garden. Would they take Yenil, too? Or leave her to be cared for here, in this house, by Mr. and Mrs. Oliver and the staff? It would not be a bad life, not at all. No doubt they could take care of the school problems, the principal and his threats, and the dubious nature of their guardianship better than Shula and Madeline could.
Yenil was crouched beside the faerie village, a grin on her face, happily talking to the make-believe creatures in her town of sticks and moss. Shula pulled the curtain back so they could see her as they packed, and it made Madeline smile, washing away her anger and even the stubborn look of resolve that had been on her face. Shula stopped packing and watched her. It was rare these days to see a moment of true happiness for her friend. But sadness crept across her face soon enough, and Madeline stole a guilty look at Shula.
Shula realized with a start that Madeline might have a different plan than she did. She wasn’t wondering whether to bring Yenil, she had already decided to leave her. And maybe to leave Shula, too. “You have to let me come with you,” she said, but Madeline didn’t answer.
13
FAR SEEING
Now, fair lady, what three commands have you for your servant? For you have saved me, and I must do as I have promised.
FROM “JELDA’S REVENGE,” A SCIM LEGEND
The rain beat down on the bedraggled line of pack animals and people waiting outside the city gate. The rain was colder than it should have been—just this side of sleet. Since the archon’s hand had been cut off, the weather in Elenil territories had been unpredictable.
Darius rearranged his hood, covering his face. Not that anyone in the security line knew what he looked like. His face wouldn’t be the problem if they searched him. The Sword of Years was wrapped in oilcloth and stashed in his wide bag underneath a pile of filthy clothing in the hope that the guards wouldn’t dig deep. The white robes he wore when he was a Black Skull were in his bag as well. And he still wore the handcuffs the Elenil captain, Rondelo, had put on him.
Most of the soldiers checking the line ahead were human. The Elenil almost always used human soldiers. Darius had no quarrel with them. They were pawns. It was the Elenil who were the problem, building their entire society on magic that required stealing from others. The Court of Far Seeing loomed ahead of them, grey in the sleet. Other than that one dark night of the Festival of the Turning, Darius had never seen it like this, never seen it any way other than shining white in the Elenil’s bright dusk or practically glowing in the midday sun. The typical weather in Far Seeing was a stark difference from the Wasted Lands. When Far Seeing was at its darkest, the magical connection gave the Wasted Lands a few hours of almost dawn. Weak plants, nearly white from lack of sun, reached for the light. Grey-skinned children in their war skins came out of their hovels, laughing and turning their faces toward the dim brightening. Sometimes, watching the children of the Wasted Lands rejoice in their meager leftovers made Darius angrier than seeing the Elenil take their excesses for granted. It wasn’t so much that the Scim children accepted their lot, it was that they didn’t know anything better.
Darius had figured out the way Elenil magic worked almost the moment he arrived in the Sunlit Lands. He’d thought it was night when he arrived. Which is to say, he’d thought it was a normal night. On the third day of brightening which refused to give way to full dawn, he’d realized that there was no sunlight in the Wasted Lands. That was the day (night) that he walked into his first Scim village. The shabby houses made of mud and scraps, the meticulously cared for but ragged clothes on the monstrous creatures who lived in those houses, the way they worked hard in the meager fields: he recognized it immediately. He had been in these neighborhoods often enough in the United States. He knew poverty didn’t just happen. There were forces at work—cultural and personal, historical and contemporary—that flowed around and through a place like this. And like it or not, once a place like this existed, there would always be people who benefited from making sure most of the impoverished people stayed that way. The magical tattoos like shackles, the occasional Elenil guards making their rounds through the Wasted Lands . . . Darius knew this world.
So it gave him a grim satisfaction to see the Elenil magic weakening and out of control. Sleet and cold here meant clear, mild skies in the Wasted Land
s for once. When he felt uncertain, when he felt a prick of something that seemed like it might be conscience for his violent actions, for his leadership in the Scim rebellion, Darius steeled himself by thinking of the people he’d met in the Wasted Lands. He thought of Dread Teeth, who had sold his farming skill to an Elenil with a hobby farm in exchange for a warm piece of bread once a week. The poor soil of the Wasted Lands yielded less and less, and his family needed food. Darius thought of Rend Flesh, who had a terrifying war skin name but was only a child . . . four years old when his parents died in a skirmish with the Elenil. Rend Flesh called Darius uncle, and whenever Darius returned from battle, Rend Flesh wanted to hear every detail. “They killed my parents,” he would say every night before he fell asleep. Darius thought of Wolf’s Howl and Muzzle, two Scim cousins who lived on the edge of Elenil territory, where there was enough sunlight to grow food. They had to keep a constant eye out for Elenil patrols, who would arrest them or worse, but when harvesttime came, they pulled a cart throughout the Wasted Lands and handed the food out for nothing more than a thank you.
It had taken time for the Scim to trust him—this strange human who came into the Sunlit Lands through some back door. At that time the Scim were always fighting on the defensive, just trying to keep what little remained for them. Darius had seen the way they put on their war skins to appear dangerous. He told the elders over and over, “If you make yourself appear dangerous and are still attacked, still damaged, still taken advantage of, then it is time to stop appearing dangerous and to actually become dangerous.” It was Darius who had encouraged the Scim toward open war. Darius who invented the Black Skulls, who saw a way to invert the Elenil magic system to make the Scim strong. It was Darius who found Break Bones and encouraged him to become something more than another angry Scim, to actually do something with that anger, to become a war chief, a leader. And it was Break Bones who had finally said, “We will take this battle to the gates of the Court of Far Seeing.” Darius had gladly followed him there, sword in hand.
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