Outlier: Reign Of Madness

by Daryl Banner

  But he’s not whole. That day broke him, too.

  Just then, as if acting as the physicalized punch line to a joke Arrow did not utter, Ivy steps into the house. Her eyes scan over the room listlessly and then come to find the two of them at the stairs. She looks at Arrow for all of two brief, heavy seconds, then lifts her pretty gaze to Athan. “I’m so sorry, Athan. Wick seemed like a really nice boy. He was kind to me.”

  Athan’s voice is dry when he responds. “Thank you, Ivy.”

  “And his brother, too,” she adds, then clasps her hands in front of her, leaning some of her weight against a barstool at her side as she stares at Athan, unsure of what else to say. Athan just leans his head against the wall and closes his weary, reddened eyes as he hugs Wick’s hoodie tighter.

  Prat steps into the room next. “They’re going on about plans and resources and stuff,” he tells the three of them. “Arcana knows a few people, or something. She’s talking about looking for Queen Ruena, since she escaped from the King’s Keeping, apparently. I hope she can be found. With her, we’d have some serious leverage.”

  No one in the room responds to Prat’s words. Even Ivy doesn’t regard him at all, staring down at her hands with sorrow in her eyes. For the first time, her pained expression doesn’t annoy Arrow as bad as it ought to. Once, he felt she didn’t deserve to act sad and garner sympathy. Now he doesn’t know anymore.

  “We’re going to need a leader,” says Prat, “and I think it ought to be you.”

  Arrow wasn’t looking at him when he spoke, and when he feels the silence of the room, Arrow lifts his eyes to find the others staring at him.

  Arrow blinks. “Me? No. I’m not a leader. I’m a listener. I listen.”

  “Which is why you ought to lead,” Prat goes on. “You are first to know of things. You are first to hear through your charms. You have the care that Gandra lacked, and the deep wisdom that Yellow never shared with us.”

  “I have no ears,” states Arrow. “They are all dead. Everything they planted in the Lifted City, it’s dead. I have nothing.”

  “Just think about it,” Prat urges him. “Don’t answer now.”

  “I’ve already answered. My answer is no. Arcana is the one with the fire in her. She knows the Lifted City. She knows the King. She ought to come up with the ideas. I’ll just be in my room listening.”

  “Just think on it,” Prat still insists stubbornly. He gives a nod to Athan. “You should get that arm looked at.”

  Athan ignores him, eyes shut as he holds the jacket to his chest, breathing deeply.

  Soon, Prat heads back outside, joining Arcana and the others in the street where their words are nothing but distant muffles of noise that Arrow can’t understand. Ivy moves from the barstool to the couch where she sinks into its cushions and curls up. Arrow puts a hand on Athan’s thigh, giving him a squeeze, then deciding to stay there on the staircase and listen to the different sounds of their deep, patient breathing.

  Hours later, Arrow is in the backyard collecting the charms he had thrown out of the window upstairs. Twice he scrapes himself on a sharp branch that’s fallen, cursing under his breath as he pokes around for the charms. He tries not to think about Wick or Lionis or the times he shared with them. He already has too much grief within him, and even still, every time he blinks, he sees Victra’s terrified face. I’ll never stop seeing her face, not for the rest of my life.

  In his quest throughout the backyard, he comes to a stop in front of the giant metal disc that Wick once mentioned. “We call it our giant scrap metal disc thing,” Wick was telling Prat one night a week or so ago. “Some trash thrown down from the Lifted City. I even saw it when it landed in our backyard. Nearly took off Lionis’s head!” To that, Lionis argued with him from the kitchen, accusing Wick of exaggerating and claiming that none of them saw it fall.

  Arrow has no idea what in the world it could be. He walks around it, then gives the side of it a kick. It looks like an enormous dinner platter that might have been used at some lavish Lifted party in the sky with hundreds of guests in some enormous mansion. Its surface is riddled with strange carvings, curly designs embossed in asymmetrical shapes all around the rim. The center is a smooth, reflective, convex circle of metal.

  As he stares at it, he thinks of Victra and finds some deep, dark part of him begging for her forgiveness. I was not an adequate guide. I failed you as a partner in escaping that sixth ward tower. I should have been quicker in assisting you. I should have heard the arrow coming. I should have … I should have …

  Just as a tear forms in his eye, the back sliding glass door opens and Ivy peeks her head out. “Arrow?”

  He quickly wipes the tear away before looking up. “Y-Yes?”

  Her eyes avert; the tear he wiped away did not go unnoticed. She takes a short breath, then says, “Auleen and Iranda are making a meal for us next door. They’ve invited us over. Well, they’ve invited a lot of people over. It’s sort of a … a dinner in Wick and Lionis’s honor, I think.”

  Fools. “Is Athan coming?” he asks without looking at her.

  Ivy shakes her head. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Arrow gives a short nod. “Alright. I might come. I just need a moment longer to myself.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says suddenly. “About before.”

  Arrow feels a pang of frustration. He doubts he can ever hear those words come from her mouth and not feel indignant at once. Still, he allows himself to hear the words and lifts his face to her. “No. I was the one who lost my temper.”

  “You may see me as spoiled, but that’s okay. Most of the sixth ward is. I understand. But my sisters and I were not. We had a good family. My mom and my dad—”

  Now she’s said too much. “Please. Stop.”

  “My mom and my dad raised us well. We were good people. We did our best to live a humble, nice life. We gave spare money to the orphanages and we—”

  “Ivy, stop.”

  “Please, just let me say this,” she pleads.

  Arrow turns away, overcome with a very untimely and horrible urge to cry. The sobbing breaks him, pouring forth all the emotions he was so desperately trying to keep walled up inside. Victra’s face is before his, terrified and lost. Wick’s face, laughing. Lionis lifting his chin haughtily. Juston snorting, all dumb-faced at some joke he just made. Arrow blinks rapidly until he doesn’t see the faces anymore.

  But those faces are only replaced with others. His mother and her broken expression, the look of pain and aimlessness on her face. His father and his hardened eyes every time he came home from working for the Caldrons—for Ivy’s family. His sister’s face before the attack when she was alive with joy and spouting off the latest thing she learned at school—and then her face after the attack, how it always seemed to be searching for something she was missing.

  “I’m sorry,” murmurs Ivy, closer to him now. “I won’t say any more. Nothing at all. I’m sorry. You’ve lost so much too.”

  It’s the last thing she says before she retreats back into the house, leaving Arrow to empty all the tears from his eyes.

  It doesn’t take long. Soon, he’s drawn right back into a numbed silence, staring down at the scrap metal disc thing. We’re going to need a leader, and I think it ought to be you. That’s what Prat said. Because I hear, Arrow adds with a smirk, yet I hear nothing. I hear …

  Then his eyes flash with a thought, staring at the metal disc.

  He leans forward and, with a small amount of reluctance, puts his palm to its smooth surface. Listen … He listens, feeling with his Legacy. Swallow your words and listen, listen … He waits for the scrap metal disc thing to speak to him.

  Arrow’s mouth drops open. “It’s a Lifted charm,” he breathes.

  0222 Kid

  Time means nothing in the face of happiness.

  Link and Fae celebrate every month of little Akidra’s life with the joy of two happy parents who can’t believe how much fortune has fallen into their laps. Ms. Re
eda’s “well of compassion”, it turns out, is bottomless.

  Yes, Kid heard the term uttered from Link’s mouth that day long ago before the storm. She was, in fact, in and out of that house many times before deciding to show herself in the backyard after the storm died down. She had to be absolutely sure that she wanted to be a part of her own upbringing before letting herself into their sight again.

  It’s a choice she does not regret.

  The laughter shared between Link, Fae, and Kid is endless. The three of them—and little Akidra—spend their days sharing laughter, chatter, and merry midday meals in the house, living like a normal family. Days turn into weeks turn into months, and time is nothing.

  Kid even thinks she remembers having a family friend that was around the house often. Am I that family friend? Kid wonders as she watches Fae playing with little Akidra in the kitchen one morning. She considers how much she remembers at all of her childhood. So much of it was a blur. My parents didn’t have many friends, she realizes, except the neighbor, and … She feels some faint memory of a young woman who came and went, a young woman who may or may not be Kid remembering herself.

  Was I in my own life the whole time …?

  They watch somber news on the broadcast in the den together while little Akidra plays with toys on the floor. Ambera, the Royal Legacist, is found dead in her home, and Good King Greymyn names Impis Lockfyre the new Marshal of Legacy. Impis greets the city on the broadcast in a suit nearly devoid of the colorful flair for which he eventually will become known. Even his hair is tame and drab.

  Akidra’s first birthday is celebrated with the Reedas, who come over with a cake and cute party hats. It’s immediately following that first birthday that Willa Reeda herself learns that she is pregnant with her first child. To that news, Kid smiles knowingly and gives a tiny, foreboding wave to Willa’s belly. Hello, Landy, she’d say. We’re gonna be friends for a while, then you’re gonna learn my whole family was murdered, I’m going to scare you by trying to play with you in the yard, and then your parents will convince you that ghosts aren’t real.

  Months go by, and the city grows cold with winter once again. Months go by, and the city grows warm with summer heat. And on an unassuming morning at the end of that summer when the leaves on the tree in their front lawn turn yellow, little Akidra wakes up for the final time in her life. They don’t realize this until that afternoon when Akidra doesn’t quiet down for a nap, then finally confirming it that night when the little two-and-a-half-year-old ambles about the house with no sign of sleepiness pulling upon her eyelids.

  “Why the age of two?” asks Link one day when they are sitting on the back step of the sliding glass door, watching little Akidra run around in the yard.

  “I don’t know,” confesses Fae. “Maybe my sister thought a child ought to develop their imagination first … before their final wake? Maybe my sister can’t take on the dreaming for them until they’ve developed enough? Maybe it is all just a coincidence … I cannot say.”

  “Do you speak a different language with your sisters?” Link asks with a sudden quirk to his voice. “I don’t know if you remember the day we first met, but you were speaking some strange tongues I had never heard before. I thought you were from the second ward.”

  “Perhaps there is some sort of tongue I speak,” she admits.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I haven’t needed to use the other tongue for years, now.” Fae gives him a blank sort of look. “Hopefully I never will again.”

  It’s one quiet night when they’re watching Peacemaker Janlord delivering a speech in the Crystal Court on the broadcast that Akidra goes missing. Link calls out for her in a panic, racing out into the backyard. Fae searches every cabinet in the kitchen and underneath every table and chair, calmly singing out her name.

  Kid, instead, turns herself invisible and finds little Akidra at once standing at the top of the stairs. “Mommy?” the little girl calls out, alarmed at all the commotion downstairs.

  Kid becomes visible again when Fae arrives in the entryway by the front door, hunting for the voice she just heard. “Here,” says Kid, extending her hand. When Fae takes it, Kid draws her into the invisible world where Fae looks up and sees her daughter at the top of the staircase. “Ah,” says Fae with a short sigh of relief. “Of course.”

  Mother and daughter reunite, and a girl learns her Legacy.

  “I’d always wondered,” says Link some time later, “why we can see one another when we’re all invisible together. I suppose it must be some sort of … frequency thing. Like, when we’re both invisible, we are of a similar … frequency, or something. And so others cannot see us, but we can see each other.”

  “Frequency?” echoes Kid, not knowing the word.

  “I heard my brother Lionis say it dozens of times,” explains Link. “He kinda knows everything. It’s annoying.”

  “I wish I knew everything,” mumbles Kid.

  “Me too. I miss him.”

  “You’ll see him again,” Kid promises him. “And all your other brothers, too. And your mom and your dad.”

  Link puts an arm around her and hugs her close. “Hey, I just realized something.”

  “What?”

  “You know your birthday now.”

  Kid blinks with the realization. In the last couple of years while they’ve been so busy raising the baby, it never even occurred to her that she had a birthday to celebrate at all.

  “Why don’t you ever celebrate yours?” Kid asks distractedly.

  Link shrugs. “I’m kinda not alive, remember? I don’t really age.”

  “But you are. And you do.”

  Link smirks doubtfully, then moves over to the broadcast, which casts a reflection when it’s turned off. He puts a few fingers to his face, studying himself dubiously. “Have I …? Am I aging, really …?”

  “Yeah.” Kid giggles. “I guess you’re cursed with a baby face.”

  Link scowls playfully at her. “I don’t have a baby face. In fact, I have a hint of hair on my chin and upper lip.” He smirks. “I’d wished for more than that by now. At least one of us should take after dad, the bearded brute he is. But alas, all of my brothers are similarly cursed with not being able to grow much on the face. Unless Lionis shaves his off in private. I don’t know. He’s too cursed with acne.”

  “I like your baby face.”

  He sneers at her teasingly. Then, it is his turn to experience an unsettling realization. His jaw drops. “I’m … I’m eighteen years old.”

  “I’m twelve.” Kid smirks, then adds, “And a half.”

  “I’m older than Anwick,” he breathes, astonished by the fact.

  “By the time we catch up to the day we left, you’ll be twenty-six years old,” Kid points out. “I can count,” she adds in a whisper.

  Link gapes disbelievingly at her. “Twenty-six? I’ll be older than Aleksand!” That statement makes him laugh out loud, his face alight and twisted with hysteria. “From youngest brother to oldest!” And another wave of hysterical laughter consumes him. Kid gets tickled by it too, breaking into fits of laughter along with him. The cackling goes on and on until they’re both collapsed onto the couch, spent.

  When Akidra turns four, Kid turns fourteen. The Reeda family, as they do each year, attends the mild festivities with a little Landy, who’s made friends with Akidra. Timm and Link chat often. Link had concealed the true identity of his parents when he was asked years ago, claiming he’s an orphan. He offered to clean Timm’s yard and do whatever he can to repay them for the years they’ve let them live in the house for free. Timm took him up on the offer, especially when he considered that Link can use his Legacy to paint all the rooms in his house in an instant. “You could be a painter!” Timm told him. “Make a business out of it!” Then Timm put an arm around Link’s shoulder and, after giving him a hearty pat on the chest, told him, “If I’m honest, the amount of joy you’ve given my wife just by you and your family being here, that’s payme
nt enough.”

  Wife. The word seemed to swim in Link’s eyes. When the party ends and the Reeda family leaves, Kid watches Link hold Fae tighter on the couch, and the two of them share a kiss more intimate than usual, causing Kid to blush and dismiss herself upstairs.

  It’s a month later that the strange things start to happen.

  During an unassuming middle-night meal at the dining room table, Kid brings a bite of food to her mouth and disappears. She does not, however, realize that she disappeared at all until Faery looks up from her own plate and says, “Kid? Where are you?”

  Kid blinks a few times, then turns visible again at once. “Sorry,” she says, confused, and nothing further is thought of it.

  Until the following week when it happens again. Link and Kid are sitting in the backyard looking up at the stars when suddenly Link can’t see her anymore. Kid clenches her fists to bring herself back, apologizing once again. Slipping into the invisible realm seems to become an accidental habit of sorts, like mindlessly scratching a certain spot on the arm, or picking at one’s nails.

  Then it becomes as casual as blinking. “You did it again,” says Fae, a touch of concern in her voice. “Are you meaning to—?”

  “No,” snaps Kid tersely, annoyed with both Fae and herself for some reason, before shutting herself up in the back room upstairs and staring out the window with a frustrated glower on her face.

  The condition only gets worse. “I’m not even meaning to,” Kid tries to explain to a patiently-listening Link a week later. “I just relax and … and suddenly I go invisible. All I’m doing is relaxing.”

  “It’s alright,” Link assures her. “At your age, I could accidentally turn pencils pink just by gripping them whenever I was mad.”