Lives of Kings

by Lucy Leiderman

  He threw up his hands in surrender. “You are right,” he said. “You’ve changed me. I was broken when we met.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. I immediately felt bad for bringing up his strange traits, most of which he seemed to have abandoned during our journey together.

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “You were my first real contact with this new world,” Kian replied, as if it was obvious. “Looking for you was the first thing I had ever done that wasn’t under the watchful eye of the Godelan, or of Magician. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was kept on a short leash for a long time. And I let myself be, because of what I was promised. Maybe I didn’t even believe it, but I had no choice. If I had admitted to myself that I was being used, what was I supposed to do with my life? You gave me a reason.”

  The conversation had shifted from light to heavy very quickly. Always being surrounded by the others, Kian and I rarely had a chance to speak alone. Even though we shared a room in Australia, it had been purely functional — first for Michael’s snoring and then for my possible concussion. And if it wasn’t as utilitarian as we were both making it out to be, well, neither of us had the time or the right words to talk about it.

  “Come walk with me,” Kian said.

  Still lost in thought, I didn’t move as he got up and reached out to help me up from the fallen trunk. I took it. Every moment we had found together in the last while had always been intruded upon.

  Now, while Seth, Garrison, and Michael were busy and had even wandered off slightly, we finally had a chance to be alone. Not that I knew what to do with that chance. My stomach turned as he took my hand and didn’t let go, even as we walked side by side. Some people call that butterflies. I lean more toward nausea.

  “What did it feel like when you … changed? Started feeling your past?” he asked.

  We walked along the same road on which I had tried to catch the school bus. Soon, my last year of high school would be over without my ever having set foot in a classroom. Sudden panic overwhelmed me when I thought about the worldly things I was abandoning, including a diploma. I let the thought linger as I considered my life after our mission.

  “It felt like I was drunk,” I said. “Heightened senses and awareness, but at the same time the paranoia that I could be imagining all of it.”

  He smiled.

  “Are we meant to die?” I asked.

  Perhaps I said it so calmly because I already knew the answer.

  “I don’t know,” Kian replied, squeezing my hand tighter.

  “What other purpose would we have in this world other than to defeat the Godelan?” I asked rhetorically. “There’s nothing to do for us here after that. No place in this world. We must have been intended to die in the process.”

  “The same could be said for me,” he said. “Certainly I don’t have a place in this world either, but I intend to try my best to live. Besides, you’re talking about your past life. After the Godelan are done, she has nothing else to accomplish. You can have a life.”

  I remembered how it felt not to possess magic anymore. It was lonely, like a hole in your heart, or missing something that you know won’t be back. I didn’t know how I’d feel about that.

  We came to a stop in the middle of the road.

  “What?” I asked Kian. He was smiling knowingly.

  “Recognize this spot?”

  I looked around.

  I didn’t, but I knew what it could be. This was probably where I had tripped over my feet, fallen down a slope, got a million bruises, and ended up in the ocean. It was the first, but not the last, clumsy fall Kian would see me take.

  I walked to the edge and glanced over. It didn’t look like anyone had been crashing through it. Funny how nature could pummel me, but I hadn’t even left a mark on it.

  “It seems like a long way down,” I said.

  “It was,” he agreed.

  “You know, when I fell, I remember how nervous you looked,” I said. “You tried to grab for me. I think I knew in that split second that you probably weren’t trying to kill me.”

  Kian laughed. “Nervous? I was terrified. I finally find you, and then you tumble over the edge of a cliff. I had no idea your magic would save you.” He joined me by the edge, looking down. “I was running after you, getting ready to jump in the water.”

  He had seemed so steely and distant, it was strange hearing about his perspective. I was thinking about what would have happened had I not been the first one found when he took my hand again and pulled me back to the road.

  “I don’t have magic anymore,” he told me.

  “So you won’t go running in after me if I fall again?” I asked, batting my eyelashes and playing the perfect damsel in distress.

  He turned and gave me a look that caught me off guard. I knew the next words out of his mouth were going to be sincere.

  “Of course I would,” he said. “But I don’t have magic anymore, so it probably wouldn’t end very well for me.”

  My stomach did an extra flip as he came closer. I suddenly felt my mouth go dry.

  “You know I would do anything for you, right?” he said, taking another step toward me.

  I could only nod. To any other two people, the words might have sounded romanticized or exaggerated. After what Kian had put himself through to save me, I knew it was the truth.

  Slowly, he leaned until his face blocked the wind, and I was enveloped in warmth. Our lips met and I could do nothing but enjoy the moment as the cold April day faded and I only lived in the space between us.

  This was different than any other time in the last months when Kian and I had actually found some time to be alone. There was no confusion or vexation. For the first time, there was only honesty and complete understanding. As he wrapped his arms around me, I was ready to sink into this feeling forever.

  A loud boom sounded from nearby like thunder, shaking the earth beneath our feet. We jumped apart. Instantly my heart was pounding.

  My first reaction was to look up at the sky, thinking lightning had struck the woods just on the other side of the road. It was a grey day, but I dreaded that the noise wasn’t a natural occurrence. Seconds later, my fears were confirmed as I heard Seth yelling my name, and then Kian’s.

  We ran at full speed back to where the others had been using magic and going through the drills Kian had taught us. I nearly tripped on a root but managed not to fall. Pain like fire raced up my ankle and into my leg, but I kept going anyway.

  Kian, whose long legs had given him an advantage when running in the forest, got to the clearing first. He stopped suddenly and I nearly bulldozed him by careening straight into his back. He was looking around, resembling a bird more than ever as his brow furrowed and he cocked his head to the side, listening. I saw why quickly enough — the clearing was empty.

  “Kian! Gwen!”

  Seth was yelling again. This time we followed the voices to a hollow. Long and narrow, but deep and filled with dirt and leaves, it looked like a trench separating one part of the forest from the other. Close to where a boulder ended the grotto, Seth and Michael huddled over an unconscious Garrison.

  “What did he do?” I asked.

  Michael helped me climb in since the walls on either side were nearly six feet tall and I didn’t want to risk collapsing the earth even further.

  “Stupid,” Garrison suddenly muttered.

  I sighed in relief. At least he was alive.

  The four of us huddling over him formed a bit of a dark cave, so we had to back up, despite my desire to both take care of him and smack him for worrying me. I guess I couldn’t really be angry. If there was one person who made magical mistakes resulting in injuries, it was me.

  “We were trying to build up this path,” Michael explained, waving to the far side of the trench. “It looks like something formed by ice, and we wanted to see if we could move it.”

  “Why?” Kian asked.

  Michael looked at Garrison and Seth, obviously lackin
g a good answer. “To see if we could,” he said.

  Kian nearly groaned. If he were anyone else, he would have waved his arms in exasperation.

  “When it comes time to fight the Godelan,” Michael rushed to explain, “we’ll be ready. Our magic will be stronger.”

  “That’s not how it works!” Kian was close to yelling, but he worked to get his temper under control. I could see the strained effort in his tense movements. “You can’t make yourself stronger by pushing yourself to extremes. Magic is not like muscles. Your magic is tied to your past life. You need inner growth. Understanding. Compassion. Balance.”

  Michael was quiet for a long moment. He looked a bit like a child caught doing something bad. “I didn’t know that,” he said softly.

  Kian sighed. “Of course you didn’t, because I didn’t tell you. But in the future, before you make any assumptions, just ask me, okay?”

  The others nodded.

  With Michael’s brawn, we managed to carry Garrison back to the house. Well, it was mostly Michael, but we all fluttered around him. Garrison looked a bit like a wooden puppet, all rigid arms and legs flailing around as he was carried, using his last energy to emphasize how embarrassed he was to be carried around like a princess by a knight.

  Luckily, my parents were busy with the cats and dogs (they even had a horse tied up in the backyard) so we were able to put Garrison into my bed without drawing any attention. Seth stayed with him while the rest of us went back into the woods to see what could have caused him to use so much magic.

  By this time, my paranoia had kicked in and I was watching over my shoulder constantly for any sign of the Godelan. If they were behind this, then we weren’t safe here anymore and my visit home would have to be cut short. I couldn’t involve my parents in my problems.

  Kian jumped into the trench and turned to help me. The ground smelled damp and fresh. I could tell it had been covered just a short while ago. It wasn’t soggy and rotten like the rest of the forest, still thawing in the unusually warm weather for April.

  “We moved this rock a part of the way,” Michael explained, pointing to the rock face that was cracked clean in two. That must have been the boom we had heard. Michael showed us how they had moved it at least ten feet. “But then it wouldn’t budge.”

  Kian ran his fingers over the split in the rock. The edges looked fresh and razor sharp.

  “It’s warm,” he observed. “There’s still magic here.”

  There was something unusual about the stone. If I tried to sense its shape and how I could use it, I couldn’t see its definition.

  “Hey, Michael, you climbed the rocks and cliffs because you always had a feeling about what to grab a hold of, because you knew its shape, right?” I said, guessing.

  He had proven himself exceptionally skilled at moving the earth. Unless any of us had found ways to trick him or use his own size against him, we could never win any of the drills.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.”

  “Well, tell me the shape of this rock,” I said, stepping aside.

  He approached carefully, bouncing a little on his feet as if to get a feel for the ground he walked on. He eyed the rock before placing his hands on it and bouncing some more.

  “I can’t feel it,” he admitted. “I don’t see where it ends.”

  “Probably because it doesn’t,” I told him. “You were trying to move a part of the continent. You could have sent us all right into the ocean if Garrison wasn’t trying to do it all by himself.”

  Again, I realized I sounded a lot like Kian, but it was true. They hadn’t really used a lot of thought when overdrawing on their magic. I couldn’t believe my friends had nearly just collapsed part of Oregon. Michael’s chastised child expression lasted for only a few minutes as we walked back to the house. Moments later, he was already imagining all the possibilities.

  “So do you think if Seth and I were helping, the three of us could have moved the whole cliff?” he asked.

  Both Kian and I ignored his question.

  Garrison eventually recovered his energy, but having all the information before throwing his magic into something was a lesson that was engrained in him and all of us. His magic came back as slowly as mine had when I had caused a snowstorm that let us escape the Godelan in the winter. He pined for activities while he was restricted to my bed, so many days found us playing board games around a little breakfast-in-bed table in my room.

  I was happy enough to camp in the living room with everyone else, telling my parents Garrison had fallen outside on the path. Which was true enough. Kian and I managed to steal a few more moments alone together, but between my parents and running up and down the stairs to talk to Garrison because, as he said, he was dying of boredom, I had little time to spare.

  A few weeks passed quietly enough, and May came around. Seth and Kian would often get into deep discussions about how much time we had left to kill the Godelan once and for all, and how much time they had to do the same for us.

  Ultimately, we were as vulnerable as they were for another seven months. But before we could ever get close enough to act on a ritual that would take them out of the initial ritual they had performed, we needed their names to control them.

  We quizzed Kian on what the names could be, how it had looked when the Godelan removed their names, and the type of box they had put them in. Kian answered diligently but always reminded us that Stone would never just entrust his entire life to a box. It had to be something more than that. Unfortunately, he didn’t know about their travels right after his and Magician’s arrival. They had stayed in the house alone and waited for the other two to return.

  “It was always like that,” Kian remembered. “We would just wait. They’d never share anything with me, and I don’t think Magician knew much more. They were born and raised in this world. While they knew him, he was still different. Unpredictable.”

  My theory of placing the names somewhere we wouldn’t dare go was fine, but it didn’t narrow down our options. And would the location of the names be physical, like a box hidden in a cave somewhere in the North Pole, or would it be something that would present itself to us only when we had figured it out, like the answer to a riddle?

  That thought pattern usually made my head hurt with all of the answers I didn’t have, so I gave up a lot faster than Kian or Seth. For them, it seemed to be the thing that bonded them. As the only two who could perform the ritual or command the Godelan, this was a way to finally be kings and redeem themselves for leaving the tribe.

  While we came together as a group, I couldn’t help but think about Moira. She had been the banished one, yet I had ended up going home. Had she gone back to her parents? Was she living now just as she had before we found her, or had we ruined her life by igniting her past, which took over in the end?

  Perhaps my constant dwelling on the guilt of losing the present Moira to her past self turned many of my memories into ones of her. She had always been kept apart by a strict mother who was proud of her magic yet disapproved of the rest of us. And I had never fully considered that she was also Kian’s cousin.

  My ties to Moira through their family reached far into our past, and in some ways I wondered if she was right to hate me. I always wanted what she took for granted, and so I took it for myself.

  After a month of being in Oregon, an earthquake struck in Los Angeles, but it was so strong that we could feel it in our house. It was six in the morning when the ground began to shake and books fell from the shelves, nearly on top of our heads.

  We jumped out of our sleeping bags and just stood in the middle of the room, adrenaline rushing though somewhat still asleep, just trying to keep our balance and dodge falling objects. I could hear my parents shouting upstairs, and Garrison answering them. Dogs began to bark and howl in the vet clinic part of the house.

  From what I remembered of events in San Francisco, it was fairly long for an earthquake, lasting about a full minute. The sound was the scariest part, sin
ce the old wooden house, built into a hillside with probably very little foundation, creaked and groaned as if it was about to fall over. Finally, it stopped, yet we all stood stock still for several moments afterward.

  “You kids okay?” my dad yelled from upstairs.

  “Yeah!” I called back.

  A few moments later, they came downstairs with Garrison hobbling behind them. He was walking now, if only for short periods, but had to pretend to limp to keep up the fall story.

  As was our routine in California, my parents immediately turned on the TV. Every news channel in the country was reporting on a strong earthquake that had hit Los Angeles.

  As the day progressed, shocking images played across the screen. The most eerie for me was an entire freeway that had simply slid into the ocean, along with all of the cars. Houses were rubble. Buildings were beyond repair. People cried and looked for lost loved ones in front of the cameras.

  While I was used to the guilt and what-ifs that immediately hit me, it was a first for Michael. He waited until my parents left the room before turning to me and asking, “Did we do this?”

  He was ashen.

  I was glad that seeing things like this would keep him from thinking that trying to move continents was cool, but he also seemed heartbroken. And for the first time, the big, happy guy we had met in Australia looked to seriously be contemplating what he was doing here with us.

  “No,” I told him. “These shifts, pushes and pulls, the Godelan do it.”

  “Why?” he asked, though we had been over this several times.

  “They want power. Chaos and destruction make it easy to get.”

  “So if we stop the Godelan, this will stop?”

  Time to admit where we had failed.

  “I don’t think so,” I told him honestly. “But if we stop them, we can help to keep it from getting worse.”

  Michael continued to stare at the TV for the rest of the day, and the day after that. I could see each bit of information flowing over him like the tidal wave in New York had flowed over me, haunting me long after I had escaped it.