Starcrossed

by Josephine Angelini

  calmly, but Helen could still hear the fear in his voice. “There

  haven’t been very many of them in our House’s history, but every

  one of them that we know about has turned out to be, well . . . evil.”

  A few tense minutes passed with Cassandra cupping her hands

  over her eyes in a posture of deep concentration. Finally, she

  looked up at Helen, and with a determined smile she dispelled the

  lingering negativity.

  “Well, you’re safe for now. I don’t see any immediate threats,”

  she said reassuringly, watching Helen cradle her still-tender midsection.

  “Any idea which human saw you chasing Creon?”

  “Gretchen. Don’t worry, no one will care. She’s always saying

  stuff about me,” Helen said positively. “Wait a sec. How do you

  know someone saw me?”

  “These cramps you’re having? They’re the curse. Your mom

  cursed you to feel almost unendurable pain if you use your Scion

  powers in front of mortals,” Cassandra said with a shrug.

  “Is that what it is? It’s been driving me crazy all week!” Lucas

  said from the front seat as he turned down the long Delos

  driveway.

  “Of course you wouldn’t recognize them. You’re a boy,” Ariadne

  said. “Curse Cramps are sadistic, really. I haven’t even read about

  anyone doing it in centuries.”

  180/395

  “My mother cursed me?” Helen repeated back to Cassandra, who

  nodded sadly.

  “Way back, hundreds of years ago, it was thought to be the only

  way to keep women Scions in line with the society of the time.

  Mothers would do it to their daughters to keep them from drawing

  too much attention to themselves because women weren’t supposed

  to be special or smart or talented.” Cassandra wrinkled her

  nose, like she had said something that smelled bad as it came out

  of her mouth.

  Helen sputtered uselessly to herself for a few seconds, unable to

  process what she had just learned. Cassandra took Helen’s hand

  and smiled kindly at her. “If it’s any consolation, the curse probably

  kept you hidden all these years.”

  “As much as I hate to admit anything so barbaric could be useful,

  I have to agree,” said Ariadne as she opened her door and got out

  of the car. “If you hadn’t been cursed, can you imagine what your

  mortal dad would have gone through when you were a toddler with

  all that strength? He tries to punish you, you throw him out a window.

  Bedtime would have been a bloodbath.”

  “Well, when you put it that way,” Helen admitted as she climbed

  out of the back, accepting Lucas’s politely offered hand. As she and

  Lucas walked side by side behind Ariadne and Cassandra toward

  the house, she started to laugh to herself.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I always knew my mother hated me, and now I find out that she

  literally cursed me,” she replied, hearing her voice sound matterof-

  fact. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything that made so much

  sense in my whole life.”

  “Your mother was trying to protect you,” Lucas countered

  judiciously.

  “Oh, you are such a boy! You’ve never had cramps,” Helen

  muttered. They paused on the landing.

  181/395

  “Maybe take your shoes off,” Lucas said, looking down at Helen’s

  feet. She was caked in black marsh mud all the way up to her waist.

  “Maybe get a hose,” Helen countered with a laugh.

  “I can do better than a hose,” he said with an easy grin, pulling on

  her hand to follow him toward to the pool. “Outdoor showers are

  sort of a requirement for our family.”

  He brought her to the outdoor shower and left her there to go to

  the pool house to get some towels and a change of clothes. When

  he was completely out of sight she self-consciously stripped down

  in the shower area. The beautiful teak walls of the shower curved

  around in a spiral that screened off the important parts of her

  body, but her feet and the very top of her head were still visible.

  She’d taken millions of beach showers like this, but never without

  wearing a swimsuit. She washed as quickly as she could and was

  nearly finished by the time Lucas returned.

  “The T-shirt’s definitely mine, but I have no idea who the sweatpants

  belong to. Don’t worry about it, though. No one will care,” he

  said, flipping the clothes and a big beach towel over the top of the

  screen. Then he put a plastic shopping bag down on the ground.

  “That’s for your uniform and sneakers.”

  “Thanks,” Helen called out, painfully aware how little space stood

  between him and her naked body. It was silly, really. Everyone is

  naked under a few millimeters of clothes, but this felt different

  somehow. It felt dangerous. She watched his feet through the gap

  at the bottom of the screen as he began to turn away, hesitated,

  and then hurried off. She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d

  been holding.

  The clothes he’d left her were gigantic, but they were soft, comfortable,

  and they smelled like dryer sheets. She toweled off, put

  the borrowed outfit on, and came out of the shower area carrying

  her bag of dirty clothes.

  By the time she and Lucas made it into the house, Jason and

  Hector were sitting at the kitchen table watching Cassandra and

  182/395

  Ariadne shower a man Helen didn’t know with affection. Lucas introduced

  Helen before giving his uncle a big hug.

  Pallas Delos was a large, blond man, still glowing with health and

  youth even though he was graying at the temples. He and Hector

  shared the same cautious smile and sharp eyes, but there was more

  of Jason’s and Ariadne’s prettiness about him than Hector’s blunt

  masculinity. He shook Helen’s hand politely, but his curious stare

  followed her long after the introduction was over and it began to

  make Helen feel uncomfortable. She wondered if he was just reacting

  to her taboo name or if he had heard unflattering things about

  her from someone in the family. His stare made Helen jumpy. She

  tried to hide herself behind Lucas.

  “Okay, everybody out. I have to get started on dinner,” Noel

  ordered as she entered the kitchen, waving her hands in a shooing

  motion. Helen found herself being pulled out the back door by

  Lucas.

  “It’s a good idea to stay out of my mom’s way when she gets like

  that or you’ll end up chopping vegetables for the next hour,” he

  said. He led her back outside toward the grassy lawn between the

  tennis courts and the pool.

  “I don’t mind helping,” Helen said, starting to head back toward

  the house.

  “I do,” Lucas said with a sly smile, tugging on her hand. “Besides,

  I thought you wanted to learn how to fly. Isn’t that what caused all

  the fuss earlier this afternoon?”

  Helen could tell he was upset and trying not to show it. “About

  that,” she began, scrunching her face up guiltily.

  “Yeah, that was bad. And it was all my fault. I should have taught

  you to fly as soon as we healed from our fall, but I didn’t trust . . .”

 
he said, stopping himself and shaking his head ruefully. “Never

  mind. The point is, once I learned I could fly all I wanted to do was

  get back in the air. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. It was stupid of

  me to think you would wait.”

  183/395

  “How old were you when you found out?” Helen asked.

  “Ten? But it took me a while to understand it,” he said as if to

  prepare her for something. “Scions are born with all their talents,

  but it takes time to discover how to use some of them. Especially if

  there’s no one with your particular talent to act as a mentor.”

  “Did you have one? A mentor, I mean.”

  “No. I don’t know any other Scions who can fly besides you. But I

  had books, and my family for support.” He pulled up and stopped

  to face Helen. “You never had any of that, so this might be a little

  harder for you.”

  “I’m good at hard, it’s easy I’ve never trusted,” she responded

  quickly, but he gave her a look that indicated he thought she had

  missed his point.

  “I just don’t want you to get discouraged if this takes us a while.

  So before we start, I have to explain some things,” he said, suddenly

  all business. “Strength, speed, agility, acute hearing and eyesight,

  beauty, rapid healing, and intelligence, although that last

  one’s debatable, these are all gifts that pretty much every Scion

  has, and we don’t have to be trained to use them. But there’s another

  group of talents that are rare, and most of them take some

  work. Flying is one of the rare ones. And it’s one of the hardest to

  get the hang of.”

  “I honestly don’t care how hard it is to master this. I don’t care if

  this takes me years. I’m just dying to do it again!” Helen bounced

  up and down on her toes impatiently.

  “Okay, okay! First of all, you have to hold still. The jumping part

  comes later when you want speed,” he said with a laugh as he put

  his hands on Helen’s waist.

  She gasped faintly at the unexpected touch, and tried to make

  herself stand still like he had said, but it wasn’t easy. They stood

  for a few moments, just staring at each other.

  “Close your eyes,” he whispered. Helen’s heart was racing and

  she had a feeling Lucas could hear it.

  184/395

  “Calm down,” he said, smiling with his eyes closed. “Try and slow

  your pulse down if you can.”

  “I’m trying. Do you have to stand so close?” Helen asked, her

  voice thin and shaky.

  “Yes. I don’t want you to get away from me. That would be bad,”

  he said in a deadpan voice, maintaining his concentration. A few

  seconds passed. When he next spoke he sounded very calm and far

  away.

  “Now. Focus on your body. Take a deep breath and follow it in,

  like your brain is floating gently inside that air you’re breathing.”

  He waited a few moments for Helen to get to where he was.

  It took her a few breaths, but eventually she was able to do it. He

  knew exactly when she was ready. “Good. Now you’re inside of

  yourself,” he said triumphantly. “Can you feel the weight of you, all

  stacked up and all tied together?”

  She did feel it. She could feel the weight of her skin on top of her

  muscles on top of her bones, all stacked up, just like he had said.

  There were millions and millions of little bits of her, all marching

  around like soldiers with different but cohesive orders. Those were

  her cells, she realized at once. She giggled, thinking how strange it

  was to be this massive army and never feel it. She heard Lucas

  laugh, too, and she knew that he was right there with her, experiencing

  what she was experiencing.

  “Now I want you to do something really hard,” he said, his voice

  light and curious, almost childlike. “I want you to stay inside, but

  also look out, if you can. Don’t be scared. I’m right here with you.”

  Helen did as he told her, but the sensation was way too intense to

  process.

  She had lost her sunglasses once. She’d looked all over, in the kitchen,

  the living room, back up in her bedroom, but she couldn’t

  find them anywhere. It was annoying because she knew she had

  just had them in her hand, but she couldn’t remember what she’d

  185/395

  done with them. Then her dad told her that her sunglasses were on

  top of her head.

  In that moment she realized that she had been using the wrong

  sense. She had been looking when she should have been feeling.

  She reached up and felt her glasses with her hand, but she also felt

  them with her scalp, and when she thought about it she realized

  that she had been feeling her glasses up there the whole time.

  She’d just been so busy looking she hadn’t thought to feel.

  This was similar. Again, she was realizing that there were many

  different ways to experience the world around her. Now, she was

  still aware of all of her millions of cells, but she could also feel

  something new. She felt herself falling toward something truly

  huge, and she knew she had another sense that could stop the

  falling.

  Scared out of her mind, she instinctively pushed with this new

  sense. She needed to put some distance between her little army

  and the big, fast monster she was falling toward—the monster she

  suddenly realized she had been falling toward every second of

  every day of her life.

  A moment too late to stop herself, Helen realized that the monster

  was the earth, and the falling sensation was gravity—and that

  what she had just done was switch it off. Vertigo sucked at her,

  pulling her off balance. She grabbed on to Lucas, frantically burying

  her face against his chest. He was the only unmovable object in

  the entire universe, and if Helen let him go of him she knew she

  would spin off into space forever and ever.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered into her ear. His breath was warm, and

  his voice soothed her. “I won’t let you go, Helen. I promise. Do you

  trust me?” The temperature dropped and great gusts of wind

  tossed her hair around in a tangle.

  She kept her face pressed against the L-shaped hollow where Lucas’s

  shoulder turned into his neck. She told herself that this is

  186/395

  what difficult felt like, this was the “hard” that she had been cavalier

  enough to tell Lucas she preferred to “easy.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, feeling the cold, thin air crawl into her

  clothes and snatch the sounds she made away from her lips as soon

  as she spoke.

  “Then prove it,” he whispered back. “Open your eyes.”

  They stayed in the air until the sky was almost completely dark and

  Helen was so cold she couldn’t stop shaking. There was a lot for

  her to learn. Defying gravity was a big deal, but it was only half of

  flying. The other half was less of a mental leap, but it was also

  much trickier. Helen learned that to move through the air she

  couldn’t just flap her arms or kick her feet. She had to manipulate

  the air around her. Lucas started to teach her how to command the

  air, make it denser o
n one side and thinner on another so that a

  tiny, Helen-sized current was created around her. When Lucas did

  it, it seemed as if he were floating underwater. The wind didn’t

  whip at his hair or clothes, but flowed around him, gently holding

  him or quickly pushing him depending on how fast he wanted to

  go.

  Lucas spent most of this first lesson just floating there in front of

  Helen as if he were in the ocean, his long limbs sinuously riding

  the currents, his fingers splayed to stave off random eddies. He

  kept his arms out and ready to catch her in case she shot off too

  fast, or slipped off a current of air pressure that she had created

  unevenly before she tumbled into a spin. Flying was complicated,

  and Helen didn’t have the feel of it yet. It was a bit like learning to

  drive a car and aim a rifle at the same time. It required a light

  touch and complete concentration.

  Lucas also taught her tricks for not getting spotted by the “gravity

  impaired,” as he called the poor landlocked suckers they were looking

  down on. Helen was surprised to learn that early evening was

  actually the most dangerous time to fly. Sunset was when people

  187/395

  looked up to admire the pretty colors, and on Nantucket it was also

  when half the island’s residents were making their living taking

  photos or churning out watercolors.

  Several times, Lucas had to grab Helen and fly out over the ocean

  so they weren’t seen. Apparently, flying any time during the day

  was dangerous, but if Helen stayed high enough, anyone who spotted

  her would think she was a bird. Night was the safest time, of

  course, and that’s when they could fly closer to the ground, which

  Lucas promised was a thrill. But all of it was a thrill to Helen, and

  when Lucas finally said that they should go in, she literally whined

  and asked for five more minutes. Lucas just laughed.

  “Believe me, I know how you feel. But I’m freezing,” he said.

  Helen pushed away from him with narrowed eyes and a small

  smile. She swooped over his shoulder and around his back, softly

  brushing against him as she passed.

  “Tomorrow?” she asked, feeling shy and powerful at the same

  time. He rolled over gracefully and captured one of her arms just

  before she could drift away.

  “Tomorrow. I promise,” he said quietly as he reeled her in. “But

  it’s nearly dark and my family will worry about us if we stay out