by Sophia Sharp
Ashley frowned. For a second, she looked conflicted. But then she sighed, and stepped away from Liz. “Sometimes, you have to take a leap of faith,” she muttered, coming to our side. She glanced back at Liz. “They’re right, I think.”
Liz glared at me, then at Eve, and, finally, at Madison. The look she gave us was enough to crack boulders. She glared at Ashley worst of all. Her mouth worked silently, and she clenched and unclenched her fists. Then, just when I thought she would explode, she… sighed.
“You’re probably right,” she grumbled, unhappily. “I guess… I was just being stubborn. I was afraid we’d get hurt if more people knew. That’s why secrecy was so important at first. But look at us now.” She barked a laugh. “This is by far the worst thing we could have expected. Chased by anonymous attackers. Threatened for our lives. And we don’t even know the real reason why.”
She came over to us, and we surrounded her in a hug. “John and Rob are reliable,” I assured her. “They’ll be able to help.”
“If they don’t think we’re totally crazy when we tell them,” she mused.
With that settled, all we could do was wait for the guys to return. We had no phones, no internet, so there was nothing we could look up about the professor we had to meet. While we waited, I asked Liz for the abstract of the report about the crystals again. But no matter how many times I read it, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
There was a TV in the room. We had time to kill, but there was little of interest on in the morning hours. So, we just kind of just lounged in the hotel room, waiting for Rob or John. They had been gone much longer than I expected. Hours started to creep by. With each hour, doubt grew in my mind. What if we were wrong about all this? What if Arthur Eliot wasn’t the one who knew about the crystals? And if he was the right man, what if he wouldn’t talk to us? That was entirely plausible. We had come here on a whim – a whim necessitated by the people chasing after us, but a whim nonetheless.. When we decided to leave Traven Island, we hadn’t really thought of what we’d do if this turned out to be a dead end. The Harvard Professor was the only lead we had.
The front door burst open with a bang. I whipped my head at the sound and found Rob gleaming in the doorway.
“We found him!” he announced triumphantly. He had a huge grin on his face. “He’s a professor of philosophy here. He teaches in Emerson Hall.”
“And he has office hours today at five,” John said, coming in from behind on crutches. “That’s only a few hours away. We can go meet him there. Or…” he hesitated, “…you can go without us. Neither Rob nor I know why you consider him so important.”
“Actually…” I began. We decided I’d be the one to tell them everything, since I was the one who had wanted to do it from the start. “Actually, we want you to come. There’s more to all this than what we’ve told you.”
“What do you mean?” John asked. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. Rob looked at me blankly. Liz was staring out the window, clearly avoiding John’s eye.
“Close the door. We’ll tell you,” Eve said.
“Alright…” Rob said uncertainly. He closed and locked the door. John hobbled over to the table. “This sounds pretty serious,” he noted. “What’s going on?”
“Well… this is going to sound crazy,” I sighed. “Okay. There are these… crystals. We found them on Traven Island. Actually, the other girls found them way before I got there. But the crystals are the reason all these people are coming after us.”
John frowned. “Are they very valuable?” he asked. “Did you steal them?”
“No!” Liz cried out. I turned to look at her, and she shyly looked away. “Keep going,” she told me.
“They’re valuable…” I said, “…but not in the way you think.”
“What do you mean?” Rob asked.
I sighed again. This was harder than anticipated. “The crystals… they’re not plain rocks. They give us—” I motioned with my hand around the room, “—special abilities.”
“Special abilities?” Rob snorted. “What? Like in the movies? This is a joke, right?”
“No joke,” I said seriously. I pulled the leather cord from around my neck to show them the crystal that hung from it. “This is one of them. This one’s mine. We all have them. What they do… well, it’s hard to explain. They… allow us to open our minds. We can use them, in a way, and when we do…” I trailed off helplessly. “Jesus, this sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Your minds become more in tune with your surroundings,” Madison piped in. She looked at me and smiled. “When we use the crystals, we can connect ourselves to the world around us. Everything becomes much clearer. Imagine you have on somebody else’s glasses. Everything you see becomes foggy and blurry. But when you take them off, things come into focus. It’s like that with the crystals. Except what we see without them – what you think of as clean and clear – is the blurry part. With the crystals, we can… sense… everything about, well, everything. Everything around us.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like it!” John said. “You’re not joking, though. What do you mean, use the crystals?”
“When one of us touches her crystal,” Ashley said, “we can form a link to it. With our minds. It’s… tricky to explain, I know,” she glanced at me sympathetically, “but it’s something we just do. You know? I can’t describe it any better. Not to someone who can’t do it. It’s like a bird trying to teach a fish to fly.”
“What do you mean, someone who can’t?” Rob asked. “If you can do it, why can’t I? Why can’t John?”
“Only some people can do it,” Eve emphasized as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “And only females. That’s just the way it is. None of us knows why.”
“We’re the only ones on Traven Island who can do it,” I said. “All of us feel a… a pull… to the crystals. A longing. Like… kind of like if you’re missing home when you’ve been gone for a while.”
“So let me get this straight,” John said. He looked directly at Liz. “You guys found these crystals, these rocks, and you can link your minds to them? Just like that? What happens when you do it?”
“We become hyper-aware of our surroundings,” I explained. “Acutely so. It feels like our minds go into overdrive.”
“What do you mean?” Rob asked.
“Like, reality slows down for us. At least, our perception of reality slows down. Time grinds to a halt. We think it’s because our brains start working so fast.”
“And then what?” John asked. “You said they give you… special abilities?” He put particular emphasis on that to show his incredulity.
“Yes,” Eve said. “I’d call us crazy if I were you, too. But with the crystals activated, we sense things about the world. There are these… connections… that exist between everything. The crystals make them apparent to us. And we can manipulate those connections, in a way. Except…” she paused, looking at me, “…except, only Tracy has the strength to actually do anything about it. The rest of us can only feel the connections. We can’t shift them or move them or anything.”
“Connections?” Rob asked. “What? Like energy or something?”
“Yes, exactly!” I exclaimed. “That’s exactly what it is! Or, at least, that’s what it feels like. It’s like the inherent energy that exists within everything in this world. We – I – can redistribute some of that energy when I’m linked up to the crystal. Ashley knows some more about the theory behind it.”
“I mean, I’ve puzzled out some things,” she said. “I think the connections that the crystals open our minds to are linked back to the beginning of time. Back to the big bang, or the origin, whatever you believe in. Back when everything in this world and in this universe was created. All the matter around us came from one initial source, and with the crystals, we’re able to sense some of that essence.” She shrugged. “But that’s mostly theoretical.”
“And this professor you had us seek out,” John said, “he knows more abo
ut it?”
“We hope,” I said.
“You also notice things when you link your mind to the crystals,” Madison added. “Tiny things. Like, if I do it, I can feel every thread of fabric in this chair, every molecule that makes it up. I know very infinitesimal part of everything around me clearly in my mind.”
“And that’s not overwhelming?” John asked. We had his rapt attention now, I could tell. “How do your minds cope with all that information?”
“We don’t think it happens consciously,” Liz said. She seemed only to speak when John asked something. “We think what happens is that your mind filters out most of it, except the most relevant things.”
“It’s like at a party,” Madison exclaimed. “You know, when there’s noise all around you, you filter all of it out. Things go in one ear and out the other. But if somebody calls your name, even from across the room, you instantly pick up on it.”
John nodded in agreement. “I’ve experienced that before. But who found the crystals in the first place?”
“I did,” Liz said. “On the island. In the caves down below. When I just got to Oliver Academy my first year, I went exploring. I found these ancient runes inscribed into a cave wall. They led me to the crystals. But…” she bit her lip, hesitating.
“Go on,” I urged.
“Alright.” She nodded. “We’re in this together. John, remember the night you talked about, when Tracy and I both came to the clinic?”
John nodded. “Everybody knew about it.”
“But nobody knew what happened, did they?”
“No,” he said.
“Well, here’s what happened. Chris – Professor Rosenberg’s son – tricked me into coming down to a part of the caves I haven’t been before. And when I got down there, he trapped me, demanding that Tracy come. He threatened me with a knife. I was useless to him except as bait to lure her down.”
“What did he want with Tracy?” Rob asked.
“We don’t know,” Liz continued. “But she’s the only one who could manipulate the connections the crystals link our minds to. Somehow, we think Chris knew that.”
“But none of us knows how,” I pointed out.
“Right,” Liz said. “We kept the crystals a secret. We were the only ones who knew about them. At least, that’s what we thought before that night.”
“So what happened that night?” John asked.
Eve answered. “We brought Tracy down there to rescue Liz. Chris was acting like a maniac. There was a fight. Tracy used her crystal, and Chris was hurt, but he managed to get away. Our concern was getting Liz to safety. And Tracy.”
“And you came to the clinic in the aftermath?” John said. “That makes sense. What is it you were saying about the runes?”
“Oh!” Liz exclaimed. “Well, the runes were what led me to the crystals in the first place. I thought they were ancient. They looked like it. But a few days ago, we sneaked into Chris’s dad’s office—”
“Broke in,” Eve corrected.
“Broke in,” Liz repeated, “with an ID card we found on Tracy’s attacker. The ID card? It belonged to Professor Rosenberg.”
“Jesus Christ!” John exclaimed.
“There’s more,” Liz continued. “We went to his office, and found this.” She pulled out the plastic bag from under her seat, and carefully took out the large scroll of paper. She brought it to where Rob and John were sitting and spread it on the table.
The rest of us all came around to look at it again. We all knew the markings by now, but they were new to the two men. Rob whistled through his teeth.
“What is it?” John asked.
“These are the runes I found,” Liz said.
“What do they mean?” John asked. He traced a finger along one particular curve.
“I thought I knew,” Liz said. “But this paper looks like it was the original design of the runes. Not a copy.”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “This was hidden in Professor Rosenberg’s office. So before, we thought that the runes on the cave wall were ancient. But now, we think that somebody put them there, specifically carved them there to make them look like they were ancient. But… we don’t know why.”
“For you, or somebody else to find,” John said.
“But why?” I continued. “And how would they even guarantee any of us found it?”
John looked up from the paper. “What else do you know about the crystals?” he asked.
“Not much,” I admitted. “We know that only women can use them. We don’t know why.”
“And… you have them?” John asked. “On you? You showed me something earlier.”
“Right,” I nodded. I pulled on the cord around my neck again, bringing the crystal up from beneath my shirt.
“Can I… touch it?” Rob asked.
“Go ahead.” I untied the knot in the leather strip and gave him the crystal. He took it as if it were a live bomb. Extremely carefully, and with extreme caution, he held it in his hand.
“You can have mine,” Liz volunteered, handing hers to John. He took it with the same fasciation as Rob.
They both examined the crystals silently. They brought them up to the light, close to their eyes. They hefted them in their palms, and rotated them around to see them from all angles. They put them onto the table, knocked them lightly against the wood, and spun them around.
“This little rock does all that?” John finally said. “That’s the cause of all this trouble?”
“That’s what we think,” I answered.
“Then why don’t we just destroy them?” Rob suggested innocently.
“No!” all of us cried out as one.
Rob held up his hands. “Woah, woah, don’t worry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just thinking out loud. With the crystals gone, so would be the threat. No?”
“We don’t know that,” I said, snatching the crystal from Rob. To think, he would suggest destroying it! To even consider such a thing…! “They’re our only protection now. And there’s so much about them that we still don’t know. It’s really fascinating, if you think about it. We can uncover so much. If we have a chance to really study them, we can learn something new—something exciting.”
“So this is what caused the tires to explode, then?” Rob asked me directly.
“Yes,” I admitted. “I did that.”
“I knew it!” he exclaimed. “I knew something was up. This is the danger, the secret, that you told me about before?”
I nodded. “Now you know.”
“It truly is fascinating—what you say you can do with them,” John said. “If you’re telling the truth—and I don’t see why you would make something like this up—the science behind it all, the physics, it’s purely unimaginable. My med school professors would have laughed if I ever suggested such a thing! Yet, I have to admit, on some intuitive level, it does make sense.”
“There are people who know even more about them,” Ashley said. “That is why we came here.”
“Along with a copy of the runes,” Liz continued, “we found this.” She took out the second sheet of paper and handed it to John. His eyes scanned the page as he read. He frowned, and then gave it to Rob.
“Arthur Eliot,” Rob said after a moment, tapping his finger on the name. “That’s the professor you’re looking for.”
“Bingo,” I said. “We found this sheet of paper hidden in Paul Rosenberg’s office as well.”
“It looks old,” Rob observed.
“The funny thing,” Ashley offered, “is that we couldn’t find anything about that paper online. It’s like it never existed. But his name is right there in the corner. And he teaches here. We came here because we think he can give us answers.”
“And we’ll find out in a few hours,” I said.
Chapter Fourteen – Arthur Eliot
The next few hours flew by as John and Rob bombarded us with questions about the crystals. Most of what we knew we’d already told them, but they had us repeat every
thing over and over again. John seemed fascinated by our individual experiences with the crystals, which – somewhat disappointedly for him, I’d imagine – turned out to be pretty similar. Rob was more focused on the power behind them. He couldn’t get over the fact that they allowed us to sense things more clearly than he could, and, moreover, to actually influence those things in some way. It was like something out of a fantasy novel for him. He treated it like magic. Even for me, that type of description didn’t seem such an exaggeration.
The most frustrating part for them was that they weren’t able to use the crystals like us. And no matter what we said, I think they both harbored some skepticism about the verity of it all until I used my crystal to melt a kitchen knife like I’d done with the gun. All doubt vanished after that.
We also decided that it would be less threatening if not all of us went to meet Arthur Eliot at once. Making initial contact was just that. If he was willing to talk further we could all meet then. Liz had to go, since she discovered the crystals in the first place, and Ashley insisted on coming as well, since she was the one who found out about the professor. I had to go, too, since I was the only one who’d been directly targeted by… whoever… so far. That left Eve and Madison to stay in the room with John and Rob.
About twenty minutes to five, I headed out with Liz and Ashley. Our hotel was only a block from Harvard’s main campus. We picked up a map from the hotel lobby and quickly pinpointed Emerson Hall, home of the philosophy department and the building that housed Arthur Eliot’s office.
It was chilly outside when we left our hotel. The sun had already begun to set. The university’s campus stood behind a gated wall, protected from the sprawling residential area around it. Once we crossed the gated entrance into the yard, I felt like I’d been transported to another world. Large buildings stood everywhere. Each looked like it had been there since Harvard’s founding three and a half centuries ago. Winding cement pathways linked the structures, but they were cracked and uneven, which somehow added to the charm of the place. Vast expanses of land surrounded each building, adding a sense of larger-than-life awe and wonder. The ground was all brown, hard dirt, but in places you could see a vestige of grass from the summer months. Trees with branches already bare stood tall overhead, dwarfing some of the buildings in both age and grandeur. The massive Widener Library, recognizable even to me as one of Harvard’s greatest landmarks, loomed ominously to one side of the yard, all white stone blocks and pillars. A hundred stone steps made up the grand flight of stairs to its enormous double doors, and a steady stream of students were walking up and down the well-worn pathway.
