by David James
As if everything was normal.
Tiny flecks of what looked like mirrored snowflakes floated through the air like fragmented thoughts from a thousand angels. Each fleck shone a rainbow of whites, not colors, reflecting everything and nothing at all; it was as if they were made of pure light, white as the center of the sun.
And then belief hit me: Lake Iris.
It had to be.
The lake stretched wide, resting in the very center of the cave. It was a vast black thing, still as death and as placid as if ice had formed on top. The lake, so still and dark with the swirling white flakes reflecting off its surface, became the night and the stars.
“We have to hurry.” Kate’s voice brought me back to reality. “Let’s go. Move. Now!” She pulled me forward and, without meaning to, I found myself falling into her, touching her, holding her, and it was like the first time all over again:
My heart was all I could feel until:
I can’t breathe.
Too much, too fast.
Our eyes met.
I can’t breathe.
One moment lingered in time.
Hope.
Blue against eyes so black they looked violet.
Is this the beginning?
Her eyes narrowed-
Or the end.
and found mine and would not look away.
I can’t breathe.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I pushed away and blinked and the moment was just a lost memory I wanted to remember but didn’t know why.
Kate backed up slowly, her eyes wide, turned-
and ran.
I was left behind, broken and alone.
I wondered if that’s how it always would be.
Desperate, needing, wanting: I ran as fast as I could to catch up to Kate. My legs moved under me as if I was a magnet and so was she.
I screamed, “Kate!” but it was nothing more than a lost breath; as I ran my voice flew behind me. “Wait!”
She stopped.
Then, opposite to opposite, we stood in front of each other, unable to move closer.
I asked, “What were those words you said back there?”
“Just words,” she said. “But words have power when they have purpose. Basically, it was a passcode to get through the wards that protect this place.”
“What does it mean?”
“Praecipio vim virtutum luce. Sum fortitudine. Ego sum lux. Hac virtute lucis intus, aperta ianua mando secretum,” she repeated. “I was told it means ‘I command the power of virtue, of light. I am strength. I am light. With this power of light inside me, I command this secret door to open.’”
“Can anyone say the words?”
“Sure,” a voice like thunder said behind me. “But not everyone can use their magic.”
A boy stepped beside me, and I felt my breath catch. With his thick arms crossed over his gray shirt, and eyes popping green against his dark skin, he made me think of Tyler.
“What do you want, Zack?” Kate asked, leaning back on one foot.
He smiled and rolled on the heels of his feet. “Nothing. Just wanted to see who you had with you and why you’re sharing our secrets with him. Who is he?”
“He’s no one.”
Zack raised an eyebrow. “Is this him?”
“Go away, Zack.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
Kate stepped closer to him. “Then I’ll make you leave. You don’t think I could?”
Zack just grinned and ran a hand over his dark, short hair. “Oh, I know you could. I’m not stupid.”
I could see Kate almost smile. “No, you’re not. An idiot, maybe, but not stupid.”
“You gonna show him around?” Zack asked, looking me up and down. The veins in his neck burst with every movement.
“No,” she said. “I have orders.”
Zack’s eyes went wide, and his dusky skin blotched with pale light. “Oh, sorry. Go. Didn’t mean to keep you.”
Kate nodded, her eyes almost sad. “Talk to you later.”
Zack turned to leave, and Kate grabbed my arm to pull.
“Wait!” I called to Zack. “Hold on.”
Slowly, he turned around to face me. His eyes were bright, shining with a quiet sadness that reflected the light in the cave. “What?”
“Who do you think I am?” I asked, and held my breath.
Zack’s eyes turned to Kate, and then slowly back to me.
“I think,” he said, “that you’re someone who has no idea what’s about to happen to him, and that makes you afraid of what’s to come.”
My voice caught in my throat. “Do you know what’s going to happen?”
His smile was sad. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? No one does.”
Without another word, he turned and ran.
“A friend of yours?” I asked Kate.
“I have no friends,” Kate said. “He’s just someone I used to fight.”
“Is he the one you wanted to meet after dinner that night?”
Her eyes blazed. She spat, “No, Calum! Zack’s not like that at all.”
Again, without warning, she turned and ran. This time though, she stopped before I had the chance to scream.
I bent over and put a hand on the back of my neck before I stood straight and brought it down to my heart. My chest was too full, and not enough so. My heart skipped beats, my lungs were in my throat, and my pulse raced.
With a stitch in my chest, I breathed, “Why-
Do I feel like you-
Did
something to make me think about-
you
always?
Like I need you.
Like I should-
run?”
away, I thought. But no. I don’t need anyone.
Do I?
“I ran because we have to meet Marcus,” she said unwavering. “In case you forgot, you wanted to figure out what was going on with you, remember?”
She was lying.
She had hidden so many things from me, given me so little that it felt like too much, and so I knew her eyes. I knew when they hid secrets, and when, like now, they lied.
Her eyes spoke the truth even when her voice stayed silent: I will never tell you the truth about why I ran. It is a secret worse than everything I’ve kept before, and so I will not tell you. Ever.
I wondered if this was about the family she missed, or if maybe there was someone more.
The lies, so many hidden lies, began to grind against my mind, began to eat at my heart until all I could think was:
Lies.
Kate.
Lies.
Dad.
Dad.
Lies.
Kate.
Why did I run after you?
Kate.
Why do I care?
I blinked and tried to believe, “I don’t care.”
I won’t.
I can’t.
“What?” Kate’s eyes threw daggers at me and her fists curled into hammers, shaking. “You’re telling me that you don’t care? You were the one that nearly cried like a baby in the Jeep before I told you anything! You’re the one that begged me to tell you what you are and now-”
“You still haven’t told me what I am! I’m some bastard offspring of the Devil, some guy who has no choice but to destroy the world? You’ve told me that but not what I am. Thanks, Kate, but forgive me if I’m not jumping up and down right now.”
“I don’t know what you are!”
“You said you knew!”
“No I didn’t!” She shook her head. “I only know that the Order thinks you’re the one from the prophecy. They want you. I said Marcus knows what you are. He has answers. Which is why we need to hurry.”
I glared. “Fine. Lead the way.”
But she didn’t move.
Instead she said, “You need to care, Calum.”
“Why? It’s not like I have anything to care about.”
Kate’s eyes slanted down, the purple in
them fading to familiar black shadows beneath her long lashes. Her voice ran at me, hard and fast and, when it found me, was as though acid had merged with breath. “You don’t know that! You don’t know where your Mom is or that Tyler guy you keep talking about, and you sure as hell don’t know what the future will bring, so don’t say you have nothing. Don’t you dare lose sight of what you could have if you did care!”
Cold.
I do care, I thought, the cold realization of it unleashing itself in my blood until it was all I could feel, all I could think.
What Kate didn’t realize was that I did care.
About Mom and Tyler.
Me.
Her.
I cared too much.
I sighed. “I care. Okay? I do.”
I just didn’t know why, or when it had started. When Kate had become someone more. Maybe because she was broken and I understood that. I saw it in her eyes; the way she lived and breathed for her sisters; the way she moved toward them without knowing where to go; the way she needed them more than even she could know. Maybe it wasn’t that I understood it, but that I wanted it. I lived to find it just like she did: A place to belong, family.
I remembered again that first time I saw her. Her dark brown curls fell in loose waves past a face riddled with anger, though now it was luminous in the light from the lake beside us. I saw those freckles that looked liked stars dancing on her dark, golden face, just above where her lips pursed like two slashes of blood. She stood tall, her shoulders high and back, the veins in her neck popping and, with flakes of silver falling in her hair and on her skin so she seemed to glow with light, she looked like an angel of death.
I wanted to smile-
to laugh-
to touch-
to kiss.
No, I thought. That wouldn’t be good. And if it is, it will just be good and gone like always. Like Tyler. Nothing stays good for long.
I can’t let it be good for long.
She doesn’t care about me anyway.
She took me from my life.
I wanted to run.
I remembered Kate saying, “Funny, I feel like I saved your life.”
I wanted to run from her, but I could feel in my heart that I was something more than the person I had been in Lakewood Hollow.
Sometimes you can only go forward.
Sometimes it’s impossible to look back.
Maybe she did save me.
Words fell from my mouth before I could stop them. “Is that the only reason you kidnapped me? Your family?”
She gasped. “What?” Her mouth opened and closed, and then she said, she shouted, “Yes! What other reason would I have?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I took one step back. “Do you... Do you...”
“Do I what, Calum?” she snapped, but her voice was softer than before. She tilted her head to the side. She ran a hand through her hair and, for a moment, her leviti was gone. Her eyes searched me up and down. They were taut with irritation, but beneath those shadows I saw the girl that missed her family. The girl that told me a story. Beneath it all she was just Kate. A girl.
For some reason, that made it worse.
Do you care? I wanted to say. Why do you look at me like that?
I looked down and felt the unsaid words stick in my throat. “Do you know what all this is?” I looked up and pointed to the falling specks of silver. “Looks like diamonds floating in the air. Like glass rain.”
I turned, my eyes locked with hers, and I had to look away. I had to, but I couldn’t, and one hundred moments happened in one beat of my heart. One look between us and my heart didn’t know what to do: Beat, boom, stop, stop, beat, stop, stop, beat.
Beat.
She smiled. “Glass rain. I’ve never heard that before.”
Boom.
Kate’s chest moved up and down in jagged breaths. I could feel my own lungs struggling for air.
I whispered, “What is it then?”
“They say every fallen Warrior leaves a trace of his or her power when they die,” she breathed. She was so quiet, her voice nothing more than air, and I wondered if it would blow away before I heard it.
I stepped closer, just one foot forward.
She blinked but didn’t step back. “Marcus told it to me like this: These are the tears of those fallen Warriors that have become angels, the Heaven’s Guard, who proved themselves in the name of the Order. These are the tears of the group of Warriors that still protect the Order from where they rest in the sky. When a Warrior sacrifices himself in the name of the Order, they find a place in the afterlife always helping a Warrior or Order member in need.” Her voice grew quiet, fading to only a shiver in the air before dying away completely.
“Do you believe that?” I asked.
“I always thought I did. I want to. I believe the Order is truth so I’ve never questioned Marcus about the story, and it’s nice to believe in a happy ending, you know? I like the idea of Heaven’s Guard, a group of powerful angel Warriors that fight eternally to save the world. I’m a Warrior. It’s what I should believe in. Even if it doesn’t exist, it’s nice to hope it might.” She looked at me. “Do you believe in happy endings?”
“I don’t know.” My head felt heavy. I cracked my knuckles, then my neck. “I really don’t know. I mean, my Dad is the Bloodletter. My Mom is basically an alcoholic, and my best friend could be dead. I have no one in the world to make me believe in happy endings, but I want to. I want to.”
Her eyes agreed with me.
I moved closer to her until we were almost touching. The two of us stood still, our shoulders nearly together and heads lifted up, while the rain of angel tears kissed our faces. I opened my mouth, pretended I was a child wanting to catch snowflakes, and stuck my tongue out. I felt a tingle where a tear landed. Warmth spread from my head to my toes.
I felt like flying.
And then, “We need to go. Now!” Kate backed away from me, and then turned to run. Her eyes were wide, darting left and right as if she were scared of someone I couldn’t see. She snapped, “Move, Calum! Why are you so slow? Idiot. Follow me. Let’s go!”
She ran, but all I wanted to do was stay-
in that moment-
in time standing still-
and just for a second, keep something good.
But time wasn’t stopping, and so I ran as fast as I could to catch up to Kate, and as soon as I was close enough to feel the brush of her long hair blowing back against my face, I slowed enough to pretend I was standing still.
I couldn’t fool myself, though.
My heart, beating faster than I ran, gave me away.
All around us the men and woman gave us curious looks as we passed, though I had a feeling their eyes only saw me. The stranger. The one that didn’t belong. The ones in gray shirts looked especially angry, their eyes slanted down, lips curled in my direction. I could feel sweat dripping down my face already, while everyone else seemed to move so gracefully swift like Kate.
I saw a woman in red, her hair like embers burning, touch her hand to a cold lantern and light the flame with a snap of her fingers.
Closer now, I could see that their skin seemed iridescent, the same glow I had noticed in Kate that first day, almost lit from the inside out.
I wanted to ask about it, but I couldn’t find my breath.
Part of me felt I might be dreaming.
The other part of me knew I wasn’t.
Kate and I ran further into the cave, straddling the edge of the great lake. I noticed, as we sidestepped the runners in gray, that there weren’t many children around. The only ones I could see were circled near the lake. They were dressed in the same gray shirts as the runners. Three of the children were playing, two of them twirling the ends of a rope while another bounced up and down in the twine vortex, singing a song to the beat: “Drums, drums all around...”
I stumbled, tripping on the point of a lone rock that was peaking out of the otherwise smooth ground.
/> Tyler and I had played jump rope with Kendra in Birdsong Park many times before. Every day, actually, for an entire summer when Tyler was Kendra’s babysitter while Mrs. Little finished classes for her Master’s degree. Tyler and I had made up different versions of songs for Kendra to jump to, but we’d never sung one so haunting.
The eerie song sent shivers down my spine. One of the children, an older boy about twelve or so, seemed to be bossing the others around as if they were playing house and he was the father. He was shouting and screaming at the others. I saw him point to his eyes and then at theirs, shaking his head back and forth and back again as if the world depended on it.
Run, I told myself. I focused on the curled brown hair in front of me, flying back like a hundred sparrows flocking together. Just keep running forward and don’t look back.
That thought was brilliant in my mind:
Just keep running forward.
Don’t look back.
Don’t ever look back.
But as the memories of Tyler and Kendra, Mom and Dad, chased behind me like shadows, I knew not looking back would be impossible. Even now I could feel those memories closing in, and soon they would find me, break me, and I would be helpless to ignore them.
How did I last so long by ignoring so much?
Kate pushed me into a building near the back of the cave, built underneath the largest waterfall. The water gushed down over the top of the building making the stone smooth and shiny. Inside, the building was dark and the air was damp, tasting dank and wicked as if death was visiting.
The room felt wrong.
“Kate, what is this place?” I asked.
“Shh,” she hissed, throwing her hand up to silence me. “Be quiet!”
“Kate,” I said, “you can’t leave me in the dark.”
“Shut up! You’ll get us-”
Boom.
At first, I thought it was my heart breaking.
Boom.
Steps. Footsteps sounded in the distance, growing ever closer, as if gravity were stomping down in metal boots.
Boom!
The door on the opposite side of the room opened with a bang, splintering on the floor in a thousand pieces. It became nothing in the blink of an eye, destroyed in a boom. And, as the broken bits of door fell to the floor, the air in the room seemed to flow towards the shadow of a man in the dark void of shadow and dust.
