“I intend to enjoy this, even if I freeze to death,” Pearl says as I park the car.
“Phoenix girl.”
She laughs. “I don’t carry five extra layers of fat.”
Touché.
We get out of the car and make the short hike to the arch, watching the incoming storm blow the clouds in. We don’t hike very fast; these are our last hours together and I find myself savoring each step.
Once we get close to the arches, we stop, and I put my arm around Pearl. The view is spectacular with the clouds racing above the towering arches. Two girls, about our same age, are also here. One of them is a tall, pretty blonde with short pink shorts and a bright purple University of Washington sweatshirt. She’s climbing on the steep rocks between the arches while other girl watches, her back to us. The watching girl has brown curly hair, and she wears blue pants and a gray sweatshirt. A set of discarded crutches is propped up on the rock next to her.
Eventually, the blonde calls to us. Her “Good morning” echoes around the cavern that the two arches create.
“Hello!” Pearl yells back. “Sorry to interrupt your view. Wow! It’s pretty today.” She steps away from me and starts to hike up the arch.
The blonde scrambles down the rocks while she yells at Pearl some more. “We’ve been here for a while now, and you’re the first people we’ve seen. I’ve only been here once before, and it was packed! This is the time to come. I’m never coming in summer again!”
Pearl gets close enough that they stop yelling, though they keep talking. I wander aimlessly toward the arch.
You can’t appreciate Double Arch until you stand under it. That’s when you realize just how small you are. The two arches tower over me, 40-50 feet off the ground, with bright red rock accented by darker red lines marbled throughout. The space between them reveals an even greater sky above. I climb up the slope, leaving the trail. The entire entrance feels open, like the main floor of the Cathedral of Learning on Pitt campus, but with a different kind of beauty; it is a main hall of a grand palace.
The girl with brown hair stands as I approach and pick up her crutches. When she turns, I’m surprised at how pretty she is. Her hair is curly, and her features are soft and unique. Really unique. Her nose is small, and she doesn’t have ear lobes. I wonder if she speaks English, though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone who looks like her, or what part of the world she might come from. But even though she looks strange, she’s pretty.
And my eyes have lingered on her for longer than is polite.
“Maria,” she calls to her friend. “Why don’t we head back and let these people enjoy the arch?”
“Okay,” the girl calls back. “I just want one more look out of the second arch.” She and Pearl scramble up the rock to the top to the great view out over a large valley. I looked through it yesterday when we were here, and the height of it scared me to death. I don’t need to go again.
The pretty girl puts her weight on her crutches and starts back down to the trail. A large cast covers most of her left leg. The hike here isn’t difficult or too sandy, but I’m impressed that she made it all the way on crutches. I watch her, still fascinated by her foreign features.
The ledge at the base of the arches isn’t too far off the trail back to the cars, but several large rocks need to be maneuvered to get to it. The girl cautiously maneuvers through the rocks and moves surprisingly adroitly until she’s almost to me. Then, her crutch hits a rock and gets caught. She loses her balance. I jump forward and catch her by the elbow.
Upon contact, a strange blue light starts to seep through the cracks of the red arch. I blink, trying unsuccessfully to clear the glare out of my eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask. The red arch is glowing blue. What is wrong with my eyes?
“Yeah.” The girl smiles. She has a pretty smile. She pushes herself up, away from me and the arch. I keep my hand on her elbow for support.
As she steps, whatever light is shining in my eyes explodes. It pours out of the arch like a tidal wave and drenches me and the girl as if it were water. The whirlpool of light spins around us. All I can see is light. Bright blue light. I’m screaming, but I can’t hear it. The only thing I can feel is my grip on the girl’s elbow.
And then, as quickly as it appeared, the blue light is gone.
I blink and try to clear my vision. I see me, and I see the girl. I no longer see the arches or the red rock or the girl’s cast. I see myself standing in a bright, sunny meadow full of wild flowers. The sun is low in the sky, as if it’s the end of an early summer’s day. I hear birds chirping.
I feel my pants starting to slip down, and I reach down with my free hand and pull them up. My zipper and belt buckle are gone! I look at the girl, and her crutches have also disappeared.
The girl looks around at the meadow with wide eyes, her free hand reaches up to touch her chest just above her right breast. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that it looks like blue light is glowing underneath her shirt.
I take a step back. As I do, I notice blue light shimmering above me. The girl hops backward toward me to keep her balance. The same blue light floods around us again, and seconds later the illusion is gone. My pants are zipped up, and the girl has her cast. Her crutches have fallen to the ground, but I still have her, so she hasn’t fallen.
I let go of the girl and blink a few times. No lights in my eyes. Everything is normal.
“Okay,” the blonde calls. “I’m coming.” She starts the climb down the arch.
I bend over and hand the girl her crutches.
“Thank you.” The look in her eyes matches how I feel right now. Shock. Disbelief. Worry. I just had a major hallucination, and I don’t know why. The girl opens her mouth, but then closes it when nothing comes out.
“What’s going on?” the blonde asks, stepping next to the girl.
“I slipped and this boy caught me and...” Her voice trails off.
“And your friend lost her crutches,” I say. “It’s a bit slippery here, and a little hard to maneuver.”
I don’t know what I saw. What I thought I saw. I try to clear my brain, but it feels clear already. What happened to me? Blue light? A meadow? Is it possible the girl saw the same thing?
Impossible.
Just a weird reflection of the light or an ugly reaction to breakfast. It has been an emotional time I’ve spent here with Pearl.
The girl on crutches is still looking at me.
I look back at her warily.
Maria breaks the awkward silence. “Yeah, she forced me to come out here. I’ll take her the rest of the way back.” She pushes the girl on crutches forward.
“What is your name?” the girl asks as she starts to step away.
I’m not sure why I answer honestly, but I do. “I’m Karl. I’m from Pittsburgh.”
“Pittsburgh,” she repeats.
“Come-on Lydia,” the blonde sighs. “Pittsburgh is really far away from Seattle.”
“Thanks for catching me,” the girl says. Lydia says.
“What was that all about?” Pearl asks after I climb up to join her on the slope between arches.
“She tripped when she went by me, and I caught her.”
“No, why was she looking at you so intently like that? Did something happen when she tripped?”
“I don’t think so. We got a weird glare of the sun in our eyes for a second.”
Pearl nods and starts talking about something else.
It was a just a weird glare. That’s all it was.
15 Rivals
Cadah
“It’s time for you to leave,” Ore says. She grabs my fuma skin from the corner and tosses it into the center of the room.
I open my mouth and close it again. I knew it was a bad idea to bring up her father again, but I had to do it. She needs to know the truth. Why does she not believe me?
Ore glares at me. “I’m serious. You keep bringing this up. I don’t know why, or what you’re hoping for, but I’m sick of it. Arujan
said he fell. I saw where he fell from.”
“But Ore, I saw Arujan hit him! I saw Arujan knock him off the trail.”
“From so far down the mountain? How do you know he wasn’t trying to save him? You bring this up all the time! Why? I’m done, Cadah. I’m done with you.”
“Where am I going to go? You’re my best friend.” I bite my lip to stop it from trembling. I don’t ask my real questions. Who will be your friend, Ore, after I leave? Who is going to listen to you talk about men and plan the harvest? Who will you find to fill your days, if not me?
“Ask your new boyfriend,” Ore says, and she grabs my pack of clothes and tosses it onto the fuma skin. “I’m sure he can find a place for you to live.”
She reaches for my dad’s wood carving, a rendition of the Blue Princess fighting to save the mountains. It was his greatest work, and the only thing I’ve kept from him. The carving shows the princess emerging from a cave, wind blows her curly hair behind her as she raises her hand, which has fire shooting from it.
“No,” I say. “Don’t touch that. I’ll take it. I’ll leave. I’ll talk to Ler and find a new place.”
Ore’s face hardens at the mention of Ler. She picks up my dad’s statue. Before I can get to her, she swings it over her head and smashes it on the ground. The princess’s head flies across the room and into the fire, her hand breaks off and the wood cracks down the middle.
I stare at her, shocked. “Ore,” I manage to say.
“Don’t talk to me!” she shouts. “Get your things and get out. There is no blue princess. We are not friends. Don’t come back here. Ever.”
I move around the room and gather my things: my extra tunic, my fuma skin, an old necklace from my mother. Ore doesn’t look at me again.
It’s not Ore’s fault. She’s suffering from the loss of her father. I’ve been there. I am there. At the loss of my father’s gift, I feel like I’ve lost him all over again. And it hurts. A lot.
✽✽✽
I lean into Ler, taking solace in his strong arm around my shoulder. “Sometimes I just think she might be right,” I say. “Her and that strange man. Maybe there is no Blue Princess. Maybe Wynn isn’t real.”
“Why would you say that?” he asks patiently. This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation.
“Two hundred years? That’s a long time for someone to be alive. And an even longer time for two people to be alive.”
“Both of them are Azureans, Cadah. Powerful people. They can heal, they can avoid aging. That’s why they’re so dangerous.”
“Okay, but if the Blue Princess is dangerous, how do we know we can trust her? What makes one Azurean good and another bad? How can we wait for centuries, without knowing if we may just be replacing one monster for another?”
“What other choice do we have?”
I shrug. “I just don’t know if she’s going to come, anyway. And maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we can be happy here. Or maybe we can be happy in the valley.”
Ler’s arm tightens around me. That means he’s thinking, taking all my thoughts and emotions seriously before responding. I wait and let his warmth soothe my fears. Eventually, his arm relaxes. “I had a friend from Keeper who wasn’t there this year when I went to visit,” he says.
“You have friends in Keeper?”
“I’ve been going to Keeper since I was small. The girl there, Sharue, has been determined to marry me since my first visit when we were five.” Ler laughs.
I sit up a little straighter.
“Don’t worry, Cadah. I’m not interested.” Ler laughs again.
I don’t join in. I’m not sure why he just told me that.
“Seriously,” he says. “But I had another friend, too. His name was Anu. He snuck out of the mountains regularly when we were young. A funny habit of his, I suppose. He found people down there, a village a lot like ours. People there had seen Wynn, and according to Anu, Wynn was every bit as terrible as the legends say. But this time when I visited Keeper, Anu wasn’t there. He was gone, and no one knew where he was.”
“You think he decided to stay in the valley?”
Ler shrugs. “Either that, or he was killed. He never told me he wanted to stay in the valley. He always said the opposite.”
I don’t know what to say, so I put my arm around Ler’s back and rub it softly. We sit like that for a minute before Ler speaks again.
“Cadah, I don’t know for certain that the Blue Princess is really out there, but I believe she is. I don’t think Togan would really leave all his friends up here to die. I think she will come, and I think there is a better life for us than this one.”
“I hope you’re right.” My cheeks warm at the mention of a life for us. How fast things have changed! I want that life for us. A life with Ler, whatever it is.
Ler laughs again. “Me, too.”
He looks down at me, and I look up at him, wishing he would have given me another moment for my heart to slow. His face lowers slightly, his lips approaching mine. My breath catches, and I close my eyes as my heart beats even faster. My skin tingles with the anticipation.
I can feel his breath on my lips when we hear crunching on the trail. Ler pulls away, leaving me feeling cold and disappointed. He stands, and I follow, brushing myself off. I’m glad it’s almost dark now, and so Ler can’t see how giddy, despite my disappointment, I am from the moment.
And then the person approaching calls out in a high-pitched voice and the smile disappears from my face.
“Ho there! I’m looking for a place to stay in Watch.”
I don’t need to look to know who that voice belongs to. It’s Arujan.
16 Rousseau
Lydia
I crack open my text book, which is an awkward thing to do with my leg elevated.
I hate having my leg elevated.
The doctors say it must be up six hours a day. Minimum. They clearly have never tried to do anything with their leg in this position. Yet, I do everything, aka midterms, midterms, and more midterms, with my leg up. Apparently healing a torn LCL is more miserable than tearing it in the first place.
I flip the pages of the book until I get to the right page. Page 281. The French Revolution.
Yuck.
Is this really going to be on the exam? I look longingly at Maria’s empty desk. It would be nice to have someone to talk to, but I haven’t seen much of Maria since we got back from Moab. She’s been attending a string of homework dates Brian has set up. Talk about cute! It turns out that Brian is a better influence on Maria than her parents hoped I would be.
Not that I can complain about her too much—I owe her a lot. And not just for helping me through the summer. The trip to Utah was just what I needed to get out of the funk I was in after the injury. I’m studying again, and my grades will be okay by the end of the semester.
Still, I can’t help but wish it were me making eyes with Brian over my textbook right now.
The only guy I can see right now is a picture of Jacque Rousseau. Nope. Not making eyes with him. I shudder and put the book down.
With Jacque out of the way, my thoughts turn, as they do all the time now, to the meadow. I pick up my phone, open and close it, and twirl it in my hands. What would Mom think about my trip to the meadow? She would believe me, I know that. I’ve replayed that day in my mind hundreds of times. I fell, Karl grabbed my arm, and Arches was gone. We were gone. No red rock, no Maria, no cold.
I felt something strong there. Like the pull of a magnet on my chest. I belonged there; I needed to stay there. I haven’t felt so at home since Mom died. But, it’s weird, because I’m sure the pull pulsed from the flower on my chest. I haven’t ever felt anything from that flower.
I may be going crazy.
Still, whether I’m supposed to be studying Jacque or Newton, I can’t stop thinking of that meadow. Was it on earth? Did we travel through time?
And the most important question of all: How am I going to get back there?
&nbs
p; The only thing that competes with thoughts of the meadow is how much I miss soccer. Thoughts of the meadow are less painful, so that’s where I tend to direct my thoughts. At least I try to, though it’s harder when my leg hurts.
Another strange thing, every night over the past few weeks, I dream about going back to the meadow, and every night Carl stands in the meadow with me. Always Carl, and only Carl. And I remember a lot about the meadow—the details are minute and beautiful. It doesn’t make sense. We were only there for a moment; I shouldn’t remember as much as I do. In each dream I even see a trail across the meadow. I know I’m supposed to go down that trail.
Maria thinks the memories and the obsession are love.
I may be obsessed, but I’m not in love. That guy was nice, but I only touched him for a minute, and we only spoke enough to exchange names. Still, when he walked away, I can’t help but thinking that he took my key to returning to the meadow with him.
Why couldn’t I have been brave enough to say more to Carl before we left? What is he thinking about the meadow? Would he go back with me?
I slip the phone into my pocket and lean awkwardly over my computer.
Carl Pittsburgh.
Google returns millions of irrelevant results.
Karl Pittsburgh.
A different set of nothing.
I don’t know anything else about Carl. At least not in real life. Though, in my dreams, he’s always a student. I google the list of colleges in Pittsburgh. It’s long, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, Duquesne, Point Park, Chatham, Carlow, and many more. Talk about tedious, but it’s either this or Jacque.
As if that was even a choice.
Karl Carnegie Mellon. Carl Carlow. Karl Point Park. I type in search after search. I look through pages of photos. Nothing, but at least most of the guys aren’t as scary-looking as Jacque.
If only I had one more piece of information about him.
Like last night, in my dream, he told me he was studying biology.
Ten more searches, and then I’ll do something else.
Karl student Carnegie Mellon biology.
The Forgotten World Page 11
