The Crescent Stone

by Matt Mikalatos

  The warning bell for first period rang.

  The crying set off a minor coughing fit. She sat up, bracing herself on the dashboard. Darius put a comforting hand on her shoulder. When it passed, she wiped her eyes with her sleeve and slipped the book into her backpack.

  “‘There must be something better, I know it in my heart,’” Darius said, quoting a line from the book. The main characters, siblings Lily and Samuel, are standing at the space beneath the stairs, and the wall has fallen away, and there is a swirling of color in the space. The gryphon has disappeared into it, and beckons Lily and Samuel to follow. “‘And the only impossible thing is that I would leave you.’”

  Madeline wiped her eyes again, then replied with Samuel’s words, “‘If we’re together, I won’t be afraid.’”

  Lily’s next line was, “Then take my hand, Samuel, and let us see what beautiful things await,” but before Darius could say it, Madeline took his hand and squeezed, and before she could stop herself or think about what it meant or what the consequences might be, she leaned toward him and kissed his cheek.

  She pulled away, the heat from Darius’s hand familiar and comfortable. She looked into those dark-brown eyes, so deep they were nearly black. It was like looking into the night sky if all the stars blinked at once. It had been weeks since she had looked at him like this, and she wanted him to reach out, to touch her cheek.

  Instead, he opened his door and came to get her. He walked her to class, her backpack on his shoulder, his hand on the small of her back, ready to catch her if she fell. Did she look as weak as that?

  “If you need to go home early, text me,” he said. His words were so gently delivered that she didn’t get angry at the suggestion she couldn’t make it through the day.

  “You’re going to be late for class,” she said.

  He grinned. “Impossible.” Then he ran toward his classroom in that loping, long-legged stride of his, leaping like a deer over a planter, so full of life and joy and breath.

  “Your car,” she gasp-shouted.

  He changed directions immediately, sprinting, a sheepish look on his face. “I might be late to class!” he yelled back, just as the bell rang again.

  3

  PARTNERS

  Humans! Ye shall live upon another earth,

  a people of science and dust.

  FROM “THE ORDERING OF THE WORLD,” AN ELENIL STORY

  After what had happened to his sister, Jason Wu had made a decision. He would never keep quiet about what he saw again, and he would never lie. No matter the cost, he would speak up and speak truth.

  Sure, he’d gotten detention over the whole Principal Krugel fiasco, but his toupee was on backward. Maybe Jason shouldn’t have mentioned it in front of the football team. He almost certainly should not have repeated it over the school intercom. He could still hear the principal’s shrill voice shouting, “JASON WU!” from his office. That could have been the end of it, but when Jason refused to apologize or retract his statement, the principal had taken to the intercom to explain he did not wear a toupee.

  That didn’t excuse what Jason had done next. He saw that now.

  Seeing Principal Krugel in front of the whole school at the football rally the next day, his ridiculous fake hair sitting on top of his head like a shag carpet, had driven Jason right to the edge of madness. Then Darius Walker had shouted to Jason, “Krugel’s hair looks real to me! What are you going to do?”

  Jason had said, “Pull his toupee off,” meaning it as a joke.

  But then he thought, I promised never to tell a lie.

  Taking off the man’s toupee wouldn’t be good.

  But if he didn’t, he was a liar. Again.

  It was a moral conundrum.

  Anyway, it had earned Jason detention and earned Principal Krugel the nickname Principal Cue Ball.

  He had received a second detention when the principal called his parents, put them on speakerphone, and made Jason explain what he had done. When the principal said there had been a mini riot at the assembly, Jason’s mom asked if it was true. Of course Dad didn’t say anything. He hadn’t spoken—well, hadn’t spoken to Jason—since things had happened with Jenny. Before he could stop himself, Jason said, “Yes, everyone was wigging out.” Even that didn’t get Dad to speak up. It had, on the other hand, turned Principal Krugel’s face a shade of red Jason had never seen before, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

  So he wasn’t trying to be insensitive when his chemistry partner, Madeline Oliver, came in to class looking like someone had given her a swirly. “You look terrible,” he said. “Your mascara is running everywhere. Your eyes are red.” All true.

  Madeline choked out a sarcastic thanks, then started coughing. She coughed a lot. He knew she was sick. She didn’t talk about it, ever. Everyone at school acted like it was a big secret, but he noticed that meant they couldn’t take care of her, either. Couldn’t ask how she was doing, couldn’t make sure she was taking care of herself. That’s why he’d asked to be her chem partner. She didn’t know that—she had been at the doctor the day they picked partners. Besides, she was better at chemistry than he was. So they were watching out for each other, in a way. That’s what partners do.

  “You sound terrible too. Should you even be in class?” Jason spun a pencil in one hand, twirling it like a baton.

  “I can’t skip school all the time.” She slammed her bag down and slid onto a stool, leaning against the counter.

  “You already skip half the time,” Jason said. “You’re the worst lab partner I’ve had. Besides, it’s a sub today. We’re probably doing some idiotic worksheet.”

  “You just described half of high school,” Madeline said. “Who are you to say I look terrible, anyway? Your clothes look like they’re on day three of being picked up from your floor.”

  “Day four,” Jason said. He hadn’t combed his hair, either, and he knew it went five directions at once. Only one of his shoes was tied. The other one he had overknotted yesterday and couldn’t get it undone. He had actually worn his left shoe to bed last night. He watched Madeline coughing and digging through her backpack for her textbook. She really shouldn’t be here. She didn’t even notice the substitute call her name. “Here,” he said.

  The substitute looked at Jason over the top of his glasses. “Your name is Madeline Oliver?”

  “Nah, it’s my partner, but she’s busy coughing up a lung. She needs to go to the office.”

  The sub regarded Madeline skeptically. He had a big nose and a wreath of brown hair that stuck up on the sides. He looked like an angry koala bear. “It’s not my first time as a substitute,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” Madeline said, still coughing.

  “Try not to distract the class,” he said, and continued calling roll.

  Jason spun on his stool. He knew what was coming. He leaned over and whispered to Madeline, “He’s going to read my Chinese name, I can feel it. And he’s gonna say it wrong. I hate this guy already. Maybe you should take your inhaler.”

  “Already took it,” she said, gasping for air between words.

  He opened her purse—she tried to stop him, and yes, he knew you shouldn’t dig in a girl’s purse—and pulled out her inhaler. He shook it three times and handed it to her. She took a deep puff, her eyes shut. She leaned on the counter, panting.

  “Song Wuh,” the substitute said.

  “Jason,” he called. “It’s Jason.”

  “Says Song Wuh here.”

  Jason sighed. Should he correct the guy? He got so tired of correcting people when they said his name wrong. “With Jason in parentheses, right? And it’s pronounced woo, and the o in Song is long, like in hope. Wu Song, that’s how you say it—family name first. It’s not that hard. Seriously.”

  The substitute wrote something on his paper. “Ah. Jason. Yes, the principal mentioned you.”

  The principal mentioned him? It made him sound like some sort of troublemaker. One little incident with a man’s fake hair
and you’re branded for life. Was it in his personal record? Would it follow him to college? Make sure this boy never gets near a toupee—he will take it and run around the gym, waving it like a hairy flag. Oh yeah. He had done that, too. He hadn’t run it up the flagpole, though. That had been someone else.

  “Is my name so hard?” Jason asked Madeline. “Wu Song is famous, too. Killed a man-eating tiger with his bare hands. Doesn’t seem like it’s asking too much to get my name right, especially when I’m named after a famous guy.”

  “Your life is hard,” Madeline gasped. She had her phone out and was texting someone.

  “It’s like mispronouncing Robin Hood.”

  “Jason.” Her body listed to one side, like a sinking ship. She grasped at the counter, trying to keep herself upright. Jason grabbed her sleeve, pulling her toward him, pulling her upright, and then she was slipping, falling. Her arm slid out of her jacket, and she half rolled, half fell onto the floor, her head knocking against the polished cement.

  Jason jumped off his stool, knocking it over with a clang. He threw Madeline’s stool out of the way and knelt over her. He asked if she was okay, but she didn’t answer.

  “Mr. Substitute,” Jason shouted. “Call an ambulance.”

  “You two stop messing around.”

  “She’s actually sick,” Jason shouted, and other kids in the class chimed in, telling the sub it was true, that she had some lung sickness or something.

  “I’ll call the office,” he said, but he was still standing there, staring.

  Madeline’s eyes rolled back into her head, and her skin went pale. Jason put his hand on her face. Cold and clammy. She wasn’t breathing. A knot of panic sat in his chest, small and cold as her skin. For a second he was looking at Jenny’s face, still and pale, but he shoved the image out of his mind, hard. He needed to think about right now. He tilted Madeline’s head back and got ready to do chest compressions.

  One of the other kids said, “Dude, you’re not going to—”

  “Shut up,” Jason said, and started chest compressions.

  He pinched her nose shut, sealed his mouth over hers, and breathed two quick breaths into her mouth. Her chest rose, she coughed, and she started to breathe again.

  “Her color is coming back,” one of the kids said.

  The substitute stood there at the end of the row, the stack of worksheets in his hand. His mouth was open, and his glasses had slid down his nose. He cleared his throat. “Calm down, class. We’ll—”

  Jason interrupted him. “Mr. Koala Bear. Snap out of it. Call the office. Right. Now.”

  This was taking too long. The sub was in shock or something. Jason pointed at a kid in the row in front of him. “You. Kid with the braces. Call 911. Tell them we’re headed to the hospital.”

  He leaned over Madeline. “It’s gonna be okay. Keep breathing.” He slipped one hand under her neck, grabbed the belt loop on her jeans with the other, and lifted.

  The classroom door slammed open, and Darius stood on the other side, panting. “What happened? She just texted me.”

  “Help me get her to the car,” Jason said.

  The security guard in the parking lot said something to them, but Jason rushed past. Darius shouted an explanation, and then he helped sling Madeline into Jason’s sports car and put her seat belt on.

  “Where are you taking her?”

  “She can’t breathe, Darius, where do you think? The hospital. Get in the car or step back.” Why were people such idiots during times of pressure?

  The car settled under Darius’s weight as he got in the back. “Drive,” he said.

  Jason peeled out of the parking lot and screeched onto the road.

  “Red light!” Darius yelled.

  Jason punched it through the intersection.

  “An accident won’t get us there faster,” Darius said.

  “This isn’t driver’s ed,” Jason said. “I know what I’m doing.” He glanced at Madeline. She was coughing up blood now. There’s no way he was going to stay quiet, no way he was going to wait for an ambulance. No way. “Hang in there, partner.”

  She coughed until she fainted. Jason laid on the horn and sped toward the hospital.

  4

  THE STRANGER

  And he placed a tower in the center of the Sunlit Lands and called it Far Seeing.

  FROM “THE ORDERING OF THE WORLD,” AN ELENIL STORY

  It felt like someone had put cinder blocks on her chest. Transparent tubes snaked into her nostrils. A red plastic band clung to her wrist. Sensors were stuck to her chest, an IV line dripped into her left arm, and a clip on the finger of her right hand monitored oxygen levels. Her lips were dried and cracked.

  The hospital again. More and more of her life found its way here. Appointments, tests, paperwork, treatments. Meetings to talk about tests and treatments. The harsh lights, the antiseptic smell that came even through her oxygen tube, the incessant beeping and nurses checking in and noise. She hated finding herself here. Hated that she couldn’t make it through one day of school, hated the reminder yet again that she should just stay home like a good girl, hidden away and waiting, alone, for the end to come.

  Darius was in a chair beside the bed. Jason was sitting in a windowsill to Darius’s left, half an arm’s length away. Even with only two visitors, the room felt crowded.

  Darius touched her hand gently. “You’re awake.”

  Madeline looked at her hospital gown. “How—?”

  “They cut off your clothes,” Jason said. “Don’t worry, they kicked us out until you were dressed.”

  “Are my parents here?”

  “Not yet,” Jason said. “The hospital called.”

  “I texted your mom,” Darius said.

  Jason was chomping on an apple. “When I said you looked terrible, I didn’t realize how low the scale goes, you know? You looked pretty good earlier, all things considered.”

  Darius punched him in the arm.

  “What was that for?”

  Madeline asked, “What did the doctor say?”

  Darius’s brow furrowed. “You don’t remember?”

  “Was I awake?”

  “You told them we could stay,” Jason said. “And that it was okay for us to hear, um, your diagnosis.”

  Madeline blushed. She hadn’t really told the other kids at school what was going on. Darius knew the basics. Jason, weirdly, seemed to have figured it out, but they never talked about it. She didn’t want to talk about it at school, didn’t want to answer the endless questions. What’s interstitial lung disease? Is it common in teens? Will it kill you?

  Scarring in the lungs. Not really. Probably, yes.

  Madeline’s scarring was advancing. Every hour, every minute, it progressed through her lungs, like an army gaining a few yards each day. Where the lungs scarred, they didn’t process oxygen. Eventually she’d run out of usable lung tissue, and she’d asphyxiate. It was only a question of how long. All the doctors’ appointments and medications and oxygen tanks were to prolong her life, not save it. She was on the list for a lung transplant, high on the list, actually—no previous illness, a fatal disease that wasn’t responding to treatment, she was young. But every time a donation came up, something got in the way. The tissue went bad. Another donor somehow jumped in line. Her application was mysteriously deleted. It was like an unseen hand kept intervening, frustrating any chance of her getting better. And now she was getting so weak, the doctor wasn’t sure she’d survive the surgery. She cleared her throat, which felt raspy and raw.

  “Could I get a drink?” Madeline asked. “Maybe some ice chips.”

  “I’m on it,” Jason said, stepping away from the window.

  Darius said, “Could you bring her something soft to eat, too, like some applesauce?” Jason nodded and scooted out of the room.

  The oxygen tubes in her nose rubbed, and her arm felt stiff and uncomfortable where the IV entered. Darius leaned in close and squeezed her hand.

  A blinding li
ght hit her full in the face. Her first thought was that it was the kind of light they put in an operating room, the bright white light surgeons use, but it wasn’t in one place, it seemed to come from all over. Her second thought was that she was passing out or something, but she knew what that felt like, had experienced the light-headed, rolling blackness more than once, and this wasn’t that.

  Then the light started to burn, and she could feel it searing her skin. It seemed to be coming from the end of the bed, so she turned away, but even with her eyes shut, that white light pierced her eyes, as if her eyelids weren’t even there.

  The light disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving the room dim and Madeline shivering in the sudden cold. Darius’s hand still held hers, but it was rigid, though still warm. He was leaning toward Madeline but not moving or blinking. She slipped her hand away from his, and he didn’t move, didn’t so much as breathe.

  “Darius?” What was happening? Was this a hallucination brought on by lack of oxygen? She felt coherent, but her brain couldn’t process what she was seeing. Her own heart ratcheted up, beating faster. She took a deep breath, ready to call for help, and instead gave an involuntary shout when she looked toward the door.

  At the foot of her bed stood a tall, slender man. He had the palest skin she had ever seen, almost the color of platinum, with a bluish undertone. His silver-white hair was fine and long, falling to his shoulders. He wore a brocade jacket with pale-pink roses worked into the silk and veins of gold shooting through the design. Stiff lace blossomed from his sleeves, nearly covering his gloved hands, and more lace covered his neck, where a white cravat was tied with perfect grace. He inclined his head to her.

  “It is customary you should bow,” the man said. “But there will be time to learn such pleasantries. I am called Hanali, and I have come as a representative of the Sunlit Lands.”

  Madeline tried to speak but found herself choking instead. It was like a dream, but in a dream she wouldn’t be in so much pain, would she? Darius still hadn’t moved. She managed to get a breath and said, “What did you do to him?”