by Kate, Lauren
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
I’m expected to initiate an endless future, free from small concerns like aging, like death. But I see only blank and disappearing pages. I see a past I don’t understand swirling wordlessly around her.
The fire dwindles. It’s cold and dark and I have failed. If I could have surrendered my love for her, the rest would have melted easily away. But she is a tree whose roots embrace the center of my being. There is no uprooting her. She holds down everything else, making it impossible not to love.
I remember the cake. I unwrap the foil and shake the candles out of the box. I plunge the candles into the cake and light them, staring until their flames lick the icing. I fill my lungs with air and blow with all my might, wishing for my family not to see instantly that my Passage was a lie.
The force of my breath startles me. It smothers the campfire, blows branches off the surrounding trees. I send a bald cypress stump tumbling down into the bayou with a swampy splash.
Giving up in darkness, I pull close the dog that won’t leave, and fall asleep.
III
It is nighttime and I am standing in a desert, surrounded by dunes a hundred feet high.
An enormous bird soars above, silhouetted against the moon. I hear soft footsteps in the sand behind me.
I turn and see her. Though she is very far away, I hear the rustling of her clothes, feel the weight of her body on the sand.
As she draws closer, her face begins to change. Lines deepen around her eyes, gray comes into her hair. She was seventeen a moment ago; now she looks seventy.
By the time she is in front of me, she is stooped and frail. I recognize her easily as my Eureka, though she is close to death. She opens her mouth to speak.
Ashes pour out in an endless stream.
I awake. Three crows sail the pink sky above my opening eyes. My body is stiff and it takes a moment to recall where I am. The campsite looks like it’s been trashed by something bigger than a boy blowing out candles. Black logs lie scattered across slick leaves.
I roll over in time to see a raccoon run away with the last remnant of my cake.
Sometimes I look at people and wonder if they’re afraid to die. My family speaks of age with pity and disdain: The elderly are weak, sick, pathetic. My aunts and uncles look away from old men with walkers and women in wheelchairs, as if no one should have to endure such shameful spectacles.
I wonder if those old people would make the bargain I was supposed to make last night: Stop feeling and you get to live forever. Would Eureka?
Shiloh stirs and sighs beside me, dreaming of chasing something. He smells more like home than anything in that sad farmhouse I will return to without him. I lay my head next to his and we stare into each other’s eyes. He has to go because my heart has to go. And soon—the meeting place is a full day’s hike away. My family is always on time.
I feel around in the pack Starling gave me and find two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a bag of chips, two bottles of soda, and another can of beans. Anything will taste of nothing, go down bitter, but a sandwich at least will give me energy. I force one down and feed the beans to Shiloh. We eat slowly, watching the sun rise, listening to the gentle waving of the bayou.
I reach into my coat pocket and feel something stiff, remembering the sting of Albion’s palm across my cheek as I tear open the envelope.
It’s not one card—it’s three.
Each is twice the size of a playing card and several times as sturdy. The cards are hand-painted and brightly colored. They look old and well made. On the back they share the same design: against a metallic silver background a blue figure holds a spear pointed downward. It’s the original Seedbearer insignia, symbolic of my family’s most important pledge: Keep the enemy below the sea.
I lay the cards faceup in a row on my sleeping bag. On the first card, two triangles back to back—one a deep ocean blue, one the pastel mix of an early-morning sky—form a single triangle. In the center of that triangle, the number six is painted in dark, glittery blue.
Things you know but do not think you know, Albion said.
Chora begins her cooking every night by sprinkling six grains of salt into a pan. Albion meditates six times a day. Without knowing why, I’ve always thought of the number six as my lucky number. It has an unarticulated power in my family, like an open secret that determines everything.
The next card features a black crown at the top and a black tombstone at the bottom. In the center, thick, curving lines resemble an ocean wave. One line curls upward on the right side; another dips down on the left, connecting the crown to the tombstone. Tombstones usually stand for death, but what about the crown?
My gaze drifts to the remains of the fire. I realize that the wavelike image on the card symbolizes wind—Seedbearer wind created from breath.
Wind is the source of the Seedbearers’ power—that’s the connection to the crown. But I don’t know about the tombstone. The need to understand grips me, and for the first time, I know for certain that I will meet my family tonight. I won’t simply run away. I will ask them these questions then. That’s why Albion gave me the envelope. He knew I’d need to know the truth.
On to the last card: the point of a red, twin-lobed heart shape pricks an anatomically accurate depiction of a human heart. Half of the human heart is red; the other half is the sickly gray of rancid meat. Blood drips from the human heart.
My family has always made it clear that love drains life. It’s a mantra muttered often in my home. I’ve heard Starling say it to a sunset, Albion say it about a tragic story he overheard. Once, Critias said it under his breath while looking straight at me. It’s a warning, a weaning. I’ll be expected now to say it to myself, like an adult.
“Love drains life,” I whisper, wondering how much life there is left to drain.
Without love, I’ll be strong and supple, eighteen forever. Every time I let love or passion creep into my soul, I will age a little more. Acts of extreme detachment—such as abandoning Shiloh—reverse the aging process. This explains why my aunts and uncles range from hundreds to thousands of years old. They failed at completely shutting off emotion at eighteen, but they’ve learned to temper and offset it so that none of them looks older than fifty.
I test myself. I think of Eureka’s laughter in the restaurant window. The thought brings me to my knees. I touch my face, certain I’ll find wrinkles. Am I older? I don’t feel anything but the desire to see her, touch her—
They’re going to know. They’ll smell weakness on me. They’ll see the signs of aging. I must do something, take control.
Shiloh. I love everything about him. He’ll expose my failure unless I get rid of him now. He rises when I stand, puts his front paws on my chest.
“You’re easy to love,” I tell him. “Someone else will do a better job than me.”
He barks and I don’t scratch his head the way I want to. I slip the cards into the envelope and back into my pocket. I pace the clearing and remember something I’ve seen my aunts do with stray cats.
I have a strength that I’m forgetting. I can use it to help Shiloh. I study his face, memorizing every inch.
When I inhale, I aim my breath at Shiloh’s heart. Instantly, he rises off the ground. He whines but doesn’t struggle. His eyes are locked on mine as he wobbles, unbalanced and clumsy, in the air. I’m not sure what to do with him. My breath feels the weight of him and my lungs strain under the effort. If I send him straight in one direction, no matter how far away, he’ll find me again. I have to disorient him first.
I focus my breath and spin him like a top. He whimpers, his tail tucked between his legs. He makes the sounds he makes when he’s sick.
I empty my lungs into a long curving line. Shiloh tumbles over the barren treetops, a strange angel, his paws paddling the air. I send him west, toward the edge of the woods and a girl I saw yesterday playing with a hula hoop in a yard just off the street.
Though I can’t see him anymore, I take care to focus and set him down gently. Now he’s out of my control. I meant to give him one last breath to start him trotting toward the little girl’s yard, but it’s too late.
We’re both on our own.
I roll up my sleeping bag and start the long walk back to my family.
IV
When I arrive they are waiting, sitting around a perfect campfire. They’re drinking nettle tea from small tin mugs. The night is black and frigid.
Though they don’t acknowledge my presence, they must sense me, because slowly and in unison they begin to clap. I feel their breath focus in on me as the power of their shared inhalation lifts me off the ground.
I hover ten, then twenty feet above the campfire and try not to think of Shiloh. The exaltation is undeserved, out of place. My family stands and applauds. The unprecedented joy on their faces renders them indistinguishable in the firelight. In their eyes glistens a pride I’ve never seen before.
I watch my shadow on the ground beside the fire. The control of my aunts’ and uncles’ breaths is infinitely more precise than mine. I envy and hate them.
They exhale and lower me softly to the ground. My boots touch earth and the weight of my body returns. My eyelids are too heavy for me to look at anyone.
Albion motions for the others to sit down and comes to stand beside me. He and I are the same height, but tonight he towers over me.
“Your Passage was successful,” he says.
It is not a question.
“You feel lighter now,” he tells me. “Freer.”
I am heavier, enslaved.
“You are confident of your role and identity in the universe.”
I’ve never been more lost or alone.
“You have questions.”
Now I meet his eyes. “Yes.”
“Take your time. You may ask anything. Our secrets are yours.”
I set my backpack down. It sags with gloomy lightness. I reach inside my coat and pull out the first card, which I lay on the ground before the fire.
“I want to know the significance of the number six.”
Albion nods. “When our forefather—”
“Leander,” I say. I’m named after him. He’s the original Seedbearer, the ancestor from whom we all descend.
“—when Leander escaped the confines of Atlantis,” Albion continues, “he made landfall in the Waking World and sired six children with six women. These children are the original six Seedbearers. They found each other after Leander’s death and vowed to carry the lessons of Atlantis into perpetuity. From that moment on, there have always been six living Seedbearers, and there must always be six living Seedbearers. It is essential to our strength.”
I look at him, then across the fire at my two aunts and two uncles. Chora, Starling, Critias, Albion … and me. That’s only five. “Someone is missing,” I say.
I expect them to mock me or change the subject, but things are different than they were yesterday.
“His name is Solon.” Albion’s jaw tightens. “He is a disgrace and was banished.”
So this is the last one Albion said I am not like.
“What did he do?” I ask.
“It was what he would not do that exiled him,” Chora says.
Albion waves her off. “He went through the same Passage that you completed, that all of us completed. But Solon could never truly free himself. A passion enslaved him, and probably still does.”
My face reddens. “Where is he now?”
Albion looks far to the west, as if his gaze could see across an ocean. “Do not fear him; he is no threat. His is a meaningless life, but he must live it to ensure our meaningful ones. Do you understand?”
“I think so.” In the hazy way I have come to understand so much about my family, I have a sense of how each Seedbearer is linked inextricably to the others. Our breath connects us. We live as one organism—which means that we die as one, as well. “If one of us dies—”
Albion nods. “All of us die.”
“How long has Solon been gone?” I ask.
“We have lived almost seventy-five years without him. His punishment is permanent, his exile absolute.”
“But he won’t die?”
My aunts laugh their cruel laughs.
“He does not have the means,” Albion says. “Do you understand?”
My hands are stiff when I draw the second card from the envelope. My aunts and uncles nod as I place it on the ground. The black crown and the tombstone look ghostly in the dancing firelight.
“Yes,” Albion says. “Power and death derive from breath.”
I wait for him to continue.
“Many times you have seen us employ the Zephyr—the name for the power of our collective breath. It is our weapon and our shield. It can influence the tides, the weather. It is a power unmatched in this world. You have it in you, too.” He raises an eyebrow. “You may have experimented with it?”
I repress thoughts of Shiloh. “I have.”
“You will improve. The Zephyr derived from Leander. It intertwines our lives. It is also our weakness. Only one substance can kill us, but a single breath of it is death. This poison is a rare strain of the plant known as artemisia. It killed Leander and each of the eleven Seedbearers who have died—always voluntarily, always in the first moment of a new and stronger Seedbearer’s life.”
“Is that how my mother died?” I ask.
My family’s shared glances answer yes, but I can’t let myself care. “Where do you get artemisia?”
“We possess the only remaining quantity in the Waking World,” says Chora. He holds up a small metal chest. I’ve seen it before. It is one of five orichalcum relics salvaged before the flood. As her fingers trace the clasp, Albion walks over to her and places his hands on hers.
“Simply know that it is here, Ander, and well protected. Your life is never in danger as long as this chest remains with us.”
“If it’s so deadly, why not destroy it?” I say. “Why do we keep it?”
“We keep it to help one Seedbearer pass out of this world when a new and stronger one enters—like you. We keep it because we may perhaps one day be forced to choose death over life. But enough poisonous talk. There is another card.”
I place the last card next to the others. It looks faded, as if its red pigment rubbed off in my pocket.
Albion waits.
“Love drains life,” I whisper.
My family leans forward, watching me.
“Love is important,” Albion says. “Love brought you up to be a man. Love versed you in loss and sorrow, which leads to strength, which is detachment from these self-imposed vulnerabilities. Yes, love has served you well. But listen closely, Ander: love is child’s play. To assume your place among your people, you must prove you can grow out of love, and shed it like a snake loses its skin. Only then can you live forever, like us.”
“You may slip from time to time.” Starling, raises her frail shoulders. “It is only natural. But soon you will be a master. You will observe the passing parade of life for ages to come. You will understand far more than any mortal. You will recognize patterns and cycles that the greatest geniuses among them never can.”
“It’s astonishing, how their little life spans keep them sprinting on their various hamster wheels,” Critias says. His eyes close halfway in revulsion, so that only the whites are visible.
Albion studies me. “You should already sense a difference.”
I can’t be so unusual—but can the rest of them be this skilled at lying? Or is it that they’ve simply forgotten what it’s like to feel? Are they hypocrites, or insane? I take comfort in thinking of Solon, the exiled uncle I’ve never heard about before tonight. Did his failure look anything like mine?
“When Solon failed,” I ask, “why didn’t you replace him with a new Seedbearer, the way I replaced my mother when she died? Why didn’t you kill him instead of exiling him?”
“You tell me,�
�� Albion replies.
I think; then I know. “He is too strong.”
My family closes in a tight circle around me.
“Prove to us you’ve changed,” Chora says. She looks at Starling, who steps forward holding something wrapped in foil. When she pulls the foil back, steam rises and a wonderful aroma fills the air. Keeping her eyes on my lips, Starling dips a spoon into the dark dish and says, “Open.”
I close my mouth around the spoon. The substance is sweet, buttery, crisp, and warm. Something deep and strong takes hold of me. The food is so delicious I can barely swallow.
Suddenly, I remember Starling feeding me this dish on cold mornings of my childhood. I remember her soft cooing as she wiped the corners of my mouth.
Blueberry cobbler. The words fill me with a mighty nostalgia.
But I must stifle everything I feel.
“What do you think?” Starling’s eyes betray none of the compassion I remember. This is the test. Years ago they planted this memory inside me. They fed me cobbler and feigned love, and now they want to know if I can conquer the only memory of comfort and safety I have.
“What is it?” I ask as blandly as I can.
“Leftovers,” Chora says slowly. “We thought you might be hungry.”
“We’d like you to listen to something.” Albion nods at Critias, who presses Play on an old tape recorder. The quiet night bursts into music.
“Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.” Critias used to take me to St. John’s to listen to Eureka sing. This song often made the worshippers in the pews around me cry. It is unspeakably beautiful, and I can make out twelve-year-old Eureka’s voice perfectly, hear how her words are affected by her braces. I want to swoon, to fall down to the ground and scream.
“Tell us what you feel,” Albion says.
Eureka’s voice is so steady. I’m about to lose it. It takes all my strength to adopt a monotone. “I’m very tired. Is it a lullaby?”
I do not want to know the person I sound like.
“You’re doing fine,” Albion says. “You’re nearly done. We want to show you one more thing.”
