Benedict straightens his legs and lays his hands on his lap. “I’ve killed hundreds.”
My breath catches. Hundreds. He’s killed hundreds of human beings. And he’s only four years older than me. I have to remind myself to breathe and force my muscles to relax while I let this information truly sink in.
“I dream about them sometimes.” He says.
I take the last few hits of the joint and then throw it to the ground, squishing the embers underneath my sneaker. “About the people you’ve killed?” I ask, not really sure whether I want him to answer me or not.
“I’m in the middle of a city plaza, surrounded by crumbling skyscrapers.” He says, his eyes glazing over from the weed and the memory. “I know something bad is going to happen, but I can never remember what, even though I have had this same dream countless times.” He swallows before continuing.
“Slowly, a multitude of people with pale faces and dead eyes emerge from the shadows around me. I try to move, but my feet are stuck to the ground. They walk up towards me with their pits-for-eyes, and I know it’s them.”
He sits in silence, eyes lost in darkness. I don’t need to ask who they are.
“After a while, they start tearing me apart limb by limb. There is absolute silence, except for the sound of my laughter.” He continues.
“…Laughter?” I say, trying hard not to imagine it, not here.
“Yeah.” He says, sighing deeply. “I’m happy they are dismembering me. It seems fair, given I was the one who took their life in the first place.”
We sit in silence for a few moments. It’s so quiet I can hear ourselves breathe. “That’s not fucked up at all.” I finally say.
He has a strange look on his face, like he’s a thousand miles away instead of chained to the wall like a dog in a dirty, dark chamber underground. “Thanks for visiting, and for the joint.” He finally says, and I get the hint that he’s dismissing me.
Frankly, at this point, I’m okay with that. I came down here looking for answers and I leave with the burden of a half-spoken truth. “Sure man. Stay strong.” I get up and dust off my jeans. “When are you getting out of here?”
“A day or two at most, according to the sups.”
By sups, he means our superiors. The seers report to them, which means they always knows when someone doesn’t complete their Mission, or whenever there’s a major fuckup. Case in point. “You believe them?” I ask, doubtful.
He shrugs, grabbing the chain surrounding his neck. “What choice do I have? Unless you have the key to unlock these chains hidden away in your pocket.”
I try to grin at his joke, even though I hardly find his situation humorous. “I’ll be waiting for you up there.”
He closes his eyes and says nothing, but when I turn around and walk toward the spiral stairway, I think I hear a muffled ‘thanks’ coming from him.
I don’t look back.
-*-
I go back to the library.
Eric isn’t there anymore. Who the hell knows where he is. I grab a random book and sit down at a table, opening it at the middle. I try to read, but the words jumble together into one giant incoherent mass. Who wrote this book anyway? It’s not making any sense.
A drop of water falls onto the page, and then another. I look up to the ceiling, trying to find the crack where the water’s leaking in, but there is none. Then I feel the moisture on my cheeks, and I bring a hand to my face. I’m crying. That isn’t water on the pages of the book. Those are my tears. I furiously wipe them from my face. Crying, really?
I shut the book and throw it in front of me. It hits the wall hard and lands face-down on the floor, a cloud of dust surrounding it.
I stare at the dust as it settles on the floor and on top of the book, feeling mad at myself for deciding to visit Benedict. Instead of answers, I found questions that I can’t even begin to word; feelings that I can’t even begin to understand.
Talking to Benedict only made everything worse.
And then another thought enters my head, one that leaves me cold.
What if I end up like him? Unable to bear the guilt inside me until finally I lose it and do something crazy, like healing someone without planning on killing afterwards? The scariest thing is that I didn’t even suspect it. I would never have thought it of Benedict.
Nobody would ever think it of me, either.
The words repeat themselves over and over in my head, until all I can do is fold my hands on top of the table and rest my head above them, the world spinning around me. I feel myself falling into a fitful sleep, and soon enough, I’m lost in dreams of crumbling buildings and people with stone-cold eyes standing still around me… looking at me…waiting…but for what, I don’t know.
The Festival
“Daniel!” A high-pitched voice which I would recognize anywhere yells. I wake with a start, and squint up to face Kismet staring down at me.
“What time is it?” I grumble. For a second, I can’t remember where I am or how I got here, but then I see Eric standing next to Kismet, and everything comes rushing back. The solitary cell. Benedict’s muffled thanks. His confession. The guilt.
Right…
“You’ve slept through lunch,” Kismet says. “You’ve slept through the whole day, actually. The festival is about to begin.”
“What?” I say groggily.
“Don’t worry, lass.” Eric tells Kismet. “I’ve been taking good care of him, even though he’s abusive to my books.” I notice him holding the book I threw to the wall earlier and avoid his eyes. He sets the book on the table. “Your snores could wake a dragon!” He tells me, laughing merrily. I look up at him and arch an eyebrow. Eric flashes us us his gap-toothed smile, but then saddens. “That is, if there were any Dragons left.” He stares off into space.
Well, at least he’s not majorly pissed about the book.
Kismet and I look at each other, and I can see she’s trying to suppress a laugh, which makes me want to laugh too, despite everything. “I guess I better get going,” I say, picking up the book. I glance at the title before placing it back on the shelf. Man and his Symbols, by Carl Gustav Jung.
“Are you going to the festival, Eric?” Kismet asks him. I blink, noticing she knows his name and I didn’t, even though she rarely comes to the Library, and I come here all the time.
“Oh, no.” He scrunches his nose as if he’s smelled something unpleasant and then limps back to his desk. “I never go to those things. There’s always too many people. I prefer the company of books.” He sits down and once again opens his book. He’s almost finished it, even though I remember that this morning, he was only at the beginning. “Like Daniel.” He winks at me.
I narrow my eyes at him, wondering what he’s playing at. But then he buries his long nose in the book, so I get up and walk out of the library with Kismet.
“How are you doing?” Kismet says softly.
I consider her question for a moment before answering. “I’m…better.” It’s not necessarily a lie. At least I’m not a sobbing mess of tears and mucus anymore, or so angry that I’m lashing out at everyone in my way. I try to smile and find that it’s not so difficult, not when I’m with her. “Ready for the festival?”
Her face lights up. “Can’t wait.”
And I know that just like that, our argument is over. One of the best things about Kismet is that she doesn’t dwell on the past, and that inspires me not to, as well. I look at her, and something inside me softens.
“I can’t either.” I say. “Maybe a night of escapism and debauchery is just what I need.”
Kismet laughs. “I agree.”
We enter the Dining Hall, and I’m immediately blown away by what I see.
The tables have been moved aside and stacked up one above the other to make room in the middle of the hall, where people are dancing and laughing and drinking. Some pre-teens, most likely the latest recruits, are running around and screeching in delight.
There’s musicians every
where, playing their flutes, violins, and acoustic guitars. The sound of drums fills every corner of the Hall.
There’s also a large buffet table, with all kinds of food and more bottles of red wine than you can count. Suddenly my stomach rumbles, and I remember I haven’t eaten since breakfast. My mouth waters as I ogle the hams and cheeses. They really out-did themselves this time.
A variety of new kerosene lamps are hanging from the walls to brighten up the atmosphere. This isn’t the first Summer Solstice Festival I’ve attended, but it’s by far the grandest.
“I wonder if our superiors had to sell their souls to the devil for this,” I say.
“I was under the impression they already have,” Kismet says. We snicker. “But yeah, it must have been a logistical nightmare.”
What shocks me the most is that there are more Sun-Children here, from literally every corner of the earth, than at any other Festival I’ve attended in the past. I see women dressed in beautiful saris, men in long, flowing pants and turbans around their head.
There’s also women with cinammon-colored skin and bright skirts. Their loud laughter and fast conversation in a foreign tongue I can’t quite place drowns out the surrounding noise. There are even some old, wrinkly ladies dressed in fur coats and high heels that are way too snobbish-looking for Agartha. They turn their noses up at everyone and keep to themselves.
The Common Hall is filled to the brim with people from the five continents, united under one system, one mission, and one name.
The Children of the Sun.
Before I know it, my little meeting with Benedict is the last thing on my mind. I hear someone behind me speaking Spanish, which I recognize because Kismet sometimes speaks to me in Spanish, calling me mi amor and other sweet things like that.
“Excuse me…” Kismet turns around and faces them. “Did you say that there’s some important news to be shared tonight?”
“Ah, yes,” one of the men says with a slight accent. He raises his eyebrows at her. “That’s what I’m telling my friend. I’m sorry, do you speak Spanish?”
Kismet nods. “My parents were immigrants from Argentina.” She offers no more explanation about her human family. “I also heard what you said about Agartha.” She narrows her eyes and puts her hands on her hips. “That wasn’t nice.”
The two men look at each other, embarrassed. But then Kismet laughs, and they smile and shift in place.
“Come, it was just a little joke,” the man says, slightly apologetically. “And it is a shit-hole, even if it’s the capital of our race. You’re living like moles.”
“That’s what I always say!” Kismet tells him. She grins at him, and he grins back.
“How do you live where you come from?” I ask him, intrigued. I also want him to stop ogling my girlfriend.
“We’re from Chile,” he says. “We live in a large commune in the open air in the countryside. There, you can smell the fresh air and feel the sun’s face on your skin every morning.”
“That sounds great,” I say. “What I wouldn’t give to live out in the open with the sunrays beating down on my skin every single day. Too bad our superiors would never allow it.”
“And why is that?” the man from Chile asks me, curious.
I shrug. “Rule is that if you are born in the States and you’re a Sun-Child, Agartha is the place for you to go. I think it has something to do with pride and paying respect to the place our forefathers built for us by living in it. In short, it’s a load of bullshit.”
They look at each other with raised eyebrows.
Oops… looks like I put my foot in my mouth.
“He’s just joking.” Kismet starts laughing, nudging me brusquely in the ribs. Criticizing your superiors is something nobody ever does, not if you want to avoid being physically beaten for getting too smart.
“I’m not.” I say, slightly annoyed. “But I honor our superiors wishes, even if I don’t agree with them.”
Kismet gives me a little patronizing shake of the head. I roll my eyes at her and massage my ribs. I need neither your help nor your approval, babe.
“Anyway, Agartha is comfortable enough,” Kismet says, a little defensively. “Of course, it’s not the countryside, but we manage.”
“So what’s the big news?” I say. They stare at me with confused expressions that I suspect are fabricated. “You guys were talking about some big news that they were going to share with us tonight.”
“There, I cannot help you,” the man who smiled at Kismet says. “All I know is that it’s huge. Nice to meet you both, eh?” he says, cutting the conversation short and moving past us toward the buffet table.
“Nice to meet you too…” Kismet starts saying, but they are beyond ear-reach before she finishes the sentence.
“Assholes.” I mutter under my breath. “Want to get something to drink?”
She narrows her eyes at them. “What do you think he meant when he said ‘it’s huge’?”
“I don’t know. Guess we’ll find out later.” I say. I’m already over the whole conversation. “Come on, I’m hungry.” I take her hand and lead her to the buffet table, where we grab some plastic plates and indulge ourselves to all kinds of breads, meats, cheeses, and wine.
Once we’re done, I grab Kismet’s hand again, turn her around in a circle, and then pull her into my arms. She giggles and her face lights up. “What has gotten into you?”
“It’s a party. We’re allowed to have some fun. Plus, I think I’ve had too much wine.” We relax into each other.
“What about that no PDA rule?” she says, wrapping her arms around me even tighter. I can feel her heartbeat in tune with mine.
“It’s the Festival. We’re allowed to forget about that stupid rule tonight.” Then I kiss her. I can sense people staring, but I don’t care. Her lips taste of wine and something else, something sweet that drives me crazy and makes me forget everything around me.
Suddenly, I feel someone patting me on the back. I break the kiss with Kismet and turn around.
“Resurfaced to the world of the living, haven’t we?” Henrick says, raising an eyebrow and looking at us rather lewdly.
“Haven’t we all,” I say, turning my back to him again. I refuse to let that joker irritate me. Not tonight.
Suddenly I notice Beatrice far off to our left. She’s dancing with the other two witches. Their bodies follow the rythm of the drums, their bellies curling in and out in snake-like movements. Then they start grinding on each other, and people circle them to stare.
Beatrice smiles, enjoying the attention.
Then she takes the face of one of the other witches in her hands and kisses her. The men cheer like animals, closing in. They stare at them, hardly blinking, drool practically falling out of their mouths.
I clear my throat and force myself to look away, turning to Kismet, who is staring at the witches with a curious intensity. “Looks like the seers are having an interesting night.” She says, with more than a hint of disappointment in her voice.
The lights have been getting progressively dimmer, and most people are already more than a little drunk.
“Come, let’s dance!” Kismet says, tearing her eyes away from the witches and pulling me into the center of the hall, where kids, adults, and seniors alike are all offering their bodies to the beat of the drums in a sort of trance-like, sweaty, hot devotion.
The lights dim even more. Kismet grabs my face with both her hands and kisses me again. I feel desire rising within me, making me want to take her here, right now, in front of everyone. I taste the sweaty saltiness of her skin, and we dance together, limbs intertwining, belly upon belly, the beat of our hearts aligned with the rhythm of the drums.
Then, all of a sudden, two kids run past us, accidentally bumping into Kismet and almost toppling her over. “Hey, watch it!” I yell at them, but they are already gone, lost in the crowd. “Are you okay?” I ask Kismet. She stares longingly after the boys, a sadness creeping into her features.
“Yes.” She tries to smile. Her eyebrows pull together at the middle, and her lips quiver a bit.
“No, you’re not,” I say, my heart sinking. I feel myself coming out of the trance, back to reality.
“Doesn’t it bother you, not even one bit?” she says, staring up at me. Her eyes are glassy with the effect of the wine and deep-rooted sadness, the kind of sadness that is always there, in the core of your soul, waiting to consume you if you’re not strong enough to hold it at bay.
“I don’t know.” I frown. “I haven’t really given it much thought.”
Kismet sniffs. “It’s easier if you’re a man, I guess.”
“Hey”—I grab her by the chin and tilt her head backwards—“being infertile is not easy for anyone.”
“You know that Immortal we killed, she said she had a son.” She burrows her delicate face into my chest. “I never knew—I mean, I thought anyone with supernatural powers was infertile. I just assumed that was how it worked. Now it turns out it’s just our kind.”
The Immortal did say that, and I hadn’t even noticed. “You know how our superiors say fate has relieved us of the burden of having children so we can focus exclusively on our duty?”
She nods.
“Well, it’s bullshit, Kismet.” She looks at me, wide-eyed. “I don’t know why we can’t procreate and, apparently, the Immortals can. I don’t know why some of us get this power and others don’t. Hell, I don’t even know why all of us are stuck with dark, mousy hair and brown irises when you have exotic red locks and gorgeous amber eyes.”
She smiles a little, and my heart melts.
“We’re stuck with what we have, Kis,” I say. “I’m just lucky enough to have you.” She blushes and then buries her head in my chest. “If you don’t feel like dancing anymore, we could go get some more wine—” I start to say, but then the music stops abruptly.
Everybody starts whispering to each other and looking around with bewildered expressions. I look around, too, confused. This has never happened before. Beatrice saunters over to us with a cup of wine in her hand, drunk as a sailor.
The Sun Child (The Sun Child Saga Book 1) Page 5
