What’s real and what isn’t? Alia wondered. Maybe the island was real and her perceptions were off. Her brain could have been damaged in the wreck. Her body had definitely been flooded by adrenaline. Or maybe she was lying in a hospital somewhere, being pushed into an MRI machine, and this was all a hallucination. She liked that idea a lot. They’d figure out what was wrong with her misfiring mind and they’d fix it. Science could solve anything given the time and the resources. That was what her parents had taught her and Jason. The world had a beautiful logic to it, hidden patterns that would reveal themselves if you could just learn to see them. What would they think of giant trees and jewelry that acted like a well-trained pet? They’d say there had to be an explanation. They’d find one.
Alia staggered after Diana as the woods sloped down. The trees thinned and gradually gave way to a clearing. She had the jarring sense of slipping from one world into another. They’d just left a forest dense with vegetation, crowded with flowers and brightly colored songbirds. Now she was looking at what could only be described as grasslands, long rolling hills of gently shifting reeds, gray and pale green that resolved to the colors of an overcast sky.
Alia tried to catch her breath, acutely aware that she was panting like a tired dog, while Diana didn’t seem winded at all. “This doesn’t make any sense. This kind of ecology is completely wrong for this climate.”
Diana only smiled. “The island is like that. It gives gifts.” Alia tried not to roll her eyes. “My mother never talks about life before the island,” Diana continued. “But she loves this place. I think it reminds her of the steppe.”
Diana stood for a long time, staring out at the grasses. Alia had no desire to start walking again, but she also had the distinct impression that they were supposed to be in a hurry.
“So…,” Alia began. Diana shook her head, placing a finger to her lips. “If you’re going to shush me—”
“Listen.”
“All I hear is the wind.”
“Here,” Diana said, taking Alia’s hand. She squatted down and tugged Alia with her, placing her palm against the damp earth. “Do you feel it?”
Alia frowned but then—a trembling, different from the earthquakes. It was more like the patter of rain, but that wasn’t quite right, either.
“Close your eyes,” Diana murmured.
Alia gave her a wary glance, then shut her eyes. The world went dark. She could smell the storm in the air, the deep mossy fragrance of the woods behind them, and something else, a warmer smell she couldn’t name. She heard the lonely rustle of the wind moving through the grass, and then, so faint she doubted it at first, the softest whinny. It came again, and the sounds began to coalesce with the gentle drumbeat she felt through the earth: bodies shifting together, a snort of breath, hoofbeats.
Her eyes flew open. She felt herself smiling. “Horses?” Diana grinned and nodded. They rose. “But where are they?”
“Here, in the field, the phantom herd.”
Diana unhooked the golden coil of rope from her hip and began to move through the tall grass. It came up to her thighs, almost all the way up to Alia’s waist, tickling her bare legs in an itchy way that made her think of cobwebs.
“My mother and her sisters were great horsewomen,” Diana said. “They could ride any steed and coax the best from it, land arrows while hanging from a saddle, aim upside down. When Maeve came to the island…” Diana’s voice wavered. “The phantom herd was a gift from the goddess Epona. A thank-you to Hera and Athena for granting Maeve immortality.”
Diana gestured for them to stop, and Alia saw that she had knotted the rope into a loop, forming a lasso. Diana let it swing gently from her hands, building momentum.
Alia could hear those sounds growing closer now, the rumble of hooves that seemed to echo a heartbeat, double it, treble it. The tall grass moved against the wind as if trampled by some unseen force. Alia’s mind refused it. It can’t be. It can’t.
Diana’s eyes were closed. She stood with her face tilted to the wind, listening, the lasso moving in a lazy, looping rhythm. The rope seemed to glow in her hands as she released it. It cut a long, shining path against the gray sky, then dropped around the neck of a huge white horse that hadn’t been there a moment before. It was as if the lasso had caused the horse to appear.
Alia took a step backward, heart slamming in her chest. Diana gave the lasso slack, turning in place as the horse shook its shimmering white mane in frustration, checking its stride. She tugged gently and it slowed, rearing back on its hooves and releasing a high, angry whinny.
“It’s all right, Khione,” she murmured, her voice low and soothing. “It’s just me.”
The horse danced back, tossing its mane, and Diana gave another gentle tug, the muscles of her arms shifting beneath her bronzed skin.
She whistled softly, and the horse’s ears flicked. Grudgingly, it settled, hooves landing on the grass with a sulky thump, and blew out a disgruntled breath. It walked forward as Diana reeled in the lasso. When it was close enough, she crooked an arm over the horse’s neck and patted its flank as it bumped its great head against her.
“She’s Maeve’s favorite,” Diana said, and Alia could hear the sadness and worry in her voice. She waved Alia forward with an encouraging smile. “Go on.”
Alia hesitated, then cautiously reached up to stroke the creature’s velvety nose. A lot of kids at her school rode, but she’d never seen an animal like this, white as alabaster, marble-hewn, a horse that looked as if it had leapt down from some monument at the center of a plaza. Its lashes were the same snowy color as its mane, but its eyes had no whites. They were the deep purple-black of a pansy.
The horse—the invisible horse, Alia’s mind corrected, then rejected—bowed its head, and Alia felt some tiny bit of the terror she’d been carrying since the wreck release. Suddenly, she was blinking back tears. She thought of a glass filled to its brim, the tension at its surface that kept it from spilling over. The horse was warm beneath her hand. She could see the long curl of its lashes. It was real in a way nothing else had been since the cold of the waves. If this creature was possible, then all of it might be real. It was too much.
Alia shut her eyes and pressed her forehead against the rough silk of the horse’s mane. “What did you call her?”
“Khione. It means ‘snow.’ ”
“And she was a gift?”
“Yes. When a rider sits one of the phantom herd and takes hold of its mane, she becomes as invisible as the horse.”
“How can we see her now?”
“The lasso. It always shows the truth.”
Alia took a shuddering breath that was halfway to a sob. “Can you ask the lasso if I’m going to get home?”
“It doesn’t work that way. And, Alia, you can’t go home. Not yet. People tried to kill you.”
“Because of the Foundation.”
“Because of what you are. You’re dangerous to a lot of people. We have to get you to Greece, to the spring at Therapne.” Diana whispered in the horse’s ear and then plucked several strands of Khione’s mane. Khione made a disapproving nicker but remained in place, stomping her huge hooves.
“What are you doing?” Alia asked.
“We need these to get off the island.”
Another tremor struck and the horse reared back, yanking the lasso from Diana’s hands. Diana stepped in front of Alia, arms spread wide, her expression unruffled. Khione took some skittering steps, then seemed to calm. Diana waited a few more moments before picking up the rope. She patted the horse’s flank. “It will be better soon,” she said softly. “Promise.”
Diana slid the lasso over the horse’s head, and Alia watched in wonder as Khione vanished. Magic. She was seeing real magic. The kind of magic in movies. No wands or wizards yet, but maybe if she stayed on the island long enough, a dragon would show up. It all feels so real, Alia thought as she followed Diana through the grasslands. But that was probably how delusions worked.
At so
me point she realized that the terrain was starting to look familiar. In the distance, she saw the sea. They’d returned to the cliffs.
“I’m not going back to the cave,” she said stubbornly.
“Not the cave,” said Diana. “The cove.”
Alia picked her way cautiously to the edge of the cliff and looked down. There was a small sandy beach carved into the coast, like the top of a question mark.
“Okay, but no way am I getting on your back again.”
“I can hitch up a sling,” said Diana, removing a length of ordinary rope from her pack.
“Not happening. I’m not going over that cliff.”
“I won’t let you get hurt.”
“You know what, Diana? We just met, so maybe you haven’t picked up on this, but I’m not made like you. I appreciate that you saved my life—”
“A couple of times.”
“Okay, a couple of times, but this day has been a lot. I don’t do miles of hiking or any kind of rock climbing that doesn’t involve a safety harness, an indoor wall, and some jacked-up guy on the gym floor shouting stuff like ‘Good hustle!’ I’m trying my best, but I’m about ready to lose it here.”
Diana studied her for a long moment, and Alia was pretty sure that the girl could simply throw her over her shoulder if she wanted to. But Diana nodded and gave a small bow. “Forgive me.”
Apparently, cult kids had really good manners, too.
“No problem,” Alia said, embarrassed by her outburst. At least this meant no more piggybacks. Diana led her along the cliff to the beginning of a steep, narrow path. Alia swallowed and did her best to feign confidence. “Much better.”
“My way would be faster,” Diana offered.
“Slow and steady wins the race.”
“That is almost always untrue.”
“Take it up with Aesop.”
“Aesop never existed. The stories credited to him were the work of two female slaves.”
“That sounds about typical. I’ll ponder it on the way down.”
Alia started along the path, carefully choosing each step, afraid she’d lose her footing and go right over the side.
“It’s going to take you an hour if you do it that way,” said Diana.
“I’ll get there when I get there. I’m not part goat.”
“Could have fooled me.”
At that moment another small tremor struck, and Alia pressed her body to the cliff side.
“You’re sure you want to take the path?” Diana said.
“Positive,” Alia squeaked.
“All right. Wait for me on the sand.”
“You aren’t coming?”
“I’ll go my own way.”
Diana tossed her pack over the side of the cliff to the cove below. Then, as Alia watched in disbelief, she sprinted the length of the cliff top. Alia clapped her hands over her mouth. She can’t mean to—
Diana leapt, silhouetted for a moment against the thunderheads, toes pointed, arms outstretched. She looked like she might sprout wings and simply take flight. Stranger things have happened today. Instead, her body arced downward and vanished over the cliff side.
“Show-off,” Alia muttered, and continued down the path.
As she shuffled along, she alternated between trying to find the next place to put her foot and gazing out to sea to try to locate Diana in the rocking gray waves. The surf was huge, beating at the cove with ceaseless rage. What if Diana had simply been dragged under? What if she’d cracked her gorgeous head open on a rock?
The farther Alia went, the worse her own head ached and the sicker she felt. By the time she reached the bottom of the cliffs, her thighs were shaking and her nerves had frayed to nothing from fear of the fall. There was no sign of Diana, and Alia realized she had no idea what to do if she didn’t return. Climb back to the top? She wasn’t sure she had the strength. Hope one of those hippie weapons collectors found her and was friendlier than Diana had suggested? And what about everything Diana had said about Greece and Alia being dangerous?
“Girl is addled,” said Alia decisively to no one. “That’s what growing up in a cult does to you.” Yeah, and you’re the one talking to yourself on a beach.
Even so, Alia felt the knot of worry in her chest loosen when she looked out to sea and saw Diana cutting through the ocean, her arms slicing through the water at a determined pace. There was something behind her, a massive shape that appeared and disappeared in the spaces between the waves.
When Diana reached the shore, she emerged with water streaming from her dark hair, ropes thrown over her shoulders, feet digging into the sand, every muscle in her body straining as she strode forward. It took Alia a long moment to understand that the ropes were rigging.
Diana had hauled the Thetis from the bottom of the sea.
A bone-deep shiver quaked through Alia. One of the masts was still intact; the other had snapped free close to its base. The prow was completely gone. The explosion had left nothing but a jagged line of wood and fiberglass where the rest of the boat should be. You are being hunted….Because of what you are.
Diana didn’t understand. Alia’s family had been targets for so long, first when people accused them of “playing God” with their research, then because of the rules the Keralis Foundation attached to any grant for aid. There was still speculation that the crash that had killed her parents had been an assassination plot. A thorough investigation had proven that there was nothing more to that terrible night than a slippery road and distracted drivers. But every few years, some newspaper or blog ran a conspiracy piece on the deaths of Nik and Lina Keralis. Alia would get an email from some curious reporter, or she’d walk by a newsstand and see her parents’ wedding photo looking back at her, and the wound would open all over again.
She remembered sitting in the backseat with Jason, his profile lit by streetlamps, her parents in the front, arguing about which bridge to take home. That was the last memory she had of them: her mother drumming on the steering wheel, her father jabbing at the screen of his phone and insisting that if she’d just taken the Triborough, they’d be home by now. Then the strange feeling of the car moving the wrong way, momentum carrying them across three lanes of traffic as they slid into a skid. She remembered the car hitting the divider, the shriek of tearing metal, and then nothing at all. She’d been twelve. Jason had been sixteen. When she’d woken up in the hospital, she still had the smell of burnt rubber in her nose. It took days for it to dissipate and be replaced by the cloying stink of hospital disinfectant. Jason had been there when she woke, a big slash on his cheek that had been stitched closed, his eyes red from crying. Their godfather, Michael Santos, had come, and his son, Theo, who had put his arm around Jason and held Alia’s hand.
Looking at the remains of the Thetis felt the same as waking up in that hospital bed, like grief rushing straight at her. You are being hunted. Was Alia the reason for the wreck? Was she why Jasmine and Ray and the others were lost forever?
Diana had set about disentangling the rigging and was now tearing the hull apart as easily as if she were digging into a lobster dinner.
“What are you doing?” Alia asked, eyeing her nervously. Maybe the cult members mixed steroids in with their chewable vitamins.
“We need a craft to get out past the boundary.”
“What boundary?”
Diana hesitated, then said, “I just meant open sea. The hull is useless, but I think we can salvage part of the deck and the sail and use it as a raft.”
Alia didn’t want to touch the boat. She didn’t want anything to do with it. “A raft? In that surf? Why don’t we wait for the storm to pass?”
“This storm isn’t going to pass. It’s only going to get worse.” Diana peered out at the water. “We could try swimming, but if we got separated—”
“It’s fine,” Alia said, helping Diana brace a piece of the hull against her shoulder and tear it free.
At that moment Diana doubled over in pain.
“Wh
at is it?” Alia asked, panicked. Without realizing it, she’d started to think of Diana as invulnerable.
“Maeve,” she said. “The others. We have to hurry. Soon it will be too late.”
They worked for the better part of an hour. The earthquakes were coming more frequently now, and occasionally bits of the cliff would shake free behind them. Alia had tried to help for a while, but eventually she’d given up and leaned against the makeshift raft, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Diana could see just how ashen she looked beneath her brown skin.
She’d seemed better when they were climbing and Diana had been close to her. Your proximity may prolong her life, may even soothe her, but it cannot heal her. She will die, and the island will live. Alia was dying, and though Diana still felt well, she could sense the pain and bewilderment of her sisters through the blood tie that connected all Amazons. What one of them felt, they all felt, and to fight, even to spar, meant to endure the pain of your opponent, even as you dealt the blow. If one of them died…No, Diana would not allow it.
“Hold on, Maeve,” she whispered.
They lashed together the raft as best they could, and then Diana raised the sail, tying strands of Khione’s mane into the knots of the rigging. With each knot, another section of the raft vanished. It would be invisible from the shores of Themyscira and the southern coast of Greece. Diana hoped to put the raft in as close as possible to Gytheio. From there it would be a two-day journey on foot to Therapne. She doubted Alia could make faster time than that in her current state. Perhaps they could acquire one of the machines she’d read about.
“Do you know how to drive an automobile?” asked Diana as she secured the raft’s makeshift rudder.
“A car? Nope. No reason to learn in New York.”
Diana frowned. “Well, even on foot, we should have plenty of time to reach the spring before the start of Hekatombaion.”
“And Hekatombaion is what exactly?”
“The first month in the old Greek calendar. It used to mark the start of the year.”
Wonder Woman: Warbringer Page 8
