She imagined this wind came from the north, somewhere with snow. She had seen drawings of snow, and Evyn had told her about his trek to the top of Eyelit Pass, where he scooped handfuls of white powder until the burning touch of his fingers made it disappear.
I glanced at Ryder. “So Evyn and Sevyn are twins. Unfortunate naming there. Where’s scrappy Eamon slash Nolan?”
“We don’t meet him for a while.” My brother’s smile was blissful. “Sevyn was cursed by lightning. No one can touch her. Evyn was blessed by the power of fire. Sevyn’s dad—who can control the wind—hates her and loves Evyn. He has some issues.”
“Clearly.” I remembered the teaser trailer, the sparks jumping between the two hands in the dark. “You’re serious about the lightning?”
He scowled with his eyes closed. “Keep reading. It’ll make sense.”
Remembering Evyn made her ache with fear. She stared at the midnight sky with its coin-faced moon and prayed that wherever he had been taken, he was safe. Alive. No matter how small the chance. “I’ll find you,” she whispered. “I’ll go to the mainland. Survive its poisons. Somehow…”
When sleep finally came, she dreamt that she was an eagle, soaring over Elementia. She surveyed an ancient, dense forest and an argent river. She turned in wide arcs, shifting her wings until she could see the coastline. A beautiful woman stood upon the cliffs, her chestnut hair waving as it caught the wind.
Wake, she told Sevyn. You are astray.
A thunderclap rang in her ears, forcing Sevyn’s eyes open.
“This isn’t what we saw yesterday. Sevyn wasn’t an eagle when Maedina was on the cliff. She was in the boat,” I said, trying to line up what we had seen with what I was reading.
“Cate said they have to change things to make it a better movie. There’s no Coad too. And you know Sevyn and Evyn are supposed to be thirteen, but now they’re eighteen, so they could cast Julian Young for sex appeal.”
“Ryder!” I blushed, although I couldn’t argue. “Cate Collins is onto something. The casting of Julian Young is the saving grace of this whole experience.”
My brother’s grin was joyous. “Can I ask Cate to give us bit roles? Please?”
“Absolutely not, and you know why.” I kept reading to cut off that line of questioning.
Bump. Bump.
Sevyn struggled to sit up. She had slipped into the bottom of the boat. It was early morning, and the sun scalded the water with golden rays. Her mouth was parched and her skin was crusted with a fine layer of salt.
Coad still slept at the other end of the boat. His head was thrown back, exposing the stringy ligaments of his neck.
Bump. Bump.
The boat was caught on something. Sevyn swung her head over the edge to behold a hand projected from the water, outstretched and ghostly white. She stifled a scream, remembering the clawed fingers that had ripped Evyn out of her life.
But then, the bleached appendage was not a real hand; it was the raised limb of a sunken marble statue. Beneath the surface, Sevyn could make out the armored head and body of a soldier. The raised hand gripped nothing, its sword long lost.
All around, the azure water was a graveyard of statues. Most were broken beyond recognition, but she made out the headless bust of a royal woman, barnacles blotching its ivory surface. Beyond that, two child figures held hands against a large marble slab. They appeared frozen, their small faces pointed toward the sky.
Sevyn swept the scene, eyes catching on a rock. It was strewn with bird droppings and seaweed, but underneath, it had the distinctive shape of a castle battlement. The white marble had been cut into massive crenels, carved with the images of men and elves.
“Manifest,” Sevyn whispered. Her favorite stories had been about this great city. This was where the kings and queens she had descended from lived and ruled—before the exodus to Cerul. Before Elementia had started to die, the trees burnt, the ground breaking apart and creating great rifts.
The flat, wide wall of white rock showed how the earth had split, and her bedtime stories had never truly encapsulated the horror. Manifest had once been a bastion larger than the entire island of Cerul. And it had tumbled into the sea in one cracking moment of fear and loss. As Sevyn looked out over the half-sunken ruins, she could hear the cries of all the lives the sea had swallowed that day as if they were still in the air.
“So it’s a sad story,” I murmured.
Yesterday on the ferry, I’d seen the wide, tall, harsh stone wall below the old fort. It had been impressive, true enough, but how would it feel after the CGI littered the scene with the remains of a fallen kingdom?
“Ryder, what…” My brother was asleep, his mouth open. I straightened his legs and pulled the blanket over him. He flopped on his side, and I was a little sorry he hadn’t stayed awake until the end of the chapter. I was now wide awake.
Before I closed the book, I noticed some pencil scribbles in the margin.
SAN ANDREAS FAULT PARALLEL—OBVIOUS.
It was my dad’s handwriting. Old and faded. Was this his copy? Wait, he owned a copy? I shut it and carefully placed the book next to Ryder, as if it had turned into a land mine in my hands. My dad’s feelings about these books were something I avoided out of a biological sense of self-preservation.
I crawled into bed, picturing fictitious Manifest falling into the sea, wondering if it would look like all the wretched blockbusters where LA cracks off the edge of the continent and gets swallowed by the Pacific.
Parallel—obvious… Is that where he got the idea?
To date, my dad’s only true moment of literary fame hadn’t come from one of his books, but a rather infamous obituary he wrote for the New York Times. In it, he’d described his mother and himself as being “on opposite sides of the San Andreas Fault. Always grinding against one another. Always threatening disaster.”
I’d read the obituary more times than I cared to admit. It had fascinated me. Made me wonder how my dad could have been at odds with his own parent—although after the last few years, perhaps it was just research on Thorne family tendencies.
My dad and I had been pushing against each other since way before Felix Moss came into our lives. Since before Ryder, even. All the way back to the catastrophic event with my literary tutor. That was, what? Nine years of resentment and frustration building underground between us? I kept stuffing my feelings down, but I was running out of room. What would happen if I told him how I hated being my brother’s stand-in parent? Or that my music wasn’t my “little hobby”?
I imagined the earthquake would be a ten on the Richter scale. Fire and flood. No survivors.
EVYN
FILM: ELEMENTIA
DIRECTOR: CATE COLLINS
ON LOCATION: DAY 3
ARAN ISLANDS, IRELAND
FILMING NOTES:
A.M.: SEVYN’s docking in Elementia and introduction to MAEDINA.
P.M.: EVYN’s initial conversation with BYERS.
After dark: One take burn of MAEDINA’s tree. BE READY.
ETC. NOTES:
Ryder Thorne is joining the crafty crew.
Iris Thorne is meeting with Julian Young for lunch.
Make sure to give Eamon O’Brien brief interviews on your Thornian background for his “Making Of” blog series.
MEANWHILE ON SOME LITTLE-KNOWN EDGE OF THE WORLD...
I woke too early, groggy and stiff, to the sound of someone knocking.
Ryder slept through it, snoring lightly. I checked my watch. Ten o’clock at night in LA, which was what in Ireland? Through the blinds over the tiny trailer window, the sky was dawning with slivers of orange. The knock returned, louder this time. I shot out of bed before it woke up Ryder, only to find Cate Collins—in a full-body, black spandex suit.
“Filming CGI this early?”
“Funny, love. Your father said
you run.”
“You talked to my dad? When?” I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice. Tried and failed. He hadn’t even replied to the text I’d sent two days ago.
“Last night after the excitement.” Oh great, now Cate had told my dad what happened before I had a chance to spin it. “Get dressed. I’m rather serious about running.”
“I don’t run on vacation,” I said.
“This isn’t a vacation. It’s time you and I talked that through.” She walked away, stretching her arms over her head. I changed into my workout gear, curious but also confident that this forty-something-year-old would not be able to keep up with me.
Wrong again, Iris.
A half hour later, we were running along a cliff walk that veered within feet of a twenty-foot drop to the ocean. Inishmore was silent except for the occasional screech of gulls and the tussle of the waves against the gravel beach below. It was beautiful, but more than that, it was different. How could LA’s congested vibrancy exist on the same planet as an island missing from time and seemingly pleased to be so lost?
Ordinarily I ran with headphones, drowning out the world, but Cate kept her nose high, eyes searching the landscape. I followed suit. She sprinted on the uneven ground, while my stride shrunk until my sides hurt. Cate slowed and looked back. “We can power walk now.”
“Great. Thanks.”
She was taking pity on me, but maybe she was ready to talk. After all, we weren’t out here for the epic scenery. “I read your grandmother’s books when I was out of film school, still digesting LA. I missed home, and this is what I pictured. In my heart, Elementia will always look like Ireland.”
“Isn’t that weird though?” I asked. “Isn’t Elementia all collapsed stone cities and burned forests? Isn’t it abandoned?”
“It is until the second book, when it begins to flourish.” Her light tone proved she was surprised that I knew this much; I didn’t tell her I’d learned it last night. She sighed and her emotions shone on her face: wistful longing with veins of deep sadness. I looked away. Thornians always wanted to tell me what they’d discovered in Grandma Mae’s books, but they didn’t need a reaction. When I was Ryder’s age, I pretended to go invisible when people began this speech. No one noticed; I was that good. “Iris?”
“What?”
“I asked if you truly think you’re on vacation.”
“I’m here for my brother,” I said. Last night had been an acute reminder. “This trip means the world to him, and his therapist thinks… How much do you know about his situation?”
“Your father told me the harsh details last night.” Cate looked annoyed. “I would have appreciated knowing earlier. I could have helped.”
She was being earnest, so I tried not to laugh. “Unless you have a time machine and can remind my dad to pick us up instead of leaving us at the mercy of a mentally unhinged stalker, there is no help.”
“Iris.” She said my name like a mom. Like a person who cared about me deeply, which was weird and misleading because we barely knew one another. “That attitude will kill you.”
Jaded Iris, reporting for duty.
“I know,” I admitted. The sun cracked over the eastern horizon, and I turned my eyes away, toward the west and the sudden jewels of light popping across the deep blue ocean. Azure?
Blue.
Cate flexed her hands in the rays. “I assure you yesterday did not go as planned for anyone, but I want you to stay. To become part of this production community.”
“Because we’re your Thornian luck charms?”
Oh, I’d gotten to her. She scowled. “Because this is your family’s story. Whether you like it or not. Whether you know it or not.” She picked up the pace, and I had to hustle. “I have jobs for you and Ryder. Perhaps if you feel more involved, you’ll seek out less trouble.”
“Look, Eamon should have been watching Ryder like he promised and—”
“Eamon O’Brien is one of the stars of this major motion picture, not a babysitter. And I’m speaking of the trouble of you and Julian and Shoshanna huddled up in Julian’s trailer, making fun of everyone on set.”
“But—”
“I’m very sharp, Iris. Very,” she said in a way that left me wondering if there was an Irish mafia. Did she bring me out here to dangle me over a cliff and tell me to watch myself? “I know you haven’t read your grandmother’s books, and high fantasy is not your literary style. You’re a, what, Pride and Prejudice kind of girl?”
“No,” I threw back just as snappish. “Jane Eyre.”
“Oh, Iris. That is a true fantasy.” Cate’s accent crystalized in a way I hadn’t heard before. She sounded more like Eamon, like this country. I already felt foolish for thinking the accent was exotic when I arrived. It was far better: welcoming, honest, and, well, sharp. “Regardless of your reluctance, you can be no stranger to the feminist themes in Elementia.”
I rattled off my dad’s dry elevator pitch on cue. “Male chauvinist king who denies his daughter’s birth rite in favor of his son ends up killed by said son while the whole world gets saved by said daughter.”
“That sounds like a man’s interpretation,” Cate said. “Your father’s?”
I nodded, wondering what had given me away.
“You need to know this story is more complicated. Like this world. What does your mother say about the books?”
“She hasn’t read them either. She’s a poet. She…” How much to say? When it came to my mom, the outside world didn’t understand, and we Thornes rarely asked them to. “She’s a bit of an Emily Dickinson. Instead of an attic, she hides in her greenhouse. All day. Every day.” Cate’s pitying look made me ache. “It’s okay. My dad does the heavy lifting.”
“From my point of view, you do the heavy lifting.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Was I relieved or embarrassed that my situation was so transparent?
We were approaching what felt like the northern edge of the island. A towering silhouette loomed on the pinnacle of the cliff wall, and I squinted but couldn’t make it out.
Cate took off her running headband and rubbed a hand through her short, grey hair—I felt pretty certain now that Cate’s hair was grey, not gray. Whatever she was about to say took a back seat to Julian jogging down the cliff walk, shirtless. He wore huge headphones, shout-singing the wrong words to “Hooked On a Feeling” at the top of his voice.
He caught sight of us and waved like a five-year-old. He was all sweaty and glistening, and if I hadn’t had such a glorious view of his chest yesterday, I might’ve fainted. We stepped to the side, and he hollered, “GOOD MORNING,” his headphones throwing off enough “ooga chackas” to drown out the ocean.
My laughter came from somewhere deep. It rose up and up, until I couldn’t hold it in.
Cate smiled, and then her smile cracked open, and she started laughing rather musically. “Well, after such an interlude, I don’t know how to continue.” The crinkly laugh lines around her eyes were inviting, joyful, and I dared to like Cate Collins for a moment.
“I’ve set Ryder up with a job in craft services. Food prep. He’ll be busy and involved, and under the supervision of Mr. Donato,” she said. I opened my mouth to object to a stranger watching my brother for the next nine days, but Cate added, “He’s a father of five, and he’s already been approved by your dad to watch your brother.”
“Ryder’s going to mess up,” I countered. “He can’t even load the dishwasher, and when he gets frustrated, he throws tantrums like a toddler. You saw him last night.”
“You have to trust him to take on more responsibility. Otherwise, he never will.”
I could see the chaos now. Whole trays of food dumped on the ground. Water coolers doused with brain-numbing amounts of sugar. “All right. It’s your production.”
“It is,” she said, mafia style. “As for
you—”
“No cameo appearances. I’m not ending up as an Easter egg joke on some deleted scene.”
She waved her hand in dismissal. “I have a problem you’re uniquely qualified to help with.” I don’t know why, but I pictured Eamon. Was she going to make me help him with his lines? “Julian Young is a mess. When I finally got through to him that he’s no one’s love interest, he started playing Evyn as a pathetic child, which is just…” Her voice dwindled to a growl. “If he doesn’t turn this around, I’ll have to fire him.”
I stopped walking. “You can’t fire Julian! You’ve already filmed so many of his scenes!”
Cate kept going, and I had to jog to catch up. “I will do what I need to do. I am directing this film and will not be bullied by any big-shot producer.” The conviction in that sentence had little do with me. What was going on behind the scenes of Elementia, the major motion picture? “I want you to talk through his character with him, Iris. Make sure he understands the story.”
“How? I don’t even understand the story.”
“Evyn—Julian’s role—has been kidnapped by a damaged creature,” she said. “You have some experience in that department.”
I searched the horizon for a focal point—anything to avoid the sudden mental picture of Felix Moss. We were getting close to the pinnacle where the sun lit up a massive tree. Part of me wanted to say, How dare you, Cate Collins, but a larger part was relieved to be surrounded by people who didn’t shy away from what had happened. They asked questions. They wanted me to face it. Which was…what, exactly? Refreshing definitely wasn’t the right word.
“Will you do this?” Cate asked. “It’ll mean quality time with Julian Young, which seems like something you’re mighty interested in.” I couldn’t say she hadn’t pinned me there.
I looked at Cate anew. She was short and so skinny the black spandex suit made her look like a luger. My gifted imagination now pictured the weight of this production across her shoulders. She was the new Atlas—a fantasy globe about to crush her. No matter my hang-ups and desire for this movie to disappear, I didn’t want it to come at her expense. “I’ll help Julian.”
Now a Major Motion Picture Page 6
