by Cynthia Hand
“Oh, sugar, call me Rachel. I think we’re past the formalities.” She slaps her husband’s hand away from the basket of dinner rolls. “I hope you’re hungry.” Dinner turns out to be pot roast and gravy, potatoes, carrots, celery, and homemade buttermilk rolls, washed down with large glasses of iced tea.
We eat quietly for a while. I can’t stop thinking about how devastated this whole family is going to be if they lose Tucker, can’t stop remembering the way their faces look in my dream.
Sad. Resigned. Determined to get through it.
“I tell ya, Ma,” Tucker says. “This is really a fine meal. I don’t think I’ve told you enough what an amazing cook you are.”
“Why thank you, son,” she replies, sounding pleasantly surprised. “You haven’t.” Wendy and Mr. Avery laugh.
“He’s seen the light,” Mr. Avery says.
This seems to ignite something, and suddenly everybody’s talking about the fires.
“I’ll tell you what,” says Mr. Avery, spearing a piece of meat with his fork and waving it around. “They ever catch the bastard who started those fires, I’m going to give him what for.” My head whips up. “Someone started the fires?” I ask, my heart suddenly thundering.
“Well, they think one was started by natural causes, like a lightning strike,” says Wendy.
“But the other was arson. The police are offering a twenty-thousand-dollar reward for anybody who gives them information leading to an arrest.”
This is what happens when I stop watching the news. They call it arson. I wonder what the police would do if they found out who really did it. Uh, yes, officer, I believe the one who started the fire was about six foot three. Black hair. Amber eyes. Big, black wings. Residence: hell. Occupation: leader of the Watchers. Birth date: the dawn of time.
In other words, that’s twenty thousand dollars that no one’s ever going to see.
“Well, I for one hope they catch him,” says Mr. Avery. “I want a chance to look him in the eye.”
“Dad,” says Tucker wearily. “Give it a rest.”
“No.” Mr. Avery clears his throat. “That was your land, your grandfather’s legacy to you, that was everything you ever worked for, your truck, your trailer, your horse, all those odd jobs, scrimping and saving to be able to afford the rodeo fees, the gear, the gas for the truck. Years of backbreaking work, sweat and more sweat, hours of practice, and I will not give it a rest.”
“Wait,” I say, still catching up. “It was the Palisades fire where they suspect arson?” Mr. Avery nods.
So, not the fire Samjeeza started trying to flush out my mom and me out at Static Peak.
The other fire. Someone deliberately started the other fire?
“It doesn’t matter,” Tucker says offhandedly. “It’s over and done with. I’m grateful just to be alive.”
So am I. And what I’m thinking in this moment is, How can I keep you that way?
Later Tucker and I go out to the porch. We sit in the swing and rock. It’s cold, freezing actually, but neither of us seems to mind it. It’s too cloudy to see the stars. After we’ve been sitting there for a while, it starts to snow. We don’t go in. We lie there in the swing, swaying back and forth, our breath mingling as it rises in foggy puffs above our heads.
“The sky is falling,” I whisper, watching the flakes drift with the wind.
“Yeah,” he says. “It kind of looks that way.” He sits up in the swing to look into my face, and my heart starts pounding a mile a minute for no good reason.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “You’ve been tense all week. What’s going on?” I stare up at him and think about losing him and my eyes suddenly brim with tears. And tears — any girl’s tears, but mine especially — really get to Tucker.
“Hey,” he whispers, and instantly gathers me up in his arms. I sniffle against his shoulder for a few minutes, then get myself together and look up and try to smile.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m just stressed.”
He frowns. “Angel stuff,” he says, not even as a question. He assumes, every time something’s weighing on me, it must be angel stuff.
I wish I could tell him. But I can’t. Not without knowing for sure.
I shake my head. “College stuff. I’m applying to Stanford, you know.” This is true. Even though I think it’s pretty far-fetched, even though I can’t drum up much enthusiasm for college, even Stanford, I’ve been applying.
Tucker’s expression clears, like he suddenly understands everything perfectly. I’m upset because I am going to college and he’s staying here.
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “We’ll make it work, wherever you end up, okay?”
“Okay.”
He hugs me again, his playful shoulder-squeeze hug. “Everything’s going to be all right, Carrots. You’ll see.”
“How do you know so much?” I ask, only half playfully.
He shrugs. Suddenly he frowns, cocks his head slightly to one side.
“What is it?” I ask.
He holds up a hand to quiet me. Listens for a minute. Then he lets out a breath. “I thought I heard something, that’s all.”
“What?” I ask.
“A horse. I thought I heard a horse.”
“Oh, Tuck,” I say, hugging him tighter. “I’m sorry.”
But then I think I hear something too. A rumbling kind of noise. Maybe hoofbeats.
I listen for a few moments and still hear it, the steady rhythmic strike of something against the earth. Then the huff of air from a large moving animal, running, breathing heavy.
My eyes meet Tucker’s. “I hear it too,” I tell him.
We pop out of the swing, dash onto the front yard. I turn a slow circle in the yard, listening, as the sound gets closer.
“That way,” I breathe, pointing toward the Tetons. Tucker starts running in that direction, leaps over a low fence. That’s when Midas breaks the tree line, running hard, sweat gleaming along his flanks. Tucker sees him and gives this great, joyous whoop. Midas neighs. I stand there and watch as Tucker and Midas meet each other in the field near the house. Tucker throws his arms around Midas’s shoulders, buries his face in the glossy neck. They stay that way for a long time, and then Tucker pulls away and starts moving his hands all over Midas’s body, looking for injury.
“He’s burned, real skinny, but nothing bad,” he calls out. “Nothing we can’t deal with.” Then he says to the horse fondly, “I knew you’d make it. I knew that fire couldn’t get you.” His parents and Wendy come out onto the porch, see Midas, and run down into the field with us to marvel over this crazy miracle. Wendy holds my hand tight as we all bring the horse back into the barn, back where he belongs.
“What once was lost, now is found,” Mrs. Avery says.
“See, Carrots,” Tucker says, stroking Midas’s nose. “Things have a way of working out the way they’re supposed to.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
Sorrow descends on me again the next day. I’d almost forgotten how awful it feels, the way my throat closes up and my chest constricts and my eyes burn. This time I’m in the grocery store with Jeffrey, and the minute I tell him he goes all angel-blood ninja, paranoid and crouching down right there in the middle of the aisle between the yogurt and the cottage cheese while I call Mom again on my cell. I would have thought Jeffrey was funny if I hadn’t been so freaked out by the prospect of getting killed by a Black Wing, only this time I assume I can’t get killed. If I die here on aisle nine, I’ll never make it to spring and the day at the cemetery.
So Samjeeza’s not here to kill me, I think. But it’s not really me I’m worried about. In spite of all my loony ideas about possible ways that Tucker might die, the one that strikes me as the most likely is that a Black Wing shows up and kills him. To get to me. To punish me, maybe, for turning my back on my purpose. To balance the scales. Or maybe simply because Black Wings are bad and they like to do bad things, such as do away with those the good people care about.
The idea
terrifies me. But again the sorrow feeling is gone even before Mom gets there.
Like it never happened. Like it’s all in my head.
A few days later, at Angel Club, Jeffrey’s showing us this trick he can do where he bends a quarter in half using only his fingers. Then of course we all have to try it, first me, and Jeffrey’s none too pleased when I can bend the quarter too, then Angela, who tries so hard that her face turns purple and I think she’s going to pass out, then Christian, who can’t do it, either.
“Apparently not my thing,” he says. “Pretty neat, though.”
“It could be genetic,” Angela theorizes. “Something that runs in the family with you and Jeff.”
Jeffrey snorts. “Oh, yes. A quarter-bending gene.”
I think, what good is it that I can bend quarters? What kind of useful skill is that? And suddenly I feel like I want to cry. For no good reason. Bam — tears.
“What’s the matter?” Christian asks immediately.
“Sorrow,” I croak.
We call my mom. Angela is super spazzing out this time because this is her home and it sucks for your home to not feel safe. My mom shows up ten minutes later, all out of breath. This time she doesn’t look that worried. Just tired.
“Still feeling it?” she asks me.
“No.” Which means I am feeling very stupid at this point.
“Maybe it’s your empathy thing,” Angela says to me as she walks me to the door of the theater. “Maybe you’re picking up on people around you who are sad.” I guess that would make sense.
Mom, it turns out, has a different theory. I find this out later that night, when she comes into my room to say good night. It’s still snowing, has been since the night of Midas’s return, coming down in big flakes at a slant outside my window. It’s going to be a cold night.
“Sorry I keep, you know, crying wolf,” I say to Mom.
“It’s all right,” she says, but her expression is pinched, like I’m giving her new wrinkles.
“You don’t really seem that alarmed,” I point out. “Why is that?”
“I told you,” she says. “I don’t expect Sam to come after us so soon.”
“I really feel sorrow, though. At least I think I do, when it happens. Doesn’t that mean something?”
“It means something.” She sighs. “But it might not be a Black Wing’s sorrow you’re feeling.”
“You think it’s somebody else’s?”
“It could be yours,” she says, looking at me with that quasi-disappointed look again.
For a second it feels like all the air is gone from the room. “Mine?”
“Black Wings feel sorrow because they are going against their design. The same thing happens to us.”
I’m stunned. Seriously, I have no words.
“What Black Wings feel is much, much more intense,” she continues. “They have chosen to separate themselves from God, and that causes them an almost unbearable pain.” I can never go back. That’s what Samjeeza kept thinking that day. I can never go back.
“With us it’s a little more subtle, more sporadic,” she says. “But it happens.”
“So,” I choke out after a minute, “you think I’m feeling flashes of sorrow because I didn’t. . fulfill my purpose?”
“What are you thinking about, when it happens?” she asks.
I should tell her about the dream. The cemetery. All of it. But the words stick in my throat.
“I don’t know.” That’s true. I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking about all those times, but I would hazard a guess that it involved Tucker and my dream and how I’m not going to let it happen.
Fighting my purpose.
Which means I’m going against my design.
The sorrow is mine.
Chapter 7
Go Take a Hike
The next morning there’s two feet of snow on the ground. Our yard’s a winter wonderland, covered neatly in a downy white blanket that makes everything seem muffled. That’s the way it is in Wyoming, I’ve learned. One day it’s autumn, red leaves spiraling down from the trees, squirrels running around frantically burying acorns, a tinge of smoke in the air from people’s fireplaces. Then, like overnight, it’s winter. White and soundless. Really freaking cold.
Mom’s downstairs frying up bacon. She smiles when she sees me.
“Have a seat,” she says. “I’ve just about got your breakfast whipped up.”
“You’re perky this morning,” I observe, which I find odd considering our conversation last night.
“Why shouldn’t I be? It’s a beautiful day.”
I step into the kitchen and discover Jeffrey sitting at the counter looking as half awake as I feel.
“She’s gone crazy,” he tells me matter-of-factly as I slide in next to him.
“I can see that.”
“She says we’re going camping today.”
I swivel around to look at Mom, who’s flipping pancakes, whistling, for crying out loud.
“Mom?” I venture. “Did you happen to notice the snow outside?”
“What’s a little snow?” she replies, an extra twinkle in her twinkly blue eyes.
“Told you,” Jeffrey says. “Crazy.”
As soon as we’re finished with breakfast, Mom turns to us like she’s the director of a cruise ship, ready to get us started on our day.
“Clara, how about you tackle the dishes? Jeffrey, you load the car. I have some final things to do before we go. Pack for the weekend, both of you. Dress warm, but with layers, in case it warms up. I want to leave at about ten. We’re going to be hiking for several hours.”
“But Mom,” I sputter. “I can’t go camping this weekend.” She fixes me with a steady, no-nonsense look. “Why, because you want to stay home and sneak over to Tucker’s?”
“Busted,” laughs Jeffrey.
I guess I wasn’t being as quiet as I thought sneaking out of the house.
“I call shotgun,” Jeffrey says, and that’s that.
So by ten o’clock we’re all showered and dressed and packed and bundled into the car, the heater on full blast. Mom passes me back a thermos of hot chocolate. She’s still in this supernaturally good mood. She puts the car in four-wheel drive and turns the windshield wipers on to clear away the dusting of snow that’s coming down, humming along with the radio as she drives into Jackson. Then she pulls up in front of the Pink Garter.
“Okay, Clara,” she says with a mischievous smile. “You’re up.” I’m confused.
“Go get Angela. Tell her to pack a bag for the weekend.”
“Is she expecting me?” I ask. “Does she know that she’s going on some loony camping trip in the snow?”
Mom’s smile widens. “For once, Angela doesn’t know anything about it. But she’ll want to come, I have a feeling.”
I go to the door of the theater and knock. Angela’s mom answers. Her dark eyes go immediately past me to my mom, who’s now out of the car and coming toward us. For a second, Anna Zerbino looks like she’s going to pass out. Her face gets this strange, part-terrified, part-reverent expression, her hand involuntarily coming up to touch the gold cross dangling around her neck. Apparently Angela’s enlightened her about my family being made up of angel-bloods, and in Anna Zerbino’s experience, we’re something to be feared and worshipped.
“Hi, Anna,” my mom says in her nicest, sweetest, trust-me voice. “I wonder if I might borrow your daughter for a couple of days.”
“This is about the angels,” Anna whispers.
“Yes,” answers my mom. “It’s time.”
Anna nods silently, clutching at the doorway like she suddenly needs it for support. I dart up the stairs to find Angela.
“I think my mom might be hypnotizing your mother, or something,” I say as I push open the door to Angela’s room. She’s sprawled out on her stomach on her bed, writing in her black-and-white composition book. She’s wearing a red Stanford hoodie and only a blind person wouldn’t notice the huge Stanford
banner she’s tacked on the wall over her bed.
“Wow, go Cardinals,” I comment.
“Oh hey, C,” she says, surprised. She flips her notebook closed and tucks it under her pillow. “Were we supposed to hang out today?”
“Yep, it’s written in the stars.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve come to steal you away for a magical two days and one night in the freezing-cold snowy wilderness. Courtesy of my mom.”
Angela sits up. For a minute she looks like an exact replica of her mother, except for the golden eyes. “Your mom? What?”
