The Awakening of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  He smiled, a nice full smile. It was charming and brilliant—and edged and dangerous. The image of him wavered between the two.

  “Do not be afraid, Miss Crown. I am anchoring you.” He waved a hand in an aristocratic manner. “You'd likely be dead otherwise, or locked in a mental ward. Though, you are a fascinating subject. I wonder if you might spontaneously create a portal to another layer of the world.”

  “Right.” I cast a quick glance around the room. There were students sitting at each workspace, but every one of them was unmoving. Frozen mid-movement.

  “Without a single bit of knowledge or training, you anchored your brother for weeks.” I jerked at the mention of Christian, and Mr. Verisetti smiled. “I find the anchoring beyond interesting. Perhaps it is a twin thing. Perhaps it is you.”

  I took a full step back to get a better line around the tables to the door, and tried to cover my actions with a neutral smile. I could barely force the edges of my lips up.

  In both images his smile turned into something more satisfied. “You are seeing me truly now? Of course you are. Excellent.”

  I took another step back. In movies, when men cornered women, the men were usually hideous in some way. Showing their evil on their skin or in their expressions. Mr. Verisetti looked angelic, except for the intensity of his eyes, and the gold cuff at his ear which seemed to brighten suddenly. I felt an answering electricity—the hair on my arms standing on end—in reaction.

  “Don't you want to see what is in the box?”

  There was something mesmerizing about his voice that circled around me, but it was only an echo of whatever spell I had been under while drawing, and I pushed it aside. My heart thumped loudly in the unnatural silence of the room. “What box?”

  “The one in the painting.” He motioned toward the piece I had drawn.

  “That's charcoal.”

  “Ah, yes, the one you were about to paint.”

  “Right. Listen. Have the piece, if you want it.” I actually didn't want him to have it. There was a part of me that said mine in a vicious voice. “School is almost over. My parents will be waiting for me outside. They'll probably be in here to get me any moment now.” I tried not to concentrate on the fact that no one in the classroom had moved an inch throughout our entire conversation.

  He laughed lightly, his attention divided between the picture and me. “Clever caterpillar. Clever butterfly.” His voice had changed. It was like a long sweep of a loaded brush, curling about a canvas with never ending shades of red.

  He tilted his head, looking at the ceiling. “Your father is indeed texting you right this moment to tell you not to walk home, that he will pick you up, and your mother is planning to leave from work soon. Worried and distrustful now, aren't they? It was easy enough to put traces on them, when they are connected to someone like you.”

  I experienced that feeling of bone deep fear that only something exceptionally scary produced. Cold rushed down my throat and hardened in my stomach. Freezing all my organs, making it hard to breathe.

  My phone vibrated once in my pocket.

  His smile grew.

  I wondered if this was how a heart attack felt—this non-breathing sort of heart failure. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to finish your picture. You've been starving. And I've been dangling the dish of cream for weeks now instead of letting you drink. I can't be sorry, alas. Not for such delicious torment. Especially when it is all the more potent when one such as you breaks through on her own. More painful as well, but such is art.” He smiled. It was lovely and terrifying at the same time.

  “I don't understand.” My own break from reality, fine. A psychotic break in a guy who outclassed me by a foot and a good hundred pounds? Not good.

  “No, of course you do not.” He looked back at the piece on the easel. “A little dark treasure waiting to bloom. It has been a great delight to watch you these last few weeks.”

  “Ok.” I chanced another step.

  “I adore ferals.” His fingers lightly swept a table as he took a step closer. “Draining them dry is such a delight. All for a good cause, I assure you. And with you—double the delicious torment.”

  The cold in my stomach turned brittle.

  “Here, in your natural element...I could simply sit for days and watch in wonder. Alas, that I have a mission far too important, because watching you...the words...” His other hand went to his chest, and he bowed his head.

  I took that as my cue and ran.

  I was fast—I had practiced ten million passing drills with Christian, running patterns across our yard in order to make him the best. I dodged desks and chairs, hand outstretched for the door. My hand struck an invisible barrier, fingers crumpling inward toward my palm, then my shoulder, head, and hip hit an invisible wall and bounced me back as if I had run into a giant wall of clear Jell-O. The gross kind with the hard top.

  I turned quickly and put up my hands. Betrayal tasted like bitter toffees.

  “I can't let you leave yet, I'm sorry,” he said, not looking sorry in the slightest as his mouth quirked invitingly again.

  I couldn't respond. I didn't know what to say. There was some sort of force field at work behind me. Magic. A vision of electric arcs hit me, and I clutched my head as pain exploded in my skull. My newly crazed teacher was moving closer, one swaying step at a time. All of the colors and shadows around me drew into a vision of dark El Greco lightning, threatening.

  He cooed like I was a small lamb. “Don't be frightened. That just won't do. And you are developing a resistance to the toffees.” He reached into his pocket to grab—a knife, a gun, duct tape?—and I scrambled for anything I could see. I grabbed a pair of scissors on the table and thrust them in front of me.

  “Stop!”

  He held his hands out. No weapon. Nothing sinister. Only pieces of pocket lint. I could have dropped the scissors, so heady was my relief, but my fingers stayed tight around the handle. My unmoving classmates sat frozen in their seats around us, eyes down.

  The lint lifted and swirled and I could only watch, strangely detached, unable to move with the unnatural wall at my back, as the lint swirled and settled over me, covering and embedding small hooks into my skin like some strange glitter.

  There was a pull, starting in the top layer of my skin, then the pull became a wrench that spread through my veins, my bones, diving, swirling, sucking. A pull, then a tug. I shuddered as they rippled through me. Something was being taken from me. I tried to grab whatever it was, but the feeling flitted away, swirling into the air in reflection of the lint. A deep breath released from my lips. Then two. I shuddered, then grew still.

  I looked at my shimmering arms. I felt light. Unencumbered. As if the hooks were pulling all feelings of fear—current and past—right from my flesh and dissipating them into the air.

  Terror...did not exist. I could think about Christian and my emotional pain, but it was as if it was someone else's life and misery that I was observing.

  “Don't you want to finish your picture, Ren?”

  I did. I did want to finish my picture.

  “You've hurt yourself.” He touched my hand. I hadn't seen him move closer, but suddenly it didn't frighten me. “Let me help.”

  I looked down. There was a trickle of blood where I had cut myself on the edge of the scissors. The thin rivulet of blood trailed along a path of glitter. The pain hadn't registered. I had been too desperate for a weapon and too scared to think of anything else. Mr. Verisetti's fingers wrapped around the scissors, too.

  But I wasn't scared anymore.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted to finish my painting. I wanted my brother. I wanted to go home. I wanted to let go of the scissors that were still clasped in my fist. Why couldn't I release the scissors if I wasn't scared?

  The ground beneath me shook.

  He moved back quickly, letting me keep my grip. “Bravo, little butterfly.” There was a smile in his voice, even as he kept his distance. If I was
n't scared, why did I feel relief? The shaking stilled.

  “Most stubborn of you to fight the dust.” He smiled, but didn't attempt to come near me again, as if he had sudden cause to be wary. “You beat the toffees, but it will take you far too long to beat the dust. Should you survive, I definitely will refine my tests on you. Oh, don't look at me that way. It is far better than what the Department will do to you, should they figure out what you are.”

  “Who are you?” My mind clinically said that I should be scared in this situation. Like a portrait missing its background—a face floating in empty space. But without the actual fear, my other emotions easily overtook conscious thought. My unchecked desires pushing into control and displaying the possibilities of what I could accomplish without fear.

  He smiled, a wide mysterious smile, and the intensity in his eyes grew. “Who am I? I am no one and everyone. But don't you want to finish your piece?”

  No. Yes.

  No.

  “Look at you fight. I ache to push the boundaries of such aggression and submission, regardless of the consequences.” But he maintained his distance. He looked back to the piece and cocked his head. “But time hastens all, and for now, I think there is enough to entice you without resorting to other means. Such a hungry soul. Twins. Those fools should have captured you both alive.”

  The tube of paint was in his hand and not mine. With his finger, he smeared a swath of glittery electric blue onto the figure of the girl twin on the left. The color spread to all areas of her dress, as if absorbing the white space. The strange color was like the second paint I had mixed, but it contained an added shimmer of something. Something almost alive. A color edged in silver and gold.

  “I am tempted to keep you, even though it would go against all of my plans. If you learn the pleasure of exploiting such power, though, I just might,” he said as he dabbed a bit more of the color on. “On your own, I am sure you would have created something magnificent for your awakening—perhaps destroyed the entire eastern seaboard or created a monster from the pits of hell—and I will dream of it, I will. But alas, I must guide this so that I obtain what I must have.”

  The figure started...dancing. Her long, white dress whirled outward from the page, flinging white smoke into swirls that appeared to leave the paper entirely. This did not seem to surprise Mr. Verisetti—and I could see his eyes following the motion. I was not alone in my craziness. Or not crazy at all.

  He cocked his head, still watching the girl. “Your lavender mix was truly exceptional, and I ached to use it, but this blue is distinctly apt for what I require. A warrior's hue. My heart weeps for what might have been, should we have prolonged this experience another week.” He watched the figure twirl. “I might have procured God's own sword.”

  The girl in the sketch tried to get the boy figure to dance with her, but he remained motionless. I wanted him to dance too. Needed it.

  Golden light illuminated the edges of the girl's dress.

  “Ah, yes. There you go, Butterfly. Perfect,” he said. He was suddenly touching my wrist, tucking a stone under my brother's leather band, securing it against my skin. “There is never a force quite as fierce as an Awakening. You possess quite a stubborn will—it amuses me, and I never let opportunities slip by.”

  He smiled at me as he stepped back again. “I will confess, here in this moment that you will never remember, that I have some fondness for you. Art will always be my first love, and you, my dear, will be a dark goddess among artists. Should you survive, it will come in quite handy in the future to have learned your habits and weaknesses.”

  I gave a stiff, negative shake of my head.

  He put a hand to his chest. “Glorious. Now, as to your other concern...” He looked to the paper, to the motionless figure of the boy. He smiled, a beautiful, edged smile. “We shall see.”

  Gold glinted from his ear cuff, and it felt like molten gold flowed through my limbs in response, weighting them, then bursting into brilliant gold sparks, glitter staining everything in my vision.

  I followed his line of sight and everything in me suddenly focused on one thing. I wanted that boy to dance.

  The girl whirled in her gold-edged dress, leaving the figure of the boy behind. She twirled closer, reaching out from the paper, and hooked her hand over my arm, pulling me inside, amidst the paint and charcoal into a world filled with—

  Blackness cleared from my vision. I had...what had I been doing? I stood with heavy scissors gripped in one fist feeling no fear at all. Just wrongness. And it felt as if I had been gripping something in both hands for a long time. My joints hurt with the effort. My wrist burned. My eyes pulled to the clock on the wall. The bell would ring in five minutes.

  Five, not fifteen?

  I shook my head trying to clear the lingering fog, yet I kept my grip on the scissors. Dried paint crowned every fingertip. What had I been doing? I pushed at the fog in my mind. There was a man in front of me, putting a box into his pocket and smiling at an easel.

  “Even something vulnerable like a sapling or chrysalis can be extraordinary given the right purpose, Butterfly.”

  I followed his eyes to the picture. It too was wrong. A figure of a girl stood in front of closed drapes holding a potted sapling in her hands. Patterned, circular portals shaded with a dimensional edge were the only adornment on the draperies. No box, no second figure, and no color present anywhere. Yet my fingertips were stained blue.

  The man smiled, as if I had voiced my thoughts aloud.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  The question was wrong. God, what...? I pushed as hard as I could against the fog.

  “I am the man with the answers to all of the questions you don't even yet know to ask.”

  I pushed harder. Hard enough, that I felt something tear around my mind.

  There was a loud boom outside, and the other students started moving again, but I couldn't look away from the man in front of me. His smile grew. “Ah, conceit, my ultimate weakness. You ripped right through and exposed me. Delicious. But far too late for them.”

  Tumbled blocks of memory and information re-formed into a whole, bar one smoking black spot. Mr. Verisetti held something large and dark in his hand, a wide mysterious smile curling his lips. “No time to test further. Do keep hold of that marvelous piece of art.”

  He dropped a wide, round, black circle to the floor. It stuck like a suction cup thrown with great force. “They'll be here in five minutes. You should really run. Or else they will take that which I have allowed you to keep—your life and magic. I left a bit in the container since you did so well.” He stepped forward, one foot hovering an inch above the black circle, the other at its edge. “Do remember my generosity. Until next we meet, Butterfly, I look forward to the havoc you will wreak.”

  He slid forward on his planted foot, not quite making a hop, not quite taking a step, and his body fell into the black hole. The edges of the black circle pulled in quickly toward center, slipping across the still completely intact tile, as if the circle had been a thin blanket covering a gaping hole, and weight was forcing the entire blanket down and pulling the rest of the earth around and above it to close the hole. Intact floor tile remained as the circle rapidly pulled to its own center, sealing itself to a point over the top of him like a pod. Mr. Verisetti disappeared into the earth without an iota of displacement.

  The last bit of black circle disappeared without a sound.

  Only a light scorch mark remained, as if something round had burned the tile, then been dragged, flaming, to center. I held the scissors tightly in front of me.

  “What is she doing now?” I heard the whispers of the students, who were moving around once again.

  Your life and magic. Magic. I gripped the scissors harder.

  The door of the classroom burst open, and a boy ran inside, furtively looking in all directions, then at something in his hand.

  I looked back to the spot on the floor where my teacher had disappeared. I pushed against
the feel of the hooks still buried in my skin. I demanded anger. I demanded terror. I demanded betrayed sorrow.

  “Hey, where did Mr. Verisetti go?” another student said, craning her head. “Did she kill him too?”

  “Verisetti?” The new boy said in alarm as he stopped next to me. He looked my age, but I had never seen him at school. The jacket of his tailored suit was slightly askew, his gray eyes sharp. His dark hair and silver-rimmed glasses mirrored the black and silver of his pinstripes.

  He looked terrified, but squared his shoulders, held out a device and made a sweeping motion with it over the black spot, as if he were scanning the space. He kept sending quick glances between the door of the classroom and his device. None of the other students were looking at him.

  It was like I was in a painting by Magritte—normal objects assembled together to form a surrealistic whole. Except, the boy next to me should be wearing a bowler, not a beret. And carrying an apple, rather than a computer tablet.

  The boy's face brightened. “I knew it. I knew one could work here. Ha. Suck it, Rational Engineers' Club. The Department can suck it too.”

  He bent down and scraped a residue from the black scorch mark, collecting it and placing it on a violet-colored tablet device. Then he ran the device over the spot again, pushing buttons. “Three more minutes and this place will be crawling with those bastards. Come on, come on, a little more. I'm so going to win the competition this year. Record keeping first, though. What's that terrorist's full name?”

  He touched beneath his ear and his eyes lit. “Oh, right.”

  He cleared his throat and pushed a finger to the tablet. “On this day, I, William Archenwald Tasky, report that I have found traces of portal pad technology in the First Layer. The name Verisetti was mentioned by an ordinary boy. This leads me to conclude that Raphael Immanuel Verisetti might be involved, given the criminal circumstances. Bookmark this report under Will Is Always Right.”