by Harrison, S.
Professor Francis looks at his watch. “Ten o’clock exactly. There should be someone here to meet us.”
“Maybe you got the day wrong, Prof!” Dean McCarthy yells from the back of the group.
Brody Sharp walks forward and knocks on the side of the gigantic, black hemisphere. “Hellooo? Anybody dome?”
“Now, now, quiet down, please,” Professor Francis says in an attempt to quash the laughter.
It’s then that I notice the faint hissing sound. Karla Bassano is the first one to see where it’s coming from. She points, clapping her hands excitedly, her shiny curls bouncing up and down as she does tiny jumps on the spot. “There! Look!” she screeches.
Everyone’s eyes look where she’s pointing, scanning the sides of the dome for whatever it is that she’s spotted.
“There, inside, on the ground!” she screeches again. “That little star!”
Sure enough, through the glass on the inside of the dome, there’s a small twinkling point of light. It really does look just like a single star sitting on the ground against an empty, pitch-black night sky. Everybody runs forward to see it, all of us pressing our noses to the cold black glass, cupping our hands around our eyes. Some kids immediately begin taking video with their phones.
It gets brighter and brighter and bigger and bigger until it’s a blue-white globe the size of a basketball. After a few seconds it gently begins to rise, floating up in a straight line from the ground. It’s impossible to judge how far inside the dome the ball of light is; we can see it through the glass as if the wall is transparent, but the ball of light is still somehow inexplicably surrounded with an impenetrable darkness. We crane our necks as the glowing sphere slowly drifts upward. Up and up it goes, until eventually it reaches the inside surface high in the dome. It hovers there for a few seconds—then, in a blink, splits into four. Each smaller ball shoots off in its own direction, leaving thick trails of white light behind like swathes of luminous paint, all the way down the giant dark curve and back to the ground. The glowing white beams begin rotating sideways, painting the whole inside of the gigantic dome pure white. There’s a bright flash and the brilliant white veneer suddenly drops from the crown of the dome, like a five-hundred-foot-high curtain. It gracefully cascades down the sides of the massive structure in silent billows before vanishing into the ground like mist.
In the minute from the first moment Karla saw the star until now, the entire sixty-story-high curve has turned crystal-clear transparent.
We all stand there in wide-eyed amazement. The sight that greets us is breathtaking, but at the same time doesn’t quite make sense. Through the glass of the dome, filling the entire space, I see what can only be described as a lush, green, thriving, tropical rainforest. It’s glaringly plain to see that this is so much more than just a fancy greenhouse filled with foreign plants. Oh no. This is a flourishing, steaming, moving, living ecosystem, complete in every way. It’s as if a giant hand had reached down from the sky, scooped an immense circle of jungle from the depths of the Amazon, and inexplicably placed it here in pristine perfection, more than six thousand miles from where it should exist. Towering trees wrapped in sinewy tendrils of ivy jut skyward from thick, green, tangled undergrowth. There are flashes of vibrant color from the plumage of exotic birds as they flit back and forth in the high branches. A large lizard of some kind sleepily watches us from a big flat rock as spider monkeys playfully chase each other through the leaves overhead. A stream winds its way through the thicket, lazily trickling over stones as it flows. A wild boar and two piglets stand at its edge, nuzzling the water as a huge, mottled python slowly coils its thick body down a mass of twisted vines. It’s the most wondrous thing I’ve ever seen.
I look around at the group and everyone seems to be just as awestruck as I am, their mouths agape at the incredible beauty that has just been unveiled before us.
My sudden and unexpected excitement at what else we might see today is immediately tinged with bitterness. How could such an amazing thing, something that my father created, be as new to me as everyone else who is here seeing it for the first time, too?
Does he really think that little of me? Does he think of me at all? Dammit! There are those pesky mixed feelings again. I decide to try and do what I have always done. I push them to the back of my mind and cover them with indifference. In that respect, maybe he and I are all too similar.
“There’s someone in there!” Brent Fairchild exclaims in a high-pitched tone of voice that strips away his usual arrogant façade.
A human figure seems to have materialized from absolutely nowhere. It starts walking directly toward us. It looks like it’s covered from head to toe in some kind of skin-tight, hooded, silver bodysuit. Judging by the breasts beneath that suit, it’s obvious that she is a woman, and yet where her face should be, there’s a featureless, shiny, black oval-shaped mask. She walks toward the wall of the dome, stops about sixty feet away from us on the other side, and stands motionless, her black-plastic-covered face staring blankly out toward us.
Suddenly, without warning, a razor-thin split shears up the entire surface of the glass. With a sound like violent ocean waves crashing against a rocky shore, the whole massive dome slices down the middle and opens up like an impossibly huge crystal flower. We all stumble and stagger backward in speechless wonder. The gap is getting wider and wider, the edges cascading loudly into the ground as if it were made from thousands of tons of free-standing water, pouring down into itself and inexplicably disappearing without a trace, like ice melting into piping-hot sand on a sweltering summer’s day.
What just a moment ago resembled a giant, jungle-filled snow globe now looks more like a huge, translucent mouth, slowly yawning skyward. The sounds of birds and monkeys become louder and louder as the gap expands, the edges retracting down into the earth until soon the glass cage is completely gone, sunken into the dirt at the edge of the circular stone rim surrounding the beautiful, teeming green forest. The ground begins to vibrate, quickly followed by a rolling rumbling noise in the distance. Bit stumbles and grabs onto Professor Francis’s arm.
I reach out for something to hold on to and clutch the nearest person without thinking.
I turn and find myself looking directly into Ryan Forrester’s eyes. They’re a kind of hazel amber, speckled with tiny flecks of gold. “Hi,” he says softly, his voice warm and calm. My stomach does a somersault.
Out of the corner of my eye, something moves. A flock of birds has been startled into the air. Ryan and I look up just in time to see a massive flat-topped monolith of brown rock emerge above the trees from the depths of the jungle.
Trees sprout instantaneously on the top ridges, and shallow troughs carve themselves on either side. We hear the sound of rushing water before we see it. Louder and louder it becomes, until suddenly it gushes out over the sides of the peak, pouring in heavy torrents out into the jungle below. The shaking ceases and the entire monolith changes color from terracotta brown to a dark shade of gray. Blue flames erupt from the face of the sheer rock wall, burning a huge flickering Blackstone diamond logo into its surface.
Somewhere in the dense jungle, as if on cue, the powerful guttural roar of what I imagine could only be a tiger reverberates through the trees and echoes into the distance.
Everything is absolutely breathtaking.
Even though she’s been right in front of us the whole time, I had forgotten the woman was even there, standing as still as a statue in front of this stunning backdrop. Professor Francis is as gob-smacked as the rest of us, ogling open-mouthed at the amazing sights and sounds. After a moment he seems to gather his senses. “Move up. Move up everyone.” Oohing and aahing and wowing, we all walk forward toward the silver woman. Karla Bassano, at the back of the group, jumps with a little screech as grass and bushes sprout from the ground behind her. The farther in we all go, the thicker the sprouting foliage behind us becomes, until we’re a
ll gathered in a small round clearing, completely surrounded by trees and bushes with the woman in silver standing in the center a few feet in front of us.
With a quiet hiss, the black plastic oval covering the woman’s face shifts and morphs, molding itself into human features. In just a few seconds the mask has transformed, the glassy black replaced with the face of a beautiful woman. She has alabaster skin, deep, sapphire-blue eyes, dark eyebrows, a perfectly shaped nose, and soft pink lips. She scans across the faces of the group. When her eyes meet mine, she stops and smiles warmly. In a very feminine, yet slightly metallic, voice, she utters only one word.
“Welcome.”
The shock takes half a second to register, but when it does it hits me like a kick to the stomach. That face. I’ve seen that face before. I’ve seen that face a thousand times.
I know the elegant curves of the eyebrows, those lips and those cheekbones, that smooth, pale skin and that delicately pointed nose. Even the beauty spot on her cheek is there. Every smile line and eyelash is committed to memory. I know that face as well as I know my own.
Suddenly my vision swirls and my legs stop working. The world goes into slow motion as I fall and darkness closes in from all sides. I’ve never fainted before. It’s something that I honestly thought I would never do. Just like I never imagined that I would ever look into those eyes, or see that face outside of a picture frame. It’s the last image I see before everything goes completely black. The smiling face of the woman in silver is the smiling face of Genevieve Blackstone.
My dead mother.
CHAPTER SIX
“Finn?”
I open my eyes to the bright-blue sunny sky of a balmy summer afternoon. Kneeling at my side is the exact person that I was hoping for. My Jonah.
“Wha . . . happen—?” I mumble groggily.
“You fell, sweetheart. I saw you from the window of my room. It was quite a tumble. Don’t move too much, Finn, you were knocked out for a little while.”
I sit up despite his insisting I stay still. Over my shoulder, lying at the bottom of the hill, is the red bicycle that Jonah bought for my sixth birthday. Its front fork is buckled, the front wheel warped, and the spokes are splayed at bizarre angles like uncooked metal spaghetti.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Jonah asks, a look of deep concern creasing his face.
“Two,” I say, blinking my eyes back into focus.
“What day is it? How old are you?”
“It’s Saturday; I’m thirteen. I’m OK, Jonah, stop making a fuss,” I say, brushing his hand away.
“I think you’re gonna be alright. Just a few scrapes here and there. Let’s get you back up to the house and check you out properly, just to be on the safe side.”
I let out a bothered sigh. I know Jonah won’t let this drop until I agree to some unnecessary coddling. I try to get up and a sharp jolt spears along my wrist to my elbow. “Ow! Wait . . . ow . . . I . . . I think I’ve broken my arm.”
It hurts a lot, but I know it’s broken mostly because my forearm isn’t straight anymore. Now there’s a freaky bend where there definitely shouldn’t be one.
Wincing, I hold my arm up for Jonah to inspect. His face turns as white as a sheet. Not the reaction I was expecting from a former soldier.
“It’s OK,” I say. “I’ll just straighten it out.”
“NOOO!” yells Jonah, but I’ve already done it. I hold the bent part in place with my other hand, close my eyes, and think of something that makes me angry. Anything to do with Nanny Theresa usually does the trick.
“We need to call the doctor, Finn, right now. Come with me up to the house,” he says in his no-nonsense tone.
“Shhhh. Wait. Just a few more seconds aaand . . . there you go, all fixed,” I say matter-of-factly, holding out my straightened arm for him to see. I give my fingers a wiggle to test them and grimace at the little needles of pain. Jonah’s expression is a surprising mixture of confusion and bewilderment, and it’s then that I suddenly remember.
He’s never seen me do that before.
Maybe if I just pretend it didn’t happen? Act like it’s no big deal, shrug it off.
“I’m calling the doctor, Finn,” Jonah insists again.
“Don’t be silly,” I say, half-laughing. “It’ll be a bit sore for a few hours, but it’ll be just like new tomorrow.”
I get to my feet and walk over to my bike.
“It’s wrecked, Jonah. And look, I’ve ripped my favorite t-shirt as well.”
He’s standing there looking at me strangely, eyes narrow, his head tilted slightly to the side.
“Finn, how did you do that?”
“It must have happened when I crashed the bike,” I say, plucking at the hole of torn fabric, deliberately avoiding where I know this soon-to-be lecture is heading. “I know I shouldn’t have been steering with my feet, and that old bike is waaay too small for me now, but if it wasn’t for that damn pothole . . .”
“Not the rip in your shirt, Finn, your arm. How did you fix your arm?”
Jonah walks over and gently takes my wrist. He runs his fingers over the skin where the bend was. “It was broken. I saw it.”
“Oh. That,” I mumble.
Usually I try my hardest not to lie to Jonah. I much prefer to keep things from him instead, but now that he’s asked, I guess I’m gonna have to spill.
“I’ll tell you if you promise not to get mad. Or punish me,” I say, frowning up at him, pointing my finger at his nose like I have some kind of authority over the situation.
“You have to promise, though,” I demand.
He stands there with folded arms, expecting me to fess up without bargaining. He really should know better by now.
“Cross on it, and I’ll tell you.”
Jonah sighs and rolls his eyes. He knows he can’t catch me if I run off across the fields, which is exactly what I’ll do if he doesn’t swear on it. He grudgingly crosses his heart. I make him do that every time I think he might get mad at something I’ve done. In fact, this is the third time this week I’ve made him cross on something. As far as I’m concerned it’s a binding contract with absolutely no take-backs.
I take a deep breath, let out a huge sigh, and grudgingly confess. “It’s not the first bone that I’ve broken.”
The familiar “what have you been keeping from me?” crinkle appears on Jonah’s forehead.
“Explain,” he mutters.
“The first time was an accident, I swear. One night I took Beauty out for a ride by the lake and she got spooked by something and bucked me off. I broke my arm pretty bad,” I say, absent-mindedly rubbing a spot on my upper arm.
“What? When?!” blurts Jonah.
“Three years ago,” I murmur coyly.
“Three years?! Why am I only finding out about this now?” Jonah bellows, his voice becoming louder with every word.
“I didn’t wanna get in trouble for taking her out without permission, so I snuck upstairs and went to bed. I willed my arm to get better, and by morning it was,” I say, looking guiltily at the ground.
“Well, maybe your arm wasn’t really broken? It could have been a bad bruise or . . . but that doesn’t explain how you just fixed your . . . you are in a lot of trouble, Miss Blackstone!” Jonah shouts. It’s kinda funny to see him so flustered.
“No punishment. You promised. You totally crossed on it.” I point the finger of power at the spot right between his eyes.
“But how did you just fix it like that? It’s simply not possible.”
“Well, quite clearly it is,” I say, waving my arm in front of his face. “I can heal cuts and bruises, too. Anything’s possible. You told me that. I used mind over matter just like you taught me.”
“That’s not exactly how it’s supposed to work, Finn,” Jonah says, softly prodding my arm. “Doesn’t it hurt?”<
br />
“Yeah, totally! It hurts like crazy at first, but after the bone sets, it aches for a while and my arm will be a bit weak for a couple of days. It took a lot of practice to teach myself how to do it properly. In the beginning I really had to concentrate. Had to break a lot of bones before I was able to set them as quickly as I did just then.” I slap my hand over my mouth. What is wrong with me today?
Jonah puts his hands on his hips and gives me his interrogation eyes. “Start talking.”
After I make Jonah cross his heart two more times, I tell him how I had jumped off the roof of the house and broken my ankle, broken both wrists and all my fingers with a hammer, and broken my arm three times jumping off my bike and rope-swinging into tree trunks. There was also the time I jumped out of a tree onto the front of the Bentley one day when Arthur was taking it to the mechanic. Cracked two ribs and broke my wrist again. I really feel bad about that one. When one of the maids found Arthur, he was face-down on the driveway. He had died of a heart attack. For obvious reasons, I decide to keep that one to myself.
“Oh, and my nose got busted once when Carlo threw a rock at me, and another time he hit me with a tree branch. Cracked my arm that time, too.”
Those last two confessions just slip out. As soon as I say them, I want to take them back. I swear it has to be the bump on my head. I really don’t want Carlo to get in trouble because of me, and right now it sounds like all he does is fight with me and hit me with stuff.
“Carlo knows that you can do this?” Jonah asks sternly.
“Ah, yeah, he’s seen me do it a couple times . . .” I say, knowing it’s more like five or six.
“I think I need to have a little chat with young Carlo,” Jonah says gravely. He turns and walks briskly in the direction of the stables.
“I made him do it!” I plead at Jonah’s back, chasing after him.
“Leave your bike and get back to the house, Finn!” Jonah barks over his shoulder.
“It was only a fracture!” I yell, but he pretends not to hear me. “I can honestly tell the difference! It was two whole summers ago!”
