The Soultakers (The Treemakers Trilogy Book 2)

by Christina L. Rozelle

  I push back from her in momentary disbelief and look into her deep blue eyes. I brush my fingers across her smooth cheek, and she grins at me.

  “It’s really you.” I tremble, tears welling. “You’re back.”

  “I never left.”

  “Wait—where’s Baby Lou?” I whip around to scan the dark cell.

  “Fabricated.” Aby spins me back toward her. “I’m sorry, Joy. She does not exist. The Superiors, Miguel, Pedro, Emerson, Mateo . . . Jax. None of them ever existed.”

  “What do you—? Of course they existed!”

  “They’ve altered your memories, except for a few things. Even the world you believe we live in isn’t what you think. This will take some adjustment, but it’ll be quick. You’re going to love it.”

  But nothing she says makes any sense. Her smile’s rebuked by the burning of suspected lies in my core. Baby Lou and Jax can’t be made-up. They’re too real; my love for them, too real. And what about our child growing inside me?

  “The baby . . .”

  Aby takes my hand. “Joy, there’s no baby. There never was.”

  “But . . . but Tallulah—”

  “Certain things were not fabricated. Me, Tallulah . . . your father, a few others. Come on.” She pulls me through the doorway. “We have to go.”

  I toss the keys aside, dazed, and Tallulah scampers off. My thoughts crash at my tongue, too many of them to grasp one clear enough to speak. So I let her guide me out into the corridor, and my heart stops. “Aby, why are we at Gomorrah Grande?” Light flickers behind me, illuminating the room in which I discovered her and Jax together. “I thought this was a cell at the Subterrane.”

  “I’ll explain everything on the way.”

  We travel down the hallway and enter the magic pool room, where she places a finger to her lips. I freeze. There, in the center of the pool lies a platform of fire, and over it spins a horizontal metal pole pierced straight through the small, charred body of a boy. Cloaked people, chanting low and monotone, stand in the water around him. I scream, but Aby covers my mouth and drags me into the shadows.

  After we sneak down the mirrored hallway, we get to the lobby, which is how I remember it: the enormous, cylindrical column, rising all the way up, past the sky hammock to the dome. Bloodbugs flutter through the air, land in the column’s thick, leafy covering, and I shiver.

  Aby leads me toward the jungle elevator, except . . . it isn’t there. Instead, the wall’s an oversized window overlooking a beach, like Zentao’s.

  Now I’m sure I’m dreaming.

  “You’re thinking it’s not real.” She sweeps me through an open door in the glass wall, out into a grassy field. “It’s real! More so than any recent memories you have.” A few hundred feet away, the grass fades into a sandy beach. She races toward it, spins and dances, stirring up a swarm of black butterflies. “Come on!”

  I jog to her, but something in my gut tells me to stop. Somewhere, a voice says: Run, Joy. Aby skips back to me, takes my hand, and tugs me toward the shoreline. Only when my toes touch cold, rough sand do I realize I’m barefoot. Where’d my boots go? I swear I was wearing them.

  The air is strange, still, sterile, thick in my lungs. It suffocates me. My heart pounds slow and hard, and I begin to sweat. “No, Aby.” I yank her back, plant my feet. “It’s not possible. This is a dream, it has to be.”

  She cups my cheeks, sad, like she was toward the end of . . . what I thought was her life. “Joy, I need something from you. A secret, a lie. I have to be certain it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  Why do those words sound so familiar?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking—”

  “The key, Joy. It’s imperative you tell me where it is. Did you put it somewhere?”

  Tears trail down her cheeks. She clutches my wrists, and I peer down at her hands. The mole that dotted the knuckle above her thumb is missing, and the fingers aren’t long enough. Her skin is too dark. I gaze into her eyes, which aren’t quite right, the lashes too short.

  And Aby would never say the word “imperative.”

  “You’re . . . you’re not Aby.”

  In a flash, she jabs my face, and her hand enters my mind with a pain so great I scream and jump back. I touch the spot on my head. No wetness. She lunges, shoving me toward the shore. Her fingers become knives, and she grows two feet taller. I dive into the ocean, and she dives in after me. The water’s foul, not salty, my nostrils burn with the stench of waste. I sink in its smothering thickness, then break the surface again, breathless. Now, I’m floating through a tunnel, in a river of feces, toxic waste, corpses, bloodbugs, and jumper carcasses. Demon Aby is gone.

  Along the side is a narrow ledge, which I use to drag myself out. Wet, stinking, and covered in brown, I lean over and vomit blood. It pours from my mouth onto the concrete, splattering the arced wall beside and above me. I wipe my mouth and stand on wobbly legs, hunched over because the ceiling is too low.

  Cries echo from down the tunnel.

  “Baby Lou!” I try to run, but the air’s too thick. With every step, the tunnel stretches farther, grows longer. Bodies float in the filth, people I used to know: Toby, Miguel, Samurai, and . . .

  “Mom?”

  Her body’s young and fresh, pure against the rot river. She glances up at me.

  “Momma!”

  She reaches for me, but a figure rises up next to her out of the muck, red hair matted with brown.

  Aby?

  She lifts her head, and it’s not her. Wearing the wig he made from Aby’s hair, Emmanuel Superior snatches my mother away into the filth.

  “Momma!” I jump in, but the waste disappears and I’m floating in darkness. No light or sound. No sensation. Nothing, except for the hint of citrus.

  When I awaken, pain racks my body, and a dim blue light blurs before I close my sore eyes again. I can’t move. My head spins, pounds. I moan in agony and the sound echoes back to my own ears. Disoriented. Where am I? My wrists and ankles are strapped down.

  “Hello?”

  My voice is hoarse, weak. I’m thirsty, and there’s so much pain. My throbbing head matches the quaking in my stomach. I try to touch it, but my hands are bound too tight.

  What happened? I can’t remember. “Please . . . someone . . . tell me where I am. Why do I hurt so much?”

  The top of the compartment rises, bright light pours in, and I squint into it.

  A woman with short blonde hair and glasses peers down at me. “Hello there, Lily.”

  “Who . . . are you?”

  “I’m Suellen. You may not remember me, though. You’ve had quite the accident.” She punches a button, and the straps release my ankles and wrists.

  “Where . . . am I?” I move to touch my stomach, which aches and burns.

  “No, don’t.” Suellen guides my hand away from the wound. “It needs antiseptic, and I’ll give you something for the pain.” She squeezes clear gel from a tube onto a gloved finger, then smoothes it over my belly’s exposed skin.

  I cringe at her touch. “What happened to me?”

  “You fell from a third-level balcony and impaled yourself on a fence post. You’re very lucky to be alive.”

  “But why . . . why don’t I remember that? And why did you call me Lily? That’s not my name, it’s . . . it’s . . .”

  “You bashed your head against a stone wall. We’re not yet sure if the amnesia will be permanent or not. We’re hoping you’ll get your memory back before the wedding.”

  “W-wedding?”

  Suellen chuckles and sweeps hair from my forehead. “You poor thing . . . you have no idea how fortunate you are. There are thousands who’d take your place in a heartbeat. Even now. In fact, we’re wondering if that might be the dark secret behind your . . . ‘accident.’ We don’t believe it was an accident at all.”


  I lie back down, breathing in a deep dread. None of this is right. The memories are all there, on the edge of my thoughts . . . but out of reach.

  “Come on, let’s get you out of this thing.” She helps me up, guiding me with one hand gripping mine, and the other under my arm to steady me.

  “Why am I in this?”

  “It’s a repair compartment. You had a fractured skull, two broken ankles, three broken vertebrae, a broken femur, and a dislocated hip and shoulder. Not to mention a ton of scrapes and bruises. You’ve been in here for five days being repaired after surgery.”

  It takes a minute before my sight adjusts to the light, but when it does, I’m in both awe and fear of my surroundings. The room is a beautiful pristine white with lush hanging plants and a little trickling waterfall in one corner. Across from me is a huge window so clean, I can’t tell if there’s glass in it.

  “Have I ever been here before?”

  “Oh sure, plenty of times.” She helps me out of the compartment, steadying me down the three shallow steps to a chair with wheels. “Your sister’s a nurse’s assistant here. She’ll be along shortly to check your vitals when it’s time for a shift change.”

  “I have a . . . sister?”

  “Yes, Lily. A twin sister. Aby.”

  A sudden pain in my head makes me grimace and double over, until a throb in my stomach shoots me upright again. I lift my shirt to discover a perfect red line about three inches long stitched with tiny silver clamps. I lean forward to touch my back and Suellen watches me.

  “There’s nothing there. You said I was impaled.”

  “The stone wall saved you from going all the way through”—she shakes her head—“though I wouldn’t call a fractured skull much of a saving.”

  I press around the circumference of my head; not much pain on the outside, but on the inside? . . . like someone slammed my brain against a brick wall more than a few times. My fingers find short hair that stops at the base of my neck. So strange not knowing how I look.

  “Can I . . . see myself?”

  “Sure, dear.” Suellen digs through a drawer, removes a handled mirror, and holds it in front of my face—that of a stranger. I take the mirror in one hand and run my trembling fingers through the unfamiliar light blonde hair. Blue eyes . . . ? They could be someone else’s. I trace a long scar across my cheek. “How did I get this?”

  “Oh, that I don’t know. Probably happened when you were little.” She stirs a cup of something steamy, then crosses the room to hand it to me. “Drink up.”

  I set the mirror down, dip a finger into the liquid and find it’s the perfect temperature. A cautious sip, and it’s delicious. In seconds, the glass is empty, and a moment later, the pain is gone, replaced by a quick, hot wave of euphoria.

  “How about some fresh air?” Suellen asks. “It might do you some good. We may run into your sister; she likes to stop at Atrium Three on her way here.”

  “Um . . . okay.” Because my mind is a cloud, floating through a balmy blue sea, and I’m fine with wherever I go, even if I don’t know who or where I am. None of that matters. My eyelids flutter closed, then open again when my chair moves forward, Suellen pushing me. A door ahead of us whooshes open, and a gust of warm air rushes in.

  “What a gorgeous day.” Suellen hums to herself, rolling me over a bumpy, wooden platform along the edge of the building. Through the slats of the wood below, water rushes by. I squint up. Above us is a rich purple sky dotted with lavender clouds.

  What a strange world.

  “I thought the sky was blue . . . ?”

  Suellen laughs. “It is, on the other side of the protective dome, dear.”

  “Oh.” I must’ve really damaged my brain good.

  I peer out over the spherical-shaped city. All around the circumference of the dome are massive waterfalls, which appear to originate in the purple sky. They flow in winding rivers throughout the entire place; beneath, around, and through everything. A dozen or more clear cylinders rise to the top of the dome, with cloth-draped levels inside where people move about. Living quarters, I’m guessing. Bridges stretch from one to the next, rivers flowing beneath them, headed toward one enormous crater in the middle of the place. Sticking up from the center of it is a wide, round structure, atop which rests a huge fan with giant blades. “What’s that?” I point to it.

  “The weather fan; it regulates heat and moisture.”

  “And where’s the water going?”

  She hesitates before wheeling me off of the wooden platform and onto a grass-covered one, the roar of the falling water growing more deafening the closer we get. “The chasm.” She stops in front of the enormous guard railing, and I peek between the bars. Near the bottom, where the water forms a giant whirlpool, lies a platform, and a towering structure sparking with energy.

  “What’s—?”

  “The power plant. It’s a very good thing you didn’t fall down there.” She turns my chair toward the wooden pathway again. “Now let’s get to the atrium so we don’t miss your sister.”

  Once we’re on the path again, we turn a corner, and the city expands back and up. More waterfalls, rivers, platforms, and living tubes. Seven of them buzz with life among clusters of smaller, round buildings that crawl up the hillside. Hundreds of people crowd the streets, making passage difficult. Many glance away from us.

  We pass a row of three tiny shacks with standing room for one person, each with a printed sign hanging above its doorway that reads: Dreamland Booth—Pures Only. A man stumbles out of one to puke into the grass. Beneath the crack of the second shack’s door, a blue light flashes. “Scan complete,” says an electronic voice. A strong citrus smell hangs in the air, along with smoke that disperses from the first shack’s open doorway.

  “What are those?” I ask.

  “Entertainment. One of your favorite things to do. It’ll all come back to you soon.”

  “Why would I enjoy throwing up?”

  She chuckles. “There’s a medicine for that, but it requires extra services for His Clergy members. Most opt out and deal with the nausea and vomiting. You, of course, won’t have to. You’ll have everything you need to be comfortable, always.”

  Over an arched bridge, we pass a pair of men seated hip-to-hip, gripping poles extended out from them with long strings dropped down into the rushing water below. They whip their heads around just as my ears register shouts from near the chasm, where a group of men attacks another in white, ripping a helmet from his head. And when they do, I see it isn’t a man at all, but a girl.

  A blaring alarm sounds overhead, and Suellen hurries to wheel me off of the bridge pathway and onto a grassy spot. Another group of white-clothed and white-helmeted people rush toward us as the men pick up the girl. A flash of light bursts, and one of the men flies back, but the other two hold the girl steady, then hoist her up and heave her helpless body over the railing and down into the chasm. The helmeted men blast the others with what seems like bolts of energy shot from their hands, and in seconds, the three men are dead, charred black.

  Terror-stricken, I cover my mouth and turn from the surreal horror. Is this a nightmare? Am I dreaming? My head swims with warmth as Suellen wheels me in silence back onto the path. I can’t form words to ask her what I just witnessed.

  “Tea would be nice,” Suellen mumbles. “We should have tea.”

  “What . . . just . . . happened . . . ?”

  “Huh? Oh, that’s common, dear. Many of the Impures have a hard time accepting things around here.”

  “But that girl . . . they—”

  “Hush now, Lily. We don’t speak of such things.”

  I almost ask her why, but another surge of warmth in my head pushes the care away. I shiver from the pleasure trickling down my spine, and wrap my arms around myself, when I notice the raised skin on my right wrist—a perfect, symmetric
al circle scar, cut into three notched sections. Tender to the touch. “Why . . . do I have this?” My voice is soft, with no weight behind it. It’s sucked into a nearby stream.

  “That’s your mark of purity, dear,” Suellen says. “It means you’re allowed inside the Monastery, among other things.”

  “Allowed in . . . where? And what’s a . . . mark of purity?”

  She gives my shoulder a pat. “The Monastery is the sacred dwelling which you will soon call home.” She points. “There.”

  Far off in the distance gleams a grand, pyramid-shaped building, white with gold railings that wrap around each tapered level. Two massive waterfalls pour from the dome on either side of the Monastery, meeting in front of it where they form a raging pool of sparkling blue water. Smaller rivers branch off from the pool and stretch throughout, joining with others as they all head toward the chasm.

  “And the mark,” Suellen continues, “means you’re one of less than five hundred Pures, out of the thousands of Impure souls in this city.” She shows me her own scar on the same wrist. “We are most fortunate. You . . . especially.”

  She pushes the chair around another corner, past a gold-and-red painted building with decorated tables lined up out front. Covering them are bright-colored cloths and dishes that might contain food. A man with a long, thin stick lights something in a small pot, avoids our faces.

  “Why do they look away?” I ask.

  “They are Impure and are forbidden to stare at Pures for fear of tainting our purity. Only during the unification and sacrificial ceremonies are they allowed to gaze upon the faces of the unified Pures. And only because of their sacrifice for the privilege of observing such a holy event.”

  Beneath the dazed euphoria, an uneasiness resurfaces. How could I be pleased with a life like this? From what Suellen has told me—and from what I’ve seen—I wouldn’t be surprised if I jumped from that balcony to end it all.

  Ahead is a fenced-off area with magnificent, towering trees, climbing vines, pools and tiny waterfalls, and a colorful array of flowers. A sudden breeze blows my hair back, stirs butterflies from their blooms. The weather fan. I shiver in the slight chill. The butterflies flutter and dance into the purple domed sky, while Suellen rolls me up to the opening. A sheer netting stretches all the way to the top of the dome, I suppose, to keep the butterflies in. She unhooks the netting and pushes me inside, past a sign that reads: Pures Only. The net falls back into place behind us.