Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy)

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  Silea hadn’t struck me as a fool. It was kind of her to let Cadmon hold her hand and borrow the CD player. Scraping out the last drips of ice cream in my bowl and debating a refill, I said, “I didn’t like the other ones so much, Collan and Evanyi. They were pretty rude to Drina and Adriel and me.”

  “You know the saying that when you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail? That’s a mindset kreolos hunters get into, that everyone is the enemy. Like Radeo looking at me as a potential zombie, they look at the Graystones as potential Rippers. Kill them all! But the Council of theirs says they can’t kill anyone until that someone has committed a crime. And the only crime I’ve committed lately is stealing.”

  “Zakia! Shame on you! What did you steal?” I scolded.

  “The remote,” he said with a grin, and flipped to sports. “Hah-hah.”

  I smacked him with a pillow and lunged for it. He kept it away and I yelled about how much I pitied Lotus for having to put up with such an obnoxious brother for eternity. For twenty minutes, I endured the sports channel. Then he deemed my torture sufficient and said with innocence, “Hey, weren’t we watching a movie?” I glared and he flipped it back on.

  That evening, I called Grandpa Jack to say hello. He was fine, still without suspicion about my absence and hoping the police caught those fools who set off fireworks over the weekend. Forest fires were no one’s idea of a good time. I amended his statement. “Except for pyromaniacs.”

  “Except for them,” Grandpa Jack agreed. “A box came in the mail from your parents. I put it on your desk. So, this is some project! When do you expect to be finished?”

  “It’s awful, Grandpa Jack! It’s thirty pages of leaf and flower identification, and it’s half of my grade. Some kids are just cheating and going to a botanic garden when we’re supposed to find them wild. I want to be home next weekend sometime, or the Monday after it.” I actually planned to go home on Friday, but just in case something went wrong with the Rippers before then, I didn’t want him to have a firm time in mind. “What are you up to this week?”

  “Well now, I was trying to figure out what to do about a friend of mine. Shaun used to work at the post office. Nice man. He and his wife moved up to Caylan after he retired. He’s in the hospital having heart surgery this week, and his wife is getting radiation for cancer. Their daughter is overseas in the Army. I was just talking on the phone to Marjorie about the pickle they’re in right now. Shaun is coming home in a few days and she can’t help him get out of bed or anything, not when she can barely get out of bed or do anything herself. I got so much vacation time piled up. I’d offer to drive up there and help out for a week while Shaun gets back on his feet, but with you here-”

  “Grandpa Jack, I’m turning eighteen years old in a few weeks. I can take care of myself for a while just fine. Those two need help,” I said. He heaved a sigh of relief and said that he’d make plans to take some time off from work.

  The box on my desk was likely full of little gifts. I wished I had it with me now, as a way to be close to them. On Friday evening I was going to open that box as soon as I walked in. I should write a letter back to them too, although what I was going to say I had no clue. God, I even missed the stupid disco fish.

  It was early night when Adriel called to say he was coming over, and stupidly I jumped when I heard the tap on my bedroom window minutes later. I had been listening for his car. Climbing through the window, he put a finger to his lips. Hoopie and Lotus were talking in the hallway, and he didn’t want them to know of his presence. We rested against the headboard on the bed and I said, “Well?”

  “Nothing,” Adriel said. “How about here?”

  “Nothing,” I repeated. There was something I had to ask. “Were you . . . ever tempted to rip me?”

  “No.”

  “You could have gotten away with it.”

  “I could get away with an awful lot. That doesn’t mean it tempts me to do any of it. Drina and Taurin don’t turn out Rippers, not if they get to us early enough.”

  “Tell me more?” I moved closer and put my head upon his bare chest.

  His arms came around me. “When you don’t have much to do with humans, when you can’t relate, it’s easier to objectify them. Once Cadmon is more present, Drina will press him to go to school or at least join a sport. When I was like him, I didn’t want to do any of that. I just wanted to lick my wounds in private, stay cut off from everything and everyone. But she pushed, and so did Taurin. We have to do something else with all of our time than dwell upon being cast out. That’s why she seeks out the newly fallen. It’s then they are the most impressionable and she can make the biggest impact. She’s proud that none of the newly fallen angels she has taken in have become Rippers. Her children are spread out all over this planet, working in charities or as nurses or firefighters, giving instead of taking. Her bedside table is filled with their letters.”

  The sensation of his fingers stroking my hair was soothing me to sleep. With a yawn, I said, “It must be hard for her to press when you want so much to retreat.”

  “But it’s the right thing to do. She learned from her own mistake and doesn’t want us to repeat it. So I went to school. How could I rip after that? All of the students in my classes, my teachers . . . They had families and dreams and fears and lives of their own. They also had deaths of their own. Who was I to come in and change it? Who was I to make someone my prisoner? That’s abhorrent. So I wasn’t tempted to rip you. I wouldn’t want any girl to look at me as her captor. Jacquiel used to joke about his girlfriends being so beautiful that he might consider ripping them if the chance arose, and Taurin came down hard on him for that. It isn’t funny.”

  “Jacquiel had girlfriends? Human girlfriends?”

  “Yeah, a bunch of them for every new home as we moved around. I guess girlfriend is too strong of a word. He had endless dates.”

  “Have you?”

  “No. There was one girl in the fifties where I wanted to, but . . . like the letters to my friends, it’s all a lie. I can’t get serious with a girl and interfere with the thread of her life, and keeping it so frivolous like Jacquiel wasn’t appealing to me. It was hurtful what he did, treating a girl like she was the one and only, showering her in flowers and little gifts and all the while, he had his eye on the next one in line. Drina was sorry that she hadn’t had him as a newly fallen. Nothing she said made much difference. He tried to start a relationship with Kishi and she shot him down fast.”

  “Why aren’t you with Kishi? She’s beautiful.”

  The voices in the house faded. Everyone was going to bed. “Being newly fallen is like childhood, and she was in the role of my big sister. That emotional category doesn’t change. People thought we were together in my earliest days, since I’d hold her hand when we were out and about. They had no idea she was guiding me. I thought she knew how to do pretty much everything, and I still think that.”

  “Except keep time,” I said. Then I fell asleep. Much later I woke to him keeping watch out the window. He wanted to fly around to check at longer distances, so I did the latch after he climbed out. One of his feathers he left behind on the pillow. I placed my hand over it and dreamed of flying through the tapestry. This time I saw Tomo’s bright purple thread from beginning to end. The pink-cheeked baby turned to a scarred old man over decades of battle, and from his thread came the dimmer purple of Radeo’s. Twined about that one was the shining white thread belonging to Silea. Though I wanted to watch her life, the dream faded.

  The week passed slowly. The gossip at school centered on my stalker, and then a senior named Brett Filger was arrested one night for drunk driving in his mother’s car. That moved the spotlight away from me. Not only was Brett intoxicated, but he also broke free of the cops administering the sobriety test and led them on a chase through the woods. Savannah said that he threw up all over the Spooner jail cell and woke up the next morning with no memory of what he had done. Sadly for Brett, consequences didn’t jus
t vanish with his memories. Everyone was shocked since he was a straight-A student, the star of the wrestling team, and not one to party at all, let alone too hard.

  With the arrest and a second lunchtime food fight outside that got everyone called into the gymnasium for a stern talking-to, I was relegated to old news. On the way to the Cooper residence that day, I made Zakia stop so I could buy him an ice cream sundae at Doozy’s. Cleaning up that mess twice was grossly unfair, even if the office caught some of the culprits and forced them to help. It had looked like a grocery store exploded over campus. Some of the new flowers in the planters had been destroyed, so Zakia had had to replace those, too.

  Doozy’s was packed, so we claimed the last two stools left over. I breathed in his earthy scent and thought it should be bottled, since I would never tire of it. Taking off his shoe, he beat it over the trashcan and a pistachio shell fell out. “So that’s what hurt.”

  “Kids these days,” I said.

  “My favorite moment of the clean-up was some kid complaining that he hadn’t started it, so he shouldn’t have to clean it up. Even though he joined in the throwing.” Zakia put his shoe back on and nodded out the window, where Grandpa Jack was tootling by in his mail truck. I went outside to visit with him while Zakia waited for the ice cream. Happy to have run into me, Grandpa Jack said he was leaving early Saturday to get to Caylan, so I should just mind the house when I returned and he’d be back in a week.

  On Friday morning, I woke up light-hearted. There hadn’t been any hint of the Rippers so I was home free. Packing up my suitcase, I set it by the front door and went into the kitchen to have breakfast. Lotus was reading the newspaper at the table. It had gotten a little easier between us, the scant times I saw her, and she said, “You would think after living this long I could swing more than one-third of the crossword questions.”

  “I am no good at those,” I said. “What are you doing today?”

  “It’s been a busy week, so I’m just going to kick back in the house and read for fun.” The paper crinkled. “Ugh, here’s one I won’t get: actress who played Zombie Blast heroine. The first letter is J and it has seven altogether.”

  “Justine,” I said, pleased to know something. “Take it those aren’t movies you’d want to see.”

  In precise print, she filled in the letters. “Not at all. Zombies are to be pitied. They can’t help what they are, or what they do. They aren’t a topic for cheap blow-’em-up entertainment. I don’t think anyone would find it in good taste if the movies were Rabies Blast or Leper Blast.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” I said over my cereal.

  “Maybe you’ll know this one as well since you’re young,” Lotus said, which made me laugh since she appeared younger than I was. “Last name of the BBG triplets. Who in the world are they?”

  “Their last name is Shadland. Brayden, Cayden, and Hayden Shadland. They’re up-and-coming pop stars with a bunch of great love songs they sing to each other. The two boys are so cute.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Love songs? But they’re siblings.”

  “Oh, don’t have a dirty mind about it. It’s innocent.” Some people got really hung up on that point.

  “If you say so. And this long one is related. First BBG break-out hit? Seventeen letters.”

  “If I Had Three Wishes.” I held back that the triplets had wished for each other in the lyrics, since Lotus was going to be one of those people who thought they were weird. We worked on the crossword until it was time for me to go to school. Today my ride was with Vanya, since she was driving the youngest set of twins into town for a check-up with their pediatrician. I sat in the passenger seat and gave directions since she had never been to the high school. Adriel met us in the parking lot, and subtly relaxed to see the occupants of the car. The boy was whining, the girl was burping, Vanya was yawning yet all had souls for him to see.

  “Let me,” Adriel said about my suitcase. He lifted it away and we set it in the trunk of his new car. This one was the same model as the first, but a beautiful champagne color. Closing the trunk, Adriel looked up out of reflex to the bare blue sky. “We’re good. Not a sign of them.”

  “I feel like I’ve been holding my breath all week,” I said.

  “Me, too. Hopefully, they’re gone forever. It will be nice to know that you’re back at your grandfather’s house.”

  “All of the Coopers treated me very well,” I reminded him.

  “As they should.” He kissed my forehead lightly and we walked through the parking lot to campus. It was going to be very empty today, since half of the student body was on an all-day field trip for their science classes, and even emptier by afternoon since several sports teams were playing away games. Adriel said, “What do you want to do tomorrow?”

  “Anything but Seataw,” I said. “Could we go flying again sometime? I would love to hear the music.” To hear the music and be holding his hand, experiencing that perfection together under the glow of the moon.

  “How about tomorrow night? I’ll come to your window at midnight and we’ll ride the wind.”

  Sneaking up behind us, Nash said, “I ride the wind on chili night! Or maybe it rides me. Oh, Adriel, you’re such a gentleman through and through. Come on, tell us a fart joke.”

  “Do you go home to a barn?” I asked in disgust. If he did, the farmer should be fined for not shearing him. Every week, his bangs got longer and more in his face.

  “Everybody farts, Jessa,” Nash said sagely, and released one.

  “But we don’t need to talk about it,” I retorted.

  “Smells like taquitos,” he observed with a sniff.

  As he wandered away, I whispered, “Out of curiosity, what do you see in his soul?”

  “A lot of insecurity,” Adriel said. “He’s the youngest of four boys, I think that’s what causes this. They were all better students and great at football.”

  “So it leaves him to bodily noises and messy hair,” I said. It didn’t make me like Nash any more than I had before. He was obnoxious.

  I hardly listened through my classes, too excited about going home and flying tomorrow night. The music was gone from my brain except the memory of how magical it had been. Not long from now, I’d be hearing it again. Even at lunch I was thinking about it, and Adriel gave me a half-smile that said he knew exactly what was on my mind. I wanted his wings wrapped around my body, to be in that embrace as long as I desired. The others joked and talked over their lunches, with me smiling at the right moments but lost in reveries. The cafeteria was a desolate place with so many students gone. The bell rang and we walked out together.

  When I was one classroom away from reaching fifth period, a boy who hadn’t taken the lecture from administration to heart tossed the contents of a full yogurt pint into the air. It splattered over fifteen people going down the hallway, myself included, as he cheered. A teacher with pink cream in his hair yelled and marched the kid into the office to be suspended.

  “Ew!” I said. I was drenched in strawberry yogurt. It was in my hair, dripping down my cheek, and all over my arms and clothes. There was even a splotch on my shoe. Adriel had taken a splash directly to his eyes.

  “Seriously?” Kitts asked, looking at her arm and shirt in distaste. More was in her hair and upon her glasses. “I hate this school.” Students flooded to the restrooms.

  There was more yogurt on me than a damp paper towel could remove. “I have to change. Adriel, may I have your keys? I need to get some clothes from my suitcase.”

  Flicking smears of cream from his hands to the ground, he said blindly, “Reach into the front of my backpack. The keys are there. Could you . . . could you just guide me to the boys’ room first? I can’t see a thing.”

  “Sure,” I said, and took his sticky arm in mine once I had the keys. I would have to wash those off, since I was smearing cream on them. Walking him to the restroom door, he whispered that I should check the sky before I went out in the open.

  People la
ughed to see me going through the hallways to the parking lot. Fortunately, most of the students were already in their classrooms. I checked the sky at the last overhang as I’d been bidden. Nothing. I headed out for the car.

  At the trunk, I unzipped my suitcase and pulled out a clean T-shirt and pair of jeans. Then I returned to the girls’ restroom and started the slow process of getting clean. Kitts was bent over at a sink to rinse a lock of her hair. Wrapping a paper towel around it to dry, she went into a stall with damp towels to go after what had slipped down her shirt.

  Adriel called in, “Hey, Jessa? You okay?”

  “Yeah!” I called. “But it’s going to be a while.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “No, don’t, Adriel. I’m right beside my class. Go to yours and I’ll see you in sixth period.” His footsteps rapped away from the restroom.

  Toilet paper spun in the stall. “This is so disgusting. I hate the smell of strawberry.”

  “I am covered in this!” I moaned to my reflection in the mirror. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “If college boys act like this, I think I will scream,” Kitts said.

  Hoping there wouldn’t be too many visitors to the restroom while I was in here, I peeled off my saturated shirt and put it on the towel dispenser. Then I kicked off my shoes and did the same with my jeans. Rinsing my hair in the sink, I wrung it out, put it back in an untidy bun, and washed off thoroughly with paper towels. Kitts came out just as I was pulling my clean jeans on. She swiped at a last smear on her glasses and said, “I’m going to class. I’ll tell Ms. Crane that you’re in here still cleaning up so she doesn’t mark you absent.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Zipping up my jeans, I put on the clean shirt. Lucky I had these clothes with me! Or else I would have had to put paper towels over the passenger seat in Adriel’s brand-new car and hope I didn’t stain the fabric while he drove me home. Dampening another towel, I worked on his keys until they were clean and slipped them into my pocket.