by Lydia Millet
“Glen’s point is, they’ve been around for a long time,” interrupted Mrs. O brusquely. “And that’s only possible because they’re not, in fact, human.”
“They’re like the Pouring Man, then?” said Cara. “Elementals?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. O. “That’s exactly right. The Burners are fire elementals.”
“I thought I might have—that it might just have been one of these visions that I get,” said Cara. “Like when I saw wings on you. But they weren’t really physical wings. Were they?”
In the corner of the kitchen, someone clanged a pot, and it rang out in the stillness.
“Sorry to disappoint. The Burners’ flames are real,” said Mr. Trujillo.
The other teachers were definitely listening now. Most had even stopped eating, though some still lifted their wine glasses and sipped. It made her a bit nervous.
“The humanoid forms they take are just camouflage. They need a certain amount of heat to manifest, and they also give it off” went on Mr. Trujillo. “In a pinch they can use flammables instead of an open flame—the gas in the tanks of cars, for instance, or lighters or some kinds of alcohol.…”
“They carry whole microclimates with them,” said Mrs. O. “So usually you feel them before you see them.”
Cara remembered the heat of the subway car. At the time she’d thought it must be what always happened, that when the train stopped maybe the air-conditioning shut down… But wait: If the Burner had been real, what did he want with her?
Another teacher spoke sharply from the end of the table—the East Indian woman. She had her hair braided up on her head and a dark red spot between her eyebrows.
“My dear, listen closely: this is important. Where did you have this vision? And when?”
“On the T,” said Cara. “On my way here.”
Then suddenly all the teachers were talking among themselves—or no: they were thinking at each other. It made her catch her breath: ripples like waves in the air, like the shimmer above a road in the desert heat. They were identical to the ones she’d seen flow between Jax and the leatherback sea turtle in the Aquarium back in August.
All around her the air was moving, somehow—like a turbulence, a minor half-visible storm, twisting ribbons that distorted the view like a warped mirror or the patterned plastic of a shower door.
She gazed up into it, amazed. Technically the silence around the table was wearing on, but at the same time the air was bristling with energy she could almost hear—a kind of liquid back-and-forth of pulses and lulls, so that the silence seemed less like the absence of sound and more like some kind of low-level white noise. It felt almost like the ocean, with currents and rhythm and deep pulls below…
But it didn’t last. After what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, all of the teachers were standing. They seemed to be deserting their meals and their half-full, richly red glasses of wine. Some of them almost seemed to glide away, Cara thought, and remembered the wings.
She felt at a loss until Mrs. O’s hand on her arm guided her up from the table, up and—with the crowd in front of them and behind them, too—out the door they’d come in through.
“Was it what I said?” asked Cara, though it was half whisper and half thought.
Partly, thought Mrs. O into Cara’s head.
Her thought had the high, pure sound Jax’s had had—as though, in the space of Cara’s brain, completely different people’s voices got translated into the same kind of music. And yet, she knew it was Mrs. O. The idea “coincidence” came to her more as a feeling than as a word, a feeling or maybe a minor vision: in this case, a small mental picture of two parallel lines, which she instinctively knew meant coincidence.
We sensed their presence then, sang the mind of Mrs. O into Cara’s. It sounded like a tuning fork, that resonating tone. She’d heard a tuning fork in music class one time last year. Not exactly relaxing. When the thoughts came from Jax, it wasn’t as jarring.
“Sensed it?” asked Cara.
They’re coming.
“But I thought this was a sanctuary, where the bad guys couldn’t get in,” protested Cara.
“It is,” said Mrs. O out loud. “But all fortresses can be breached. The enemy is focusing a lot of energy, as we speak, on breaking down our wards—our defenses. And sooner or later they’ll succeed.”
With Mrs. O and Mr. Trujillo alongside, Cara raced up stairways and through corridors to the bedroom where Jax lay sleeping—only now, when they pushed the door open, he was awake.
He was sitting on the edge of his canopy bed.
“Jax!” said Cara, and ran up to him.
He stayed slumped over, head bowed.
“Jax?” she asked, sitting down on the edge of the mattress beside him. “Jax? Are you OK?”
Still he didn’t say anything; slowly he raised his head and turned to look at her.
His eyes, she thought. They’d changed again. Now the pupils were huge; the pupils were the whole iris. The blue of his eyes was completely gone. The irises were black—and not sharply black but a black that faded around the edges, fuzzed into the white of the eyes.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked urgently, turning to the teachers. “Why are his eyes like that?”
They were at the bedside now, too, on the other side from Cara, their hands passing over Jax’s head in a strange fashion.
“Because the treatment failed,” said Mr. Trujillo.
He shook his head, glancing grimly at Mrs. O.
“We’re going to have to take him with us,” said Mrs. O, more to him than to Cara.
Although her hands were moving over Jax, they weren’t, Cara noticed, quite touching him. Jax wasn’t saying anything; she couldn’t imagine him speaking, the way he was now. He just stared at them emptily.
“What do you mean, take him?” asked Cara.
“When we go,” said Mrs. O.
“We’re going to have to go,” agreed Mr. T. “The wards are still up now, but they’re breaking down fairly quickly. I can feel it happening. We can rebuild them, but not fast enough.”
“But—go where?”
“We’re leaving—though not through the front door,” said Mrs. O. Her hands fluttered, seeming to draw Jax’s face forward, and then fell. “We have to abandon this place for a while.”
“You have to leave, too. But you won’t be coming with us,” added Mr. T. “We need you to do something else. Something crucial.”
“But I can’t leave with Jax…like that!” said Cara. She felt on the brink of tears.
“You need to do this for him—do this so we can help him,” he went on. “He’s who they’re here for. They were led to him.”
“You mean by—by me?”
“Not your fault, Cara. Not at all,” said Mrs. O quickly. “Anyone who loved him would have done the same. But he needs to be moved. Your mother’s out there as their hostage, and she has something he needs if he’s going to recover.”
“We’ll need something from her to bring him back,” added Mr. T. “We have to stay out of sight and take care of him, so you’re going to have to go get her. Either her or what we need from her. Whichever’s possible.”
“And what do you need from her?”
“A memory.”
“A memory? But how can I—”
“The memory of his birth,” said Mr. T.
“Jax is adopted,” said Cara.
“Yes, of course,” said Mrs. O. “The memory of when she first saw him. Her earliest memory of him. She’ll know, when you tell her what’s happened. If you can find her, she should know how to help.”
“But how am I supposed to do that? I haven’t seen her for two months!”
“You have to use your own old way,” said Mrs. O. “Work on your vision. It’s your talent, Cara. You need to call it up.”
“I don’t know how!”
“We’d guide you, but there’s no time. There’s a book in the library here that should help,” said Mr. T. “L
ook for the title…let’s see, how did it go…yes: Learning to See. If I recall. It has an inscription on it, “Videre licet.” That’s on the cover, too, I think. Videre licet. Be listed in the card catalog.”
As he said all this they were guiding Jax to his feet, standing him up between them. His arms hung limply; he gazed ahead, zombie-like.
“We have to take him now,” said Mrs. O. “Can you feel it, Cara?”
The air in the room had gotten warmer. Cara touched her upper lip and felt a bead of perspiration.
She followed the two teachers out the door, walking behind them as they hustled Jax along the hall and rounded a corner.
“You’ll need the code for the elevator,” said Mr. T, and stopped walking to turn to her. “It’s easy. Key in your own eight-digit birthdate, month first. You’re in the system already. When you have what you need, come find us again.”
“Jax is depending on you,” said Mrs. O. “You can do this. But be careful. And be quick. You’re safe here until the wards fail. But you don’t want to be here when that happens.”
“Jax? Hey. Jax?” asked Cara, leaning in to him.
She couldn’t let go of the conviction that he was in there somewhere, and since he was in there, he had to respond to her…didn’t he? And then, if she could just make him act like himself again, they wouldn’t have to separate. She wouldn’t be left alone, wouldn’t have to do something hard that she had no clue about.
But he wasn’t even turning to look at her as she spoke; all she could see was the back of his head. “Jax. Come on, Jax. It’s me!”
She grabbed his arm and tried to turn him. The arm was rubbery, and his jaw, when she rotated him to face her, was still slack. And in his staring, impersonal eyes, their pupils huge and black, she saw what looked like an infinite void.
It was as though the pupils were so deep they went down forever, as black and silent as the vacuum of space.
It chilled her.
“Remember: Crede quod habes, et habes” said Mr. T. “Latin.”
Cara opened her mouth to tell him they didn’t offer Latin at her school; so could he please speak English? But before she could get it together to speak, the boy who had been Jax, along with both of the teachers, melted into the wall.
She was standing there awestruck, with an afterimage stamped on her mind of the three of them disappearing, when she realized she didn’t have time to wonder how they’d done it. She didn’t have time to think about what was going on with the other kids, in the shell of the building, or the rest of the teachers, or where exactly the Burners were.
Instead she shook off her questions and headed down through the maze of deserted corridors to the library to find the book.
It was spooky to be in there alone. Though the dome itself contained no glass, and of course there were no windows, an odd kind of light still shone down whitely from up high, as though leaking through invisible seams in the walls. It wasn’t daytime anymore, but still the light beamed down with no clear source, dust motes whirling. As she made her way through the room, she was conscious of the jars in the cubbyholes, the bones in the display cases.
Was it getting hotter, she wondered? The back of her neck was clammy underneath the hair; strands stuck to the skin and made her itch.
How fast would the Burners get in?
Or would they possibly give up, if they sensed Jax had been moved away? Might they sense his absence and not be interested in coming in anymore? The Pouring Man had sensed where she and Jax were, after all. Max, too. He had found out where they were going and what they were doing, it seemed, more than once. He had known seemingly impossible things.
So maybe the fire elementals could do that, too. And maybe, hopefully, she wasn’t a big enough prize for them…but she still had to hurry. She had to figure out where to go and how to get there, and the book was her only hope.
In the wing of the great room that was devoted to bookshelves, where armchairs stood with floor lamps beside them on the fraying rugs, there was a wooden cabinet she thought must hold the card catalog. She hurried over and pulled out one of the trays. But there was nothing under “Learning to See” in the L’s. (The nearby titles were curious: Lean on Me: Brief Biographies of Famous Trees. Learning to Cope With H. Sapiens in 10 (Moderately) Easy Steps. Learning to Sing With Cetaceans: The Gift of Harmony. But no Learning to See.)
She opened one drawer after another hastily until she found the Vs: how did you spell it? She tried Vee— first, then Ve—. Nothing. Then Vi—. It seemed to be by subject as well as by title or author, all combined in the one cabinet. Violets, Shrinking. Violence, Electrical…
Videre licet. Could that be it? The subtitle was “Learning to See.” Had Mr. T gotten it the wrong way around? There was no author’s name and only a simple number; it didn’t look like the Dewey Decimal. Nor was the card attached to the drawer; she could pull it right out. So she did.
It must be late by now, she realized. She didn’t wear a watch, and she hadn’t looked at her cell recently, which was back in her backpack in the room she’d been sharing with Jax….
Jax of the dark eyes. The eyes like the vacuum of space.
The floor lamps had to be motion sensitive, she thought, like the light outside the garage at home, because as she moved toward them they flicked on. She counted the numbers on the shelves, consulting her index card as she moved quickly along; soon she was at a tall shelf of oversize books. Some of them were two or three feet tall, it looked like; some had to lie horizontally, they were so large.
She bent down to study their dusty spines and finally made out LEARNING TO SEE. A GUIDE. Videre licet.
She put down the card and reached for the book, which was beneath a pile of others, drawing it out carefully. It was a very large book—more than half as tall as she was, and quite a bit wider—but there wasn’t enough light to read by so she carried it over to the oak table where she’d sat before with the teachers. A long reading light with a green glass shade flicked on as she placed the book flat on the table’s surface and pulled out a chair.
Gingerly, because the book looked worn, she opened the book, thumb and index finger carefully holding the front cover. There was no jacket, only a faded blue cloth binding. As the cover rose, she saw it was covered in tiny eyes—tiny, faint images of eyes: there had to be thousands of them. And it must have a 3D effect sewn into the threads, she thought, because as the cover opened, the eyes seemed to open with it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology—she recalled Mrs. O saying to her in this same room—is indistinguishable from magic.
The first page was blank. That wasn’t unusual. But then the next page was blank, too. And the next.
Maybe she needed a stronger light, she thought; maybe the type was faded. She pushed the book closer to the green light; it seemed to her that the light brightened further.
Still she couldn’t see anything on the massive pages. They looked white as a field of fresh snow.
She turned a few pages further, slowly and deliberately, and then flipped to the back of the book, just in case.
Nothing.
She sat back in the chair, discouraged. Then panicky. Her time had to be running out. And what could she do, without the book? How would she ever find out where her mother was being kept?
She touched her ring quickly, still looking at the book.
But the pages stayed blank.
She raised her eyes from the empty pages and caught sight of a painting on the wall. It was a portrait of two young ladies from olden times; they had wide ruffed collars on, those giant white lacy things you saw on the first Queen Elizabeth. They always reminded Cara of the plastic cones vets put on dogs. Worrying the ring with her fingers, she wondered what she was supposed to do next. What would happen to Jax if she failed?
They hadn’t told her that. They hadn’t said what would happen to him. But it couldn’t be good.
How could she figure out the book?
She wasn’t really looking at t
he painting, she realized, though she was resting her eyes on it. It was lit by a small brass light above it, the kind they had at museums, which jutted out from the wall…and then, with a shock, she knew exactly what she was seeing.
The ladies had faces she knew, faces she recognized.
One of the ladies was Jaye.
And the other was Hayley.
Back in the bedroom with the twin beds, where she’d run till she was out of breath, she dug into her pack and pulled out her phone. Sure enough, there were more texts from Hayley; she didn’t stop to read them. She dialed.
“Finally,” groaned Hayley, picking up after one ring. “What’s up with you?”
“So this is going to seem hard. But it’s really important, Hay. I need you.”
“What?”
“I need you to come to where I am—like now, right now. I need your help. I’ll text you directions.”
“Are you kidding? You know how my mom is. She’d wig if I asked to go out into the city after dark.”
Part of her wanted to run to them instead, just take the book and go to the hotel herself, away from this place with its failing defenses. But so far the book wasn’t helpful—what if it was the wrong one? If it turned out to be the wrong book entirely, she’d definitely need to be here to find the right one. She knew her friends could help.
“Please, Hay. Please come. And Jaye—I need her, too. I need both of you. I really do. I’ll owe you big-time, I know I will. But this is for Jax. He’s really sick. He got…rie got poisoned.”
“Poisoned?”
“I promise, this is way bigger than the meet.”
“You know what would happen if Mom found out I snuck out. I’d be grounded till freshman year in college. If she even let me go, at that point.”
Cara gazed at the miniature portraits beside the bed as she listened to Hayley protest. They were amazing in the fineness of their details, she thought…and she touched her ring again to see if these pictures, too, would turn into her friends. Nothing happened. It must have to do with thinking about something, she thought, as she made contact with the ring…some kind of focus she had to have, maybe? Not just a subject she had to be thinking of, but also a problem?
