My mom’s voice floats up after me. “It’s just an idle threat, dear. She’s not foolish enough to run away.”
I slam my bedroom door and pace to the window and back. It’s not an idle threat. With eighteen looming over me, I have options. I just have to figure out what they are, exactly.
If I don’t finish this year of school, I won’t have much of a future, except as a spectacle in the eyes of the nation: President Sigourna’s failure of an older daughter, who couldn’t even graduate from high school. Running away is a fool’s option, but honestly, at the moment, I want to be that fool. At this point, if I stay, it’s tacit agreement to abide by their dictates.
I’m done abiding. I’m done.
Fifteen minutes of pacing doesn’t relieve any of my stress. They knew I wanted to quit, that I’ve wanted to quit for years, and they re-enrolled me anyway. And Tana’s smirking face from across the table keeps flashing into my mind.
I need open space, away from the oppressive “roof” that holds me down. I grab my coat and leave my room. Dad is halfway up the stairs, with Mom two steps behind him. The staircase is wide enough for me to skirt by them.
“Where are you—”
“Jen, what are you—”
My mom tries to catch my arm, but I twist out of her reach. “I’m going for a walk.”
“No you’re not. We need to talk.” They’re both following me now.
“No. I’m going for a walk.”
“Anjeni Sigourna, stop right there.”
I’m at the door to the garden. “Make me,” I hiss, and I wrench it open. A cool breeze hits me as I slip through to the night. Mom catches the door before it can shut.
“Jen! Where do you think you’re going?”
“For a walk, I said.”
“It’s late! You have homework to do.”
I turn and point one finger to the sky. “Not under your roof right now. Don’t have to follow your rules.”
Mom’s mouth opens and shuts. Anger builds on her face in a heavy blush, but what is she going to do? Ground me for a whole six hours? She starts to say something, but my dad lays a forestalling hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t go past the garden,” he tells me. “Even if you’re an adult, you’re still the president’s daughter, and you still have a security detail that will follow you beyond the grounds.”
He’s going to let me walk off my anger, in other words. Dad always was sensible like that.
I give him a salute and continue on my way, down the path through the rose bushes and out to the bare side of Monument Hill. In the dark of night, the Eternity Gate looms like a shadow-guardian against the backdrop of city lights and sounds. On holidays it’s illuminated, but tonight is a normal night.
And I’m glad. I couldn’t lurk around the hillside otherwise.
I descend ten or more steps past the Gate and flop onto the grass, my body angled on the hill and my head tilted up for perfect star-gazing. Except that you can’t see any stars in the middle of the city. A handful twinkle through the light pollution that obscures their weaker denizens. The cityscape below me, with its street lamps and cars, seems like a blight on the world.
I haven’t seen the stars properly in years, not since before my dad was president. Our family went camping once when Tana and I were kids, and it was awful. The sprawl of stars above was the only positive memory I have from that adventure.
As the night deepens, cold sets into my bones and decisions elude me. I have to finish high school. It would be stupid to run away before the end of the school year. That’s still three months away, though.
Can I endure the pointless magic classes for another three months? After twelve years of fruitless training, three months seems like nothing. And yet, it’s an eternity to me right now. I had my hopes set on today being my last day.
I’m pretty sure the Dean of Magic had his hopes set on the same thing.
Maybe I could just ditch class between now and graduation. He probably wouldn’t report me. He’d probably thank me, truth be told.
There’s just the matter of that pesky security detail that keeps within a hundred feet of me whenever I leave the executive residence.
But I have to finish high school. And I’m already accepted to the sister college, more on my parent’s reputation than my mediocre grades. One school feeds into the other. I have to take that opportunity into account as well.
With a heavy sigh, I finally heave myself up from the grassy hillside. I will not—will not—go to magic classes over the summer. Whether I go from tomorrow onward remains to be seen, but this is not a simple submission to my parents’ wishes.
As I cross back into the house, Tana emerges from the dining room. She stops short upon seeing me.
“Hey, quitter,” she says. “Finally come back to your senses and realize you have nowhere else to go? I thought maybe you’d started off on your spiritual journey.”
“At least I have a spiritual journey, Aitana,” I reply. “Shouldn’t you be off stealing someone’s boyfriend or something?”
Her face crimsons. Her legendary namesake was supposed to be an accomplished magician, but all anyone really remembers is how she stole a goddess’s lover. Tana, for all her many talents, often gets this man-stealer label thrown in her face, however jokingly, and she hates it.
She also knows that I’m not really joking.
“You don’t have to worry about me stealing any boyfriend of yours,” she says, her mouth twisted in a sneer. “You couldn’t even get one worth stealing.”
The truth of her words skewers me inside. I cover my hurt with a sarcastic tip to my mouth and walk away, shoulders back, head held high as though she didn’t just pierce me through the metaphorical gut.
I mean, what can I even say? Guys don’t look twice at me when Tana’s anywhere in the vicinity, unless they’re trying to pique her interest or make her jealous. I learned that lesson a long time ago the hard way and have taken a general disinterest in boyfriend-girlfriend relationships ever since.
And Tana knows it.
I’m back in my room for only two or three minutes before there’s a knock on the door. “Jen?” My dad’s voice muffles through the wood.
Mom has turned over my re-education to him. She always does.
I open the door to meet his reproving face. “I’m not going to magic classes over the summer. You can’t make me. I will move out. I’m applying to the dorms on the college campus, and I’m pretty sure they’ll admit me early, if needs be.”
“We’ve never discussed the dorms,” says my dad with a frown.
“I’m done here,” I tell him. “I can’t do it anymore. I need to get away, to be my own person instead of this shadow you all want me to play.”
“Your mom and I only want what’s best for you.”
Right. I’m sure.
“You only want what’s best for yourselves. If you wanted what’s best for me, you would have let me abandon things I suck at so I could find something I was good at instead.”
A storm cloud descends across his face. I move to shut the door, but he catches it. “You want to know something you’re good at? Defying anyone and everyone who should command your respect, insisting on having everything your way, on your timetable, and refusing to cooperate with anyone who tries to help you. You’re as stubborn as a mule, Anjeni, and you have been from the day you were born!”
He finishes this tirade with a huff. The accusations shoot through me like a cluster of poisoned darts, painful and corrosive.
“Now if you would just listen, for once in your life—” he continues, but I’ve crossed the threshold on what I can bear.
“I’m going to bed,” I interrupt. “I am of legal age as of midnight. I’ll tell you in the morning what I’ve decided to do with my future, but you and Mom have no say whatsoever, do you understand? And since I’m as stubborn as a mule, there’s no point in arguing with me.”
Something in my tone gives him pause. He steps back, allowi
ng me the opportunity to shut the door and twist the lock. I stare at the barrier between us, numb from his outburst. Beyond, in the hall, he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. I can see his shadow in the ribbon of light at my feet.
He’s debating whether to renew the conversation or to give me my space for the night.
His better senses triumph. The shadow shuffles sideways out of my view as he retreats down the stairs.
Chapter Six
I can’t sleep. As I lie in the darkness of my room, my father’s words play over and over again in my mind.
Stubborn. Defiant. Refusing to cooperate. Forcing my own way on my own timetable.
And I have been this way since the day I was born. Before that, even. I forced my own timetable on my parents even in my conception, against their family planning and future expectations.
I am a mistake.
I had resigned myself to compromise, at least until the end of the school year. His outburst rings in my ears, though, and my soul chafes with rebellion. I can’t compromise now. And yet that will prove him right.
I don’t want him to be right.
But compromise will make him right as much as rebellion will. Compromise means I was wrong to object in the first place.
Beleaguered with frustration, I shove aside my bed covers and pace my room. The house is quiet. Everyone’s gone to sleep, and I’m stuck awake as the seconds and minutes and hours tick by. I’m too restless to stay in bed and too harrowed to read. I have to walk off this nervous energy.
Out of habit, I grab my lighter from the dresser top as I pass to the door. I slip it into the pocket of my pajama pants and tap quietly down the stairs. I pull a light sweater from a hook by the back door and cross the threshold into the cool night.
The grass is wet against my feet. A noise to my right alerts me of someone approaching.
“Miss Anjeni?”
It’s one of the night security guards. He waves a flashlight my direction, though he’s polite enough not to aim it into my eyes.
“I’m just walking around the garden,” I say. “I won’t go any farther than the Gate.”
His flashlight briefly flits across my bare feet, but he doesn’t comment on my lack of footwear. “Keep inside the fence.”
I nod my understanding. As I start down my chosen path, he calls after me, his voice hushed.
“Happy Birthday, ma’am.”
As if I were eighty instead of eighteen. The “ma’am” delights me, though. “Thank you,” I whisper to his retreating back. He lifts one arm in acknowledgement as he continues on his rounds.
Midnight has come and gone hours ago, and I am officially an adult.
The first glimmerings of dawn begin so slowly that I barely even recognize them. I sit between the two pillars of the Eternity Gate, my back against stone and my head rolled to the side to watch the glittering cityscape that sprawls across the valley. Absently I flip my lighter open and shut, open and shut. The tiny flame probably looks like some strange, alien beacon to anyone who happens to glance up at the monument.
Not that many people are awake. The restricted-access road below is as deserted as always, though I can see the occasional security guard pass beneath its street lamps. The word has spread among them that I’m here. No one else bothers me for the hour and longer that I sit.
What am I going to do? The perpetual calm around the Eternity Gate quiets my troubled mind, but it offers me no answers.
I doze off as the burgeoning gray along the horizon lightens into the pale yellows that herald the rising sun. I’m only asleep for a few minutes. That transition from darkness to light, so long in coming, speeds up as the sun crests the distant mountain peaks, but I miss that moment when the first rays spear across the land.
Instead, a far-off thudding jars me from my sleep. I jerk awake, and my first thought, nonsensically, is that a high school marching band is holding early morning practice for their drum line.
My hand is empty. I feel around the dewy grass for the lighter I dropped when I nodded off. It glimmers nearby. Absently I pick it up as that far-off drumming beats a steady pulse. The air in front of me shimmers, the stark sunlight obscuring the carpet of buildings below. I lift one hand to shadow my face, and for an instant, a trick of the eyes seems to mask the teeming city with the image of a barren valley instead.
I blink away the mirage. The chorus of drums beats again, a heavy sound that reverberates through my chest.
And again, that barren valley flashes into view.
I scramble backward, the hair at the base of my skull standing on end. Something is wrong. The city shifts into view, but the gap between the two pillars of the Eternity Gate ripples, more akin to water than air.
The drum beat is coming from that second, barren scene.
Absently I stash my lighter in my pocket as I stand, my gaze fixed on the ripples. It’s as if my eyes themselves are shuddering, though, causing the illusion in their fatigue. Am I that exhausted, that delirious? Is this all a dream?
The atmosphere around the Gate is foreign, no longer one of calm tranquility, but now possessed with the first vibrations of a coming storm.
Either my sleepless night has driven me insane, or this ancient, decorative stonework is trying to fulfill its rumored purpose.
I step closer, both cautious and fascinated. The space within the arch pulses with the beating drum. If I squint, I can see the barren field overlaid upon the cityscape.
It’s not barren, though. At the edges, to the north and south, a dark line extends and I know rather than see that there are people there, so far distant that I might as well be looking out upon ants.
Still in the grip of curiosity, I lift one hand to touch the roiling air. An electric shock rips up my arm, and I jerk back, my preservation instincts flaring.
What am I doing? The last thing I need right now is to cross over into some alien world—or to have some alien creature cross over into mine, which seems the likelier possibility. I need to get help, to tell the security guards or my father. But will the disturbance disappear if I look away? Will it still be there when I come back? Will everyone think I’ve gone crazy? I step backward up the hill, loath to tear my eyes from the sight. The ripples dance in the full dawning sunlight, two landscapes crisscrossing one another.
Behind me, familiar, quickening footsteps dart across the grass.
I panic. “No, Tana! Don’t—”
But she’s already upon me, shoving my half-turned body. My protest mingles with her crowing jeer.
“Off on your spiritual journey, Goddess Anjeni!”
And I swear she pushes me harder than she ever has before. Light and flame erupt around me as my body flies beneath the arch. A high-pitched scream fills my ears. Is it mine or someone else’s? My shoulder jars into stony ground, and I bounce once, twice, three times and then roll boneless down the hill.
I’m in shock as I come to rest at the base. The sky above, a perfect blue, extends like a canopy over the grass. There’s no wrought-iron fence, no street or civilization beyond. My fall has knocked the wind out of me. The air, hot and dry, crackles into my lungs as I force an inhale.
The beating drums increase their tempo, and behind them, the gathered host afar on my right raises a chorus of voices in a blood-chilling cry.
The host to my left remains silent. Even their drums are still.
The pain from my tumble is too real for a dream, and my disoriented horror would be more than enough to jolt me from any nightmare, were I asleep.
No, I have passed through to another world.
The Gate looms above me at the top of the hill, so close, and yet so distant. I have to get back to it. My body aches as I heave myself up from the dry, scrubby grass.
My shoulder is bleeding, my sweater torn and stained where I first hit the ground. Above me, the gap within the Gate shows crystal blue skies and no sign of rippling energy.
It’s already closed, my instincts warn me.
A despe
rate sob tears from my throat. The screaming host grows louder, their voices magnified in the harsh, dry air. I scramble barefoot up the steep hill, halfway to the Gate when a chilling sound echoes from behind.
The screech of a monster.
I whirl, only to be met with a horrific sight. A warrior has emerged from the host, a massive hunk of black armor and needle-sharp spikes astride the most hideous creature I’ve ever seen. It’s like someone bred a horse with a giant lizard, all scales and claws and hulking muscles.
The monstrous steed screeches again as it gallops across the barren valley, headed straight for me. Its rider holds aloft a gleaming morning star.
Great. Not only have I crashed into an alien world, but its inhabitants are going to kill me.
The mutant horse launches onto the hillside with sickening agility. In my attempt to flee, I roll my ankle and pitch back down the incline.
Graceful, that’s what I am. Meeting my impending doom with dignity and poise.
I tumble past my attacker. Claws scrabble against the stones above. Adrenaline courses through my blood as my body stops at the bottom of the hill. I spring to my feet and bolt.
As if I could possibly outrun my killer.
The creature shrieks behind me. On instinct more than anything else I fling myself out of the way. A whoosh passes too near, the spikes of the morning star dangerously close. The army on the right jeers and catcalls, their derision unmistakable. Still the army on the left does nothing.
I catch myself and thrust from the ground, but the warrior is already upon me.
His aim is better this time, too.
Pain bursts upon my back as the morning star connects, shredding through my clothes and raking up my ribcage. The force of the blow sends me airborne. I collide with rough earth, my limbs in a heap, my mind gripped in mingled agony and shock.
I’m on my side, facing the jeering host. A buzzing in my ears drowns out their frenzied roars.
The monster passes above my head. Its rider holds aloft his weapon, victorious, fomenting support from his rabid minions. My shallow breath puffs along the dirt in front of me.
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