I took a step closer to Aidan, pressing my shard up against his. Even though I could not see it, I knew it was burning bright pink; I could feel the rush of affection for him. The deep roots of my love, perhaps lost in all the memories I’d had wiped away or altered, were firm, and I could feel the flower of my love for him blossom.
The sublime beauty of that moment was contrasted sharply with the reality we now faced.
“We have to fight this,” I said quietly.
“I know.” Aidan’s voice, this close to me, reverberated against my skin. I shivered at the sensation, even though I was warmed by his certainty.
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Aidan sighed. “But we’ll think of something. If nothing else, I am glad you know. For now, you need to get ready for the Learning Ceremony. I know I am supposed to be helping there, too.”
He backed away from me, letting his hands slide from mine as slowly as possible. Affection between friends was encouraged in the City by the Sea, but I had a feeling a number of people would be disconcerted by the blazing passion I saw in Aidan’s eyes as we finally let each other go.
“Promise me you won’t forget this.”
I blinked, appalled he would even suggest it, but, as I recalled how I’d forgotten so much of his kindness and attention before, I clenched my fist, feeling more determined than ever. My nails dug into my palms, and at the pain, I paused as my shard seemed to hum softly.
“I won’t forget this,” I said, uncurling my fists.
I did not want to hurt the boy anymore. I didn’t feel my pain leaving me, but I was not sure if he would receive it or not. I did know that I would remember the boy, just as I would remember Aidan’s love—no matter the cost.
I made my silent vow as Aidan and I faced our street, where our two houses were in line with all the others.
“Aidan.”
“What is it?”
“When I was thirteen, and I asked you about the shadows in the morning, what did you tell me?”
He looked over at me. “I don’t remember it all, to be honest. It’s one of the first things I remember on my own, without it being taken from me. But I remember telling you not to tell anyone else, and that they would see it as an overactive imagination.”
I nodded slowly. “I thought that myself. That’s why I never told anyone but you, I think.”
“That’s the first day I decided I liked you,” Aidan said.
I reveled in that feeling of bedazzlement, before the shard in my forehead began to buzz; I could hear it this time; I could feel it changing colors as I looked at Aidan.
A sudden thought struck me as we approached our houses.
“Do you think people would remember their pain and their other memories better if we freed the boy?”
“Where would we take him?” Aidan asked. “The Community Elders might be away today, but there aren’t a lot of openings for breaking him free. I might have tried that myself, if I thought it would work.”
Aidan told me all about his moments of planning, about the pitfalls of each of his plans. As he escorted me to the door of my house, his voice fell into silence, as if he was aware that mourning over his failure would be frowned upon by others.
“I love you even more for all of this, you know,” I told him, as I knocked on the door and waited for my House Mother or Father to open it. “You’re a good person, Aidan, for telling me and helping me. And wanting to do something.”
“It doesn’t matter what I thought,” Aidan said, shaking his head. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You helped me.” I took his hand again, unwilling to let him go.
Before he could say anything else, the door opened up, and we were immediately surrounded by our families.
“There they are!”
Aidan and I jumped in surprise at Aidan’s sister, Stella, as she announced our arrival. Our collective house members—Mother Annika and Mother Erika, our House Fathers, Stella and even Storm—all of them stood in the door before us.
Uneasiness crept into me, before it slipped away into uncertain happiness.
“You should have told everyone you were going to ask Skyla to be your House Mother,” Stella said, bouncing a cheery Storm on her hip. “We could have had more time to prepare something for you!”
“Prepare?” Aidan asked.
“For your Joining Ceremony. Come in, and we can celebrate until it is time to go to the Summer Festival.”
We were pulled inside and pushed around, everyone alternatively offered me advice and congratulations; I vaguely recalled Aidan had told Stella he was going to take me as his House Mother, and that meant there was a lot that went with it. Before we were separated by the different parties, Aidan and I exchanged a knowing glance.
It was almost as if I could hear his thoughts.
They don’t know. They won’t help.
Before I knew it, I was telling them of how Aidan and I planned to move closer to the tower, how we wanted to start a family of our own, how we would apply for Child Rearing as soon as we were able. And when Mother Annika said there was a waiting time of at least four years for a new baby, I assured her that it was the perfect amount of time to wait for such a joy.
Stella handed me a piece of cake, and Mother Erika gave me a kiss on the cheek, welcoming me to her House Son’s family. Aidan’s House Father, Robert, shook my hand and began to sing a song of joy and celebration.
It was while he began to sing that I somehow heard River’s voice through the crowd.
“You’re just asking for trouble, joining with her,” he sneered.
The singing faded into the background, and my eyes shifted over just in time to see Aidan’s gaze frost over, and he hit River across the face.
River doubled over, nearly falling to the ground before he was righted, and the blood on his lip was replaced by a wholesome smile.
I almost forgot the charade for the second, wanting to yell at both River and Aidan, but I stopped myself—though only barely.
Thankfully, no one else noticed what happened.
And that’s when the idea began to form inside my mind.
“I’m so happy for you both,” Mother Annika said, brushing a lock of hair from my face. “You will make an excellent House Mother for Aidan, Skyla.”
“Yes, Storm is always happy to see you,” Mother Erika agreed.
“I would love to have a child,” I said, suddenly thinking of all the daydreams I was now allowed to have, since I was supposedly a House Mother. I could see Aidan and me as we worked together, keeping house and attending to our jobs. We would have two children to start, and then when they were older, if we had fulfilled our task well enough, we would be given another one or two. All House Parents had children for as long as possible, until the youngest from each family took care of us in our later years, until we were sixty.
The smile fled from my face at the thought.
Sixty years of torturing that boy. All for a perfect life.
I shook my head.
If Aidan and I were going to fight, the first thing we would have to do was free him.
“What is it, Skyla?” Mother Annika asked. “You are not smiling.”
I cleared my throat carefully, after feeling the sharp spike behind the shard on my forehead. “I am well.” I forced myself to smile. “I am … thinking of where we will live now.”
“Oh, do not even think about that,” Erika said. “The Community will decide what is best for you, just like they do for everyone else.”
I felt my teeth grind against each other as I nodded, all while the image of the boy, being tortured with all the pain of the Community members, raced through my mind.
A bell chimed in the distance, marking the opening call for the Summer Festival, and both relief and sadness coursed through me. For now, I would have to lay my dreams of a life with Aidan aside. Perhaps I would have to do it forever, and that thought made my heart ache even more than the shard in my forehead di
d.
Aidan tugged on me, pulling me out from my oncoming despair.
“Come on, Sky,” he said. “Let’s go to the Festival.”
“Yes,” Mother Annika said. “Skyla might be your choice for a House Mother, but she still has to complete the Learning Ceremony.”
Time did not seem to pass at all while we walked towards the tower. There were more stations set up since I had been there last, or maybe I just noticed them more, taking them in with a bland eye.
It was when I caught the sight of the oceanfront that the rest of my plan came together in my mind, and I squeezed Aidan’s hand at once.
“What is it?” he asked.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed he was looking at me, letting his gaze take in my dress and the twisted flowers in my hair. Another wave of warmth, one that had nothing to do with the weather, washed through me. I almost forgot what I was going to say when he asked me, “Is something bothering you?”
I sighed, then whispered, “I have been thinking. If the shard is what controls us, we should free that boy and take his shard. If we can dismantle it, he should be saved from the pain other people experience.”
“The Community Elders will not like that.”
“No,” I agreed. “They will not be for it at all. That’s why I need you to distract them somehow.”
“Distract them?” Aidan frowned. “How?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But no one in my house saw you punch River when he was being … rude … about us.”
It had taken me a moment to recall the word, but the moment I said it was the moment I knew it was the right one.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to think of something.”
“You thought of telling your sister you were going to ask me to be your House Mother,” I reminded him. “Because of that, everyone else in our Houses was distracted and didn’t see you.”
“You did,” Aidan pointed out.
“We’ve already established that we are the ones who can see certain things others can’t,” I said. “It makes sense I saw it, even if the others didn’t. Just try to think of something else, something that will distract them. Something that’s not bad enough to be erased, but something that will cause people to look at you for a few moments.”
Aidan hesitated, but then he nodded. “All right. But you’ll have to work quickly.”
“I’ll free the boy, and then I’ll take him down to the caves we used to play in as kids,” I said, looking back toward the oceanfront.
The boy was malnourished and thin which made the punishments he received all the more terrible. But there was hope in that, I decided. He wouldn’t be too heavy, and I would be able to get him out of the tower long enough to get the shard out of his forehead.
“Skyla.”
Aidan dropped my hand as Lady Sula’s voice called out for me.
Carefully, with a bright smile, I turned around to face her. “Lady Sula,” I said, giving her a small curtsey. “How are you today?”
“I am well, Skyla.”
Lady Sula had been the Lead Elder of my Community for as long as I could remember. She never seemed to age, but if I had to guess by looking at her, she was nearing her sixtieth year. Her long hair was pure white, and the shard in her head burned with total control all the time; every time I saw her, each of the seven rainbow colors evenly divided up the small gem, marking her as an Elder.
Her demeanor seemed to solidify the rest of her title. Despite her age, she stood straight, while other Elders were a little hunched. Her eyes, a perfect gray, were clear and alert. She had no wrinkles in her smile as she looked at me, and her gnarled hands seemed strong and firm despite the small splatter of gray freckles across her knuckles.
“I heard you will be a House Mother,” Lady Sula said.
“Yes,” I agreed, trying to look contrite and content at the same time.
“I did not see your registration,” she continued. “You must go down to the Elders’ Housing after the Learning Ceremony to correct this oversight.”
Aidan stepped forward. “It was my overexcitement,” he said. “I will fix it.”
“You will both need to go,” Lady Sula said. “And Aidan, remember your manners. We live in a perfect world, and we make it all the more beautiful when we remember how fragile that beauty is.”
She gave us a quick nod, smiled, and then walked away, taking her place at the entrance to the tower.
Aiden tugged my hand again. “I’m going to go in and find your brother,” he said. “As a member of last year’s class, I am allowed to go and stand with this year’s graduates. They will do some introductions before showing everyone the boy. In the meantime, you go see if you can sneak around and find him.”
“All right.” I swallowed hard, and Aidan leaned over and gave me a quick, stolen kiss on the cheek before he left me.
I felt each footstep he took as though it was a stomp on my heart. I could only hope that the boy did not feel all of my pain, now that Aidan had fiddled with my shard; if so, I wondered if my sudden sorrow at his parting might kill him.
There were a few ways into the tower, and I quickly spotted an entrance as I joined the adults heading into the tower. It was a small building, but the Community was not all here yet.
It made me sick to think of how each year I would have to witness the boy getting beaten and barraged by my pain.
A worse thought hit me as I slunk my way around the hidden hallways of the tower: What if someone actually enjoyed watching the boy suffer, and deliberately set out to cause him even more pain?
I did not want to think about that. Such cruelty did not seem possible.
And yet it was, wasn’t it?
That was the reason for the Imperfect Times. That was the reason that we were all here, forcing a young boy to take on all our pain and troubles. We ourselves were capable of all those things—hurting others, hurting ourselves, falling into the harshest cruelties of the human heart.
“Welcome to the 83rd Annual Summer Festival!”
An Elder’s voice called out through the tower, and I nearly screamed at the sudden, booming voice. I held my hand over my mouth to stop myself from making any noise, and it had to be a matter of divine providence that I did, because in that very next second, my shard began to buzz, vibrating with pain and sorrow.
Tears filled my eyes, as if to prepare me.
He’s near.
Another layer of pain struck me hard and fast, the same as it had before, when I’d first seen the boy.
I was getting closer.
A doorway on my left glowed with crimson fire, and—with a new surge of anguish pouring into my forehead—I opened it.
There he was. The same boy as before.
His eyes met mine as I stepped inside the room.
“I knew it was you, Skyla.”
The voiceless whisper in my head spoke, without his chapped and broken lips moving.
Before I could tell him I was there to rescue him, I realized the room’s ceiling was made of thick glass. The light was flooding all around him, and I could see a new cut form with a line of blood on his arm as I came closer.
If I had been in the Learning Ceremony line, like I was supposed to be, I would have only seen the lights. There were lines up above, and I knew that they would open up, showcasing the boy’s torment for all to see.
Through the glass, I could see Lady Sula was reigning over the room. I could hear her talking about the Learning Ceremony, and how good it was that we had all made it to this moment of our lives.
“Now,” she called out to the young people in the crowd, “now you will know the truth that comes with the Age of Accountability, and you must face your choice: Will you stay in the City by the Sea, or will you leave us?”
There was a loud chorus of naysayers, those who already were determined to stay. Had I not known the truth, I might have been among them.
But then I thought about being Aidan’s House Mother, about holding a ch
ild we were to raise; I imagined working at a job I loved, every day, no matter what it was; I thought about getting to kiss Aidan in our own house, whenever I wanted, in the years before we would be eligible for Child Rearing.
Maybe I would be one of the naysayers, too, even if I knew the truth. If I was not down here …
I squeezed my eyes shut in pain, angered and frustrated. All my life I had been told I was good, but in that moment, when I truly knew what good was, I knew I was not.
I would have been happy, I would have been content, I would have been productive, and I even would have been loving and kind to others. But I would not have been good.
“It’s all right, you know.”
“What?” I opened my eyes.
The boy in the center of the room was now before me, and his gaze had never left my face. I realized he had been able to read my thoughts.
“It’s all right for you to want a good life,” he said.
“But it’s not good for you to pay the price for me to do that.” I shook my head. “I don’t even know your name. Who are you?”
“My name is Ai,” he said, in that strange, voiceless tone. It was louder than a whisper in my head this time.
“Ai. It’s nice to meet you,” I whispered back, before I held out my hand to him.
The scarlet chains of light surrounding him scorched my palm, but I did not stop reaching for Ai. It was something I had to suffer for—honestly, truly suffer for—and after my life of perfection, it was the smallest amount of sacrifice I could give.
And even while the light burned into my flesh, making my tears swell and augment, I felt a rush of joy inside of me. I knew I was doing the right thing.
As if to agree, just as I was about to grab Ai’s hand, I heard Aidan’s voice speak up above us.
“My Community,” he said, racing into the center of the tower auditorium. “My Community, I ask of you to celebrate with me today, for I have chosen a House Mother!”
“Aidan Aeros.” Lady Sula’s voice cut through his, stopping his impromptu speech.
“Yes, Lady Sula, it is me,” he agreed, doing his best to play off her words as a sign of reassurance, rather than discouragement. “I wanted to let the Community know I have asked for Skyla Mercer’s hand today, to join in mine as a House Mother.”
Wayward Magic (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 2) Page 37
