6

TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

How can I be loyal to the king and disloyal to my beloved friends? I will never leave you. I will follow you to the ends of the earth.

PRINCE IAN, IN THE GOLD FIRETHORNS BY MARY PATRICIA WALL

Darius saved her. Whatever came later, that was something to remember. It was Darius who saved her life.

The room was crowded with people in scrubs and the blaring screams of the machines, the clipped orders from the doctor, the quick replies of the nurses. Darius burst in, spinning past the nurse who stepped in front of him. He danced through the crowd of medical people until he arrived on the left side of her bed and slipped the bracelet onto her wrist.

The bracelet did nothing for a terrifying three seconds.

Then it tightened.

It kept tightening until it was cutting into her skin. She gasped, and then the burning started. The bracelet seared her like it had been in an oven. It glowed furnace bright. Just when she thought she couldn’t bear it, the bracelet cooled. On her left wrist was the latticework of a silver tattoo, and the clouded jewel had grown to the size of a watch’s face, glowing beneath her skin.

And she could breathe.

The sudden burst of oxygen rushed to her head, and a dizzy wave of giddiness washed over her. She was breathing again, gulping in the sterile, cool hospital air. She wrapped her arms around Darius and felt his strong arms encircle her, almost lifting her from the bed.

The doctors pulled him away. Someone called for security, and Madeline tried to object, but she was so shocked she couldn’t speak. She just kept breathing, and for the first time in a long time it felt like she could keep breathing forever, like a normal person, breathe for ten, twenty, seventy years without thinking about it.

A security guard had Darius by the arm and was pulling him out of the room. “Can you breathe?” Darius shouted.

“Yes! Thank you,” she said, but it was more whisper than words, and she wasn’t sure he heard. She wanted to tell the guard to let him stay, she wanted to explain to the doctors that she was okay now, but she was overwhelmed, confused, and breathing. There was scarcely room in her head for anything but that.

A smile like sunlight spread across his face. “I’ll wait for you downstairs,” he called. “I won’t leave.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. Darius always said that. I won’t leave. She knew it was true. He had already stuck with her through some terrible things, and there was no evidence he would stop. It was what Prince Ian said to Lily in The Gold Firethorns, the third Meselia book: “I will never leave you. I will follow you to the ends of the earth.” That’s what Darius always said to her. When she first started to get sick. When the diagnosis came. When she couldn’t stand the thought of seeing another doctor’s face. To the ends of the earth.

She heard Darius scuffling with the security guard until the door closed, muffling the sound. She laid her head on the stiff hospital pillow.

Madeline’s head throbbed where it had hit the classroom floor, but her lungs felt brand new. She could run a marathon. She could do jumping jacks or swim or dance or sing at the top of her lungs or yell at someone and still she could breathe!

The doctors ran tests. Tested her oxygen levels. Listened to her lungs. They didn’t have much to say. They weren’t sure what had happened, but in the past her lung capacity had seemed to come and go. They wanted to keep her for observation. Given what had happened with Darius barging in, they said no one else could come in until her parents arrived. No one mentioned the bracelet. They didn’t comment on the tattoo. It’s like they hadn’t seen that part, had only noticed a high school boy bursting into the room, hugging her, and being dragged away.

But between nurse visits, Jason slipped in. He had a pudding cup in one hand and a silver tattoo on his other wrist. “People say tattoos hurt, but I barely felt this one.”

“You have one too?” Relief flooded her. She wouldn’t have to go alone.

“Your friend Handy gave it to me. I figured I’d put mine on today to guarantee we’d go together to the Sunshine Place.”

Madeline looked at Jason. “What did you promise to him? What are you giving up?”

Jason shrugged. “I get to go with you, and they give me snacks.”

Madeline’s stomach dropped. “Jason . . . you’re leaving behind your life for a year. You don’t . . . You don’t have to do that.”

The edges of Jason’s lips twitched up. “I would have flunked chemistry without a partner anyway. Might as well take a gap year.”

“But your parents —”

Jason didn’t let her finish. “Are going to be fine, if not happy to see me gone.”

Madeline couldn’t imagine that was true. Picturing Jason’s parents and their grief somehow made it more real. Her parents would be going through the same trauma.

“Are my parents here yet?”

Jason shook his head. “Darius texted them, though.”

If her dad was in a meeting, he wouldn’t look at his phone for hours at a time, and her mom often left hers in the car. “I guess we can wait to leave until they get here? Do you want to say good-bye to your parents?”

Jason shook his head. “Hanali said that unless we ‘start our journey’ the magic stops working. Like, if the magic thinks you’re not going to follow through, it takes away your breathing. We should get going soon.”

Now that he mentioned it, she did notice a hitch in her breathing. So slight, and so small compared to what she had been living with up until now, but definitely there. She took a deep breath —amazing that she could do that again —and reflected on leaving home. This was going to be hard. She couldn’t imagine missing her birthday, missing Christmas and Thanksgiving and a hundred other little family traditions. But, she reminded herself, she probably wouldn’t have made it to Christmas anyway. She needed to set aside the chaotic mess of excitement and fear and sadness and confusion and loss, and get ready. Maybe she could send a message to her parents, although she didn’t think they’d believe it for a second. Still. It was time to go. “Close the curtain,” she said to Jason.

He pulled the curtain shut around the bed.

“With you on the other side, dummy,” she said. “I’m going to get dressed.”

Jason blushed and disappeared through the curtain.

Her shoes and socks were in a bag hanging on the end of her bed, but the rest of her clothes were gone. Right. They had cut her out of her clothes. It had been an emergency, they had been moving fast. She put on her socks and sneakers. “You can come back in,” she said.

Jason looked at her hospital gown. “Bold fashion statement,” he said. “I like the shoes.”

Madeline wrapped a blanket around her back. She slipped the oxygen tube out of her nose, something she had done a hundred times before. Hopefully this would be the last time. “I’ll need help getting the IV out.”

Jason looked at her arm, his face pale. “Maybe I should go find some clothes for you.”

He disappeared, and the sound of the door clicking shut echoed in the small room.

Fine. She didn’t need his help. She peeled up the edges of the tape on her inner elbow and pulled both sides toward the center. The needle bit deep. She wasn’t sure how to turn off the drip or if there was some special way to pull out the needle. She grabbed the base of it, her hand shaking, and with the smoothest motion she could muster, pulled the needle away from her arm.

She gasped. It was out, still drooling liquid onto the floor. A pinprick of blood welled up. A quick rifle through the bedside drawers produced a small piece of cotton, which she put over the wound. She found a roll of colored Coban to wrap around her arm and bit the edge to tear it.

Jason ducked under the curtain with some folded green scrubs. His shirt had brown stains dripping down the front.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I spilled chocolate pudding all over my shirt and went in the waiting room and started shouting that I was covered in blood and needed a change of clothes.” He looked down at his jeans, which were also covered in pudding. “I got you some pants, too. I’ll wait outside.”

She tugged the pants on. They tied at the waist, so although they were baggy, they would stay up. The top slid on easily. She found a rubber band in the drawers and pulled her hair back, wincing at the tender spot on the back of her head. The strange silver markings of her bracelet tattoo glimmered even under the fake light in the hospital room. The jewel glowed under her skin, but it didn’t hurt.

They slipped out of her room and into the elevator. Darius was downstairs in the waiting room. Darius gave Jason a funny look when they came out of the elevator together, but then he was wrapping Madeline in his arms. She leaned into the hug, thankful for him, thankful he was here and had brought her the bracelet, and glad that, for a moment at least, this seemed uncomplicated and normal.

“Did they release you already?” he asked. “Shouldn’t they do some more tests?”

Madeline squeezed his hand. “Darius. There aren’t more tests. We know everything there is to know.”

He lowered his head, a look she had seen too often on his face since her diagnosis. “Okay,” he said. “I know that. Can I give you a ride home?”

A sharp pain came from the bracelet. “I can’t go home.” The whole story came pouring out. Darius held her hand loosely, his eyes on hers the entire time she spoke, but he didn’t speak until she was done.

“So the magic works?”

She lifted her left hand so he could see the silver network of tattoos. “A hundred percent.”

Darius’s face filled with wonder. “Madeline, it’s everything we dreamed about. It’s just like The Gryphon under the Stairs.”

She nodded, smiling. “Finally something is working. There really is magic.”

“So we’re going to fight these —what are they called again?”

“Scim.”

“We’re going to fight the Scim, and in a year we’re coming back.”

Madeline pulled her hand away when he said “we.” Of course he would say that. But there was no guarantee he could come . . . He hadn’t made a deal. He hadn’t seen Hanali.

Jason said, “I don’t think you have a ticket.” He held up the silver tattoo on his wrist.

“I’m coming,” Darius said, glaring at Jason.

“Darius,” Madeline said. “Your parents —”

“We’ll be back in a year,” Darius said.

Jason was getting nervous. “Can we take this outside before someone comes looking for the kid who checked herself out of the hospital?”

Madeline led them out to the street. She walked with purpose, away from the automatic doors and toward 23rd Street. Darius paced beside her, and Jason brought up the rear, his hands in his pockets, his shirt and jeans still covered in pudding. She knew Darius wouldn’t be able to go. She felt it, as deep and certain as the magic moving through her. That was how it worked. She had read all the books. Darius didn’t see Hanali, Darius didn’t make a deal, Darius wouldn’t be able to cross into the Sunlit Lands. That didn’t mean they couldn’t try, but . . . She tried to think of a way to make it noble, make it helpful for him to stay.

“I need someone to explain all of this to my parents,” she said.

Darius laughed. “Your parents will call the cops if I tell them this.”

“I could leave a note with you. Or send them a text.” But her phone was still at the school, in her backpack. Her tattoo twinged, and Jason gave a yelp at the same moment. She knew which way to go, sort of —it seemed to be almost pulling her off the main street, down a narrow alley. “You’re right,” Madeline said, stepping around a dank puddle. “Don’t tell them anything. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“How about I just come with you? Then this won’t be an issue at all.”

“Okay,” Madeline said, exhausted. “Come with us.” Darius winced when she said “us.”

The bracelet was guiding them into an old neighborhood. If she went too slow, her breath started to go ragged. She moved quickly, following it toward the end of a long cul-de-sac.

A chain-link fence surrounded a low spot where long grass grew in a slight depression. All the neighborhood’s runoff water eventually came through here. No one stirred in the neighborhood. No one opened a door or looked out a window. A hummingbird sat on the fence, chirping. That was weird. She hadn’t noticed a hummingbird doing that before, and it seemed larger than usual. She thought back to the bird that had been talking to the woman in her garden. Could it be the same one? Could the Garden Lady have sent it?

Madeline rubbed her chin. “I think . . . we’re supposed to climb this fence.”

Jason groaned. “Tell me we’re not about to crawl through a drainage ditch.” He wrapped his fingers through the chain-link fence and pressed his face against it. “Ugh, I can smell it from here.”

“I’ll go first,” Darius said, but when he put his hands on the fence, a brilliant flash of light knocked him backward. He lay on the ground, smoke rising from his clothes.

Madeline’s heart leapt into her throat. She ran to Darius and knelt beside him. She helped him sit up. “Are you okay?”

“Electric fence?” Darius asked, still dazed.

“I’m still holding onto it,” Jason said.

The hummingbird chirped and flew to the other side of the fence, zipping back and forth in a strange, almost hypnotic pattern.

“We should come back with a ladder,” Darius said.

Madeline considered this, but her breath went immediately ragged. “I can’t wait.”

Darius frowned. “I always told you I’d follow you to the ends of the earth.”

Madeline smiled and pulled him into a warm embrace. In The Gold Firethorns, Lily betrays the Eagle King. Ian, Prince of the North, escorts her to the edge of Meselia after she is banished. In one of Madeline’s favorite moments of the whole series, he lays his crown down at the border and steps across with her. He says, “How can I be loyal to the king and disloyal to my beloved friends? I will never leave you. I will follow you to the ends of the earth.”

Madeline leaned back so she could see Darius’s face. “But do you remember what happens in the story?”

Darius nodded, a frown returning to his face. “Lily sends Ian back to serve King Kartal, and she heads into the wilderness alone. He watches her disappear into the mist, and the people call him Prince Ian the Sorrowful in the years to come.”

“Except I’ll only be gone a year,” Madeline said. “And when I come back . . . things will be normal again.”

Darius squeezed her shoulder. “That’s not how it works, Maddie. You don’t go away for a year and come home to ‘normal.’ You come back and . . . you come back and everything has changed.”

She didn’t answer him, because she knew he was right. She stood, and he stood beside her. “So I guess this is the ends of the earth,” she said.

“On the bright side,” Jason said, still at the fence, “she’ll be fighting evil monsters during that year. So. There’s that.”

Darius frowned. “How is that a bright side?”

Jason shrugged. “Monsters are bad. Somebody’s gotta fight ’em.”

“Ignore him,” Madeline said. She pulled Darius’s forehead against hers. “I’ll miss you,” she said. “But a year from now I’ll be able to breathe. I’ll be able to live life again.”

Darius sighed. A deep, resigned sound. “It’s only a year,” he said.

“Tell my parents . . . Tell them something. Tell them I’m okay.” She shook her head. “Or don’t tell them anything, I don’t know what’s best. Do what you think is right, Darius.”

“I know the right thing to do already. I’m going to find a way to come to you,” Darius said, and she knew it was true that he would try.

One more hug for Darius, as long as she dared, until her breathing started to go ragged. When she stepped away from him and toward the fence, her breath returned.

Jason stood near the fence. He cupped his hands into a stirrup. “I’ll boost you.”

Madeline laughed and leapt onto the fence. She slung herself over and dropped to the ground on the other side. She could breathe. She’d never need help to jump or run or scale a fence again.

Jason, on the other hand, appeared to have never climbed a fence in his life. She tried to coach him, and he fell off twice. Eventually Madeline leapt back over the fence and cupped her hands into a stirrup. She boosted Jason to the top, and he made his way to the other side with the help of a missed rung and gravity.

“I did it!” he shouted. “King of the world!”

They grinned at each other. Madeline looked back to Darius, but the world on the other side of the fence looked grey and sluggish, like a video in slow motion, covered with a thick fog.

“Magic?” she asked.

“No turning back now, I guess,” Jason said, but that had never been a real possibility. Madeline shouted good-bye to Darius and told him they were safe, but he moved so slowly she couldn’t tell if he heard. She wrapped her fingers in the chain-link fence, trying to see him more clearly, but the fog only grew thicker. She could barely see him now. Madeline whispered another good-bye. The space between them had already begun to grow.

The hummingbird zipped in front of her face, and she spun to watch it, but she couldn’t see where it had gone. She didn’t think the bird had crossed outside the fence. The drainage area wasn’t huge, but it was clear of fog, and there wasn’t another way out that they could see. A cement pipe protruded from the ground, just big enough that Madeline could crawl in on her hands and knees. A sludge of accumulated mud coated the bottom. A flicker of light came from far down the pipe.

“Do you think this . . . ?”

“I absolutely do not,” Jason said, but she knew this was the way. Of course it was.

They stared at it for a full five minutes, neither of them speaking. Her breathing didn’t change, but she knew. “I have to,” she said at last.

Jason shook his head. “There’s no way Hanali crawled through there.”

The hummingbird appeared between them, then darted into the pipe. A chirp echoed back. Madeline glanced at Jason. “You saw that, right?”

“I did not see that,” Jason said, crossing his arms.

Madeline put her hand on the lip of the pipe. She wrinkled her nose. A dank smell of ancient, decayed leaves and old mud came from the darkness. But there was light farther down. She could see it now for sure. She took a deep breath, thankful once more that she could breathe at all, and crawled into the tunnel. The mud squished beneath her hands and knees, but she moved steadily forward. She felt a lightness, a relief to be moving in the right direction. She would miss Darius, and her family, and her friends, but she was glad to be moving, to be breathing, to be headed toward health and freedom. If only Darius could have come.

From somewhere behind her Jason said, “Seriously. Hanali would never get his costume dirty like this.”

She smiled, glad for Jason’s company, and crawled steadily toward the dim light ahead.