28

Varek was right; the ride wasn’t long. Or the world was moving faster, pushing her toward her inevitable past. The sun had barely moved in the sky, or so she thought, until she glanced over to Anya who fanned herself with her hand. When the ocean breeze lulled, it left behind a stagnant heat that she didn’t realize was there until she saw sweat dripping down Anya’s temples. Sabi looked up to Varek and saw his hair matted around his ears, tangled into a mess at the nape of his neck.

A couple of floating docks bobbed on the rolling water, one with a fisherman at its end, his line cast. She watched him as they passed and he turned to stare as they trotted by. Even in the glare of the sun she saw the intensity of his gaze, his accusatory stare. She swallowed hard and looked away first, leaving his eyes to burn holes into her back.

As a line of cottages formed to her left and the packed earth under them faded to glistening sand, the air grew just a hint sweeter, like a cluster of flowering bushes was nearby, but when she looked around it was just ocean and tall grass and sky. But it was there, on the wind. Sweet. It wasn’t anything distinct, not a scent she could put her finger on, but something she kept getting a whiff of and it would drive her crazy until she figured it out.

An icy burst flared across her flesh as one by one they ambled past the cottages. Each step seemed to linger, each house paused as they passed, frozen in time only to return to normal and repeat all over again. Each thatched roof, each piece of siding with peeling paint, each open window plucked a chord of familiarity with Sabi, but just one. It wasn’t until one particular house came into view that invisible fingers strummed down those strings and reverberated notes of history into her soul.

In front of them Shay’s horse stopped and Anya whipped around to face them, but her gaze didn’t linger. Like catching a moment too private to see she turned back around, away from Sabi, and left the memory for her to grab.

Slices of dreams came flooding to the forefront, rolling waves of déjà vu crashing into her. The feeling that her brain didn’t create this place, that it was a real memory filed away in some dusty drawer at the back of her mind, unnerved her. If she weren’t sitting on a horse she’d take a step back, almost afraid that the house would reach out to her. And do what? Slap even more reality into her? How her brain hadn’t cracked in half by now was a miracle.

With more grace than she thought possible in legs still too stiff to move, Sabi swung over the horse and slid down. Her feet made a soft padding sound as they struck the ground, more dirt than sand this far back from the water. Her dream with the star drifted in her memory and the sun seemed to flare, making her squint at the brightening day. But when she blinked the day was its normal brightness with the cottage soaking up the late afternoon sun.

The color of the building didn’t quite fit, a bright yellow when it felt more like a red. The picket fence was there, the gate creaking on its hinges, adding an unnerving groan to the soft ocean breeze. The white of it was right, even if the graying wood underneath splintered through in patches. A pockmarked lawn with dried dirt and wisps of sand instead of the lush green in her head sat in front of her. But the piece fit, as if its shape were carved out of her brain and pasted into the scene.

Someone moved in the window and her papa’s face came to the glass. The press of her mama’s hands pushed through her clothes and a happy, unlined face was up against hers, cooing something indecipherable. The world bounced and Sabi’s hand, tiny and stubby, reached out to steady on her mama’s shoulders. A peal of laughter shattered the vacuum of silence and she felt the smile form. A laugh even bubbled its way up her throat. Papa smiled and disappeared behind the glass. Footfalls creaked on wooden floors and a child’s arm reached out to the front door.

When the door opened the hand and arm were her own again, the figure in the door no more her papa than the tree in the backyard. The feel of her mama’s hands fizzled away and the weight of her legs under her became real again. At first the face was a frown of confusion that quickly turned into a scowl that could melt steel. Heavy arms crossed over a broad chest then flexed, pushing the rolled-up cuffs tight. The man’s girth filled the doorway and kept even her thought of the inside from getting past.

This time the earth didn’t so much bounce as tilt and her knees buckled under the weight of the man’s glare. A calloused hand caught her arm before she went down and she steadied herself on her sudden sea legs. The man’s eyes turned on Varek and he snarled when he spoke.

“Get that curse out of here. Blood flows in her wake and I don’t want none of it near me.”

“Her parents ran, not her.” Varek’s defense lightened the weight in her chest but the man’s retort cracked it in half.

“Her leaving brought Sickness. Her return will bring war.” He turned to her, his neck moving so slowly it should have creaked. “Why couldn’t you just’ve died with the Goquin and brung us peace? Your skin gets saved again and the rest of us die in your place.”

Sabi choked on air as she tried to inhale it, giant gobs of breath bunging up her throat. Varek grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her back toward the horse.

Through tear-blurred eyes she watched the horse’s tail swish and pause at the middle of its swing, hairs splayed out in a fan, not moving even for the breeze. Shay’s horse was equally frozen mid-shake, its lips flipped in odd directions, its teeth bared. Shay and Anya still moved and quickly slid from the horse when it froze underneath them, backing away toward Varek and Sabi as if not believing their eyes. Even the ocean behind them stopped mid-wave, the curl partially formed, the shoreline still. It was impossible to tell whether the tide was coming or going.

Sabi chanced a glance behind her and saw the hateful man frozen in a twist, his face contorted with disgust and anger, his body not quite facing front anymore. Maybe he was headed back inside what was once her home. Maybe he was reaching for something. Now he was just as unmoving as the rest of the world and she didn’t know if now was the time to run or get nailed down by fear. She was aware of whatever was coming and she closed her eyes against the day and wished for time to make her freeze too.

“What is that?”

Anya’s voice was just above a whisper, the end of her sentence tinged with disbelief. Sabi opened her eyes and kept her focus on Anya who’d nestled in under Shay’s touch, the woman’s hand firmly on Anya’s shoulder. When Anya looked over at Sabi, her forehead crinkled and she pointed out toward the ocean. Sabi’s eyes followed the pale, thin arm and gazed out over the sea stuck in mid-shimmer. Pockets of darkness pooled along the surface where the sun skipped in that frozen moment.

Movement in the stillness drew her eyes out to the horizon. Her stomach dropped before she even had a chance to focus, as if her body knew what was out there before her brain did. Sunlight cast a figure into silhouette as it walked along the surface of the water. Her knees buckled, nearly dropping her to the sand, making her replay her dream, but Varek’s solid arm wrapped around her shoulders and held her up. With a quick shuffle she leaned against his back as he stepped in front of her. Shay did the same with Anya, but Sabi knew it didn’t matter what they did.

She righted herself and forced her spine to carry her weight instead of Varek’s. Quietly she stepped to the side and watched the figure take a more masculine shape before his features solidified into the face from her dream, including eyes that were entirely white and a glow that radiated from within. His linens were still tan and his walk held a purpose.

Varek’s body dropped in front of her, his knees hitting the sand with a thud as he covered his head with his hands. Two more thuds broke over the still silence as Shay and Anya dropped down next to her, groveling at the feet of the approaching star. Sabi didn’t know if she should follow them or keep standing there gaping. This wasn’t a hallucination. A Raydin god had just frozen time and appeared before them.

“It pleases me that you’ve come so far,” he said to her, stepping around Varek as if he were nothing more than a stone. “I see your mind has changed from when we last met.”

The star stepped up to her and Sabi tried not to wince from the light. He reached his hand out and placed his fingers at her temple. With each pad pressing into her skin, it felt like pressure directly on her brain, a poke, a twitch. Flashes of feelings, questions, doubts, scrolled through her mind like a marquee. No matter how hard she grasped, her thoughts were just out of reach, the star keeping them from her as he waded through. Each prod was a violation and it made the flame of her anger burn hotter.

“Good,” he said. “That’s what you will need to move forward.”

The world rumbled, a ripple through the still waves, a flick of horse hair, but it all settled back into silence and stillness. The star’s smile cracked open, revealing one gleaming white tooth after another, until the smile looked almost sinister, its spread just a touch too wide for comfort.

He chuckled and it shook her heart. “Very good. I gave you my word. I intend to hold myself to it as you hold yourself to yours.”

He turned away from her then, his face pointed toward the sea. Waves moved, a great crashing roar as wave after wave folded in on itself, parting itself like a curtain and folding away to make a path. Swirling water created the walls of a hallway, the sand leading down a path to a water doorway that flickered like a movie screen. Images flashed before her, leaving blurs too quick for her to grab hold of.

A hum met her ears. At first it was a single note thrumming at a soft pitch. As it grew louder the notes filtered out, the sounds distinguishing themselves from each other. A car horn. Shouting voices. The low rumble of a passing train under a grate. Sabi took a step forward and the spinning images slowed, as if slotting themselves into place. No longer a gunmetal blur, buildings stood tall against a bright blue sky, the sun flickering off a wall of glass. Sabi winced as the image tilted and a pane caught the light and flashed into her eyes.

The sight panned down the side of a building and the sky shrank to something more recognizable, dog-piled by steel and smog. A bead of sweat formed at her temple in the effort to convince herself that she wasn’t really seeing this. That wasn’t the block she walked down a million times in her life. Those weren’t the same people she passed. Green leaves engulfed her view until the park appeared, the iron gate more nostalgic than off-putting. Scraps of napkin clung to the base of one of the spikes and Sabi could almost reach out and touch the cheap paper.

Only when she looked around did she realize she was halfway into the tunnel, surrounded by churning water that swelled over rush hour traffic. She jerked around to find the star at the entrance and Anya just behind him, her brows drawn together, waiting. Varek and Shay were farther back, closer to her first home, hands held loosely between them. Her fingers twitched at her side, eager to reach out to Anya in the shadow of the star, but the pull to turn back to the doorway was infinitely stronger.

The sign for the subway stop, her stop, with its white lettering and colored dots to denote the trains, forced out a sob. Her heart was getting wrung out, the pain twisting like a knife. What she wanted from her world, her known world, came crashing down around her.

Sabi moved closer and the perspective of the doorway changed, shifting to something underground and all around danker. Now she was looking up a flight of crust-covered stairs, pooled in murky yellow and dirt. A florescent light flickered over her head and a wash of air pressed at her back. The steady rhythm of wheels on tracks pulsed with her heart. She looked down and the sand under her booted feet faded into gum-studded cement speckled with fluids and years of miscellaneous grime that could probably incite a plague. She could kiss it.

All she had to do was keep walking. Heel, toe, heel, toe. The water pathway would turn to stairs, stairs that were right in front of her. The edge of her vision wavered and a person emerged from her peripheral, heading up the stairs at a pace, only the back of them visible. A tree from the park was just noticeable at the far edge of the exit, the tops of the buildings from across the street, chunks of sky directly overhead. All she had to do was keep walking and she’d be home. Her real home.

For how long?

Long enough to let Mama and Matti know she was alive? Long enough to pull them back to Raydin and ruin their lives even more than what was already done? Sure, Matti’s heritage came from behind Sabi, in a land she could barely grasp. But her life was New York. That’s where she was born. No wayward memories haunt her dreams, no diamond tears rule her fate. Her heart, her life, may be bottled up on this side of the line but she didn’t know it. Did she really need to?

And Mama. The way people looked at Sabi, the things they thought. They said. If caught in a dark alley with some locals, she’d certainly be afraid for her life and she was only two when she was dragged out of the kingdom. But Mama? The woman who actually did it? The one who set the Sickness on so many children, who has a pile of bodies in her wake? The mob would keep her alive as long as they could and siphon as much pain out of her as possible. She’d feel every Sickness pustule that ever popped, every piece of skin that slid away, every child that melted before their parents’ eyes.

The subway stairs shimmered and Sabi jammed the heel of her hand into her eyes to force away the tears. Her shoulders shuddered with sobs, but she forced herself to look up to the street. She forced herself to remember how the buildings carved hard edges into the sky, how the glass struck her eyes with shine if she swayed just a little. The mesh pattern of the stairs crusted in years of stomping feet. The spikes of the wrought iron gate surrounding Tompkins Square Park, the leaves hanging over the iron. Anonymous people in clothes she actually recognized: jeans, t-shirts, leggings, blouses, baseball caps. Hair that made sense and covered peoples’ heads. Or not, but those heads didn’t have stamps.

She filed away every detail, committing it all to memory before she took a step back.

If she thought of herself it would only cause what was left of her family more pain. She was dead to them. That at least allowed them to move on. If she let them know she was still alive they would only worry or try to get her back. Or worse, try to come back over. No. She couldn’t let that happen. When Jeviar got a hold of Sabi it was a one-way ticket. Anya’s parents thought the same thing, regardless of how they felt for her. Mama and Matti needed to keep thinking she was as good as dead. It was for their safety.

Sabi took another step back and the New York sky wavered as it became more water than air. Instead of wiping them away she just let the tears fall as she remembered hot chocolate and bedtime stories, the Empire State Building, Coney Island, and snow days.

Another step and the buildings collapsed into waves, leaving just the stairs to waver in the swirling water. She knew this was it. Her last moment to reconsider. Forward would bring her happiness, however temporary. Back came with the unknown and war. Maybe to someone else it’d be an easier decision, but Sabi couldn’t make the same mistakes her parents made nor could she sacrifice what was left of them to make herself happy.

One more step back and the stairs swirled away, replaced by frothing sea water and the end of a tunnel that crept steadily closer. She didn’t bother wiping her tears away or clearing her running nose. Shuddering sobs overwhelmed her, sending her hiccupping and heaving down the tunnel toward the shore. The water crashed in behind her but not even so much as a splash got her wet.

She stared at the figures ahead of her, smears in her vision as she ambled forward, markers of her destination. When the last of the tunnel collapsed behind her and the surf returned to normal, she crumbled to the sand, crashing into the water as it lapped at her legs. A thin body wedged itself underneath her and wrapped its arms around her shoulders. Anya shushed noise into her ear as she rocked and Sabi cried into her tunic, soaking it to the skin.

“You are on the right path.”

The voice lifted Sabi’s head and she felt Anya turn her head to face it as well. The star shined even against the wash of sunlight, brightening the deeper, richer hues of a waning afternoon. His words barely registered and Anya opened her mouth but the star cut her off.

“Know that, at least.”

It was probably meant to be reassuring, as reassuring as he could be. Instead she still felt cold on the inside.

“You knew,” Sabi mumbled more into Anya’s shoulder than to the star, but he still heard and tilted his head to her. She lifted her head away from the fabric. “You knew what I was going to do before I did it.”

The star’s lips curled at the corners, a smile that looked more patronizing than reassuring, as if he were humoring a simple child. “Ours were expectations and you simply met them.”

“Are we anything more than stupid game pieces to you?”

A sharp intake of collective breath behind her almost drew her gaze away from the star. Almost. If it wasn’t Jeviar or Naileigha, it was the stars. Sabi had been batted around the kingdom like a goddamn shuttlecock and she was stick of it. The pain of giving up Mama and Matti crystalized and hardened around her heart. Something inside her clicked into place as she watched the star tilt his head like an expectant beagle and stare at her with a deadpan face she could almost believe was genuine.

“Why would you think that?”

Sabi twisted away from Anya and steeled herself on her knees, glaring up at the celestial creature before she pulled herself to her feet. A ripple radiated under the ground as if it were water and someone’d just dropped a pebble. The star’s blank expression faltered, but he caught himself before too much emotion leaked out. It was there and gone so quickly she couldn’t remember it long enough to guess what she saw.

“Because you just basically said I’m a puppet stuck on your fist and I’m feeling a little crowded right now.”

“Sabina . . .”

Shay’s voice carried over on the wind, but the buzzing in Sabi’s ears deflected it. No. She was beyond caring. What could this guy do to her that hadn’t already been done? How much more could she possibly lose?

“You have it wrong. It pains us to see our humans hurt.”

Sabi saw him twitch but he was next to her before she could register it as anything more than that. He reached out to her and she tried to recoil but found herself stuck, frozen solid where she stood. The star brushed his fingers along her temple and streaks of light edged down her skin, making her glow.

In a heartbeat the ocean world was gone, replaced by something nearly indecipherable. Like space, vast and filled with nothing within reach. Lights twinkled, blinked on and off, making stairs and layers of a nonexistent world. Voices surrounded her, invading her presence as if they were adopting her essence. There was nothing but twinkling light around her but she felt them. Stars. They were everywhere, permeating her very being. She reached out with her self, this non-body she didn’t have, and merged with a handful of others.

Their emotions were almost tangible, a fear so thick it nearly gave substance to the insubstantial place. Sabi refocused her attention and found herself looking down on a familiar sight. The golden dome of Jeviar’s castle stared straight up at her before her being plummeted down, through layers of stone, to the dungeons.

A scream shredded the air and with a thought she was there, at its source. It was a Crier in the extractor, white-knuckled on the face mask, trying to rip it off, but it wouldn’t budge. All around her, hanging in the air like humidity, was fear. It was palpable and as repugnant as stagnant pond water. It was all she knew in that occupied space, so overwhelming it felt like she’d be swallowed by it if she didn’t step away.

With a thought the dome was at a distance and she belonged to the nothing once again. Another blurb of feelings drew her attention and she found herself in sadness, looking down at a Sickness child, half of its face rotted away, barely discernible as human as it choked on its own distended tongue.

She pulled herself out of the pool of wretched sadness only to be sucked into pain, worry, indifference. She wanted to scream but didn’t have a mouth to let out the noise. She looked around the space, frantic for a way out, grasping without arms for the nothing to pull her out.

A tug pulled at her and she braced her non-self for another void of despair only for the sunshine to flash and she to have a body again to recoil from the brightness. The ocean was back in front of her, the star at her side as he lowered his hand.

“Is that how you live?” Sabi gasped, “Wallowing in other people’s misery?”

The star shook his head. “There is more to the world than that, but the dark is sometimes stronger than the light. That’s when we intervene.”

“You start playing the people game,” Sabi said as she blinked back the sun. “That’s when you start nudging them where you need them to go.”

“It is what they need too. Raydin couldn’t live like this forever.”

“No, but people would have gotten pissed off enough eventually to do something, you think?”

The star followed her gaze out over the water and Sabi looked to the side of his face, his golden hair catching the breeze, his pure white eyes creepy even in the daylight.

“Perhaps. However, this timing was right. You and the others were set up perfectly.”

Something like a snort clotted in Sabi’s nose. “Yeah, perfect.”

“You must trust that this is for the best.”

Laughter burbled up from her chest and erupted from her mouth unhindered. She couldn’t stop it if she tried, like thinking of something funny that dug its heels in and wouldn’t budge. Except this wasn’t funny ha ha. It was a funny that twisted her smile into a grimace as glittering tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. Sometime in her maniacal fit Anya had walked up to her and taken Sabi’s hand in hers.

“The best? The best for who? You killed my papa, exiled my mama and sister, and had me held captive while some douchebag harvested by face. What best is that?”

Heat flared in Sabi’s cheeks and the bones of Anya’s hand dug into her own. She didn’t care who or what this dude was. He helped fuck her life for some bigger picture. No way was she just going to accept that.

The star turned to her then and reached a hand out that Sabi jerked away from. He wasn’t sending her brain on any more acid trips. In that moment, when she shoved herself away, his face saddened, a droop to the corners of his eyes, a downturn of his lips. Even the blankness of his stare took on the frame of emotion showing on his face. He dropped his arm back down to his side and straightened, removing the sadness as he did.

“The world is more than you. You need to understand that.”

“Why?” Tears flecked the word, her voice choked. “Why can’t it just be about me and my life? Why can’t I just have that? Why can’t everything just go back to normal and all of this just go away?”

The weight in Sabi’s hand fell away, leaving a wet coolness in its wake. At a sniffle she turned to see Anya, her lip quivering, the strength gone from her demeanor. In that moment she was an insecure teenager like Sabi, selfish, self-centered, eyes wrapped in tunnel vision. Her own blinders lifted and she saw the world around her, what it would really mean to forget it all. Her heart cracked at the thought of losing Anya, her defeat seeping out of that crevice like blood. Sabi’s breath came up short and she took a step toward the tearing girl.

“Because it will no longer let you,” the star said from behind her.

His voice was a hum barely heard over a crashing wave, barely registered beyond Anya’s trembling face. Shimmering tears streamed down her cheeks. Sabi could almost hear her own voice replaying in Anya’s mind.

“No,” Anya mumbled through the cries as her fingers twisted into each other.

Sabi took another step forward and Anya didn’t move. Another step and she got closer. This was her signing on the dotted line of the unspoken contract with the star. This was her life now and she damn well better get used to it.

“No,” Sabi said as she launched at Anya, wrapping her arms around the girl’s neck as she returned the squeeze, arms far stronger than they looked pinching into Sabi’s sides.

“You don’t mean it.” Anya’s voice was wet and slurred in Sabi’s ear and she nuzzled Sabi tighter.

“No, no.” It was all Sabi could say. She’d meant what she said before, in all the anger and hurt that had happened. But it wouldn’t be at the sacrifice of this. It was anger at the world, not Anya. She could still want both things, right?

“Move along,” a gruff voice yelled over the tide. “Do your business elsewhere.”

Sabi lifted her head from Anya’s shoulder. When her tear-stained vision finally cleared, the man that had spit such hurtful words at her was still on his porch, his face still twisted in disgust, no hint of acknowledgement of what’d just happened. The ambient noises around her finally filtered in and she looked around only to realize the star was no longer there. The world was moving once again.

“We must go,” Shay said as she rested her hands on their shoulders. She turned to look behind her, her eyes catching the cottage-dweller before landing on her approaching husband.

“Tell no one of this,” he said as he came within whisper’s reach. “There are too many that would abuse it.”

She nodded at Varek’s insistence and climbed onto the horse after him, the lingering pain of her travel barely a memory let alone a hindrance. It was still there, buried deep in the bone, but it was out of her reach right now. There was a meeting coming and there wasn’t any room for pain.