Chapter Forty-One

It’s not easy to convince Bodin. In fact, it takes another hour of talking, cajoling, and convincing before he’s willing to admit that he can lift the keys to the helicopter. What’s more, he actually knows how to pilot the chopper.

“Perfect!” I exclaim. “Our plan just got a whole lot simpler. You sneak me into the mountainous compound. We rescue our friends, pick up my parents, stuff everyone into the helicopter, and fly away. And then we all live happily ever after.”

“When you put it that way…” Bodin drawls.

I frown. “Why? What’s wrong with the plan?”

On the muddy banks of the pond, he plants his once severed hand, which has grown back to normal. Holy crap, that was fast. “Heads up,” he warns. “I’m coming out.”

I avert my eyes, but I can still see a blurry image of him in my peripheral vision. And when Bodin nonchalantly pushes himself out of the water, I blush. I can’t not blush, even though I can’t see anything in detail.

Bodin takes his time drying himself off, no doubt enjoying my discomfort. When his clothes are finally in place, he sits next to me on the rock.

“I can’t sneak you through the tunnels,” he says. “Xander has sensors that can read thermal signatures. That’s how he always knew where we were in the caves. But…” He stops and pushes the wet hair off his forehead.

“But what?” I prompt.

“There’s a crevice in the mountain that you can pass through, just north of where you entered the cave,” he says slowly. “You’ll encounter an obstacle there—but it’s nothing you can’t handle. I’ll meet you on the other side, and we’ll enter the compound directly, bypassing the tunnels altogether. Easy, right?”

I swallow hard. His first instincts were right: it’s much easier to simplify a mission to its core steps than it is to actually execute it.

A million things could go wrong. I could be detected at any turn. Xander might suspect that his son-in-name had a change of heart. The helicopter might be out of gas. The lot of us might not fit in said chopper. And oh, countless more missteps that I have yet to think of.

But it’s a plan, a combination of mine and his. And more importantly? It’s the only play I’ve got.

“So, what’s the obstacle?” I ask.

Bodin gives me a long look, and then he dips his head and tells me.

I bury my face in my hands. “You’ve got to be joking.”

…

Shortly after full dark, I leave my parents once more, under the guise of giving them more privacy. They don’t question me. Papa’s memories are growing fuzzier, and as much as we stick stubbornly to the present, I think we all feel the hands of the clock pressing down on us.

Only, this time, I don’t have the luxury of lying on my side and counting the seconds.

I head into the woods in the same direction as the previous night, toward the northern end of the island, as Bodin instructed. My hands feel strangely empty with the absence of Rae’s double-edged sword.

As much as Xander claimed that he wanted me to feel “comfortable,” he confiscated my weapon—and didn’t give it back. It’s hard to blame him, I suppose. Last night, I made darts break in the air. There’s no telling what I’ll be able to do with a sword should I gain any other abilities.

I move through the woods swiftly but carefully. My senses have magnified even beyond their strength yesterday. I can now see as clearly in the night as I do during the day. The five-mile jog passes in less than one revolution around the clock, and when I reach the deep gouge in the island, formed by shifting tectonic plates, I’m not even winded.

Per Bodin’s directions, I skirt around the small canyon and proceed up the side of the mountain, at nearly a forty-five-degree-angle. Here, I do get tired. The first drop of sweat appears when I’m a third of the way up, and by the time I reach the plateau, I’m gasping for breath.

Almost there. Bodin said I would see the crevice after a hundred yards. Ah, there it is: a black triangle cut into the rock, larger than—but strangely reminiscent of—the temple doors of the many wats I’ve visited. I duck through the opening—and freeze.

The ground ends abruptly, giving way to red-hot lava that bubbles and splashes. Bodin told me about the lava…but it’s a shock to see the boiling floor nonetheless. I scan the cavernous space. The lava extends in a pool that splashes against the rounded walls of the cavern in brilliant shades of orange, yellow, and red. The walls rise sharply from the lava, smooth and unscalable. On the other side lies freedom: the back entrance to Xander’s compound, where Bodin and a helicopter wait for me. But there is simply no way to get across, other than through the lava itself.

This is the obstacle Bodin told me about, the one that he was confident I could handle.

Then, as now, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. What kind of powers does he think I’ll develop? The ability to fly?

No. My worries, doubts, and fears melt away, and my mind crystallizes on the hot liquid that is as menacing as it is mesmerizing. Xander is searching for a lotus flower champion, not a flying champion.

I’ve known this folktale since I was a child: the good queen walks barefoot across hot coals, unharmed, because lotus flowers bloom under each of her steps. I swallow hard. Lava lies before me, not coals, but the parallel is unmistakable. And something inside me tells me that I can do the impossible: I can walk across lava uninjured.

Am I being foolish right now? Probably. But what are my options, really? I can give up in the face of seemingly insurmountable barriers, as I’ve always done in the past. Or I can play my own game and believe in my own instincts, for once. Thinking too much has always been my downfall. Thinking allows space for worry and fear to enter. It gives room for doubt to grow. It stops us from taking a leap of faith, from rolling the dice on a move that might be unwise in the extreme—but that might save us all.

And so, it may be risky—it’s definitely foolhardy—but I don’t think. I take a step onto the lava. My canvas sneaker immediately sinks into the liquid, and a heat like I can’t imagine surrounds my foot, piercing my skin like a thousand burning knives.

Yelping, I yank my foot out of the lava and back onto solid ground. Holy moly, what is wrong with me? This not thinking business is clearly not working out.

I plop onto the dirt and wrench off my shoe so that I can examine my foot. The skin there is red—and hot to the touch—but it’s not bubbling or puffing up. In fact, despite that initial sensation, it doesn’t hurt at all. Somehow, my skin seems immune to the lava, even though the sole of my sneaker has all but disintegrated.

So, what went wrong? If I do have some sort of ability with respect to the lava, how come a lotus flower—or a feather or a plate—didn’t bloom under my bare foot?

Oh. I look at my foot, now resting gingerly on top of the ruined sneaker. My foot was covered, and that was a key part of the folktale: the queen walks barefoot across the burning-hot lava.

Damn it. Clearly, the queens in the old folktales didn’t have OCD. Maybe they didn’t even have shoes. They certainly hadn’t gone the last five years without their bare feet touching the ground.

I look despairingly at the lava. I wear water shoes in the swimming pool. Slippers inside our house. Flip-flops in the shower. And my white canvas sneakers everywhere else.

There’s about a zero percent chance that my feet are touching that lava.

At least that’s what my OCD wants me to think. It rules in absolutes. Can’ts, nevers, and impossibles. It keeps a tight control over my language so that it can retain a tight control over my mind.

It’s no big deal, I tell myself sternly. I’ve been sleeping in the sand (albeit on a sleeping bag). Getting mud in my hair. Dirt on every square inch of my body. Of all the surfaces on this island, my shoes probably have the most bacteria festering in them, since I never take them off.

These statements are all so very rational. So very logical.

And yet…and yet…I am rooted to the spot. I can no more take off my shoes than I can take flight in the air. The lava gurgles in front of me, each pulse echoing through the cavern.

You can’t, you can’t, you can’t, the lava jeers at me. Your shoes are the biggest protection you have. They’re what’s kept you safe all of this time. They’ve prevented germs from entering the cracks of your feet. They stopped the world from crashing down around you.

I shake my head weakly. No. I try to argue; I try to protest. But my words are just noise, battling at the certainty inside of me.

This is what people don’t understand. My OCD isn’t a devil on my shoulder. It’s not an alien entity enticing me to do harmful things. It’s the voice of reason. The certainty in my gut. A knowledge that penetrates every cell of my being. A truth that fills every inch of my soul.

It works in disguises; it relies on tricks. It hides under my very own skin. At its most effective, there’s no distinction between it…and me.

How do I fight back against so much certainty? How do I ignore what seems to be my gut? How do I trust myself…when that’s the very last person that I should trust? I weep. At the unfairness of it all. At the maddening nature of my disorder. At the strangeness of my mind, which gives me the strength to walk on hot lava…but not to take off my shoes.

I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust Bodin, who’s lied to me for the bulk of our relationship. I can’t trust Papa, who’s losing more and more memories with each passing day. Each passing hour.

So who do I trust?

The answer—although hard to remember, easy to forget—has always been clear.

Mama. Oh, not the fallible human being who walks on this Earth, but the person she is in connection to me.

I imagine her soft skin, her guileless smile, her clear eyes. She’s not perfect. She doesn’t belong on any pedestal. She loses her temper; she gets frustrated. She’s super cranky when she’s hungry. Sometimes, she says things that she doesn’t mean. Sometimes, the things that she says are mean.

But there’s one truth in this universe that I will never, ever question. She loves me, to the depth and breadth and height her soul can reach.

Maybe playing my game isn’t about acting independently. Maybe it’s not about following a trusted person’s advice. Maybe, just maybe, playing my own game is a combination of the two: following the advice that I imagine someone I trust would give.

What do I do, Mama? What would you say I should do?

I take a deep breath, channeling Mama. And then, my fingers are attacking my laces. My breath speeds up as though I’m running a marathon. The voice tries to intrude, but I push back against it. I fight.

I kick off my shoes, and I jump from foot to foot. Even the brief contact my bare skin has with the ground floods my mind with images. The germs crawling up my feet, coating my feet like slime, sinking into whatever crack they can find.

I don’t need to eliminate the feeling of distress entirely. I only need to accept my distress—and tolerate it.

I take my first bare step onto the lava. The hot liquid rushes under my soles, tickling but not injuring them. Something soft and silky sprouts under my foot. I peek down: a lotus flower. Delicate, pale pink petals that come together to make a powerful splash.

I take another step. Another flower, even more delicate and more powerful than the last.

The distress fades. So do my fears. Instead, effervescent joy fizzes out of me. It worked. The words that an imaginary Mama whispered to me worked. I’m not walking barefoot over the hot lava. I’m wearing shoes of lotus flowers.

It takes eleven steps in all for me to cross the lava. My magic number. But because I can, I take one more minuscule step, leading to one more minuscule flower, making the number twelve.

For better or for worse, my OCD is a part of me. It’s never going away. But more and more, I hope I will continue to play my own game.

I touch down on the other side and raise my arms in triumph. Before I can truly celebrate, however, I hear a slow…and very deliberate…clap.

Xander.

I turn, and all of the peace drains out of my body when I see him standing next to Bodin.