Our search for the next Salem took us through Chicago.
I knew it by the signs. I felt it by the tolls.
But I would not hurry. The best way to eliminate the limpet wedged in the backseat would be to make our travel so intolerably slow that she could bear it no longer.
I set the cruise control at forty and relished every honk.
“Clarita, why is everyone passing us?” Elias looked around. The disappointment in his voice was palpable, and tragic. I had gained a suspicious Izzy and I was losing a trusting Elias. The medicines’ effects were quickly passing, and the boy who placed his faith in me was long gone, but I told myself he was still there, somewhere beneath, looking up, trying to escape.
Meanwhile, my transformation was complete. I had forced Elias into this state, yes, for him but also secretly for me. For what I stood to discover from the Other One. I wasn’t like the boarders at Guinevere’s inn; I was far more hideous. I didn’t just wait for the Other One; I set him free.
My motives were as distinct as Elias’s personalities, selfishness and selflessness alternately driving my actions.
And at the root of it all was Little T.
That one epic failure drove everything.
“I don’t want to get pulled over,” I said.
The first two words from Izzy since we left.
“No.”
“Speed up.”
“No.”
Elias, now Jason, was clearly uncomfortable with feminine conflict. He fidgeted and crossed and uncrossed his legs. “Maybe we should go Clarita’s speed for an hour and then Izzy’s speed for an hour.”
“Speed up.” Izzy’s voice was soft and certain.
“No.” Again, I matched her resolve.
“I can’t have my guide and my guard arguing. How are we going to quietly find the Lightkeeper with all this bickering?”
“Toll ahead. Izzy, your turn to pay.”
Her face bunched in the rearview. “I will pay if you speed up.”
“No.”
We came to a halt. A Fiat pulling an aeroplane. I smiled at the tollbooth operator, a thin man with a pleasant face.
“Dollar ninety, please.”
I held my hand back over the seat. “You heard the gentleman. I need the toll.”
Fifteen seconds later, my palm was still empty.
“I apologise. My companion must have misplaced the toll.” I glanced back at the tollbooth. The man’s eyes were wide; his hands and the gate slowly raised and he nodded me through.
I frowned. “No toll?”
“No toll.”
I pulled forward and glanced in the rearview in time to see Izzy place her rifle back in the guitar case.
“Did you just hold up a tollbooth?”
She shrugged and yawned. “Or you did.”
“We are going to be apprehended in minutes!”
“Then I suggest you speed up.”
I could wait. This seemed the logical move. I could wait and tell the copper about this strange girl who threatened me and the toll boy. I exhaled hard. And then I would need to explain why I was kidnapping Elias. Why I couldn’t turn around. Why he was off his meds. Where I was born. Why I ran away.
“Blast!” I floored the accelerator. “I should think we will blend right in pulling a plane on the motorway. How many cars have you ever seen pulling a plane?”
“We need to get off the road, Clarita.” Elias rummaged for his star chart. “There! Orion is the only constellation visible in the sky. What does that mean? Get out your manual — we need an interpretation. Quick! Recalibration!”
We hit eighty miles an hour. I was rummaging in my bag, Izzy whistled in the backseat, and I was now an accessory to a new crime. “Izzy, hand me my diary. In the left bag. By all means, I’m certain the manual will solve the dilemma.”
She acquiesced, and I fought with the dome light and the diary pages and swerved about the road.
“I don’t know what Orion means! I need time to look, and I can’t do that at these speeds —”
“I know what it means.” Izzy placed a hand on my shoulder.
I glanced at her hand, so gentle, reassuring. Hours ago holding a gun to my head, now treating me as her best mate. I rolled my eyes.
Perhaps a second individual with an identity disorder.
“Tell us, Izzy! Don’t you think, Clarita? We should listen.”
I rolled my eyes. “By all means . . .” I shrugged my shoulder and wriggled free of Izzy’s hand. “Let’s sink deeper into this nightmare.”
I peeked over my shoulder. Izzy slowly sat back, the wild pride gone from her face. In its place was a sadness, and she dropped her gaze. It felt good to see her weak, whatever the reason.
“Well then? Speak, mighty Izzy.”
She took a deep breath. “My dad was a great fan of Greek mythology and drilled it into me. I know all about Orion. In mythology, the guy was something. The son of Poseidon, the sea god. He could walk on water, and that’s where his problems started. He wandered across the sea to a small island of Chios. He ran into trouble, got drunk, as those Greek gods often did. He went after Merope. Bad idea, ’cause she was the daughter of Oenopion, who was no small guy. Anyway, Oenopion got pissed and blinded Orion, who took off, stumbling . . . Are you following?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes, she is.” Elias sighed. “Go on, Izzy.”
“No!” I conked the wheel. “I’m not! I don’t see how a blind, drunk, and likely upset Greek god from a Greek myth has any import on this . . . thing we’re doing.”
Izzy cleared her throat. “I will continue. Orion bumped, literally, into Hephaestus. That god was lame. Physically lame. But he ran a big forge, with Cedalion helping as his apprentice. Cedalion guided the blind Orion to the east. Way east. To where the sun lived. The sun, Helios, healed Orion. Orion was so thankful that he carried Cedalion around on his shoulders. That’s basically what happened.”
“Anything else?” Elias’s eyes were big.
“Oh, Orion did some other stuff. He went back to revenge his sight. No luck. And that’s when the story turns. He went hunting with Artemis, but he was still so filled with bitterness that he decided to kill every animal on earth. Earth found out, sent a scorpion after him, killed Orion, and Zeus stuck Orion in the constellations. That’s it, more or less.”
“And from this emotionally edifying myth, we’re supposed to gather what exactly?” I asked, checking in the mirror for flashing lights.
Elias grabbed his sketchbook and a pencil from the glove compartment and began a furious sketch. “I don’t understand the mystery. It’s all so clear now. Izzy has made it so clear.”
Five minutes later, he stuck his drawing in front of my face. A beautiful portrait of Izzy and Elias and me, racing through a field, the moonlight on our faces. We were chasing Orion. Izzy and Elias wore faces aglow, while I looked back, frightened. I grabbed the picture and ripped it from his book, crumpled it in my hand, and tossed it out the window.
“Why did you —”
“I don’t know!”
Elias crossed his arms. “We left on a quest. So did Orion. But we’re wandering; we don’t know exactly where to go. Just like Orion. Then we meet Izzy, our Cedalion. And she leaves her home and we all go east. We’re practically carrying her around on our shoulders. Oh, don’t you see it?”
“I see a remarkable set of coincidences.”
“Orion searched for Helios, sunlight. We search for the Lightkeeper. When we find him, we’ll end the threat, and Salem will heal. But there’s danger. We are being pursued now even as we pursue. We just need to keep following the stars.” He shook his map in my face. “We’re so lucky to have a wise guard who can also interpret my map.”
There was nothing to say. Luck. Fate. Happenstance. A girl with a gun set our course, and I was to follow as if her story held biblical weight.
“So, Ms. Wisdom, where would you like me to drive?”
“Salem!” Elias raised his pointer. “We must to stay in Salem.”
Izzy stretched her head forward into the front seat. “Salem. That’s the word for peace. Peace, huh? Yeah, I’m all for peace.”
I coughed loudly.
“Then let’s stay in Salem.” Izzy turned from Elias to me. “I know there’s one in Ohio. It will . . . It will be our Chios, our island of danger. Then, we’ll head for Salem, New York. There’s a Salem there too. That’s where we’ll find our Hephaestus. That’s where we’ll find our forge. From there, we’ll head east. East to the sun.”
“And you know of all these places?” I asked.
“Intimately.”
“Well, then.” I slowed and eased off the road. “It doesn’t seem as though there is a need for me on this trip. It appears you have found not only an able guard, but a suitable guide. She is delusional. She is accommodating. She is . . . attractive. What more could you want?”
I stepped out of the car and opened the rear door, dropping the keys into Izzy’s hands. “This trip is yours. You win.”
“Win what?”
“Oh, shut it! It has been quite clear since you stuck your weapon in my face that the only thing you wanted was him.” I pointed into the front seat. “Well, here he is! Why you want him, I don’t know!” I reached over her lap and grabbed my bag. I yanked and walked away from the car, before plunking down on the shoulder and burying my head.
The car revved and pulled out. I listened as it disappeared into the distance and a strange weight of emptiness settled over me. I had nowhere to go. For the first time since I left home, there was no next step. No Plan B. There was only me.
“You abandoned us!”
I whipped around, and Elias huffed toward me with his bag, collapsing beside me.
“Why are you here?” I buried my head again.
“I can’t abandon my guide. I love her.”
There was no way I heard correctly. “You love me.”
“Yes.”
I took a deep breath, threw back my hair, warmed inside and slapped him across the cheek. “Then what was all that Izzy affection?”
“What Izzy affection? Clarita, we needed information. We got it. We got rid of her.”
Two cars rushed by, slowed, and continued on. “Probably this isn’t the best place to sit,” I said.
“You chose it.” Elias took a deep breath. “You know, it will now be a much slower quest, but the good news is we know the next steps.”
I stood and raised my hands to my hips. “So we’re following her path.”
“Do you have a better interpretation? Look. See how bright Orion is tonight. Doesn’t it feel right? The story? The everything?”
And it was at this moment that everything I learned in school, every lesson in logic, every concrete decision I’d ever made seemed baseless. Yes. It made sense. It made sense that I was nearly shot and that I was sitting on the side of the road. It made sense that the most important task in life was to follow a Greek myth.
And as in the myth, someone had to die, and I realised that someone was me. The me of London. The me of the past eight months. Both lay dead on the side of the road, but perhaps there was something on the other side of death. Something lighter and brighter.
I had been bent both on helping Elias become whole, and discovering the final piece to my puzzle. I still was. But if neither occurred — if I passed no more tests and received no more sketchings, if I never held the true Elias again — it would not destroy my world. This Elias loved me. The Other One. The one I once thought monstrous.
This was my journey.
I would not break my word again.
“Come on, then. We’ve a bit of a jam here, and transportation will be needed.”
We started to walk.
“Can I hold your hand?” Elias asked.
“Can I stop calling you Jason?”
And we strolled along the motorway, likely going nowhere, but for the first time going everywhere.
“Clarita?”
“How about we use Clara?”
“Clarita?”
“Yes, Elias?”
He stopped. “Why was there an aeroplane attached to the car?”