I ran madly toward the house, tearing through the bushes and grain, crushing everything in my path until I reached home, taunted by the faint pulsing light of the Scribe. With each mad step I took away from him, the light faded more and more, growing dimmer as I distanced myself.
“Help!”
Light flickered on in my house, as well as in Dreya’s, as I approached. The light flooded the edge of the farm, illuminating my way. My grandmother burst through the back door, looking about frantically until she spotted me. At the same time, Dreya and her mother and her father hurried outside. My grandmother and Dreya made their way toward me, while the Allblooms stood in their doorway, arms crossed disapprovingly.
“Caenum! What is it?” my grandmother yelled, and then looking out into the farm, gasped. “It can’t be.”
“Can’t be what?” I asked, cocking my head, following her line of vision. She was looking at the pulsing blue light.
“What’s going on?” Dreya asked. “You’ve got my bag!” she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up.
“Yes, yes,” I said, tossing her the pack. I turned back to my grandmother. “Look, there’s something out there you have got to—”
But before I could finish, she stormed toward the light.
I ran after her, and Dreya trailed behind. By the time we caught up, she was down on the ground, cradling the boy, whispering something to him.
“What are you doing?” I asked, panicked.
“What is this?” Dreya asked, and looked down at the boy, terrified. “What’s going on?”
He groaned, the light from his Ink pulsing. “Help me.”
I looked from the Scribe to Dreya, feeling strangely torn. Part of me wanted to leave him there, alone in the night. But as furious as he had made me, if it was the other way around, I’d like to think he would have found it in his heart to help me.
I took an anxious step toward him and my grandmother, who was currently sitting on the dark earth, stroking the Scribe’s hair. His shift from red to white was shocking, and he looked like freshly fallen snow.
“Help . . . help me . . . ,” the Unprinted pleaded. My grandmother looked up at me with sad eyes.
“Caenum . . . ,” Dreya started, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll help you,” I said. “But what happened?”
The Unprinted closed his eyes and let loose a broken sigh.
“This . . .”
The Unprinted gently pushed himself off my grandmother and dropped toward the earth for a moment, his palms flat against the ground. He raised himself on his knees and balled up his fists, closing his eyes tightly. The light pulsed through his Ink, in bluish glimmering waves leading into his hands. Waves of heat started to pour off of him, the sort you could see looking out a window on a summer day, and I took several steps back.
He opened his eyes and looked at us; his eyes were replaced by a blinding white light and what looked like smoke pooling out of them. He let loose a scream. He threw out his hand and sent a bolt of lightning across our field, setting it ablaze in the process.
He slumped back over and fell into the dirt, seemingly asleep. The line of bushes smoldered, little fires on the tips of twigs and leaves, the scent of burned plants and berries wafting through the air.
For a moment, we were all silent.
“That . . . that’s impossible,” Dreya said.
My grandmother bent over to help the boy up.
“That was Magic,” my grandmother said quietly as she cradled him.
“Close the door!” my grandmother yelled as we rushed the boy into our house. As we had carried him through the fields his skin grew cold, his Inked symbols pulsed gently but grew weaker with each blip.
Dreya reached down and touched the boy and immediately jumped back, looking at me frantically. “He’s freezing! Where are the blankets?”
“There are some extras in Caenum’s room, under his bed,” my grandmother said.
Dreya returned quickly with the fraying sheets and joined my grandmother in bundling them around the boy.
“What’s going on?” Dreya whispered, her voice fading softly into a squeak. As we had approached my grandmother’s house, Dreya’s parents had slipped away from outside of theirs. I wondered whether they would be coming over or if they were hiding. I couldn’t blame them for going the second route.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Should we even be helping him? The Guard is watching, and Molivar is here . . .”
“Kenzi,” the boy said, hardly a whisper between his now chattering teeth. When he exhaled, we saw his breath.
We all froze and looked down at him, his eyes fluttered open.
“What was that, dear?” my grandmother asked tenderly. I tried not to scowl.
“My name,” he said, his voice soft still, “is Kenzi.”
Kenzi slowly came to, situated on a chair in our living room, my grandmother, myself, and Dreya all gathered around him. The color slowly returned to Kenzi’s face as he stopped shivering, and he sipped quietly on a cup of lemongrass tea my grandmother had given him.
“So,” my grandmother began, sitting down on a chair opposite Kenzi, “if I’m going to help you, you need to tell me everything that’s happened.” She reached a hand out to pat Kenzi’s blanketed leg. He flinched.
“Maybe start with the lightning blasting from your hands,” Dreya suggested. My grandmother flashed her a look, while I grinned. “What?” Dreya asked with a shrug.
“Don’t be rude,” my grandmother said. I snickered. “Same goes for you, Caenum.” I looked sideways at Dreya, who rolled her eyes. My grandmother turned her attention back to Kenzi, who looked down into his tea.
“Go on, Kenzi,” she said.
“This . . . ,” he sighed and stammered his way through his words. “T-this was my first Inking trip. And depending on how the names rolled out,” he looked up at me and shrugged, “chances are you might have been the first person I got to Ink. Maybe we could have met under better circumstances.”
“Wait so, you’re actually a Scribe?” I asked, looking from Kenzi to Dreya, who wore an expression as equally confused as mine.
“Well, yes,” Kenzi said, shrugging. “Though apparently I’m something else?” He looked at his hands, the crackling lines on his skin pulsing madly. “Why?”
“Molivar . . . ,” Dreya started, and I could see her thinking just as hard as I was. “He said you were all a bunch of Unprinted. That you came to mess things up.”
“Why would he say that?” Kenzi asked.
“I think we’re going to have to find out,” I said, nodding slowly. “And how was it supposed to end, anyway? Us two meeting in better circumstances? Maybe without you terrifying me in front of the town?”
“Hey, we’re even, aren’t we? You did punch me in the face,” Kenzi muttered.
“Fair point,” I said, smiling.
“It’s just . . . ,” Kenzi started, and looked back down into his tea, as though he could escape into it somehow, “the folks back home said to act tough. Confident. Said it would make us seem intimidating . . . ,” he broke off. “Now look at me!” He gestured wildly, forgetting about his tea. The steel cup tumbled off of its tiny coaster and onto the ground. “Oh Gods, sorry, sorry.” As he bent over and reached for the cup, his blankets began to slip, and he dropped the coaster onto the floor.
Another wave of pity washed over me.
“It’s okay,” my grandmother said. She placed the cup on our rickety table and tucked his blankets back in. “Keep going.”
He breathed in. “Anyway, when you come of age as a Scribe, you go off to perform your first Inking, and while you’re there, you get Inked yourself.”
He wrung his hands and looked at the Ink on his arms. It was still pulsing with a faint blue-white color. He stared at his runes, as though he’d never seen them before, and ran his fingers along his skin. The Ink crackled at the touch, and he jumped. Tears welled up in his eyes.
“After our run-in, my father took me aside for my Ink and my practice.” He smiled faintly, a fond memory. “So we huddled up in the wagon, and he gave me my tools, passed down from my grandfather to me.” With this, he reached into a small pack he had slung around his shoulder, about the size of two hands closed together. He plucked two brass gadgets out of the leather satchel, one long and pointed, like a dagger crossed with a pencil, the other a cylindrical vial with a long, black tube curling out of it.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The tools looked nothing like the ones I saw in my dream.
“He started on my wrists and up to my forearms.” He glanced down at his tattoos for a moment before he continued on, his electric skin crackling. “The black Ink formed what I thought were the traditional marks. It was all so normal. Afterward, I wound up my tools and watched the Ink pour into the needle,” he said, looking at the instruments as though he was weighing them in his hands.
“The practice was supposed to be so simple. Just a little rune on his forearm, just as he’d done for his father, and his father for his father . . . for generations. I knew the ritual.” Tears started to well up in his eyes again, and he choked on his words. “It wasn’t even like it was that serious. We were laughing the whole time I got the stuff ready, he picked on me, we . . . ,” he glanced over at me, “talked about you.” He grinned a little. “Sorry.”
I scoffed.
“And then this!” he exclaimed, lifting up his arms, showing his pulsing Ink. “Everything just started glowing, and these other runes just started popping up out of nowhere.”
As he got more heated, the light from his Ink shone brighter, and his skin continued to crackle. Dreya and I inched away a little, but my grandmother moved in closer, smoothing his white hair, trying to calm him down.
“I started freaking out and my father tried to calm me. I . . . I don’t really remember much of what happened afterward. I screamed, and there was this enormous blast. I woke up several feet away from the wagon.” He looked up, horrified. “All the Ink was billowing up in smoke, rising into the sky.”
I looked at him quizzically. “The black smoke that kept coming from the rubble. That was Ink?”
“Yes!” He nodded, horrified, “I’m not sure what it’s going to do.” He craned his head to look out the window.
“I know,” my grandmother said with a nod. “Ink has a habit of leaving a stain on the world.”
I looked at her, a faraway expression on her face, as Kenzi slumped back down, continuing his story.
“After all that, I didn’t see my father anywhere. All I saw were Otcha and Akfa slumped outside the second wagon. I went over to check on them and I called for my father, and all the townsfolk started pointing at me, I just . . . ,” he closed his eyes, “I just ran away.”
My grandmother put her arm around him. “If you hadn’t, they would have taken you away.”
“But why?” Kenzi asked. He looked frantically around the room, the Ink on his forearms pulsing madly. “What’s happening to me?”
My grandmother sighed. “Kenzi, you’re a Conduit. Ink is a type of Magic. It helped to unleash the power you’ve always had, but all at once. You’re going to need to learn how to use it, and control it, so you don’t hurt those around you.”
Kenzi looked up at my grandmother with pained, fear-stricken eyes. “But that’s impossible,” he said, his arms still flickering. “No one in my family has anything like this.” He held out his arms and looked into the palm of his hands, fingers outstretched. “What did I do?”
“Shh,” my grandmother said, reaching out. “It’s not your fault, dear boy.”
“It is though!” Kenzi said, his tone growing harsher, louder. “My father—the two Scribes traveling with us—they’re dead! Everyone is dead.” With each sentence his Ink pulsed more furiously, until small sparks started to dance at the edges of his fingers.
“Kenzi,” my grandmother said, her tone calm, “I’m going to need you to take a deep breath—”
“But it isn’t fair, I—”
“Kenzi, breathe,” she continued, her voice soothing. “You’re going to need to harness this gift of yours so you can—”
“This is not a gift!” Kenzi barked, moving to stand up. “How can you call it that?”
“I can call it that,” my grandmother said, moving her hand slowly back to Kenzi’s shoulder, “because I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen what it can do.”
“But how?” I asked, interrupting for the first time. “How do you know so much about all this? About the powers, about the Conduits?”
She got up and walked toward me, meeting my gaze.
“Your father was one too.”