“Something may awaken,” my grandmother said, her body crushed under an endless pile of rubble. Her arms and legs were bent in impossible directions, her neck twisted, but she still spoke. I bent down to grab a rock, barely the size of my fist, and watched in horror as it slipped from my grasp and transformed into a boulder. I pushed and heaved, rolling it aside, only to see it replaced by another one. Each rock I bent to pick up became enormous, expanding in size, permanently blocking the way.
“I can’t . . . I can’t . . . ,” I said, heaving rock after rock, my body drenched in sweat. “I’m sorry . . .”
“The pepper thistle . . . always right in front of you,” she said, as more rocks and rubble fell from the sky. I gazed up as the sky burned, the clouds turned to fire, the stones hurtling toward the earth like meteors. The rocks continued to pile up, but despite how high the mountain of stones grew, my grandmother’s voice remained clear, trapped beneath the growing heap. “Pepper thistle,” she said. “Something may awaken.”
The rocks stopped flying from the sky, and suddenly, all was silent. I called for her, I screamed at the top of my lungs into the mound of rocks and broke into thick sobs as an ominous pool of dark blood oozed from beneath them.
“Pepper thistle!” I heard in a loud whisper one last time that echoed through my mind.
“Caenum!” I heard Dreya’s voice, calling for me, somewhere out there in the darkness that swirled like Ink.
I fluttered my eyes open and looked up into a brilliant blue sky. I gasped, the winter air crisp and frigid.
It had been a dream.
I exhaled, relieved. I moved to sit up, and discovered that I couldn’t. I swayed back and forth, my hands tied tightly around my back, my feet bound. We were moving. I craned my neck to the side and caught a glimpse of the thick wooden beams beneath me, held together with brass bars. Bits of stray light came through them, revealing a dirt road underneath. I turned my head and spotted Dreya, peering at me with her bright amber eyes, sitting up and leaning against the edge of the wagon.
“What happened?” I asked. Dreya winced and looked around, motioning for me to be quiet. She nodded her head toward the front, where I could make out several horses, and spotted the outline of a large man seated at the head of the wagon, cloaked in burgundy and gold. The colors sent my heart racing.
Beyond Dreya, toward the back of the wagon, Kenzi sat slumped against the edge, asleep, his face lightly bandaged. And further off, I could see a handful of men following us on horses.
“What happened?” I repeated softly.
Dreya frowned. “Caenum, it’s the Citadel Guard,” her eyes started to glisten, “they showed up a few hours after Vikash knocked you out,” she stammered. “They wouldn’t listen to me. And they won’t tell me where they are taking us.”
“We’ll be okay,” I said, wiggling back and forth, “is there anything that can get us out of these ropes?” I asked, squirming.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve tried. And you guys aren’t tied up in normal ropes—you’re in those brass wire things.” She nodded over at Kenzi, and I saw them, dangling off his wrists. The pulsing brass orbs. Magic Dampeners. I arched my back and shook my arms and wrists, the brass balls banging against the wood platform.
“Both of us?” I asked, confused. “Why?”
Dreya looked shocked. “Do you really not remember? The vines? The plants?”
“Come on, that wasn’t me,” I scoffed, pretending the idea was absurd. “That was Kenzi. Maybe he cast some spells in his sleep . . .”
“Caenum,” Dreya said softly, “I saw your eyes.”
I stopped talking.
“They were glowing white, the same that Kenzi gets when he uses his . . . his energy or whatever it is.” She looked at me, her face awash in disappointment. “When were you going to tell me? You’re . . . my . . .”
I wanted to reach out and hold her, grasp her hand, anything to be close to her, to let her know it was going to be okay. I wrestled into a sitting position, my wrists and forearms fighting angrily against the wooden planks below me.
“I didn’t know!” I said, protesting, my arms stinging. “My grandmother—before she died she said something might happen, something might awaken. I didn’t know what she meant.” Dreya looked away, glancing at Kenzi and then over the side of the wagon, at the rolling hills that we rocked and shook passed in the rickety wagon. “You have to believe me,” I said, pleading. “When Vikash threatened you, something just, I don’t know, something broke inside of me. I wish I had the words to explain.” I said, my eyes pleading.
“I felt it happen once before, I think, when we found my grandmother,” I admitted, softly. “There was all this anger, this crushing guilt. I started screaming and there was this cyclone of dirt, these sprigs growing out of my palms. I didn’t really think about it. I just figured it was . . . I don’t know, the grief, the weather or something. And then in the fields I could feel the pain of the plants as they burned and broke and—” I stopped, my mind racing back to that day.
To the greenhouse.
To the shattered glass.
To my splintered hands and Dreya’s searing hot touch, her hands glimmering, golden . . . I gasped and looked at her.
“You can do it too!” I exclaimed, accusingly.
“What?” she asked, startled. “You, you don’t know what you are talking about!”
“Ha!” I snorted. “When Kenzi burned down our homes we held hands, and your hands, they burned, lighting up like your eyes.” I grinned.
Dreya smiled softly and looked away.
“Come on,” I said, soothingly. “I don’t care. I don’t care if you had some crazy power to transform into a dragon, or if every time someone looked at you, your gaze turned them into stone.”
She laughed and looked at the landscape rolling by. “Don’t be stupid,” she said, “then you’d never be able to look at me.”
“Hey,” I said, trying to get her attention. She turned to stare at me with her piercing yellow eyes.
“It’d be worth it.”
I awoke with a jolt, as the wagon hit a rock and tilted. Dreya woke up startled as well. I shifted uncomfortably, trying to get a glimpse over the side of the wagon. The man leading the horses was cloaked in deep burgundy, a purple and gold C with a sword through it on the back. He stomped over to the broken wheel, grumbling a series of swears under his breath, and knelt down out of sight.
“Psst!”
I turned to find Kenzi, now wide-awake, squirming his way toward us, not unlike an inchworm making its way across a leaf. The movement would have surely been comical, had the situation not been so overtly dramatic.
“You guys are awake. Good,” he said, leaning up against the opposite side of the wagon.
“You are too,” I said, sizing him up. “Earlier, you were out cold.”
“Getting your ass kicked will do that to you,” he said, grumbling. “I appreciate you trying to help me out though. That Vikash guy . . .” I nodded my head, agreeing sadly. “Anything over here that could break Dreya’s ropes? Then she could get these things off and we could . . .” he stopped midsentence as Dreya and I shook our heads sadly. He frowned.
“Hey!” he shouted suddenly, yelling at the man fussing over the wheel. “Care to maybe answer a few questions?”
The guard looked up at us and simply shook his head, returning to his repairs. He didn’t appear overly threatening for a man that was supposed to be terrifying. Medium build, a clean-shaven and almost good-looking face with hardened features, as if he’d been in one-too-many fights.
“You know, maybe like where we’re going? Who are you? Simple stuff?” Kenzi arched his head over the side of the wagon, trying to catch a better look at the guard. He glanced at him again and shook his head, focused on whatever work he was doing down by the broken wheel. “Maybe tell us why you guys wear those girlie looking capes?”
I gaped at Kenzi and Dreya gasped. “Shut up,” I whispered, “don’t push him.”
“Or what?” Kenzi asked sarcastically. “Look at me. What’s the worst that could possibly—”
He was cut off by the guard, who was now standing right near us, outside the wagon, his hands over the edge. “Best keep quiet, Conduit,” he said, “members of the Citadel Guard are not to be trifled with.”
I found myself trying to stifle a laugh.
This man was not at all what I expected, these legendary powerhouses of men, their brutality and mercilessness renowned through the Realm. This was certainly not the sort of man who would have sacked Frosthaven.
“You don’t look so intimidating,” I said, my eyes still sizing him up. Dreya bumped into me and flashed me a What do you think you’re doing? look.
“I mean, you don’t look like a Citadel Guard,” I said, trying to be somewhat respectful.
“Shut up, the three of you.” He peeked over the edge of the wagon, his eyes wandering to our bonds, and nodded curtly. “Just sit here and mind your damn business. Not another word.” He shuffled over to the back of the wagon, grumbling to himself, and began tinkering with the wheel again.
“Caenum!” Kenzi whispered, inching himself closer to me, his eyes wide and full of mischief. “I have an idea. Watch this,” he said, and started jostling himself about. The wagon squeaked and groaned, swaying from side to side.
“Hey!” barked the Citadel Guard, his head peeking up over the wagon.
“Sorry!” Kenzi yelled at him, insincerely. He looked at Dreya and I and grinned mischievously. He lowered his head and whispered. “With that wheel down and the wagon tilted, I bet if we all hurled ourselves at the side of the wagon while that guy is fixing the wheel, it would flip over, and we could run off.”
I grimaced, “I don’t know Kenzi; it might crush him.”
Kenzi’s brow furrowed and he scoffed, “So what? He’s one of them.”
I squirmed uneasily, “I don’t know, he just doesn’t seem like the typical Guard we’ve heard about. Look at him.” We glanced over just in time to catch the Guard hammering at something and let out a loud shriek. He whipped his hand back and forth and stuck a finger in his mouth for a moment, before realizing we were watching. He cleared his throat and returned to work. “Does that look like a killer?”
“That’s not the point, we—”
“Do we look like killers?” I asked him, feeling melodramatic. “Come on, I didn’t even know how to load the crossbow . . . ah, damn it. Our bags and supplies!” If my hands were free, I would have slapped my forehead. “What do you think they did with all of that?”
Kenzi shrugged and Dreya pursed her lips, looking sad. We’d kept the last few memories from our homes. Were they really all gone?
“Maybe it’s here with us,” Kenzi mused. “I saw a trunk underneath the wagon when they were tossing us in here.” Dreya nodded softly, agreeing. “Whatever,” he continued, gesturing dismissively, “we flip this damn thing, and get everything out of the trunk. Then we run for it.”
“And where’s the nearest village?” I asked, sarcastically. “We don’t even know where we are. And in case you forgot,” I banged the brass bonds against the side of the wagon, which thunked loudly, “we’re kind of tied up here.”
“Dreya can untie them! We’ll get those ropes off her, using the first sharp object we see. Maybe when the wagon flips, we find some nails or something, some broken pieces of wood, I don’t know. Something!”
I looked at Dreya and shook my head softly. Kenzi grew heated and snarled.
“Well if you two aren’t going to do something, I am!” he said, pressing himself hard against the side of the wagon and attempting to get to his feet. The wagon jerked back and forth as he wiggled about, pressing his back hard against the wood and digging his feet into the floor to push himself up.
“Kenzi, stop it!” I said loudly, my eyes darting back and forth from him to the Citadel Guard. “He’s going to—”
The Citadel Guard jumped up. “Hey!” he shouted, and as Kenzi glanced over him, Kenzi toppled off the edge of the cart, flipping over and crashing nearly headfirst on the dirt road. Somehow Kenzi struggled to his feet and made a mad attempt at making his way off the road and into the fields beyond, hopping off quickly, his ankles still bound.
The Guard abandoned his project and ran after Kenzi, who was hurtling himself wildly through the fields, hopping madly, looking absolutely absurd. I caught him glance back at Dreya and I as he ran, an expectant look in his eyes. Did he want us to make a run for it too?
As the shouts of the Guard and Kenzi’s frantic jumping grew softer and farther away, Dreya suddenly perked up. She pressed herself against the side of the wagon and wiggled her way up until she was standing. Moving around, she looked over the edge of the wagon and winced, as though bracing herself.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Caenum look!” Dreya nodded her head at the broken wheel toward the back of the wagon, bits of brass and wood jutting out here and there from where it had cracked. “If we get down there, we can get the ropes off. Then we can make a real run for it.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding. “Okay, okay, let’s do this.” I squirmed to my feet as well and faced the edge of the wagon. It wasn’t a long fall by any means, but without the use of my hands and arms, the possibility of it hurting something fierce was unfortunately high.
“One . . . ,” Dreya said.
“Wait a second Dreya, we should—”
“Two . . .,” she continued, swaying back and forth.
“It looks really far I don’t think we—”
“Three!” she exclaimed, and spotting my hesitation, nudged me over the edge with her shoulder. I fell to the ground with a hard thud, landing squarely on my back. She followed suit, landing on her side with a soft gasp.
I wiggled into a sitting position against one of the front wheels, the wooden spokes looking old and archaic, as the pain in my back faded quickly.
“Hey Dreya, did you notice that—” I looked at the ground to spot her missing—“Dreya?”
“Over here!” she shouted, already struggling to get to her feet by the broken wooden wheel.
“What should I do?” I asked, looking at her tied-up wrists and the shards of broken wood sticking out of the wheel.
“Just keep a lookout,” she said, already working one of the jagged spikes of splintered wood up and down her ties, the thick ropes starting to fray.
I hopped my way for a couple of feet before stumbling and crashing to the ground, dirt and rock pressing angrily into my check, arms, and neck. I heard Dreya chuckle and I flashed her a look, squirming my way toward the edge of the road, which curved up a slight hill toward the open plains. My eyes widened as I looked over the hill.
“Dreya!” I yelled. “Hurry up!”
The Citadel Guard was walking back toward the wagon, Kenzi slung over his shoulder, kicking and wiggling about wildly, screaming a fine array of curses. I squinted, focusing on the two forms. Flashes of light were erupting from the brass spheres that hung by the ropes holding Kenzi’s wrists and legs together with each of his furious kicks. Were they blocking the angry Magic that was about to spill out?
“Ah!” Dreya shouted. I turned around to spot her flexing her open hands in front of her, wiggling her fingers. “That’s better.” She took the frayed rope and tossed it into the wagon, then bent down to untie the ropes around her ankles.
I looked back at the guard, growing closer with each passing second.
“Dreya!” I shouted. “Come on, we’ve got to get back inside. They’re almost here.”
She picked up the other piece of rope, grabbed the side of the wagon, and pulled herself back up, the wagon creaking and groaning as it jostled. I hopped over to the side of the wagon and frowned. How was I supposed to get back up there?
Dreya lowered her now-free hands over the edge toward me. I frowned at her.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, grimacing at her hands. She moved to hop back off the cart.
I glanced over my back and spotted the Guard and Kenzi just a few feet away, beginning to crest over the hill.
“No time! Hide your hands!” I yelled, and hurled myself toward the ground. I heard the wagon squeak as she repositioned herself back inside. The wagon had barely finished swaying back and forth when the Citadel Guard crested over the hill, an exhausted-looking Kenzi over his shoulder. The Guard was clearly struggling under the weight of Kenzi, and looked forlorn when he first caught sight of me on the ground next to the wagon.
“Oh for the Gods’ sake,” he said, tossing Kenzi over the top of the wagon, his body hitting the wood floor with a crash. “You too?”
The Guard bent over and lifted me up over his shoulder, not without some difficulty. He groaned and strained, and I struggled just enough to make it seem like I wanted to get away. I almost, for a split second, felt bad for the guy, out here on the road alone with us three, clearly not strong enough to handle the trouble we were causing. He tossed me onto the wagon and I slammed against the floor with a grunt.
“At least one of you knows how to behave,” he said, nodding at Dreya. She turned away. “Now you two stay put; don’t make me break those ankles or something.” Again, I found myself wanting to laugh, his threats sounded so unbelievably insincere. He ambled back over to the broken wheel with a sigh and got back to work.
“So?” asked Kenzi, squirming his way over to us. “Any luck?”
Dreya looked over the edge of the wagon, the Citadel Guard back to being hard at work and focused on the wheel. She pulled her hands out from behind her back and wiggled her fingers.
“Yes!” Kenzi mouthed, nodding his head excitably.
“When we get underway again,” Dreya said, nodding at both of us, and then with a whisper, “I’ll untie you guys and we’ll make a run for it. With the horses trotting and the wheels crunching over this rough road, he won’t be able to hear us.”
Kenzi and I nodded a silent agreement, as the Citadel Guard grunted and groaned over the broken wheel.
After an hour or so, we were back on our way.
The Guard checked on us inside the wagon and nodded sharply at us. He hopped back into his seat, pressing the horses to continue on down the dirt road.
We waited a few minutes before silently nodding to one another. The cart bumped along, jostling us to and fro, making an incredible racket. Kenzi furrowed his brow and arched his head, leaning toward the Citadel Guard, as if he was listening to something. Just as I was about to ask him what he was doing, I heard it too.
Music.
The Citadel Guard was singing something to himself, barely audible over the clatter of the wheels and the clumping of the horses’ footsteps, but it was just the little bit of extra distraction we needed. Kenzi glanced at me, grinned, and swung his legs over to Dreya.
The pulsing brass orbs were shockingly heavy despite how small they were, and Dreya had a hard time untwisting the thick brass ropes, the spheres pulling them together tightly. When he was free, the Dampeners hit the floorboards with a satisfying bang, and the two of them helped untie me.
“Okay, are we ready to jump?” I asked, squatting near the edge of the wagon.
Dreya and Kenzi looked at one another. Something unspoken traveled between the two of them, a lingering pause floated through the air. Dreya looked down into her lap and Kenzi shot me a piercing look.
“We’re not jumping,” he said, shortly. “We’re tipping the wagon.”
“What?!” I protested. “But didn’t we . . .”
“Our supplies are underneath the wagon Caenum,” Dreya said, looking up at me, ashamed. “We need what’s in that trunk, or we aren’t going to get anywhere.”
“No,” I insisted. “The horses will go mad, drag the bits and pieces of the cart along for who knows how far.” I looked back and forth from Dreya and Kenzi, pleadingly. “Come on, we can’t.”
“Fine,” Kenzi said, his tone cold. “Then time for plan B.”
With that he stood up and outstretched his hands, his eyes lighting up white as the energy pulsed through his arms and down to his fingertips. He curled his fingers into a fist, and before I could yell at him to stop, he shot a bolt of energy at the wooden winch that held the beat-up wagon to the horses and the Citadel Guard driving it.
The wagon smashed into the ground and sent the three of us hurtling through the air and landing hard on the dirt road. As Dreya and I struggled to our feet, I saw Kenzi, already standing, his white hair rustling madly from the energy pulsing through his body, wisps of white smoke pooling from his eyes. The Citadel Guard was screaming frantically at the horses that had run ahead of us and were starting to slow down, when Kenzi shot small bolts of lightning at the panicked animals.
“Kenzi stop!” I yelled, running toward him.
“Relax!” he said, his voice echoing eerily as white light poured from his mouth. “Look!”
The horses had taken off, rushing away from the broken cart and the lightning that had snapped against their hides. The Guard screamed, his arms flailing and whipping the horses, pulling at the reins. As Kenzi’s eyes faded back to normal, the power leaving his body, the Citadel Guard and his scared horses had nearly vanished from sight, far off in the distance up the road.
“Let’s go.” Kenzi said, rushing toward the wreckage of the wagon. I scowled at him but said nothing. The trunk had burst open during the crash, and we gathered up our packs. I was shocked to see they had included my crossbow, the one I had tried, and epically failed, to use to defend our little group in the cave. I slung it over my shoulder, the hard wooden weapon feeling secure on my back.
And I’d remember to properly load an arrow next time.
When we had taken stock of our possessions, we stood among the broken bits of the wagon, and looked around, as if the answers were suddenly going to come to us in the middle of a dirt road, trapped someplace unfamiliar.
“So . . . ,” I said, digging my foot into the earth.
“So . . . ,” Kenzi repeated, his eyes on the ground.
There was an awkward pause.
We hopped off the dirt road and skidded down the softly sloping hill before ducking.
“I was awake for a bit while you two were still asleep,” Kenzi said, squatting down beside Dreya and me. “We really didn’t pass anything on the road.”
“Should we go forward then?” I asked, lifting my head and looking up the road, toward where the Guard went speeding off. “Maybe keep to the side here, just to keep safe? I mean, this has to lead someplace. It’s not like it only goes to the Citadel.”
Kenzi nodded, “You’re right.”
Dreya adjusted her bag over her shoulder. “Then let’s go.”
Barely an hour into our walk, and the sun began to dip in the sky. We pressed our way through tall fields of wheat and barley, the sun illuminating their outlines with golden hues of amber and dark orange. The height of the stalks was incredible, reaching up to my chest, far taller than any I’d seen back in Frosthaven. Was this how people lived outside the Realm, with wild farms and gigantic plants? Who tended them? So many questions, so few answers out here on our own.
Whenever we heard a noise, we would duck into the thin, waving stalks, the bristles tickling our faces, as we waited for it to pass. As much as we wanted to ask people trotting by for help, it was impossible to know who to trust. Our trio wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Without Ink, I looked like just another Unprinted. Dreya was Inked, sure, but we had Kenzi, who continued to glow faintly.
As the sky turned a bright pink, dark-purple clouds leading the twilight in, we wordlessly slowed down, and eventually stopped.
“So now what?” Dreya asked, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. “Make camp?”
“Sounds about right,” I said. “But sleep isn’t exactly an option.” I glanced over at Kenzi, who nodded.
“We can try though,” I said, attempting to sound encouraging. “Hidden here, I doubt anyone will be able to see us from the road.” I sat down and opened up my pack, the others following suit. The stalks formed a soft wall around us. The road, only a hundred feet away, disappeared behind the swaying grain.
In silence, we each pulled out some dried meat and fruit from our packs, nibbling quietly under the dark sky, the stars overhead twinkling brightly.
As I watched Dreya take small bites from her food, I noticed the growing frustration on her face, her brow more furrowed with each bite.
I scooted over to her and put my arm over her shoulder. She tore into a piece of jerky and looked over at me, her expression angry.
“Everything okay?” I asked, hugging her gently.
“How can you even say that?” she said, angrily chewing the jerky. “Look where we are. Miles from a home that doesn’t exist anymore, we’re running low on supplies,” she bit down hard on the end piece of her jerky, “and it’s freezing, Caenum! What are we supposed to do?” she shouted, her voice carrying through the night. I reached inside my satchel and pulled out a thin blanket. I started to wrap it around her, but she pushed me away.
“These old blankets,” she grasped angrily at her bag and pulled out her own, spilling the contents of her pack onto the cold earth, “they aren’t going to help!” She unfurled the blanket madly, the thin fabric slapping in the air.
“We . . . we could layer them together,” I suggested, struggling to help her regain her composure, “just huddle up close. The three of us together, it’ll be okay.”
“You keep saying that! It’ll be okay, this’ll be okay.” Dreya stood up, her dark outline ominous against the blackened, starlit sky. “You don’t know that! You can’t know that!”
I brushed my hands along the ground and found the spilled contents of her bag, placing them each inside one at a time, squinting in the dark to find absolutely everything. Something else glittered on the ground, faintly in the soft pulse of Kenzi’s Ink. I glanced over at him and smiled. He’d dozed off sitting down, his bag still clutched in his hands. I reached down and grasped the glittering object that I’d seen only moments ago, its shimmer caught in the corner of my eye.
A sharp pain sent me reeling back and I grasped my hand. I looked down at my palm in the weak light and saw what looked like a black slash across it, and what could only be blood oozing from the wound.
“Caenum?” Dreya whispered as I grasped my hand and fumbled in her bag for some of the bandages I knew we had left over. “Caenum, what happened?”
“It’s nothing,” I lied.
She walked over and grasped my hand, and dragged me by it towards Kenzi, who had slumped over and snoozed peacefully, his face touching the dirt. She held it up near his head and I lurched back, but not quick or strongly enough to avoid her seeing the nasty gash in my palm.
“Caenum!” she exclaimed as she grabbed for my hands again.
“It’s fine!” I said, wrestling with the bag with one hand, finally locating the last balled-up bit of bandage. I pulled it out and unfurled it only to discover the piece inside could barely wrap itself around my finger.
“Let me see,” Dreya said tenderly, reaching for my arm.
“It was that brass dagger of yours,” I said, ignoring her, “the one from your father. They must have placed it back in the bag . . . I don’t get it though, why send us off with our weapons? Why not keep them?”
I walked over to where the blade was, just a few feet away from where I had jumped back from it. I picked it up slowly with my good hand and handed it to Dreya, who tucked it between her belt and tunic gingerly.
“Caenum . . . ,” she said softly, reaching out again. “Let. Me. See.”
I walked over to Dreya and gave her my hand. She reached out slowly and grasped it, closing both of her hands around it, and I placed my free hand over them. She gazed down at our hands, her eyes fixated, her breathing long and heavy.
“Caenum, I . . . ,” she began as she looked up at me, “I’m sorry. I should have told you about . . .” She paused, and the hand she cupped started to feel warm. Hot, even, as if I’d held it too close to the fire. “About this.” A glow grew from her hands, as if a hundred fireflies had been trapped inside of them, light pouring between our closed fingers. I winced. For something that was supposed to be healing me, it hurt a lot.
“It’s okay . . . ,” I said, sucking air through my teeth, squinting my eyes with the pain, “is it supposed to hurt this much?”
Dreya chuckled and let go.
As my eyes readjusted to the darkness, I held my hand up by Kenzi, starting to feel guilty for using him as a human night-light. The wound was gone, and in its place a thick scar sliced down the middle of my palm in a perfect straight line. Dreya grabbed my hand.
“Here, let me do a little more; get rid of that,” she said, clasping both of her hands together over mine.
“No, leave it,” I said, pulling my hand back and looking at my palm in the light of Kenzi’s face, “I kind of like it.” I grinned and moved my hand back and forth, the shiny scar glinting. I looked up at Dreya and felt my brow furrow.
“Dreya . . . ,” I started, “how long?”
“Only a year,” she said, answering my question before I could ask it. “After I was Inked, things felt . . . different. Even plants starting acting strangely.” At this she grinned and looked down at her hands, as if they were old friends. “Sometimes I could touch a withering flower and watch it spring back into bloom. Fix little scratches that I’d get while out picking weeds.”
“Did your—” I started.
“Yes,” she said, her face sinking as she again answered an unspoken question, “my parents knew. I didn’t want to tell them, but,” she sighed and wrung her hands, “there was this one time my father cut himself working on a sheet of glass. It was bad, just gushing out of his arm and you could see inside, you know?”
I winced and gulped. “Sounds unpleasant.”
“I had to do something,” she continued, looking up at me, a frantic look in her eyes, “my mother, she looked so terrified, and my father’s eyes were just lolling about in his head.” She closed her eyes tightly. “They didn’t talk to me for a few days after that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say, my head down.
“Don’t be,” she said, and she reached out and tilted my head up, looking right at me. “They came around after a while, and we just sort of pretended like nothing happened. Until . . . ,” she broke off and looked at Kenzi, frowning.
“So that’s why they wanted you to go with us so badly?” I exclaimed, feeling my eyes widen. She closed her eyes tightly and then lifted her hands up to her face. “What is it?” I asked, immediately regretting the stupid question. I knew.
“I could have helped them,” she said, “if I hadn’t been trapped in that damn storeroom, stuck in the basement.”
“They would have attacked you too,” I said, grasping her hands and pulling them away from her face. “I know you don’t believe me,” I said, running my fingers through her hair, pressing her head against my shoulder, “but we’ll be okay. I promise.”
She pulled back and looked at me, her eyes hard.
“Okay, Caenum,” she said, “I’ll believe you.”
“Good,” I said softly. We stood there for a while in silence, looking at one another under the bright stars.
“Gods damn it!” Kenzi shifted on the ground, stirring up rocks and soil as he twisted about. “Some of us are trying to sleep here.”
Dreya chuckled.
“Get your blanket,” I said, letting go of her hand as I reached for my own bag, which sat on the ground, “we’ll all get close and try to get some sleep.”
Dreya plucked her blanket off the ground and shook it out next to Kenzi, who had immediately fallen asleep again. After unpacking Kenzi’s blanket and placing it on top of him, I flopped down next to her and unfurled my blanket over the two of us.
I rolled onto my back and Dreya leaned over, burying her head between my neck and shoulder. I ran my free hand over the dirt on the ground off the blanket and felt the soil with my fingers, hard and dry. I squinted my eyes at the star-speckled sky and tried to concentrate on the ground beneath my hand. To do what, I wasn’t sure. Maybe shoot some dirt around and watch it burst some vines out like before, I don’t know. Anything.
But nothing happened.
I sighed and let my head fall back onto the hard ground, the blanket not much of a cushion, and looked up at the shimmering stars before turning to look at Dreya, her eyes closed. I sighed and closed my eyes, pulling her closer to me, and let the sleep come.
The bright stars began hurtling toward the earth.
I was locked to the ground, unable to move. I looked frantically at my sides, to Kenzi and Dreya, who both slept soundlessly, their eyes closed as the sky filled with fire.
I tried to twist and turn, tried to move. This was the sort of dream where you could feel your body outside your mind, twisting and shaking madly, the pressure behind your eyes. I willed my mind to shake loose this unreality, the way the sky had lost hold of the stars. The burning spheres grew brighter and closer, huge tails of white light soaring behind them, the clouds and sky torched a hue of horrible orange and red and their faint outline a deepest black.
“Dreya! Kenzi!” I screamed, feeling my throat rattle. The roar of the falling stars grew louder, the air around us crackled and burned.
I looked back up at the stars, each looking like a small sun in the sky, growing ever larger, the sky in flames. The light, in even the dream, hurt my eyes, and I found myself squinting.
Someone was yelling. “Caenum!” she screamed. “Caenum, wake up! They’re here!”
I awoke from the dream. The sky was still black, the stars still glimmered, and the world wasn’t on fire. But as my eyes flew open, I looked over to see Dreya, her hands grasping wildly at my jacket, a silhouetted figure pulling her away.
The world might as well have been aflame.
“Let go of her!” I roared, the words reverberating in my throat. There was a rush of wind and the soil floated into the air, swirling around me like a cyclone. I glanced down at my arms, and my muscles were taught and my veins were popping, like blue rivers along my skin.
It was happening again.
I could feel the rush of power coursing through me. With each breath, the floating soil pulsed, as if it were one with the air in my lungs, pushing in and out. The grains of wheat grew into long, unnatural tendrils and circled around me.
“Not yet!” shouted a voice in the darkness.
“Caenum!” I heard Dreya yell, “Caenum it’s—” Her screams were suddenly muffled. As her protests grew softer, I felt the cyclone of earth becoming more intense. I turned to Kenzi, who was shielding his eyes from the swirling dirt and sand.
“What’s going on?” Kenzi asked, his voice hardly audible through the din of the swirling air.
“They’ve got Dreya!” I started to walk forward, the clinging, serpentine tendrils of vines and small tornados of loose soil following me on both sides. Kenzi leaped to his feet and with a loud crack, his body ignited with white-blue energy swirling through his Ink. His eyes flashed white and his hair flew back. He grinned at me.
“Well,” he said, smiling, his voice reverberating in that strange, hollow way it did when he used his Magic, “let’s go get her back.”
“There! I can see both of them!” a voice in the darkness interrupted.
“Do it now!” a familiar, thick and gruff voice yelled. “Don’t hurt them!”
I looked over at Kenzi, who gazed at me quizzically, the voices in the distance strangely kind.
“Who . . . ?” Kenzi began.
Whoosh.
The sounds of several things hurling across the fields, coasting easily through the stalks of grain interrupted whatever Kenzi was about to ask. All at once, I felt a hard, cold rope wrap around my arms and ankles. The cyclone of dirt fell like a hard rain, the long tendrils of vines and golden grain collapsed like limp noodles, smacking again the earth. As I fell I caught sight of Kenzi, his hands outstretched, power surging through him into a sphere of light in his palms. White smoke pooled from his eyes as the surge grew . . . and then it all went out.
The world was darkness as my eyes struggled to readjust once Kenzi’s blinding energy shut off, but I knew what had stopped the two of us.
Dampeners.
They knew what we were.