The other side of the wall was not what I had imagined. It wasn’t filled with shadows at all. It was a bowl of gold light—gold from the stones and from the exiting sun. The gap opened onto a small mesa. The others looked like ants as they wound down the path deep into the canyon. It was like nothing I’d ever seen, like some giant god had cupped its hands to capture something earthly and beautiful. This Laurel knows what she’s doing, I thought.
“Whoa, right?” Alex said. His voice shook me out of the semitrance I’d been in.
I nodded.
We followed the others down and down. Shivers of loose stones fell around our feet. I was the last one in line, my eyes on the back of Alex’s neck.
The path ahead of us cut through a dense mass of trees. The other stragglers pushed through the piney branches, and Alex helped me through, holding back the fragrant boughs as we broke out into a clearing. Laurel’s team had been busy. Their work was evident in that basketball court–sized space. There was some low brush bursting up along the edges, but the ground was mostly clear. An enormous tepee had been set up in the center.
Others had begun to set up their small tents around the vividly embellished conical structure. The fawn flaps of the tepee had been painted with feathers and birds and faces. Under the very last light of the sun the magenta on the tepee looked especially sinister, like an incurable wound.
“Van! There you are!” Laurel had found me. She was dressed in billowing white robes. “We’ve been waiting for you. You’ll need to hurry now. The ceremony is about to start. Leave your things with your friend and come with me.”
“Is this okay with you, Van?” he asked.
I nodded, remembering that if I was about to see Mom, it would be better if Alex wasn’t there. I didn’t want him to see her like that, to see that genetic potential in me. I didn’t want him to see what I was going to say to her.
“Well, I’ll be close.” He pointed to a spot next to the tepee. “Within yelling distance,” he added.
Laurel put her hand on my back as a light breeze filled the canyon. Her robes billowed out and around us both. She guided me to the entrance of the conical tent.
“Now,” she said. “Do you have any crystals with you?”
“Um, no,” I said.
“Well, this is a problem. Crystals are an integral part of tonight’s ceremony. Perhaps Carapace can lend you one of his. Carapace!” Laurel called, like she was summoning an animal.
A thin, bearded man, maybe Mom’s age, scuttled up to us. Carapace, I thought, the man with the singsong voice.
“Please lend us the use of one of your crystals. Just for a moment—Van’s forgotten hers.”
I shrugged, trying to convey my generally sincere apologies to Carapace.
“Oh, of course,” he gushed, displaying a set of yellowed teeth. “It would be my honor.” He had a kind of utility belt wound around his bony hips, and unclipped a leather pouch from it. He poured the contents into one palm. Crystals clacked together like dice in his open hand.
“Well,” Laurel said. “Choose. You know, pick each one up, touch it, see if it speaks to your energy.” She paused a moment. “Have you seen Harry Potter?”
I nodded.
“Pretend you’re selecting a wand. Pick up each stone and give it a wave. See if you can make magic.”
Carapace let his hand hover a few inches from my face. I made a pincer with my fingers and picked up a small piece, probably the most gruesome-looking one, about the size of my pinkie nail. I pressed it between my thumb and forefinger, because I figured that was the way to test a crystal. I felt a sharp shiver up my arm, like a static shock. The weird thing was, I kind of expected it before it happened. I knew something was coming out of the hideous ruby scab for me. I tried it again, just to make sure I hadn’t imagined it, and felt that same little shiver. It wasn’t unlike the thrilling, near-discomfort that I felt holding down a power chord. I held my arm out in a somebody-take-this gesture.
“Ah,” Carapace and Laurel sighed together as though my choice had answered an important question.
“No, Van. You hold on to it. I want you to focus on the vibration of that stone and the vibrations of your own energy. I’ll do a quick cleansing before we begin the ceremony. Just hold still.”
Carapace held out a large breakfast-in-bed tray filled with all kinds of grubby odds and ends. Laurel floated her hands over it and chose a short, fat wand of dried plants tied together with string. Carapace set the tray on the ground, flipping out its little legs so that it was slightly elevated off of the sand. He pulled a miniature blowtorch from his utility belt, the kind that the Silver Saddle kitchen used on crème brûlées. Laurel held up the wand between them and Carapace lit it like a comically large cigarette. The end of the twist of dried leaves caught fire. Laurel spoke over it, softly, and blew out the flame, leaving the wand trailing plumes of fragrant, musky smoke as she moved it around.
She waved it over my head, around my shoulders, even down to my knees and feet. The smoke stung my eyes, and when I took a deep breath, I started to cough.
“That’s right,” Laurel said. “Reject the negative energy within.” She circled me a few more times and handed Carapace the smoking wand. “Now,” she said. “Inside.”
I pushed open the tepee flap slowly. Mom sat cross-legged in the center, underneath the point of the cone. She wore white robes that matched Laurel’s, and her face was still painted magenta and gold. Her eyes were sealed shut. Marine sat in the sand behind her. She looked right at me, her dark eyes pouring out a message. I stared back at her, but couldn’t decipher it.
Ida would never have let things go this far. She would have come with me and whisked Mom from Laurel’s campsite before anyone knew what was happening.
Laurel closed the flap and stepped in behind me. A few others were planted around the tent—drummers mostly, and two or three people holding some kind of maracas. Laurel stood directly in front of Mom and raised her arms. She began to chant, rhythmically and repetitively. I assumed it was another language, but really I had no idea.
The tempo and cadence were like the sound of a train—chug-a-chug-a, chug-a-chug-a, chug-a-chug-a. The drums began to beat and the maracas rattled along to the same rhythm. The sound was so thick, I felt as if I could see it floating in the air, like I could slice one of my hands through its layers and feel something there. Laurel waved her arms, conducting the swells and dips of the chant until she cut it off with a series of handclaps. In the silence, she reached down and lightly touched the top of Mom’s head.
“Here we go,” I heard someone say. And then a sharp intake of breath from somewhere inside of the tepee, like a person had been burned. Mom opened her eyes. Her gaze was ferocious; it was beyond. My vision blurred and my throat hurt, but I didn’t cry.
Laurel helped Mom stand and held her hands. Marine stood with them, a palm at Mom’s back. It was clear that they were leading her outside. I stepped out of the way. The drummers filed out next and took up the beat again. I went after them: last.
Outside, all traces of the sun were gone and the full moon glowed in the clear, dark sky. Millions of stars cast a milky light all around, and a bonfire blazed nearby. More drummers surrounded the tepee and the fire, banging along as the campers sang in a rising and falling rhythm, the sound wrapping us all around. I closed my eyes for a second, and it was like being in a little boat on the ocean.
Laurel led Mom to the front of the fire and waved out to the others. The music and chanting dropped off, and Laurel began to speak, holding Mom’s hand up to the sky.
“My brothers and sisters,” Laurel shouted out into the night. “My sons and daughters, my friends and my lovers,” she continued.
Eww, I thought.
“We have come to this sacred space on this night for a reason. Perhaps the reason. To learn why we are here. To learn from where we have come and where we will go.” I could tell she was going for a Southern Baptist preacher kind of delivery, but she wasn’t quite pulling it off. “All around us, in this canyon, there was once an ocean.” A swirl of chatter wound through the crowd as the others looked around. “In this very place we stand, creatures of the deep once splashed and swerved, lived and died. Millennia of pulses and billions of heartbeats fill the air! Can you feel it?”
A few shouts popped up out of the crowd.
“This is the sacred place we have chosen to send our prophet, Sofia. This is where she will receive a message from our Cosmic Masters, from the Spirits of the Earth and Seas.” Laurel let go of Mom’s hand and began to circle around her. “She is ready! She has fasted and meditated for three days and three nights. Our blessed committee will accompany her to the center of the Thousand Seas Energy Vortex, and there she will wait, under the light of this bountiful full moon, until the light of the sun is at its peak tomorrow. Our message, the message, will be delivered to her there.”
The beginning of a cheer stirred through the onlookers.
“When the prophet returns, we shall rejoice and feast, for the message will save all of mankind! Come!” Laurel raised her arms and the others raised theirs. I definitely did not raise mine.
“Come!” Laurel reached for my hand and for Mom’s and started to walk, setting an awkward, jerky pace. A pack of people broke off from the crowd and followed us. Of course, there were plenty of drummers drumming, but there were also a few peripheral figures carrying lanterns and flashlights and bundles. The small pools of roving lights distracted my eyes from the lights in the sky. I snuck a look at Mom. Her eyelids were heavy, and she kept stumbling. She was definitely drugged, but I had no idea how, or what to do to snap her out of it. Or if I even wanted to snap her out of it. Drugged Mom would be a lot easier to abduct from Laurel’s production than fully sentient, wild Mom. We just needed to get through tonight, and with help from Alex and, hopefully, Marine, we’d get out of there.
The drumming was disorienting—it was as bad as the slot machines at the Silver Saddle. I couldn’t feel the shape of the night around me, couldn’t feel the way the wind was blowing.
“Here!” Laurel bellowed. She stopped abruptly and everyone slowed around her. “The vortex! It’s just ahead! Do you feel it?” she shouted into the wind. She dropped my hand and Mom’s and started to twist around and sweep her hands over her body and through the air. I was beginning to wonder if Laurel was on something, too. She hadn’t seemed this deranged earlier.
Carapace darted ahead and started to mimic Laurel’s bizarre dance. The drummers began that first beat I remembered, the chug-a-chug-a, chug-a-chug-a, and a woman’s voice spun out from the darkness.
Laurel danced a little farther off the path. Into the vortex, presumably. Mom and Marine stood beside me, the three of us still and quiet while the others roiled and shouted. Laurel hopped up onto a wide, flat rock and shot her arms into the air. One of the campers holding a flashlight pointed it toward her. The light was weak, so I could only make out bits and pieces of Laurel—a white curl of hair, a swish of robes.
“We are here, spirits!” she shouted, over all of the drumming and whooping. “We are here! Sofia!” She reached an arm out to Mom.
Carapace and a few others surrounded her, like a human raft, and jostled her forward to Laurel, who pulled her up onto the ledge. Laurel motioned to Carapace, who climbed up beside them carrying a jug of water and a rolled-up bundle. He put them down where the wide ledge met the canyon wall, and then he and Laurel settled Mom into a seated position on the rock. Two more campers started a fire in a ring of stones they’d made.
Carapace and Laurel climbed down, with surprising agility, and started to dance around again. This time, though, they began to move along the trail as they danced. Marine and I waited until the celebratory parade had snaked a little further away. We stood side by side and looked up at Mom, perched on the ledge.
“We’re just leaving her here?” I asked.
“She will be all right, Van. It’s only one night.”
“But what about bears?” I shouted.
“There are no bears. Your mother can handle it.”
“Even when she’s on drugs?” I stepped a little closer to Marine, trying to intimidate her, to get in her face, but she was much too tall.
“She is not on drugs,” she said, slicing delicate air quotes into the space between us.
“Well, she’s on something,” I muttered, feeling more helpless than ever.
“Nothing that will cause her harm. Honestly, this is the safest place she could be right now. Maybe this will really help. Come now, let’s go. It’ll all be over tomorrow.”
I couldn’t leave on my own. Marine had to steer me down the path. We followed the echoes of singing and drumming back to the campsite. I realized I still held Carapace’s crystal in my clenched fist. I thought about throwing it down into the sand, about running back to Vegas with Alex. I slipped the crystal into my back pocket and moved along with Marine.
• • •
The camp was overflowing with celebration when we returned. The smoke from a dozen fires mixed with all kinds of music in the air. Someone had decorated the site with garlands of paper flowers and woven branches. A long line of folding tables had been assembled in front of the bonfire. Laurel and most of our procession, including Carapace, were already sitting.
“I’m going to talk to Laurel. Make sure you drink some water,” Marine said, her brow furrowed. “There isn’t a spot for me at the head of the table.” She wandered away, toward the rejoicing.
“I guess I’ll try to find Alex so we can check on Ida.” I said this out loud to myself, like a real weirdo. Everything looked different in the dark. I could barely remember what color tent Ulrike had selected for me. Then I thought about how Alex and I would be sharing that tent. I didn’t know if it was because Marine had just mentioned it, but my throat was suddenly dry as torture. I turned back and found another small folding table draped in cloth and covered with drinks. There were jugs of wine and plastic pitchers filled with vibrantly colored liquids, but no cups. Unopened gallons of water were lined up at the table’s base. I took one, hauling it back to the edge of the campsite. I cracked it open and hefted it to my mouth, sloshing water down the front of my sweater.
“Good, the water,” a voice said.
I jumped and spilled more water onto the sand. Ulrike stepped into the light, a terrifying vision of Viking blondness.
“Jesus, Ulrike, you scared me!” I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and screwed the cap back on.
“You drink water!”
“Okay, I hear you,” I said, wondering if everybody in the camp was high. “Um, have you seen my friend? Alex?”
“Ah-lex,” she said and then waited out a long pause. “No.”
“Do you remember seeing my tent?”
“There.” She pointed to the left of the fire.
“Thanks.” I walked away as fast as I could while carrying the enormous plastic jug of water.
Nobody noticed me, but then, I didn’t ask any questions, and I tried to keep my gaze down.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sphere of blue light, about the size of a palm. I squinted into the darkness and saw someone doubled over a cell phone. It was a stoop I could have picked out of a lineup of hundreds. Part of me wanted to run over and tell Alex everything I’d just seen, about the dancing, about the vortex, about just leaving Mom in the middle of nowhere. But another part felt suddenly very shy, like I didn’t want to go over there at all. I shuffled where I stood, trying to decide which way to go. Alex looked up and straightened to his full height.
“Van?” he shouted, just a little too loudly. “Is that you?”
“Yeah,” I said as I walked over to him.
“What happened?”
“I’m not really sure,” I said, and stepped a little closer. He squinted down at me.
“I think you should sit down. You don’t look so good.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
“That’s not what I mean.” He shook his head. “Just come sit down for a minute, okay? Have you eaten anything?”
“No.”
“Come on. You rest in the tent and I’ll get you something.”
Alex bounded around the improvised avenues between tents and fires to a tent that looked like many of the others.
“Did you hear from Ovid at all? Or Chantal?”
Alex slowed his pace but didn’t look at me. “No,” he said. “I tried to call, but the reception out here is terrible. I was going to walk around a little to see if I’d have better luck higher up, but I wanted to wait until you got back.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That would be great.”
We walked a little more, huddled together.
“This is the spot. Here you go,” he said, zipping open the front door flap. “I’ll be right back.”
I thought, again, about being alone, inside, with Alex. I flushed, hoping it would be invisible in the dark.
“Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want me to stay with you?”
“No, no. I’m just going to sit down in here,” I said, waving at the tent.
“I’ll try to find a signal somewhere out here.” He gave me a half-serious, stern look. “Don’t go anywhere.”
I nodded and slid inside. Two sleeping bags were rolled out on the ground side by side. Two jugs of water and my backpack were squashed up against the opposite wall. I thought I would lie down for just a minute, just until Alex came back. I turned onto my side and then nothing, only sleep.