Boundless (Unearthly) (38 page)

It’s a bad throw, but it clips my shoulder and part of my left wing. The pain is intense, piercing, the kind of pain that slows the mind, and so it takes me a few beats longer than normal to understand what she’s done.

She’s flying off again.

And Tucker is falling. Down, down, he’s falling.

Toward the lake, so very far below us.

I forget about Lucy. There’s only Tucker, and I know the moment I start for him that I’m not going to be able to catch him.

I try. I narrow my body, I push toward him through the air, but he’s still too far away to stop him.

It’s terrible, those few seconds, but a peaceful kind of terrible, the way he turns over and over in the air as he falls, gently, gracefully, almost like a dance, his eyes closed, his lips parted, his hair, which has grown longer over the months I haven’t seen him, caressing his face. The world opens up below us in a rush of blue and green.

And then he strikes the water.

I’ll hear that sound in my nightmares for the rest of my life. He comes down on his back, hits the surface so fast, with so much force, that he might as well have hit concrete. The splash is enormous, obscuring everything. I hit the water a few moments later, only thinking to retract my wings at the last second. The water closes around me, over me, cold as a knife stabbing me, knocking the air out of my lungs. I push upward, break the surface, gasping for air. There’s no sign of Tucker. I turn in the water frantically, searching, praying for a sign, some bubbles, something to give me an idea of where to look, but there’s nothing.

I dive. The water is dark and deep. I kick downward, my eyes open wide, my fingers out and groping.

I have to find him.

Feel for him,
comes that voice in my head.
Feel for him with more than just your hands.

I push deeper, turn in a different direction. My chest asks for more air and I deny it. I dive deeper, reaching for him with my mind, a tiny flicker of something that might be him, and when I’m about to give up hope and go for more air, my fingers catch his boot.

It takes an agonizingly long time for me to get him to the surface, then to the shore, then out of the water. I drag him up on the rocky bank, screaming for help at the top of my lungs, then fall to my knees beside him and put my ear near his chest.

His heart’s not beating. He’s not breathing.

I’ve never learned CPR, but I’ve seen it on television. I’m crying raggedly, stifling my sobs so I can breathe into his mouth. I press on his chest and hear a bone crack, which makes me cry harder, but I keep doing the compressions, willing his heart to pump. I can feel when I touch him that he’s already hurt so badly, so many bones broken, organs inside of him injured, maybe beyond repair. Bleeding inside.

“Help!” I scream again, and then stupidly remember that I’m more than a human girl in this situation, that I have the power to heal, but I’m so shaken that it takes me a few tries to summon glory. I lean over him, the glory shining through me like a beacon on the shore of Jackson Lake, where anybody out on an early morning hike could see me now, but that doesn’t matter. I only care about Tucker. I put my glowing hands on his body and will his flesh to mend. I stretch my body along his, my cheek to his cheek, my arms around him, covering him with my warmth, my energy, my light.

But he doesn’t take a breath. My glory fades with my hope.

I hear wings behind me. A voice.

“Now you know how it feels,” she says, and I raise my arm to block her dagger, but I’m not quick enough. She’s going to kill me too, I think dazedly.

But then she doesn’t. There’s a strange noise, something whistling by my head.

And then there’s a glory arrow sticking out of Lucy’s chest.

Jeffrey’s standing behind her, his face resolute but also shocked, like he didn’t even know what he was doing up until now. He drops his arms.

Lucy’s dagger is gone. She crumbles to the ground, gasping like a beached fish.

“Jeffrey,” she says, reaching for him. “Baby.”

He shakes his head.

She turns onto her stomach like she’s going to drag herself away from us. Then without warning she rolls into the lake, and she’s gone.

I turn back to Tucker and bring the glory again.

Christian comes down on the shore next to Jeffrey.

“What happened?” he asks.

I look up at him.

“Can you help me?” I whisper. “Please. I can’t make him breathe.”

Jeffrey and Christian exchange glances. Christian goes to his knees beside us and puts his hand on Tucker’s forehead, like he’s feeling for a fever, I think numbly, although that’s not what he’s feeling for. He sighs. Puts his hand gently on my arm.

“Clara …”

“No.” I pull away, grasping on to Tucker more tightly. “He’s not dead.”

Christian’s eyes are dark with sorrow.

“No,” I say, scrambling to my knees. I pull up Tucker’s T-shirt, lay my hands on the strong, brown expanse of his chest, over the heart I’ve heard beating under my ear so many times, and pour my glory into him like water, using all of it, every bit of life and light there is inside me, every spark or flicker of light that I can find. “I won’t let him die.”

“Clara, don’t,” Christian pleads. “You’ll hurt yourself. You’ve already given too much.”

“I don’t care!” I sob, swiping at my eyes and pushing at Christian’s hands as he tries to pull me away.

“He’s already gone,” Christian says. “You’ve healed his body, but his soul’s gone. It’s slipped away.”

“No.” I lean down and put my hand to Tucker’s pale cheek. I bite my lip against the wail that wants to tear out of me, and taste blood. The ground shifts under me. I feel dizzy, faint. I gather Tucker’s body into mine, hold him against me, my hands curling and uncurling in his coat, spilling out jelly beans on the wet rock beneath us. I stay that way for a long time, letting my tears run against his shoulder. The sun gets warmer and warmer, drying my hair, my clothes, drying his.

Finally I raise my head.

Christian and Jeffrey are gone. The lake’s so clear that it makes a perfect reflection of the Tetons on the water, the pink-tinged sky behind them, the lodgepole pines along the opposing shore. It’s so incredibly still in this place. No sound but my breath. No animals. No people. Just me.

It’s like I’ve stopped time.

And Tucker is standing behind me, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, looking down at me. His body has mysteriously vanished from my lap.

“Huh,” he says bemusedly. “I had a feeling you might be in my heaven.”

“Tucker,” I gasp.

“Carrots.”

“This is heaven,” I say breathlessly, looking around, noticing at once how the colors are brighter, the air warmer, the ground under me more solid, somehow, than it is on earth.

“It would appear so.” He helps me up, keeps my hand in his as he leads me along the shore. I stumble, the rocks on the bank too hard for my feet. Tucker has less trouble, but it’s difficult for him, too. Finally we make our way up to a sandier spot and sit, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the water, looking at each other. I’m drinking in the sight of him unbroken and healthy, perfect in his beauty, warm and smiling and alive, his blue eyes even bluer here, sparkling.

“I don’t think this dying thing is half so bad as it’s cracked up to be,” he says.

I try to smile, but my heart’s breaking all over again. Because I know that I can’t stay here.

“What do you think I’m supposed to do now?” he asks.

I peer over my shoulder at the mountains. On earth the sun would be on the other side of them as it rises, to the east, but here the light is behind them. Always growing. It’s always sunrise in heaven, the way that hell is in perpetual sunset, never breaking into the full light of day, but there’s the promise of it, soon, maybe.

“Go into the light,” I say, and scoff at how cliché it sounds.

He snorts. “Get out of town.”

“No, seriously. You’re supposed to go that way.”

“And you know this because …?”

“I’ve been here before,” I say.

“Oh.” He didn’t know that. “So you can come and go? You could come back?”

“No, Tucker. I don’t think so. Not where you’re going. I don’t belong here.”

“Hmm.” He stares off at the lake again. “Well, I’m glad you found a way this time.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

He reaches for my hand, takes it in both of his, strokes my palm. “I love you, you know.”

“I love you, too,” I say. I would cry, but I don’t think I have a tear left in me. “I’m so sorry this happened. You had this beautiful life in front of you, and now it’s gone.” It’s good to be here with him, to see him safe and sound, but my heart hurts when I think of Wendy and his parents, the way his death is going to open a big black gaping hole in their lives, a wound that won’t ever fully heal.

I hurt when I think of spending my whole long life on earth without seeing him again.

He tilts my chin up. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“If I’d just left you alone …”

“Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t regret us. I don’t. I won’t, ever.”

We sit there together like that for I don’t know how long, our hands tangled, my head against his shoulder. He tells me about all the things I missed this year, how he took up bull riding at the rodeo, for the adrenaline of it, he says, because he wanted something to make him feel alive when he was otherwise feeling pretty low.

“You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck,” I say.

He grins. Shrugs.

“Okay, not so lucky.”

“I missed you every minute. I wanted to drive out to California and grab you by that pesky hair of yours and drag you back to Wyoming and make you see sense. Then I thought, well, if I can’t bring her to me, I’ll go to her.”

“So you applied to UC Santa Clara.”

“Wendy told you about that?” he asks, surprised. I nod. “What a tattletale.” He sighs, thinking of her. Sobers. “You sure we can’t stay here forever?” he asks wistfully.

“No. You’re supposed to move on.”

“You too, I guess. Can’t hang out with a dead guy all your life.”

“I wish I could.”

“Prescott’s a good egg,” he says, his voice strained. “He’ll take care of you.”

I don’t know what to say. He stands up, brushes the nonexistent heavenly dirt off his pants out of sheer force of habit. “Well, I should let you go, I think. I’ve got a hike ahead of me.”

He pulls me into his arms. We’ve had some good-byes, Tucker and me, off and on again, but nothing like this. I cling to him, breathing in his smell, his cologne and horse sweat and hay, a hint of Oreo cookies, feeling the solidness of his arms, knowing this is the last time I’ll feel that, and I look up at him all desperate and heartbroken, and then we’re kissing. I hang on to him for dear life, kissing him like the world’s about to end, and I guess in a way it is. I kiss him like I probably should be embarrassed to do in a place like heaven, which feels like church, a place where God is looking right at you, but I don’t stop. I give him my whole heart through my lips. I love him. I open up my mind and show him how much I love him. He gives a startled, agonized laugh, and breaks away, breathing hard.

“I can’t leave you,” he says hoarsely.

“I can’t leave you either,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t.”

“Then don’t,” he says, and grabs me behind the neck and kisses me again, and the world is tilting, tilting, and everything goes black.

I wake up in my room in Jackson. For a minute I consider whether or not it was all a bad dream. It feels like one. But then reality settles over me. I groan and turn onto my side, curling into the fetal position, pressing my hands to my forehead until it hurts, rocking, rocking, because I know that Tucker is gone.

“Ah, now,” says a voice. “Don’t cry.”

There’s an angel sitting on the edge of my bed. I can feel that he loves me. He’s thankful that I’m all right. Home. I can feel his relief that I’m safe.

I turn over to look at him. “Dad?”

It isn’t Dad. It’s a man with clean-cut auburn hair, eyes the color of the sky after the sun’s gone down, when the light has almost left it. He smiles.

“Michael couldn’t come this time, I’m afraid, but he sends his love,” he says. “I am Uriel.”

Uriel. I’ve seen him before. Somewhere in my brain I’m storing an image of him standing next to Dad, looking all fierce and regal, but I don’t know where that comes from. I sit up and am instantly flooded with weakness, a hollowness in my stomach, like I haven’t slept in days. Uriel nods sympathetically as I sink back onto the pillows.

“You’ve had quite the adventure, haven’t you?” he says. “You did well. You did what you were meant to do. And perhaps more than you were meant to do.”

But not well enough, I think, because Tucker’s dead. I’ll never see him again.

Uriel shakes his head. “The boy is fine. He’s more than fine, as a matter of fact. That’s why I’ve come to talk to you.”

It’s like my whole body goes limp with relief. “He’s alive?”

“He’s alive.”

“So I’m in trouble?” I ask. “Was I not supposed to save him?”

Uriel gives a little laugh. “You’re not in trouble. But what you did for him, the way you poured yourself into him, it saved him, yes, but it will also have changed him. You need to understand.”

“It changed him?” I repeat, dread uncurling in my gut. “How?”

He sighs. “In the old days we called a person with so much glory, so much of the power of the divine inside them, a prophet.”

“What does that mean, a prophet?”

“He will be slightly more than human. The prophets of the past have sometimes been able to heal the sick, or conjure fire or storms, or see visions of the future. It affects the little things: their sensitivity to the part of the world humans don’t usually see, their awareness of good and evil, their strength in both body and spirit. Sometimes it also affects their longevity.”

I take a minute to digest this information. And wonder what the word
longevity
actually means in this case.

Uriel’s expression is almost mischievous. “You should keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”