Authors: David James
I’m something more than this.
I had to be.
This couldn’t be it.
I put my hands up to my face, guarding it. I didn’t know much about fighting, but I knew this: Those who gave up easily, lost more quickly.
I was afraid of death, and so I couldn’t be afraid to live.
I felt my entire body tense. The air was heavy against me, trapping me against the stone. I held my breath, but the wetness found its way into my lungs and stayed there, filling them up until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Kate?” I whispered into the dark. I sounded small.
She sighed. “Put your hands down. Just watch what I do, okay? If you can see anything in the dark, that is; you shouldn’t be used to it just yet.”
But I almost was. Here, there was no sky to fill the darkness in the tunnel. No breeze came through the maze to push through light. There was nothing but dark shadows, thick as the air, moving like black liquid through the void. But even so, I was beginning to grow used to the dark. I was beginning to see. Not completely, but just enough so I could see Kate as if she were a ghost, outlined in gray, born of night with violet stars shining bright.
“I can kind of see you,” I said. “I can see your eyes.”
She paused and blinked. I could see the ghost of her shrug its shoulders. “Hmm. The binding spell must be wearing off more quickly than we thought. The wards here should have prevented you from seeing anything.” Her voice wasn’t as steady as it normally was. She sounded nervous. “Now stop talking and really look. Watch. I can’t get us in there if I’m not concentrating.”
I said, “In where?”
She was silent, the calm before the storm, quiet and still. Her stillness sent chills up my spine. I knew this: Before a belligerent storm hits, there is nothing to do but wait; wait for the loud screams of danger; wait for the illuminated brightness of panic; wait for death to come and end it all.
Before the storm there is only waiting-
and silence-
and space between-
a calm horror of unknown-
and silence, silence,
silence
.
I didn’t say anything, but watched her hands as she reached them slowly up to touch the wall. She muttered something but her voice was too quiet for me to hear. The second she touched the rocky surface, her
leviti
started to glow a faint pink, like blood mixed with water, before turning as red as a sky at sunrise. The light from it began to envelop her entire body, swirling in a fine pink mist around her. It moved as though alive, dancing on her exposed skin.
Fire felt like it burned in my chest. “
Kate
?”
She said, “Take my hand.” Her voice sounded distant. She didn’t look at me but focused on the wall, on her hand as it glowed as though she stole it from a fire, all embers and flames and skin. “Be quiet.”
I grabbed her hand and she started muttering again, letting words fall out as though they were her only hope to survive; her voice sounded desperate as it began to live in the shadows around me. “
Praecipio vim virtutum luce. Sum fortitudine. Ego sum lux. Hac virtute lucis intus, aperta ianua mando secretum
,” she said. She kept repeating it, her voice growing louder, crashing into the tunnel walls and off until her voice seemed to be more inside my head than out. Chills ravished my spine. She chanted, “
Praecipio vim virtutum luce...”
I gasped as the wall in front of us began to shake and vibrate. After a few seconds, the entire tunnel was on the verge of exploding around us. Mist crawled over me, so thick I couldn’t breathe. I was only mist, and as it became my skin and my lungs and my veins, I felt it take my heart as well. I knew soon I would be nothing more.
I closed my eyes and, as Kate’s voice roared around me, I thought of my nightmare that had become alive in this moment:
The air was thick, wrapping itself around me and pushing into my lungs.
I opened my eyes and, for a moment, thought I saw a flash of purple.
A face in the mist.
I opened my eyes and Kate was all I could see; her violet, luminous eyes stole my breath and my world and I was gone.
I thought,
This is the end.
Before the storm there is only waiting, but after there is only destruction. Death.
Then without fear or explanation, Kate walked through the stone wall she touched, as if it were made of nothing but colored air, and pulled me through.
Again, blackness erupted around me as though death had made me a friend.
Or an enemy.
~
My ears popped.
First, the sound hit me; water crashing so angrily it screamed. The sound was a hundred waterfalls falling at once. It must have been. It was nothing and everything, so loud it became quiet in an instant, shattering into something so beautiful I thought maybe I was actually dead.
But I breathed deeply-
and I was so, so alive.
I wrinkled my nose against the humidity and the cold breeze that cut through it. I closed my eyes for just a second, and gulped in the raw, clean air. It was sweet and frigid, filling my lungs with so much life they felt as icy as death inside me. This air reminded me of rain, of the way it fell from the tops of the Rocky Mountains down to towns below in sheets and storms.
Of rain so alive it killed.
When I opened my eyes I felt the breath I’d taken live and die on an exhale.
The cave was enormous, lit by a thousand tiny lanterns and filled with hundreds of people as if an entire city had been hidden in this hollow mountain. Jagged stone walls rose up toward a ceiling that wasn’t there, trapping the place in an angry cage of gray. Everything, including the floor, seemed to be made of stone. Four fast moving waterfalls, shimmering green and blue and white, ran quickly down the high walls as if pretending to be the four points of a compass. They jumped over misplaced stones and onto the tops of buildings and houses, draping them in curtains of blue-green water, frothing white where they hit gray, and flowed gently into a rapid river that circled the edge of the cave. The river must have drained out somewhere, but there was no end in sight. There was only water and stone, the two mixing together, one.
Amidst the water and stone were people, all dressed in the same black pants but different colored shirts: Blue, red, green, yellow, white, and gray. Each person had determination in their eyes, the same burning purpose I saw in Kate. They moved with grace, and the ones in gray ran like birds against the river. None of them seemed to have realized we had stepped out of the mist and through the stone as if it were nothing.
As if everything was normal.
Tiny flecks of what looked like mirrored snowflakes floated through the air like fragmented thoughts from a thousand angels. Each fleck shone a rainbow of whites, not colors, reflecting everything and nothing at all; it was as if they were made of pure light, white as the center of the sun.
And then belief hit me:
Lake Iris
.
It had to be.
The lake stretched wide, resting in the very center of the cave. It was a vast black thing, still as death and as placid as if ice had formed on top. The lake, so still and dark with the swirling white flakes reflecting off its surface, became the night and the stars.
“We have to hurry.” Kate’s voice brought me back to reality. “Let’s go. Move. Now!” She pulled me forward and, without meaning to, I found myself falling into her, touching her, holding her, and it was like the first time all over again:
My heart was all I could feel until:
I can’t breathe
.
Too much, too fast
.
Our eyes met.
I can’t breathe.
One moment lingered in time.
Hope
.
Blue against eyes so black they looked violet.
Is this the beginning?
Her eyes narrowed-
Or the end.
and found mine and would not look away.
I can’t breathe
.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I pushed away and blinked and the moment was just a lost memory I wanted to remember but didn’t know why.
Kate backed up slowly, her eyes wide, turned-
and ran.
I was left behind, broken and alone.
I wondered if that’s how it always would be.
Desperate, needing, wanting: I ran as fast as I could to catch up to Kate. My legs moved under me as if I was a magnet and so was she.
I screamed, “Kate!” but it was nothing more than a lost breath; as I ran my voice flew behind me. “Wait!”
She stopped.
Then, opposite to opposite, we stood in front of each other, unable to move closer.
I asked, “What were those words you said back there?”
“Just words,” she said. “But words have power when they have purpose. Basically, it was a passcode to get through the wards that protect this place.”
“What does it mean?”
“
Praecipio vim virtutum luce. Sum fortitudine. Ego sum lux. Hac virtute lucis intus, aperta ianua mando secretum
,” she repeated. “I was told it means ‘I command the power of virtue, of light. I am strength. I am light. With this power of light inside me, I command this secret door to open.’”
“Can anyone say the words?”
“Sure,” a voice like thunder said behind me. “But not everyone can use their magic.”
A boy stepped beside me, and I felt my breath catch. With his thick arms crossed over his gray shirt, and eyes popping green against his dark skin, he made me think of Tyler.
“What do you want, Zack?” Kate asked, leaning back on one foot.
He smiled and rolled on the heels of his feet. “Nothing. Just wanted to see who you had with you and why you’re sharing our secrets with him. Who is he?”
“He’s no one.”
Zack raised an eyebrow. “Is this him?”
“Go away, Zack.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
Kate stepped closer to him. “Then I’ll make you leave. You don’t think I could?”
Zack just grinned and ran a hand over his dark, short hair. “Oh, I know you could. I’m not stupid.”
I could see Kate almost smile. “No, you’re not. An idiot, maybe, but not stupid.”
“You gonna show him around?” Zack asked, looking me up and down. The veins in his neck burst with every movement.
“No,” she said. “I have orders.”
Zack’s eyes went wide, and his dusky skin blotched with pale light. “Oh, sorry. Go. Didn’t mean to keep you.”
Kate nodded, her eyes almost sad. “Talk to you later.”
Zack turned to leave, and Kate grabbed my arm to pull.
“Wait!” I called to Zack. “Hold on.”
Slowly, he turned around to face me. His eyes were bright, shining with a quiet sadness that reflected the light in the cave. “What?”
“Who do you think I am?” I asked, and held my breath.
Zack’s eyes turned to Kate, and then slowly back to me.
“I think,” he said, “that you’re someone who has no idea what’s about to happen to him, and that makes you afraid of what’s to come.”
My voice caught in my throat. “Do you know what’s going to happen?”
His smile was sad. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? No one does.”
Without another word, he turned and ran.
“A friend of yours?” I asked Kate.
“I have no friends,” Kate said. “He’s just someone I used to fight.”
“Is he the one you wanted to meet after dinner that night?”
Her eyes blazed. She spat, “No, Calum! Zack’s not like that at all.”
Again, without warning, she turned and ran. This time though, she stopped before I had the chance to scream.
I bent over and put a hand on the back of my neck before I stood straight and brought it down to my heart. My chest was too full, and not enough so. My heart skipped beats, my lungs were in my throat, and my pulse raced.
With a stitch in my chest, I breathed, “Why-
Do I feel like you-
Did
something to make me think about-
you
always?
Like I need you.
Like I should-
run?”
away,
I thought.
But no. I don’t need anyone.
Do I?
“I ran because we have to meet Marcus,” she said unwavering. “In case you forgot,
you
wanted to figure out what was going on with you, remember?”
She was lying.
She had hidden so many things from me, given me so little that it felt like too much, and so I knew her eyes. I knew when they hid secrets, and when, like now, they lied.
Her eyes spoke the truth even when her voice stayed silent:
I will never tell you the truth about why I ran. It is a secret worse than everything I’ve kept before, and so I will not tell you. Ever.
I wondered if this was about the family she missed, or if maybe there was someone more.
The lies, so many hidden lies, began to grind against my mind, began to eat at my heart until all I could think was:
Lies.
Kate.
Lies.
Dad.
Dad.
Lies.
Kate.
Why did I run after you?
Kate.
Why do I care?
I blinked and tried to believe, “I don’t care.”
I won’t.
I can’t.
“What?” Kate’s eyes threw daggers at me and her fists curled into hammers, shaking. “You’re telling me that you don’t care? You were the one that nearly cried like a baby in the Jeep before I told you anything! You’re the one that begged me to tell you what you are and now-”
“You still haven’t told me what I am! I’m some bastard offspring of the Devil, some guy who has no choice but to destroy the world? You’ve told me that but not
what
I am. Thanks, Kate, but forgive me if I’m not jumping up and down right now.”
“I don’t
know
what you are!”