The Gift (31 page)

Whit

I GUESS WE FAILED his test. But we won’t surrender, no way. That isn’t going to happen.

The force of hitting the water might have knocked us out and drowned us if Wisty and I hadn’t been almost perfectly in sync.
We pull off a near splashless dive and slice through the surface. But underneath, the water is churning and rushing up from
the bottom of the sea.

Who controls the water? Who else?

The entire harbor is piling up into one enormous wave—a tsunami to end all tsunamis—and we’re floundering, swimming right
in the middle of it. Higher and higher it builds. I’ve never seen anything like it. I think it’s safe to assume no one has.
Unless we’re supposed to take the Great Book literally.
Are we?

Wisty and I can’t force our way downward against the surge. It’s useless even trying to swim at this point.
If you can’t beat it, join it, right?

And so I imagine us…
on longboards
. And it actually happens!

“
You
did that?” Wisty yells as she steadies her footing on the surfboard.

“Yeah!” I shout. “Even if we crash and drown, it’ll be some kind of a ride!”

Wisty smiles a crazed surfer-girl grin at me as the wave starts to go down—as
we
start to go down.

Wisty

IN ABOUT ONE AND a half seconds, my very brief euphoria changes to dread. Suddenly this massive wave is gaining height again. We’re approaching
shore and we’re maybe a quarter mile in the air. The One’s going to wipe out a major chunk of the city if he doesn’t stop
this madness right now. And that means there are hundreds—make that thousands—of people in terrible danger of being drowned.

Even though I figure that many of them are New Order automatons, I keep telling myself they’re living, breathing human beings.
And we can’t let this giant wave—or The One—crush them. I think I know what I have to do, and there’s no time to consult with
Whit.

It’s what my parents were saying: sometimes for the good of the many, you have to do something way outside your comfort zone.
And this, dear reader, is
way
outside what I would consider even borderline sanity.

Over the roar of the massive wave, I yell so loudly I think the force of the words is going to tear my throat open.
“I’ll give you what you want! I’ll give you my Gift! Just stop this insanity before the wave hits shore!”

Like magic—or maybe I should say it
was
magic—the wave starts to lower and then we’re gently coasting toward a narrow shoreline of packed sand.

Standing there is none other than The One. He’s smiling like a proud dad welcoming his kids home from a long trip.

“What an amazing ride! Ah, to be young… I envy you!” he says as the wave calmly spreads itself across the shore and we drift
to a stop.

“I’m so pleased you’ve come to your senses, Wisty,” says The One. Unfortunately, I have rather sad news. You fail—both of
you. All of the Allgoods fail. It’s obvious that I can’t work with you, so I suppose… I have to work without you.”

He turns so his back is facing us and raises his hands to the heavens.

“Take them away!” he bellows. “I have no further use for this witch and wizard.”

But there’s no one there.
He’s talking to no one
.

And then, in a heartbeat, like a plague of locusts overtaking the land, thousands of New Order soldiers and police swarm over
the crest of the hill and descend upon us.

We swirl around, only to be confronted by even more hordes of soldiers standing in the water.

This wall of evil is impenetrable.

Finally The One looks back at us. “There is a moral to this story,” he says. “Of those who receive Gifts, much is expected.
Take that one to the Shadowland with you, witch and wizard.”

Wisty

I KNOW THERE’S NOT many pages left in this book, so at this point you’re wondering where the happy ending is.

I may be pretty young, but I’ve figured out that life doesn’t get wrapped up into neat little endings with perfect little
bows. I can promise you one thing, though: there’s hope, okay? Don’t ever call me, Wisteria Rose Allgood, a
downer
. No matter what crap The One shovels upon us, I swear I’ll find that single bright spot in the bitterly dark landscape and
cling to it for dear life.

And right now I’m clinging to the sight of the very people who gave
me
dear life.

My mother and father!

Not ghosts, not hallucinations, but live and in the flesh. But in ropes. Just like me. At least Whit and I can see them and
tell them how much we love them—one last time before we die.

But what a family reunion it’s turning out to be! Look at
us here—the jeering crowd around us, the jackbooted New Order lackeys shoving us forward onto the stadium stage, the ropes
around our necks, the TV cameras in our faces… and, in the tower, right in front of us,
Him.
The One Who Is The One. He’s in his glory, triumphant—he’s won!

Using the old hangman’s platform as his stage just digs the knife in. Vaporization is The One’s preferred method of execution—it’s
highly efficient—but the nooses are a bonus in our extra-cruel humiliation, the morbid theater of it all.

I
so
want to burn up with hatred for this monster who has destroyed our life and is about to kill my entire family. I want to
use my anger to find my strength, to find my magic, to burn this horrible scene to ashes, to cauterize this place right off
the face of this so-called world.

But honestly I’m too terrified to be angry. My courage is crumbling; my light is fading.

Oh God, I don’t want to die right now. I don’t want my family to die. I don’t want to watch them die.

Dad’s still wearing his game face, trying to give me and Whit courage. Mom’s given up attempting to hide her emotions and
is quietly crying in grief and fear.

Whit, on the other hand, looks wildly angry, at least when he’s not recovering from repeated blows to the back of his head.
Half a dozen times now he’s surged against his bonds, and half a dozen times his hooded handlers have struck him with a billy
club, sending him limply to his knees until they haul him back up and he tries to find the focus and strength to surge again.

The ghoulish crowd is loving every dramatic bit of this. The heartbroken mother, the stoic father, the defiant son, the quaking
chicken-liver daughter who they have somehow come to believe is a powerful witch.

But now The One Who Is The One raises his long-fingered hands in the air and waves for them to be quiet.

And now he’s doing something else with his hands, a motion I know only too well.
Oh God, please don’t let him —

A black rift opens in front of him and rips its way toward us. Or, at least,
toward two of us.

And, just like that, Mom and Dad have been vaporized. There’s nothing left but smoke. My mother. My father. Gone.

Wisty

WHIT AND I STARE in paralyzed horror as a wisp of black ash lifts in the breeze and moves out across the sea of onlookers. They’re stomping,
fist-pumping, and roaring their approval of the disgraceful murders that just took place.

I’m too decimated by the grief and shock of it to take any joy in the fact that we are—inexplicably—still alive. The One didn’t
kill us.
He didn’t kill us.
It makes no sense.

And then it gets even stranger, even more surreal. Like a dream.

The scene is suddenly awash with painfully blinding light. But it’s a chilling light, if there is such a thing, like a powerful
tsunami of sun blasting over a landscape of ice.

Maybe I’m dead after all? Maybe this is that celebrated light at the end of the tunnel?

Or… is it the End of Days?

When the light ebbs, I see that The One Who Is The
One is on his knees.
Screaming.
Only for some reason I can’t hear him. In fact, I can’t hear anything.

Was there an explosion? I don’t know, but suddenly there are hands all over me, cold hands. They’re loosening my ropes. A
small army of hooded figures has banded around me and Whit. The New Order guards lining the stage have been toppled by the
rush of flooding light and energy.

No sooner have the hooded figures pulled the nooses up over our heads than the hangman’s trapdoors on which we’ve been standing
click open. And I’m falling into darkness.

It’s as if I’ve been hanged, but I haven’t been, have I? I’ve just fallen onto my back.

I’m sprawled on the ground with all the spirit and decorum of a discarded rag doll. I don’t care to move. I don’t even care
to breathe. I just want this all to end. I want to close my eyes and stop
being.
I pray for it to happen.

There’s another cold hand on my arm, helping me to my feet. And now my ears are starting to ring, and I hear something else,
too—a voice. A familiar voice.

“Run,” the voice says as a door opens and daylight streams in. “Run, Wisteria. Run like there’s no tomorrow… because if you
don’t, maybe there won’t be.”

My hearing returns as the sound of massive panic sweeping through the stands hits me. The shrieks and wails seem to have enough
power to bring down the entire stadium.

What have they seen?
What has happened to their fearless leader?

I stagger outside and join the frantic crowd on the stadium field streaming toward one of the four tunnel exits. I have done
this before: escape the scene of my own execution. It seems impossible, but I know I can do this. I know how to keep my head
down. I know how to duck and weave. I know how to stay focused in a sea of blind panic.

But I haven’t gone fifty yards when I stop dead, as if my heart has fallen from my chest.
Whit! Where is Whit?

I turn and manage to glimpse the plywood hangman’s scaffold. Four empty nooses dangle limply in the breeze. The One is nowhere
to be seen.

Neither is Whit.

I haven’t even cried for my parents yet, but now I fall to my knees and start to bawl like a baby. In an ocean of thousands,
I’m alone.

But not completely. Again there’s a hand on my arm and a voice in my ear. “Run, Wisteria,” it says. “Hurry. You have to leave
this cursed place.”

But this time I resist. I get to my feet, but I’m pushing back toward the scaffold, toward the last place I saw my brother.

I make it only a few steps when somebody—or something—knocks me to the ground.

“Whitford’s fine,” it says, pulling me back to my feet and turning me around. “
Think
about it. You can’t be together now. It would make it easier on them if you were together. We can’t risk it.”

The voice has been rational, if insistent. But now it
sounds truly urgent. “There’s no time, Wisty. For Whit’s sake, run! Run. You have The Gift. Only you have it. Without you,
hope will die.”

And I have to run, don’t I? I have to try to escape.
My life matters. My Gift matters. So I run. I run as if my brother’s life depends on it.