A Beautiful Dark (13 page)

“The rebels spent their time on Earth harnessing their own powers. To counter the Sight of the Gifted, they honed their control of the elements. They learned to create chaos.”

Asher poked his stick into the flames, and sparks fanned out into the darkness. Devin flinched, something I’m sure no one else noticed. Slowly he lifted his gaze to me. His eyes were unreadable but definitely not tranquil. I realized I’d been watching the two of them too closely. I looked away.

“That was how things were, anyway,” Asher continued, regaining his command of the circle, “until something unprecedented occurred that rocked the natural order of things.” His voice hooked on to the word
rocked
, sounding almost like a growl. “Upsetting both sides, the Order and the Rebellion.” He looked right at me, and I heard myself take a sharp, involuntary breath. “
Love
. The great destroyer of worlds.”

Cassie gripped my arm. She was the biggest sucker for epic love stories.

“Eighteen years ago, a Rebel fell in love with a beautiful, lonely Guardian. The Guardian had a predestined soul mate chosen for her by the Gifted. Like all Guardians, she had been raised to hate the Rebellion and everyone in it. But in spite of everything, what she felt for this Rebel went deeper. Maybe he had sexy eyes, I don’t know. Or a great smile.” Asher winked at me, and my stomach dropped away. He had a great smile, and he knew it. “Unable to act on her feelings, she tried in vain to hate him. But she soon realized that she had a choice to make: stay in Paradise and allow her destiny to unfold as the Gifted had planned—or forge a new path. One that was unscripted. She didn’t know what would happen. Only that she would be walking into the unknown if she left the Order.

“It turned out the Rebel Elders were as angered by this love as the Gifted. And so, a council of the highest order was held: seven of the Gifted and seven Rebel Elders. The couple was tried.”

Everyone around the campfire was silent. Cassie had her head resting against Dan’s shoulder as she stared at Asher, their faces glowing amber in the firelight. Dark shadows flickered across Asher’s face. His story was clawing at my memory. I had heard it before, somewhere, hadn’t I? Parts of it? But where? And how could that be? I struggled to remember.

Asher captured my gaze and held it as he said, “The Rebel and the Guardian stood together waiting for the tribunal’s final verdict. The price for their love was banishment—they would belong to neither faction. They would be nomads, forced to walk among the people of Earth, stripped of their otherworldly powers. And, going forward, their days would be numbered, like the very people among whom they were forced to live. Their punishment was mortality.

“When the couple settled in a small town and gave birth to a daughter, both sides took note. What would a baby born of the Order and the Rebellion be like?

“The Gifted and the Rebels worried that such a child could be dangerous. But they reminded themselves that this child would be human. She might not have any powers at all. . . .

“And so the vigil began. Agents from both sides were sent to guide and protect her. And to determine what, exactly, was in store for her future.”

The sounds of the fire snapping and popping echoed through the trees. Asher looked up at us, as if finished with the story.

“What ended up happening?” Cassie asked breathlessly.

Asher hesitated, glancing at Devin before continuing.

“That’s all we know. The legend is supposed to be open to interpretation.” He swept his gaze around the circle, giving us all a devilish grin. “It’s just a legend, after all.”

I clapped along with everyone else, but I was flooded with disappointment. Why had the story ended so abruptly? Some pull deep inside me didn’t want to leave the girl’s life open to interpretation. I wanted to know who she was, what she became.

“It’s so romantic!” Cassie sighed. “Oh, Skye, can you even imagine? It’s like a celestial
Romeo and Juliet
!”

“If you like that kind of thing,” Dan grumbled, faking a yawn. “I’d rather hear about a ski patrol with no face.”

“What about you, Skye?” Asher asked quietly, squeezing himself onto the log next to me. He stretched his legs out toward the fire, and the flames exploded in a leap of spark and ash. I thought about the fire in the cave. “What did you think?”

Honestly I didn’t know what to think. The story sounded so familiar, but my mind was struggling to place where I’d heard it before.

And suddenly, without warning, it came to me. All these memories came pouring back, moments long forgotten. My father holding me up to the bathroom mirror before bedtime, telling me something I couldn’t quite remember. Both of us studying my reflection and laughing. He and my mother tucking me into bed. My mother’s soft, clear voice singing to me as I drifted off to sleep. What was the melody of her favorite song? What were the words to her lullaby? Something about the Ancient Gifted Ones, and the Rebellion, and the love of a thousand lifetimes.

I scanned the others sitting around the fire, my eyes resting momentarily on Devin. His jaw was clenched, and I could tell he was upset. By the story? Why?

The fire popped loudly. He looked at me. And I could see in his ice-blue eyes the warning he’d given me about Asher.

Dangerous
.

I looked away from Devin. My heart was pounding.

One phrase kept replaying in my mind.

Love. The great destroyer of worlds.

How could Devin and Asher know about the songs, the stories my parents made up for me? Who
were
they? Was I just looking for connections?

“Skye?” Asher whispered into my ear. “Are you okay?”

Suddenly I was furious with him for telling the story—and at myself for letting it get to me.

Destroyer of worlds.

“Leave her alone, Asher,” Devin said quietly, sternly, from his place by the fire. “You’ve done enough.”

It was all connected in some way. It had to be. The fire. The story. The two of them, staring.

The boiler explosion.

The avalanche.

The songs.

My parents.

And the axis that brought them all together. Me.

Chapter 15

N
othing was as formidable as Aunt Jo on a rampage.

She was waiting for us when we got back to the lodge near midnight, and not at all happy that Ms. Manning was allowing me to “run wild in the woods at night” after my brush with death.

“I wasn’t running wild!” I insisted. Everyone was watching as they filtered back in from the campfire, and I tried to keep my voice down to avoid an even bigger scene. It was humiliating. “I was sitting. On a log. By a fire. It was very
un
-wild! It was the dictionary definition of
un
-wild. If you looked up
un
-wild on Wikipedia, you’d get a picture—”

“Get your things,” she said. “I’m taking you home.” There was nothing I could do to argue.

Half an hour later, I found myself in her silver SUV, snaking down the road that led away from the lodge.

The mountain roads were dark and winding, scarier at night than they’d been in the early morning the day before. Aunt Jo drove in tense silence; I leaned my head against the window and tried to push out all the thoughts that were encroaching on my sanity.

After Asher’s legend, as he’d called it, no one had been willing to compete with another story. I had hoped to catch up with Asher and Devin alone, but as the circle around the fire dissolved, Asher slipped away with Ellie and Devin simply slipped away. They were so elusive, the two of them. One minute, I felt I had a handle on each—the next, they were evaporating into the night and I was left staring into the fire, wondering what had just happened.

As I stared out the window at the night shadows, Aunt Jo muttered every now and then under her breath. I caught snippets of “almost killed,” “incompetent teacher,” and “if your mother were here. . . .”

“Aunt Jo,” I said finally, “you don’t have to worry so much about me. I’m okay. I wasn’t even hurt.”

“When we get back to town, we’re running by the emergency room to make sure.”

The emergency room. I shuddered. I hated hospitals. I hadn’t been since . . . well, since I was six. And I wasn’t about to go now.

I groaned. “The medics already checked me out. I’m
fine.
” And Devin had taken care of the one injury I’d had. How had he done that? Did he have some kind of hippie, voodoo medical training, where all he had to do was apply pressure to the right points, and, voilà, no more pain? Maybe I’d just been in shock from the fall and had exaggerated the pain in my ankle to begin with. It’s possible that the injury hadn’t even been as bad as I’d thought.

But the fire Asher had created. The way the campfire seemed to respond to him as if he were able to control it. I couldn’t explain that one away.

Aunt Jo sighed. “Fine,” she conceded. “But you’re staying in for the rest of the weekend. And if you’re walking even the slightest bit unevenly on Monday, I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“What about your trip?”

“What about it, Skye? Come on. I ended it early so I could take care of you.” She paused, and I could feel the whole car sigh under the weight of her thoughts. “It’s not going to be for that much longer. I’m going to start looking for Jenn’s replacement on Monday. I promise.” Her eyes were trained on the road.

It was nearly dawn when we pulled in to the parking lot to pick up my car. When we got home, I crashed on my bed and slept the sleep of the dead. When I finally opened my eyes, the afternoon sun was streaming in. I threw on the faded maroon River Springs Community College sweatshirt that had once belonged to my dad, and padded down into the kitchen. The aroma of Aunt Jo’s ancho chili rub spiked the air. Cooking was her zen; maybe this afternoon she was in a better mood.

She was at the counter next to the sink, dipping pork medallions into the spicy mix.

“How are you feeling?” she asked without turning around.

“I’m fine,” I said, hopping onto a stool by the island. She turned around, her hands covered in meat and spices.

“I know you are, but it scared me, okay? I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

“You’re not going to lose me,” I said quietly.

“That’s what I thought about your mom,” Aunt Jo said, turning back to the counter.

We were silent for a while after that.

Since I’d slept so late, the rest of the day went by quickly. We ate the pork medallions for dinner, with carrots and ginger mashed potatoes, and afterward we held a disaster movie marathon. It was nice to have this time with Aunt Jo, munching popcorn and laughing. Even if she had overreacted. But that was kind of nice, too—to be reminded how much I meant to her.

That night I had strange dreams. In one of them Asher and I were running from a volcano. I tripped and fell in the street, and Devin was the one who saved me. Aunt Jo was there, angry that I could be stupid enough to trip. Cassie and Dan were buried under the hot, molten lava. They didn’t make it.

I woke up the next morning gasping. I was once again unable to shake the feeling that I was floating above my mattress. I couldn’t handle any other strange things happening to me this weekend. I didn’t open my eyes until the dizziness subsided.

And that’s when I realized how cold the room was.

Peeking my head out of the covers, I felt a frigid breeze brush against my face. I looked around my room, and my eyes rested on the curtains flapping gently against the wall. The window was open, though I’d been making sure to lock it every night before bed—ever since the morning after my birthday.

My heart pounding, I scrambled out of bed to close it. But I stopped short before I ever reached the window.

An inky black feather was dancing along the floorboards in the icy breeze. I had never seen anything like it before. Its length spanned at least from my elbow to wrist, and the color wasn’t just black, like the crows that stalked the fields behind our house—it had an iridescence to it.

I bent to pick it up, examine it, but another gust blew the curtains into my face and before I knew it the feather was swept up by the wind and twirling through the open window, back out into the morning sky.

What kind of bird has feathers like that?

I shook my head. Too many strange things had been happening lately. Maybe on my birthday when I stepped out of the Bean, I stepped into an alternate universe.

I spent the morning reading. In the afternoon, I hiked the fields near our house. I was hoping I’d cross paths with Devin, even though I knew that was impossible. He would be at the ski lodge until the bus brought everyone home late that afternoon.

At one point along the trail, I thought I heard a branch snap behind me. I had the unmistakable feeling that someone was watching me—but when I turned around, time after time, no one was there. I was alone, the sound of my breath echoing into the gorge.

That night I dreamed about my parents, and in my dream, they told me the story that Asher had told us around the campfire, and soon my memories became dreams and my dreams were memories. The connections were slipping from me as fast as I’d made them.

On Monday, Cassie was waiting for me in the parking lot when I drove up. Her arms were around me as soon as I got out of the car.

“Are you okay?” she cried. “Did Jo rush you off to the hospital?”

“I somehow convinced her not to,” I said. “But let me know if I can’t remember how to get to homeroom or suddenly start falling over in the middle of conversations, okay?”

Cassie smirked. “So you’re telling me that if you start acting
weird
, to let you know?”

I nodded.

“Um, Skye?” she said, tapping me on the shoulder. “You’ve been acting weird for days.”

I laughed lightly and tried to play it off. “I’ve just been distracted, that’s all.”

Cassie smiled at me knowingly but didn’t say anything else on the subject.

We started walking toward the main building. “How did the rest of the weekend go?” I asked.