Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (23 page)

“Why?” she asked. “So that he can do to us what he did to the people who used to live here?”

“We need to get out of here.
Now.
” I was done listening to her argue. I grabbed her arm with my other hand and pulled the two of them through the remains of the mountain village, but every step I took closer to the summit was weighted with my own dread.
 

Would he come for us next? No, something told me he wouldn’t. He was playing with us like puppets on strings. If he could see us now, he would be entertained, I was sure of that. He would save our destruction for the end. I shuddered, trying to think of how we might survive this.
 

We skirted around the smaller cottages, trying to stay away from that horrible place, but Jade pulled on my arm, craning her neck to try to get a glimpse of the massacre inside. I yanked her away, alarmed by the eager look on her face. But everything in that moment was frightening to me. Every crunch of rock, every whistle of wind, seemed to set me on edge anew.
 

As we climbed the hill on the opposite side of the town, I let go of the last of my sobs through my heavy breaths. When we got to the top I stopped, turning, to look back down at the ruined place. No one would ever live there again.

“Let’s walk for a while,” I said, turning away. “And keep your eyes out for somewhere to hide. I don’t want to be out here for any longer than we have to be. Not tonight.”

On the outskirts of the town we found another small group of fields. The weeds, like on the other side of the village, were plentiful here, but much of the harvest remained in the ground. We spent twenty minutes collecting root vegetables and greens before pushing on. My fingers pushed through the porous dirt as if sifting through ashes.
 

An hour later, as the sun sunk behind the mountain, we carefully made our way into another cave. I took the blindfold from Almara’s head and he slumped down in a corner, drawing his knees up to his chest like a child in the womb. I held the shirt in my hands, wondering just how much of the world it blocked out. I put it up to my eyes, and, sure enough, not a single sliver of light penetrated the fabric. And yet Almara had
known
about the bodies before we even got within viewing distance.
 

Was the Corentin just playing with us? I had thought that if I blocked Almara’s sight, the Corentin would have one more obstacle to face if he wanted to follow us. And it was true, no attack had come. Not to us. But Almara seemed oddly tuned to this place, and to the Corentin, too. I was starting to feel that he knew exactly where we were, and that nothing we could do would hide us from his sight.
 

We sat, without fire or warmth, for what felt like hours. Slowly the cave darkened as the day slipped away, but none of us paid the passing of time any attention.
 

I stared at the wall, wanting to erase the images from this morning from my mind forever, but not having the energy to fight their reentry each time I tried. I was outdone. Outwitted. Overwhelmed. I had heard so much about evil, witnessed it in Cadoc, felt it in my gut. But nothing could have prepared me for the carnage that had sat smoldering and waiting for me in that church today.
 

I was vaguely aware of a sound coming from the corner where Jade sat. First, a soft
snap
. Followed by silence. And then a low smack of rock, just barely echoing off the cave walls. I turned to her.

Her hand shot out, catching something in midair. A fly? She held it up to the dying light that came through a crack in the cave, inspecting her prey. Then, studying it carefully, she picked at it with her fingers.
 

I sat up, focusing on her more clearly.

It wasn’t a fly, but some sort of moth. I watched as she gripped onto one of its wings and, before I had a chance to protest, tore it clear off its body.
 

“Hey!” I said.
 

She looked up innocently, as if she had been doing nothing more offensive than stroking a kitten’s fur.

“What?”

“Do you have to do that?”

She shrugged. Then she looked back down at the little creature and tore off the other wing.

“Hey, knock it off!” I said, getting to my feet. I was suddenly on fire, furious about the dismemberment of the innocent bug.

But I was too late. She put the remains of the creature, squirming and writhing, onto a flat stone on the floor of the cave. Her eyes fixed, gleaming, on a second rock sitting nearby. As she watched it, it raised slowly into the air and came to hover over the first. A smirk flashed across her face, and then she brought the rock down hard and smashed the bug flat.

Smack.

“What is it with you?” I yelled. “Why did you have to do that?”
 

She shrugged again.

“I don’t know,” she said, uncaring. “I’m bored.”

“You’re
bored?
” I asked. “So you torture butterflies to pass the time?”

“It wasn’t a butterfly, it was a—”

“I don’t care what it was! Knock it off!”

My skin was crawling from the sight. What was wrong with her? I stormed out of the cave, unable to look at her any longer. I thought that if I spent another minute in there, I might be sick again.

I walked up the closest hill, trying to put some distance between us, and thought about all the strange things she had been doing lately. At first, I had just thought that she was upset about Almara. But now I was starting to wonder if something else was going on. Too many times in recent days her reactions had been…off. The smashing of rocks at the beach. The way she tried so hungrily to see the bodies today. And now the moth.
 

It wasn’t such a big deal, I tried to reason with myself. It was just a moth. I’d seen Grandma swat at moths on the farm plenty of times.

But Jade wasn’t swatting at it like it was a pest. She had said she was bored. And she had looked like she was having
fun.

I hadn’t really noticed it until now, but she had been acting weird for days. I had been so distracted by all of the other terrifying things going on that I hadn’t really registered the change in her. For a moment, an icy feeling of dread settled in my stomach. Was Jade losing it?

“I’m sorry about before,” she said from behind me. I jumped at the sound of her voice, surprised and a little bit frightened. “It’s just, none of this is what I expected. This isn’t how this was supposed to go. First Father, then the whole champion thing, now the murders in the village.” She paused, looking out over the valley. She looked like she was chewing on a thought, figuring out how to phrase it. “No offense, but how are we supposed to
teach
you magic? Nobody ever taught me. It was just something I sort of knew.”

“Maybe if you just explain,” I said.
 

“I don’t know how to explain,” she said. She picked up a pebble and began passing it back and forth between her two hands. After a moment, the pebble began to hover in the air above her palms. “It’s just something I can do. It’s like we talk to each other.”

“You talk to the rocks?”

“Well, it’s not really talking, I suppose. But we are communicating. Just like when Father was able to pull the power from the ground. He asks the ground to give, and the ground finds a way to respond. Like a dance. You move one way and then your partner follows you. It’s an exchange.”

I eyeballed her, unsure of the girl who stood before me, smiling and friendly.
 

Maybe I was wrong about her. Maybe I was just overreacting.
 

I picked up a pebble and began passing it back and forth between my hands, as Jade had done. I looked down at it and thought,
move
. I closed my eyes and asked the rock,
move.
I did this for several minutes, but the cold little stone did nothing but lay helplessly in my hands. I sighed in frustration and plunked the rock back down to the ground.

“Try this,” she said. “When you’re holding the rock, you have to give it something. A piece of yourself. It’s almost like an offering. Close your eyes and try thinking about something that only you know, something you’ve never told anyone else.” She closed her eyes, mimicking the motions with her hands, and explained the feeling. “Then imagine the energy in your body flowing through your chest, filling it with light. Then, move the energy down your arms and into your hands. And then, when it’s pulsing at the tips of your fingers, finally, to the rock.” She opened her eyes and looked at me expectantly. “Try it.”

Something I had never told anyone?

I gulped as the thought came instantly to my mind, immediately trying to push it back down. I had no happy secrets. And even if I did, with the sight of those burned bodies still fresh in my mind, I would have been unable to summon them.

Instead the thought that came to mind was dark and hopeless. It was the thought that followed me every day of my life. The thought I tried my best to bury. I looked at her fearfully, but she only nodded.
 

I didn’t want to do this. The feeling in my stomach was sick again, like a tiny, aggressive animal was trying desperately to escape it. But I had to try. No one would know. Jade wouldn’t know. Only the rock.
 

I closed my eyes. For a moment I saw nothing behind my lids, only black. But then a tearing, burning fear bubbled through my body as I imagined the face of my father. He scowled at me as if he had never seen me before, as if I were a predator preparing to strike out at him.

Then the pain came. My chest contracted as the truth that only I knew flooded my body.
 

He didn’t love me.

I was useless.

Alone.

And I was to blame for everything.

If only I were better. Stronger. More.
 

I imagined the energy of my secret flowing through my fingers and into the rock. Somewhere in the back of my mind I felt sure that, with as much as I was letting go, the tiny stone would explode, not strong enough to handle a lifetime of hurt and fear.

Move.

Come on.
Move.

The stone sat stubbornly motionless in my hand. All the pain, all the misery, all the rejection of my pathetic little life was not even enough to convince this tiny piece of Aeso to grow warm under my touch. It lay as still and lifeless as the bones back in that church.
 

It dropped from my palm and it clicked against the mountainside.

I slumped down to the ground beside it. Next to the girl I had saved. The girl I was still trying to save.
 

I was broken. As broken as my home planet. As broken as the Fold was becoming before my eyes.

Jade put her hand on my shoulder, squeezing it a little.
 

“You’ll get it,” she said softly. “You just need to practice.”

I looked up into her jade-green eyes, still young, still here with me. The girl I had seen five minutes ago was gone again, and I was left with the friend I depended on.

As long as Jade stuck with me, I would make it.
 

I picked up another pebble from the ground and tried again and again until the sun finally fell below the land and I could see no more.
 

My torch stretched out in front of me as I entered the tiny stone chamber. Along each roughly hewn wall, books piled up in tall stacks.
 

A little man sat at a tiny desk in the corner of the room. The stubby fingers of one hand gripped the side of the desk, the other a feather quill. He hunched over his work, his pen scratching madly at the page beneath it.
 

“Hello?” I asked.

He didn’t look up from his writing, only huffed an irritated sigh at my interruption.

“I—” I began, but then stopped. How should I introduce myself? “Do you know where I can find the book?” I finally said.

The quill moved over the paper feverishly as he continued to write.
 

I looked around the little space, and leaning up against the far wall stood a narrow podium. A large, leather book bearing Jared’s mark rested on the platform. I looked back to the man, but he either didn’t see or didn’t care.

I approached the ancient text, my arms outstretched, and ran my hands along its edges. The leather was intricately decorated, the work of a master craftsman, and the grooves bumped beneath my fingertips. I eagerly opened to the first page.
 

It was blank.
 

I quickly flipped through the hundreds of pages in the great book, searching desperately for a sign that I had come to the right place.

All blank.

I looked back towards the man. His eyes stayed down.
 

But this had to be it. I knew it. I closed the cover and wrapped my hands around the edges, lifting.
 

It didn’t budge. I heaved on the giant thing, but it didn’t move.
 

This time, when I looked back at the man, he had stopped writing. He sat staring at me, his thin lips open wide in a malicious smile, revealing pointed, gray teeth. His deep amber eyes gleamed with pleasure.

My stomach sank to my knees. My heart pounded. I heaved again. This had to be the right book. This was the answer. This would solve everything. It was a trick, like Almara’s maps, that was all. Somehow we would get it to reveal its secrets, and when we did, we would level all the planets in the Fold. We would make things right.
 

As I yanked on the book, grunting in frustration, a wicked laugh filled the room, too big, it seemed, to be coming from such a small man. But when I eyed him again, there was no mistake. His mirth echoed off the thousands of ancient books that insulated the space.
 

His laugh angered as much as frightened me, and soon I found my strength changing. Coursing through my veins, pumped by my battered heart, could it be only blood? I felt cooled from the inside out, and suddenly the book lost its weight. I lifted it from its platform easily, my eyes greedily taking in every detail of the cover. In my delight at having retrieved the prize, worth more than all the treasures on all the planets, I noticed too late that the sound of his laugh had disappeared.