Between (12 page)

“Now, if everyone will excuse us,” Alexander says, nodding to Clara, Keiran, and everyone else who stopped to listen, “I’d like a word alone with Charlotte.”

Keiran straightens. “Yes, sir. Clara and I are going to go for a walk.”

Ugh. Every part of me that didn’t want to see Seth a few minutes ago is screaming for him now. The rest of the crowd slowly backs away, drifting off to wherever they were headed before Clara’s dramatic tale drew them in, until there’s no sign that anything newsworthy had happened at all.

Keiran pulls Clara’s arm, and she shakes her head as she sulks off. Keiran winks at me and whispers, “Don’t mention donuts.” His dimples are in full effect now, and I literally have no words. He’s like a work of fine art you can’t stop studying, appreciating the sheer genius behind its creator.

And then they’re gone, and I’m standing alone with Alexander the Intimidating. I wipe my hands down my sides and square my shoulders, giving my head a quick shake. I brace myself, waiting for him to say something. My stomach begins a complicated series of acrobatics.

“Did you believe it was wise to leave your room without telling anyone where you were going?” Alexander growls. “After you’d been specifically ordered by your Aegis to stay there?”

Ordered? It hadn’t felt like an order from my Aegis, so much as a suggestion from the guy whose suggestions I’ve had the choice to ignore for years. I fight to keep from shrinking beneath his stare. “I couldn’t sit there and wait. I had to—”

His nostrils flare. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened if Clara hadn’t been there to save you?”

I recall the harpy’s black talons and razor-like teeth. The mere memory is enough to catapult my heart against the front of my chest. “I’d be dead.”

“Undoubtedly,” he states, his eyes hard. “What were you doing out there?”

I take a deep breath, reminding my heart that I am with Alexander and the harpy is long gone. I rack my brain for an answer he’ll like but come up empty, so I give up and admit the truth. “I was looking for a gate. I wanted to go to the Between. I couldn’t sit in my room and wait for someone to come tell me Mom and Sam are dead.”

My voice cracks on the last few words. I can’t believe I even said that out loud. They can’t be dead. I rest my hands on the backs of my hips and look at the ground. They simply can’t be.

“You really aren’t grasping the situation,” Alexander says quietly. “You cannot ignore direct orders.”

I haven’t even been here a full day and I’m already tired of this “orders” talk. As soon as I learn the world is three times larger than I ever knew, my personal existence becomes more and more confined. Three realms to explore, and I’m restricted to Seth’s reach.

Alexander’s shoulders heave, and he releases a frustrated sigh. He stares over my head for a moment before saying, “Follow me.”

I spin around as he marches past me toward Artedion. “Where?”

“Where you wanted to go this morning.” He doesn’t stop to look back. “The Between.”

S
EVEN

W
e’re leaving Ellauria?

I guess that whole, “only with an Aegis” rule is trumped if there’s a founder around.

When we reach Artedion, he steps off the path and strides past the giant steps. I stumble along, desperate to keep up with Alexander, anxious for more answers. The ground slopes downward beyond the Clearing, and he guides me down the clover-covered terrain until it levels out again. I didn’t study this part of the map at all. I hadn’t paid any attention to what lay beyond the Clearing.

We’re surrounded by a mess of thin, stark-white trees with copper-colored vines hanging from their sprawling branches. I pause once to look back at Artedion, but the crowded trees block my view. Completely disoriented, I scramble to catch up with Alexander.

When I reach him, he’s standing between two trees, taller than the others, and I stop beside him. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small plastic device like the one Mom had used before the Mothman attacked.

“What are you doing?” I ask, watching his fingers move across it. It’s definitely not a calculator.

“Letting Seth know you’re with me,” he replies, focusing on his fingers while he talks. “We didn’t find any trace of Adele and Sam last night, so I sent him to the mortal realm before dawn to do a search of his own. He knows all of you better than anyone. I thought he might have more luck.”

Alexander looks to me and drops the device back in his pocket. “I’m sure he’ll be looking for you when he returns.”

I can’t decide if it’s good or bad that they didn’t find any trace of Mom and Sam. It could mean anything. They’re alive and running. They’re dead and—my stomach flips. They’re not dead.

They’re not.

Alexander nods toward the ground. “Watch your feet.”

Huh? I look at the leaves scattered across the darkened grass. It’s a flat space between the trees. Watch my feet for what?

He grabs hold of a branch over our heads and bends it toward us. The ground beside my feet shifts and collapses, transforming into a set of stairs leading downward.

I tilt forward, peering down into the shadowy passageway. He steps around me and descends the steps. I stare, open-mouthed. There is no way I am walking down a dark stairwell made out of dirt.

When his head is at ground level, Alexander looks up at me. “Come,” he orders.

Nope. I shake my head and add Fear of Being Buried Alive to the list of things I’m absolutely sure of about myself.

“Charlotte, if you want your answers, you will come with me now,” he says.

I fumble with the hem of my shirt, twisting it beneath my fingers. I
do
want answers. More than anything. Where are Mom and Sam? Who am I? Aside from being a muralet, where did I come from? If Mom isn’t my mom, who is? Is the man I called Dad my actual dad?

Yes. I definitely want answers.

I lift one trembling foot and set it on the first step. It’s surprisingly firm, and my knee nearly buckles beneath me.

OK. One step at a time.

I bring my other foot to the next step, and repeat, following Alexander into the cool darkness. The smell of earth surrounds me as we go down and down, darker and darker, until I’m relying on the sound of his muted steps to guide me. I grope for the wall and dirt crumbles beneath my fingers. I draw my arms in again and clasp my hands in front of my chest.

Completely blind, there’s no choice but to keep moving forward.

Suddenly the world flips and gravity tugs at my back rather than my front. Rather than walking down, we’re climbing up—the air warms, the passageway brightens, and we emerge into the sunlight.

The Between spreads before me, calm and welcoming, and the unease in my chest diminishes.

“Where are we going?” I ask. Like before, I can’t focus on anything except how green the greens are and how the blues are so clear they glow. Everything is bigger, fuller, taller, cleaner. Everywhere I look, there’s more of the same. The eternity of it is as overwhelming as its perfection.

“You’ll see.” He strides toward a clean, clipped path nearby.

The grass under my feet is so thick it doesn’t seem real. “Is it far?”

Alexander doesn’t turn around. “You’ll see.”

I give up trying to talk. I’m out of breath in no time, struggling to keep up as we march through the trees. Every leaf is as big as my hand, edged in olive green that gradually becomes yellow in the center. I want to pick one and take it back with me, press it into my sketchbook and draw pages and pages of them, but it feels wrong to take anything from the Between. It’s soothing in its stability. I know what to expect here. I don’t want anything to change.

Hills rise and fall under my feet, carpeted in green and dotted with daffodils of the brightest yellow. Seth can’t get my sketchbooks soon enough.

The farther we walk, the louder the sound of rushing water becomes, and I spot an enormous waterfall in the distance. We turn on a new path and I lose sight of it, but the growing roar of the water tells me we must be getting closer.

I feel the cool spray of water moments before the roar becomes the only thing I hear, and I shield my eyes, searching for the top of the waterfall. I tip my head back, taking in the wall of water flowing from the soaring peak above. The water is the clearest shade of turquoise, almost impossibly blue. Its gleam is so bright I can’t look directly at it, like rays of sunlight pouring from the very top of the sky. Alexander stops and stands with his hands behind his back, observing the water, so I do the same.

“As Seth told you,” Alexander says, “Mother Nature is the reason magic exists. When she left the mortal realm, she created this place from nothing. The Between is the foundation of the mystical realm and everything in it. All magic starts here, and this,” he nods toward the waterfall, “is its source.”

The water flows down, cresting into clouds of white before leveling into the river below. My eyes travel from top to bottom, side to side, memorizing every detail. I want to come back with my sketchbook. This is a painting. There’s a soothing familiarity in the gurgling splashes of the water and the collections of leaves and pebbles alongside the embankment.

The Between itself is a work of art. Mother Nature took her time here. But this, the Source of magic, is an experience. I don’t merely see it. I feel it—an immediate sense of welcoming, a homecoming with this place I’ve never seen before.

Alexander walks along its edge and I follow, farther and farther until the current calms and the roar fades. The river opens up into a wide pool of water. If the falls are sunlight, the pool is composed of stars glittering beneath its surface. The sounds of the waterfall are muted here, replaced by the hushed swish of air sending ripples in my reflection.

Alexander’s face appears beside mine. “Do you feel it?”

I meet his eyes in the water. Does he know? Is it this way for everyone? Do we all feel this connection to magic?

“Clear your head.” He clasps his hands in front of himself and lowers his gaze on me. “For a moment, forget Adele. Forget Sam. Forget everything that’s happened and be here. Right here, right now.”

Forget Mom and Sam.

Forget what’s happened.

I look away from him and back to the water.

Be here.

I close my eyes and breathe in, filling my lungs completely before exhaling.

Calmness wraps around me, settling in my chest until I feel as still as the Between itself. When I open my eyes, the air is thick with light. It glows, in and around me, in the space above the water and between the trees.

What
is
this?

I blink, and the moment is gone. Everything is as it was.

I whip around to face Alexander. “You felt it?” he asks, and something ignites in his eyes. He squints at me, awaiting my answer.

What did I feel? What was that glow? I press my fingers to my eyelids and rub them before I look again. Nothing.

“I’m not sure. I mean, I felt like everything inside me stopped. My heart, my lungs, everything. And then I saw—” I shake my head. A trick of the light? Something about the blinding waterfall mixed with the pool’s reflection?

“What was it?” Alexander steps closer. “What was it like?”

“Everything was,” I glance over my shoulder, peering at my surroundings, “different. It glowed. Almost like everything was made up of a billion little points of light.”

He raises his shoulders and releases them, like the tension that had held them in place has diminished. His chin falls to his chest, and he nods at the grass, obviously pleased. “Perfect.”

“What’s perfect?” I don’t even know what just happened.

“As we told you, muralets descended from Mother Nature. Because of your blood connection to her, you have the unique ability to draw upon the magic in her designs.” Alexander tilts his head and looks at me. There’s something different in his stare. A new respect? Pride? “Do you recall how Seth said you are the personification of magic?”

I run my fingers over my braid, ignoring the flutter in my stomach when he mentions Seth’s name. Oh, yes. I’m going to recall that for quite some time.

“The magic here is the same magic that flows through your veins. You are the same. Muralets have always been completely in tune with the Between. You felt that connection. The Between is an extension of you.”

An extension of me. This magnificent place and I—we share a life source. It’s as much a descendant of Mother Nature as I am. Without Her, neither of us would exist.

I study the Between, and it studies me back.

We are the same. No wonder it feels so alive to me.

“Al!” A booming voice calls out behind me, disturbing the silence. I spin around to look across the water but find no one.

“Joe.” Alexander smiles in the direction of the voice. He beckons for me to follow and leads me around the water. I slow to a stop as we get closer to a line of trees on the other side.

They’re the oddest-looking trees I’ve ever seen. Their bases are thick, and their rich brown trunks twist and turn at unnatural angles, like we’ve caught them in the middle of a dance. Several branches extend from the trunks, covered in broad leaves of many colors—not only greens and yellows, but various shades of purple, red, and orange as well. The surface of each trunk is covered in knots and grooves of varying depths, but the branches are perfectly smooth.

“Joe,” Alexander says again when we reach the trees, “I’d like you to meet Charlotte.”

“Charlie,” I blurt out, and Alexander raises an eyebrow at me.

I glance around. Who’s he talking to? I peer beyond the branches of the strange trees, searching for movement. Alexander nods toward the one in the middle, the largest.

The knots and grooves in the trunk begin to squirm and revolve. The branches on each side quiver. The tree writhes and bends, and then it stops as suddenly as it started. A face emerges with two large, empty eyes, a prominent nose, and a wide, expressive mouth.

“Hello, Charlie,” the face speaks. “I’m Joe.”

At some point, I need to accept that nothing here is what it seems, even the trees. A super-scholarly expression takes over my face, with bulging eyes and gaping mouth. I’m full of those lately. I almost remind myself not to act like a newbie until I remember Alexander knows all my secrets.