Between (4 page)

I look at Mom. “Wait, what? What’s going on?”

She cups my chin in her hand. “Listen to Seth,” she says, her brown eyes fierce. “No matter what happens in the next few hours, trust in him, and remember I love you. Sam and I will meet you there.”

“Where?” I ask.

Sam turns toward me, his green eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and terror, and there’s no time for words before he and Mom vanish.

Vanish
.

I gasp, frozen by the sheer impossibility of what just happened.

Seth’s arms circle my waist. “Don’t let go,” he orders, and in a blink, everything disappears. My stomach jumps, my head spins, and I am weightless.

Seth releases me when I feel something solid beneath my feet again. I spin around. We’re standing at the edge of a forest, barely inside the tree line. The dense trees swallow the moonlight. I step closer to Seth. “What just happened? Is the Mothman dead?”

Seth’s arm comes around my waist, pulling me forward with him while his eyes dance over our surroundings, never resting on anything for very long. “No, he’s not dead, but Adele slowed him down. You have to get his heart, right under his ribs, to kill him.”

Adele. It’s so weird to hear him call her something besides Mrs. Page. Seth drags me along, and I can hardly see the path beneath my feet. I’m so terrified by what might be sneaking up behind me that I can’t focus on what’s ahead. The Mothman is still out there. I squint, trying to see more through the darkness, but it’s no use. My knees go all rubbery, and I concentrate on planting one foot in front of the other.

“Where are Mom and Sam?”

“They’ll meet us in Ellauria,” Seth states, pushing branches away with his hands. He’s not running, but he’s not quite walking either. We’re buzzing through the forest on our way to a place I’m reasonably sure isn’t on any map I’ve ever seen.

I don’t know what’s happened. I don’t know where we’re going. All I have right now is Seth, and I’m not entirely certain what to think of him. He’d appeared out of nowhere tonight and jumped into action. He hadn’t asked us what was going on. He didn’t freeze up. He ran
toward
the Mothman, not from it. Who is he?

He glances at me. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

I swallow. I don’t feel safe. That Mothman showed up with hardly any warning, and he moved so fast, jumping straight up into the air like that. I close my eyes briefly, and long, sharp talons appear behind my eyelids.

Listen to Seth
.

I open my eyes and study Seth’s profile. “How’d you do the disappearing thing?” I ask. “We were at my house one second and now we’re here.”

“It’s called flickering. The first few times are a rush,” Seth says. “After a while you get used to it, and you hardly notice that weird off-balance feeling.”

Off-balance. That’s the best way to describe how I feel right now. It’s like I’ve just gotten off a very short, very fast roller coaster. He points at two towering pine trees a few feet away. “Let’s get through the gate, then we’ll be safe and we’ll have a little time to talk.”

Gate?

Seth turns to scan the trees and dark pathways surrounding us before pulling me through the middle of the two pines. Beneath them stands a large wooden gate, a little taller than Seth and twice as wide. It’s gray and weathered, with paint peeling from its edges like it’s been here for years.

Seth pushes it open and holds it there, waiting for me to pass through.

I look from him to the gate, confused. It’s only a gate, unattached to anything, with nothing on the other side but more trees. A doorway to nowhere. I stare at it like the emperor in his new clothes.

He shakes his head and huffs. “Go, Charlie. We have to get out of here.”

He wraps his fingers around my elbow and pulls me forward with him. The gate closes behind us, and the transformation is sudden.

The night disappears. The sky is clearer, the plants thicker, the scent sweeter. There’s a definition here that didn’t exist on the other side of the gate. Crisper lines, more dramatic variations in color. It’s nature on steroids, clean and untouched.

“Where are we?”

“This,” Seth spreads his arms, “is the Between.”

T
HREE

“T
he Between?” I ask. I try to keep my eyes on him, waiting for an answer, but it’s impossible. I’m surrounded by the purest display of colors I’ve ever seen. Blue, green, brown, red, orange. They’re the same colors I’ve seen in wooded areas my whole life, but they’re bolder, more pigmented—like every color I’ve seen before now had been muted, and I’ve just discovered what color actually is. “Between what?”

“The worlds.”

Right. Of course. Between the worlds. I tear my eyes from the scenery long enough to squint at him. “I have no idea what that means.”

“Your world,” he points his thumb back toward the closed gate, “and mine.”

I blink. He’s from a different world?

“Come on,” he says, nodding toward the path. “I’ll explain while we walk.”

He takes off with long, purposeful strides, and I follow, struggling to keep a steady pace when all I want to do is stop and stare. The Between is a wilderness like I’ve never seen. It’s not just the beauty, although the splendor of this place is absolutely hypnotic; I’m also mesmerized by the sheer abundance. The entire space, for as far as I can see in any direction, is filled with growth. Yet somehow, beneath it all there runs an underlying sense of order—there are no dead leaves or broken limbs littering the ground, the dirt paths are clear and well-defined, and every bush, flower, and tree is perfectly in bloom.

The sky is crystal blue, clearer than any sky back home. I stare up through the pointed leaves of the enormous maple trees. The branches burst with leaves, and while every single one of them is green, no two are the same shade. Even the brown of the path beneath my feet seems richer, like dark coffee grounds scattered across the ground rather than plain old dirt.

Everything here is bigger, fuller, taller, cleaner. Everywhere I look, there’s more of the same. The eternity of it is as overwhelming as its perfection. I doubt it’s possible to truly record this place on paper, but I want to try anyway.

I wish Seth would slow down a bit. “What do you mean, ‘your world?’”

He brushes past a bright yellow bush with ribbons of star-shaped blooms that spring straight out from the middle and hang to the ground. “Well, we left the mortal realm—your world—and we’re on our way to the mystical realm—my world.”

Mystical realm. Sure.

He spins around, looking at my face, and shakes his head. “That’s the problem with the mortal realm. You live there long enough, you lose all sense of magic.” He steps closer, speaking slowly, as if I haven’t been paying attention. “You were attacked by a flying, feathered man tonight. We flickered. I brought you through a portal to a natural wonderland crafted by Mother Nature herself. How do you think anything is impossible at this point?”

I open my mouth, but stop myself before anything comes out. My desire to argue with him is as instinctive as my response to the word “mystical.” I take a moment to wrap my head around what he’s saying. My world is the mortal realm, and his is the mystical? He’s
mystical
? “What are you?”

“I’m a jeravon.”

“A what?”

“Jeravon.”

I wait for him to say more, and the fact that he says nothing makes me crazy. This is not the time for his “I’m Seth, so you should accept every word that comes out of my mouth” thing. I fold my arms over my chest and shift my weight to one hip before saying, “Well, that’s excellent. I’m a shmiddlydee.” He lowers his head and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers, but I keep going. “That’s a human who makes up words that mean nothing. Now you tell me what a jeravon is.”

He rubs his hand down his face and over his chin before settling his gaze on me. “I look human, but I’m not. Jeravons live longer than humans because we age at a much slower pace. I’m also able to heal just about any wound a creature may suffer, as long as the creature is closer to life than death.”

The words play back again in my head. Magical. Creature. Healer. “Are you telling me you have magical powers?”

“Yes, Charlie.” His nod is certain, his gaze solid. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

My laughter seems even louder than usual here, and it dies quickly beneath Seth’s steady stare. “And you age slower,” I say, resting my chin against my chest.

“We age about one year for every twelve human years.”

I look around. This is a joke. A very elaborate joke. It’s something Sam would do. He could totally be behind this. But would he have trusted Seth to go through with it? Ultra-serious Seth? He Who Knows No Humor?

I lower my eyes to my wrist, rolling the tiny beads of my bracelet between my thumb and forefinger, and mutter, “I don’t believe you.”

It seems like what I should say, but I’m not entirely sure I mean it. It can’t be real—none of this can—but at the same time, we’re here.

Seth nods. “I know. You’ve been raised to find excuses for these things. When we reach Ellauria, it’ll be much easier to believe. Until then, I’m going to need you to trust me. Come on.”

He continues walking, apparently certain I’ll follow.

I can’t ignore the feel of this place. The Between. There’s something about it I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s calming, like I know it and it knows me.

Trusting Seth shouldn’t be this hard. He’s Seth. Except what does that mean anymore? What do I really know about anything or anybody? Still, there’s something calming about him, too. For once, his annoying self-assurance is exactly what I need.

Listen to Seth
.

At least I know that whatever this is, wherever I’m going, Mom and Sam will be there too. She said so.

I swipe a few loose hairs from my face and tuck them behind my ears, then take off after Seth. Honeysuckle crowds the edge of the path, its sweet scent curling around me. Somewhere beyond the trees, water flows. Aside from that, there are no sounds at all. No birds exchanging melodies, no hum of insects going about their business, no wind, no animals. Nothing.

It’s the nothing I find most concerning. This woodland should be filled with wildlife. Deer, bears, birds, butterflies, snakes. How can there be nothing?

Something cold and heavy settles in the bottom of my stomach as this new reality creeps in, replacing what I thought I knew. All the things I’d learned and loved about nature from the world I’d grown up in—the deer that roamed the overgrown woods at the edge of our fields, the hummingbirds that buzzed around the zinnias on our porch—none of that exists here. I find it harder and harder to ignore what I’ve seen and heard today.

I see Sam’s face in my mind, the flecks of gold bright in his wide green eyes before he and Mom vanished.

Before Mom flickered with him the way Seth had flickered with me.

“How does Mom factor into all of this?”

“Adele and I work for a group called the Fellowship,” he answers without looking back.

“The Fellowship? Like—of the Ring?”

The path curves around a wide lilac bush. He casts a look over his shoulder and says, “Clever,” in a way that tells me he doesn’t think it’s clever at all. “The Fellowship is in charge of making sure those living in the mortal realm don’t know anything about the mystical realm.”

Well, I’d say they’ve been doing a pretty stellar job. “How do you do that, exactly?”

“There have been times throughout history when a human sees something he’s not supposed to see. Some kid stumbles upon the flower ring left behind when one of the fairies travels to the mortal realm, a dead mermaid washes up on a beach, or someone snaps a picture of Vanessa or Nestor. When that happens, the Fellowship takes care of it.”

“Vanessa or Nestor?”

“The Loch Ness monsters.” He emphasizes the word “monsters” dramatically, wiggling his fingers in the air.

He throws each new piece of information over his shoulder and they hit me square in the chest, stealing my breath for a moment before I remember to inhale again. Fairies. Mermaids. Loch Ness monsters—all things that exist only in folklore and children’s stories. From Seth’s mouth, they sound a little less impossible. “How does the Fellowship take care of it?”

His shoulders rise and fall. “Whatever it takes. Sometimes, it’s as simple as destroying film or cleaning up evidence. In other cases, the operation is more complex, like when we have to ruin a person’s credibility or make someone believe he didn’t see what he saw.” He reaches back, his hand hovering next to me as the trail becomes steeper. Sparkling granite disrupts the path, peeking out from the ground here and there. “The point is to make sure humans go on believing magical creatures don’t exist.”

So they’re like the Men In Black, but for magical creatures. “And the Mothman? The Fellowship is supposed to hide him?”

“Not exactly,” Seth replies, keeping his eyes on the ground as we maneuver through the rocks. “Some creatures aren’t really intelligent enough to be part of the Fellowship. They’re wild animals. We try to manage those the best we can, since they could blow the lid off the entire mystical realm.”