When Copper Suns Fall (16 page)

“I can’t leave you. You owe me a
rematch.”

“Itching to get your butt kicked again?” I
barely had any strength left to smile before the darkness took
me.

I slipped into a dream where, I was in a
beautiful place with endless rolling hills covered in grass as
green as jade. Poppies, red and fluttery, shook when the wind blew
on them. Strawberries and grapes and strange banana-shaped fruits
grew in patches along a gravel road lined by tall, narrow trees.
But what I loved most about this dream soared past me like white
bullets. Doves. They filled me with joy. I’d never seen them in a
dream before.

Skipping along the road between the hills, I
expected to see Micah the way I usually did at some point in these
memories. But after a long moment, I realized he probably wasn’t
coming; so I walked up to a stone farmhouse, sat down, and waited.
No Micah. Soon, the skies turned gray, and a rank smell seeped into
the air. Afraid the thing with the giant shadow would show up, I
started walking.

He stood halfway up the dirt road. But it
wasn’t Micah. It was Faris. Amazed by his ability to enter my
dream, I approached him. He wore pants and a tee shirt made of
silver which made me notice my own flowing silvery dress. At least
I had some style in this dream.

“What are you—? How?” I said to him after we
reached each other.

“The poison is in your system. There’s no
time. I can save you, but only if you accept the blood. When we
become one, my blood becomes yours,” he said without looking at me.
His hair blew loose, hiding his face. I controlled the urge to pull
it back for him.

“Accept the blood? Like a vampyrati?”

He scoffed a bit and turned his head,
offering me a view of his profile. Why wouldn’t he look at me? “I’m
nothing like a vampire pirate. I mean Gabriel’s blood, our maker.
I’m offering you the Protector’s vow. Doleo Vis Aversus Ibi. Do you
accept my protection?”

“I don’t know anything about any blood or
vows. Wh—what happens if I do?”

“Do you accept, or not? If so, say the
words.”

“I accept the blood, or whatever.” He did
turn around then, and stared into my eyes with his own that were
like white fire. I gasped, took a step back. Although my heart
raced, I still wasn’t afraid.

He pulled me close, lacing the fingers of his
right hand through mine. Vibrations tickled my palms, and joy
filled my chest. Something about Faris made me feel light, as if I
were about to float away. Or maybe it was what he was doing. My
wings lifted as black lines extended from his hand to mine. Forming
an intriguing blend of scrolls and triangles, the lines started at
my wrist, traveled up my right arm, and stopped just below my
ear.

My first thought? How in the world would I
explain this to the Thoughtmasters? And what would Jalen and Lexa
think?

At once I was pulled into a memory. I was at
the Cradleshack, hiding in the kissing arena. Desi, Tobie, and
Faris stood across the room from me. A beautiful girl was in front
of them, and two SOCS covered their steaming faces. White flash
forward. Now, I stood in Faris’s arms just outside the
Cradleshack’s entrance. Another white flash. I was at Gargoyle
Park, waiting in the Gravity Drop’s line. The memory faded,
replaced by the two doves again. One of them flew straight toward
me, just before Faris’s face came back into view.

“The oath is sealed,” Faris said even though
his face was sad and his eyes had now darkened to gray.

“You’re an angel-blood,” I said. He didn’t
answer. Instead, he sighed and lowered his eyes. “Where are your
wings?”

“I don’t have any. I have…something else.”
Another rumble. “No more questions. Time for Jewel Face to wake up.
Or else, you can’t go back.”

“But I—” He placed two fingers on my lips.
This was how infatuation began. Relief and regret clouded my mind.
What was there to go back to? Emptiness in a perfect world? A place
where violence was routine and parents accepted their child’s
vesselism if they weren’t perfect. A place where I could never be
happy about the bond I’d just formed with the boy of my choice.
“Maybe I don’t want to go back. What I need is right here, I
think.”

“No it’s not. This is only a memory of a
place long gone. It’s almost over now.” His voice faded into
whispery echoes. Before I said another word, his face dissolved to
black and refocused into clear, vivid life.

Wrapped in his arms, I glanced around us.
He’d carried me inside a cave. My heart was heavy, and I didn’t
understand why I wanted to cry. Especially after I’d felt the
opposite way in the dream. What a scene that would be, the
co-champion snotting all over the champion. I lifted my right arm.
It was smooth. No black lines, no fancy scrolls.

“Am I dead?”

“Not quite.” He pulled me close, held my gaze
a long moment, and leaned forward. I lifted a bit, closing my eyes,
hoping my heart didn’t sound as loud as it thumped. But he
redirected his lips to my ear, and said, “I’ll come see you again
after you return to Castle Hayne.” He moved his lips away, avoiding
my eyes. I wasn’t going to let him off that easy, though.

“Does this somehow count as an official first
date?”

He paused a moment, regarding me with amused
eyes. And did I see a smile forming on those perfect lips? “Maybe
moving in that direction.”

“And I’ll um, see you again sometime soon?” I
said.

“Of course you’ll see me. There’s a small
matter of a rematch to discuss,” he said.

Voices echoed in the distance. I recognized
them at once, the Thoughtmasters. They’d found the signal Faris had
set off. “I have to go before your friends catch me cheating for
you.” I nodded, even though I didn’t understand why he had to hide
from the Thoughtmasters. He lowered my head down to a tuft of grass
he made into a pillow and disappeared outside the cave.

Thoughtmaster Oxendine trudged into the
cave’s opening first. Had he seen Faris? If not, either he was
blind or Faris had moved as fast as lightning. Two border guards
helped him lift me up to a cot. I told him about the marker
fragments I’d saved, about the outcasts, the sedwigs, the Beast. He
told me the only other trainee who’d found anything was Diranna.
Imagine that. She wasn’t all hair, bad manners, and mouth. We’d
lost a couple of people. Obviously the Thoughtmasters didn’t
realize the woods were being watched by so many outcasts and
creatures like the Beast. I kept my rescuer a secret, though, and
the tidbit about my wings. Some things couldn’t be told.

As I lay in a cabin on the train, I heard
Oxendine talking to someone standing outside my door. “She found a
fragment of the main tracking device the outcasts had left. She has
gone beyond our expectations of mere champion,” he said to another
Thoughtmaster I recognized as the bi-color eyed man called Camden
Altrauser. When he glanced into my room, I closed my eyes as if I
were sleeping.

“Good then,” Camden said. “She’d better be.
President Pinkerton intends to use the girl who faced down the
Beast for something special, just as he did her brother.”

Chapter Thirteen – Alchemical Measures

The story of the Girl-Who-Faced-the-Beast
circulated throughout Castle Hayne within a day. Wherever I went,
someone had questions about my encounter with the outcasts and
their mutated sedwigs and the Beast and how I felt about the
upcoming Swordfest tournament.

Yolanda Fuquay stopped by to talk with me,
too. She wanted every detail down to the color of underwear I’d
worn that day. I kept quiet about what I overheard yesterday.
Instinct warned me to wait before I filled her in, although I
wasn’t sure why.

Thoughtmaster Alton kept a respectable
distance while I recovered. He considered his training the main
reason I’d been successful. Various Tribunal members arrived to
interview me. They all asked the same questions. What did the
sedwigs look like? Did they have the spiked-back gear? My answer?
“They looked like guys covered in tar.” How did I manage to move
fast enough to get away from them? “Well, I’m not terribly sure. I
was scared shirtless, so I didn’t stop to think about it.” What
move did I use to defeat the Beast? My response? “He didn’t like my
training outfit, so he attacked the outcasts instead of me.” After
about a week of these questions, I began to sound like an
automaton. Although most people found my last reply funny, I
figured it wouldn’t pacify the Thoughtmasters.

Muriel started screening my visitors when
they knocked at insane hours in the night and even into the
morning. She never questioned me about what had happened. She spent
most nights typing in her purple reader or tidying her strange pink
and purple stuffed animals. They reminded me of something like a
cross between a squirrel and a koala. Just like me, she’d suffered
a loss, too. She hadn’t talked about it, but she cried every night
for a girl named Dresille.

I kept repeating Thoughtmaster Altrauser’s
words about Micah over and over in my head. What did he mean when
he said the President used him? If I had wings I never knew about,
then maybe my brother did too. Father would have told me if he did.
Unless he didn’t know what the Thoughtmasters had done, either.

And then there was Faris.

The boy who’d followed the
Girl-Who-Faced-the-Beast, saving her from outcast poison. The
champion that rescued his partner, a devilishly cute champion who
saved me by performing an ancient ritual in a dream. The vision
seemed real. He hadn’t mentioned it when I woke up. I hadn’t wanted
to make a fool of myself by asking about it. But he did confirm one
thing. That he was a Caducean, demon slayer descendants of the
archangel Gabriel. Something Father told me didn’t exist anymore.
But then, he’d also told me angel-bloods with wings didn’t exist,
either. Yet there I of coppery wings, lay in a cave resting in a
demon slayer’s arms, a boy who happened to be our champion.

My mind felt as if rocks rolled around the
edges.

I needed a break from camp and wanted to
enjoy the freedom I’d been given while it lasted. When I requested
a pass to the University library, the Thoughtmasters gave me one
without question. Fame came with both privileges and enemies in
Castle Hayne. I had hoped Jalen and Lexa would be able to join me.
Both Bermudas bailed on me. Lexa blamed her boss. Jalen’s less than
presentable grade report kept him on lockdown.

The librarian knew Father. She was happy to
let the Beast tamer who was also her favorite Historian’s daughter
lock up when done. Sitting at an empty carrel, I stared at Father’s
key to the Maze, an endless but forbidden source of information. I
inserted it into the compureader. A pleasant woman’s voice said,
“Welcome back to the Maze, Dr. Prizeon. What journey shall we begin
today?”

“Where to start? Think, Prizeon.” My voice
was loud in the deserted library, a restored 250-year-old church.
Chubby cherubs etched into stained glass windows stared down at me.
Shadows in the corners seemed to move as I glanced around the dark
room, but no blobs eased out from inside them. Books salvaged from
the Tidal Years and their musty odors mixed with the library’s
furniture polish smell, giving me a hypnotic comfort. I massaged
the place where the wound I received from Sanakim’s helper had
crusted over, and then moved my hand back to my necklace. As I
fingered it, a thought sprung to my mind.

My fingers flew across the keyboard, typing
seraphinite into the search box. A slew of blue links sprinkled
across the screen. One caught my eye: “Seraphinite— a stone of
spiritual properties believed to be used for out of body journeys
and to make angelic connections.”

“Wonderful. But tell us something we don’t
already know, please.” I typed the words angel-blood and
seraphinite. A handful of blue links rolled down the screen. A
familiar name popped up with the second link. Reverend Tom Cornice,
the man who owned my house long ago. I clicked it and read the
article.

The journals of deceased Castle Hayne
alchemist, Tom Cornice, chronicle his journeys into distant lands
parallel to our own. Cornice said the land he discovered, Bardonia,
exists beside our world nicknamed the mirrorlands by its
inhabitants.

According to Cornice’s journals, Bardonia is
populated by a peaceable group of angelic descendants who’ve been
created to balance the natural elements of human life as we know
them. This group monitors human consumption of wind, fire, air,
water, solar, lunar, and electrical elements through spies living
among us. Cornice also stated in the recovered pages that the
increasing instability of the seasons occurs because seven copper
scrolls were taken from a book known to balance the elemental
lights. Cornice’s journals also said these scrolls remain scattered
throughout our land, hidden by a priestess living inside one of the
fallen Bardonian kingdoms.

I had asked Father about Cornice’s former
owners before. What answer did he always give me? “There’ll be time
to discuss later, CC.” He had lived in the house much longer than
his children. Yet, I always wondered how we wound up living in one
of the original houses. A place constructed long before the Tidal
Years ravaged the lands.

My thoughts drifted back to the dream with
Faris. I typed the word Caducean. A Maze site covered in pictures
of angels with cherub-like faces filled the screen. They held
winged staffs and were poised and ready to throw them. I got
tickled. It was hard to imagine someone as intense as Faris Toulan
with chubby cheeks, smiling as he shot people with his arrows. “The
Caducean: a race of demon slayers believed to be descended from a
mix of humans and angels; historically believed to have healing
abilities; one of two extinct groups responsible for the battle
that started the Tidal Years.”