As soon as the new leader’s voice charges into the air, everything snaps to order. They form into orderly squads in sharp, focused movements, shouting responses in unison to the commander’s calls.
He directs each group and they set to work. Scattered groups spar in hand-to-hand combat, build, and test weapons, practice with a bow and arrow.
“What are they doing?” I murmur.
Jordan is studying their moves and exercises, absorbed in following their circuits. “They’re training. Like me.”
He’s right. This isn’t just a village. It’s an army. My mind clouds with confusion. “But what for?”
It carries on for hours, the groups rotating through the stations at the commander’s call. Not until the sun is past its highest point does the commander put the groups at ease.
The pots are pulled out again. Then some stay with the pots and tend to fires, while others walk out to the boats, take them to sea, and dredge out heavy nets. When they pull them in, they are flooded and flailing with fish. The children meet them at the dock and help bring in the haul. The cooks prepare the fish and cook them. Then they all come together again at the village center and eat. The rest is set aside for the next meal. The meal is a calm pause in the action, a collective deep breath.
And then they are back at it, doing drills and exercise until the sun touches the horizon. A final time the pots come out. They eat with weary satisfaction, filled with their day’s work.
Both times, a bowl is pushed into my hands. Lena sits with us, doing more explaining than eating.
Haven started with just a few people. People in a city much like Epoh, who saw what was coming before it happened. When their warnings were not heeded, they got out. They wandered for many years before they made it to the sea, and found there were other cities that survived too. Once the community stabilized, they looked for ways to tell others of the village. Helped them escape, too. The village grew.
But that was all many years ago, Lena says, and the old ways died off as leaders tightened their hold on their cities. Now they focus on the war to come. The Third Realm War. Their prophet says it’s coming soon.
Jordan asks question after question on each piece she gives us. But eventually I stop listening, my focus diffusing into a deep-seeded anxiety. I was all right when the humans were separate, doing their work. But now, all these humans surrounding me, open and free and crowding. They don’t know the danger they’ve put themselves in, letting me be here.
Any moment one of them will sense the box in my pocket, I know they will. Knots twitch in fraying threads through my neck and my arms and my legs, waiting for it to happen. They’re too close, too many. I can’t stay here.
But there’s a peace in these people. Something that seeps in under the fear and settles into my core. I hate to leave it, hate to leave Jordan.
When they are done, they bathe in the sea. As in the morning, the children scrub and rinse the dishes. Jordan goes with them, splashing and laughing with the others.
And then when it is dark and they make their way into their huts for the night, Jordan follows Lena and Avi to theirs to sleep. Two men in the hut next to them wave me in to roll out my blanket on their floor. There is hardly enough room for me to step into it, the doorway brushing against my shoulders as I bend down to fit through. When I lay down between their cots, we are almost shoulder-to-shoulder. One could rise at any moment forgetting I’m here. Roll over and fling an arm toward me. And that could be the end of it. I lay between them with every muscle tight and tense, my arms crossed over my chest, flinching every time they shift. Waiting for them to fall into sleep.
Once their breathing is slow and deep, I slide between them and out into the night. The relief of the air and the quiet is immediate. The hushed waves soothe my mind. I look up to the sky. It still hangs high in the dark sky, a thin sliver. Soon it will slip away completely and I can leave. Maybe tomorrow.
And then a slew of new dangers wait for me. Unknown ones.
I stand outside as long as I dare, let the stillness seep into me, until the moon is close to sinking over the horizon. Then I squeeze back into the hut quietly as I can, the layers of strain and burden piling back on.
I lie on my back and stare at the roof, waiting for Haven to wake up. My fingers trace the outline of the box over and over and over through my cloak until the quiet harmony of morning greetings wafts over the roofs as the village comes to life.
Past the village, cattails bob easily in the breeze. They roll out of their huts as softly as the waves roll onto the shore. I step out as soon as I hear them stirring. But now with the others all around the anxiety edges in again. My feet won’t take me over to the line for food where they stand in a drowsy line with their bowls. Instead, I head away, out to the bluff. Where it is safe.
I sit, and I watch.
Then Jordan comes out from Lena and Avi’s hut, stretching, his bright hair illuminated in the sun’s rays. Then he runs over to Avi and the other children in the town’s center and quickly, easily, laughing and running with them.
Already he is at ease among these people. It’s incredible, this gift he has.
Soon the morning meal is handed out. And soon after that, they are looking for me. Jordan sees me first. He runs up the bluff to me with a bowl. He holds it out to me, panting slightly.
“They wanted me to bring you this. They want you to come join them.”
I look down at the bowl, study the fish and grains. I’m shaking my head before I even look back at him. I want to be there for him, I do, but I can’t, I can’t do another day of the strain, another day risking all their lives. And he doesn’t need me. Not anymore, not here.
I push the bowl back toward him. “The box.” It’s all I can say.
Lena is trailing up the bluff behind him. Jordan nods, then turns around and sees her. He runs lightly down the bluff to her, stops her from climbing the rest of the way up.
“He needs more time,” he says. She glances back to me hesitantly, but they walk back to the village together.
I stay on the bluff all day.
The town continues its routine. From this distance, I am free to soak in as much of this peaceful place as I can, as much of Jordan as I can, wave by wave, savor every second. He’s so easy, so carefree, and open. He settles into Haven as if it was always his home. Even his bruises are almost completely faded, the last signs of Epoh disappearing. And me, and our journey here.
It’s better this way. I ignore the hollowness in my chest and accept what I knew all along—there is nothing for me here among the humans, not with Jordan. Not now, not while I’m like this. I focus instead on the unknown dangers ahead.
As twilight closes in, I soak in all I can with a last look to the village. Jordan has taken over its open center, teaching the other children his kick-the-pebble game. Their calls and laughter stretch through the cool air, free and open. No danger. No Silencers. No binds.
I look and look to the horizon, wait for the moon. Some distance up the shore, the waves splash against small clusters of dark rocks. In the middle of them, the rocks rise into a small cave.
Dark. Secluded. Safe. Like my room in the temple tower. My body aches, craves the solitude it offers. But I can’t, not now, with the humans watching.
The moon never shows. This is it, I have to go tonight.
Eventually the dark settles in and the adults call the children in from their game for bed. Jordan lingers in the village center, staring out toward me, waiting. But I can’t bring myself to go back down, take on the layers of fear and burden again, to say goodbye to him. Not again. Finally, Lena calls to him, and he goes in with a final look up to me.
And then I am left alone to face the dark and the great task it brings for me.
Night closed in too quickly. The sky is a moonless vacuum, hollow and empty.
It’s time.
Chapter 13
THE WAVES POUND against the rocks, impatient and queasy. Hours pass. I wait long enough
to be sure that all the village is deep in sleep. Finally, I must accept it is time to make my move.
I stand up and go back down the bluff, through the village all the way to where the sea touches the sand. My feet are heavier with each step as the dark water soaks into them. Even so, I stay in the waves all the way to the boats to hide my footprints. Anxiety edges into my vision and twists the darkness.
It is a short walk. Too short. The dock waddles and creaks as I trudge down it, all the way to the edge. The boats look smaller now, as I stand over them, than they did from the village. I lower myself into the very last one, bobbing against the dock’s wooden boards. It seeps low under my weight, but it holds afloat. Paddles lay on its floor by my feet. I lift them into place, running my hands over the handles, worn and smooth with use. I untie the boat from its post and break free from the dock, rocked by the sea’s uncertainty. Doubt tosses in my stomach.
I row.
The paddles push me forward with a soft splshh as they hit the water. Each splash mingles with anxiety and magnifies in my head. The waves feel rocky and uncertain below me, and the darker things in my mind that the shore kept away are coming back out. The impending immediacy of Kythiel’s charge surrounds me.
Splshh. Splshh.
It’s dark out here, a strange kind of dark that reflects back at itself from the water below, a dark that disorients, confuses, and makes the shadows seem more threatening. A tight ball of fear grows between my shoulder blades, gets bigger with each pull of the oars. The repetitive motion lulls me into an uneasy drifting quiet.
Splshh. Splshh.
But there’s no need for the fear. Is there? Kythiel made it sound simple. Easy. Swim over the barrier, get Rona, and come back. But Ceil’s face floats into my mind, creased with heavy lines of tense worry. The story he told me, the Parable of the Three Trees. The creature trapped on the outside, the one that was somehow me. I have to get in. And the way Ceil choked, coughed, and fell to the ground of his own tent, the strange way his eyes lit and his jaw contorted when Kythiel spoke through him.
A thought passes through my mind for a second time, unwelcome—Kythiel is hiding something from me.
Splshh. Splshh.
But what?
It doesn’t make sense. What could there possibly be to hide? He’s an angel. Bound to Theia’s Order. I shake these dark thoughts out of my head. It’s not true. It’s not possible. It doesn’t matter. What matters is my soul. My way out. I’d do anything for that.
Splshh. Splshh.
Splshh. Splshh.
How long have I paddled?
My body took over the repetitive motion while my mind drifted. Where am I?
My dazed eyes stare out into an unbroken horizon. I pull them back into focus. All around me, dark shadowed hush of waves, flecked with echoes of stars as far as the eye can stretch.
I’m nowhere.
My destination.
I pull in the paddles. Stand up. The boat creaks with worry beneath me. The endless dark overtakes me, attacks from all sides. And for the first time in all my bottomless past, I feel small. Impossibly, foolishly small.
What am I doing?
There is nothing below me but water and salt, sand and seaweed. The sea cannot pull me over the edge of the world, across realms, to the resting place of the souls. I’ve allowed a desperate creature to lure me in. Angels? Prophets? Gods? This all ended for this realm long ago when they abandoned us here.
I could still turn back. There’s nothing to keep me here. I could go back to the village, to Jordan, and forget all this. A trembling emptiness in my chest yearns to.
But.
The box.
I could never live among the humans as I am now. I already know how that ends. And soon the Hunters will come. Over and over into forever. They always do.
My soul. Without it, I am nothing. Ruled by something I cannot stop, pinned to this existence with no death, no escape. Golem.
The thought of it drops in my stomach like cold lead. I can’t stop here, not when I’ve come so far. Not with so much to gain, so little to lose. There is nothing I have not already tried thousands of times to be free of it. Kythiel’s promise is my only hope.
The time for questions is past. I step to the boat’s edge and leap toward the horizon before I can do any more thinking.
The water is thick and heavy, tugging me downward. It seeps between my particles, loosens the specs and grains of my body, makes my limbs heavy. My cloak mats to me, tangles my arms and legs. I fight to stay afloat, taking a moment to adjust to the new sensations.
Then, I swim.
I pull on and on, the boat shrinking behind me each time I look back. Finally, it disappears completely. The waves grow larger, tossing, pushing, and pulling. Dragging me under in dark foamy heaves. They are strong and sudden, and each time one forces me under my chest throbs like it will burst and I wonder if this is it, if it is pulling me through to the Underworld. But they keep coming.
I push against it as hard as I can, and harder still, the blunt edge of panic pressing into my mind. But the faster I swim, the stronger it pushes back, until I can’t tell if I’m moving forward at all. I thrash against it harder and harder, a rapid pulsing in my ears, but still I slide backward against the current’s pull. It tips steeper, steeper, steeper, until it seems I am swimming up a wall. The pull is too strong, too steep for me, the panic presses deep into me with a swelling dark vacuum, but I don’t dare slow, for fear I will fall away into the depths. The tilt slants more and more, until I am sure it will fold on itself and swallow me.
Then it lurches, the sea relieves itself in a swell and forces me over. I fall up, up, up, away from the sea and into the murky depths and my stomach drops out in the sudden free-fall.
Up becomes down. The current thrusts me into murky rushing waters. I am blind, I am deaf, I am lost to it, overwhelmed and helpless. An undertow catches me, shoves me along, rolls, and tosses me until I cannot tell which way it takes me, and I give myself to the churning waters. With a thud it rushes me into something hard, pins me against it.
I stay there, the water rushing around me, embracing the steady stillness. Then I spread out my arms to feel out my situation. One of my arms bursts beyond the water and finds a ridge. I grasp it and pull myself up, straining against the torrid current.
Chapter 14
AT THE SURFACE, the water is quiet and still.
My head sloshes with the pull of the water as I try to take in my surroundings.
I made it. I’m in the Underworld.
The realization rushes my mind with a dizzy lightness.
But there’s no time for anything more. Just in front of me, my hand clutches to pulpy splintering panels—a boat. A long iron staff points at my head, clutched by a hard, wiry figure towering over me. Under his cloak’s hood, the man’s face is screwed into a frown.
“What are you doing?” His voice is tense and prickly. “Get in.”
No point causing trouble if I can help it. I strain against the bottomless waters to do as he says. The boat gives way under the pressure of my weight. The man watches my struggle still and stern, keeping his staff’s rough point at me. The boat rocks as I roll in, sends me tumbling across its floor before settling. My mind teeters with it, a mix of relief and disbelief and confusion.
“Sit.” The man nudges me with his staff.
His body shows great wear, but his movements are strong and gruff. His face hangs from his skull, scrunched into a scowl that runs deep in its crevices.
A bench runs the length of the boat’s side, and a second figure is perched near the helm. The man’s staff and eyes follow me, his muscles tightly wound.
I sit. Slowly. Stretch my hands out to show I mean him no harm.
Salty water is sloshing out of me and pooling around my body on the boat’s floor. As it leaves me, I can feel my elements collect and tighte
n. And then, as I begin to dry, something new. Heavy. It’s the air—this realm clings like cooling wax.
The man leans in to me, staff still poised to strike.
“What are you?” he demands.
“I am nothing.” Golem. I cling my secret close to me on instinct and habit.
“Do not lie to me!” He lunges toward me violently, leans over, inches from my face. “What are you? What brings you here?”
My thoughts slosh through me with the pull of the river and I cannot come up with an answer.
He presses again. “I am the keeper of this realm and its gates. I know everything that is here, everything that passes into it. And you are not of it. Nothing enters the Underworld without going through me. Nothing. You reek of old magic. What have you brought here? What do you come for?”
The Keeper’s hot breath blows on my face with his words and I smell fear on him, a tense, tight waft all too familiar to me. He holds the staff steady, aimed at my head. If I want to pass through without conflict, I have to tell him something.
“I come from Terath.”
He leans away and stands upright, still charged.
“Of course you do. That’s where they all come from. But you are not one of them, you are not a soul. How did you get here?”
“I swam.”
The deep lines of his face shift, forming into new shapes. His brow crinkles, his mouth balks. “I have never heard of such a thing. It cannot be possible.”
“It was not easy.”
The angry edge in his voice slips away to confusion. “But you are drenched in the water of the River Lethe. No man could swim here and come out still remembering. The water makes you forget.” He gestures to the figure at the front of the boat with his staff, and my gaze follows his direction.
When I realize what I’m looking at, the hairs rise down the back of my neck. It’s a soul. A wispy beam, hardly even truly there. At first, its low glow is all I can see of it, but as I step closer, it takes shape, an echo of its form in life: A woman. Her body streaked with bloody gashes. Long red curls.