The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) (34 page)

“The horrors,” I say.

“The Paintbrush of the Gods,” says Rana, and I feel her ghost fingers flicking through my mind. “This is what you call it.”

There is a peal of laughter, and now a group of children appear in the courtyard, running out to its center.

They form a circle, their hands making a chain around the oldest girl. Her skin is nearly ebony, her eyes lavender. While the younger kids spin around her, she becomes still, palms out, and something blue begins to glow in each. A pale turquoise, similar to the vortex engine, and yet also like the siren.

The girl begins to rise from the grass. Her toes point downward as she leaves the ground, lifting to ten meters, where she does a somersault to the cheers of her friends. Then she arcs her body into a dive and swoops down over the others. They squeal and duck. The girl spins, but then falters and tumbles to the grass. The others laugh and run to her. She laughs, too.

“Once, we heard the Terra’s song, her whisper in every branch of our being,” says Rana. “We were in balance, Qi-An, and the Terra allowed us to know the more intricate harmonies of the universe, the deeper spiritual frequencies of her soul.”

“You could fly?” I asked. “Like, literally?”

“We could play with gravity and space same as you might play with wind and water. It was informal, it was spiritual, personal. Games in a courtyard . . .”

Rana’s tone darkened. “But the masters wanted more control. And with control come laws, and with laws come right and wrong, the concepts of
more
and
better
, and from there begins the journey to the horrors. Qi and An separate, fractured. Science and ambition split from magic and being. The masters went so far as to imprison the Terra in a crystal cage. But the Terra did not take kindly to this. And when they tried to use her full power to remake the earth, she revolted, and the horrors were unleashed.”

Rana reaches down and rubs her palm on the turtle’s head. The turtle and the jaguar gaze east, toward the sound of the sea.

“The turtle is the balance, the support, floating safely, so that the jaguar may leap. The jaguar will leap because the turtle cannot reach. Qi and An. The turtle is aware that it cannot leap. The jaguar is aware that it cannot float. This is balance. This is truth. Qi and An. One cannot be without the other. So you must be.”

Rana turns and walks away. I am about to follow her when something catches my eye. A shadow. I turn, and I feel certain that I saw something, a dark shape back among the columns where we came from. Seven? The siren? But I watch for a few more seconds and don’t see anything.

“This way.” Rana is leaving through an archway. I hurry to catch up and we walk down a tree-lined path to the base of a pyramid. Rana starts up the steps. She seems to float. I follow. Each step is almost a meter high, and we rise quickly over the trees, over the other buildings, up into the moonlight and stars.

We reach the top of the pyramid, a flat plateau. There are no lights. Beyond is the sea. It rolls in the nighttime breeze, thunders on the cliffs below this temple. Rana faces it, the damp breeze ruffling her hair. I stand beside her.

“In order to speak to the Terra,” she says, “you must sing your soul.”

Rana opens her mouth and an ethereal note emerges; and it sounds too pure, as if it’s not being made by her vocal cords, but instead by some energy inside. The note seems to engage with the breeze, to tangle with it and spiral off in all directions. It becomes everywhere. And there is a song to it, lilting and sad, and it nearly makes me cry, a feeling normally so foreign to me, as if it’s being unlocked from somewhere deep inside me.

Then a second note begins to hum in my ears, a different tone, higher, in perfect harmony with Rana’s.

And there is a light. Growing from a spark to a blue corona, somewhere below the horizon. The Terra is singing back.

Rana pauses. “In between the two notes you will hear her dialogue, and you will speak with her. It is not merely language. The Terra is
feeling
.” She begins to sing again. The Terra responds. The horizon glows with blue fire.

I wonder if I should tell her that I don’t hear any speaking right now. After all, I’m not the Medium—

Only you can free me
.

Wait, I do hear that. Was that the Terra? Speaking to me? How could that be?

Rana pauses. “Do you hear the voice? Do you feel how to sing your soul?”

I think to say no.

Only you, Owen
.

“Yes,” I say, because though I don’t understand why, I do hear the voice.

Rana smiles. My answer seems to satisfy her. She stops singing, and, as the horizon goes dark, she turns back to me and touches my sternum. “Good,” she says.

White begins to flutter on the borders of my vision. The program is ending.

But there is another sound, a scraping of feet, somewhere nearby. I try to turn my head. There is a figure in the shadows down the pyramid steps . . . but white is overwhelming everything.

“Are you sure there’s no one else here?” I ask.

Rana is fading. “There can only be us,” she says.

Only you
, says the Terra, and then I think that the voice is familiar, but I am still certain that something else lurks nearby, somewhere behind me . . .

Before I can turn, everything dissolves to white.

I FELT THE WORLD AGAINST MY SKIN AND OPENED my eyes. I was back in the skull chamber. My hands were still on the skull. I pulled them off, and noticed that everyone was looking at me.

“What just happened to you?” It was Seven. She was peering at me through the glow of the skull, like I was something alien.

“I, um, I was in there,” I said, shaking away the cobwebs of light. “I saw you. I guess because I have similar genes, the skull did its thing for me. You know, about Rana and the Terra and how you sing to it. You saw that, too, right?”

“Yeah.” Seven was still looking at me warily. “Of course I saw it, but . . . I don’t understand why you did. I thought you already found your skull.”

I shrugged. “I did.” But then I remembered the voice of the Terra. It said I was the only one. The same thing Paul had said a few days ago . . . What was that all about? It made me wonder if there was something different about me. Different even from Seven and Leech. Would that explain why I could see the siren when they couldn’t?

“What did you say about singing?” Victoria asked me.

“The Medium,” I said, then I looked at Seven. “You can tell them.”

“No, go for it.” She sounded kind of annoyed that I had heard the message, too.

“Well, that’s how she talks to the Terra,” I said to Victoria, “through this song. And the Terra sings back.”

“What do you sing?” Victoria asked. I could hear that pure curiosity in her voice. I remembered when Paul had gotten that tone, too. “Is it words?”

“Not really . . .” I looked to Seven.

She looked up into her brow, like she was searching for how to explain it. “It’s not really music like we think of it,” she said. “I feel like it’s just . . . in here, now. In my head. And I’ll know what to do when we get close.”

“Fascinating,” said Victoria. “We’ll bring the skull up. You’ll need it on the journey.” She motioned to two of the soldiers, who wrapped a sheet of foam around it and slipped it carefully into a padded bag. “Let’s see what Leech found.”

As we all started out, I looked around. “Where’s Lilly?”

“She took off while you two were in the skull,” said Victoria. “She was muttering to herself. Something about . . . well, I couldn’t begin to understand emotions at your age but I suspect you know.”

“Jealous,” said Seven seriously, wrapping her arm around mine. “Sorry.”

I found her half smiling but I didn’t return it. “Whatever,” I said, feeling exhausted from the time in the skull.

And yet I also felt revived. That connection had been electric. Energy coursed through me, like when I met Lük for the first time. “Do you feel that buzz?” I asked Seven.

“I do,” said Seven. “What’s it like for you?”

“Like humming,” I said. “Like we’re a note that’s sounding in some kind of amazing chord.”

Seven nodded, but didn’t add anything.

We returned to the navigation room. Leech was busy sketching, stopping frequently to shake out his hand and flex his fingers.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“I’ve got it,” he said. “At least . . . I think. I’m cross-referencing the star positions on this map with what we found in the sextant room. I’m close.”

“We have some fairly current satellite imagery back at Tactical,” said Victoria. “We can probably check your maps against those.”

Leech got up. “Sounds good.”

We stood there in the dark of the cave, and suddenly it became real what was going to happen next. “So then,” I said to Leech, “that means we’re ready to go.”

“The Three, to depart and defend the Heart,” said Victoria. “A momentous event for my people. And an even bigger undertaking for you.”

“Sure,” I said, feeling a ripple of nerves. Leaving Desenna meant going back out into the wilds. I never would have believed, just a few days ago, that this place would feel like safe haven.

As we headed back to the spiral staircase, we passed Lilly standing in front of the inscription on the wall. She didn’t move, just stood there humming, like she had been up at the lake. I thought to say something to her, but it just felt awkward, so I kept going.

“Hey,” I heard Leech say to her. “You coming?”

“Yeah,” said Lilly. “Just checking this out. It was better than watching the show back in there.”

“Yikes,” Seven said to me, “watch the claws.”

As we made our way out of the temple, I found myself feeling more annoyed with Lilly than ever. Was it my fault that the skull had spoken to me? It was part of my destiny, Seven’s, too, and I had to wonder: Could Lilly really understand what that was like, what any of this was like?

By the time we got out of EdenSouth and were on the jungle trail back to Desenna, it was midafternoon. Leech was walking up ahead with Arlo, pointing out various aspects of his sketches. Arlo seemed genuinely interested in the cartography. I could hear them talking about longitudes and latitudes. Lilly was near the front, between soldiers, and didn’t seem to be talking to anyone.

“You know those kids who got their throats slit?” Seven asked me.

“You mean our Atlanteans?”

“Yeah. Do you think we, maybe,
were
those people? I mean, long ago. And now we’re, like, reincarnated or something?”

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking. “In a way, yeah.”

“Maybe that’s why we feel a connection with each other.” I found her looking at me. “Why it’s so
easy
to be around you. Because we’ve known each other before. Because we died together, and now here we are again. Jeez, flyboy, do you think we might have been . . . you know . . . a thing, back then?”

“Ha,” I said, and felt myself burning up at the thought. Seven was right, though. Everything did feel easy with her.

As we passed back through the gate. Leech found me. “I’m gonna get my bandages changed, then probably work on the maps a bit. You?”

“He’s coming out to Chaac’s Cove with me later,” said Seven, eyeing me. “Aren’t you? Last free night before the big mission. You can’t say no again.”

“Right.” I glanced ahead at Lilly without even meaning to, maybe to see if she was looking or not. She wasn’t.

“You can invite Lilly,” said Seven, noticing, “but she’ll probably say no.”

“Probably,” I said.

“You in?” Seven said to Leech. “I have cute friends.”

Leech made his slopey grin. “They’re fitting me for an eye patch tonight. Do your friends like pirates?”

“I think they could get into that,” said Seven. She started backing up, gazing at me. “Say yes.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to head home for dinner now, though.”

“That will give me time to put on something sparkly. Eight o’clock, plaza fountain.”

“See you then,” I said.

Seven grinned. She looked genuinely happy. “It’s a date.”

AS I WALKED DOWN THE AVENUE TO THE APARTMENT, I realized that I’d been referring to Mom’s place as home all day. The thought bothered me but also didn’t.

Mom wasn’t there when I got in. She’d left me a note that she and Emiliano would be at the clinic until dinner.

I sat out on the back deck, watching the clouds, reading the breezes. I thought about leaving. It would feel good to fly again. I thought about that view inside Seven’s skull. That distant light on the horizon, the light of the Terra, and the sense of some end place that we had to go. It excited me to imagine heading toward that light. I had this sense that there would be something there, some big answer, to what I didn’t even know.

Mom and Emiliano came home and we ate and mainly talked about their Nomad years. At first, hearing about it made me grumpy, but I told myself to relax, to just be here in this now, that the moment was all that mattered. Qi-An. We had a good time, eating and laughing, and I decided I could worry about sorting out my feelings for Mom once we were gone. For the rest of the time here, I would just let it be good.