The Last Stand of Daronwy (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Mira sat against the wall, unusually alone, thumbing through a magazine before class. Other kids passed through the halls or sat in small clumps, girls peering at binders of stickers, boys rifling through Garbage Pail Kid cards. Jeremy squatted down across from Mira.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

It had all been so clear in his mind, but now he didn't know how to talk about anything. He had wanted to ask what she thought about Travis, but the words vanished. “Um… How are you?”

She shrugged. “I'm okay.”

“What do you think about… about Travis?”

She didn't respond. She blinked and looked down. Jeremy's mouth filled with cotton, and he extended his awkward hands as though she were made of porcelain.

“I'm sorry.”

Mira shook her head.

“What are you doing?” A deep voice thundered over his shoulder.

Jeremy half turned to see Josh towering over him.

“You made her cry!”

Jeremy scrambled to his feet, but Josh was still taller. “I didn't. We were just talking. I didn't make her—”

The right hook magically appeared, catching Jeremy on the jaw and spinning him around twice before he hit the wall and slid down it. Mira ran for the girls' bathroom. Josh hesitated a moment, looking from Jeremy to Mira. He hurried after Mira. The other kids turned to look at the commotion, but it was over as soon as it began.

Daniel rushed to him. “What was that about?”

“I don't know.”

“Are you hurt?”

Jeremy rubbed his jaw. It was sore, but there was no blood. “No, I don't think so.”

“You have to be careful. Josh and Mira are going together.”

“They are?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know that?”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Everyone's talking about it.”

Jeremy sighed. “I thought everyone was talking about TV and—ow!” Daniel's fingers clamped onto Jeremy's shoulder, tugging him to his feet.

“Get up, come on!”

Daniel hauled him through the crowd and into the bathroom. Once inside, Daniel ran to the window.

“Are you crazy? What are you doing?”

“Josh is coming back!”

“I didn't see him.”

“He looked totally angry and we don't want to get caught… Ugh.” Daniel stepped back from the window and then lunged at the rusted casement. He spoke through gritted teeth. “Help me… get this… window open.”

Jeremy added his hands to the ancient frosted window. The rusted rails would not budge, even with their combined strength. Footsteps came toward the door. The footfalls echoed flatly off the urine-colored tile. Both boys turned to face the door and their inescapable fate. The sinks extended behind the door just slightly. Everyone stepped into the bathroom and continued straight, no one ever turned left toward the sinks. The outer door squeaked open.

Jeremy grabbed a fist of Daniel's shirt and vaulted him across the small room. He pressed his friend into the wall on the left of the door and they crouched beneath the towel dispenser. They held their breath as the inner door opened. It wasn't Josh's tennis shoes and jeans that came through the door; it was a pair of expensive loafers and pressed slacks. Mr. Boudreaux, the principal, crossed to a stall, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him.

Jeremy and Daniel pulled the doors open, sacrificing the telltale squeak of the hinges for speed and toppled over each other into a deserted hall.

“We're late!” Jeremy hissed.

“Come on!” Daniel was already running toward Mrs. Livingston's room. She was writing on the board when they stole in through the open door. Since she sat them alphabetically, Daniel's desk was near the front, in the middle of the room. Jeremy's was toward the windows and the back. Halfway across the room, someone erupted into giggling at his overcautious sneaking.

“Jeremy Trahan! What are you doing?”

More giggling. His ears turned bright red. He glanced at Daniel, safely in his seat. “I was… uh… I was in the bathroom.”

The entire class erupted into laughter.

He stood there, crimson-faced, hands shaking. If he had his way, the school would be destroyed. Its tiles would be cracked, the rusted windows broken. He would read beneath a tree, and he would never have to set foot into a place like this again. He hated Mrs. Livingston, hated Josh, hated the cinderblock walls. He hated the laughing, the traffic light, the rules, and the oppressive boredom. A spit wad hit his neck like a clumsy, wet mosquito.

“Do you hear me?” Mrs. Livingston was saying.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“What was I saying?”

“I don't know.” More laughter. He swallowed the bile creeping up his throat. If he were Eaglewing, he'd leap through those windows, sprint toward the forest across the backfield, and disappear. Disappear forever. There had to be a way out, out of this polluted, corrupted, horrible world. There absolutely had to be.

“Get to your seat, Jeremy. Your name is going on the board.”

As he took his seat, his stomach sank deeper as she scratched out each letter in his name on the chalkboard. Another spit ball hit him in the neck, and he glanced toward the back of the room at a glowering Josh. Jeremy turned back to the front and imagined the cinderblock wall crumbling, the roof peeled back like a tin can and open to the sky. One day, he would find the way out. It had to be in Helter Skelter. He would leave this world, leave it and never come back.

The constant, invisible follower matched every soggy step Jeremy took into the shadow-shrouded depths of Helter Skelter. Jeremy set his face into a grim, determined line. Each hair that frightened into attention brought him closer. Each drop of clammy sweat that chilled his spine stirred the magic. This time, he was not running away. He marched into the fear. He marched into the tangled gray vines, hunting the secrets that pursued him in the shadows. A darker shadow loomed before him, as though the very forest lifted upwards. He angled toward the shadow, listening to the soft footfalls of his unseen pursuer. Even the pursuer seemed to hold back. Jeremy fought with the electric army of fireflies in his stomach that begged him to run. He made another step, settling his feet down, making no noise.

The forest rose into a house-sized, vine-covered hill, much bigger than Twin Hills. Fenders, tires, and rusted barrels corroded on the steep, shadowed slopes. Young tallow trees grew along the disheveled edge; the summit disappeared into the matted canopy. His ears buzzed. This was it! He grabbed the nearest tallow, careful to hold only its base, lest the tree fall. Then, pulling on it, he grabbed the next, then the next, climbing the slippery mud. What was up here? Where had the hill come from?

His foot slipped in the pine needle-covered muck. He fell flat and slid. His foot crashed into a fender with a bang that echoed through the forest. Nothing moved. Jeremy grabbed the nearest bush and pulled himself up. He could see the top now. Goose bumps pebbled his arms. His heart hammered in his ears. This was the moment. What would the doorway look like? Would it be black? Would it radiate? Would he be able to see through it, or would he have to cross through first? He wrapped a clutch of weeds around his hand and tugged himself onto the summit.

The top of the hill looked no different than its slope. Ancient cans, old bottles, another barrel, and a stray tire were scattered among the thick vines. It was just more trash; not a gateway to another world. Jeremy collapsed into a ball, wrapping his arms around his knees, and pressed his back into a young tallow tree. “What have I done wrong?”

The cold breath on the back of his neck vanished. The follower's presence disappeared. Jeremy fought to keep his mind clear, to think of nothing but what was before him—the canopy of Helter Skelter. He stared at the tangled mass of vines as they grew together, undulating like seaweed in Jacques Cousteau's shows.

Birds fell silent. The wood waited. He reached out, looking for some signal, some trace of a world where the air did not smell like processed petroleum. The trees were there, on the edge of his mind, both asleep and awake, forever talking, forever listening on the wind. He tuned his ears for some semblance of the electricity that such a doorway must channel through both worlds. The wind would know. Eyes half-closed, he watched the vines blur together in an infinite knot.

Chosen
.

He gasped, realizing he had forgotten to breathe. Where had that come from? He kept his breath shallow, his mind clear.

Chosen
.

A crystalline, fragile voice that sounded like it would shatter with the slightest breeze was carried on the wind. Yet it held a muted power, a resonance that reverberated in his skull. A green dragonfly hovered, then alit on his hand. Six tiny legs pricked his palm.

“Chosen for what?” he asked the dragonfly, the air, the wind. The dragonfly flexed its wings and compulsively washed its face using two front legs. No answer came. He tried forming the question as a thought, a thought as delicate as the dragonfly's wings and as tough as a banana spider web. Still, no answer. The dragonfly buzzed away. A grackle screeched.

His head ached. The shadows darkened. His jeans soaked up water from the ground, chafing his skin. He sighed. It was pointless. He slid to the bottom and walked around the base of the trash hill twice. The trail had disappeared. Perplexed and hopeful, Jeremy picked his way toward the fading light in the west. Had he crossed over? Was that what happened to the trail? Was he in some new world right now?

Jeremy kept an eye out for anything unusual. The only thing he noticed was the one thing he couldn't see—the follower was gone. The presence had disappeared, completely vanished. Could it mean something? Could he have crossed over?

Voices echoed ahead of him. Crouching low like one of his fellow shadows, Jeremy stalked the voices. He pushed a bush aside, certain that he would find a new world, a pristine place bursting with adventure. He peered into the clearing beyond. Sy whizzed past on a bicycle, laughing and taunting some other boy in close pursuit behind him.

Jeremy sighed. He crushed his way out of the thicket, breaking sticks and swatting branches. He stomped toward home, toward homework, toward school tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.
Chosen
, he thought.
Yeah, right
.

The scent of cornbread filled the kitchen. His mom barely turned. “Jeremy, you're just in time. Go take a shower before dinner. And put those clothes directly in the washing machine after you take them off.”

“Can I have a Coke, please?”

“Sure, there's a Sprite in the fridge that your sister didn't finish.” His mom dropped ground meat into the iron skillet, watching it sizzle. Jeremy poured himself the rest of the Sprite. “Did you have a good walk in the woods?”

He shrugged. “Eh, it was okay.” Jeremy threw the Sprite can in the plastic garbage can that she kept in the center of the kitchen while she cooked.

“Aren't you going to recycle that?”

He shook his head. “It doesn't matter.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

An oozing blackness covered Mayflure's features, eclipsing her face. Eaglewing's fingers raked at the stuff. With each desperate swipe he could see her, but after each swipe, the murk coalesced, subsuming all light, leaving him alone in an empty void. His aching hands clawed faster, shoulders burning with the effort. A lock of hair, a cheekbone, her face—all contorted in pain.
Mayflure!
The viscous blackness concealed her and began to pull him down. He tried to scream but the ooze filled his mouth. A heavy exhaustion saturated his bones. He should rest, rest and sink into the warm ooze.

“Eaglewing!”

A torturous light burned through the void, splitting his head apart. Eaglewing coughed and sputtered, trying to breathe. He looked for Mayflure, but all he could see was a blistering brilliance.

“Eaglewing!”

His spine arched backward as an electric spasm wrenched through his leg. He opened his eyes.

“Eaglewing!” Lightningbolt torqued his wounded ankle again.

“What… Augh! What are you doing? Stop that!” Eaglewing moaned.

“Eaglewing, wake up!” Lightningbolt's head dropped to his chest, sighing. When he raised it again, Eaglewing saw the dark circles beneath his brother's eyes, the haggard lines on his face, and the dirt covering his clothes and body.

Eaglewing massaged his aching foot. “By the Stones, I'm awake now. Where is Mayflure? She was just here.”

“She was?”

“Yeah.”

Lightningbolt swallowed. He looked at the rubble, sighed, and looked back at his brother. “You saw her? In your dream?”

Eaglewing nodded, raising himself on his elbows. Pain throbbed through his leg.

“You were being pulled into Kronshar's darkness,” Lightningbolt said. “I have been looking for you for two days. He found you first.”

“But he doesn't share a link with us—none of the High Wizards can do that unless we allow them.”

“Unless he has turned an adept to his side.”

Eaglewing dropped back to the ground, covered his face with his hands. “Tell me it's not like that.”

“What was she doing?”

“She was in pain.”

“She was resisting Kronshar taking over her mind.”

“By the Stones.” He remembered Mayflure flying across the writhing dragons, jamming her dagger into Kronshar's shoulder, the blinding flash of light, and her fall. “Lightningbolt, I was going to ask her… ”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“Can you heal my leg? It really hurts. Twisting my ankle didn't help.”

“I had to bring you back somehow. Here, lie back.” Lightningbolt crafted a spell.

Nails drove through Eaglewing's leg from his hip to his toes, pain ricocheting into his back and shoulders. “Augh!”

“Sorry, I'm really tired. It took a lot to get you back.”

“Next time, just kill me,” Eaglewing groaned, rolling onto his side and holding his leg.

“You can walk now. I'll have to finish the rest later. You really broke it good.”

Lightningbolt helped Eaglewing stand. Rubble extended in every direction. Gray smoke still billowed from the smoldering ruins of the inner keep. “There's nothing left.”

“No. Nothing anywhere.”

“Anywhere?”

“The reports are beginning to come in. Grandor, Skarnsk, Tillianfeld, Quartzite.”

“No.”

“Yeah. At least we took plenty of his army with us. The other cities weren't so lucky. They fell in less than an hour.”

“Skarnsk and Tillianfeld?”

“Gone.” Lightningbolt shook his head.

“What of the tower?”

“Which tower?”

“The Adept's Tower, in Tillianfeld.”

Eaglewing could read the memories from Lightningbolt's face without having to delve in his mind. It was in that tower that they began their training, there that they met for the first time. Twins born in years of war, separated at birth, reunited eleven years later in that marble tower with its high arched windows. It was there they were initiated as Master Adepts.

Lightningbolt swallowed. “Gone.”

Eaglewing looked down and found his sword half-buried in the rubble of a house. He pulled the blade free.

Lightningbolt gestured. “Come on. I have a horse.”

Eaglewing limped after his brother. Each step surged pain into his lower spine.

A knock on the door shook the rubble, making it disappear into the wooden paneling of Daniel's room as Mrs. McClain poked her head in the door. “Jeremy, that was your mom on the phone. She said you need to get home for church.”

Jeremy hung his head. Saturday Mass. Why did they ever invent Saturday Mass? “Yes, ma'am. Thanks.”

As he pedaled home, Jeremy wracked his brain for what Eaglewing and Lightningbolt's next step would be. The options were bleak. Halfway to his house, he glanced to his right and saw the last of the golden autumn light flutter across the trees of Twin Hills. Had that voice the other day been God's? Had God chosen him for something? But what? Maybe he hadn't listened hard enough. If he prayed tonight at church, maybe it would speak again and show him the way out.

The minute he knelt in the pew, his hands went up, fingers pointing to the sky like an antenna, and he started to pray. “God, what do you want me to do? How can I save Father Pat? How can I find the doorway to another world?” He repeated the simple prayer until it was a mantra, weaving an undulating rhythm in his mind. His mom nudged his shoulder to let him know that Mass had started and he needed to stand while Father Boylston and Father Pat walked up the aisle.

The Mass trundled along at its two-thousand-year-old pace, with the sonorous Father Boylston droning on and on. Each time Jeremy's knees hit the pew, he started praying his mantra again, waiting for something to happen, secretly hoping for some kind of sign. But there were no thunderous voices from the heavens, no doves appearing out of nowhere, no water transforming to wine. There weren't even cryptic voices in his head. It was just another Mass, just another sermon read to the congregation by Father Boylston.

Jeremy shuffled to the altar for Communion, following his parents. When he arrived, Father Pat glanced down and smiled at him. He should tell Father Pat; Father Pat would know what to do. But he couldn't talk in the Communion line. He was already taking too much time by standing there, indecisive. Father Boylston's eyes plunged into Jeremy's skin like icepicks. He took Communion, scooted to the right, made a quick sign of the cross, and tried not to run back to his seat.

He began praying until a fragile chord interrupted his fervent chant. A soft, open, woodland sound—a song of Lothlórien on an instrument that only elves could play—sang through the rafters. Could anyone else hear it? He glanced about. Everyone could hear it. They stared at Mr. Leblanc in the choir loft, playing a wooden instrument so plaintive, so soul-searching. It embodied the search for Christ, the search for a miracle and the beauty of finding it. The choir sang:

And He will raise you up on eagles' wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you to shine like the sun,

And hold you in the palm of His hand.

Jeremy opened the hymnal to gawk at the words. The song was called “On Eagles' Wings,” but before he could read any further, Mr. Leblanc played the flute again and a chill of recognition crept up his neck. This was the music of King Arthur's court in exile, waiting to come back to the world. This was the music of moonlight on a wooded glade, echoing across the centuries from a time when magic immersed the world in torrents of mystery and marvel.

The song ended, leaving an eerie silence in its place. The congregation was frozen, stone-still. Father Pat stood, holding up his hand to prevent the congregation from following him. He stood at the microphone a moment, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “And that, my dear people, is an Irish flute. I ne'er thought I'd hear one since leaving Erin. Let's give Bob a hand. Thank you.” Applause clattered across the congregation. Was this the sign? Jeremy dropped to his knees and prayed again for direction. No voice came. Mr. Leblanc put the flute into a box, shutting away the only music that could awaken the dormant magic Jeremy sought.

Mira's ringlets danced in the sunlight as she laughed at something Josh said. The other girls in the Pink Ladies club whispered around her, then they all laughed. The T-Bird boys pushed them on the merry-go-round, and every revolution seemed to take them a little farther from Earth.

“… attack Kronshar himself. Jeremy?”

“Yeah, I think so, too. What was Niritan's plan?”

“I just told you. To attack Kronshar's castle.”

Some of the girls were shrieking to slow down. They clutched the metal stiles like sailors on a capsizing ship. Not Mira. She smiled into the sky while the wind blew in her hair. One hand rested on the rail, the other was extended, palm up.

“There is no hope,” Jeremy said, finally turning his eyes to his friend.

“Yeah. That's what all the wizards and the council have been saying.”

Jeremy blinked at Daniel, cocking his head. “Right. No hope. So, um… how are we going to do it?”

“I think he's got to be starting to create an impenetrable defense around his palace, because if the demons know where the Stones are, they are going to try to breach the world boundary and take them. We have to strike before that happens.”

“Mmm.”

“So, Niritan should propose that we—”

“Hey!”

They both turned to see Josh marching across the cracked concrete of the old basketball court.

“Hey,” he said again. “I ain't forgotten you. I'm watching you. You better keep away from Mira, you understand me?”

Jeremy shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. His foot kicked at a crack in the concrete where long blades of grass grew. “Yeah.”

“I didn't hear you!”

“I said yes.”

“Yes what?”

Daniel snorted a laugh, earning him Josh's attempt at a withering gaze. He looked like a confused mastodon.

“Yes, I understand.”

“Okay.” He started back toward the clutch of Pink Ladies, turning to point at them both again. “I'm watching you.” The finger moved from one to the other. “Both of you.”

Daniel shook his head. “He should really get a life.”

Jeremy sunk down onto a set of red and blue tires buried together to make a small hill for the obstacle course.

“What's wrong? Why do you let him bother you?”

Jeremy stared up at Daniel, uncertain how to describe what he felt watching Mira smile so broadly around Josh. It felt like something in his chest had cracked open, leaving a hole. But more importantly, more urgently, it made him realize that he should leave. That he should escape. He would never be Josh, he would never stop pollution, he would never make a difference. So why should he remain here? He had to find a way out and find it soon. “Because I'm running out of time.”

“Time for what?”

“I don't know, exactly.”

Coach Penicillin's shrill whistle saved him from the further questions written across Daniel's face. They joined the other students trudging across the playground to form a line to go back to their classrooms. A crisp autumn wind rippled out of the north, breaking over the queue like sun-dappled water. Jeremy raised his head, inhaling its luscious, cool scent. Somewhere on that wind was the way out.

Resigned to having homework whether he worked in class or not, Jeremy spent the quiet math hour with
The Two Towers
snuggled inside the crease of his math book. He wanted to shout for joy when the Ents marched on Isengard. He glanced at the line of trees outside the window of the classroom. He imagined those trees coming to life, marching on the school and tearing it apart piece by piece. The sun was well into the west when he got home. Jeremy dropped his bags in the living room, crept out the unused front door, and sprinted across the street into Twin Hills.

He crossed his arms over his chest as he walked the shadowed trails in his school clothes without a gun or knife or stick. Every broken twig in the darkness compounded his defenselessness, but perhaps a portal would open if he wasn't ready for it. In books, people were never ready for it; one minute they were in one world, the next minute they were somewhere else. He rubbed his arms, then shoved his hands in his pockets. He'd forgotten to take a coat, and while the days were warm enough, the evenings were cold. He shuffled through the fallen leaves, head down. Why did he have to be the one to write the president? Why did he have to found the Pollution Club? Why was he so oddly “chosen?” And what, really, did that mean? Did he just make it up?

A black shadow snatched his foot, pitching him forward. Jeremy's hands snagged in his pockets, and he hit the dirt hard, landing on his elbows and face. A dark trench cut through the trail, from the pond to Swamp Creek. It was barely a foot wide and little more than six inches deep. Was this another of Loren and Roland's pranks?