A Matter of Fate (45 page)

“Smashing,” Quincey says, sliding the sheet of gold in between us. “First, the logistics. Name? Age? Birthday? Craft? Current location?” He drills me, rapid-fire, question after question, yet doesn’t write down a single answer. Once done, he smiles so brightly that I’m blinded by his white teeth. “Put your left hand on the gold, please. And do not move until I tell you to.”

Karl nods encouragingly, so I lay my hand onto the sheet. Within seconds, it grows scalding hot. Just as I’m about to rip my hand away, Quincey barks, “I said no moving!”

Had he grown fangs, I would not have been more surprised. I keep my hand where it is.

The metal grows hotter and liquefies under my skin. I have to bite my lip from screaming out in pain, but just as I’m about to tell Quincey what he can do with his gold, it cools. “You may remove your hand now,” he says, smiling brightly once more. I rub my red palm, scowling; Quincey, on the other hand, admires the sheet of gold. There is a perfect imprint of my hand in it, every last line present.

I motion toward it with my wounded hand. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s that for?”

“Your file,” the Smith says. “We must be able to always accurately identify you, no matter your state. As long as you have your hand, we’ll be able to do that.”

“And if I don’t have my hand?”

He titters nervously. “Oh, well—in that case, we have your blood from the oath-binding ceremony.”

What’s this? EWW.

He runs his hands over the gold, smoothing out the edges as if they’re made of putty. “And . . . if I’m not mistaken, you’re Connected to Jonah Whitecomb, correct?”

“Uh . . . .” Is this common knowledge?

“Connected pairs are always able to identify their mates, even if the body is badly mangled,” Quincey continues, sounding like he’s describing his favorite kind of cotton candy. “So if need be, Whitecomb would be able to ID you, even if it was just a small piece left. If he was still alive, of course.”

I nearly choke on my tongue. Karl hauls me up out of the chair and says, “Keep working on those people skills, Quincey.”

“Always!” the Elf chirps. “I’m doing a hell of a lot better lately, aren’t I?”

“I can’t . . . I can’t believe . . . .” I gurgle as Karl tugs me down a hallway. “He just . . . is he . . . ?”

“Stupid?” Karl offers. “No. Actually, Buttercup is pretty smart. But he’s got no idea how to interact with people. He’s been down here working with the Medium for most of his life, making rare one-day-a-month trips to the surface.”

He definitely needs more time up there.

The Medium, the person in charge of helping Magicals go through Ascension, is an extremely old Gnome dressed entirely in white. He moves slowly with a cane, his bare feet covered with grass stains. “Well, well,” he says, his voice surprisingly youthful for a face so craggy with years, “if it isn’t the notorious Creator.”

“Uh . . . yes?” Karl has already left, not being allowed in the Medium’s office. Which is, in itself, a misnomer, because the room is huge, at least twice the size of the room Quincey rules, and more like a hotel lobby than any office I’ve ever seen before. It’s circular, with doors spaced roughly ten feet apart lining the walls. Each door is made of a different wood, each door handle a different metal. Some doors look new, some old. None are marked.

“You aren’t sure?” he asks, lifting a very hairy eyebrow up. The hairs are so long that they brush down and threaten to scrape his eyeballs.

“Yes,” I say more firmly. “I’m the Creator. My name is—”

“Frankly, child,” he interrupts, tapping the cane on the ground next to him, “I do not care what your name is. It is irrelevant.”

Oo-kay?

“You are aware of the risks?” he asks, leading us to sit down on the only two uncomfortable chairs in the entire room. There are plush couches and loveseats everywhere, yet he chooses two small, wooden stools.

“That come with Ascending early?”

“It is not normally recommended,” the Medium continues. “And the truth is I dislike having to clean up the mess afterward.”

Flashes of blood-splattered walls pockmarked with gray matter fill my mind. “I thought the whole head-exploding thing was metaphorical—”

“Sometimes,” he says, not smiling. “Sometimes not. Did anyone explain how a Creator’s chances are even higher of becoming unstable during the process?”

NO, NO THEY DIDN’T.

“I’d say they hover more around seventy percent of failure. Creators are tricky creatures; your sort have more power than the others. Many bodies don’t deal well with Ascension even at the appropriate time.”

Seventy percent?!
WHAT. THE. HELL?! I close my eyes and count to twenty. Slowly. Then I pinch the bridge of my nose. “If I choose not to Ascend today?”

“There is no more choice. Your handprint has already been collected.”

You can do this,
the little voice says.
Trust that the odds are in your favor.

I am an overthinker. Typically, when it comes to the big stuff, I think and think until I make myself sick. All those weeks fretting over what Jonah was thinking and feeling when he’d moved to town. All these past weeks worrying about how Kellan is dealing with things, if I’m failing my parents, of what expectations are on my shoulders, of what I’ll be doing in Council chambers, of what I’ll be asked to do. Of what it’d be like to run, of where I’d go and who I’d become. I’ve thought of all of these things. In great detail.

If I were to contemplate how small my chances are of surviving Ascension, I’d go mad. So I stand up and smack my hands together. “Tell me what I need to do.”

“Pick a door.” His cane swings around in an arc. “And then go through it.”

“Are all the rooms the same?”

He’s amused. “No.”

I close my eyes and turn my body round and round, like a kid at a birthday party, getting ready to hit a piñata. When I open my eyes, I walk directly to the door in front of me. It’s a pale wood—blonde, really—with a sapphire doorknob surrounded in platinum.

Behind me: “I wish you luck, Creator.”

Blinding light assails me, so much so that I stumble forward for a good few minutes before it begins to fade. Once it does, I halt in my tracks at what I see in front of me.

It’s the exact setting where I’d met Jonah for the very first time—a dappled riverbank, complete with the small, stone bench he’d once sat on. I’d perched in the tree above, watching him night after night. I know this spot. I know the tree hanging over the river. I know this bench like the back of my hand.

What I don’t know is why I’m here, or how the door I just entered, half a mile below Annar’s surface, could lead to someplace from my dreams. Or, perhaps most importantly, just what I’m supposed to do here. The Medium gave no specifics, let alone helpful hints.

I wander around, rediscovering places I’d believed long lost. Eventually, I shuck off my shoes and wade into the water. I bend down to run my fingers through the inky darkness. It doesn’t feel like water. It’s more . . . dense. Soft. When I pull my hand out, no droplets fall. It’s oddly warm, soothing, and far more sparkly than I remember.

I don’t know how to explain it, but I suddenly know what to do. I back out of the water and climb the tree hanging over the river. It’s the same tree Jonah first kissed me in. I take my time moving across the branch, smoothing my hands across the worn bark, remembering how beautiful and magical it’d been up here.

So it makes sense that this is the place I launch into my new life. It’s where I knew, for certain, I was in love. To move into my new life, I want these pieces, these reminders of who I am, what I have, and what I stand to gain.

I pull myself into a standing position, grabbing onto the branches above me. I creak and sway, but I have no fear. I will survive—not because of the expectations on my shoulders, or the ones from my family, but because I simply know I will. I will not be part of the seventy percent who fail.

I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and let myself fall forward.

Darkness is the first sensation—not uncomfortable or terrifying, but safe and enveloping. It pushes against me, seeps into every pore until I am heavy. Sated. And then, just when I feel as if existence is a pleasant, distant memory, the darkness evolves into sunlight—still warm, still comforting, yet exciting now. The darkness flattens, then twists into strands of yellow light, escaping through the same pores it’d once sought refuge in.

When there is nothing left, no darkness, no light, no nothing, and I’m floating high and weightless, something rushes into me. Something so sharp, I’m knocked breathless—not in pain, but surprise.

The unknown pulls toward my center, sucking every last molecule of air with it. And then it explodes until everything is glitter, all blues and silvers and golds, and it’s beautiful, amazing—like the birth and death of the universe all at once. I become a part of the iridescence, a free-floating consciousness no longer attached to anything tangible at all.

And then consciousness floats away, leaving nothing at all behind.

The room I’m standing in is nondescript. Plain off-white walls, scuffed hardwood floors, no windows, no door, one singular cot-like bed with a white sheet and a flat pillow. I do not know how long I’ve been here or how I even got here in the first place.

What I do know is that my body is thrumming with so much power that I can’t believe my skin hasn’t split open yet. It races through every vein, every pump of my heart, every firing of a synapse in my brain. I’m crackling with energy, so much so that I have no doubt that if I were to toss a single strand of hair at the bed in the corner of the room, I’d blow it up.

It’s then I realize this is the whole point of being in this room. I’ve got . . . well, who knows how long, to get myself under control. I can only hope that the room can keep me from destroying everything in the process. But a small victory is that my brain seems to still be functioning, that my thoughts are fairly coherent and rational.

I spend the next hours (days?) honing my craft. Building and destroying things I’ve never done before, just to see if I can—things I expect to be asked to Create in the coming years. Miniature planets. Miniature cities. Doorways leading to very specific places I don’t dare to tread through until I know my powers are stable. Complete books down to the last word, written by authors I love and authors I don’t even know. I move through subject after subject, building, tweaking, and then erasing, until I can barely see straight. And then, exhausted, I intuitively build more. I push myself to the point of nearly passing out, still Creating, knowing that there might come a point in time in which I’ll have to work under such conditions, and I want to make sure that I’m good with it all.

Every so often, a plate of food and a glass of water appear on the floor next to the cot. I know it’s not me making it—I may be able to make many things, but not those. I eat, but do not sleep. I push myself until the power in me no longer feels like it’s going to leak out. It’s still humming throughout me, but it’s beginning to assimilate rather than overtake.

And finally, when I cannot build another thing without my eyes drooping, a door appears on the wall opposite the cot. The Medium steps through. “Congratulations,” he says. “You have successfully Ascended. You may leave now.”

I struggle to stand up. “Just like that?”

“It’s been a week. I assumed you’d want to go home.”

Whoa. “I’ve been in here a week?”

“Creators always take longer than the rest,” he says. “Frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t take two.”

I feel like a rock star with no band, no fans, and no stage to play on. But so goes life for someone who’s beaten crappy odds, come out for the better on the other side, and lived to tell the tale to . . . well, almost no one, because I’m not even allowed to tell the stinkin’ tale. But still! Woot! Go, me!

The Cousins pummel me with questions, but much like Karl did when I quizzed him, I find it impossible to answer. Jonah simply tells me he can feel the difference in me—not that it’s bad or good, but that it’s simply now part of who Chloe Lilywhite is. And he accepts it, which is a comforting thing. “This is part of what’s awesome about Connections,” I tell him one afternoon as we stand at his locker. “Unconditional acceptance and love.”

He puts one of his books into the locker and slides out one of mine. I’ve been using his most of the time nowadays. Then he gives me one of his smiles, one that makes me feel all tingly and warm and uncomfortable about being in public because there are so many things I want to do to him—with him—that I can’t, thanks to all the people around us.

“Stop that,” I laugh.

He says, “What am I doing?” but he knows exactly what he’s up to.

I slide my fingers under his shirt between button holes. This is something I shouldn’t be doing, especially since there’s a pair of teachers across the hallway talking, but I like touching him and knowing that these small grazes against his bare skin have a huge effect on his control. “You know.”

I watch his control waver, how the heat in his eyes flares to the point that I’m thinking we ought to just ditch school to go have a marathon make-out session, and it makes me even more excited. Getting Jonah out of his comfort zone in public is always such a rush. He makes this tiny groaning sound and then kisses me—
really
kisses me—making the two teachers across the hall issue a series of disappointed sounds until we pull apart.

In my ear, Jonah laughs quietly, “They’re such hypocrites, considering they’re trying hard not to give into sex right now, too.”

The teachers continue to stare at us. The woman, a science teacher who’s normally straight-laced and boring, flushes bright red, like she knows we know what’s going on. And it’s weird, but rather than being embarrassed about being caught by the teachers, I’m okay with it. Because I know that when it comes to Jonah, I never have anything to be embarrassed about.

A couple months after my Ascension, Lizzie announces, “I love summer,” as we head toward our history class.