Exile (The Oneness Cycle) (7 page)

Despite the steep grade of the road, Tyler picked up his pace. The lights were on in the cottage, and he could smell meat cooking. The smell was better than he would have expected from Chris, and he wondered if Diane had come over. He thought he glimpsed a female form passing in front of one of the windows, confirming the guess. It felt right that she should be there. He wasn’t quite sure about the propriety of Reese staying with him and Chris alone, but somehow he knew Chris wouldn’t want her to go stay with his mother. Troublingly, he was also fairly sure Diane wouldn’t be open to Reese anyway. He didn’t understand the dynamic between mother and son and guest. But, he realized, he cared about Reese, just like he cared about Chris and Diane.

He reached the front door and started to wipe his boots on the step, turning to say something to his travelling companion. Chris must have seen him coming, because the door opened before Tyler had been there a minute.

“Where’s Reese?” Chris asked.

Tyler turned, the words “Right here” on his lips.

The words died away.

She was gone.

* * *

It was the light that woke April. Light that came softly from behind her like the glow from a lamp. She opened her eyes and smiled sleepily as the mural spread out before her in vivid red on pale rock: the vine and its roses in colour that seemed to pulse with life, branching, arching, looping across the cave wall. Despite the darkness, she had hardly made a mistake.

Perhaps painting the cave wall wasn’t such a childish thing to do after all.

Whether because she was so tired or because her head truly was injured, it took April a few minutes to wonder where the light was coming from. As she traced the contours of her painting she slowly became aware of someone sitting next to her. This didn’t bother or frighten her at all—again, perhaps because she really did have a concussion. Maybe she was lapsing into a coma, she thought, and imagining the light.

Or maybe this was death.

She turned her head slightly, happy to find that for the first time since she’d awakened in the cave, movement didn’t set her whole skull throbbing.

A woman she had never seen before was sitting next to her, and the light was emanating not from a lamp or from the dawn outside, but from the woman herself. The light was warm like flames in a hearth. The woman’s eyes were fixed on the mural, and they sat together for some time, just taking it in.

“It’s really fine work,” the woman said eventually. “And important. You should keep at it, I think.”

It was morning.

April was alone, and the cave was getting lighter—light enough that she could make out the lines of the mural, though not in the living relief she had seen it in last night. Her headache was still gone. The cave smelled, but the presence of the painting still made her happier, stronger.

Had she dreamed the woman?

Well, she wasn’t dead … so the visit hadn’t been death. And unless she was dreaming now, she didn’t think she was in a coma.

Ignoring the slight cramping in her stomach—too bad that hadn’t gone with the headache—she got to her feet and headed for the wet mud in the back of the cave. “Keep at it,” the woman had said.

It seemed to April like a fine idea.

This time she stood for a few minutes in front of the wall, the mud ready in her hands, considering. An image arose: one of the last she’d seen before all this. Bicycle tires whirling, a boy riding as fast as he could straight down the cobblestone street toward the bay. And then another image: the nets and crowded spaces of the fishing shack. And another: Nick’s face. She hoped he was well, that the thugs had not had him in their sights in any way. She felt that he still needed her, and the frustration of being interrupted suddenly hit. So she began to sketch the images out in red paint, this time laying the mud down thickly and then scratching out a sketch with a thin bit of rock, using the light stone beneath to create the lines of the pictures. It would be a prayer, this painting. It was all that she could do here.

She became aware, as she worked, lost in concentration, that she wasn’t alone. She could see no one, but her spirit sensed what her eyes could not. It was no great surprise.

She was Oneness, and she was never alone.

* * *

Chris had gone pale when Tyler arrived by himself, and he rushed out into the gathering evening. Tyler, bewildered, had stumbled into the house to find that the visitor he had spotted was not Diane; it was a woman he didn’t know, small and weathered, with dark hair silvered in strands and a face that was still powerfully attractive. She introduced herself as Mary and then stood peering around Tyler out the front door, clearly concerned about Chris.

When Chris came back twenty minutes later, having searched the immediate area as thoroughly as possible in the gloom, Tyler explained, “She was right behind me—we spoke when we got to the town. I have no idea when she left.”

And Mary made both young men sit down and eat a dinner, which she had cooked, of ham and potatoes and cornbread. Tyler wolfed it down, starving despite himself; Chris ate as much as Tyler did but without apparently noticing it. Mary was remarkably unoffended by this.

“You are sure she
left?”
Mary asked Tyler once he had slowed down his eating somewhat. He was surprised at how much stronger eating made him feel. He hadn’t realized just how harrowing the day had been. “She didn’t get lost or …”

“She was right behind me,” Tyler said. “It’s a quiet night—I would have heard if something had happened to her. And we were practically at the base of the road when I talked to her last. She could see the cottage from where we were. She must have gone off alone on purpose.”

Chris made an inarticulate sound. Tyler didn’t bother to try to interpret it.

“One thing is certain,” Mary said, “it’s not an accident she came here. Two attacks in a row are not the work of renegades. Something big is happening.”

The story of the capsizing had come out in bits and pieces in between bites of dinner. Chris pushed his chair back from the table, the legs scraping across the kitchen floor. The room was so tiny that he shoved himself right up against the wall before he could even stretch his legs fully.

“So explain,” he said. “You must have some idea what’s happening.”

Mary shook her head, frustration evident in the lines of her face. “If I could have talked to her, I might have learned something. As it is, all we have is a lot of disconnected pieces, and I can’t make them fit. You said your mother has been dreaming … well so have I. Dark dreams, prophetic ones. But they don’t say anything clear. They’re just foreboding. We’ve had letters from other cells, warning us that something is wrong, that they too can feel an attack pending. But that’s all they say. We’ve all been sensing it. And now here we are: April’s gone, demons are attacking …”

Her voice trailed away. “I think Reese might be some kind of key. And now she’s gone too.”

“I think maybe she doesn’t want to be a key,” Tyler said.

The others looked at him.

“I mean, maybe she realized you were here waiting for her, and she didn’t want to meet you. I’ve never seen anyone so broken in my life. She thinks you people rejected her, and that rejection is … it’s like death to her. I can see it. So maybe she’s just scared to be around you.”

“None of it makes sense,” Mary mumbled.

She stood, pushing her own chair back into the wall. “At least we know she was here, and she went off on foot. I think it’s time Richard and I went looking for her. He won’t want to be pulled off searching for April, but maybe it doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

“I’ll help,” Chris said.

She gave him a long, searching look. “All right,” she said finally. “And I’m going to get on the phone and see if any of the other cells of our acquaintance know anything about this exile of yours.”

“The phone?” Tyler asked. “The Oneness uses the phone? I thought you were some kind of supernatural being.”

Mary smiled. “We are. But we’re not above a little old-fashioned sleuthing. Of course, if you really want to see more of the supernatural in action …”

“That’s okay,” Tyler said. The image of the thing that had capsized his boat and died at the end of Reese’s sword was still fresh in his mind. “I don’t mind old-fashioned.” His mouth twisted downward. “I’ll help too. I’m the one who lost her.”

“Hey,” Chris said. “I don’t think it’s your fault.”

“Sure it is,” Tyler said, his expression still grim. “I’ve been watching out for her all day. Don’t know what I was thinking, taking my eyes off her at the end.”

“You didn’t know she was planning to run,” Mary said.

He shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t know that either, until she did it. She’s grieving. People who are grieving might do anything.”

Chapter 6

Mary left the cottage with a heavy heart. The boys had decided to go back out and keep looking for Reese, searching the cliff paths with heavy-duty flashlights. She suspected they wouldn’t find the girl. Despite Tyler’s assertion that Reese’s running off might have been unpremeditated, Mary doubted it. Those who were heavily afflicted with grief might be given to making unpredictable decisions, but they were not usually full of the courage, strength, or initiative it would take to go into the wilderness surrounding the village, in the dark, and face an active enemy.

Besides, whatever Reese was, Mary was quite sure she wasn’t inexperienced. She had twice dispatched demons that struck at her without warning, and though Mary hadn’t seen the fights, she knew that Reese had been fighting from a place of weakness and that the attacks had been fierce. And yet both times, there had been no question of who would win.

As Mary made her slow way down the cliff road to the village, the stars out overhead and glistening over the bay, she made a mental list of cells to call. They weren’t directly connected to many anymore, but she should be able to find contacts for some of the larger ones. She planned to try the nearest cities first. Reese’s level of expertise pointed to her being part of an active cell in a battleground, and that almost certainly meant an urban cell, not a rural one. Surely the right cell couldn’t be that hard to find—the act of exiling would have rocked them to the core. Mary was surprised she hadn’t heard rumours of it or received letters sounding the alarm. For that matter, she was surprised she hadn’t felt the exile in her own soul. The Oneness was many, and some connections were much farther afield than others. Yet, something this drastic ought to affect everyone in a way that could be felt. The analogy she’d given Chris was not an exaggeration: an exile would be an amputation. Not like a death—deaths were not felt except by those who were closely connected to one another, because death did not break the Oneness. The body was one in heaven and on earth—and the distance between the two was not nearly so great as most people supposed.

She slowed around a bend in the road and prayed quietly, letting the Spirit in her speak. She felt the prayers humming in the air like vibrations on a string, creating music, creating a language not human and not bound by human limitations. She knew she was not alone in the prayers. The cloud—the family in heaven—prayed with her. Perhaps the angels did too.

Mary parked in the driveway and paused after stepping out of the car, letting her prayers swell higher and deeper. The moon was bright overhead.

When she stepped into the house, the vibration nearly knocked her off her feet.

Richard was home, and he had been praying.

To Mary’s eyes the very walls of the house seemed washed in gold, and they quivered as with life. Richard was kneeling in the centre of the living room. Mary knelt beside him, and she felt her spirit expanding, stretching beyond her to the others, One in heaven and One on earth, One in Spirit and in truth. She closed her eyes, and time passed; how much she did not know. She felt eyes on her, the many eyes of the angels.

Finally Richard sighed.

He stood. Mary opened her eyes slowly and saw his hand outstretched. She took it and he pulled her to her feet, her knees and ankles protesting that she was getting too old for this.

“No sign of April,” he said. “I looked everywhere. Knocked on nearly every door in town by one pretence or another. She’s gone, Mary.”

Gone, but not dead. As close as these three were—close like fingers on a hand—they would have felt her death. Yet Mary
did
feel something: a growing dread in the pit of her stomach. April was alive, and yet things were not well with her.

“April is not the only one we need to find,” Mary said, sitting on the couch. Richard raised an eyebrow and sat down across from her. A clock in the kitchen ticked—it was nearing midnight. They’d been praying for hours. No wonder she felt so stiff.

“What is it?” he asked.

Mary explained about Reese. He did not interrupt, but when she finished, he said, “Is it possible? An exile? It can’t be!”

“Even if it could,” Mary said, “she doesn’t act like an exile. The boys say she’s torn apart with grief—dying of it. And yet the sword comes to hand when she’s attacked, and she found the courage to go off alone tonight. They don’t understand why, but I think she may be doing it for them. To draw the demons off. That’s love, Richard. Whatever’s happening to this girl, it isn’t what it seems. I think if we find her, we might find the key to what’s happened to April.”

“One thing,” Richard said. “About April. I spent time—a lot of time—in prayer today. If I wasn’t knocking on doors, I was on my knees. And I think I saw some things in the spirit I haven’t seen before. April’s a lot …” he paused, trying to form the right words. “She’s more than we thought. We thought the Spirit sent her here because she needed to heal and live at peace after that hell of a childhood. She thought she was assigned here just to help some lonely folks out.”

“She’s good at it.”

“No doubt. But she’s
more
than that. Her paintings, for one thing. I kept seeing them in the Spirit. They were opening windows and building bridges, and really changing things. She’s been doing more, here, than we ever thought.”