Of Delicate Pieces (18 page)

The next story began, entitled:
Paradise
. Alex gasped, and Chase reached out to snatch the blue mist, to catch the breath of surprise before the storyteller saw it.

“My stories,” he began in a worn out voice, “they come to me in pieces, battered and torn, so sometimes they do not mend cleanly. One story may be comprised from ten different spirits over the course of a lifetime before finally fitting into place. This one took the longest to assemble because the pieces were so delicate.

“Some souls are larger than life, and their spirits are visible even while trapped in a body. Many of you sitting here were probably described in such a way. Spirited. Special. These are the people who become stories, the legends.

“Long ago, a man and his wife created three such spirits in three consecutive years. The children ran rampant through the town, aging their parents with their antics. Sneaky and wild but harmless in their fun.”

Alex smiled. Sneaky and wild but harmless. They sounded like her friends.

“Their parents were doctors and gone often, making the three Cinatri children dependent upon one another. Brigitta, the oldest, took care of her siblings and tended to the house. Broderick, the only brother, taught the girls to fight. Balin, the youngest, she taught them how to love. When illness plagued the town and claimed Broderick and Brigitta, they passed into the afterlife with ease. Balin felt lost without her brother and sister. She mourned them endlessly and ignored the power in her mind until one day her sadness turned to rage, and she inadvertently ignited the home. Her parents feared her ‘gift,’ but more so they feared her punishment. They lived in a time when such talents were called witchcraft and were punishable by death. Thus, they used the fire to script her death and kept her hidden in the cellar.”

Pity struck Alex’s heart. She remembered how she felt after the Lasalles died. She mourned and she cried, but more than anything she was furious, enough to even set a house on fire if her mind was gifted enough to do so. Instead, she took out her rage on herself, but like Balin’s parents, her father sent her away. Not under the ground in a cellar but close enough.

“On the day her spirited brother and sister came to her again, Balin was so used to darkness that she distrusted the light. Brigitta told her they were building a city for others like them. They called it Eidolon, a name that meant
phantom
but also
an
ideal
. It would be their ideal world. They said Balin could come along, but Balin couldn’t travel as they could, and she couldn’t leave the darkness to which she’d become accustomed.

“Brigitta Cinatri, unwilling to allow her baby sister to rot away for however long her mind would last, traveled to Salem, Massachusetts, where she’d heard rumors of similar ‘gifts.’ To avoid the perils and persecution of ‘witchcraft,’ she encouraged the gifted to migrate west where they could build a town under the ground. A paradise of safety would give Balin a life again. Safe in the darkness, it would create a life for her sister. And so it was. But Balin missed her siblings. One day, she battled her fears and ventured up into the light and traveled to the town her sister and brother had built. But she couldn’t get in. Her body prevented it. As did the town.”

Alex felt a strong sensation of déjà vu. She pictured someone trying to get through the gates of Eidolon, but her mind kept inserting Skye and Rae and the gray Forget-me tree with the peeling bark.

“Brigitta begged for them to let in their sister, but Broderick refused. He was the voice of his people. The town had unanimously opposed offering sanctuary to the bodied, and that included the gifted. The hidden town of gifted souls cried foul, tired of living under the ground, they claimed that they had been promised safety if so desired. They chose violence. Lives were lost with no resolution, and the Cinatris put up even more walls around our city. At the end of the pointless fighting the world was no different, but never the same. The gifted attacked spirits and the spirits imprisoned the gifted. Balin Cinatri retreated to the darkness of Paradise where she eventually died. They could have reunited after the Cinatris passed on from this afterworld. But that is a piece of the story I’ve never found.”

When he finished, his audience didn’t stir. If they were anything like Alex, they were hoping he might keep going or begin a new story. Instead, he stood, with the planets revolving around his head. When he left, the stars left traces behind like contrails after a plane. Similarly, his voice lingered and hummed in his wake.

Alex continued to think of the story as she and Chase explored the rest of the festival. Spirits tossed around bulbs of light like balloons. The golden flashes stretched to the sky only to plummet again to the crowd below, unable to reach the stars they resembled. When one of them landed in Chase’s arms, the light from the bulb illuminated his face and his icy blue eyes. He used two hands to push the bulb high into the outstretched arms of the spirits reaching over the rails of the balconies.

It never occurred to Alex that Brigitta Cinatri was a real person with real problems. She was someone who created a beautifully macabre world—in part for her sister—but failed in her ultimate goal. The story didn’t explain how Paradise became a prison.

Chase took a seat on the grassy hill, watching his brothers sprint down to the playing fields. “What are you thinking about?”

Alex watched him pat the ground and sat down next to him. The earth was cold, and she felt tired and sluggish. “Did you ever notice that the ground in Parrish was always warm?”

“No.”

“I never thought of that before.”

“You might notice it now because cold air sucks the life out of us.”

“Hm.” She sat for several minutes, plucking grass from the ground and tying it together into knots. “I don’t get how we’re supposed to be so much smarter than everyone else, but we can’t figure out a way to coexist.”

“Are you talking about that story? If you think about it, really think about it, it’s probably better this way. I mean, can you imagine what the physical world would do if they knew ghosts existed? Half of them would be frightened out of their minds. And the other half, the ones who would choose to acknowledge us, would figure out how much we know. Even the smartest of the bodied would suddenly be inferior. It would be like aliens taking over the world. People aren’t ready for us. They wouldn’t understand. They would hate us.”

“What about Moribund?”

“A town of a whopping fifty people is much easier to control.”

A blade of grass snapped as Alex tried to stretch it too far. “So you think it’s the right decision?” She plucked a dandelion from the ground and began to wrap the blades of grass around the strong stem. It needed something different to keep it from breaking. “Keeping the gifted away?”

“I guess I see the benefits of both. I can’t imagine being alive and knowing about all of this.”

That meant Ellington was right. People weren’t ready for things until they discovered it for themselves.

“People would go out of their minds.”

Out of their minds. The thought twisted itself around in her head until it formed a wonderful idea. Out of her mind. She could leave her mind.

Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

***

Banyan taught them that meditation was a manner of consciousness. In other words, Alex needed to let her brain leave reality but guide it in the right direction. After the festival, she pulled one of Rae’s drawings from the wall, a pathway under a canopy of trees. It was damp to the touch. Alex knew the dirt path well and recognized the smell of earth and childhood. It had been so often imprinted with the footprints of five children, Alex being one of them. They never feared this northern area of the Parrish woods so close to Liv’s grandmother. It was far away from the tormented cove and far away from the ghosts of the Eskers.

Rae had to be pulling scenes from Alex’s dreams. She’d drawn the scene on the beach where Alex and Chase walked hand in hand by the light of the moon and the bonfire, except in the picture, she’d inserted herself sitting among the dunes. She hugged her knees and lifted her chin to watch them through the beach grass. Since the sketches depicted Parrish, Alex hoped they would help her. She crisscrossed her legs and tried to relax her shoulders, concentrating on the drawing of the pathway so intensely that her vision blurred.

“Alex!” Chase’s voice sliced her concentration.

She put a hand over her heart. “You scared me.”

“Sorry,” Chase said. “I brought you Happy Death Day cake.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious.” He held out a box. “Josepha and Johanna are always eating it. They gave it to me.”

She hid the sketch behind her back. “You’re kidding, right?”

Chase chuckled. “I can’t image it tastes much more solid than Ex since we’re dead and all, but it’s the thought that counts.”

“Is this the stuff you breathe in?”

“I used to watch you devour your cupcakes every birthday. You’ve always inhaled chocolate, so what’s the difference?”

She reached out a hand to push his shoulder, but he caught that hand and didn’t let go. He used his free hand to trace the enjoyment forming on her lips, but when he reached around to touch her back, he grasped the sketch.

He yanked it from behind her. “What’s this? Is that Parrish?”

“I think so.”

With a dumbfounded expression, Chase sat. “Look. You can even see our tree.” The “treasure tree,” as they called it, was engraved with each of their initials. In the sketch, it was small because of the distance, but it was there.

“If you try, you can feel the edges of our names.”

“And why were you sitting with your nose in front of it when I walked in?”

“I’m trying to channel my inner Banyan Philo.”

“You’re meditating?”

She grimaced. “I’m trying. It’s not working very well.”

“Why?”

“I’ve never done it before.”

“No.” He laughed. “Why are you trying to meditate? And why are you using a drawing?”

“Because it’s Parrish. And I think there’s a lot we don’t know about our little hometown. About the Havilahs. The gifted. Sephi.”

He reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear. “You know, if I’d thought of that last year—meditating, I mean—I wouldn’t have gotten into so much trouble for trying to see you.”

“That’s not your fault. You hadn’t started any meditation workshops.”

“Still.”

She met his gaze. “You regret it?”

“Of course not. Some things are worth breaking rules for. Some things are worth crossing lines.”

For a fleeting moment, he stared at her, zeroing in on her mouth. Kiss me, she begged.

Not now. We have work to do.

Get out of my head! You weren’t supposed to hear that.

He turned his head and bent to kiss her. “There.” He removed a pillow from behind his back. “Do you want to lay down or sit up?”

“What?” She choked out the word.

“Weren’t you paying attention in class? You have to be comfortable to channel enough energy for something strenuous like this. In fact, you might want to take off that coat.” There was humor in his tone, and the corners of his mouth twitched.

She hurled a pillow at him. “Why are you talking that way?”

He fell back into the comforter, tucking a white throw pillow under his arm. His shirt rode up enough to expose his stomach. She began to wonder how he projected himself to be so tan, but she became distracted by the way his hips rose and fell.

“Come on, Alex. There’s so much tension right now that I’m surprised the glass in the windows hasn’t busted yet.”

He felt it, too? Embarrassing.

“This probably won’t work,” she said. “I wasn’t getting anywhere before.”

“Two heads are better than one. Banyan said it was like exercising; you have to do a little at a time to build up the stamina.”

“Are we talking about the same thing now?”

“Get your mind out of the gutter.” He smirked.

“You started it.”

“True.” He opened an arm to her. “We have to believe in what we’re doing to channel the energy.”

“Okay.” Alex stretched out next to him.

“Close your eyes and focus on one thing.”

Alex furrowed her brow and opened one eye. She stared at his profile, the perfect slant of his nose and the long length of his eyelashes. “How am I supposed to focus on an object when my eyes are closed?”

“We should both stare at the same tree in the sketch, and then close our eyes.”

“No. Focus on the path.”

“Whatever you say.”

Alex adjusted her position to get more comfortable and nodded. “Okay.”

“Ready. Set. Stare.”

She bit her lip, but after less than a minute, she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Al! This was your idea!”

“Okay, okay.”

She couldn’t free her mind of the thought of Chase so close to her though, breathing deeply. She peeked at him one last time before surrendering to the experiment. He was positioned like she was with his head back and his chin high in the air. Behind the curtain of her eyelids, the image of the pathway danced for a while, but it was replaced by Chase’s face, the outline of his lips.

She tried to blank him out, but his outline remained, like the shadow profiles they used to draw in elementary school. Something flashed and she wondered if one of the lights in her room had gone out. Or if her consciousness was altered. Maybe she’d fallen asleep.

“Really, Al?”

She heard Chase, but she couldn’t see him. Her vision wavered, like standing over the bay looking at a painting floating a few inches under the polluted water. Distorted. She could tell it was there, but she didn’t know what it was. She could tell
she
was there, but she didn’t know what or where she was.

“You didn’t focus,” she accused.

“Guess not.”

Alex tried to sigh, but it didn’t work. It caught in her throat like a forced apology. “This sucks.”

He chuckled.

“Can you see me?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, good. I’m not going blind.”

“No,” Chase said. “We’re just not very good at this.”