The Dark Light (22 page)

“Sol, you’re bleeding.”

He laid his sword beside his makeshift bed and shook out his blanket. “It’s nothing,” he said.

“You haven’t even looked.”

He glanced at Delane, who was watching us from the corner, then he turned to face me. “It’s really nothing,” Sol said, when he caught me still watching him.

I studied him closely as he sat. For the first time, he looked almost weary. His eyes appeared to have darkened; liquid black ringed the iris.

I drew up my knees, trying to hold on to the fire’s remaining warmth. As I moved, Sol reached a hand toward my face. Convinced he was about to randomly kiss me, my heart stopped.

“You have cobweb in your hair,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, half disappointed, and then, “OH!” when I remembered the stripe-backs.

“It’s just a little. Hold still.” He gently brushed the strands of web from my hair and then quickly pulled away, almost apologetic. “I think I got it. You really should rest now.”

But I lay awake long after the fire had faded to embers. Screams raged outside. The horses stirred in the kitchen. I couldn’t sleep, no more than on the night that Jay had disappeared. Through everything that had happened during the day, thoughts of Jay had never left me. I could almost hear his voice, like one of those strange echoes I’d heard in the Wastes. I’d thought no further than finding him and getting him home—whatever that entailed. But now I knew that Jay was a Brakalander, too. A castoff like me. An exile. And I was the one who was going to have to tell him.

Or maybe I wouldn’t tell him. I’d take him home and we’d continue as normal. We’d pretend that Brakaland and the great Bromasta Rheinhold didn’t exist. We’d simply be Mia and Jay Stone, who lived on the outskirts of town with their crazy uncle.

I stared at the ceiling beams. Maybe Jay’s room had been the one with the stripe-backs. I imagined him bounding downstairs in the morning, ready for a day of sword fights, demon slaughter, and lessons in magic. He’d probably love it.

“Can’t sleep?” asked Sol.

I turned onto my side to find him watching me. “I don’t
know why,” I said, quietly, careful not to wake Delane, whose deep breathing echoed across the room. “I feel like I’ve worked three shifts and run a marathon all in one day.”

“A marathon?”

“Twenty-six point two miles.”

Sol heaved himself onto his elbows. “We’ve come farther than that today,” he said.

“On horseback.”

“That’s true.”

However far we’d come, I was certain I’d never forget the things I’d seen in Brakaland. The image of that rabbit in the Wastes would forever be imprinted in my memory. I thought of Crownsville’s new subdivisions on the west side of town. All the land that way, which had been shared between Crownsville and Brakaland, would become the Wastes.

I didn’t know how to fix the problem, I didn’t even have a clue where to start, but there was one thing I was sure of: What was happening to Brakaland was wrong.

“Sol, if we’re squeezing you out, then isn’t the Suzerain right? Wouldn’t it be better if you fought back?”

He looked surprised by my question, or maybe he was just shocked that someone from the Other Side even cared. “There are some who believe so,” he said. “But imagine the Barrier coming down in Crownsville. What would happen?”

It was a good question. “The army would be out faster than you can say ‘domestic terrorist.’”

“So the sides are already drawn. What happens next?”

“I don’t know. First we’d faint,” I joked, “then I guess we’d talk.”

Sol shook his head. “Elias won’t talk. He’ll strike. What do you do?”

Don’t ask me why, but I bristled. “We hit him right back!”

“And?”

I sighed. “And Elias will hit again.” It all seemed like such a hopeless mess. “Sol, America gets blamed for everything that goes wrong on this planet, but you can’t blame us for this. We wouldn’t want war any more than you would.”

“But war would come,” said Sol. “With the Solenetta in Elias’s hand, the Equinox will spread, starting a chain reaction that can’t be stopped. Picture demons streaming onto the streets of towns and cities all across your world.”

I tried to picture it. Visage demons in Crownsville? In Omaha, Chicago, at the White House. “You’re saying we’d wipe each other out.”

He shrugged. “One day it would end,” he said. “After we’d destroyed enough of one another that there would be no point in fighting anymore. Now picture the world. The Barrier’s gone. What’s left of two different worlds would be thrust together.”

“It’d be chaos.”’

“Ripe ground for someone to take over.”

Finally it made sense. “Elias.”

“Mia, Elias doesn’t want to attack your world for the good of Brakaland,” said Sol. “Nothing he’s ever done has been for the good of Brakaland.”

“But you can’t sit here and wait to be squeezed into oblivion.”

“There is a plan,” he said, keenly. “The Treaty of Roi. It’s a proposal to form boundaries between your space and ours. We can’t reclaim what’s gone, but we could halt what’s in progress.”

A treaty, like in the books I’d read for Rifkin’s debate, “The clash of civilizations has no basis in reality.” How was I ever going to complete my assignment knowing all of this? Treaties. Agreements. They never worked. “Sol, no one even knows you’re here. Who’d believe you?”

“It would mean letting the Other Side see us,” Sol replied. “A host of emissaries would enter your world.” It didn’t look as if the prospect pleased him. “But it will take time. Until then, the priority is to keep the Barrier intact and stop Elias’s war, or there’ll be nothing left worth saving on either side of the Barrier.”

I flopped back, listening to the demons outside, trying to get straight all I was involved in. And then I thought of Jay and none of it seemed important. “Sol, we’ve still got a chance to catch the gang, right?”

“We should. I’d never planned going much farther than we
did tonight. The Orion road is faster terrain, but it swerves north before it veers toward Orion, and the gang won’t travel through the night on the Orion road. Not with the Solenetta.”

“Demons?” I asked.

“Thieves,” replied Sol. He looked to the window where black shadows danced beyond the purple light. “Mia . . .”

I waited for him to continue. “What is it?”

Though I’d thought Sol had been checking the demons, I noticed that he was actually looking at Delane.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He sighed and then straightened. “It’s nothing,” he said, as he turned back to me. “You should sleep. We’ll leave early in the morning. I’ll keep watch if it helps.”

I lay beneath my blanket for the longest time, trying to tune out the screams. Somewhere upstairs the stripe-backs crept through their web, and the corn doll lay on her shelf. But neither creepy beasts nor memories of a childhood I’d never known could distract me from Sol. He remained on his back, his eyes to the ceiling, alert.
I’ll keep watch if it helps,
he’d said. And it did. His unblinking gaze was the last thing I saw before I finally fell asleep.

W
hether it was because of sharing a house with the horses or sharing a room with two guys, a musty odor hung over the place when I awoke. I grabbed my blanket and crept to the window. In the dawn’s first light, the demons, and all trace that they’d been there, had gone. Only the purple lattice remained, though it had faded to lavender. Even the red mist had cleared.

Sol and Delane slept, so, taking care not to wake them, I tiptoed to the door, crept past the horses, and slipped outside. The crisp morning sparkled with dew. Pale sunbeams struck the mountains and glistened on the pond beside the paddock.
From across the valley, a faint pounding, like a distant drumbeat, could be heard. That was the only sound.

Glad to be in the fresh air, I sat on the porch’s bottom step, my blanket beneath me. A feather lay on the grass beside my feet, deep, yet bright blue, and almost a foot long. I picked it up, entranced by the green iridescence that shimmered where sunlight caught the tips of its soft vanes. It was a beautiful thing, vibrant and full of color. But then I thought about the bestiary outside last night and it immediately lost its appeal. I let it fall to the ground. There was really only one thing on my mind. Today we’d reach Orion and that meant finding Jay.

Yesterday, Orion had just been a word, a vague
somewhere
in a world I didn’t know. Today it felt tangible and real. Reaching Orion was about the Solenetta for the others, and if there was anything I could do to help stop that war, then I’d gladly lend a hand. But whatever magic lay in the Solenetta’s stones, it was still just a necklace and, I suppose, I didn’t truly believe that a piece of jewelry could cause so much trouble. Jay was flesh and blood. My little Spud.

“You’re awake early.”

I turned to find Sol on the porch, his hair tousled from sleep. The color had returned to his skin and he looked strong and refreshed. After how pale he’d been last night, it was a relief.

“There were drums,” I said, pointing toward the horizon. “Or something like that.”

“I heard them too.” He sat at my side, his long legs bent, his arms resting on his knees.

“Demons?” I asked.

“Maybe. But we don’t have to reenter the forest. We should be fine.”

We sat in silence, but this was different from the awkward pauses when he’d driven me to Mickey’s. I felt no pressure to speak. It was like a regular morning—as if we were the first up after a night camping at Jacob’s Lake.

“You were right about the mist,” I said eventually. “It’s cleared.”

“It’ll build again during the day,” said Sol. “It’s always the same in the valley.”

Almost as much as his stoicism, I was growing to hate the sadness in Sol’s voice whenever we talked of his home. I chased those fleeting moments when he opened up with a smile or laugh, and I’d see the humor and mischief inside. It seemed hard for him to let go and relax.

I knew Sol could get along fine without any help from me, but still, as I watched him on the step, I battled the urge to put an arm around him and say, in my own stupid way, that I got that life sucked here, that nowhere was perfect, and that one day
I hoped it would get better. Thinking that way had gotten me through the dark times in Crownsville.

Instead, I asked, “How far is it to Orion?”

“We should reach it by noon,” he replied. And there it was. That little flicker of fun in his eyes. “
If
Delane ever wakes up.”

I smiled. “It’s quite the bromance with you two.”

He frowned.
“Bromance?”

“You know, buddy love. Guys together through thick and thin.”

“We grew up together,” said Sol. “He’s more brother than friend.”

“Like me and Willie.” I laughed as I imagined her striding across the valley floor toward us. “She’d bust a gut if she could see me in this dress.”

“The dress suits you,” said Sol. “You look good in red.”

I took a double take at him, but he wasn’t making fun. What was it about me and guys who liked red? It was the only thing Sol had in common with Andy.

“You’ll see Willie again, Mia,” he said.

“I know.”

Sol was the only one here who knew where I came from, who knew about Crownsville High, and about my life on the Other Side. All I knew about his world were sentinels and visage demons.

“I don’t get how there can be mountains here,” I said, wanting
to know more about his world. “That people on the Other Side can’t see them.”

“Maybe the Other Side does see it,” he replied. “Like in the evenings, when the sun sinks beneath the clouds, and for just a moment, you catch something out there—a mountain, a river, a city in the sky.”

I watched him, unable to look away from his striking profile. He twisted toward me, almost stealing my breath with his smile. “I once heard that we’re the ghosts you sometimes see on the Other Side.”

He leaned in to me as he spoke, his shoulder nudging mine as if to draw me into his words. I stared at him. I mean, I was
staring
at him, my eyes vacant and glazed. I hesitated.

There’s a line between enjoying some eye candy and wanting to gorge on a whole bag. I’d not knowingly stepped over it, but no matter how many times I imagined a touch or a kiss, Sol and I could never be more than a dream. Anything else would bring a long descent into a world of hurt.

I snapped out of my daze, reminding myself that I actually had to speak. “So Duddon Malone is the poltergeist in your closet? Gives new meaning to the term ‘closet monster.’”

Sol threw back his head and laughed. “It certainly doesn’t sound like something you’d want to run into. It would scare me half to death.”

“You?”
I gasped, in mock horror. “I don’t believe that anything scares you.”

His gaze penetrated mine and his smile faded. “Some things scare me.”

I took a deep breath, his sudden intensity catching me off guard. “But still,” I continued, hastily. “In the Wastes we saw Onaly, but Onaly can’t see you. The Sleeper Hill Giant appears in both places, the mountains only here. How?”

“There are places that appear on both sides,” said Sol, back to his normal, businesslike self, “some only here, some only in your world. But don’t confuse that with what you saw in the Wastes. There’s nothing natural about the Wastes.” He shrugged. “I’m no expert. I never paid much attention in school. Barrier lore is tediously boring. I doubt if there are many left who truly understand it.”

“I think I get it. The Barrier isn’t a wall or a fence.”

“That’s right,” said Sol. He seemed impressed that I understood. “The Barrier isn’t a solid boundary you can touch. It doesn’t begin or end. It exists everywhere. It’s all around us. The gateway at the Ridge is one of many weaknesses.”

“Then this world is really another dimension.”

“But connected to your world,” said Sol. “All the worlds are connected. As I said, I’m no expert. Once Elias resurfaced, school didn’t seem so important. I just wanted to get out and fight.”

Though Sol had been at Crownsville High, I couldn’t picture
him in class, on either side of the Barrier. “So you have school here,” I said.