The Light and Fallen (2 page)

As he crept down the hall, the sounds became
louder. He still heard the occasional clattering and clinking, but
he could also hear the chatter of two distinct voices. One of the
voices was low, an unfamiliar rumble, but the other he recognized.
It was the voice that had been with him in the darkness.

The room at the end of the hall confirmed his
theory that he was in a house. It was obviously a living space.
Like everything else he had seen so far, it was very white. The
wood floors continued across the room and the open windows were
simply covered with gauzy fabric that fluttered in the breeze. He
slipped quietly past a pale slate fireplace set into the wall and
two deep, slipcovered couches and stepped into the kitchen.

"You're awake!" A tall, thin woman with long,
white blonde hair smiled at Lucian. She swept across the kitchen
without waiting for an answer and placed an enormous bowl of eggs
on a battered farm table that already held two pitchers of juice
and a tray of muffins.

"Hungry?" she asked.

She patted one of the wooden chairs around
the table and Lucian's stomach twisted and growled at the
invitation. He slipped into the seat and reached for one of the
muffins, but he hesitated when he felt heat radiating into his
palm.
"They're fresh," the low voice chuckled. Lucian looked up and saw a
heavily muscled, dark skinned man smiling at him. The man reached
out with one enormous hand and deposited a muffin onto Lucian's
plate.

"You have to eat down here," he said, "or
that body'll just stop. It's something you get used to." He dropped
into a chair beside Lucian and grabbed one for himself. "Sofia's
cooking makes it easy for me to remember, but some of the
first-crossers have a hard time."

Lucian nodded. He had been warned it could be
difficult to adjust to the human body's constant demands.

He broke off a chunk of muffin and rested it
on his tongue. He felt a burst of warmth when he closed his lips,
and then it fell apart in a burst of tangy sweetness. He chewed
slowly, then reached into his mind and tried to pull out an
appropriate description. "Delicious."

His voice cracked as his vocal cords pushed
out their first words, but the large man nodded approvingly. "It
gets easier," the man said. "It all does, but especially the
talking. You'll sound like a native by the end of the day."

He reached across the table and Lucian
automatically reached back. "See!" he said. "You've got the
instincts already." He shook Lucian's hand vigorously with his own.
"Guess I should introduce myself before we get too far along. I'm
Duncan."

"Sofia." The blonde woman reappeared carrying
a platter of sausages. She placed them on the table beside the eggs
and slid into the chair next to Duncan. She also reached across the
table in greeting, and when Lucian shook her hand he noticed how
fragile her fingers seemed compared with Duncan's. She squeezed his
hand lightly before she released it and stared seriously into his
eyes. "Do you know who we are?"

Lucian searched their faces and struggled to
find the memory associated with their names. There was a spark of
recognition, but it lingered just outside of his awareness. "I do
know," he said. "Why can't I remember?"

Sofia shrugged delicately. "It's hard to
cross between worlds. We could tell you, but if you find the
connections yourself things start to come back much faster."

She gestured for Lucian's plate and began
scooping eggs onto it. Even her smallest movements were graceful.
He watched her arm dip in and out of the bowl until the eggs formed
a small mound on the plate. She balanced a sausage on top, then
handed the plate back to him. "I know that looks like a lot, but
you need to eat it. The first few days require a lot of energy, but
your calorie needs will stabilize in a week or so."

Lucian watched Duncan and Sofia as they
served themselves breakfast. Their faces were unfamiliar of course,
if he had known them as part of the Host it would've been hundreds
of years ago, but he was sure there was an association with their
names. He stuffed a forkful of eggs into his mouth and willed his
mind to relax. They all ate quietly for a few minutes, and he knew
they were waiting for him to find the answer.

He studied them over his plate, watching how
they were together. Their movements were separate and distinct, but
they were constantly reacting to each other in subtle ways. He was
wondering if they breathed in tandem when a shred of memory flashed
into his brain. "You're partners!"

Duncan nodded. "Yeah. I think that's kinda
obvious."

Lucian gulped down his eggs and shook his
head. "No, you're different. You're
real
partners." He
hesitated as he searched for the right word. "Would the humans call
you soulmates?"

Sofia gave him a radiant smile and turned to
Duncan. "See, he's coming along. It's just taking a little longer
than usual."

It took Lucian a few seconds to register her
words. "What do you mean it's taking longer than usual? How long
have I been here?"

Duncan shot a sideways glance at Sofia and
there was a long pause before he spoke. "Thirty-two days," he said
finally. "We picked you up where you landed, and you've been
sleeping in our guest room ever since."

Lucian rubbed his forehead and tried to
remember. Thirty-two days was too long.
How long was it supposed
to take?

"It usually takes eighteen or so." Duncan
sighed heavily as he answered the unspoken question. " We were
starting to think you might never wake up."

He scraped the last few bites of his
breakfast into his mouth and stood up. "I've gotta run a few
errands and I'm going to get you registered for school." He grabbed
a brown manila envelope from the edge of the table and shoved it
towards Lucian. "You can study these while I'm gone."

Lucian felt shell shocked as he watched
Duncan lean down and kiss Sofia on the cheek, carry his plate over
to the sink, and leave the kitchen. "School?" he asked.

"Look in the envelope," Sofia suggested.
"They're your personal records."

He pushed his plate to the side and picked up
the envelope slowly. He fiddled with the flap for a few seconds
before he opened it up and spread the contents out on the table.
There was a small, creased social security card, a driver's license
that somehow had his picture on it, a stack of clipped papers, and
an official looking birth certificate.

He held the birth certificate up first and
brushed his fingers over its textured surface and raised type.
"Lucian Smith?"

"You have to have a last name," Sofia said.
"That's one of the most common ones. We try to blend in."

"What's your last name?"

"Miller, for now. We've changed it a few
times over the centuries. Duncan and I are your cousins," Sofia
continued, "If anybody asks."

Lucian looked back down at the birth
certificate. There were unfamiliar names listed as his mother and
father, and below that was a birthday. He snorted in disbelief as
he calculated his age. "Seventeen?"

"It looks that way. We were surprised too.
Everyone crosses into a young body, but you're the first crosser to
arrive underage. We thought you looked young when we found you, but
we weren't sure until the papers arrived."

"Maybe it's a mistake."

He knew the words weren't true before they
left his mouth. In his world, there were no mistakes. "I need to
focus on my mission. I have to figure out what they key is, what
I'm supposed to do. I'm not here to go to school!"

"Yes." Sofia's voice was flat with finality.
"You are. We all arrive just as we should be. You accepted a task,
and obviously this is one of its contingencies.

"Unfortunately, because it took you so long
to wake, there isn't much transition time. School starts tomorrow,
so today is our only chance to help you prepare." She tapped a
slender finger against the stack of papers. "You should probably
start memorizing your personal history."

Lucian's muscles were tight and exhausted
when he collapsed into bed and stretched comfortably into the
mattress. According to the digital clock flashing on the nightstand
it was early, not even nine o'clock. He knew the body,
his
body, needed rest, but he couldn't shake the feeling that it was
wasteful to spend hours sleeping. He had never spent large chunks
of time in inactivity, and he hoped the amount of sleep his body
required would lessen as he adapted. The sounds of music and
laughter drifted beneath the bedroom door, and he briefly wondered
how long Duncan and Sofia had to sleep.

Although his body longed to shut down, his
mind was still spinning. Duncan had returned home quickly and had
spent the day giving Lucian a crash course on what it meant to be
human, something he had broken in down into three categories:
consumption, interaction, and activity. They had spent most of the
day people watching: couples eating lunch, families in the park,
men at a shelter, stretchers coming into an ER. The people mostly
seemed like strangers, but they were connected with one another in
small ways, and their interactions with one another seemed to
propel them forward from one event to the next.

After hours of studying human behavior, they
had moved on to consumption. Duncan had taken him to an enormous
grocery superstore where he was introduced to common foods and
snacks, and then on to a mall where he had purchased enough clothes
to completely fill the empty dresser in his room. Duncan had also
purchased the wallet that now rested on top of his dresser, filled
with cash and two credit cards.

Activity had been last. He felt a twinge
beneath his shoulder blade and rubbed his hand across the back of
his shoulder, trailing his fingers over the smooth, unfamiliar skin
where his wings should be. His new body was undeniably limited; he
had been surprised to discover its strengths. He slid one hand
behind his head and rested the other on his abdomen as he
remembered how the air snapped against his skin when he ran. He was
strong. And fast. His supernatural abilities were suppressed, but
physically he was in perfect condition.

And most important, he could remember. Every
word the Guardians had spoken, every lesson from his training,
every nuance of language that had eluded him at breakfast had
flooded in during the last few hours. Although everything was new,
his body had begun to feel completely natural. Familiar.
"Instinct," Sofia had called it. He could also remember every
moment of his past, but without the Timeline to guide him, he was
blind.

Thirty-two days could've changed
everything.

His eyes closed heavily and his mind grew
fuzzy with sleep. He hadn't seen a key today, not the real one. The
one that he was destined to find
. What was it?
Images
flashed through his mind one after another, pictures of Heaven and
Earth. They merged together, jumbled into one another, until he
couldn't tell if he was awake or dreaming.

Samara groaned quietly and slid down in the
front seat of her car as she scanned the familiar faces trickling
across the parking lot toward the entrance of West Wimberley High
School. One of her mother's favorite quotes, "Every morning is a
fresh beginning, every day the world is new," popped into her head
and she snorted softly.
Whoever said that skipped high
school.

Even though it was only the first day of
school, she had lived in Wimberley her whole life so she knew
something about everyone that passed. A few girls scuttled past her
car without meeting her eye, and she slid farther down in the seat
until her forehead rested against the steering wheel. She knew
about them, but they knew about her too.
What do they think
about me now?
she wondered.
The girl whose dad died?

She shook her head and pressed it harder
against the steering wheel as soon as the thought flashed through
her mind.
Presumed dead
, she reminded herself.
Disappeared.

Her father, William Haye, was a geologist, an
area of expertise that wasn't in high demand in the small town of
Wimberley. He'd spent most of the past thirteen years teaching
intro level science classes and doing research with grad students
at the state college forty miles away. He hadn't seemed to have a
particularly fulfilling life, and she had wondered if he regretted
his decision to leave the East Coast and move back home.

A few years ago, when he was passed over for
tenure and had one scotch too many, he had confided to her that he
yearned to discover something great. Something truly unique.
Something that would demand attention. "Then," he'd said, "the
world will notice me." Then he'd be published in something besides
the Hays County Gazette.

He had been loved by his students and the
community, but unfortunately disappearing was the most outstanding
thing he'd ever done.

It happened on an advance trip to the South
Pole, the last one before his upcoming research expedition began.
Each summer Professor Haye took a group of students to some far
flung excavation site for the months of June and July, then spent
the remainder of the year analyzing the collected samples in his
lab at the University. This year her father had planned to take six
graduate students to Antarctica, to the southernmost tip of the
Pacific Ring of Fire. He'd been there several years before
collecting samples of soil and ice, but when he'd analyzed the
samples there had been unusual data, patterns that he couldn't
interpret.

The trip was a short one, just long enough
for her father to confirm the students' housing arrangements and to
inspect the equipment that had been shipped to the base camp. She'd
woken up early to sit in the kitchen with her father before his red
eye flight and pressed a thermos of coffee into his hand as he
walked out the door.