The Retribution of Mara Dyer (36 page)

Their banter is intimate in a way. I’m not jealous, exactly, but I feel like a stranger, watching them play together. Left out. Cue violins.

“Who knows, you could’ve been at it for hours,” Jamie continues. “I wasn’t going to wait.”

All right, enough. “Please refrain from being a tool,” I say. “What’s in them?”

“I dunno.” Jamie shrugs. “I was supposed to wait to read mine till you had yours. Now you have them.” Jamie rips his open with a dramatic flourish. Mara begins to open hers.

Daniel frowns. “I feel so left out.”

“Count your blessings,” Mara says to him, with unusual seriousness.

“You can have mine, if you like,” I offer. Mara looks at me queerly. “What? I don’t care what it says.”

Her eyes narrow. “Can I read it, then?”

I hand it over. She opens it carefully and begins to read, but stops almost immediately. I can’t tell if she’s afraid or angry or upset; her expression is flat. Blank.

Christ. She looks like me.

She holds the letter out. “It’s for you.”

“Yes, I’m aware. I’m trying, vainly it seems, to communicate that I don’t want it.”

“Take it,” she says softly. “Please.”

Bloody hell. I feel Daniel’s eyes bounce back and forth between us.

“I’m . . . going to go make something to eat,” he says, backing slowly out of the room. “Come down if you’re hungry?”

Jamie waves at him without looking up. Mara says yes.

I finally, reluctantly take the letter from her. I owe her at least that.

There’s another envelope inside it, addressed to no one. Sealed. I unfold the note and begin to read.

Noah,

Enclosed is a letter from your mother. I managed to find it before your father did. She left it in an old jewelry box she never used, along with her necklace, which you now wear. If you take it off, I will know of your decision.

A.L.

I want to be strong enough not to read it, but I’m not. Of course I’m not.

Noah, my son,

I’m practically crying already. Jesus.

Most parents, when asked why they want to have children, say that they want to raise a child to be happy. To be healthy. To be wanted. To be loved.

That is not why I had you. I want more for you than that.

I want you to topple dictatorships. To end world hunger. To save the whales. To make sure that your great-grandchildren will know what gorillas look like, not because they have
seen them behind a moat, playing with dog toys in a zoo, but because they have tracked them in the mountains of Uganda with sweat bees in their eyes and leeches in their socks. You will see children with bellies fat with worms instead of food. You will sit down to meals, only to find that endangered animals are on the menu. Happiness will elude you, and there
will be no rest—you will have to fight every day because there is so much injustice and horror to fight against.

But if you don’t fight, you will grow lazy and discontent under the guise of wanting peace. You will acquire money to acquire toys, but the biggest ones will never be big enough.
You will fill your mind with trash because the truth is too ugly to look at. And maybe, if you were another child, someone else’s child, maybe that would be all right. But you aren’t.
You are mine. You are strong enough and smart enough and you are destined for greatness. You can change the world. So I leave you with these words:

Do not find peace. Find passion. Find something you want to die for more than something you want to live for. If it is your children, then fight not just for your own but for orphans who have no one else. If it is for medicine, then do not just seek out a cure for cancer but search for a cure for AIDS as well. Fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. Speak for them. Scream for them. Live and die for them. Your life will not always be a happy one, but it will have meaning.

I love you. I believe in you. More than you will ever, ever know.

P.S. when you find someone to fight with, give her or him this.

69

I
WATCHED NOAH WALK OUT
of the room as he read his letters. I didn’t stop him. He deserved privacy. I owed him that.

I opened my letter instead. As I began to read, I pictured the professor in his office, my mind filling in details from memories that weren’t mine.

Mara,

When I first caught sight of you in Miami, I did not know who you were. I was expecting someone Gifted to walk
into the botanica that day, but you? You were quite a surprise.

You have been wondering who I am and what I want from you, but you should have been wondering who
you
are. I had hoped you would discover yourself on your
own; knowledge acquired on your own means that you are responsible for it, no one else. What you know determines what you do and I cannot afford to change you. It
has taken me centuries to learn it, but I have no power to change anything.

You do, though, and you have. Your will has cleansed the world of some people it is better off without, and others
who have harmed no one, not even you. I will not patronize you by absolving you of responsibility—we are responsible for everything we do and do not do. But I will say
that you belong to a legacy of others who have faced similar challenges.

Euhemerus wrote that the gods of ancient myths were simply people with greater abilities than most, deified by those around them. Then came Jung, and we, the Gifted,
became archetypes. Normal men became gods. Plain women, monsters. We are none of those things. We are simply people, blessed and cursed.

Our abilities could not be explained by science. But these
abilities weren’t without a cost. We harm ourselves. Ignore wisdom. Throw ourselves into danger. Attempt and commit suicide. We have no greater enemies than ourselves. For most of our history we did not know what was wrong with us, or right—why some of us manifested painfully, others without consequence, why some were ignorant of their origins while others relived moments we had never personally experienced. I have spent more than one lifetime trying to answer these questions and many others, and I am not sure whether my answers have done more harm than good. Without my work the boy you call Jude would never have been polluted. But the boy you love, Noah, would also never have been born.

I believe that every person has a responsibility to leave the world a better place than he found it. My particular Gift allows me to draft a vision for that better world—but my curse is that I lack the tools to build it. I have tried and failed to alter the course of history myself, and have learned that my Gift is useless on its own. And so I have found others to help me, your grandmother among them.

Noah was destined for greatness, until you were born. I had hoped that the manner of his birth would prevent the cycle from perpetuating—the eternal conflict between Hero
and Shadow, the curses attendant to Tricksters, Mothers, Wise Women and Men. I had hoped that with my knowledge,
I
could end our madness. You are never too old to be
susceptible to pride. The universe demands balance, and three months after Noah was conceived, you were conceived as well.

Noah’s Gift is that he could live forever and help others to as well, but his curse is that he only wants to die. You, Mara, are Gifted with the ability to protect those you love, but only in a way that hurts them and others. You can reward with life, but you must punish to do it.

It has been said that there must be a villain for every hero, a demon for every angel, a monster for every god. Despite what we are, I do not believe this. I have seen the villainous act heroic, and men called heroes act villainous. The ability to heal does not make one good any more than the ability to kill makes one evil. Kill the right people, and you become a hero. Heal the wrong ones, and you become a villain. It is our choices that define us, not our abilities.

Do you know why it is that, even today, women are counseled to scream “fire” instead of “rape”? Because the fundamental truth about humanity is that most people would rather look away.

Whatever your faults—and you have many, Mara, challenges no one else will ever face—you have never looked away. When evil smiles at you, you smile back.

The pendant your grandmother left you represents two symbols of justice—the feather and the sword. Those of us who choose to make a difference in the world have adopted it as a way to recognize one another. Your grandmother wore it. Noah’s mother wore it. Whatever you decide will not be the end for you but a new beginning. I encourage you to think carefully; you need not decide today. But do know that it is an irrevocable choice, and it can lead to a lonely life.

Whatever you choose, as time passes, you will grow in strength and conviction, and apart from you, Noah will as well. My hope for him, his mother’s hope for him, was that he would help create a better world. Without you, he can.

So even though I already know what your choice will be, I cannot help but implore you one last time. You will love Noah Shaw to ruins, unless you let him go. Whether it is fate or chance, coincidence or destiny, I have seen his death a thousand ways in a thousand dreams over a thousand nights, and the only one who can prevent it is you.

Should you choose to wear your grandmother’s pendant, I will know of your decision. But no matter what, we will see each other again.

A.L.

I looked up as soon as I’d finished reading. Jamie was staring at me.

“What did yours say?”

My hope for him, his mother’s hope for him, was that he would help create a better world. Without you, he can.

“Stuff,” I said slowly. “About me. Yours?”

“Me too. Stuff.” He paused. “Do you believe him?”

Without you, he can.

“I don’t know,” I lied. My mind was crowded with words
I hadn’t written, thoughts I didn’t think, memories I’d never experienced, and I couldn’t untangle them yet. “Do you?”

“I want to,” Jamie said. And then he bowed his head and clasped his necklace around his neck before I could say another word. He half-smiled and shrugged one shoulder. “The freaks shall inherit the earth.”

70

I
WAITED EXACTLY ONE HOUR
before hunting Noah down. I wanted to give him space, but I also wanted to tell him about what I’d read. What I remembered. I wanted to ask him what he thought we should do.

I knew what
I
thought I should do, but I needed to work up the nerve to do it.

I was not the girl I’d been when Noah had met me. I was not even the girl I’d been before Horizons. I’ve been remade by what happened to me, by the things I’ve done. I’ve become someone new; I feel something, I do it. I want something, I take it. Maybe I haven’t changed to Noah but I
have
changed. He’d seen pictures, heard words, detailing my crimes, but he
didn’t watch me commit them. Part of me was glad. There are some things the people you love should never see you do.

And I did love him. Whatever parts of me had been burned away by what I’d been through, what I’d done, that wasn’t one of them.

But Noah was like the Velveteen Rabbit. I would love his whiskers off, love him until he turned gray, until he lost shape. I would love him to death. And he would let me. Gladly.

I found him hiding out in a different guest bedroom. He had his duffel bag with him, the one Stella had rescued from Horizons after we left the morgue. He’d finished reading the letter from his mother, but he hadn’t come to find me. I wondered what she’d said to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

I stood in the doorway, unacknowledged. “Can I come in?” He was reading something, and he nodded over the edge of his book.

“What are you reading?” I asked, then sat on the bed. Whatever it was, he was almost done with it.

“
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
.”

My book. He must have taken it with him to Horizons. I hadn’t even noticed it in his bag.

“Did you like it?”

“No.”

“No?”

“The editor never tells you whether the protagonist is mad
or was pursued by the devil. He didn’t resolve anything.” Noah set the book down on the nightstand. I moved closer, until I could feel his heat.

We’d been exhausted the night before and had passed out without talking, and when I’d woken up this afternoon, Daniel and Jamie had been there with the Lukumi letters. We needed to talk about what had happened yesterday, last night, and what would happen tomorrow, but the words I needed to say to him wouldn’t come. All I wanted to think about was today. Tonight.

I was not sure I ever really believed that Noah was dead, but I wasn’t sure I really believed he was alive either. I still couldn’t quite adjust to the reality of him. There were shadows beneath his eyes, and his cheeks were rough with stubble. The fading afternoon light from the window behind the bed shone through his hair, turning the strands gold. I never wanted to stop looking at him. I wished I wouldn’t have to.

Maybe I don’t have to yet,
I thought. There was so much to say, but maybe I didn’t have to say it now. Noah was alive.
Here.
Neither of us was in mortal danger. We were sitting next to each other in a bed. I wanted to reach out to him, but my hands stayed knotted in the sheets.