The Shattering (31 page)

There had been something on his head — a weight — and a call to come and make himself glorious, burn himself up for the good of the world. The call was gone now, and he was sad. For once in his life, he could have been somebody. He could have been a warrior, a hero.

‘You got to get out of here,' Matthew said. ‘These guys, they're angry. They're not going to hold back for long.'

It didn't seem as if the misty shapes were holding back at all. Two of them were tearing at the Hepwood woman's face as she shrieked, and others were holding Mr Davidson against the wall, hitting him in the stomach. The Maukis brothers were fighting back, but their blows passed through the angry boys as if they were trying to hit fog, and the hits they were receiving were solid and real.

The smoke was becoming thicker.

Where there's smoke, there's fire
, Sione thought, and looked for it. One of the candles had fallen and set fire to a painting on the wall. The flames were licking up the wall and spreading.
Pretty colours. Blue flame.

Wait. Fire was bad.

‘Can you pick me up?' Sione said. They had touched the back of his head, these boys, welcoming him among them as the call to glory came.

Matthew tried, but his hands slipped right through him. ‘Not now. You didn't do anything to me. I can only touch to hurt them.' He looked around, frustrated and scared.

Matthew was never scared.

A new face appeared over his shoulder, and Matthew relaxed a little.

‘Up,' Takeshi said, his hands under Sione's armpits. He hauled. ‘Up, up, come.'

Sione tried, he really did, because it was important not to embarrass himself in front of Takeshi for reasons he couldn't remember right now. But he couldn't make his legs work.
God, please help me
, he prayed, and found enough strength to make it up to his knees.

He stayed there, swaying, sure that he couldn't possibly get any farther. But it was apparently enough.

‘Okay, all right, okay,' Takeshi said, all in a rush, and bent to stick his shoulder under Sione's stomach. He was shaking, Sione realised. Takeshi was frightened, and for a moment he felt superior, because
he
wasn't.

Only because they knocked your brains together
, he reminded himself.
Poor Little Felise, did you hear? Lost his mind, and that was the only thing he had going for him.

He was suddenly upside down over Takeshi's shoulder, head spinning like it was going to fall off. He tried to scream out the pain, but all that came out of his mouth was a thin stream of yellow bile, with red globs of congealing blood from his cut mouth. He'd probably wrecked Takeshi's jacket.

‘Hold on,' Matthew was saying in his ear. ‘Shit, Sione, you did so great, you can't stop now. You just keep holding on.'

Sione tangled his fingers in Takeshi's jacket to steady himself and nodded. ‘Okay. You come with me, okay?'

Sione lifted his head, and Aroha and Janna were behind them, faces tight with concentration. It seemed right that they were there, but hadn't he told Aroha to run? It was hard to remember. They were carrying Keri between them, her small, stocky body limp. Janna's feet were in red-and-white-striped pirate socks, and as he watched, the red seemed to brighten and spread. All that pretty broken glass. Why wasn't she in shoes? There was music; Janna should be playing music, bright as any flame.

‘Stardust,' he mumbled.

‘Help me!' someone screamed from the room they were leaving behind. A woman. ‘Mum! Mum! Help me!'

Janna flinched, but she kept going after Takeshi down the stairs,
bump, bump, bump
. The flickering from upstairs was getting brighter and the smoke darker. Takeshi was coughing, and the coughs were jiggling Sione around. He was going to be sick again soon, if he had anything left to be sick with.

There was a blond boy at the foot of the stairs, waiting as they passed. He smiled sadly at Janna, then nodded at Matthew.

‘Okay,' Matthew said. ‘We gotta go.'

‘No,' Sione said. The blond boy wasn't speaking, though Janna had stopped to stare at him before Aroha yelled her on. Maybe Matthew was the only one who could talk. Or maybe you could only hear what your own brother said.

Takeshi kept walking, breath grunting out of him with every step, but Matthew stayed still, waiting by Schuyler at the foot of the stairs.

‘Wait,' Sione said, reaching.

Matthew ran a ghostly hand through his hair. ‘I can't. The crown kept us here. And now I'm free.' He smiled lopsidedly at Sione. ‘Thanks to you.' He turned, and he and Schuyler went slowly up the stairs, into the storm of flames, where the screams were dying away.

Their bodies became fainter as they went, fading into the smoke.

‘Thanks for teaching me how to swim,' Sione said, but Matthew was gone, and he would never know if his brother had heard him.

There were more lights outside, flashing red-blue-red, and the screaming of sirens, and people shouting about water pressure and steady flow. Other people took him from Takeshi's shoulder and laid him down on something flat, soft er than the floor. He could feel the heat on one side of his face.

‘What's your name?' a woman asked, taking his wrist in her strong hand.

‘Sione Felise.'

‘What happened, Sione?'

‘I hit my head,' Sione explained. It was getting harder to talk, with the persistent ache in his mouth.

‘Yes, you did,' the woman murmured. She shone a thin beam of light into one eye, then the other, and then got him to open his mouth, which hurt a lot, and shone the torch down there, too. ‘Blown pupils, confused affect, probable concussion. Pulse steady, breathing laboured but no soot in throat, probable broken nose, fractured cheekbone, cracked molars —'

She wasn't talking to him, Sione realised gratefully, and drift ed away again. Somewhere, a deep voice was explaining that he'd seen the fire and heard screams and tried to help.

‘It's horrible,' the man said, his voice shaking. ‘Are the kids okay? Are they going to be all right?'

‘Horrible,' Sione echoed.

There was a woman sobbing at the edge of his hearing, moaning, ‘Emily, Emily,' over and over.

‘Sione, when's your birthday?'

‘February twentieth.' There was a rumble that was louder than the roar of the flames, and a flash in the sky brighter than their burning, and something wet hit his face. Then lots of little wet things hit him all over.

‘Hell,' said the ambulance officer. ‘Okay, Sione, off we go —'

‘I'm coming with him,' Aroha insisted.

‘It's raining,' Janna's voice said, sounding stunned. ‘Raining on New Year's Eve.'

‘It sure is. Just like the weather girl said. First time in years. Hop in, kids.'

Water kissed Sione's face. ‘Good,' he murmured. ‘Then it's done now. It's really done. Thank you, Jesus.' And before anyone could ask further questions, he let himself slide into the warm and welcoming dark.

Two people in white coats were pointing more lights into his eyes.

Janna and Takeshi were talking quietly, holding hands.

Sergeant Rafferty was staring at him, peaked hat twisting in his big hands, two fat tear tracks down his cheeks.

Mum and Dad were there, rosary beads clutched in their hands, smiles trembling in place, and there were cousins in the hall — he could hear them praying.

Keri was sitting by the bed, her arm in a new cast, staring intently at him. Janna was asleep in the chair in the corner.

He blinked.

‘Hi,' Keri said simply.

‘Hi,' Sione said, and was shocked by how rusty and dry he sounded. There was something sticking into his arm, and his face hurt, and . . . Memories flooded back, and he lay there for a while, trying to sort them. Keri waited, green eyes solemn.

‘Did anyone survive?' he whispered at last.

‘We did. Takeshi and Aroha are fine. And Rafferty got the cuffs off and dragged Mrs Rackard out. Everyone's calling him a hero.' Her face left no doubt as to how she felt about that. ‘The rest . .. there weren't even any bodies left. The fire department said it was all the paint and stuff in the gallery. The sprinkler system didn't work — there's going to be an investigation. Do you want a drink?'