When Copper Suns Fall (18 page)

“Come on, Chela. The airbus is a lousy idea
this time of night. Let me take you back,” he said.

“Making the Thoughtmasters think I’m trying
to escape from camp, well, that’s an even worse idea. I’ve been
assigned to an airbus. So I’m good.”

“At least let me ride with you part of the
way,” he said.

He wasn’t going to give up. A part of me
wanted his company even though I was angry. What was it with guys
in my life tonight? “Suit yourself.”

He followed me to the airbus, taking a seat
right across from mine. After the longest ride from the library
ever, I saw Minders loom into view as the bus rolled up to the
entrance gates. Border guards had their pads out checking off
passes as trainees filed back in before curfew.

As I stood, Faris grabbed my wrist, and said,
“Think on what I said about leaving this place.”

Something was going down, and he had the
answers. I held my angry ground, and I didn’t dare glance at his
face. I’d been influenced enough, tonight. “Sure, I will, when you
think about giving me some answers,” I said and left the
airbus.

Part Two:

The Balance and the Champion

It was first whispered among the Seraphim and
Cherubim, and then said aloud among the Angels and Archangels, that
he didn’t even look like an angel!

-Charles Tazewell,
The Littlest
Angel

Chapter Fourteen – Batts Grave

I was released from Minders so I could attend
the Eight Hills Gathering. Super relieved to be away from Seth, I
smiled when Cornice loomed into view on top of the hill, even
though I knew Father wasn’t there.

First thing I saw when I walked in the door
was Audrina and the lollipop girls sitting in the living room.
Tablets lay scattered as if they’d studied for hours. No chance.
Audrina only studied the shapely factor of a boy’s trousers. And
the lollipops? Their nickname spoke for itself. I caught snippets
of whispers: “There’s your sister…Beast girl…yada yada.”

Softening my steps, I tried to sneak by. A
creak echoed in the hallway. Stupid floor boards.

“Oh, lil’ sissy,” Audrina’s voice sang
out.

Squeezing my eyes shut to ground the
aggravation, I stopped where I glimpsed three girls: a blonde,
brunette, and black girl huddled around compureaders. “I can’t
believe they’re letting troublemakers attend Eight Hills this
year,” Audrina said behind me.

I turned to face her. “How good to see you
again too, most lovely sister. Oh, and don’t worry. I won’t steal
any of your tramp requests. Oops, I meant dance requests.”

“Remind me to kick my ankles the next time
I’m nice to you. I was simply trying to save you from the
humiliation of getting talked down into bad news history,” she
said.

“Why do I find myself not believing you?” I
said.

“Maybe because you haven’t found enough of
yourself, yet. Which means, you probably don’t believe in
anything.” She scoffed, and walked back to sit among her fans. She
had a point. I was outsmarted, outwitted, outnumbered, and didn’t
have the energy to battle another anti-Chela club member.

After dropping my bags off in my room, I took
a few moments to bond with Peanut. And then I bee-lined through the
foyer, into the kitchen, and headed out the back door toward the
cemetery gate.

The iron bars loomed mysteriously into the
air like the old oak trees around it. What secrets did they hold?
Micah and I had played outside these gates for years. Father got
angry with us anytime we wandered near them. After the twelfth
round of punishments, I lost count. Standing in the haze of
darkness creeping into the skyline, I held the mystery note,
recalled the whispers from Barracks Hallway, thought about Faris’s
suggestion for me to leave camp, my wings.

Who was I kidding?

These days I always thought about two things:
Micah and Faris.

“A kobold darkly lights the day. A kobold
darkly.” I studied the lock shaped like a monster’s head, recalling
the vision I had at my locker. “Hello there, Mr. Kobold. What
secrets will you give me today?”

A shuffle in the gravel caught my attention.
My seventh girlie sense knew who it was even before he said, “I’m
ready to offer those answers.”

I turned to face Faris looking humbled. His
hair flowed around his shoulders. Although his eyes were the first
thing you noticed about him, they were almost always sad. An eager
part of me wanted to know why. My silly stomach flopped. I couldn’t
help smiling a bit. So much for holding angry ground.

“Hm. Two people, same location, one lives
here, the other uninvited. Sounds like a stalker situation to me,”
I said.

“I could be stalking the
Girl-Who-Faced-the-Beast,” he said in that sarcastic, but smooth
way that set off the giddy-girl bells in my head and chest. The
grin of victory crept onto my lips. He’d actually given in to me.
He shuffled his feet, lowered his head. The braid laced with silver
ribbon flipped into his face.

“Okay, so by the statement ‘I’m ready’ I
assume you mean to fess up about what’s going on?”

He shrugged. “I don’t have all your
answers.”

“Then, I’ll go easy. Start with one answer.”
I pointed at the lock. “How do we get in, and what’s on the other
side?”

“That was two questions,” he said.

“I know you can answer both of them.”

“You’re psychic now, I see. “ He moved closer
to the gate, studying it with a blank face.

“No. But I have a good memory. And right now,
I recall someone healed me by whispering strange words in my ear.
That same someone told me not to remember a thing about his illegal
actions.” I wanted to add: “And he pledged his life to me in that
same dream.”

He studied me a moment. “You mean the Shack?
So, you remember?”

“At first, I didn’t. Bits and pieces of
things started to come back to me when, I was sick in the cave.
Some things are still unclear.”

“That was necessary. Given the circumstances,
I mean.” He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced around. A star
tattoo on his chest similar to one I’d seen somewhere else showed
through the opening in his shirt.

“Want to tell me how many other times you’ve
done that necessary thing to me?” I crossed my arms. “Unless you’re
a Thoughtmaster, doing things like that are illegal in case you
hadn’t heard of the Judges or the Barrows.”

“That was the only time.” His left eye
flinched. “The only necessary one, at least.”

“Caducean or Tainted? Which one are you?” I
said, holding my breath. Even though I was mad about what he did to
my memory, I was relieved to be around someone else like me.

He smirked. “You don’t know the answer?” He
stalked toward me, eyes narrowed. I held my ground, but my heart
quickened. “If you remember everything as you say, then why waste
time on useless details?”

“Right.” He was hiding something, but I could
be patient. I needed him to take me into the gate. If something in
there could help heal Micah then, I wasn’t going to mess that up by
irritating my source. It wasn’t too hard to figure out he took the
memory to protect both me and his identity. As supernatural
creatures, we were both in danger.

After a few moments, he backed away from me
and walked over to the gate. Walking along the edge, he scanned the
forest beyond. He frowned, inhaling deeply, and studied the lock.
“It’s a thrati.”

“Okay, um, I use those every day.”

He smirked. “It means someone powerful sealed
this gate. Probably for a good reason.” Part of me said he’d
explain it all soon enough. Another voice whispered I should fear
him.

“So, translation. We might be screwed if you
open it?”

“That’s one way to put it,” he said.

“What happens if we get in?”

“Do you normally interview people to death
when they visit?” Faris asked.

“Only when they hide things and tell me not
to remember them. I’m not asking about your sex partners, or
anything.” Did he blush? My cheeks heated to a scorch.

He sighed. “You’re taking a risk by unbinding
a thrati.”

“I’m willing to chance it. I feel like—I
don’t know. I think I’ll regret it if we don’t try.” I touched his
arm. “Please.”

A faraway look crossed his face. Shaking his
head, he pulled a pencil-sized stick from a pouch hanging on his
belt. I stared at it. “A schorl. Very useful as you’re about to
see.”

“You’re talking about something useful to the
Caduceans, aren’t you?” I said, unsurprised when he ignored my
question. He ran his hand over the monster’s wrinkled iron face as
if he were a doctor checking it for disease. “Can you at least say
‘yes’ if that’s a kobold head or ‘no’ if it isn’t?”

“They’re ship dwellers. Guardians of the
gateways into our world. Now may I concentrate, if you don’t
mind?”

A wave of excitement washed over me. He was
offering the first glimpse into his world, our world, a place
filled with secrets and myths and danger. What did a locked doorway
behind my house mean? It probably meant the Tribunal was hiding
many things. What didn’t they want us to know about Tom Cornice’s
house? And most of all, why had Father kept all this from me?

Faris muttered under his breath, whispering a
phrase that sounded like a cross between Latin and Hebrew. The same
language he had used inside the dream.

The same rolling syllables Seth had used on
me in the hallways that day after English class.

He flipped his schorl. My necklace vibrated a
bit. A few seconds later, he was holding a black key made of stone.
I didn’t even see it happen. I sucked and held my breath. He
grabbed my wrist, pulling me back toward the gate. “You wanted
answers. Here comes the full deal.” He shoved his key into the
creature’s mouth.

The kobold’s open mouth screeched and clamped
down on the lock. The dead eyes I’d played around so many years
during my childhood looked on Cornice for the first time when, the
creature’s narrow slits flipped open. A squeak wheezed through the
air, tuning in with water raging behind the forest ending at the
wall. The kobold’s mouth opened and released the lock. Weathered
iron creaked open, slow and hesitant. The water’s sulfur and mildew
scents strengthened. A strong gust blew from inside the gate,
whipped our hair around, pushed me back a bit. I cried out. Faris
pulled me through the gate. The winds increased to hurricane
strength, and I wondered whether my stubbornness was about to get
us killed. But Faris was inhumanly strong, and I trusted he
wouldn’t let me blow away.

Losing my fear in Faris’s embrace, I felt his
lips brush my ear when he said, “It’s almost over. Hold on.”

I closed my eyes and buried my face in his
chest. Aware of a spinning sensation, I placed my trust in his
warrior-like embrace. Had this happened to me the last time Micah
and me wandered into the gates? I couldn’t remember. My mind
reeled.

At once, the gusts eased into a breeze and
faded. All was silent.

“Open your eyes, Chela.”

I opened them and caught my breath. We stood
in what appeared to be the same forest, but it wasn’t exactly like
Cornice’s woods. A yellow-gray light shined through the trees
versus the darkening evening we’d left back on the side where
Cornice sat. Warm air instead of nippy breezes bathed my skin.
Water rumbled in the distance, and the rotten odor was gone. Faris
took a step back but kept his hands on my hips. I glanced back at
the gate. The creature’s head had vanished, and Cornice had
disappeared behind the trees.

“I guess you meant it when you said the full
deal.” I glanced around. “Is this another dream?”

“No, not this time.”

“The crowbots?” My heart leapt. I’d already
been punished enough. I was not looking forward to seeing what
happened to idiots who didn’t learn from third lessons.

“They can’t see us in here,” Faris said.

Walking away from me, he touched the leaves
and flowers and held out his arms to bask in the light. The trees,
wide as three men lying on their sides, rose endlessly into the
sky. What was up there over the invisible treetops? A sun? If so,
it was a strange sun, muted and giving off a coppery-gray tint.
Faris glanced at me. His normal broodiness was replaced by a
serene-eyed person who reminded me of a boy revisiting a childhood
home for the first time in years. I enjoyed this calm side he’d
chosen to show me.

“The borderlands,” he said. I frowned. “You
want to know where we are, right?”

“Sure I do. But first, I want to know what
happened to Sir Moody-A-Lot?”

He studied his hands and arms with a slight
frown. “We’re on the other side. The land between your world and
mine. It’s been years since I came through here.”

“Well it looks a lot like the woods behind my
house. Father told me there’s a cemetery back here somewhere, but I
don’t see any tombstones.”

“They’re here.” He walked along a line of
wide oak trees with thorny red vines growing around the trunks.
“They call this place Batts Grave.”

“Batts Grave? That can’t be right. Those
swamp lands sank over a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“Always ready to believe what your eyes can’t
see.”

“No. More like what they can read. As in
reading about the greenmakers who rode out and recorded these
things,” I said. He smirked and shook his head.

“Even after everything you see here, you
still want to believe in the Tribunal’s lies? Take a look
around.”

Hesitant to do as he said, I glanced around,
squeezing my left fist. Seeing the doorway behind my house, and
even Faris himself meant accepting new truths about the world I
thought I knew so well. I wasn’t prepared to face anything. Faris
bounded over to me, grabbed my hands, and pulled them apart. “I
know you’re scared.”