Wild Blue Yonder (The Ceruleans: Book 3) (2 page)

The next day, Jude found me waiting for him at the window. I’d
been woken by the light leaking through my eyelids, and in moments I was up,
out of bed, to take a first glimpse of my new home through the thin window
pane. At first, accustomed as they were to darkness, my eyes struggled to
adjust to looking outwards rather than inwards, and my initial impression was
simply a haze of green and blue. Then the scene came into focus: a long,
sloping, grassy hill peppered with ferns and disappearing at what I assumed was
a cliff edge; and beyond, a cobalt-blue sea blending into a glorious sky. I
stared silently at the sight, trying to work out how I felt. Confused, I had
finally decided by the time I heard the door open. I didn’t turn to look at Jude
as he moved around in the room; I waited for him to come to my side.

‘We’re on an island?’ I said when he was beside me.

‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘Good morning. How are you?’ Subtext:
Still moping?

‘Okay,’ I said. Subtext:
Trying not to.

‘I brought you breakfast.’ He spoke gently and tentatively,
as though I were a frightened animal that may attack or bolt at any time.

I turned to see a tray he’d laid on the bed. I was hungry, I
realised. Ravenous-beast-roaring-in-my-belly level hungry. Eleven – now twelve
days without food? I hurried over and sat by the tray. There was a plate of
pale oval biscuits, a bowl of sliced apple and a glass of milk. I took a gulp
of the milk. It tasted odd, creamier than usual, but I downed it all. Then I
took a biscuit. It was delicious warm and crumbly in the mouth, sweet with a
hint of vanilla.

Jude had taken one too, and he smiled at me while chewing.
‘Good?’ he said through his mouthful.

I nodded.

We ate quietly: he watching me closely; me silently freaking
out about what was to come.

Once we’d cleared the tray, Jude pointed to the table and said,
‘I brought you fresh clothes to change into. And a coat, hat, scarf and gloves
– it’s cold out.’

I looked down at myself. I was wearing a nightgown – white,
voluminous and old-fashioned. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? My
disassociation was disturbing. I tried to remember what I’d been wearing before,
at the cottage. Luke’s t-shirt, and underwear, and not much else, because I’d
been roused abruptly from my bed by smoke. Someone had changed my clothes since
I’d come here. The thought made me uncomfortable.

‘I’ll wait outside while you change,’ said Jude, and he
moved to the door. ‘Then we can explore.’

But I called out, ‘Wait!’ and he stopped and turned.

I didn’t say anything – I didn’t know how to express all the
feelings churning about inside – but he looked at me for a heartbeat, two, and
then closed the gap between us in a few long strides and put his arms around
me. I stood rigidly at first, but his hand stroking down my back brought warmth
to the ice inside, melting it, and then I let him hold me.

‘It’s okay. You’ve nothing to fear here. Let me show you,’
he whispered. ‘We’ll look at the island first, just me and you, and then, when
you’re ready, I’ll take you to meet the others.’

I nodded silently.

He pulled back and stooped down a little to look me in the
eye. ‘But please do just one thing for me.’

I waited.

‘You’re going to have many questions, I know. And you’ll get
your answers. But let me show you Cerulea first – look around with me with an
open mind. Then we’ll talk.’

‘Okay,’ I said. It wasn’t like I had much choice in the
matter.

When he closed the door behind him, I stripped off the
nightgown and surveyed the clothes he had left me – modern and my style, I was
relieved to see: simple underwear, blue jeans, black tee, chunky-knit cardigan,
thick socks, trainers and a vibrant green duffle coat with matching outerwear.

As I dressed, I wondered about Jude, waiting outside. I
wondered why, when he said there was nothing to fear, his body belied his
words: my ear pressed to his chest had heard his heart pounding.

*

Cerulea was idyllic. Jude had ushered me out of an exterior
door right by my room and led me down to a well-worn natural path meandering
along the circumference of the island. The more I saw, the more I was swept
away by the beauty of the place: rugged, verdant, fertile, with wide
shell-strewn beaches, tiny rocky coves, copses of evergreen trees, scatterings
of bare-branched birches and beeches, and expansive meadows dotted with goats
and sheep and cows.

It was like the land that time forgot – quiet, unspoilt,
untouched, as nature intended it. It reminded me of a place I had visited while
on holiday with my parents as a child: the Channel Island of Herm, just a mile
or so long by half a mile wide – population: sixty.

As we went Jude pointed out various markers: a bench, a
statue, a little stone-built amphitheatre, a homemade swing attached to a
blossom tree on which he’d played as a child. As he talked, his love for the
place was evident. This was home to him.

From every part of the island, my eye was drawn to the
brilliant blue ocean in which it nestled. I looked eagerly for some other land
mass nearby – another island; the mainland. From the northernmost cliff I
thought I saw a faint dark outline on the horizon, but when I asked Jude whether
it was land he reminded me I had promised not to ask questions yet.

Finally, after a couple of hours, during which we met no
other soul, I recognised a path intersecting ours ahead. We were back at the
start point.
Already?
I yelled inwardly, but I said nothing and let Jude
lead me back up the path to the ‘house’, as he called it, though that was
rather like calling the sprawling mansion in which I’d grown up a shed – the
building on the hill was immense. It was white and square with countless windows,
and designed in the Art Deco style. I found myself comparing it to a hotel I’d
once seen with Cara on Burgh Island near Plymouth. It turned out the connection
wasn’t far off the mark.

‘It was built to be a hotel,’ said Jude as we approached.
‘In the nineteen thirties. But the business failed – I guess because guests
found the island too remote – and so it closed. We bought the island and
renamed it Cerulea, and we’ve lived here since.’

This time, I had to bite my lip to keep from questioning
him. There was so much to ask.

Instead of leading me to the side door, Jude took me around
to the front of the building. With each step my heart beat a little faster at
the thought of the people I was to meet. I shot glances up at windows, but no
faces looked down on me – I saw only the sky’s reflection.

We climbed the steps and pushed through the big front doors.
As I stepped over the threshold a modicum of anxiety lifted – the first thing I
noticed was a vast plasma-screen television on a wall, and I thought,
Thank goodness
for that. They do know it’s the twenty-first century
.

What once had been the reception area of the hotel had been
transformed into a spacious lounge area, with clusters of colourful armchairs
and sofas and a profusion of large potted plants around the edges. A corridor
led away at each side, and a grand staircase with red carpet swept up on the
left.

‘The lounge,’ said Jude simply.

He led me across the room to the corridor leading east. The
next room was a snug, with another television and a large corner sofa, and
beyond that there was a library with wall-to-wall bookcases stuffed with titles
– old and new, I noted, having spotted an Austen, an Asimov and an Atkinson side
by side on the nearest shelf.

Jude was looking at me expectantly.

‘Um, great,’ I said.

He led me on – a gym, equipped with cardio machines and
plenty of those enormous inflatable balls for rolling about on, and then an
expansive playroom full of toys of every kind and, through the patio doors at
the back of the room, a fenced-off play area.

I itched to ask where the children were – and the grownups,
for that matter – but already Jude’s arm was around me, guiding me back up the
corridor, across the central lounge and into the west wing of the hotel.

The first room was a dining room, large and airy and
positioned to take advantage of the south-facing views over the terrace. Tables
were pushed together Hogwarts-style to create four long dining sections.

Opposite the dining room was an office with two desks and
filing cabinets, and then down the corridor, through double doors that no doubt
once featured ‘Staff Only’ signs, I was shown the laundry room, the pantry and
the kitchen, each of which was surprisingly homely in feel, without the
industrial style I’d expected.

Back in the central lounge, I headed towards the staircase,
expecting the tour to continue upstairs with the bedrooms and the place I’d
been staying – the Birth Place. But Jude put a light hand on my back and weaved
us through the chairs to the back wall of the lounge which, I belatedly
realised, wasn’t a wall at all, but a folding partition.

He stopped when we were standing before the first fold of
the partition, which acted as a door, and looked down on me. His eyes were sad,
worried – as well they might be: he could read the questions in my eyes.

But all he said, softly, was ‘Ready?’

And before I could say ‘For what?’ he swung the door open.

My first thought as I scanned the room beyond was:
Well,
that answers the ‘Where is everyone?’ question.

The room beyond the doors was a conservatory and it was full
of people, sitting on rattan chairs and standing three-deep at the edges of the
room. Each Cerulean was quiet, each was looking at me and each was beaming.

But it wasn’t the silent, smiley staring that made my brows
soar upwards. It was the fact that of the hundred or so people in the room, I
counted only three females.

What followed in that room would always remain something of
a blur to me.

There were introductions, I remember. Many. Handshakes with
the men, and hugs with the women – four of them, it turned out – and from each
Cerulean the same word: ‘Welcome.’ I was shown to a table on which lay a big
white cake with writing iced on in thick blue swirls,
Welcome home, Scarlett
,
and urged to make the first cut. Then a glass of orange juice was pressed into
my hand and, a little while later, a plateful of cake. People flocked around
me, and Jude stood back, a step behind me, to let them get at this new
curiosity.

‘Lovely to meet you, Scarlett,’ said a man.

‘We’ve been so looking forward to your arrival,’ said
another.

‘An honour.’

‘At last.’

‘Enchanté.’

‘Wonderful.’

‘Been a long time.’

‘Such green eyes, just like –’

‘Hey, Nathaniel. Where’s Evangeline?’ interrupted Jude, and
the man who was speaking – grey hair, bulbous nose, Santa-esque beard – smiled
widely.

‘In the Birth Place,’ he said.

‘It’s time? Already?’

‘It began with the sunrise…’

A quiet voice beside me drew my attention.

‘Hello, Scarlett.’

I turned to see a tall muddy-haired guy blinking down at me
through thick black-rimmed glasses.

‘I’m Michael,’ he said. ‘How are you doing? Wishing you
could be out on a board right now, free and flying?’

‘Something like that.’ I managed a smile.

‘Must be a bit daunting, all this,’ he said in a
conspiratorial whisper. ‘All part of the warm Cerulea welcome extended to a new
female.’

It seemed an odd comment – why specify the gender of the
newcomer? And something in the way he said the word ‘female’ unsettled me. I
was about to ask him what he meant when I felt Jude’s hand on my arm and he
announced loudly to the room, ‘Thank you, everyone.’

He looked at me expectantly, and I added, ‘Oh yes. Thank you
for… this.’

Apparently, this was our farewell, because he put an arm
around my shoulders and led me through the throngs. I smiled automatically at
each smiling face as I passed, although my cheeks ached with the effort.

Outside, in the hallway, he led me swiftly across the lounge
to the staircase, and up. I had the vague impression of seascape paintings on
the wall. A wide corridor leading along. A solid wooden door. A bedroom, large
and warm. But it took all my focus just to hold the bits of myself together as
I walked – for I could feel it coming, a great unravelling: unstoppable. I was
determined. I was on fire. I would get my answers, and then…

But when it came to it, when he sat me down on a wide sofa
before the window with a view down to the sea, when he settled down next to me
and wrapped his arms around himself in a defensive, miserable gesture I’d never
seen in him before, then I found myself frozen.

‘Scarlett?’

I stared at him.

‘It’s a lot to take in, I know.’

All I could think was how blind I’d been – had
chosen
to be. I’d come here with him willingly, and yet in all the months I’d known
him not once had I properly questioned him about this place. Where it was. What
it was like. What being a Cerulean meant. I’d buried myself in living, being
with Luke and Cara and Mum, leaving death, and what came after it, a mere
shadow to be held at bay. There had been some vague idea, of course. Another
realm: a world that was separate, removed, unimaginably different – magical,
even. Now, though, I saw how laughable my hazy imagining had been.

‘Ask me,’ he said gently.

‘I don’t know where to start.’

‘Start anywhere.’

‘I’m frightened.’

‘I know.’ From the way he said it, I thought perhaps he
wanted to add,
‘Me too.’

It was just what I needed: to know that we were the same in
that moment, Jude and I: both on the cusp of something big, something altering.

And so I opened my mouth, and I asked.

And he answered.

And I asked.

And he answered.

As conversations went, it was chaotic – no logical sequence,
no flow; repetitious, circling, confusing. It went on and on, our dance with
the past and the present, the lies and the truth, the expectations and the
reality, until the sky outside darkened and it was all I could do to keep from
flinging open the window and screaming into the wind.

Afterwards, when the room was still but for the occasional
sigh from Jude and the occasional sniff from me, and I sat staring out of the window
into the darkness, I sorted through the memories and pulled out those parts
that mattered. In my mind’s eye, I created a stage – empty and echoey; wooden boards
framed by red velvet curtains. Centre-stage I set two wooden chairs cast in the
stark light of a spotlight. I sat Jude on one and Scarlett on the other, and
handed each a script – the pages muddled, the ink blurred in places. Then I
settled down in the stalls and watched as they played through each montage, and
I sought the meaning in the madness.

*

Scarlett: Is this it? This little island?

Jude: This is all of Cerulea.

Scarlett: How can it be so small?

Jude: This is all we need. There aren’t many of us.

Scarlett: But there must be more than this, surely!

Jude: We assume there are others, beyond Devon and
Cornwall. But we don’t cross the border.

*

Scarlett: I feel my heart beating. Like I’m alive still.
Am I alive?

Jude: Yes. You live and breathe.

Scarlett: Like a human.

Jude: Yes.

Scarlett: But superhuman.

Jude: Hardly.

Scarlett: But the powers…

Jude: We can heal. That’s it.

Scarlett: And Travel in an instant.

Jude: Yes. I can do that.

Scarlett: Just you?

Jude: The men… the men do that.

*

Scarlett: This island – televisions, corner sofas,
washing machines. It’s like home.

Jude: What were you expecting, a castle on a cloud?

Scarlett: Kind of.

Jude: We’re pretty ordinary people here. We just happen
to have a gift.

Scarlett: So this island is real. Someone bought it, you
said. Where is it? Scotland?

Jude: Why would you think that?

Scarlett: That ‘Hame’ll Dae Me’ picture in my room.

Jude: That’s just a picture, Scarlett. I told you, we
don’t leave the boundaries of Devon and Cornwall.

Scarlett: What! We’re still there?

Jude: Off the Devonshire coast.

Scarlett: Where? Where exactly? Jude… I’m close? I’m
close to Twycombe? To home?

Jude: No, you
are
home.

*

Scarlett: All the people in that room – they live here?

Jude: The women do. The men come and go between the
mainland and here.

Scarlett: Where are the other women?

Jude: There are four others. They’re with Evangeline now.

Scarlett: Nine women in total, including me?

Jude: Yes.

Scarlett: Why are there so few?

Jude: Females are rare among us. That’s why everyone was
so welcoming. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.

*

Scarlett: I want to go home.

Jude: I know.

Scarlett: I miss Luke. And Cara. And my mum. Even Chester
– I miss that dog.

Jude: I know.

Scarlett: I miss the cottage. I miss the beach. I miss
surfing. I miss Luke!

Jude: I know.

Scarlett: Take me back, Jude. Please.

Jude: I’m sorry. I can’t.

*

Scarlett: If I’m to stay here, on this island, how am I
to use my gift?

Jude: You don’t need to.

Scarlett: But all the people I could help…

Jude: There are plenty of us to do that.

Scarlett: Why not me?

Jude: You’re… different.

*

Scarlett: You were born here?

Jude: Yes.

Scarlett: You grew up here?

Jude: Yes. Until the age of five, when I moved to the
mainland to begin training.

Scarlett: Training?

Jude: For the work we do. Healing.

Scarlett: Were all of those people downstairs born here
too?

Jude: No. Some were Claimed, as you were.

*

Scarlett: This island is tiny, and I’ve seen it all.
There’s nowhere for Sienna to be held. Where is she?

Jude: She’s with the Fallen.

Scarlett: Where are the Fallen?

Jude: They were cast out. They don’t come here now.

Scarlett: Where are they?

Jude: We don’t know, exactly…

Scarlett: You don’t know! You don’t know where my sister
is? But you said Sienna was here, in Cerulea! Captive!

Jude: No, I never –

Scarlett: That I had to die, to come here, to save her.

Jude: No, you had to die to become a Cerulean.

Scarlett: To save her! How will I save her? Jude? Jude!

Jude: You’ll need to speak with Evangeline about that.

*

Scarlett: What are Ceruleans?

Jude: People with a gift.

Scarlett: Where did we come from? Why are we like this?
Have we always existed? Who are the Fallen? What happened to make them ‘fall’?

Jude: That’s really for Evangeline to explain.

*

Scarlett: Why did you say you don’t know your mother?

Jude: I don’t.

Scarlett: But how can that be?

Jude: You’ll need to ask Evangeline that.

*

Scarlett: I don’t understand. You told me before I died
that there was no coming back from Cerulea. That I would never see Luke and
Cara and my mother again. But they’re there – just over the water! So close!
And you’ve admitted Sienna isn’t here. So to find her means leaving the island…

Jude: Well, yes.

Scarlett: So you lied! I’m not in some cloud realm
separate from the earth! I’m not held in by some invisible, insurmountable
wall! I’m on a plain old island off the coast of England, and I can leave any
time – go back to Luke!

Jude: No. You can never go back to Luke.

Scarlett: Why the hell not?

Jude: Because you have to let him go, let all of them go.

Scarlett: Why? That’s crap... Oh… Oh God – the key in the
lock.

Jude: For your own protection, so you didn’t wander off
without me.

Scarlett: You mean to keep me here. Imprison me.

Jude: No, don’t look at it that way.

Scarlett: Then let me go!

Jude: I can’t. We can’t.

Scarlett: Why not!

Jude: You’ll need to ask –

Scarlett: If you say that ONE MORE TIME! So take me to
this Evangeline then! Now! I want to hear it from this woman – all of it.

Jude: You can’t see her. Not now.

Scarlett: Because?

Jude: Because she’s… occupied. She may see you in the
morning.

Scarlett: She may, huh? That’s gracious of her.

Jude: Scarlett…

Scarlett: What makes her the bloody god of this place
anyway?

Jude: She is the Mother.

*

In the end, I decided, it boiled down to this: I was on an
island, agonisingly close to those I loved with the exception of my sister, for
whom I’d come here in the first place but who was trapped someplace else,
someplace unknown. And while apparently I was
not
captive here, I
was
,
because I couldn’t go home for some reason yet to be explained by the elusive
Evangeline.

Is it any wonder I ended up crying? And when Jude’s arms
came around me and pulled me in, is it any wonder I didn’t fight him – my only
friend in the world, my only connection to my old life? Still, when the sobs
turned to hiccups and I found myself breathing in his musky scent and relaxing
just a little, I pulled away abruptly.

‘I want to go back to my room now,’ I told him.

He nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘That I couldn’t
tell you all of this before.’

‘You haven’t told me all of it now,’ I pointed out.

‘I know. But Evangeline insisted that she be the one to –’

I held up a hand. ‘Enough. Please.’

He reached over and ran a thumb down my cheek, rubbing away
a tear. I stared into his eyes. In the dim light coming from the lamp beside
the sofa, they were almost black. He leaned forward a little and I stood
sharply.

‘Please take me back,’ I said.

He stood too. ‘I’ll take you to your room. You’ll have a
good sleep, and in the morning everything will seem brighter.’

Literally, yes. Figuratively, I had my doubts.