A Radiant Sky

13

It was an idea I’d been brewing for a while.

Earth was an astonishing child, a “special kid” as Aaron had said. There was something almost wise about her, a maturity that was surprising, out of proportion with the number of years she had lived. She had the remarkable ability to understand emotions much more complex than she should. Part of this could have been that she had experienced more in those seven years of life than anyone should have to. But I had another idea.

I had a feeling there was something magical about Earth. And that I was the one who’d be able to bring it out in her.

I slid the door to the deck open onto a clear, warm night. Earth slipped her hand into mine as she followed. We stood, facing the mountains. Fireflies blinked on and off in the space between us, illuminating Earth’s face in a soft yellow glow.

“Mountains make me feel so small,” she said.

“You are small.” I knelt down next to her. “Earth, I think you came into my life for a reason. Obviously, you’re the smartest kid I know”—at this, Earth grinned—“but you can do things, too. Special things. Things maybe you don’t get to do that often because it freaks out your dad—right?”

Instead of answering my question, she looked up.

“Do you think they can really touch the sky, or is it only an optical illusion?”

“I don’t think anything can really touch the sky.”

“You can,” she said simply.

“Oh,” I said. “You’re right. I guess I can when I’m flying.”

“I can too.”

“You? Have you been hiding wings from me all this time?”

She rolled her eyes as if that was the dumbest question ever. “No. I can touch it with my mind.”

“Earth,” I said, my heart beating faster. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“I can hear it. Shh,” she said. “Watch.”

I looked up at the wide, endless sky, inky blue and scattered with stars, and let this strange kid guide me.

“It’s kind of like a Ouija board,” she whispered.

Before I could ask what she meant, the sky tilted violently. I lost my balance and fell to the deck.

“Ow,” I said. “What—?” But I stopped short. It wasn’t the sky that had moved—it was the stars. The whole dome had shifted like the ceiling of a planetarium. And then, individual stars began to swerve toward one another. Earth was concentrating hard, her eyes trained on the sky and her hands balled into fists. The stars were forming a pattern. A word.

SAVE

My heart was beating out of my chest. Earth’s face and neck had broken out in a sweat, and she was struggling for breath. Still, she focused on the stars even harder as they arranged and rearranged, and another word began to take shape.

HIM

“Huh?” I said out loud.

The sound of my voice seemed to break the spell. Earth collapsed, exhausted, and the stars scattered into the night. I rushed to her and scooped her up in my arms. She was shaking.

“Hey,” I said gently. “Hey, shhh. It’s okay. You’re okay.” I smoothed her hair back and kissed the top of her head. “Earth,” I whispered. “Say something.”

Her eyes fluttered open.

“That . . .” she panted, “was . . . so . . . cool!” Earth looked up at me excitedly. “Did you see that?”

“I couldn’t look away. It was amazing.” I thought for a minute. “What do you think it means?”

Earth scrunched her face up thoughtfully. Then she shrugged.

“You got me,” she said. “I’ve only been able to do it, like, one other time.”

“What did it say the last time?”

She gave me a small, sly smile.

“Help Skye,” she answered.

As I stood there, I could feel the power rolling off Earth in waves. The fireflies glowed brighter, larger, unblinking in the night. And then they were so bright that they eclipsed everything else, and Earth, the mountains, the deck—it all disappeared.

I squinted my eyes against the sudden, jarring light of day. The sun was shining down on me, but as I stood there, dark clouds rolled in faster than I could count seconds: big, churning storm clouds that threatened to burst at any moment.

Thunder clapped, and lightning backlit the clouds.

A hard rain soaked me before I had a chance to run for cover. But where was there cover? Where was I? Rain ran down my hair in rivulets, into my eyes and mouth. The ground beneath my feet felt wet and spongy, and when I looked down, I saw that I wasn’t on the deck anymore—I was on the bank of the river that ran through Foster’s Woods.

“Dan!” Cassie’s voice cried out from somewhere below me. “It’s rising too fast!”

“Hold on to my hand!” Dan yelled back.

“I can’t breathe!” she screamed.

“Guys!” I shouted. “Cassie! I’m coming!” I scrambled down the steep side of the bank, trying not to let my footing slip in the rising mud and water. I had to get to my friends in time. I had to save them.

Lightning zigzagged through the trees, and I heard a massive crack, and somebody screamed.

“Skye.” Earth tugged on my hand, bringing me back from my vision. I had to blink a few times before the deck and the starry night came into focus. “What did you see?”

What had I seen?

“I saw a flood,” I said, still dazed. First a fire, now a flood. Elemental forces at work against the people I loved. “I saw the future.”

“Does the future talk to you the way the sky talks to me?”

I nodded.

“Maybe we can make them work together,” she said. “We can tell each other what they say.”

“It’s a deal, Earth,” I said. Because I would need all the help I could get to figure out when that flood was going to happen. Another attack was coming. The Rebellion was plotting again. But this time, I refused to be caught off-guard. This time, I would be ready for it.

Suddenly, I got the feeling that being outside at night wasn’t very safe.

“Let’s go in.”

Earth nodded. “I’m scared, too,” she said. She took my hand and the two of us slipped through the sliding screen door and into the cozy house.

It had been alive with noise and chatter during dinner, but now it was still. I squeezed Earth’s hand tightly. This house had been still for so long. I couldn’t let anything stand in the way of it feeling full again.

Earth scampered up the stairs to get ready for bed, but I hung back. Something drew me to the wide window that looked out on our field, the dark sky, the mountains beyond, and I struggled to understand the message from the stars.

Save him.

I waited for the answer to come.

As I lay in bed that night, watching Earth squirm around in her sleeping bag like a burrowing animal, I thought about her strange, quirky powers—intuiting my emotions, “listening to the sky.” It had told her to help me.

Suddenly I sat bolt upright.

Was it possible that Earth was the fourth Rogue?

Immediately, I rejected this idea. It couldn’t be—and more than that, I couldn’t let it. I couldn’t knowingly put Earth in danger like that. She was only a kid. A complicated one, sure. But she had already seen enough violence, enough tragedy in her lifetime. I couldn’t let her also go into battle.

But if she was the fourth, and I denied it, then my group would never succeed. We would never win, and the balance of power between the Order and the Rebellion would come crashing down. And I would continue to be the thing I feared I was: a weapon one side could use against the other. Nothing more.

Was there a way to find out? I had been able to make myself have a vision on the roof of the school, when I’d found Aaron. Could I do it again? Could I make myself see if Earth was the one I’d been looking for?

I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to decide anything just then.

But maybe it was better to know, and protect her—than to not know, and risk putting her in even greater danger.

I closed my eyes, and I let the room fall away and the Sight overtake me.

The familiar fog rolled in off the ocean. Thick and white, making it hard for me to see more than a foot in front of me. I had been here before—in my visions, at least. As my eyes adjusted, I realized I was on a huge black-sand beach. The fog misted out with the ocean tide, lapping against the shore. Breathing in. Breathing out.

The beach was lit with candlelight. Where was it coming from?

Three figures stood in front of me. As I squinted in the dim light, their faces sharpened into focus. Aunt Jo. Aaron. And a third man whose face I didn’t recognize. James? They were holding hands. Aunt Jo and Aaron reached out in front of them—beckoning to a fourth to join their circle.

I struggled to expand my sight, to grasp onto any detail that might give me a clue. But the vision seemed to elude me, and the harder I tried, the more it slipped away. Almost as soon as it started, I was back in my bedroom, in the dark, alone.

Crickets and cicadas chirped in the backyard now. The snowy mountains no longer kept out the sounds of the outside world. Kept the cold air in, the warmth and light out. Now, the weather was warm, and the natural world was reawakening.

And Earth was listening to it.

I slid down in bed, rested my head against the pillow. Why was this vision so hard to grasp? Was my own sight trying to protect her from the truth? She was sent to help me. She was an important key.

Trees from outside cast dark shadows across my walls, and I shivered.

Astaroth’s warning came back to me, whispered in the night.

I’ll be watching your mind.

If that was true, if I was leaving it unguarded and unprotected during these visions, was it possible that the ancient Gifted One was watching me right now? Could he know how I felt about Earth?

I made a silent promise to myself. I would watch this girl especially closely from now on. And I would protect my mind, keep it safe. Because if Astaroth could see what I was thinking, Earth could be in even more danger. What if the Guardians in the darkness outside her house in Rocky Pines weren’t just there for Aaron, for the powerful Rogue who was her father?

What if they were watching her, too? Waiting for the right time to attack the fourth?