Earthbound

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The instant the metal touches my skin, I’m in a whirlwind of light and color that flashes before my eyes, brilliant, excruciating, blinding in its radiance. My fingertips dig into Benson’s arm as I try to find something to grasp onto to keep from being carried away.

But the storm rages only in my mind, and soon I have to close my eyes to the world and try to force the turmoil inside me to calm, to hush to a reasonable volume. As the pain builds, I grasp for respite. Rebecca has done this before; she knows how to manage it. Desperate, I surrender my mind to her and somehow she takes the invading burst of memories from me.

They solidify, somehow, though it’s still like watching a movie in fast-forward. Scenes in a montage that flash before my eyes for only the briefest of instants before they’re gone—long before I can make sense of them. But soon they grow bright again, wild; Rebecca can’t handle them either.

“Benson, I can’t stop it!”

The pressure is still rising inside my head and I clutch at my temples, willing it to slow, to just give me a moment of rest. An instant to catch my breath. I can feel Rebecca trying to do the same thing, but nothing is working and the pressure is building, pushing out against my skull until I’m afraid my cranial bones are going to literally burst.

She’s no good to us if her brain is destroyed. The words skitter through my mind and now I understand what they were worried about.

Someone’s screaming and I think it’s me.

Hands are on me, arms wrapped around me, and even though my eyes are open again, I see only blackness. Images race, and just as I’m ready to give up, I see a flash of gold in the smeared scenes.

“Quinn, help me,” I whisper through clenched teeth that rattle as I speak.

And then his eyes are there, still and green amid a sickly sea of memories. I focus on those eyes and the crazed turbulence ebbs the tiniest bit.

But it’s enough.

I grasp for control and it’s like swimming through tar toward the dimmest of lights. But it’s there. Quinn’s eyes sustain my equilibrium and Rebecca’s mind and mine meld—we are one, we are us—and I know what to do. Together, our thoughts reach out like a net to bridle the energy that’s been poured into me and somehow, I hold it. It fills every inch of me until I swear my skin must be stretched to bursting, but this time I can contain it.

My breath slows and when I blink again, a fuzzy green greets me. It takes a while longer before I can see the sun-imbued leaves clearly, but eventually my focus returns. My head is on Benson’s lap and I’m lying on the sparse grass just behind the Honda. I try to move and everything hurts. After a few seconds I give up and just turn my eyes to Benson.

The forest is a glade of silence until Benson breaks it with a deafening whisper. “Are you okay?”

I nod. I ache like I’ve been struck by lightning, but I’m okay. I’m more than okay.

I’m full.

But I don’t have words to express that; not ones that he would understand. I wouldn’t have understood before either. It’s beyond normal human comprehension.

I must be beyond human comprehension.

I am something else. My head aches and I close my eyes—the sunlight overwhelms my senses. But I know what I am now.

“Does it still hurt?”

I don’t try to deny it. “Not as bad as before.” And even speaking makes me want to whimper. “It’s like an entire library just got poured into my brain and there’s no room,” I choke out.

“Is that why you screamed?”

I look up at him and for the first time since touching the necklace I see him clearly, with my Tavia eyes. He’s pale and a sheen of sweat dots his brow. What have I done? “I’m so sorry, Benson.” Though I don’t know exactly what I’m sorry for. Scaring him? Putting him in this position at all?

Everything?

“You screamed and screamed,” he whispers, and his voice quavers and he won’t meet my eyes. “I thought you were going to break inside and die. I really did.”

“So did I,” I say, reaching for his hand.

He moves his arm, runs his fingers through his hair, a flash of hardness shining in his eyes.

But I don’t have the capacity to analyze it.

I lie with my head on his lap, my knees curled against my chest, for minutes that feel like hours as the pain recedes, slowly, so slowly, like the tide going out. Staring at the green leaves, the crumbly brown earth, straggly grass blades, distracts me enough to let my mind carefully make room for everything I’ve learned.

Everything I am.

“I’m exactly what they said,” I whisper, loosing my confession into reality.

“They?” Benson asks, his shaky words the barest hush on the wind.

“Elizabeth. Jay. They weren’t lying. I’m an Earthbound—I’m a goddess.” The word passes my lips for the first time and it’s not quite as frightening as I feared. But almost.

“Like … God, capital G?”

“No. Something else. Something different.” Ideas are whizzing through my head, making it hard to think in words. “I’m a creating goddess. But … cursed. I did … I did something wrong. A long time ago.”

Benson stays silent, but I have to talk. I discover my knowledge as it falls from my lips, and somehow it relieves the pressure in my head.

“I make things, from nothing. I’m a Creator, like Quinn. We’re Creators together. Lifetimes and lifetimes together. I can make anything. Anything,” I say with wonder.

“A goddess,” Benson says, and his voice is so quiet I’m not sure I would have heard him if my ear weren’t pressed against his belly.

I feel a little giggle build up in my throat. “Like a tree,” I say through a hysterical laugh. “Or a mountain. Or a building. Just poof! Anything.”

“Like a pyramid,” Benson says, following my manic thoughts.

I nod. “I was an Earthmaker. There were lots of us. We created the landscape of the whole world. It was—it was ours. Gifted to us by … I don’t know. Someone bigger. Someone stronger. But we got greedy.” Wringing out specific memories is like trying to squeeze a brick of steel with my bare hands, and my body begins to tremble from the effort. “We created humans. To—to be our servants. We overstepped. We were cursed.”

“Cursed by who?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“You remember this?”

“No. But I remember Rebecca remembering it.” Quinn told her. “We failed our stewardship.” The words are part of a proclamation—a sentence—burned into my memories. “Our immortality was taken away. Kind of. We became mortal, but with our souls tied—bound—to the earth. We live again and again, among the beings we created. Searching, always searching.”

“Searching for what?”

“Our diligo,” I say, trying out the unfamiliar word on my tongue.

“What does that mean?”

“Lover,” I say, not meeting his eyes. “Bound to earth, bound together,” I whisper. “Reus ut terra, reus una.”

Quinn.

But …

No.

“The Reduciata try to kill the Earthbounds before they can reunite with their lovers.”

“That’s why they’re trying to kill you?” Benson murmurs.

But I shake my head. “It’s more than that with me. I … I know something. A secret. A secret that could destroy everything.”

“What secret?” Benson asks, breathing in short gasps now.

But I just shake my head. “I don’t remember. Something, something I didn’t even tell Quinn because it was too dangerous. That’s what the men who came to our house were trying to get rid of. That knowledge. Something … something about the Reduciata and the Curatoria. Arg!” I growl. “It hurts to even think about it.” I force a deep breath into my lungs and bury my face in Benson’s shirt.

“Those names have Latin roots,” Benson says, and I look up at him, confused. “What?” he asks sheepishly. “I looked them up on my phone after I saw them in Quinn’s journal. Curator means ‘to keep and preserve.’ Reduco means ‘to—”

“‘Reduce,’” I interrupt with bitterness. “‘To kill.’”

“No,” Benson says softly. “It means ‘to lead.’”

I’m silent, trying to affix meaning to this new information, but my brain is too tired.

“I guess that’s why their symbol is that ankh thing. The ankh for eternity and shepherd’s crook for leading.”

“What about the other?”

“Other?”

It hurts so much to think. “The feather and flame.”

Benson chews on his lip and looks up at the sky for a few seconds. “Maybe a phoenix? You know, they die and are born again, like Earthbound.”

“And stronger every time,” I say, unsure whose words they are. “If the Curatoria does their job, the Earthbound get stronger.”

I don’t even know what that means, but the effort pulls me into silence again.

“Can you sit up?” Benson asks after a while.

“Maybe.”

He helps me up and lets me lean against him. My muscles ache and I’m hungry again. I stiffen as I realize every time I do anything that has to do with being an Earthbound, I get hungry. “I’m hungry. All the time,” I say in a flat voice.

“What?” Benson asks.

“Ever since the crash, I’m hungry all the time. But especially since I started using my powers.” I look up at Benson. “And Reese and Jay, they’re always trying to get me to eat more. Even Elizabeth told me I had to get over my guilt and eat. They all knew—my Earthbound body needs to eat more.”

“I guess it makes sense,” Benson says slowly. “You make something out of nothing and I suspect your brain works on overdrive. That kind of thing needs fuel.”

“But it was only after the crash. I’ve always been an Earthbound; you don’t become an Earthbound. Everything started happening after the crash. What was it about the crash that made this part of me … wake up?”

Benson sighs. “I have no clue, Tave. I’m discovering just how little I really know about anything,” he mutters.

Is he mad? Or just confused and frustrated, like me?

I can’t think anymore.

“We should go,” I say. “I need food and we have to get away.”

“I think you need a few more minutes,” Benson says, steadying me as I wobble to my feet.

“We may not have a few minutes. Someone’s got to know about this place.” My words are slurring and I take a deep breath and concentrate harder. “Don’t underestimate the brotherhoods. It’ll kill you.”

Rebecca’s memories flit through my head like fireflies, shining and dimming almost at random. Meeting Quinn, our life, our escape, the dugout, writing the journal.

The journal.

“I need the journal,” I say. “Rebecca’s.” I’m moving toward the car door and Benson is scrambling to help me stay upright. “I need to make sure …” I snatch it up and rifle through the pages until I reach the strange language, and a smile curls across my face. A grin. A chuckle. Then I throw my head back and laugh, the sound filling the trees. “I can read it! Oh, Benson, she was brilliant! This is Latin—not exactly Latin, like you said. A common Latin. It’s—” I think, trying to get the specifics from a memory bank that’s like a closet I can’t open more than a crack. “It’s from Rome—ancient Rome.” My head pounds from the effort of retrieving that tiny fact.

I look up, surprised, when Benson snorts. “Vulgar Latin?” he asks. “You can read Vulgar Latin?”

“It’s not vulgar,” I counter.

“No, that’s what the common Latin is called—I read about it last semester. It’s from like 800 A.D. when the Romans were trying to create a universal language throughout the empire. It’s basically the parent language of all the Romance languages. And you can read it.” He grins. “That’s awesome.”

I sober as I look down at the journal. “This is where my answers are. She left it in the dugout for me. It’s our own personal pyramid, just like Quinn’s journal said. A place where we stashed all our stuff so we could remember someday. We created it just for something like this. So we could rely on each other, not on either of the brotherhoods. After that night, we left. We never came back.”

“But you escaped. You didn’t die. What happened?”

“I died eventually,” I say, and something snaps within me and the memory trickles back and I want to gag and clench my fists against it, pushing it away. Please don’t ask, please don’t ask. If he asks, it’ll re-ignite the sensations and I’ll have to feel it all over again and I’m not sure I have the stamina for that.

“How did you die?”

I look up at him as the all-too-familiar, body-numbing chill crashes over me. “I—” I brace myself against him as the cold that exists only in my mind paralyzes me. “I drowned. In a lake.”

The nightmare of my last moments as Rebecca replays in my head until my whole body is quaking with cold. I can’t sense any details—don’t know why, where, when. All I know for sure is that they did it—the Reduciata. That fact burns in my mind like a searing fire, melting a tiny layer of ice. “They’ve been hunting me. For over two hundred years. Me, specifically. They’ve killed me so many times. I … I think they’re the ones who made my plane crash.”

Benson’s hands tighten on me.

My body courses with crazy energy now. “Of course, Benson, it makes total sense.”

“Total,” Benson says dryly.

“I’ve been reborn. Not just now, a hundred times. A thousand times.” I lean against him with a groan as the scope of that thought makes my brain ache. Then my eyes pop open. “And they’re chasing me through lifetimes, trying to keep their secret—whatever it is—quiet! The Curatoria located me—lured me to them with the promise of a fancy art school, to protect me until they could awaken me, just like Elizabeth said. But the Reduciata found out—brought the plane down. All to silence their secret.” My eyes widen and the implication sinks in. “They’ll kill anyone to get me. Anyone who stands in their way.”

Anyone like him.