Fates

18

Luc’s skin felt as if it were about to peel off.

He crawled blindly through a world of fire—flames roaring so loudly he could hardly think. The smell of burning singed his nostrils, made him gag. There were no pathways here, no signs pointing to a way out. Just heat and light and smoke and pain, forked tongues of orange and yellow.

And blue. His heart leapt. On his left burned a giant flame that was different from the others. A yellow finger of fire burned at its center, but the outer flame was all blue.

The opposite of a normal flame.

Before he could change his mind, Luc flung himself into the flame’s center. Searing heat ripped at his skin, and he clenched his teeth tightly to keep from screaming. The pain crested, became unbearable.

And then the light, and the heat, blinked out at once.

He found himself out of the Crossroad and in utter darkness, on ground as frigid and hard as concrete. He shivered. Every breath was painful.

Move, his brain commanded. He had to keep moving, even if he had no idea where he was.

He hoped he wouldn’t walk straight off a cliff.

He climbed dizzily to his feet and painstakingly inched his way through the darkness. Terror made him completely disoriented. This was the closest he could imagine to nothingness, to an endless void.

His foot hit something—a rock, maybe? As he moved carefully forward, the darkness seemed to become slightly less dense. There were now gradations of shadow, distinctions in the dark—his eyes were adjusting.

Something large loomed ahead of him. He ran his fingers over the surface, recognizing sharp angles and smooth crevices. It was a boulder, judging by the size of it. He navigated around it, keeping one hand firmly on the cold stone to orient himself. On the other side of the boulder, he heard the faint trickling of water.

Tiny lights flickered in the distance. They looked almost like fireflies. And in the sky, twin crescent moons rose over the mountains to his left.

Despair rose thick and high in his chest. He was back—back in the land of Figments and Figures, at the very edge of the universe.

Back where he had started.

And he knew then, knew for positive and for certain, that he no longer had a prayer of saving Jasmine.

Luc couldn’t control himself any longer. He spun around, kicked at the first thing he saw, sent a rock skittering into the darkness. He was so angry he wanted to punch something. If Corinthe was right, if this had all been fated, he wished he could burn down the whole universe.

Thinking of Corinthe made him feel even worse. He felt a fierce longing for her; it was here, in this very world, that she had pressed up against him in her sleep.

“Why?” he screamed into the darkness. “Why? Why?”

“Shhh,” a low voice said behind him.

Luc whipped around, fumbling for the knife in his pocket. “Who’s there?”

A shadow moved separately from the dark around it. “You looking for the pairing?” it asked in a hushed voice.

“The … what?” Luc asked.

“The gathering,” another voice said.

“I don’t know what you’re—” Before he could finish, a person seized his arm.

“Don’t be afraid,” the first person said. A girl, Luc thought, judging from the whispery voice. Her features were dark. Where she touched him, he felt warm. His anger dissipated; he felt weirdly calm. Maybe he could search out Rhys. Maybe there was hope.

The shadowy shapes led him down an indistinguishable path. They stopped in front of another huge rock. “Here we are.”

“Where … ?” Luc started to ask, but once again, his two guides hushed him.

“It’s okay. I was really confused my first time, too,” said one.

“We missed you,” said the other.

Before Luc could ask what they meant, they had rapped three times on the rock face. It slowly slid off to one side, as though it had been set on tracks, and a set of stone stairs was revealed, dimly lit by lanterns.

As the girl passed in front of him, under the light, Luc stopped. The bottom dropped out of his stomach like on the dip of a roller coaster. It wasn’t a person at all. It was just a shadowy outline, featureless, faceless.

A Figment.

The girl—the thing—realized Luc was no longer behind her. “Come on,” it whispered.

The other person—also a Figment—hovered by his side, as though looking at him curiously.

Luc hesitated. His head was spinning. Figments were supposed to be confined to the Ocean of Shadows. How had these managed to escape?

“What do you mean, you missed me?” Luc said, hedging.

The second Figment put its shadowy, weightless hand on Luc’s arm. “You don’t remember?” it asked.

“We are yours,” the girl Figment said.

“Mine?” Luc’s voice cut through the darkness.

“Your shadows,” they answered simultaneously, then turned and continued down the stairs.

Luc followed them, stunned and unable to speak. As he trailed his shadows, he felt a sense of relief, or victory, even—the way he’d lose the ball on the field and find his way to it again.

As if reading his mind, one of the Figments broke the silence. “We’ll be separated again, after this. …” She motioned down the dark passageway, where the faint sound of music drifted.

“But this isn’t the end,” the other Figment added. Its voice was slightly deeper, more grating, like rocks moving together in a current. “We’ll see each other again. In the Crossroad. When we’re strong enough to travel …”

Soon, the lanterns became more frequent and quick bursts of laughter punctuated the air.

The stairs emptied into a cavernous space. Once again, Luc stopped, amazed. The room was filled with hundreds and hundreds of people—or at least, Luc thought they were people. They moved like people, but their skin was the same reddish color as the sand on the beach and looked thick, almost scaly. None had hair, and it was hard to distinguish males from females.

They had to be the Figures.

Each Figure was dancing with two featureless shadows—Figments—waltzing and spinning, dipping and laughing. The happiness in the room was almost palpable.

You’re looking for the pairing? The Figments’ words came back to him.

Luc looked around at the cavelike space, ornately decked out with furniture from the human world—some of it ancient and crumbling, some of it pristine—like Rhys’s raft had been.

Just before the shadows next to him slipped into the crowd, Luc called for them to wait. But when they both turned, he realized he was lost for words.

“Like he said, Luc. This isn’t the end.” The girl reached out to squeeze his arm. They nodded reassuringly before disappearing into the throng of Figments and Figures. Luc was left alone, mesmerized.

As he moved out of the doorway, into the whirling mass of strange bodies, he saw something catch the light of the lantern: Corinthe’s crystal earrings, dangling from the ear of one of the dancers.

Rhys!

As Luc got closer, Rhys tipped back his head and downed the contents of a vial. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and turned toward Luc. His eye covering hung loose, and Luc saw a violent gash where the eye should have been.

“Ah, you came back,” Rhys rasped. His long hair partly concealed his face. “Did you find your sister?” He swayed lightly, and Luc smelled sweat and herbs and something musty-sweet, like tobacco.

“No,” Luc said shortly. “What’s going on? What is this place?”

Rhys grinned and raised a glass. It occurred to Luc that the man was slightly drunk. “It’s a celebration, my friend. Once a year, at the end of the moons’ cycle, I arrange this secret get-together for those who wish to be whole again.”

“I thought the Figures were afraid of the Figments,” Luc said. But even as he said it, he knew it couldn’t be true. They didn’t look afraid. They looked … joyful. Free. The Figures and Figments laughed and touched and danced without pausing for breath. It was intimate in a way that made him want to look away, but at the same time, he was fascinated.

“The old generation were the ones to battle, the ones who banned the Figments. The young Figures only want to be whole again. They don’t have the fear of their forefathers.” Rhys shook his head. “They know only the feeling of division.”

Luc watched two Figments twirling on the arm of their Figure in the very center of the room. He felt an ache deep in his chest. Jasmine would love this place: the energy, the excitement. Dancing with shadows.

He was reminded of the outdoor concert he’d attended with Jas a few years ago. She hadn’t stopped dancing all night; her hair had been whipping around so fast, she joked she could use it as a weapon. The air smelled like cigarettes and patchouli and sunscreen, and he remembered thinking that he needed to memorize everything: the look and the smell, the way she was dancing, how she’d fallen asleep on the train back to the apartment with her head resting on his shoulder. It was as if he already knew that things would start to fall apart. That she would grow up and get stubborn and wild and moody, that he wouldn’t be able to protect her.

“Don’t you see?” Rhys said in a low voice. “They must have their Others. Their shadow selves. Isn’t that what it’s all about—finding the one who makes you feel whole again?”

As Luc watched the Figure spin faster, he found that it seemed to merge with its Figments so that they were indistinguishable, moving completely in tandem. The music was wild, full of joy and longing. All around him, Figures and Figments converged, melted into each other, became one. Even Rhys was soon swept away by his Figments, drawn into the middle of the floor, where they’d had made room for him.

The music changed and a thumping beat began to vibrate through the floor. The tempo started out slow, then picked up speed.

The Figures and Figments moved with it, as if they all shared the same pulse. They lifted their hands in the air. They shouted, cries of happiness and freedom. Rhys passed in and out of view. He looked so happy. So joyful.

And still the dance went on—faster, more frenzied—nameless arms reaching out and pulling Luc into the mass of undulating bodies and shadows.

Luc’s own heartbeat pounded frantically in his chest as he was swept up in the crowd. He swayed with the others, letting their movements guide him. There was a pressure building in his chest, something he couldn’t name or explain. And then, as the music crescendoed, as the shouts of joy crested over him like a physical force, it brought with it a single word, blazing through him, impossible to ignore.

Corinthe.

When his mother died, she had taken part of him with her. He had never expected to feel whole again.

But he did. He had. A spark, long buried, had jumped to life when he met Corinthe.

He understood her. They were so similar. Both holding tight to responsibilities that were too big, too heavy for them. Trying so hard to do the right thing, struggling to find a place where they fit in.

A realization struck him as swiftly as a lightning bolt: Corinthe made him feel whole again. Around her, everything made sense. He felt the awareness in his whole body, down into his fingertips.

He loved her.

She was his Other.

He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or heartbroken. She was the one—he knew that now—and he might never see her again. Gripped by twin feelings of terror and awe, he pushed his way back out of the crowd, then through the entranceway and back up through the tunnel. He needed air.

Once outside, he stood heaving, his head still thumping from the smoke and music below. At first he didn’t even notice that Rhys had reappeared at his side.

Rhys leaned in close. “Need something for your head?”

Luc could smell his breath. It was clear Rhys was drunk on something. He opened his coat and reached into the inner lining to retrieve another of his vials. As he did so, the various contents of his coat caught the moonlight. One object in particular spilled out and swung from a chain attached to his waist. It reminded Luc of an antique watch, but the shape was different. Whatever it was, it looked somehow, impossibly, familiar.

“What is that?” Luc demanded with sudden urgency.

Rhys shrugged and grabbed the swinging object in his hand. “The compass? Something I made a long time ago,” he slurred. “It was part of a pair. Worthless, I guess. It was supposed to mean something, but she lost hers—” He broke off.

“She, who?” Luc said, taking the object into his hands and turning it over.

“Miranda,” Rhys answered, his voice slurry and heavy with sadness. “Love is bigger than any of us, my boy. It follows its own rules. For love I have lost everything. Even my eyes.”

“Love made you blind?” Luc asked with uncertainty.

“Not blind, you fool.” Rhys suddenly swung around and grabbed Luc’s shoulder. His grip was hard and firm. It was as if he were looking straight into Luc’s soul. “I turned back time,” he whispered. “Not even the Unseen Ones could stop me. And it was worth it. Even though I lost her, too. …” His voice trailed off, and Luc watched him pull another vial from his coat and bring it unsteadily to his lips.

“You … you were the one?” Luc’s heart was pounding against his rib cage. Was Rhys the Radical Corinthe had told him about? Luc hadn’t understood what she’d meant by a Radical—it sounded like the universe’s version of an anarchist. Now he realized that maybe his assessment hadn’t been so far off.

Rhys swiped his sleeve across his mouth. “Time … space … they flow like water. Only love is eternal. Remember that.” Rhys tried to return the locket to his pocket, but it popped open as he fumbled with it. Luc stiffened; he recognized the tune that suddenly floated on the air. It was the same tune that Corinthe’s locket played. The lockets were almost identical.

Only there was no ballerina inside.

It was an archer. His bow was pulled back, strung with an arrow that pointed up toward the heavens. It spun slowly to a halt, and Rhys looked up at a point in the sky.

“Where does the compass point?” Luc asked.

“To the thing I want most. A dead star.” Rhys stumbled forward, determined, as if he might walk up an invisible staircase to that phantom star in the sky. But he tripped over his own feet and pitched forward, straight into Luc.

“Easy,” Luc said, slipping a shoulder under Rhys’s arm. Without thinking, his free hand unclasped the chain on Rhys’s waist and the compass swung free. He slipped it into his own pocket in one fluid motion. “Let’s take you back inside.”

Luc supported Rhys back inside. Rhys was moving clumsily, tottering from side to side, singing along with the music and trying to get Luc to dance. Luc finally managed to wrestle him into an oversized chair just outside the ring of dancers. As he started to leave, Rhys reached out and grabbed Luc’s arm. The candlelight lit up the bloodshot whites of Rhys’s eyes.

“People leave us all the time, but it don’t mean they didn’t love us,” he said. “You gotta hold on to that no matter what.”

In the middle of the celebration, Luc thought about his mother, as she used to be, for the first time in years.

“Forgive,” Rhys whispered, even as his eyes were fluttering closed and his head nodding to his chest.

And Luc knew that maybe, someday, he could.