Beautiful Darkness

Jump

When I crawled into bed that night, I was dreading my dreams. They say you dream about the last thing you were thinking about before you fell asleep, but the more I tried to not think about Macon and my mom, the more I thought about them. Exhausted from all that thinking about not thinking, it was only a matter of time before I sunk through the mattress into the blackness, and my bed became a boat....

The willows were waving over my head.

I could feel myself rocking back and forth. The sky was blue, cloudless, surreal. I turned my head and looked to the side. Splintery wood, painted a peeling shade of blue that looked a lot like the ceiling in my bedroom. I was in a dinghy or a rowboat, floating along the river.

I sat up and the boat rocked. A small white hand fell to the side, dragging a slender finger through the water. I stared at the ripples disturbing the reflection of the perfect sky, otherwise cool and calm as glass.

Lena was lying across from me at the end of the boat. She wore a white dress, the kind you saw in old movies, where everything is shot in black and white. Lace and ribbon and tiny pearl buttons. She was holding a black parasol, and her hair, her nails, even her lips, were black. She lay curled on her side, slumped against the dinghy, her hand dragging along behind us as we floated.

"Lena?"

She didn't open her eyes, but she smiled. "I'm cold, Ethan."

I looked at her hand, which was now up to her wrist in the water. "It's summer. The water's warm." I tried to crawl over to her, but the boat rocked, and she slumped farther over the edge, exposing the black Chucks beneath her dress.

I couldn't move.

Now the water was up to her arm, and I could see strands of her hair beginning to float on the surface.

"Sit up, L! You're going to fall in!"

She laughed and dropped the parasol. It floated, spinning, in the ripples of water behind us. I lurched toward her, and the boat rocked violently.

"Didn't they tell you? I've already fallen."

I lunged for her. This couldn't be happening, but it was. I knew because I was waiting for the sound of the splash.

When I hit the edge of the boat, I opened my eyes. The world was rocking, and she was gone. I looked down, and all I could see was the murky greenish-brown water of the Santee and her dark hair. I reached into the water. I couldn't think.

Jump or stay in the boat.

The hair floated downward, unruly, quiet, breathtaking, like some kind of mythical sea creature. There was a white face, blurred by the depths of the river. Trapped beneath the glass.

"Mom?"

I sat up in bed, drenched and coughing. Moonlight was streaming into my window. It was open again. I walked to the bathroom and drank water out of my hand until the coughing subsided. I stared into the mirror. It was dark, and I could barely make out my features. I tried to find my eyes within the shadows. But instead I saw something else ... a light in the distance.

I couldn't see the mirror anymore, or the shadows of my face. Just the light, and bits of images as they flashed by.

I tried to focus and make sense of what I was seeing, but everything was coming too fast, rushing by me, jerking up and down, like I was on a ride. I saw the street -- wet, shiny, and dark. It was only inches away from me, which made it seem as if I was crawling on the ground. But that was impossible because everything was moving so fast. Tall, straight corners jutting out into my field of vision, the street rising up to meet me.

All I could see was the light and the street that was so awkwardly close. I felt the cold porcelain as I gripped the sides of the sink, trying not to fall. I was dizzy, and the flashes kept coming at me, the light getting closer. My view shifted sharply, as if I had turned the corner in a maze, and everything started to slow.

Two people were leaning against the side of a dirty brick building, under a streetlight. It was the light that had been jerking in and out of focus. I was looking up at them from below, like I was lying on the ground. I stared up at the silhouettes in front of me.

"I should've left a note. My gramma will be worried." It was Lena's voice. She was right in front of me. This wasn't a vision, not like the ones from the locket or Macon's journal.

"Lena!" I called out her name, but she didn't move.

The other person stepped closer. I knew it was John before I saw his face. "If you had left a note, they could've used it to find us with a simple Locator Cast. Especially your grandma. She has crazy power." He touched her shoulder. "Guess it runs in the family."

"I don't feel powerful. I don't know what I feel."

"You aren't having second thoughts, are you?" John reached out and took her hand, holding it open so he could see her palm. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a marker, and started writing on her hand absentmindedly.

Lena shook her head, watching as he wrote. "No. I don't belong there anymore. I would've ended up hurting them. I hurt everyone who loves me."

"Lena --" It was pointless. She couldn't hear me.

"It won't be like that when we get to the Great Barrier. There's no Light or Dark, no Naturals or Cataclysts, only magic in its purest form. Which means no labels or judgments."

They were staring at her hand as John moved the marker around her wrist. The way their heads were bent, they were almost touching. Lena rotated her wrist slowly in his hand. "I'm scared."

"I would never let anything happen to you." He tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear, the way I used to. I wondered if she remembered.

"It's hard to imagine a place like that really exists. People have been judging me my whole life." Lena laughed, but I could hear the edge in her voice.

"That's why we're going. So you can finally be yourself." His shoulder twitched awkwardly, and he grabbed it, wincing. He shook it off before Lena noticed. But not before I did.

"Myself? I don't even know who that is." Lena stepped away from the wall and looked out into the night. The streetlight outlined her profile, and I could see her necklace shining.

"I'd like to know," John leaned into Lena. He was speaking so softly, I could barely hear the words.

Lena looked tired, but I recognized her crooked half-smile. "I'll introduce you if I ever meet her."

"You cats ready to go?" Ridley walked out of the building, sucking on a cherry-red lollipop.

Lena turned around, and as she did, the light caught her hand -- the one John had been writing on. But there were no words. It was inked in black designs. They were the same designs I had seen on her hands at the fair, and along the edges of her notebook. Before I could see anything else, my point of view shifted away from them, and all I could see was a wide street and the wet cobblestones in front of me. Then nothing.

I don't know how long I stood there, holding on to the sink. It felt like I would pass out if I let go. My hands were shaking, my legs buckling underneath me. What just happened? It wasn't a vision. They were so close, I could've reached out and touched her. Why couldn't she hear me?

It didn't matter. She had really done it -- run away, just like she said she would. I didn't know where she was, but I had seen enough of the Tunnels to recognize them.

She was gone, headed for the Great Barrier, wherever it was. It didn't have anything to do with me anymore. I didn't want to dream it or see it or hear about it.

Forget about it. Go back to sleep. That's what I needed to do.

Jump or stay in the boat.

What a screwed-up dream. As if it was up to me. This boat was sinking, with or without me.

I let go of the sink long enough to heave into the toilet and stumble back to my room. I walked over to the stacks of shoe boxes along the wall, the boxes that held everything important to me, or anything I wanted to hide. For a second, I stood there. I knew what I was looking for, but I didn't know which box it was in.

Water like glass. I thought of it when I remembered the dream.

I tried to remember where to find it. Which was ridiculous, because I knew what was in every single one of those boxes. At least, I knew yesterday. I tried to think, but all I could see were the seventy or eighty boxes stacked around me. Black Adidas, green New Balance ... I couldn't remember.

I had opened about twelve boxes before I found the black Converse one. The carved wooden box was still inside. I lifted the smooth, delicate sphere from its velvet lining. The impression of the sphere remained in the velvet, dark and crushed, as if it had been there a thousand years.

The Arclight.

It had been my mother's most valuable possession, and Marian had given it to me. Why now?

In my hand, the pale orb began to reflect the room around me until the curved surface was alive and swirling with colors. It was glowing, a pale green. I could see Lena again in my mind, and hear her. I hurt everyone I love.

The glow began to fade, and once again the Arclight was black and opaque, cold and lifeless in my hand. But I could still feel Lena. I could sense where she was, as if the Arclight was some kind of compass leading me to her. Maybe there was something to this Wayward thing, after all.

Which made no sense, because the last place I wanted to be was wherever Lena and John were. So why was I seeing them?

My mind was racing. The Great Barrier? A place where there was no Light and no Dark? Was that possible?

There was no point trying to sleep now.

I pulled on a crumpled Atari T-shirt. I knew what I had to do.

Together or not, this was bigger than Lena and me. Maybe it was as big as the Order of Things, or Galileo realizing the Earth revolved around the sun. It didn't matter if I didn't want to see it. There were no coincidences. I was seeing Lena and John and Ridley for a reason.

But I had no idea what it was.

Which is why I had to go talk to Galileo herself.

As I stepped out into the darkness, I could hear Mr. Mackey's fancy roosters starting to crow. It was 4:45, and the sun wasn't close to coming up, but I was walking around town like it was the middle of the afternoon. I listened to the sound of my feet as I walked across the cracked sidewalk and the sticky asphalt.

Where were they going? Why was I seeing them? Why did it matter?

I heard a noise. When I turned around, Lucille cocked her head and sat down on the pavement behind me. I shook my head and kept walking. That crazy cat was going to follow me, but I didn't mind. We were probably the only ones awake in the whole town.

But we weren't. Gatlin's very own Galileo was awake, too. When I turned the corner onto Marian's street, I could see the light on in her spare room. As I got closer, I saw a second light flicker from the front porch.

"Liv." I jogged up the steps and heard a clatter in the darkness.

"Bloody hell!" The lens of an enormous telescope swung toward my head, and I ducked. Liv grabbed the end of the lens, her messy braids swinging behind her. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" She twisted a knob, and the telescope locked back into place on the tall aluminum tripod.

"It's not exactly sneaking when you walk up the front steps." I tried not to stare at her pajamas -- some kind of girly boxers under a T-shirt with a picture of Pluto and the caption DWARF PLANET SAYS: PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE.

"I didn't see you." Liv adjusted the eyepiece and stared into the telescope. "What are you doing up, anyway? Are you mental?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"Let me save you some time. The answer is yes."

"I'm not joking."

She studied me, then picked up her red notebook and started scribbling. "I'm listening. I just have to write down a few things."

I looked over her shoulder. "What are you looking at?"

"The sky." She looked back into the scope and then at her selenometer. She wrote another set of numbers.

"I know that."

"Here." She stepped aside, motioning me closer. I looked through the lens. The sky exploded into light and stars and the dust of a galaxy that didn't remotely resemble the Gatlin sky. "What do you see?"

"The sky. Stars. The moon. It's pretty amazing."

"Now look." She pulled me away from the lens, and I looked up at the sky. Though it was still dark, I couldn't make out nearly half the stars I had seen through the telescope.

"The lights aren't as bright." I looked back to the telescope. Once again, the sky burst into sparkling stars. I pulled back from the lens and stared out into the night. The real sky was darker, dimmer, like lost, lonely space. "It's weird. The stars look so different through your telescope."

"That's because they're not all there."

"What are you talking about? The sky's the sky."

Liv looked up at the moon. "Except when it's not."

"What does that mean?"

"Nobody really knows. There are Caster constellations, and there are Mortal constellations. They aren't the same. At least, they don't look the same to the Mortal eye. Which unfortunately is all you and I have." She smiled and switched one of the settings. "And I've been told the Mortal constellations can't be seen by Casters."

"How is that possible?"

"How is anything possible?"

"Is our sky real? Or does it only look real?" I felt like a carpenter bee the moment he found out he'd been tricked into thinking a coat of blue paint on the ceiling was the sky.

"Is there a difference?" She pointed up at the dark sky. "See that? The Big Dipper. You know that one, right?" I nodded.

"If you look straight down, two stars from the handle, you see that bright star?"

"It's the North Star." Any former Boy Scout in Gatlin could tell you that.

"Exactly. Polaris. Now see where the bottom of the cup ends, the lowest point? Do you see anything there?" I shook my head.

She looked into her scope, turning first one dial, then a second. "Now look." She stepped back.

Through the lens, I could see the Big Dipper, exactly as it looked in the regular sky, only shining more brightly. "It's the same. Mostly."

"Now look at the bottom of the cup. Same place. What do you see?"

I looked. "Nothing."

Liv sounded annoyed. "Look again."

"Why? There's nothing there."

"What do you mean?" Liv leaned down and looked through the lens. "That's not possible. There's supposed to be a seven-pointed star, what Mortals call a faery star."

A seven-pointed star. Lena had one on her necklace.

"It's the Caster equivalent of the North Star. It marks due south, not north, which has a mystical importance in the Caster world. They call it the Southern Star. Hold on. I'll find it for you." She bent over the scope again. "But keep talking. I'm sure you aren't here for a lecture on faery stars. What's going on?"

There was no point in putting it off any longer. "Lena ran away with John and Ridley. They're down in the Tunnels somewhere."

Now I had her attention. "What? How do you know?"

"It's hard to explain. I saw them in this weird vision that wasn't a vision."

"Like when you touched the journal in Macon's study?"

I shook my head. "I didn't touch anything. One minute I was staring at my reflection in the mirror, and a second later all I could see was stuff flying past me like I was running. When I stopped, they were standing in an alley a few feet away, but they couldn't see or hear me." I was rambling.

"What were they doing?" Liv asked.

"Talking about some place called the Great Barrier. Where everything will be perfect and they can live happily ever after, according to John." I tried not to sound bitter.

"They actually said they were going to the Great Barrier? Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Why?" I could feel the Arclight, suddenly warm in my pocket.

"The Great Barrier is one of the most ancient Caster myths. A place of powerful old magic, long before there was Light or Dark -- a sort of Nirvana. No logical person believes it really exists."

"John Breed does."

Liv looked up at the sky. "Or so he says. It's rubbish, but it's powerful rubbish. Like thinking the Earth is flat. Or that the sun orbits the Earth." Like Galileo. Of course.

I had come here looking for a reason to go back to bed, back to Jackson and my life. An explanation for why I could see Lena in my bathroom mirror that didn't mean I was crazy. An answer that didn't lead back to Lena. But I found the opposite.

Liv kept talking, oblivious to the sinking stone in my stomach, and the one burning in my pocket. "The legends say if you follow the Southern Star, you'll eventually find the Great Barrier."

"What if the star isn't there?" With that one thought, another began to stir, and then another, all coming loose in my mind.

Liv didn't answer because she was frantically adjusting her telescope. "It has to be there. There must be something wrong with my telescope."

"What if it's gone? The galaxy changes all the time, right?"

"Of course. By the year three thousand, Polaris won't be the North Star anymore, Alrai will be. It means 'the shepherd' in Arabic, since you asked."

"By the year three thousand?"

"Exactly. In a thousand years. A star can't suddenly disappear, not without a serious cosmic bang. It's not a subtle thing."

" 'This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.' " I remembered the line from a T. S. Eliot poem. Lena couldn't get it out of her head, before her birthday.

"Yes, well, I love the poem, but the science is a bit off."

Not with a bang but a whimper. Or was it not with a whimper but a bang? I couldn't remember the exact words, but Lena had written it into a poem on the wall of her bedroom when Macon died.

Had she known where this was going all along? I had a sick feeling in my stomach. The Arclight was so hot, it was singeing my skin.

"There's nothing wrong with your telescope."

Liv studied her selenometer. "I'm afraid something is off. It's not just the scope. Even the numbers don't follow."

"Hearts will go and Stars will follow." I said it without thinking, as if it was any old song stuck in my head.

"What?"

"Seventeen Moons. It's nothing, just a song I keep hearing. It has something to do with Lena's Claiming."

"A Shadowing Song?" She looked at me in disbelief.

"Is that what it is?" I should've known it would have a name.

"It foreshadows what's to come. You've had a Shadowing Song this whole time? Why didn't you tell me?"

I shrugged. Because I was an idiot. Because I didn't like to talk about Lena with Liv. Because horrible things came out of that song. Take your pick.

"Tell me the whole verse."

"There's something about spheres, and a moon before her time appears. Then it says the part about the stars following where the hearts go.... I can't remember the rest."

Liv sank down onto the top step of the porch. "A moon before her time appears. Is that exactly what the song said?"

I nodded. "First the moon. Then the star follows. I'm sure."

The sky was now streaked with light. "Calling a Claiming Moon out of time. That would explain it."

"What? The missing star?"

Liv closed her eyes. "It's more than the star. Calling a moon out of time could change the whole Order of Things, from every magnetic field to every magical one. It would explain any shift in the Caster sky. The natural order in the Caster world is as delicately balanced as our own."

"What could do that?"

"You mean who." Liv hugged her knees.

She could only be talking about one person. "Sarafine?"

"There are no records of a Caster powerful enough to call out the moon. But if someone is pulling a moon out of time, there's no way to know when the next Claiming will come. Or where." A Claiming. Which meant Lena.

I remembered what Marian said in the archive. We don't get to choose what is true. We only get to choose what we do about it.

"If we're talking about a Claiming Moon, this is about Lena. We should wake up Marian. She can help us." But even as I said it, I knew the truth. She might be able to help us, but that didn't mean she would. As a Keeper, she couldn't get involved.

Liv was thinking the same thing. "Do you really think Professor Ashcroft is going to let us chase after Lena in the Tunnels, after what happened the last time we were down there? She'll have us locked up in the rare-books collection for the rest of the summer."

Worse, she'd call Amma, and I would be carting the Sisters to church every day in Aunt Grace's ancient Cadillac.

Jump or stay in the boat.

It wasn't really a decision, not anymore. I'd made it a long time ago, when I first got out of my car on Route 9, one night in the rain. I had jumped. There was no staying in the boat, not for me, whether Lena and I were together or not. I wasn't going to let John Breed or Sarafine or a missing star or the wrong kind of moon or some crazy Caster skies stop me now. I owed the girl on Route 9 that much.

"Liv, I can find Lena. I don't know how, but I can. You can track the moon with your selenometer, right?"

"I can measure variances in the magnetic pull of the moon, if that's what you're asking."

"So you can find the Claiming Moon?"

"If my calculations are correct, if the weather holds, if the typical corollaries between the Caster and Mortal constellations stay true ..."

"It was more of a yes or no question."

Liv tugged on one of her braids, thinking. "Yes."

"If we're going to do this, we have to go before Amma and Marian wake up."

Liv hesitated. As a Keeper-in-Training, she wasn't supposed to get involved. But every time we were together, we found our way to trouble. "Lena could be in a lot of danger."

"Liv, if you don't want to come --"

"Of course I want to come. I've been studying the stars and the Caster world since I was five. All I've ever wanted was to be part of it. Up until a few weeks ago, the only thing I'd done was read about it and watch it through my telescope. I'm tired of watching. But Professor Ashcroft ..."

I had been wrong about Liv. She wasn't like Marian. She wouldn't be content shelving Caster Scrolls. She wanted to prove the world wasn't flat.

"Jump or stay in the boat, Keeper. Are you coming?" The sun was rising, and we were running out of time.

"Are you sure you want me to?" She didn't look at me, and I didn't look at her. The memory of the kiss that never happened hung between us.

"You know anyone else with a spare selenometer and a mental map of missing Caster stars?"

I wasn't sure her variances or corollaries or calculations were going to help me. But I knew the song was never wrong, and the things I saw tonight proved it. I needed help, and so did Lena, even if what we had was over. I needed a Keeper, even a runaway Keeper with a crazy watch, looking for action everywhere but inside a book.

"Jump," Liv said softly. "I don't want to stay in the boat anymore." She turned the handle on the screen door quietly, without making so much as a click. Which meant she was going inside to get her stuff. Which meant she was going with me.

"You sure?" I didn't want to be the reason she was going, at least not the only reason. That's what I told myself, but I was full of crap.

"You know anyone else dumb enough to search for a mythical place where a rogue Supernatural is trying to call a Claiming Moon?" She smiled, opening the door.

"As a matter of fact, I do."