Beautiful Darkness

Bonaventure

I was running, being chased. Scrambling over hedges and skidding across empty streets and backyards. The one constant was the adrenaline. There was no stopping.

Then I saw the Harley, driving straight at me, the lights getting closer and closer. They weren't yellow but green, flashing in my eyes so bright I had to cover my face with my hands....

I woke up. All I could see was green, flashing on and off.

I didn't know where I was, until I realized the green glow was coming from the Arclight, now lit up like the Fourth of July. It was on the mattress, where it must have rolled out of my pocket. Only the mattress looked different, and the light was flashing out of control.

I remembered slowly -- the stars, the Tunnels, the attic, the guest room. Then I realized why the mattress looked different.

Liv was gone.

It didn't take long to figure out where Liv was. "Do you ever sleep?"

"Not as much as you do, apparently." As usual, Liv didn't look up from her telescope, though this one was aluminum and much smaller than the one she kept on Marian's porch.

I sat down next to her on the back step. The yard was as calm as my aunt herself, a quiet patch of green spreading underneath a broad magnolia tree. "What are you doing up?"

"I got a wake-up call." I tried to sound casual, instead of how I actually felt. Awkward. I motioned at the guest room window on the second floor. Even from down here, you could see pulsing green light shining through the glass panes.

"Strange. I suppose I got one as well. Take a look through the celestron." She handed me the miniature scope. It looked like a flashlight except for the large lens fitted to one end.

Our hands touched as I took it. Not so much as a shock.

"Did you make this, too?"

She smiled. "Professor Ashcroft gave it to me. Now stop talking and look. There." She pointed right over the magnolia, which to my Mortal eye looked like a dark expanse of starless sky.

I fitted the scope to my eye. Now the sky over the tree was streaked with light, a kind of ghostly aura trailing toward the ground not far from us. "What is that, a falling star? Do falling stars leave trails like that?"

"It might. If it was a falling star."

"How do you know it's not?"

She tapped the scope. "It might be falling, but it's a Caster star falling in the Caster sky, remember? Otherwise we could see it without the scope."

"Is that what your crazy watch is saying?"

She picked it up from the step next to her. "I'm not sure what it's saying. I thought it was broken until I saw the sky."

The Arclight was still flashing in the window, a constant green strobe light.

I remembered something from my dream. It felt as if the Harley was headed right at me. "We can't stay here. Something's happening." Something here in Savannah.

Liv strapped her selenometer back onto her wrist. "Whatever it is seems to be happening over there." She dropped the scope into her backpack and pointed into the distance. It was time to go.

I held out my hand, but she pulled herself to her feet. "You wake up Link. I'll get my things."

"I still don't see why this couldn't wait until mornin'." Link was grouchy, and his spiky hair was sticking up everywhere.

"Does this thing look like it could wait until morning?" The Arclight was so bright now, it lit up the whole street in front of us.

"Can you put it on a lower setting or somethin'? Switch off the high beams already." Link shielded his eyes.

"I don't think it's working." I shook the Arclight, but the flashing green light didn't stop.

"Man, you broke the Magic 8 Ball."

"I didn't break it. I --" I gave up, jamming it into my pocket. "Yeah, it's pretty much broken." The light was shining through my jeans.

"It's possible some sort of Caster power surge triggered it and shifted the normal balance of how the Arclight functions." Liv was intrigued.

Link wasn't. "Like an alarm? That's not good."

"We don't know that."

"Are you kidding? It's never good when Commissioner Gordon activates the Bat-Signal. When the Fantastic Four see the number four in the sky."

"I get the idea."

"Yeah? Can you get one that gets us where we're tryin' to go, since Ethan broke the 8 Ball?"

Liv consulted her selenometer and started walking. "I can get us to the general area where the star fell." She looked at me. "I mean, if it was a star. But Link might be right. I don't know exactly where we're going, or what we'll find when we get there."

"Almost makes a guy wish he had his own pair of garden shears," I said, following Liv down the street.

"Speakin' a things that aren't normal, look who's here." Link pointed to the curb in front of a house with red shutters. Lucille was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, staring at us as if we were holding her up. "Told you she'd come back."

Lucille licked her brown paws sulkily, waiting.

"Couldn't live without me, could you, girl? I have that effect on women." Link grinned, scratching her head. She batted his fingers away.

"Come on, now. Aren't you comin'?" Lucille didn't budge.

"Yep. He's got that effect on women," I said to Liv as Lucille stretched out in front of the house.

"She'll come around," Link said. "They always do."

That's when Lucille took off running down the street, in the opposite direction from the way we went.

It was the middle of the night and pitch-dark by the time we found ourselves heading out of town. It felt like we had been walking for hours. The main road was always busy during the day. Now it was deserted. Which made sense, considering where it had led us. "You sure about this?"

"Not at all. It's only an approximation based on the available data." Liv had been checking her little telescope about every five blocks. There was no doubting the data.

"I love it when she talks nerdy." Link pulled on her braid and Liv batted him away.

I stared at the tall stone columns flanking the entrance to Savannah's famed Bonaventure Cemetery, on the outskirts of town. It was one of the most famous cemeteries in the South, and one of the most well protected. Which was a problem, since it had closed at dusk.

"Dude, this is a joke, right? Are you guys sure this is where we're supposed to be?" Link didn't look too happy about wandering around the cemetery at night, especially with a guard at the entrance and a patrol car that passed by the front gates every so often.

Liv looked up at a statue of a woman clinging to a cross. "Let's get this over with."

Link pulled out his garden shears. "I don't think these babies will do the job."

"Not through the gates." I pointed at the wall on the other side of the trees. "Over them."

Liv managed to step on every part of my face, kick me in the neck, and wrench her sneakers deep into my shoulder blade before I shoved all six pounds of her over the gate. She lost her balance at the top and landed with a thump.

"I'm fine. No worries," Liv called from the other side of the wall.

Link and I looked at each other, and he bent down. "You first. I'll climb up the hard way."

I stepped on his back, grabbing onto the wall. He pushed himself up until he was standing. "Yeah? How are you gonna do that?"

"Gotta look for a tree that's close enough to the wall. Has to be one somewhere around here. Don't worry. I'll find you."

I was at the top. I clung to the wall with both hands.

"I didn't ditch school all these years for nothin'."

I smiled, and let myself fall.

Five minutes and seven trees later, the Arclight led us deeper into the cemetery, past the crumbling Confederate headstones and the statues guarding the homes of those who had been forgotten. There was a tight cluster of moss-covered oaks, whose crossed branches created an arch over the path, barely wide enough to squeeze through. The Arclight was flashing and pulsing.

"We're here. This is it, right?" I looked over Liv's shoulder at the selenometer.

Link looked around. "Where? I don't see anything." I pointed to space between the trees. "Seriously?"

Liv looked nervous, too. She didn't want to climb through brambles of Spanish moss in a dark graveyard. "I can't get a reading now. It's going crazy."

"It doesn't matter. This is it, I'm sure."

"You think Lena and Ridley and John are back there?" Link looked like he was planning to go back and wait for us out front, or maybe at a rib joint.

"I don't know." I pushed the moss aside and stepped through.

On the other side, the trees were even more ominous, hanging over our heads and creating a sky of their own. There was a clearing ahead of us, with a huge statue of a beseeching angel in the center of the graves. The graves were bordered in stone, outlining the breadth of each plot. You could almost see the coffins buried in the earth beneath them.

"Ethan, look." Liv pointed past the statue. I could see silhouettes framed by a tiny slice of moonlight. They were moving.

We had company.

Link shook his head. "This can't be good."

For a second, I couldn't move. What if it was Lena and John? What were they doing in a graveyard at night, alone? I followed the path, flanked by even more statues -- kneeling angels staring into the heavens, or the ones looking down at us as they wept.

I had no idea what to expect, but when the two figures came into view, they were the last two people I expected to see.

Amma and Arelia, Macon's mother. The last time I'd seen her was at Macon's funeral. They were sitting between the graves. I was a dead man. I should have known Amma would find me.

There was another woman sitting in the dirt with them. I didn't recognize her. She was a little older than Arelia, with the same golden skin. Her hair was woven in hundreds of tiny braids, and she was wearing twenty or thirty strands of beads -- some gemstones and colored glass, others tiny birds and animals. She had at least ten holes winding around each ear, and long earrings hung from each hole.

The three of them were sitting cross-legged in a circle, headstones dotting the dirt around them. Their hands were joined in the center of the circle. Amma had her back to us, but I had no doubt she knew I was there.

"It took you long enough. We've been waitin', and you know how I hate to wait." Amma's voice was no more agitated than usual, which didn't make any sense, since I had disappeared without even a note.

"Amma, I'm really sorry --"

She waved her hand as if she was swatting a fly. "No time for that now." Amma shook the bone in her hand -- a graveyard bone, I was willing to bet.

I looked at Amma. "Did you bring us here?"

"Can't say I did. Somethin' else brought you, somethin' stronger than me. I just knew you were comin'."

"How?"

Amma gave me some of her best stinkeye. "How does a bird know to fly south? How does a catfish know how to swim? I don't know how many times I have to tell you, Ethan Wate. They don't call me a Seer for nothin'."

"I foresaw your arrival, too." Arelia was stating a fact, but it annoyed Amma just the same. I could tell by the look on her face.

Amma raised her chin. "After I mentioned it." Amma was used to being the only Seer in Gatlin, and she didn't like being trumped, even if it was by a Diviner with supernatural gifts.

The other woman, the one I didn't know, turned to Amma. "We bes' get started, Amarie. They're waitin'."

"Come sit down here." Amma motioned to us. "Twyla's ready." Twyla. I recognized the name.

Arelia answered the question before I asked. "This is my sister, Twyla. She's come a long way to be with us here tonight." I remembered. Lena had mentioned her Great-Aunt Twyla, the one who had never left New Orleans. Until now.

" 'At's right. Now you come on sit by me, cher. Don't be 'fraid. It's only a Circle a Sight." Twyla patted the space next to her. Amma was sitting on Twyla's other side, giving me the Look. Liv stepped back, looking pretty freaked out, even if she was training to be a Keeper. Link stayed right behind her. Amma had that effect on people, and from the looks of things, Twyla and Arelia did, too.

"My sister is a powerful Necromancer." Arelia's voice was proud.

Link made a face and whispered to Liv. "She gets with dead people? That's the kinda thing a person should keep to themselves."

Liv rolled her eyes. "Not a necrophiliac, stupid. A Necromancer, a Caster capable of calling and communicating with the dead."

Arelia nodded. "That's right, and we need help from someone who's already left this world."

I knew right away who she was talking about, or at least I hoped I did. "Amma, are we trying to call Macon?"

Sadness passed across her face. "I wish I could say we were, but wherever Melchizedek's gone, we can't go."

"It's time." Twyla pulled something out of her pocket and looked at Amma and Arelia. You could feel the shift in their demeanor. The three of them were all business now, even if it was the business of waking the dead.

Arelia opened her hands in front of her lips and spoke softly into them. "My power is your power, sisters." She tossed tiny stones into the center of the circle.

"Moonstones," Liv whispered.

Amma pulled out a sack of chicken bones. I would know that smell anywhere. It was the smell of my kitchen back home. "My power's your power, sisters."

Amma tossed the bones into the circle with the moonstones. Twyla opened her own hand, revealing a tiny carving in the shape of a bird. She spoke the words that gave it power.

"One unto this world, one unto da next.

Open the door to da one who's annexed."

She started to chant, loud and feverish, the unfamiliar words rippling through the air. Her eyes rolled back in her head, but her eyelids remained open. Arelia began to chant as well, shaking long strands of tasseled beads.

Amma grabbed my chin so she could look me in the eye. "I know this isn't goin' to be easy, but there are things you need to know."

The air in the center of the Circle of Sight began to swirl and churn, creating a thin white mist. Twyla, Arelia, and Amma continued to chant, their voices reaching a crescendo. The mist seemed to act on their command, gaining speed and density, swirling upward like a growing tornado.

Without warning, Twyla inhaled sharply, as if she was taking her last breath. The mist seemed to follow, disappearing into her mouth. For a minute, I thought she was going to drop dead. She sat there, her back so straight you would've thought she was tied to a rack, eyes rolled back in her head, mouth still open.

Link retreated to a safe distance while Liv scrambled forward to help, reaching for Twyla. But Amma grabbed her arm in midair. "Wait."

Twyla exhaled. The white mist raced from her lips, rising over the circle. Taking form. The mist swirled upward, creating a body as it moved. The bare feet, peeking out beneath a white dress, the torso filling the dress as if inflating a balloon. It was a Sheer, rising from the haze. I watched as the mist snaked upward, creating a torso, a delicate neck, and finally a face.

It was --

My mother.

Staring back at me with the same luminous, ethereal quality unique to Sheers. But beyond the translucence, she looked exactly like my mother. Her eyelids fluttered, and she looked at me. The Sheer didn't just look like my mother. It was my mother.

She spoke, and her voice was as soft and melodic as I remembered. "Ethan, sweetheart, I've been waiting for you."

I stared at her, speechless. In every dream I'd had of her since the day she died, every photograph, every memory -- she was never as real as this.

"There is so much I need to tell you, so much I can't say. I've tried to show you the way, send you the songs...."

She sent me the songs. The songs only Lena and I could hear. I spoke, but my voice sounded far away, as if it wasn't my own. Seventeen Moons -- the Shadowing Song. "It was you, this whole time."

She smiled. "Yes. You needed me. But now he needs you, and you need him, too."

"Who? Are you talking about Dad?" But I knew she wasn't talking about my father. She was talking about the other man who meant so much to both of us.

Macon.

She didn't know he was gone.

"Are you talking about Macon?" I saw a spark of recognition in her eyes. I had to tell her. If something had happened to Lena, I would want someone to tell me. No matter how much everything changed. "Macon's gone, Mom. He died a few months ago. He can't help me."

I watched her shimmer in the moonlight. She was as beautiful as the last time I saw her, when she hugged me on the rainy porch before I left for school. "Listen to me, Ethan. He'll always be with you. Only you can redeem him." Her image began to fade.

I reached out, desperate to touch her, but my hand only slipped through the air. "Mom?"

"The Claiming Moon has been called." She was disappearing, vanishing into the night. "If Darkness prevails, the Seventeenth Moon will be the last." I almost couldn't see her anymore. The mist was swirling slowly again, above the circle. "Hurry, Ethan. You don't have much time, but you can do this. I have faith." She smiled and I tried to memorize her expression, because I knew she was slipping away.

"What if I'm too late?"

I could hear her distant voice. "I tried to keep you safe. I should have known I couldn't. You were always special."

I stared at the white haze, churning like my stomach.

"My sweet summer boy. I'll be thinking of you. I love --"

The words dwindled into nothing. My mom had been here. For a few minutes, I had seen her smile and heard her voice. Now she was gone.

I had lost her all over again.

"I love you, too, Mom."