At length the creature reached one of the stone piles and with great effort tossed the stone in its arms onto the pile. Next it climbed up, choosing a specific stone, and with the same great effort, took the stone into its arms, curling around it and then limping to the pile of rocks on the opposite side.
Now that the creature was walking straight for Conrad and Piper they could see that she was not a creature at all but a very, very old woman. All but two of her teeth had rotted away, and those last two miserable specimens were sticking out at odd angles from her mouth and praying for release. She was so bent and twisted that her back had formed itself into a hunch almost the size of the rock she carried. She had no shoes on her feet and there were open sores covering every part of them such that each step was its own specific agony. The dirty daggerlike fingernails on her hands made them look more like claws than anything human. As she moved, the muscles in her face tightened and shook from the effort of it all, and perhaps without even knowing that she was doing it, she moaned.
The fear coursing through Piper’s body began to give way to another feeling entirely: pity. She found herself rooting for the woman; there was such determination on her face and her body was so feeble, surely too weak to make it to the massive pile of rocks against the far wall. At any moment Piper worried that the weight of the rock would pull the old woman to the ground and pin her there and possibly even kill her.
Piper held her breath with each step she took, waiting until her foot was safely returned before relaxing again.
“Do you think she knows we’re here?” Piper whispered.
Conrad shook his head.
“Hello,” he called out.
The old woman continued without interruption on her piteous journey.
With quick steps Conrad positioned himself by the rock pile and waited for the old woman to reach him. As she approached she did not acknowledge the light, nor did she see that Conrad was now standing by the rock pile waiting for her to arrive. Piper flew down next to him, propping the torch on the stone pile.
“Hello,” Piper said this time.
The old woman hobbled onward.
“She may have lost her vision and her hearing,” Conrad pointed out. He was waiting for her to stop at the base of the pile. Sure enough she did, just as she had done before, and it was then that Conrad reached out and took the rock out of her arms. He was so surprised by its weight he almost fell over.
When the old woman found herself without a rock and no explanation for its absence she stopped suddenly and with great effort opened her eyes. The moment the light hit her corneas she threw the filthy sticks that were her arms over her unsuspecting eyes as a shield.
“Owwwww,” she moaned. “Owwww.”
Piper reached out to her but Conrad stopped her. “Let her eyes adjust. Who knows how long it’s been since she last saw light.”
Curling into herself, the old woman moaned, rocking back and forth. Taking the torches, Piper flew with them to the hallway and left them out of sight, reducing the amount of light by half.
Blinking furiously and holding her hand above her head to keep the glare away, the old woman began to blink and squint and coax her tired old eyes back into seeing. As she was always in the darkness, she went days, or was it weeks or even months, without bothering to open them: when there was nothing to see you stopped looking.
She opened her mouth to speak, but began to cough violently. She motioned to her mouth. Conrad looked about and spotted a wooden bucket with a metal cup on a stick hitched against its side.
Piper saw it too and flew to it, dipped the cup in, and filled it with water. She was back at the woman’s side moments later and helped her place it to her lips.
The woman slurped it greedily, letting it slop down her face and drench the rags against her chest. When she had sucked the contents of two full cups she waved it away and opened her mouth.
“Danger.” Her mouth trembled and worked hard to form the words that seemed foreign to her. “Get out!” She pointed a sinewy arm back the way they had come.
“Can we help you?” Piper offered.
She looked back and forth between the two of them, then got up and, as they watched with amazement, she picked up another rock and started walking back to the other rock pile. They found themselves following behind her.
“We can show you the way out,” Piper offered.
“I cannot talk … to you. No one is allowed down here.” She looked over her shoulder suddenly. “No one has ever come. He might hear.”
Conrad stepped forward quickly. “Who is he?”
She hobbled faster, trying to escape them. “Danger.”
“What kind of danger?”
“Stupid boy,” she spat. “You know nothing.”
“Then educate me!” Conrad’s demand was met with silence. “How long have you been down here?”
She snorted. “I have no need of time. I was a young woman when last I saw daylight.”
A look passed between Piper and Conrad. “You’ve been down here all this time moving these rocks back and forth?” Piper was aghast.
“Stupid child. These are not rocks: they are memories.”
“You mean your memories were turned into rocks?”
“Some.”
Conrad was getting tired of this game. If she was determined to be stubborn it could take considerable time to pry anything out of her, and Max could return at any moment. Conrad decided he was going to have to bluff the old woman to get her talking. It was a gamble but one he calculated would pay off.
“Max sent us down here. Do you know Max?”
She said nothing.
“I’m going back to meet him now.” Conrad started to walk away. “I’ll tell him that I met you and I’ll tell him that you told me a lot of interesting things.”
She stopped walking toward the rock pile. “I told you nothing.”
“You told us everything.” Conrad continued to walk and the woman started to hobble after him desperately.
“Noooo,” she wailed. “Noooo.”
Piper was distressed to see her so upset. “Conrad!”
Conrad spun around and charged up to the old hag’s face, pointing his finger at her threateningly. “If you tell us nothing, I will go to Max and say that you have told us everything. If, though—” He paused a beat to make sure he had her attention. “If you tell us everything then we will say nothing and you will be safe. You choose.”
She dropped the rock. “No one is safe around Max. You are a fool.”
“We know that Max is the Guardian. We know that he is immortal,” Conrad said quickly. “Piper and I are Outsiders and we know about the rest of the world too.”
She rested her weary bones upon the rock. “Max is not immortal,” she moaned. “He lets people believe that, but … it is not truth.”
“If he’s not immortal how has he lived so long?”
“He—” She searched for the word and at the same time put her hand to her mouth as though she were putting imaginary food in it. “He’s a—a Gobbler.”
Piper repeated the word like she could taste it. “A Gobbler?”
“That is so, yes. He eats energy. But not all energy is equal. Grief, suffering, creates a lot of energy and it keeps him young. The more he eats the longer he remains young.”
“My god,” Conrad breathed. “He’s like a vampire.”
“That is his gift.” She nodded. “Without that energy he would wither and die.”
“And you’re the only one who knows this and so he keeps you down here,” Conrad considered.
“He feeds on my suffering too, but it is not why I am down here. He keeps me here because I would destroy him if I could.” She said this calmly and without malice, and it made her declaration all the more chilling.
Piper wondered what possible series of events could have led up to such a terrible end. “What happened to you?”
The sincerity of Piper’s question melted the old woman’s hardness and she sig
hed deeply. “So long ago. I think of it little.” Her attention turned inward and she got lost in her thoughts.
Conrad could see that she was ready to talk and so he approached her gently. “How was it that you learned Max is a Gobbler?”
“Because I broke the law. And because I am his wife.”
CHAPTER
40
“I was eighteen the first time I met Max. I was shy and excited. He seemed to know all about me, but then he knew all about everything. He told me that he’d been to the moon. Imagine, going to the moon!”
“Nothing much to look at up there, but way fun bouncing up and down and the earth looks a sight,” is what he said.
Now that the old woman had started talking she became oblivious to Piper and Conrad and went into a world all her own.
“My mother always said that I was very beautiful. She said I shone like the stars and that is why she named me Starr. When I was still very young it was discovered that I had the ability to read other people’s memories. My mother told me that memory keepers are rare. She said it was my job to take the memories that people offered me and to hold them safe. I did as I was told. I ate the memories of the elders. I swallowed the memories of the storyteller. Any memory I was offered I held on to. I was filled with memories.
“Max started to visit me but I didn’t notice for some time that he only came when no one else was around. He said he was busy but the truth is that he likes to stay out of sight and in the shadows. The truth is that he—well, the truth is complicated.”
The old woman grew silent, and Conrad and Piper waited patiently for her to continue.
“He was so mysterious, so thrilling, so full of things that I fell deeply in love with him. He never loved me. I know that now, but I believed that he did at the time. Just like I believed that he was immortal. He never really told me that he loved me and he never told me that he was immortal, in so many words. The thing about Max is that he directs your attention and then allows you to believe what you want to believe.”
“At dawn one day we married ourselves. No one else was there. I was thrilled by the secrecy. There are no secrets in Xanthia and to have one was exciting. When I became pregnant Max told me to go to the elders and explain to them that my child was a special child. I did as he told me.
“The elders were not surprised. It was then that I learned this wasn’t the first time this had happened. Over the history of Xanthia there had been other children born in this way. It didn’t happen very often and when it did no one talked about it. After that Max went away and didn’t come back, not even when our child was born. I had a little boy and I named him Peter. He was … extraordinary, with a heart so pure and good. He was always happy, always looking for ways to help people and bring them joy. He filled me with a deep contentment and I no longer cared or thought about Max.
“As Peter grew he became worried about his gift. It seemed to me that he had a strong gift; the way he made people happy, the way he would calm them if they were upset. Almost like he could place thoughts into their heads. I saw the gift growing, but one day it went away, and after that he was often confused and sometimes angry.
“He was eleven and his celebration was a week away when I was told that he was going to have to leave—that they were going to take him to the outside world. I swore I would never let him go. I kicked up such a fuss Max himself returned. He was angry with me and told me that I was ungrateful, that Peter was his child too and he could do with him what he wanted.
“He would listen to nothing I said. I was so angry I did to him the very worst thing I could think of—the thing that no Xanthian has ever done before: I used my ability with ill intent. It wasn’t an offered memory—I took it. Without his permission, I saw everything.”
The old woman who had once been a beautiful young woman named Starr shuddered. Her thin lips curled back from her two pointy teeth and her tongue darted out and licked them. Her eyes shifted back and forth as she remembered.
“In his mind I saw how he fed upon the pain and misery of others. And oh, how much pain he had caused. How relentless he had been. The Outsiders were powerless against him. He was so clever, so devious, and they were so unaware. I saw how he had taken his children before from Xanthia, and how those children had great gifts that he would manipulate: how he used those children as instruments of his terrible will. That is the very thing that he had planned for my Peter.
“He knew that I had seen what he was. ‘I will tell everyone,’ I said. ‘It is time you stopped this and our peoples were together again.’
“Max went wild and said the Outsiders and the Chosen Ones would never be together—he would make sure of that. I ran from him and hid with Peter. Sure enough he found us in a cave and he gave me a choice: either Peter would spend the rest of his life suffering, or I would. Of course, I chose myself. Then he had Joseff the stone maker turn the memories that I had stolen into these rocks. He locked me down here with them and you are the first I have seen since that time. When the day comes that I stop moving the stones Peter will be put to death. He is a good boy, my Peter.”
“But—” Conrad hated to interrupt the story but he was on the edge of his seat and couldn’t wait a moment longer. “What about Peter? What happened to him?”
“Max would have erased his memory and left him to fend for himself among the Outsiders.”
“Are you sure?”
“He did that with all his other children. It is certain Peter would have been the same. When he grew older Max would have used him to do his work.”
Conrad stood up and walked away. On the White House rooftop his father had said his name was Peter. My mother was so beautiful and she sacrificed everything for me, his father had said. The truth was snapping into place in quick motions inside his head.
“Conrad?” Piper whispered, interrupting his thoughts.
Conrad looked up to see that Piper was right in front of him, her face full of concern. He filled his lungs with the damp black air and shook his head. “Peter is my father.”
Piper didn’t understand him. “What?”
“My father told me his name was Peter. Remember J. was investigating my father and said that he was abandoned in the desert? Her Peter and my father are the same person.”
“But … that means she’s your grandmother!”
Conrad nodded, looking at Starr, who was slumped over and shaking. Suddenly he put his head in his hands.
“Are you okay?” Piper waited for him to recover.
“If she’s my grandmother, then Max is my grandfather, and … he knows that. Max knows who I am.”
“Wow,” was all Piper could say, and the moment lingered while Conrad processed this.
“I’m gonna have to say it,” Piper sighed finally. “Your family has some serious issues. I think you’re going to need therapy or something.”
“I think you’re right,” Conrad agreed.
“What are you going to do now?”
Conrad was watching Starr, who had grumbled herself to her feet and was hobbling back toward the rocks. “We have to help her.”
As she was struggling to pick up a memory rock, Conrad approached her and tried to take the weight of the rock away.
“Leave me be,” she snapped. “I have told you everything and now you must go.”
She snatched the memory rock and Piper could see that it was a very heavy memory indeed.
“Please”—Conrad attempted to help her—“you don’t need to do that anymore.”
“No!” She hobbled away. “Let me be.”
“We can help you,” Piper called after her.
“Help yourselves. I have made my choice. Now you must make yours.”
“Maybe,” Conrad began with the utmost care, following next to her, “something happened. Peter was hurt and it’s possible that he’s no longer alive.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head harshly. “Peter is alive. I know this.”
“But how can you know?” Piper a
sked with equal sensitivity.
The old woman dumped the rock and took a moment to gather her strength again before rummaging in her rags to pull out a necklace that had been hanging from her scrawny neck. Conrad instantly recognized it from the painting. Just like his father’s bloodstone, there was a heartbeat in the center of it, opening and contracting to a steady beat.
The old woman looked at the light and reassured herself. “This sits against my own heart so that I know. See? He is alive. If he were dead it would not beat.”
“But…” Conrad reached out to touch the pulsing red stone. “Where is he?”
“Fool. Max has him. He’s hiding him from me in the cave at the top of the mountain. The same cave where I tried to hide him.”
Conrad’s eyes went wide. “How do you know?”
She snorted. “Because Max likes to gloat. He likes the fact that I tried to hide him there and now he’s hiding him there from me. Irony is what he calls it.” She reached for another rock and turned her back on them. “He wants you to find him but he will not let you take him, foolish boy. Don’t even try.”
Conrad heard the old woman’s words but disregarded their meaning because he was already running to find the cave, and Piper was flying behind him.
CHAPTER
41
By the time he stood overlooking the Colorado River, Max’s blood was jumping with anticipation.
There was a silence around the river. The usual chatter of birds and frogs brought Max back to quieter times that he had known and remembered with nostalgia.
The world, Max had come to realize, was no longer as fun as it used to be. There was too much organization, too much peace, education, justice, and far too many medical advances. People no longer dwelled in superstition and ignorance, but relied on rational thinking, research, and science. Everything was examined and connected; kids tweeted and Twittered and took pictures that they posted on a Facebook. Everyone was looking at everyone else and nothing was hidden. And it was just the beginning, of that Max was certain. There were advances just around the corner that would eradicate war, and not long after that there would be a true global village based on peace and equality.