Then the humans, three of them, all standing on top of the western wall: White Coat A, White Coat B, and, between them, Man in Suit. White Coat A leans over the parapet to speak to someone beneath them, within in the fortress. White Coat B and Man in Suit cling silently to the wall, warily watching the ground below, as if there were a tiger crouched in the grass. Or maybe a velociraptor.
Finally you see her below, boxed in by the castle walls. She is small, perhaps five or six, so short that the forest grasses rise up past her knees. Her shrewd, narrow eyes and clay-colored skin reveal her Polynesian heritage, and her obsidian hair comes almost all the way down to her waist.
She will be beautiful one day.
She is beautiful now.
As White Coat A speaks, the girl looks up blankly with her chocolate eyes. You wonder if she even understands the language. Any language.
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“Four fruit trees,” he says, pointing in turn to each corner of the fortress. “These are your only source of food in the garden. All you have to do for us to release you is eat one of the fruits.”
The little girl cocks her head to the side. That’s it?
As White Coat A continues, Man in Suit smiles. “The trees are exactly the same except for one minor detail.
Three of the trees bear fruit that is poisonous. In smell, color, and texture, the fruit is all identical, right down to the tiny little hairs on its skin. But if you choose the wrong one, you will suffer for hours. And then the toxins will kill you.”
A quiet falls over the citadel; even the birds have stopped crowing now.
“Do you understand what you have been asked?”
White Coat A asks the little girl.
She says nothing.
But for the first time, she smiles.
When Ashline came to, she was on her hands and knees in the sand, clutching her stomach.
“Are you okay?” Rolfe knelt down beside her and offered his hand.
She gave the world another few seconds to right itself as the vertigo wore off. “I’m fine,” she said, taking his hand. “It’s just . . .” She stopped there.
It’s just that the girl in the vision wasn’t me. It couldn’t have been. Ash had never so much as been to summer camp when she was that age, let alone participated in 159
some sort of jungle-bound experiment. And she and Eve had been inseparable during their early years, so it seemed impossible that the girl could be Eve, either. Yet the resemblance was uncanny.
“What’s unbelievable to me,” Ade said, returning Ashline to the conversation at hand, “is that if there are six of us at a small school like Blackwood, then statistically the world must be crawling with . . . you know.”
Serena shook her head. “There are others out there, but from what I’ve gathered, not many.”
“Then how the hell did we all end up at Blackwood?”
Ash asked.
Serena stared sheepishly off toward the horizon, as though she could see the waves, but she said nothing.
The realization dawned on all of them simultaneously.
Raja just happened to be the first one to speak.
“You called us here too?” Raja threw up her hands. “I had just settled in and was starting to enjoy junior year—
good grades, winning soccer season, hot boyfriend—and you made me leave all that for this glorified summer camp in Yogi Bear’s forest?”
Serena took a step in the direction of Raja’s voice. “I didn’t make you do anything. I told you, it only works on the willing.”
“Willing?” Raja shrieked. “Let’s find out if you’re willing to take the back of my hand across your face!”
She lunged for Serena, but Ash intercepted her and fastened her talons roughly on to Raja’s shoulders. “Down, tiger,” she said. “You’re about to slap a blind girl.”
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Raja took a few deep breaths and then shook herself out of Ash’s grip, like a wet dog trying to dry itself. “Well, she would have deserved it.”
Ash couldn’t blame her. She felt her old temper returning at Serena’s insistence on maintaining an air of mystery. The frustration of it all was beginning to make her itch as though larvae were crawling beneath her skin.
“Serena, you seem like a real sweet girl and all,” Ash said. “A little creepy, but nice enough. But so help me God, if you give me another blank stare and cryptic one-line answer, I will let the tiger out of her cage.” She added for Serena’s benefit. “I’m pointing my finger at Raja now.”
“Thanks,” the little Greek said. “But I’m blind, not stupid.”
Raja grumbled and took a tentative step toward Serena, who flinched. “All right, all right,” Serena conceded. “But you’re not going to like it.”
Serena cleared her throat and began. “When I was thirteen, not long after I lost my sight and only days after I first realized I had this . . . link to others, I was visited by a man named Jack. He must have seen me rocking back and forth in that old chair, on the porch, night after night. The first two times he visited, he just sat with me and listened. And the third time he called, he told me the three most important things that I needed to know about my destiny. He told me that I was a siren. He told me that I had to save the world. And he told me how to do it.”
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Rolfe drummed his fingers on his surfboard before he raised his hand. “Question. You mean siren like the mythological sirens? Aren’t you supposed to lure people to their doom, not save them from it?”
Ash gave him a harsh look. “Let’s humor her for the moment and pretend that the a modern-day siren has a different job description.”
“He said,” Serena continued, “that I had to call the others to a place off the map. A place where we could gather away from the noise of the cities and suburbs. A place where I could study and . . . watch you.”
Even Ade, whom Ash had pegged as the calm one, was squinting with what was either confusion or the beginnings of a headache. “So we’re here at Blackwood because a stranger who came up onto your porch—a stranger you’ve never even seen—told you to bring us here?”
Serena shrugged. “To be fair, I’ve never seen any of you, either.”
“And now what?” Lily asked. “We save the world?”
Serena shook her head. “We save ourselves, and in doing so, we save the world.” With that she slipped the knapsack off her back and dropped it into the wet sand.
She crouched and plunged her hands inside. And when she pulled them out . . .
“Oh, Christ,” Ash said.
In her tiny little hands Serena held five pieces of parchment rolled around wooden dowels. A triumphant grin spread across her face as she displayed them.
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“Scrolls?” Rolfe scoffed. “You brought us scrolls?
What are you, Moses?”
Ade punched Rolfe on the arm. “The Commandments were written on stone tablets, idiot.”
Serena giggled. “Well, I couldn’t find a hammer and chisel at the time. And the messages I was carrying seemed too important to, you know, type up and print out.”
“Messages?” Ash echoed, and then she couldn’t help but laugh. “Of course. The blind prophet. I should have known.”
Serena shook her head. “The messages aren’t from me; they’re from Jack. He said I was to hand-deliver each to you. He also said that under no circumstances are you to share your messages with anyone else.” She paused significantly, her eyes passing over the five summoned. “They’re instructions on how to prevent Ragnarok.”
“What the hell is Ragnarok?” Raja asked. “Sounds like some sort of German heavy metal concert.”
Rolfe’s turbulent expression cut the group’s laughter short. He adjusted his wet suit uncomfortably. “It’s Norse,” he said, correcting Raja. “And it means the end of the world.”
The cold spring ocean air renewed its attack on Ashline’s soggy clothes. She rubbed her arms. The pregnant clouds over the water looked ready to open up a
gain at any moment. This was all too much to take in.
Blind prophets, shared visions, a strange man writing 163
messages to five random teenagers, lost memories that weren’t hers . . .
Ash shuddered. “So you’ve been holding on to instructions on how to save the world since we transferred here?”
“I told you,” Serena reminded her, “I didn’t know who you all were until the other night in town. What was I supposed to do—send out a campus-wide e-mail inviting all of the recent transfer students to a paranormal support group? When Jack passed along the messages, he gave me only your true names. But after the visions we shared, I think I can connect the dots.”
“True names?” Lily repeated.
“Yes,” Serena said. “Our divine names. You see, we aren’t superheroes, or mutants, or freaks of the evolution-ary chain. We are gods and goddesses; we just somehow happened to be born as mortal as everyone else.”
While the others digested this news, Ash was trying to fathom how someone like Eve, who she was now supposed to believe was a divine demigod, could be capable of doing something so deplorable. Then again, now that she considered what little she knew from Greek and Roman mythology, the gods were known for treating humans like fodder.
“I’m really starting to wish I hadn’t slept through Mr.
Carpenter’s class on world mythology last month,” Raja said. She closed her eyes and rubbed her skull; Ash wasn’t sure whether she had a migraine or if she was trying to massage the truth into her brain.
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Serena felt along the edge of the first scroll until her fingers came to a small brail sticker. Her fingertips whispered over the tiny bumps. “Shango, Zulu god of thunder,” she said. “Where are you, Ade?”
After a hesitation the Haitian boy stepped forward and wrapped his hands around the scroll. He whispered
“Shango” as he did. Ashline could see the reflection of a falling steeple in his eyes.
Serena’s fingertips played over the next scroll.
“Konohana, Shinto goddess of the blossom.” And then,
“Lily.”
Lily’s eyes seemed to pierce right through the yellowed parchment as she took it gingerly into her hands, as if the real answers lay far beyond it. At the edge of the forest, the trees rustled.
“Baldur,” Serena said. “Norse warrior, father of justice, god of light.”
Rolfe made a noise in the back of his throat. “Going to take a wild guess this one is mine.” He glanced between Raja and Ashline. “Seeing as neither of you look particularly Scandinavian. Or male.”
“And I was so hoping it was me,” Raja said.
Serena held out one of the last two scrolls to her.
“Would you settle for Isis, Egyptian goddess of the dead?”
Raja shrugged and accepted the scroll. “Depends on whether I have access to her shoe closet and her credit cards.”
As the others laughed, Serena held out the final scroll. “I guess by process of elimination that leaves this one for you.”
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Reluctantly Ash reached out and took it by the wooden rods. She cradled it in her hands. “What’s the name on the side of the scroll?”
Serena frowned. “That’s the interesting part. There isn’t one.”
Ash flipped the scroll around, and sure enough, this one lacked a brail tag.
“Jack said I would just know who to give it to when the time was right,” Serena continued.
Ashline’s fingers tightened around the dowels.
“Maybe he knew that I’m not like the four of you.”
“Or maybe he thought it was important for you to figure out on your own.” Serena’s hand touched Ashline’s shoulder reassuringly. “I know it’s frustrating when all you want is answers, and instead you get a big pile of questions. When I first lost my sight back in Minneapolis, I prayed every morning and night for my vision to return.
Instead I met a strange man who sent me halfway across the country to gather five strangers, and I still don’t know why I’m here. I’m just going on faith.”
“Faith in God?” Ash asked.
“Ashline,” Serena said with a knowing smile, “we are the gods.”
With that, Ashline opened the scroll and held it out at arm’s length. The words were messy, written in blotchy black ink and in a scrawl that was clearly the writings of a blind girl, but large enough that they were easy to read.
The instructions that Jack had prophesied for Ash were only three words long:
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KILL THE TRICKSTER
Before Ash couldn’t even attempt to process the cryptic message, Lily said, “And what if we don’t want to do what Jack has asked us to? What if I don’t feel like indulging some crazy man from the Midwest who thinks he’s an oracle? What happens then?” She was trying hard to be irreverent, but even Ash noticed the way she tenderly rolled up the scroll when she had finished reading it.
While the question lingered in the air like a bad odor, the skies finally opened up once more, and the drizzle began to fall. Serena looked up at the sky and blinked. “I don’t know. But let’s not find out.”
Ashline shivered and tucked her scroll into the waistband of her mesh shorts. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
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INTERLUDE
Centr
al Amer
ica
You watch her for three days. So do the scientists.
Man in Suit hasn’t shown his face since the first day they trapped the little girl in the citadel, but the other white coats still linger, waiting, waiting for . . . Well, who knows what they want. A miracle maybe. But White Coat B has his doubts. He disappears for large chunks of time, gets a full night of rest, enjoys longer meals.
It’s White Coat A who has conviction. He eats all of his meals standing at attention on top of the wall, looking down on the test subject. He always takes the second shift sleeping, which he keeps brief. As the girl grows hungrier, the bags under White Coat A’s eyes grow darker.
When he jots in his notebook, he rarely glances down at the page. He spends long stretches of time on the first day trying not to blink, as if, in the instant when his eyes close, he might miss a miracle.
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But the miracle won’t come for three days.
Day 1: The girl spends the better part of her day crouched over the water trough in the middle of the
“courtyard.” She stays like this through the morning and well into the afternoon. Every once in a while she reaches out and touches her reflection. The first time the ripples roll through the mirror image of her face, she backs away, startled.
In the late afternoon she must feel the heat of the sun on the nape of her neck. She keeps glaring unhappily up at the sky, almost pissed, like she wishes she could snatch the glowing orb clean out of the heavens and submerge it in this tub of water. Sometime in the early evening she strolls determinedly toward the tree in the southwest corner—until now she’s avoided looking at the trees altogether—and she knocks on the trunk several times. Whether she is hoping for a reply, you don’t know, but she waits only a few seconds before wrapping her arms and legs around the rough bark. And she climbs.
Like a caterpillar she bunches up her body and then extends, bunches and extends, moving efficiently up the trunk using only her knees and hands. When she reaches the top, she rips out some of the lower fronds and tosses them to the ground below. She makes quick work of the tree until the soil is littered with palm fronds. Satisfied, she scoots halfway down the trunk before jumping the remaining distance to the ground.
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In her arms the girl gathers a bouquet of fronds, hugging them to her chest as if she had just been given a new teddy bear. She hauls them over to the water basin and, one by one, lays them across the trough until the water has absolutely no exposure to the air.
White Coat A scratches his head pensively, and then understanding explodes behind his eyes. He scribbles the wo
rd “EVAPORATION!” in his little notebook and underlines it several times.
Day 2: Boredom sets in. Then hunger. In the early part of the day, the girl leans against the trough, wrapping the palm fronds around her head in a leafy crown.
At one point she holds a frond in each hand and hops around silently flapping her “wings,” like a little Icarus longing to take flight. Closer to noon she undertakes an arts and crafts project by weaving several fronds together until she has a rudimentary but recognizable basket. She grins elatedly at her creation and for the next hour proceeds to play basketball with stones that she finds.
By the time she runs out of stones, her grin fades completely. The sun is high and hot again.
The moaning starts at dusk. She wraps her hand over her belly and gurgles. Later she walks over to the corner of the garden and vomits under the shadow of the northeast tree. Mostly water comes out, along with any remaining vestiges of her dinner from forty-eight hours before. When the dry heaves finish, she walks back to the water trough and curls up on the bed of fronds she made 170
for herself. Strange how even in the cold of the jungle night, she never shivers.
Day 3: It’s going to rain. Even the macaws, which are jabbering excitedly up in the canopy, seem to know it. The girl moves slowly, weakened by hunger, but she never takes her eyes off the sky.
The drizzle doesn’t start to come down until an hour before dusk. Soon it increases to a pour, the droplets coming down in long, cold strands, liquid icicles sent like darts from the sky. The girl smiles, interestingly, fool-ishly. The rain may replenish her water, but it’s still only a matter of time before she starves to death.
Before you can wonder further on this, she drops to her knees and plunges her hands into the soggy ground.
Her fingers pull aside handful after handful of soil until she spots something in the shallow earth. She loads a few clumps of dirt into her basket, and when you float down closer, you can finally see her precious cargo: a mass of worms wriggling in the mud pie, confused by their sudden exposure to the jungle air.