Worldwielder, page 30
Nothing was said for several seconds, and despite her evident displeasure at being seen like this, tears continued to spill from Dez's eyes.
“What happened?” Melissa finally asked.
The thin woman burst into words as though she'd been waiting for the question. “She ees dead. Dulce… ees dead.”
“I'm sorry,” Melissa said. And she was. Despite Cynn's pull. Despite her antagonistic relationship with the sisters. She knew, if not the pain of losing a sister, a pain equal to it.
Dez looked to the floor, sobbing. “She was a foop, but she was my foop seester!”
“I know.”
“Ees not right, pleeska!”
“No, it isn't.”
Dez averted her face as a fresh wave of sorrow hit her. Then she turned back to Melissa, her gun arm going rigid. A cold fire burned in her gaze. “Ees you fault,” she said.
Melissa sighed. “Probably.”
“I should keel you.”
Melissa tilted her head to indicate Kyle. “If you kill me, just make sure you kill him, too.” She said it without the slightest hint of sarcasm, or bitterness, or cynicism. Such was the effect of Cynn.
Dez flicked her eyes to the half-dead body hanging from Melissa's side, and she started as though he'd popped into existence a moment ago. She gulped and looked the both of them over from head to foot, horror-struck eyes taking in every detail. The blood. The torn clothes. The knife wounds. The weariness. The desperation and hope and resolve. The last feeble tether of strength holding them up.
And she went slack. “Ees… ees you friend?”
“Yeah.”
The arm holding the gun fell, its cord of intention severed. Then the eyes fell. Then a few more tears fell, making shimmering circles on the obsidian floor. “Afya,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“Afya. Ees a world. You take heem there. Eet feex heem. Ees across thee Gallery. Left. Third row. Tenth column.”
Melissa could only blink, Dez's words cutting through the shield of composure Cynn gave her.
The G threw up her hands. “You a foop, pleeska?! Go!”
Thoughtless to utter her thanks, which probably would have gone unappreciated anyway, Melissa lurched into motion. Dragging Kyle, she hobbled away from Dez and into the depths of the fog. Soon, any trace of where she'd come from was lost to sight. Surrounding her was nothing but that strange luminous darkness, its ambiguity promising the infinite.
The Gallery. It was a place of wonder, but a wonder she'd never before given much thought, her every visit marked by danger and terror. It was a place at once ancient and novel, at once familiar and foreign, no matter how many times you'd been here. It was also the place she and Kyle were likely to die. The other side of the Gallery was a long way off. And Kyle felt heavier by the second.
After another minute, her addled brain reminded her of what should have been obvious. She came to a stop and pulled the chain of the golf ball from her neck, expanding it in the space in front of her. She dragged Kyle inside, collapsing in a chair for a moment of rest. If she'd let herself stay another moment, she would have passed out, so with leaden legs, she stumbled out the hatch, collapsed the structure, and stumbled on.
The relief of weight was little help, however. Each new step was a mountain to scale. Each new breath was strained in and out as a two-ton block of cement crushed her chest. Each new moment was a lifetime in which to live and die and struggle.
But when she passed Prota, she knew she'd make it. The knowledge that her journey could be over right now if she wished, that she could take Kyle to a hospital on Earth, spurred her on.
The hardest part was not being able to see him. He could die at any moment, and all the warning she'd have would be the sudden explosion of his mind. She wouldn't even be able to watch the light leave his eyes.
But he wouldn't die. He couldn't die. Not now. Not when she was this close to his salvation. Cynn made her sure of this. Her own conscience confirmed it. Neither was trustworthy at present, but she had no other guides.
She thought of her absent friends, a smile coming to her face. After everything, their belief in her hadn't been for nothing. Ringo must have known there was only a chance in a million she'd succeed in her rescue, but he'd died so she could try anyway. Fink had stood by her side despite every danger, urging her to continue even when she had little reason to. And Brock had done a very hard thing indeed—broken a promise because he knew it was the right thing to do. She couldn’t ask for truer friends.
She cried. Cynn couldn't stop her, though it made an impassioned attempt. She cried not because she was destitute, but because she was fortunate beyond measure. A thousand things should have defeated her, not least of all her own weaknesses, failures, and fears, but had they? No. No, they hadn't.
Thank you, Melissa thought, a thousand times over.
And there was Afya's painting, a sight more wonderful than any she'd ever seen. Upon its canvas was a tree, its surface crisscrossed with seams. Seams showing where fractured pieces had been reassembled. A broken object made whole again.
Melissa touched it. She alighted in the gentle waters of an ocean like no other, its surface carpeted in brilliant blue flowers, stacks and stacks of them, their edges overlapping such that no water could be seen. From these flowers came a smell that set her dizzy with emotion. It was the scent of Ringo's cigarettes.
She'd seen no land in her journey here via the gap, but perhaps this was land of a sort. The water didn't pull her under as ordinary water did. Rather, she floated without effort, only her legs submerged.
Pulling the golf ball from her neck, she tossed it into the air, and the structure grew into existence in a second. Inside, she found Kyle exactly where she'd left him, frail as ever. But alive.
She dragged him through the hatch and into the sea, collapsing on her back beside him, tucking her uninjured arm around his own. With her last fumes of strength, she entered her vim and pulled on his mind with Prota. She was relieved to find, upon releasing her efforts, that he didn't slip back into Skavitu's pull. He was free.
She shut her eyes.
Eet feex him, Dez had said. It. Not them. Not people, but the world itself.
Carried in gentle rolling arcs by the swell, basking in the light of a golden sun, as close to Kyle as it was possible to be, Melissa slipped into unconsciousness.
THIRTY-FIVE
Melissa opened her eyes to a vivid sunset. The sun was just touching the flower-speckled horizon, casting its scarlet half-light upon sky and sea alike. A light breeze rippled across her hair, carrying with it warmth and that wistful aroma of Ringo. She felt the pain of his death anew, crying despite herself. Her mind, she then realized, had been liberated from the pull of Cynn in her sleep. Grief aside, it was an aid she no longer needed.
She glanced to her arm first, stunned to find no trace of the wound Luud's knife had inflicted. Movement was an endeavor beset with stiffness, but no pain.
Her eyes shot to Kyle. He remained by her side, but the most startling of transformations had overtaken him. Wheezes were replaced by soft breaths, his anemic face was flushed again with color, and through the hole in his shirt, a pink line was all that remained of the former lesion. Though his clothes were still stained red, his body was free of cuts. She could scarcely believe her eyes, checking and rechecking his injuries a dozen times. The waters of Afya had accomplished their restorative purpose.
In her amazement, it took her a full minute to notice his eyes were open. The instant she did, she froze, watching his face intently. He wasn't sleeping. He was just staring up at the near-night sky, unblinking, unmoving. His mind, as she'd left it, was in the pull of Prota. It was no longer the changed thing she'd observed upon first finding him. It was the mind of the old Kyle, the real Kyle. And yet, she knew something was still wrong with him. He should have seen her by now.
She put a hand on his arm, leaning over him until her face was directly in his line of sight. Even then, he showed no reaction. His eyes were sightless. He was like a corpse. A living, breathing corpse.
She stepped back and looked him over, racking her brains for an explanation. What had she missed? What was there left to repair? Even as she wondered this, she knew the answer.
For years, Kyle's mind had been trapped in the pull of Skavitu. A pull that made him obey commands as drastic as think like Luud. He'd been told not to speak, not to act, not even to think as himself. Permanent changes could have resulted in his mind. Permanent damage.
Perhaps what was broken in Kyle now wasn't something she could fix… wasn't something anyone could fix. It was no organic problem, or else Afya would have done away with it. Perhaps he was doomed to remain in this state forever.
She took a deep breath, shocked at her calm. She should have collapsed in a blubbering mess at the thought that Kyle might be irreparably ruined, as she had on multiple prior occasions. But this time, she felt only a twinge of sadness. As the air flowed in and out of her lungs and blood coursed through her body, she realized something. A fact that hit her with the steady certainty of the setting sun.
She could live without Kyle. Not just survive. Live.
Standing over him with the knife in her hand, she'd had to make a decision, one she hadn't even been aware of at the time—she had to let him go. Though she loved him still, more than she'd ever love another living thing, she no longer needed him. She could accept his loss, knowing she'd done all she could to save him, and then she could move on.
She went and sat in the hatch of the golf ball and watched his motionless form as sunset melted into dusk, hoping for but expecting no change. She knew she couldn't stay here forever, but she wanted to savor this respite for a little while. The Gallery would be a changed place now that the Gs knew there were two wielders at large. Life would be forever different. She might never live another day without looking over her shoulder in paranoia. No matter where she went, she'd be a fugitive. To top it all off, she'd have to take care of this catatonic Kyle. Such was the price she'd paid to fulfill her quest.
And it was all worth it, she thought, watching the stars flow silently overhead. Hours passed. Several times, she drifted off to sleep without knowing, waking to the same darkness, the same still boy.
Just as the first glow of approaching morning colored the sky, she hopped out of the hatch. There was no putting it off any longer. It was time to go.
She waded to Kyle and towed him across the flowers towards the golf ball. There, she reached for the edge of the hatch to pull herself inside, casting a momentary glance upon her friend.
And that was when she saw it.
The pattern. Blue, red, green. Blue, red, green. Blue, red, green. Over and over again like clockwork, so faint it was a wonder she'd noticed it at all.
Kyle's mind was stuck in some kind of loop.
Every few seconds, it cycled through the same feelings of sadness, rage, and terror, like it was trapped. Like something awful had just happened and it didn't know how to make sense of life anymore.
The sight reminded Melissa of something—herself in the days following Kyle's disappearance. She'd sat in her room for hours, scarcely aware of her surroundings, her mind running in hopeless zigzags and figure eights and ellipses. If a bomb had gone off in her closet, she might not have even flinched. She hadn't been completely dead to the world, as Kyle was now, but she had been stuck in a loop of sorts. If another wielder had been watching her mind then, she expected they would have seen something similar to what she saw in his now.
If she was right, Kyle only needed something to jolt him from it.
But what? The first thing that came to her mind were fairy tales, the ones where the princess awakened to a kiss. Kyle was no princess, and this was no fairy tale… but perhaps she could give him a kiss of a different sort, something just as individual and meaningful, that would cut through the blockage of feelings his mind had set up.
She slipped into her vim and began to search through the coils of worlds making up his mind. They were endless, too many to count, and she had to find just one. She wondered if she'd even be able to identify it, having never been there before, having never used it. There were thousands of worlds with nearly the same shade. It was like trying to find a candle against the surface of the sun.
But the moment she saw it, she recognized it at once. It was as distinct from every other world as night from day.
Pineapple.
Gathering up his mind in her grip, she pulled. She pulled softly, like the tug of a breeze against a flower's stem. She pulled urgently, like the drag of a mother's hand on a wandering child. She pulled with love and fear and hope and sadness.
Then she let go.
Free of her vim, she leaned over Kyle, her dangling hair brushing his neck. She waited. But not long.
He took in a breath. A breath alien to those that came before it. An intentional breath, not a comatose body's unconscious summons for air. Then he blinked. Movement came to his eyes. Staggering, slight at first, then smooth and quick. They found Melissa.
He smiled, but the expression quickly disappeared as his eyes watered. “You found me. Melissa… you… you found me.”
She felt too much to speak, as two and a half years of foiled hopes and broken dreams ended in an instant. As every prior moment of pain, heartache, and woe was swept aside, forgotten. As she saw in her friend a relief and joy beyond words. As the same feelings echoed and redoubled through her, washing in every carved-out hollow of her soul, mending the scars and wounds of her journey, rejoining her cracked pieces.
She could live without Kyle, but that only made life with him so much better.
She blinked back tears. Unconsciously, she found herself doing what immediately seemed the only thing to do—she pulled on his mind, not with any particular world, but with all the different worlds pulling on her mind at present, letting him feel exactly what she was feeling. After a few seconds, he did the same. Back and forth they went, telling each other all that words could never make sense of, speaking in a language of simple truths, becoming one as only two wielders could.
It was ecstasy.
They lingered together as the new day of Afya came to life around them—bright, vivid, glorious. Bursting with promise. And for the first time since sitting in the grass outside her house to begin that final chess game, Melissa's mind turned the color only Kyle could give her.
The Slade Gambit
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Note From the Author
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For Grandpa
J.M. VAUGHAN was homeschooled growing up, which gave him ample opportunity to do anything and everything but school. He spent his time writing novels, building spaceships and castles out of LEGOs, and making stop-motion movies. He attended film school in Southern California and has worked as a graphic designer, editor, videographer, colorist, and visual effects artist. After several false starts, he embarked on the project that would become Worldwielder in September 2015. He currently lives in Boise, ID, where he is hard at work on his next novel, a science-fiction epic due for release in 2018.
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J.M. Vaughan, Worldwielder
