Page 37
But Rodhi didn’t hesitate.
Within two seconds, he’d jumped up and leapt back into the quicksand, landing mere feet from where the rhino beetle buzzed and bubbles brewed. He tried to plunge his arm beneath the surface, but I could see all too soon that it was never going to work in time. Gileon was too far under, and Rodhi not far enough, and…
“Do something!” Emelle shrieked—not at me, but at Mrs. Wildenberg, who was gaping at the scene before her with bewilderment clouding her features.
Do something. I snapped out of my frozen position, gritted my teeth, and angled toward Mrs. Wildenberg, aiming my Manipulating power at her brain. I had no idea how to ask the root system to save someone else yet, but she did.
Do something, I commanded her.
A glazed look passed over her face moments before the ground quaked beneath our feet. The quicksand gurgled right in front of Rodhi, like a giant pot boiling and ready to burst. Several people gasped.
I held my breath.
Then something giant came launching out of the quicksand.
For a moment, I couldn’t even tell it was Gileon. It looked more like a mud-caked boulder, and I was worried Mrs. Wildenberg hadn’t saved him after all.
Then he hit the ground with a hmph, and terrified eyes flashed open within the mud. His mouth unfurled, and he raked in lungful after lungful of ragged breaths as Emelle and I crawled toward him and the rest of the class gathered round.
“Thank God!” Emelle cried. “Are you okay?”
Gileon didn’t answer at first. He simply gasped over and over, his pupils zigzagging between Emelle and me as if he didn’t even know us. It was only after Rodhi had landed on dry land again and Mrs. Wildenberg had hobbled over with a confused purse of her lips that he hoisted himself onto his elbows.
“Are you okay?” Emelle repeated.
“I… I’m fine, I guess,” Gileon said slowly. “I just…” He tried to brush mud off his shirt. A pointless endeavor. “I’m not a very good Wild Whisperer.”
“Oh, don’t say that.” Emelle grabbed his hand. “All of us have a hard time with some things. Right, Rayna? Right, Rodhi?”
Rodhi nodded vigorously, panting slightly and dripping with muck. “I can’t get those damn monkeys to laugh at one of my jokes for the life of me. Their fault for having such a shit sense of humor, but still.”
“And I have a really hard time with carnivorous plants,” I added. “And most insects, to be honest.”
As if right on cue, that rhinoceros beetle came whizzing over in a whir of shelled wings, looking smaller and more defeated than ever before as it settled on Gileon’s shoulder. Worried that I’d offended it, I clamped my mouth shut.
Just in time for Mrs. Wildenberg to rub her wrinkled hands together, apparently unaware that she’d just been Mind Manipulated into saving a student’s life.
“Well, then, now that everyone’s okay… let’s do that one more time.”
CHAPTER
12
COEN
Not again.
Again, my oath told me, and I swung my sword into the neck of a screaming woman with straw-colored hair.
She went down in a fountain of spurting blood, her corpse merging with the others at my feet. Flesh melting, limbs melding, face fusing with the mountain of dead bodies I had created. When I looked down, hundreds of terrified, wide-open eyes looked back, glassy with death. A mountain of the people I had killed.
No.
No.
No.
I tried to back away, but stumbled over another body that hadn’t melded with the others yet. A narrow face framed by dark hair, kohl still lining his eyes. Knives imbedded in every inch of his body. Hands that still twitched, reaching for me.
