AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“For what? So he could drown ’em!”
Memphis put a steadying hand on Isaiah’s too-warm back. “We can’t do nothin’ about what other people do. We can only do right by what we believe. It’s a hard path to be who you are and try to put your best self into a world that doesn’t always show thanks for it. A world that can be unfair. Downright cruel at times. But otherwise… well, you might as well be one of those soulless dead.” Memphis embraced his brother, sheltering him with his arms. “I love you, Little Man. I won’t ever, ever, ever stop. Never.”
“Promise?” Isaiah said. His voice was thick with snot.
“Promise. We’re going to get our powers working and put things back to order.”
Isaiah looked up. “Why?”
“Whatcha mean?”
“The order’s all wrong.”
Memphis’s heart tightened. No matter how hard you tried, kids saw the world as it was.
“Then we’re going to make a new one.”
The day was coming on hot. The bath Evie had taken last night was for naught. She sweated through the cotton of her shapeless dress. “I want to try again.”
“Yeah? You want to see all those dead faces again?” Theta said. “Because I don’t think I can.”
“And anyway, we can’t. Sarah Beth is still feeling poorly,” Isaiah protested.
“I know, but we can’t afford to rest,” Evie said. “The King of Crows certainly isn’t. Neither is Jake Marlowe. And we might not have long here anyway.”
The night before, the doctor had come to the house to see to Sarah Beth. The Diviners had made themselves scarce, but Evie and Memphis had accidentally run into him as they left their nightly broadcast in the barn. The doctor had looked from Evie to Memphis. “How do you do. I’m Virginia, Ada’s cousin,” Evie had said as Memphis slunk away to the farmhands’ quarters, out of sight. But Evie could see the suspicion in the man’s eyes. And Mrs. Olson was certainly not happy about what had happened to her daughter.
“Sarah Beth’ll be sore,” Isaiah grumbled. “She’ll be sore at me.”
“I’ll take the blame,” Evie promised, and Isaiah relented somewhat.
The Diviners came together once more.
“I’m scared.” Evie hadn’t meant to say it. It just crept out.
“You’re telling the truth,” Ling said.
Evie’s laugh was brittle. “Is that so unusual?”
“Yes. You don’t always trust us,” Ling said.
“Oh,” Evie said. “I’m sorry.”
Ling took Evie’s hand. “What’s next?”
“Honestly? I don’t know,” Evie said. But wait—she did know something. Perhaps it was nothing, but sometimes the tiniest things moved mountains. “When I was attacked in Gideon”—she did not say, When Mabel attacked me—“there was a moment where I was just free. Like with Henry and Ling, trying to find each other in the dream world. Instead of trying to make something happen, let’s just look for one another.”
“When Theta created that disturbance in Times Square, she said ‘stop’ and then ‘stop’ was all I could think about,” Memphis added.
“Just look for one another?” Henry said.
“Yes,” Memphis said. “Feel for one another.”
The moment they shut their eyes, Sam started thinking of the stargazer and zooming through all that space, but this time he wasn’t afraid. It was as if he and his friends were floating up toward some great unknown all together. They were making a dimension. They were the dimension, and it, them. They were no longer bound by line and shape, by shame and fear. They simply were. A state of being so pure it was as if they had never been cut from the fabric of time and hurtled into physical bodies but existed in all time, all space at once. They were part of one another. It was beyond telepathy; they were transcendence. They could feel one another’s heartbeats. It was as if they lived in one another’s skins. Jericho’s fingers wanted to move across the piano keys of Henry’s memory and the face of a beautiful boy in New Orleans. Theta’s anger and fear swirled inside Sam, but so did her joy at singing and dancing. Evie was Memphis on Lenox Avenue, a poem half-formed in his heart. Ling was Isaiah saying, “Listen. Listen!” while people talked around him, over him, ignoring him. Memphis felt a nagging pain in his legs and then the beauty of physics making sense as he became Ling and she him and they were all one being. Jericho could touch Theta’s firepower, borrow it, make it his. Isaiah reached into his brother’s healing with a mischievous joy—so that’s how it is! Somehow, they had gotten past shame and pride and fear to vulnerability. They weren’t just combining powers, they were connecting. Anticipating one another’s moves. Beating with one heart. It was like the most beautiful voice surrounding them, looping through them, promising that no one is ever alone because aloneness does not exist. All are connected.
When they broke the circle at last, Memphis could still feel the others within him. It was fading, but he’d felt it nonetheless.
Ling smiled in wonder. “I think we’ve just discovered what we can do. We’re not a weapon. At least, not the one they were counting on.”
