The hallway I walked through was only one wing of the cabin. Two more hallways branched out from the kitchen with as many rooms down the walls as the first one. On one side of the kitchen was a general living area before coming to the front door.
“Well,” said Oak, “we have quite a few people living here. We made it as big as we could so everyone would have space. Not all the rooms are occupied at this time, but we didn’t know how long this war would last, nor how many people we’d have to house by the end of it.”
“Who is being housed here?”
“That’s who you’re about to meet,” he said.
He turned the knob on the front door and pushed it open.
Noise met my ears when it opened. The four of us walked out the door and I blinked in the sunlight.
“Oh, my God,” I said.
There were close to a dozen kids running around the yard.
The surprising thing wasn’t the fact that they were kids; it was the fact that these kids had abilities that they technically shouldn’t have had. Three boys chased after each other with different colored Bee wings attached to their backs. I saw almost identical quintuplets practice molding various parts of their bodies together. A little girl ran by and threw fire she had conjured at a boy chasing after her. The little boy laughed and put out the fireballs being thrown at him with balls of his self-made water.
“All these kids…” I said, finding it hard to talk while staring out over the yard. “They have…”
“The high priority abilities Southerners have never believed they could have,” Oak said.
“How is this possible?” I said. I turned around to look at the group. “The North lost it when they found out you had
one
person with an ability like that. What’s going to happen when they find out that you have
ten
of them?”
“That’s what we’re worried about,” Oak said. “That’s why they’re gathered here; so we can protect them and keep them out of the North’s sight.”
“But it only took us a night to get here,” I said. “Are we already on Southern lands?”
“No,” he said. “We’re still in the North. We figured it would be safer to keep them in the North since it’s monitored less than the South is right now.”
“Oh,” I said. Something clicked in my mind. “Do you know what you have here? You guys have the makings of your own ruling class. Find a Southerner with a pair of Butterfly wings and you guys can form your own kingdom separate from the North. You can be ruled by your own king or queen.”
“But that’s exactly what we don’t want,” Kaia said. “We already have a working council and army; we don’t want to be ruled over. We want to be self-governed.”
I looked at them, taken aback. “You guys want a democracy?”
“Yes,” she said. “We’re tired of being ruled by the Northern monarchy that, quite frankly, doesn’t give a damn about us. Ever since we broke off from the North and formed South Aetheria we have been governing ourselves without a king. We have a council that
common
people can talk to and help make decisions that matter to them. It has worked beautifully for quite a number of years, but for some reason we now have a generation of royalty. It’s as if we can’t escape having someone rule over us.”
“Then don’t let it happen,” I said with a shrug.
I turned back around and looked at the surrounding area. I had been right when I thought I had seen mountains the previous night. The cabin was placed in a small valley. I saw a narrow road lead away from us and create a path through the low slopes between two mountains. I walked down the wooden steps and toward the little girl that was throwing fire at the little boy. She was taking a rest in the grass.
I knelt beside her. “Hi.”
She looked at me with her turquoise eyes. “Hi.”
“What’s your name?”
“Adeline,” she said.
I smiled. “I’m Emma. It’s nice to meet you, Adeline.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too.”
“That’s a very special ability you have,” I said.
Her hand gave a nervous twitch and a couple of sparks flew out of it.
“It got me in trouble and made my family sad,” she said.
I could hear my heart break in my chest. I nodded at her. “I hear there has been quite a fuss about you.”
“They want to take me away,” she said, looking toward the road that ran between the mountains.
“We won’t let that happen,” I said.
She looked back at me. “You’re going to help Daddy protect me?”
I didn’t know who her daddy was, but I knew the answer to her question.
“Yes, I will.”
We smiled at each other. I patted the top of her head and got back up to walk back to Oak and Kaia. Caden was walking over to a stable where the horses were probably being kept.
“I’m in,” I said when I reached them. “What’s the plan that you guys
do
have set?”
The three of us took a seat on the front steps of the cabin.
“Gather all people the North would want to get their hands on in one place and keep them safe and secret for as long as possible?”
“That’s pretty much it right now,” Oak said. “We don’t want to do anything irrational and accidentally trigger the war.”
“Just lying low for now,” I nodded, watching a small bird flying in the sky. “Sounds like as good of a plan as any for now. But things won’t stay at a stalemate forever.”
“We’re trying to keep everything at ease until something can be done,” Kaia said.
“What kind of guard do you guys have?” I said. The bird grew bigger in the sky. “I know you have … one of those light people,” I wished I had asked about the terms used for certain abilities during lessons. “They were part of the Bust-Out Brigade last night.”
Oak laughed. “Yes, that was Lavianna our Illuminator riding on the back of Caden’s horse. But she really isn’t a permanent part of our guard. She’s having some … issues—”
“We have a Revealer watching the road before it enters the mountains,” Kaia said.
“What’s a Revealer?”
“A Revealer can see what ability a person has,” Oak said. “Bristan joined to make us invisible, but Sayley can see through a person’s ability so she was the one that gave the okay to let us through.”
“Yeah, I was surprised by quite a few events last night.”
“Sorry about that,” Oak said. “There wasn’t any time to explain everything that was going to happen.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “Okay, so since I know you’re telekinetic, Lavianna is the Illuminator, and Bristan is the one that made us invisible, which didn’t happen until a little way through the ride, I’m guessing that Caden is the one that covered up the sound?”
“Yes,” he said. “Caden’s a Silencer.”
“And what did the person on the fourth horse do?”
“Fourth horse?” Oak said. “There were only three.”
I looked at him. “Three … plus us?”
“No, three all together,” Kaia said. She looked at Oak. “That’s what you told me.”
“You and I were on one,” Oak said, holding up his index finger, “Caden and Lavianna were on another, and then Bristan joined us on one more,” he said, holding up two more fingers.
I smiled nervously. “But there was another horse. Lavianna lit up and I saw a horse ride to the side of us and another ride to the side of it.”
Kaia and Oak looked at each other. Their faces filled with concern.
She looked back at me. “You—you were tired last night. Are you sure you were seeing things correctly?”
I nodded. “I’m positive.”
“I—I must have missed that,” Oak said. “That horse you saw next us wasn’t supposed to be there.”
I looked over the yard realizing how quiet it had gotten within the last couple of seconds. A few of the kids were pointing at the bird I had been watching earlier. I didn’t have to look up for the fear that I was mistaken to set in.
“I’m… I’m guessing that’s not a bird,” I said. My heart plummeted.
Kaia and Oak looked over at the children, noticing the silence, too. They looked up to where the children were staring at the sky. Now it was so close that it passed under the sun and I could make out the shape of a person with a pair of red Bee wings.
Kaia jumped up and started yelling for the kids to get into the cabin.
“Hurry, get inside,” she said to the children running toward her.
“Who could it be?” I said, getting up and waving the children up the stairs.
“We don’t know anyone with red Bee wings,” said Oak. “We can only assume that it’s someone we don’t want around.”
I thought everyone had made it inside until I saw one last little boy in the field. It was the Elementist that had been playing with Adeline.
“There’s still one out there,” I said to Oak.
He looked over his shoulder. The boy was now following the intruder with his outstretched forefinger.
“Whelan, get inside,” Oak said, running to him.
“But I can get him,” Whelan said.
At that moment a jet of water shot from his finger and into the sky.
Oak scooped up the boy in his arms and ran back to the cabin. I looked up in time to see the jet puncture a hole in one of the Bee’s wings. I ran into the yard when I saw the wing break apart and the person start falling toward the ground.
“No, Emma,” Oak said when I streaked past him. “Where are you going?”
I jumped as high as I possibly could into the air and sent a pulse through my body. I felt the dirt, grass, and leaves I had summoned attach to my back. I had no idea if I was going to be able to actually fly with them. But I flexed them in the air anyway and they shot me straight toward him. I hooked my arms under the unconscious intruder’s arms as soon as his fall put him within my reach.
I strained my back to keep us in the air, but the material my wings were made of wasn’t strong enough to keep both of us airborne. The weight of his body pushed us through the air and back toward the ground. Using what strength I had left I flapped my wings as hard as I could to soften our impact with the ground. I felt them burst out of my back in protest. We broke through the small cushion of air that I had created and smashed into the ground with as much force as if it had not been there.
When everything stopped moving and my body had finally come to rest, I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t support my head and it rolled to the side. I looked toward my arms and my vision began to slide in and out of focus.
“Damn it, Dresden,” I murmured when I saw who I was holding.
Blood oozed from his nose and the corner of his mouth. Then everything went dark.
XI
A mission
Something tickled my back. It disturbed my relaxed state when I realized that it wasn’t my skin that was being tickled. It was my spinal cord. I arched my back to make it stop. That was successful and unsuccessful; the tickling stopped; now it felt like the feather running up and down my spine had turned into a thousand knives lodging themselves into every inch of my back. My eyes flew open and I let out the most ear piercing scream I had ever heard resonate through my vocal cords.
A door opened and a person ran into the room. I tried to turn my head to see who had done this to me only to have a thousand more knives stab every part of my neck. I let another earth shattering scream roll out of my throat.
“You might not want to move, love,” said the person that had entered the room. She stood next to me and tightened the various straps on my body. “The more you move the more pain you’ll put yourself in.”
I didn’t recognize the woman.
“Who are you?” I said, trying to see her through my watery eyes.
The woman let out a throaty laugh. “Ah, not only can you scream but you can talk, too. You’re coming around nicely, aren’t you?”
I looked down at the straps she was tightening. They were holding down an unrecognizable body covered in black and blue blossoms.
“What’ve you done to me?”
“I’m afraid you did this to yourself, love,” she said.
She rubbed a funny smelling ointment on the skin exposed under the straps. I winced when she touched the bruise that didn’t come to an end.
“Not everyone can survive the hundred foot drop you did and live to tell about it. The thing is, there wasn’t a bone in your body that you didn’t break in the process.”
Tears escaped my eyes, burning the swollen skin of my face as they rolled down my cheeks. “I broke … everything?”
“Just about, love,” she said, putting the ointment away. “If anything, you certainly didn’t break your spirit. We had to double strap every part of your body to keep you still in your unconsciousness. You were probably reliving what happened.”
I couldn’t remember a single thing I had dreamed while unconscious.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t scream like you just did before your lungs repaired themselves. I can’t imagine the pain you would have put yourself in if you’d tried to use a pair of blown out lungs before they were ready.”
“I—I should be dead,” I said, closing my eyes.
It was a wonder the pain I felt hadn’t stirred me from my coma much earlier. I could feel a continuous river of pain flowing through every inch of me.
“You would have been,” she said, “if you weren’t Winged.”
I looked at her.
“We have never had a case as extensive as yours: bones ripped through your skin, spine broken almost completely apart, blown out organs, limbs sticking out at angles that’ll give me nightmares for months. You know one of your ribs impaled your liver? It was like the most disgusting kabob I have ever seen.”
I could feel the color drain out of my face imagining what my mangled body must have looked like after the fall. I almost wanted to throw up.
“Oh, I’m sorry, love,” she said after a look at my face. “You probably don’t want to hear about all of that. The good news is that you’re alive, and so is your friend. You’re both well on your way through the healing process so that’s really all that matters.” She walked to the door. “Give it time and you’ll be whole again.”
I hear the door open. She walked out closing it behind her. I searched through my memory, trying to recall what had happened to me. But thinking made my bandaged head throb. Things came back to me in flashes. I could remember flying into the sky and catching a falling body. I remembered hitting the ground and feeling the earth smash beneath me. I remembered looking at Dresden’s colorless, lifeless face. My face prickled. Fresh tears rolled out of my eyes.