Chapter Three
I was over the ridge of the hill before Seth shut the door behind him. Angrily stomping through the worn paths, I made quick time to the clearing.
“Tage?” I yelled.
Only birds fluttered their wings in response, tucked into nests in the bare tree above me. Most flew south for the winter, but these were determined to survive it.
“TAGE! I know you can hear me.” At least, I thought he could.
I was proven right when the world in front of me shimmered and tore apart, revealing a dark night sky beyond the daylight of my own.
My breath caught in my chest. Tage, looking exactly as he did when he saved me and forfeited his own life, smirked at me from within The Sand.
My heart thundered. In all these years, I never expected to actually see him, and then to have him so close to home? It was unfathomable.
“Can you come out here?”
He shook his head. “I can’t, but you can enter,” he replied. I wasn’t sure about trusting him. “I’ll make sure you make it safely back,” he answered, seemingly aware of my inner monologue.
“I’m trusting you... for now. But don’t hurt me or Seth.”
“I would never do that.” His brows pulled together and his golden eyes flashed in anger.
I stepped from my world into his, my crossbow dropping to the snow with a soft thud. In The Sand, the dunes glistened in the moon’s light; a thousand tiny diamonds glittering in the pale light.
“You’ve spoken with Seth?” Tage was suddenly all business. No, How are you? Nothing.
“I have.”
“What are your concerns?”
“What choice do I really have, Tage? To let my son bring you back from the dead so that my dying husband can live here? Is it really possible? What will happen to Saul if he comes to The Sand?”
I looked around at the palm trees beyond the dunes. Flashes of memory from the night I spent with Tage flitted through my mind; the night Seth was created. I had never regretted our stolen moments, but I felt bad for thinking about it at a time like this.
“It’s not a decision to make lightly, and I think you need to talk to Saul about it. Have Seth bring him here if he wants to speak to me.”
He stood in front of me, his chest bare and only a small dark skirt covering him.
“Why is this happening?” I asked myself more than him.
“The Infection.”
I knew he was right. Almost everyone who’d been Infected was now sick with something. Mercedes had female trouble. Some had problems with their major organs. Others, like Saul, had cancer. The defects that lingered had already cut far too many lives short, and now it was going to take Saul from us.
“If Saul chooses to come here,” my voice broke, “and you leave this place for the Underworld, what happens to Seth? Will he still be able to speak with you?”
He shook his head. “No, I won’t be able to see or talk with him again.”
“Not even in dreams?”
He shook his head sadly. “No.”
“And if you leave this place and come back to life, what will happen then? What are your expectations?”
“I have none.”
I found that hard to believe.
“I will live where I can keep in contact with my son, and with you if you prefer it. I won’t interfere in your lives unless you ask me to, but if you let me, I can help Seth contain his power.
It’s getting stronger and he needs to learn how to control it before he makes a mistake and someone learns about it.
But I can begin to work with him now before anything happens with Saul.
I don’t have to return to Earth; that I want to make perfectly clear.
I will only step foot on your soil if you ask me to.
Otherwise, I’ll forfeit my ownership on this place and give it to Saul, should he want it. ”
“He’ll want to talk to you.”
I was numb as I tried to absorb all the information. I looked at him seriously and asked, “Are you sure it’s cancer?”
Tage’s eyes said it all; the warm honey-tones cooling with sadness. “Seth is very good at discerning illnesses, Porschia, and he loves his Dad very much. He wouldn’t say it unless he was one-hundred percent sure.”
“Seeing you is hard,” I admitted. I’d let him go once, and now with this macabre twist of fate he might be back in our lives. Literally back from the grave. Saul was dying. Seth was crumbling under the weight of his unchecked power. The Infected were falling apart around us.
“I’ve been watching you since I left,” he said softly. “I’ve watched over you all. Close, but never close enough. That’s been hard.”
My heart was aching for so many conflicting reasons. I wanted to yell at him, I wanted to pull him into my arms, I wanted him to go to the Underworld, and I wanted him to live again.
“I have to go,” I whispered. It was a mistake to come here. I don’t know what I expected him to be like, but it wasn’t like this. I thought he’d be different, harder, but he was just Tage. And I hated and loved it at the same time.
Mostly I felt that by seeing him, stepping into The Sand and speaking with him, I’d somehow betrayed Saul.
With a heavy heart, I stepped back through the slash of early morning light and into reality once again.
What had I done?
Seth was acting weird. He wouldn’t make eye contact, and coming to work late wasn’t normal for him, either.
I guessed he wanted to talk to his mom about the dizzy spell I had, but I was fine.
We’d been working really hard to fix up some of the buildings in the city.
A lot of the formerly Infected had moved there, and they needed better living conditions than the crumbling buildings that fell apart a little more each season.
We’d burnt several down and were working like dogs to haul off the leftover debris to clear room for new structures, but more was needed.
Especially now that people could move freely through the country.
Hammering a nail into the wooden frame of a new wall, I turned to my son. “You’ve been awfully quiet today.”
“Just concentrating on not losing any digits,” he smarted, focusing on the handsaw he pushed through a piece of rough wood.
It was just me and him here today. The others were spread throughout the city. “You could always reattach them. I wouldn’t worry too much.”
That got his attention. He stopped moving the saw and stared at me.
“What is wrong?” I enunciated.
“I don’t want to get into it here.”
“Oh, no? Then where? Where is better, Seth? Because whatever is eating at you, we need to hash it out.”
“No, we don’t,” he argued.
“Yes, we do.”
“You’re not gonna stop, are you?” He cursed under his breath. His mom hated it, but I let him if he needed it and in that moment, he did.
“Talk to me. We can’t fix it if we don’t know what the problem is.”
He threw the saw on the table. “That’s just it! I know what’s wrong and I still can’t fix it.”
“Well, what is it?”
He swallowed hard and looked away from me.
I stepped over the crisscrossing pieces of wood and made my way to him. “Is something wrong with me?”
His golden eyes flashed in warning.
“Tell me.”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“Tell me, Seth,” I prodded. I knew I shouldn’t have. I should have kept living with my head in the clouds.
“You’ve got a brain tumor.”
I let out a shallow laugh, but he didn’t laugh with me.
“How do you know?”
His face contorted in pain. “I can see it, but I can’t heal it.”
The breath was knocked out of me with one simple sentence and the look on my son’s face. Seth was no liar.
“How long do I have left?” I croaked.
He shook his head. “Not long.”
I eased the hammer into my tool belt and walked around the pile of work we’d made for the day. “Then let’s go home. I don’t intend to waste another minute out here when I can be spending it with you and your mom.”