Chapter 8 Whitney #2
But as the air in my lungs expels, I realize that I can’t do it.
It’s not who I am. I don’t know how not to fight.
My arms and legs pump, and I kick and flail around, and suddenly my face is breaking through the top of the water, and in that same moment, I realize that something else is propelling me forward, something that’s not coming from my own inertia.
I sail out of the water and up, up, up until I’m flying across the second half of the river and up into a copse of trees on the far side of the bank.
“What was that?” His eyes flash. “You think you can just kill yourself?” He clenches his fist, and a tree behind him explodes, shards of wood and eviscerated leafy chunks raining down on our heads. “I told you to use your powers and follow me.”
I don’t explain myself. Doing that feels like a surrender. I glare.
“You’re mine.” He growls. “You don’t get to give up when things are hard.
We never surrender. We are anger. We are death.
We’re fiery justice.” Another tree goes down, this time engulfed in flames.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” He slams his hands together and then spreads them wide, and an enormous chasm opens in the ground beneath his feet, widening as the world around us trembles.
So much for not drawing attention to his existence.
“You must learn to draw on my magic, or you’ll never be of any use to me.
” He steps closer, seemingly entirely unconcerned about the massive crack in the earth he’s just stepped to the right side of.
“Now, close that back up.” He points. “Or it’ll surely spread and kill lots of the humans you worry so much about. ”
“No one’s dying from that imminently.” I shake my head. “You made the mess. You should fix it.”
“You agreed to train.” He points again. “So fix that, or I kill the entire population of that little city ahead. What did the sign say?” He narrows his eyes. “Sparks.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I huff. “You just agreed to this deal because you’re afraid I’ll kill myself. When I even get close to real danger, you yank me out of the river. So tell me the truth. What happens to you if I die?”
“You aren’t asking the questions, human. You aren’t calling the shots. I am.” His nostrils flare. “Are you going to fix this, or should I show you how many people I can kill all at once?”
“If I can figure out how to fix this mess you made.” I point. “Then you’ll spare that city?”
He nods, eyes narrowing.
I breathe in, and I reach out with my senses as much as possible.
I can smell the deep scent of clay, moisture, and dank earth rising from the crack beside us.
I hear a groaning and cracking and popping sound as the fissure continues to spread.
And what’s strange is that I feel a sort of imbalance underneath me that isn’t related to my dripping misery or the ground’s trembling. I reach for that.
And then I pull as hard as I can.
There’s a groaning sort of sound, but nothing else happens.
Xolotl laughs.
My hatred for him surges even higher, and I wish desperately that I had just died in that river. The town of Sparks might go down either way, but at least he might have been hurting about it. I reach for that same off-kilter feeling, and this time, I throw all my weight into it, and I pull.
There’s a great heaving sound, and the fissure stops spreading.
That’s it. I don’t close it, but I stop it from widening. “There.” I drop my hands on my hips. “Now you clean up the rest.”
Xolotl stares at me for a moment.
“And while you’re at it, dry me off and make me some socks.”
He frowns. “Dry yourself off, and I’ll fix the fissure and make you some socks.”
It takes me about ten tries, and I feel really, really stupid in front of the scowling dictator, but I finally get my boots dry, and I dry off my dress three tries after that, but I also singe one corner.
He’s actually laughing by then, but he does close up the chasm he made, and he tosses his head. “Now let’s try something a little easier.” He walks closer to the river. “Let’s try moving some water.”
I do my best to follow his lead, forcing the water to surge out of the riverbank and up onto the dry land five different times. By then, I want to curl up and cry, I’m so tired.
Xolotl molds me a pair of red socks, as if all humans must dress in entirely monochromatic colors. “Not horrible for your first attempt. Not impressive, mind you, but not horrible.”
“Please,” I say. “Like your other generals did better.”
“Oh, they did,” he says. “Every single one of them was chomping at the bit to harness my magic, but you’re a woman.” Is he smiling? It feels like he is.
I gather up all my remaining energy, and I push the wind at him so hard he almost staggers into the scrub brush behind him.
That makes me smile. “A woman.” I snort. “Take that, jerk.”
Instead of getting angry, he shrugs. “Better. Apparently anger motivates you.”
“It’s not anger,” I say. “It’s my hatred for you.”
“Do you truly hate me?” He lifts his eyebrows. “Because that’s an emotion I can use.”
I think about it as we walk along the riverbank, and I realize that I don’t really hate him.
I did, but I don’t really anymore. He’s not evil in the way I thought he was.
He has no malice toward humans. He doesn’t seem to want to destroy us or watch us burn.
He takes no joy in killing us, other than the joy of a job well done.
He doesn’t seem to feel much of anything.
It’s a real shame that the creature tasked with dispensing death among us doesn’t seem to care about us at all. Then again, if he felt guilty about what he did, it might be impossible to do his job.
“Who made you?” I ask.
“Who made you?” He turns, his eyes open and clear. He’s not mocking me. He’s asking.
“Abigail and Nathan Brooks,” I say. “My parents.”
He shakes his head. “No, that’s not what I mean. Who made humans?”
“How should I know?” I shrug. “God, maybe?”
He shrugs, too. “I’m not sure either.”
That bothers me more. “So you have this job, this task, one that ruins the lives—no, ends the lives of untold numbers of humans—and you have all this power, and we’re like ants to you, but you have no idea who gave you the job or why you should be doing it?”
“What’s your job?” Again, he looks entirely earnest.
“I—” I frown. “I mean, we’re supposed to be happy, right? We’re supposed to help other people, and maybe have families. That’s our job here on earth.”
He shrugs. “Is it? Who says?”
“Come on,” I say. “That’s your argument? That because I don’t know what the purpose of humanity is, you don’t need to know why your entire purpose, why all your powers, should be bent on destroying us?”
He sighs. “This is why I granted you the time you requested, so that I can convince you that the destruction of your lives isn’t the unquantifiable tragedy you seem to believe it is.
” He’s actually smiling. “Humanity needs me, and they don’t know it, because they’re quite stupid, but they will live better, happier, and more fulfilling lives because I will restore the balance of the world in which they do live. ”
“Except a lot of them won’t.” I sigh and shake my head. “I have half a mind to make you watch the Avengers franchise, but I’m afraid it would just inspire you to snap your fingers, and. . .” I cough. “Never mind.”
Xolotl’s frowning, and I hate how beautiful he is, even though he never smiles.
“That’s enough progress for us to move on to Reno without leveling any cities, yeah?”
“I think in Reno, we should get a car,” he says. “Then we can talk and move.” He inclines his head. “Yes?”
“I detest you the least in your horse form,” I say. “But that might be a smart move.” But it begs the question—I have no money, identification, or, well. . . anything. “How do you think we’re going to get a car?”
“Humans seem to just leave them lying around.” He nods. “I’ll just walk up and take one that doesn’t have a human piloting it.”
Oh, boy. We’re in for a fun few days.