CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE #2
I half-walked, half-slid down the sand until I reached level ground. All that lay ahead of me was a quiet beach. The ocean was so calm that aside from the gentle shifting of the water right at the edge, lapping at the sand, it resembled a sheet of midnight glass.
Sitting in the sand, out of reach of the water, was a boy. He was facing away from me. But as I approached, I noted that he couldn’t have been more than seven years old. He sat with his legs pulled into him. His dark hair was short, but shaggy. A few tufts hung in his eyes.
His gray eyes, tinged in ethereal silver.
“Kieran?”
The boy wouldn’t look at me. But he said, “What?” in a small voice that was both familiar and unfamiliar.
“Do you mind if I sit down?”
“It’s not my beach. Do what you want.”
I sat down beside him and pulled my legs into my chest, mirroring him. My eyes drifted over his face. The little nose. Cheeks that had a slight pudginess to them. A jaw that was still softened by youth. My heart swelled.
We sat in silence for a while. He refused to so much as glance in my direction.
Eventually, I spoke. “Kieran. Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”
He snorted. “What do you care?”
“I care,” I said, turning away from the ocean to face him. “Because I care about you. I want to know what’s bothering you, so I can make it better.”
“Okay,” he drawled sarcastically.
I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes. So the sarcasm wasn’t a new thing for him, then.
“I mean it,” I said patiently. “I care about you, and I don’t want you to be upset.
I want you to be happy. In fact, I want you to be the happiest person on the entire planet.
” He tried to stifle a laugh. A real one, I detected.
I kept going. “I want you to be so happy that you don’t know what to do with yourself.
So happy that you get bored with it and actually wish you were sad sometimes, just to change things up. ”
He chuckled then, and his eyes darted to mine warily. Then he resumed staring out to sea, all traces of laughter gone. “You shouldn’t bother.”
“Why?” I shifted so that I was sitting cross-legged, tilting my head toward the sand until I caught his eye.
“I think I’m just supposed to be by myself,” he said with all the authority of a seven-year-old. When he continued, his voice was soft. “Everyone I care about always dies. My mom, my dad…and now you.”
I swallowed. “So your mom and dad died, then?”
“Yeah. My mom first, my dad second. My mom died because she was sick. My dad died because his family didn’t like me and my mom. They said he had more important things to do.”
“That’s hard stuff,” I said quietly. “Especially at your age.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, his dark hair bouncing. “But your parents died, too. And your sister. That’s even more people.”
I went still.
“When you told me they all died,” he continued. “I was sad. It’s sad to be alone. It’s scary sometimes, too. Like maybe I’ll get eaten by a marsh wolf or something, and no one will even care because I’m all alone anyway.”
“You’re not alone, Kieran.” My voice was a whisper. “Larimar’s magic saved me somehow. I’m not really sure how it’s possible, honestly. But the important thing is that I’m not dead. Or at least, I’m not anymore. I’m here. With you.”
He turned to face me fully then. His eyes were that blending of bright silver and muted gray. Hope and fear. “Why do you care so much about me?”
I took his small hand.
“Because I love you, Kieran.”
I was back on the battlefield, clinging to Kieran’s chest.
The wind was still roaring around me.
Then it was silent, and I wondered if the roaring had finally shattered my eardrums. Still squeezing my eyes shut, I was too afraid to hope for the alternative—that it was finally coming to an end.
I don’t know how long I stood there before I tentatively opened my eyes and tilted my head up to Kieran’s face.
He was already looking down at me. The sun, emerging from the ominous black overhead, was reflected in his eyes.
A gradient of silver and gold. The colors began to tremble. His eyes were filling with tears.
“I watched you die,” he said softly. He traced my face with his fingertips, studying every inch of it. As if he were seeing me for the first time.
I placed my hand over his. “I know, but I’m here now.”
Kieran smiled back at me, and it was brighter than the sun. There was no sarcasm in it, no wryness. Just joy.
The most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Then he fell forward slightly, and Nya was beside me, helping hold him upright. A spike of dread shot through me. Kieran’s head rolled back, his eyes fluttered closed. Then his breathing slowed, becoming automatic. Relief flooded me as I realized he was just unconscious. Asleep.
“I guess I would be exhausted, too, if I just annihilated half the fucking bay,” Nya muttered as we lowered him carefully to the ground.
At her words, I stood abruptly and turned a circle, taking everything in.
Devastated.
That was the only word that came to mind as I beheld what little remained of the field, of the wall, of…the Knowledge Center. My stomach turned over.
People on both sides—the Enforcers and the Strangers—were doing the same as I was, standing and surveying the destruction.
Helping one another to their feet. I had cried so much lately, I didn’t think I had any more tears left in me.
But seeing that there were people alive, that others had been huddled on the ground just like us, waiting for the chaos to subside, brought fresh tears to my eyes.
I couldn’t allow myself to think just yet of those who didn’t survive.
My gaze drifted to the beach, and I relished the sight of the ocean, blue and bright and calm under the midday sun. No longer a roiling black mass.
I started.
Where the grass transitioned to sand, outlined in an almost ethereal glow by the sunlight reflecting off the water, was a figure. A figure cloaked in black.
Silver eyes stared out from the shadows of its hood.
It stared at me unblinkingly. Then it inclined its head toward me and vanished.
The next few hours eroded my sense of relief, leaving nothing but heartache in its place.
The Strangers had failed. That much was clear.
With at this point uncountable people injured and dead, there simply weren’t enough warm bodies to keep pushing to take the city.
And frankly, it wasn’t even clear how much city was left to take anymore.
The only small mercy for all was that there was an unspoken cease-fire as both sides tried to get their bearings.
Initially, there were shouts and tears and tight hugs as friends found one another still standing, talking, functioning. Still alive.
Then came the realization that that dark power, Kieran’s magic, had disintegrated all the bodies that were lying deceased on the field.
Some remarked that this saved the trouble of digging graves for hundreds upon hundreds of people, but others mourned the fact that they would not be able to give their companions a proper burial.
Then people began to identify others who had been alive before the start of the chaos, and who, while still living, breathing, screaming, had been carried up by the current of Kieran’s power and reduced to nothing. Not even to dust.
Nya and I managed to drag Kieran’s unconscious body to the beach, depositing him safely in the sand with the group of injured men and women that was beginning to assemble there.
As we moved on to reunite with members of our group and tend to the wounded, I began to overhear the stories.
One Enforcer shared with another how his comrade had been lifted skyward before his very eyes, his mouth still twisted in a wail as he disintegrated.
Another shared how his whole group had been carried away by the wind while he clawed at the grass and dirt and held on for dear life.
But the stories from our side were the most uncomfortable.
Stories from people who knew Kieran, who were friends with Kieran.
Who considered him one of them. On their side.
And yet he had destroyed members of their group.
He had destroyed people who, according to the accounts we were given, had worked alongside him during long days at camp.
People he had trained with. People he called friends.
When Nya and I finally encountered Cecil, there was a much-needed celebration.
Despite being covered in burns and having half his beard singed off from the kiss of barely-dodged Immobilizer blasts, Cecil was alive.
He lifted Nya off the ground with his hug.
Then he gave me a hug that was more careful but no less hearty.
We joined him in wrapping the wounds of those who had fought near him.
Then came the discussion of what had just taken place. And even he, I saw with a sinking feeling in my gut, had a hardness to his expression. I could see that even though the battle was over, conflict still raged powerfully within him.
“We were winning, Nya,” he said, his voice low. He seemed to have forgotten that I was standing there, and in that moment, I was grateful. “We were going to do it. After…after all of it, after everything, we were going to do it.”
For the first time since meeting him, I didn’t hear the friendly, good-natured tone of a man who drew terrible maps and adored his infant daughter. I heard a warrior who had put everything on the line for the betterment of his people and had lost.
At one point later while wrapping a man’s leg, my eyes and Nya’s met. Neither of us had to say anything. We were both thinking that there was still another battle to come.
The battle between those who understood that what happened was out of Kieran’s control, and those who would not so easily be able to forgive and forget.