Renegade

  “She’s gone,” said Dare. He sidled up to his mother, and finger-combed the hair from out of her eyes.

  “You don’t even seem upset.”

  He flinched at that. It didn’t seem put on, either. “I said good-bye to her many years ago. Believe me, she must have done the same.”

  He picked up a cloth from the floor and poured water onto it. Slowly, tenderly, he cleaned his mother’s face. “Will you release her body to the water?”

  I nodded, but he couldn’t see. “Yes.”

  “Thank you.” He finished by wiping her chin. Then he kissed her forehead and covered her face with the blanket. “I need you to let me escape, Thomas.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have to talk to Jossi.”

  “He’ll kill you.”

  “Maybe. But I have to distract him long enough for you to get to Kieran’s parents. If he can’t control the rats, Jossi is finished.”

  “But the pirates still outnumber us. They have guns.”

  He groaned. “Weren’t you listening to what I told you just now? The first elementals were outnumbered too, but they still held an advantage. Earth, water, wind, and fire. By combining, anything is possible.”

  “I have none of those elements.”

  “Wrong! You have all of them. Alice told me what you did to her—how you took over her element. Don’t you see? You can harness all the elements in the world. You can make anything, take anything . . . destroy anything. And no one can stop you.”

  “They’d hate me for it.”

  “Being hated is better than hating yourself.”

  “Is that how you justify everything you’ve done?”

  “I don’t justify, or make excuses. I made peace with being hated a long time ago. I can live with it. The only thing I can’t accept is regret. I stand by my actions.” He conjured a flame, and snuffed it out suddenly. “If you want to end this fight, you’ll use that power, Thomas. And you won’t second-guess the damage it’ll do.”

  The water canister was still beside Tessa. Dare saw me looking at it, and handed it to me. “I need to go to Roanoke,” he said. “If the pirates think I’m dead, they’ll either figure I’m a ghost, or they’ll have to concede that I foresaw everything that would happen from the start. In any case, it’ll cause a little confusion in their ranks.”

  His words hung between us.

  “And did you know what would happen from the start?” I asked. “Is that why you wanted us to go to Sumter?”

  He shrugged. “Seeing the future is unreliable. But it didn’t matter to me whether you stayed on Roanoke or left for Sumter. The one thing I knew for certain was that Griffin would never die of the Plague. The only question was how he could save the rest of us.”

  “If seeing the future is unreliable, why do the pirates believe everything you say?”

  “Because I notice the things they don’t. Being a seer is what has made it possible for me to control my crew, but the truth is, seeing the future is less important than observing the present and remembering the past. I watch people, Thomas. Learn who they are; their strength and weaknesses. Some are cowards, some bullies. But some surprise me, risking everything for a better tomorrow. The more I know about them, the more I can predict their future. Predicting isn’t seeing, but in a world as unpredictable as ours, it can feel like the same thing.”

  All filthy, corded limbs, Dare resembled a lizard as he pulled to a stand.

  “I still don’t understand something,” I said. “Why would Jossi pick a fight with elementals? He saw what happened to the other pirates when they attacked us.”

  Dare opened the cabinets across the galley and removed the containers of food. He helped himself to small bites from each of them. “I rescued Jossi when he was just a young boy. He was strange, even then. Most everyone else had given up on life as we knew it, but he was an optimist. An idealist. He believed there was an order to the world, and if we could just survive, we’d find a solution to everything. He even used that word: solution.”

  “So what changed?”

  “He witnessed an accident. Something that couldn’t be explained, that didn’t fit in the natural order of things.”

  “What did he see?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

  “Jossi saw a boy sliced to death by a mechanical saw. Saw it all: the blood, and mangled limbs; the panic. But when he tried to talk about it, people told him he hadn’t seen what he knew he’d seen.” Dare stuffed his mouth with food and chewed slowly. “He’s been a victim his entire life, and now, finally, he controls perhaps the greatest power of all. I might be able to reason with the other pirates, but Jossi . . . well, Jossi holds life cheaper. Because the elementals made him that way.”

  Not all the elementals. It was my father’s element that had caused the saw to start moving. He’d told us about the incident while we were at Sumter—how he’d seen a boy playing with the massive blade. He’d tried to pull the boy away, but because he was focused on the blade, his energy went into that instead. The boy died instantly.

  I waited for Dare to continue, to place the blame at my father’s feet. But he didn’t say another word. Unaware that I already knew the truth, he tried to spare me from knowing that my father was to blame. Or maybe not my father, but his element—the same element the Guardians had hidden from me my entire life.

  Might I have accidentally killed someone too if the Guardians hadn’t taken so many precautions? I wanted to ask Dare if he could read my future, let me know if injury or death lay ahead for someone I touched, just like the boy who’d died by the mechanical saw.

  I looked through the porthole at the sun setting over Roanoke Island and realized that I would be asking for the wrong thing. The question wasn’t whether people would die. That seemed inevitable now. What really mattered was who would be left standing when the sun rose again.

  CHAPTER 26

  I didn’t bolt the door as Dare retreated to his hiding space. He said he’d know when to sneak out, and I believed him. He said that no one would know he’d been on board. Since he’d been a stowaway on our voyages to and from Sumter, I believed that too.

  Nyla was waiting outside the galley. “I’ve been keeping guard,” she said. “Figured you didn’t want any interruptions.”

  “Thanks. Did you hear everything?”

  She peered around me to where Tessa’s body was stretched across the floor. “I heard enough.”

  Together we lifted Tessa, and carried her along the corridor. Nyla couldn’t bear to look at the old woman’s Plague-ravaged body. It was a reminder of what might have happened to her if Griffin hadn’t cured her, and an image of what could still happen to her brother, Jerren, if we didn’t rescue him.

  It felt disrespectful to blunder up the stairs, Tessa’s body colliding with the walls, but we were doing our best. When we reached the deck, we placed her gently on the warm wooden planks.

  Marin and Tarn stared at Tessa. They’d grown apart from the seer, but Tessa had been an important part of their lives for years. Decades, even. What part of their shared history were they seeing as they looked at her now?

  Marin approached us. “We should release her body,” she said.

  I’d heard those words more in the past several days than I had in my entire life leading up to Dare’s attack on Hatteras. How many other people would be released to the ocean before everything was over?

  With Tarn and Marin helping, we carried Tessa to the side of the ship. Dennis joined us there. We balanced the body precariously on the railing, and paused.

  “Does anyone have something they’d like to say?” asked Tarn.

  It was our custom to offer thanks. But while I respected Tessa’s fortitude and determination, I still didn’t understand what made her do the things she’d done.

  “Tessa was a woman of conviction,” said Marin finally. She see
med satisfied with the sentiment, and continued, “She stood by what she believed.”

  “No, she didn’t,” I said. “Tessa chose self-imposed exile over fighting for what she knew was right.”

  More silence. Tarn cleared her throat. “Then let us give thanks that she was brave enough to return to us and make amends. I honestly believe that with her final words she was trying to help us.”

  Tarn was right about that, even though she hadn’t actually heard Tessa’s final words.

  “Are you ready, Thomas?” Nyla asked.

  I studied Tessa’s face. Tried to see past the disease that had destroyed her. My life would have been so different if she’d never left our colony. I wished she could be a part of it now.

  “Thomas?”

  I nodded. “I’m ready.”

  We eased Tessa over the side. She landed with a splash and returned to the surface. Seeing her floating beside the ship, I felt a rush of sympathy—it was as if she wasn’t quite ready to leave us.

  We stood in a line and stared at the water. Watched her drift steadily away.

  “When do we go ashore?” asked Dennis softly.

  I expected Marin to tell him that he wouldn’t be going ashore at all. Instead, she caught my eye. “He should go with you,” she told me. “He’ll help.”

  “But you need to stay on the ship,” I reminded her. “Rose needs you here.”

  “I know.” She placed a hand on Dennis’s head. “With or without me, his element is special. Air is a powerful force in the right hands. I trust him to know how to use it.”

  “I’ll go too,” said Nyla.

  “No. I need you to stay here,” I said.

  She pointed to the island. “But my brother’s over there.”

  “If Griffin’s going to cure Rose, he’ll need help.”

  “Then you stay!”

  “Please, Nyla. You don’t know Skeleton Town like we do. You’ve never been there.”

  She took off for the stairs without another word. I needed to hear her say she’d remain on board, so I followed her below deck and along to Griffin and Rose’s cabin.

  My brother was propped up against the far wall, eyes closed. Perspiration covered his face. Nyla ran a cloth across his forehead, down his cheeks, and around his jawline. She was careful not to touch him directly, but as she brushed his lips her fingers slipped, and they were skin to skin. Her pulse must have been fast, because his eyes flashed open. He smiled to find Nyla before him, but there was no mistaking that her element had startled him.

  “How do you do it?” she asked me. “How do you touch someone when your element is strong?”

  “It’s only this strong at Roanoke Island.”

  “Well, we’re next to Roanoke now. And live or die, there’s a chance we’ll never leave. I can’t go through life never touching anyone. So how do you stop the hurt?”

  She stared at me, waiting. When I returned her stare, the truth dawned on her at last: That I hadn’t made it work. That I’d spent a childhood in physical isolation. That there was no easy answer to her question, or any answer at all, as far as I knew. Combining was a poor substitute for direct touch.

  She bowed her head. “I see. Well then, maybe this is my punishment. I always figured there’d be a price to pay for what I did.”

  I felt the room go suddenly still. “What did you do, Nyla?”

  She raised her hands, and in faltering signs tried to help Griffin understand what she needed to tell me in words: “I’ve always had the element, just like you. On Fort Dauphin it was weak. No one felt my power unless I was angry. But I fought all the time. I was stupid. Every person on that island was superstitious. They’d heard stories of the so-called elementals . . . how they stole land and food, and killed people for fun. Every colony needs a bogeyman, and for us, it was elementals. Lucky for me, the other children were too scared to tell anyone what it felt like when I hurt them.

  “Jerren had an element too. He was practicing, learning to control it. One day I got into a bad fight, so he twisted sound, made noises to distract everyone. He was trying to help me, but it wasn’t even his fight, and I got so mad at him for ending it. So I . . . I grabbed his hand. At first, I only meant to shock him. But then I thought about the sound he was twisting. Suddenly it was moving wherever I wanted.”

  Nyla closed her eyes. Her signs became smaller. “I only turned the noise on the kids for a moment. Just so they’d think twice before messing with me again. But they covered their ears and screamed. Turns out, there was an adult watching too . . . one adult. But it changed everything.

  “Our parents didn’t wait to see what happened next. Didn’t even stop to pack up our belongings. We ran to the shore and took the colony’s fastest sailboat. The last thing I remember about Fort Dauphin was watching every last person line up against the breaking waves. They didn’t chase us, and they didn’t shout. They held hands and bowed their heads and prayed. They were praying for us never to come back. They thought every single one of us had been sent by the devil.”

  I didn’t know what to say. The story that Jerren had told us about their escape from Fort Dauphin had been a lie. Why hadn’t Nyla realized that if anyone could be sympathetic to her plight, it would be me?

  As she watched me, her hands folded into fists in her lap. “You wonder why we lied to you. But you lied to us too, when you hid your elements from us. The difference is that you don’t have to wake up every morning knowing it’s your fault that your parents had to leave everything behind. That it’s your fault they’re dead.”

  She wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging herself. Her signs for Griffin hadn’t communicated even half of what she’d told me, but he read her body language clearly enough. He reached out as if he wanted to touch her, but she leaned away. I understood why too—she didn’t want Griffin to suffer, just so he could prove how much he cared for her.

  As Nyla left the cabin, I followed. In the corridor, I touched her arm—gently, but I still figured she’d pull away. Instead, she leaned into me, let me wrap my arms around her and pull her close. Energy flowed easily between us as she cried against my neck. Her breaths were quick and warm. When would either of us be able to hold someone else that way again? Without trepidation, and pain.

  “What if death is all we’re good for?” she whispered.

  “I can’t accept that,” I said. “And neither can you.”

  I returned to the cabin alone. Griffin was lying down now, eyes closed. But Rose had stirred. In the sliver of light that came through the porthole her neck appeared grisly. Now, in addition to the knife wounds she’d suffered at Sumter, her neck showed the telltale symptoms of Plague—swelling, and dark lumps.

  There was a water canister beside the door, so I offered it to her.

  “Save it,” she croaked.

  “Why? You can find more fresh water for us when we run out.”

  She returned a wan smile, but I saw right through it. She was preparing me for a time when she might not be able to test the purity of our drinking water. A time when she might not be around at all.

  “We’re almost back to where we started,” she said. “Feels like a lifetime ago that the Guardians sent us to the shelter in Skeleton Town.”

  “I think it was a lifetime ago. I wish I could go back and change everything.”

  “Me too.” Rose furrowed her brows. “I wish I could go back three years and tell myself that the boy I like really likes me too.” Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. She blinked them away. “I made it so easy for the Guardians to control me. Why didn’t I fight them?”

  I was blinking back tears as well. These were the regrets of a dying girl, and I wasn’t willing to accept that. “What about Sumter?” I fired back, sounding angry even though I didn’t mean to. “You were the one who risked everything to find out the truth. Without you we’d all be dead.”
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  She gave me a hard stare. “I want you to hold me.”

  How could she know that a similar scene had just played out between Nyla and Griffin? “You know I can’t do that. It’ll hurt.”

  “Then get the canister, and channel through me. Just don’t let go of me. Promise you won’t let go.”

  I lay down beside her and held her hand. At first, I tried to control my pulse, but it clearly wasn’t working. So I concentrated on the canister instead. With my energy passing right through her, I drew the water out in a narrow stream. On Sumter I’d pulled off a similar trick, but this time I had complete control. I was able to savor the feel of her against me, even as I separated the water into molecules. I brought them down as a gentle mist that settled on her hair and face, glistening in the low light of approaching sunset.

  “Thomas,” Rose whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “I—”

  The door opened, cutting her off. Rose gasped as I lost my concentration. It was only a moment, but with nowhere to go, the full force of my element was turned on her.

  I rolled away, but the damage was done. Rose breathed in and out slowly, managing the pain.

  “I’m sorry,” said Marin. “I didn’t realize . . .” She retreated along the corridor, leaving us alone.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” I said.

  Rose faced me. “Don’t be sad.”

  “I hate my element.”

  “Shh.” She ran a finger along the fabric of my tunic. “The echo only hurts because your pulse is fast.”

  “It’s always fast when I’m with you—”

  “Which is how I know that I matter to you. Don’t you see? Your heartbeat tells the truth of how you feel.”

  It was a beautiful idea, but I wasn’t in the mood for moral victories. I didn’t have time for them anymore. Not with Jossi waiting for us in Skeleton Town, and Rose growing weaker every moment.

  Outside the porthole, smoke was rising over Roanoke. It was a slender band, probably from a small fire. Perhaps the pirates were cooking food . . . or cremating the remains of yet more Plague victims.