Even if Mt. Fuji never erupted again, the catastrophe had already left its permanent mark, not just on Japan, but on the entire world.
“Look what the cat dragged in.” Wayne noticed their presence, his dry remark cutting Jo from the constricting tethers of grief that had already begun to form between her and the television. “We’d wondered where you two had gone.”
“He’d wondered,” Samson corrected bravely, but still very quietly and without raising his head.
“You could’ve come and got us,” Jo said defensively.
“A reprieve is sometimes necessary,” said the elf, who had barely moved from the television and still did not tear his eyes from it. “And there is not much to be done, for now.”
Samson caught her eye, but seemingly wasn’t able to speak until he’d ducked his chin again. “I made some breakfast for everyone.”
Slowly, Jo walked the rest of the way to the couch, leaning heavily against it. “Thanks, Sam. That’s very thoughtful of you,” she murmured, distracted by the images flickering across the TV screen.
They were showing footage of the Hakone region now, still smoldering in some places, burning in others, but mostly just completely destroyed. With a sickening lurch, Jo found herself subconsciously comparing the sight to old photos she remembered learning about in her high school’s ancient history class—the entirety of Pompeii sitting in ruins, whole families frozen forever in their last moments of life, completely unaware of it being taken from them. The images of the long-ago Roman city came alive vividly in her mind, like she’d seen it before. Jo attributed it to the footage she’d all but seen on loop now overlaying with her past school lesson.
She wasn’t sure what was worse, seeing something like this coming, or being blindsided. For example, Shizuoka had watched their neighboring region fall to the might of a natural disaster, knowing all the while they were next. Multiple clips of a tsunami, triggered by the quake, only added to the still spreading damage.
It was truly becoming too much to bear, a relentless assault of one thing after another after another.
She didn’t know how the men continued to do it, stare at the news with their somber tones, as if seeing something she couldn’t. So, Jo didn’t bear it. She turned away and stepped toward the kitchen, where Samson had laid out mismatched plates and platters filled with breakfast foods, willfully oblivious to the horror-movie cinematics only a few yards away.
Apparently, she wasn’t alone in needing to step away, because Jo nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden appearance of the orange-haired man at her side.
“Thank you for making breakfast,” Jo said, mostly just to break the silence. Samson nodded, keeping his eyes set firmly on moving the platters so that they were in a perfect line. Jo grabbed some scrambled eggs, a few slices of bacon—careful not to disrupt Samson’s adjustments—and then paused. This close, even Samson looked more uncomfortable than usual, his brows furrowed and face bordering on stricken. “Hey, Sam?” Jo whispered, taking in a breath when he glanced at her with noticeably wet eyes. “Are you all right?”
For a couple of seconds, Samson didn’t respond, just looked at her with that same worried expression. It was a dumb question and she knew that; none of them were really “all right.” Then he sighed, an exhale that Jo felt leave her own lungs in response.
“Yes,” Samson mumbled, scrubbing harder at the soapy pan. “I just don’t like the waiting.”
Jo wanted to ask him what he meant, but there was something about the sentence that felt final, a heavy silence following in its wake. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she was certain Samson was done talking. So, with one last murmur of thanks, Jo took her plate out of the kitchen, down the hall, and as far away from the television as she could get.
Takako was expectedly awake when Jo let herself quietly into her room. She was now in a seated position, but otherwise didn’t seem to have moved much from her futon. So Jo placed the plate of food in front of her and took back her own spot on the adjacent futon as well.
“I don’t know if you’re hungry, but Samson made it.” Jo offered, trying once again to simply fill the silence with anything but worry and tension. “At the very least, it’ll feel good to fill your stomach with something hot.”
Takako nodded at her, mumbling what sounded like a soft thank you, but she made no move to eat. Jo could sympathize; her own stomach tied in sickening knots. She didn’t have the heart to mention the fairly recent development of a tsunami; Takako would find out soon enough.
As Takako stared off into the distance, Jo started to see traces of a similar expression on her face, the same concern that had been mirrored on the faces of the rest of her team. A concern Jo was slowly starting to realize ran deeper than just for the lives lost in Japan. Everyone was on edge, waiting for something, as if they expected the catastrophic after effects of Fuji to somehow reach them as well.
Eventually, Jo couldn’t take the silence anymore, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them close. “Takako?” she asked, wincing when it seemed to startle the woman out of her thoughts. Takako hummed in acknowledgement, but seemed no less distracted. “Samson said he hated the waiting. What did he mean?”
Somewhere in her, Jo had known. Even as she asked the question, she knew what the answer would be. She just hadn’t wanted to hear it. Or maybe her mind just rejected thinking it, as if that could make it any more or less real.
When Takako frowned in response, it was with no little amount of fresh pain in her eyes. She looked reluctant to answer even, raising one hand to her mouth as the other tapped a soft rhythm against the tatami. It took longer than Jo expected for her to string together a response, but when she finally dropped her hand, it was with a stoic and schooled expression. Even if the turmoil in her eyes hadn’t entirely faded.
“He means waiting for Snow to call us to the briefing room,” Takako said, a fraction of that carefully crafted expression crumbling. Jo didn’t need to ask for clarification, but she gave it to her anyway. “With a disaster this big, there’s no way someone won’t make a wish.”
“Of course someone will make a wish.” That much was obvious. Hundreds of thousands of people were dead or gravely injured. “But what are we supposed to do? Stop a volcano? Even Snow knows we can’t prevent a natural disaster.”
Takako finally looked up. Jo had spent so long trying to get close to the woman, but now that she finally was, all she wanted was to be blind to the truth in her eyes. Especially as she said, with a blunt and grave certainty, “That doesn’t mean we won’t be asked to try.”
Chapter 9
Late Night Visitor
EVENTUALLY, TAKAKO HAD requested to have some time alone, a request that Jo couldn’t deny. Everyone had their own manner of processing and she wasn’t about to dictate Takako’s.
Jo didn’t go very far. She didn’t feel like wandering the mansion, didn’t have the energy to do anything in a recreation room (despite all earlier notions of picking up a hobby), and couldn’t continually impose on Nico. So when Takako gently kicked her out, Jo drifted across the hall to her own bedroom.
She laid on her bed, stretched out amid the plushness, occasionally watching the nighttime of Paris. When the sun rose, so did Jo, for no other reason than habit. She left her bed and with it what felt like all notion of ever being able to sleep again.
The next night, Wayne kept her company—companionship only; it was impossible to feel any sort of urges under the present circumstances. Wayne was on the same page, it seemed, when he produced a bottle of whiskey from his room and they drank till dawn, thinking of new (terrible) “crew names” for the Society. The two winners were “The Timekeepers of Infinity” for most palatable, and “Witnesses of Truth” for most cringe worthy. At least it gave them a laugh, something Jo realized she hadn’t done for days.
Another day passed. Another day of drifting from place to place, doing nothing of worth, contributing nothing to no one. Another day of waiting as she witness
ed the rise and fall of the world from her new vantage of eternity.
It was then, on the third day, that sleep miraculously came to her. She wasn’t sure if it was sheer will and determination, boredom, or the fact that even if her body didn’t need sleep, her mind eventually demanded a reprieve. In fact, were it not for the heavy knock on the door waking her, she wouldn’t have been certain she’d slept at all.
“This better be good,” she mumbled into the pillow. She’d just been on the cusp of a dream—she’d swear it. It may well be a decade before she’d find herself able to actually shut her mind completely off once more.
Jo flipped her wrist, looking at the time that illuminated the strip of fabric. It was some time after three in the morning and two hours after everyone had broken off from the common room and gone to bed.
Jo pulled herself from the bed and shook the drowsiness from her mind. Who could possibly be knocking—
Her hand froze, hovering above the doorknob. If magic was a current of electricity, the metal of the knob was conducting it between her and the man on the other side. She could feel him there, and for the briefest of moments, an alarm bell rang faintly in the back of her mind. Something about this was ill-advised, the alarm warned. Perhaps, it was because there was something akin to her now dream-like memory of meeting Pan, an ominous threshold from which there was no going back from.
But Jo willfully ignored it all and opened the door.
Snow, even untouched by the Paris skyline that illuminated her bedroom windows, still radiated moonlight. His silver hair swept over an eye, but seemed looser and rougher at the edges. His eyes were sunken, hollow.
This wasn’t their fearless and stoic leader. This was the man in agony she’d seen through the Door months ago—the man she’d forced herself to all but forget. There was clearly no path forward to discovering anything more about him.
No path, until he presented one to her.
“I don’t know why I’m here.” His voice belonged to someone who’d spent hours screaming at the shadows in the corners.
“Come in.” She moved on instinct—on an invisible tide that ebbed and flowed between them. If he was the moon, then she was the sea, pulled along by the mysterious aura that he wore like couture.
“I shouldn’t.”
“Why?” It wasn’t a particularly good argument, so his lack of fight when he did surrender was all the more glaring. While she was used to his feet seemingly never touching the ground, the wounded, once-majestic creature now walked with the heaviness of a body robbed of all ethereal grace.
Snow closed the door behind him, leaning against it as if to draw space between them. There wasn’t much, and it pulled her a half-step closer in. . . what? Fascination? Concern? Sympathy? He was all of it wrapped in the most beautiful enigma she’d ever seen.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he repeated.
“Well, you are, so that’s that,” Jo said as gently as she could through her exasperation. “Snow. . . What happened?”
“Warning you is pointless.” He pressed his eyes closed and hung his head. “It will do no good. You can’t stop it, none of us can.”
“Stop what?”
“And now, now we must do this.” He shook his head again and the long bangs all but concealed his face. “Why did I come? Telling you will do no—”
Jo summoned magic she didn’t realize she possessed and silenced him with a touch.
It was the most delicate, timid touch she’d ever given. Lighter than a butterfly landing, her fingertips on his cheek. Right first, then left.
He was warm. Warmer than she thought he would be for a man who looked so much like his namesake. Had he been this warm when he’d taken her hand at the Ranger compound all those months ago? Had he been this warm when she’d helped him most of the way back to his room after he’d allowed her to witness his magic?
When he didn’t flinch or pull away, the pads of her fingers made shallow indents in his skin as she pulled his attention forward. Look at me, she wanted to say, let me see you. Her lips were still, voice silent, but everything about her was alive. His presence had done for her what sleep could not; it rejuvenated her.
Perhaps it was some residual magic that lingered between them from his pulling her into the Society, but this man made her feel something indescribable. Something she’d never felt across universes or realities. In a fake world outside of time, this was real.
It was something she’d been missing all along. Something she longed for. Something that was almost like. . . a reunion.
“There’s been a wish, hasn’t there?” she whispered.
He nodded and pressed his eyes shut again, as if in pain.
“Tell me.” He’d have to sooner or later and if he did it now, he’d have practice keeping his composure for the rest of the group.
As if reading her mind, Snow took a shuddering breath. Then another, slightly more stable one. And then, he found length in his spine and strength in his shoulders. He rose to his full height and looked down at her. His carriage wasn’t overbearing, nor was it the aloof comportment she’d seen him muster so many times before.
He looked like a stumbled Atlas, finding the will to stand and carry the world on his shoulders once more.
“We are to prevent all loss of life.”
“Wh-what?” Appreciation for him telling her in advance hit Jo like a Mac truck. She would’ve never been able to keep herself together in the briefing room when he broke the news. She could already feel it ripping at the seams of her facial composure. Scenes of wide-spread carnage from the news they’d been watching for nearly a month all flashed before Jo’s eyes in a visceral assault. “It’s too much this time. It’ll be impossible.”
“We’ll think of something.” He glanced away.
“No, we won’t.” Jo grabbed his hands, taking a full step closer to him. Their hips were almost touching now. “Snow, this isn’t hacking into a mainframe or getting revenge on a mob boss. This is a volcano. It’s already happened, we can’t just get a do-over.”
“We can.” He tilted his head to her, eyes locking.
“What. . .” Jo’s voice had fallen to a whisper.
“I’ve done all I can.”
She searched his face, her fingertips still mapping the curves of his cheeks and the line of his jaw. “Are you all right?” Jo wanted to groan at herself for the question. He gave her that cryptic response and all she could ask was if he was all right?
“I did. . . all I could, Jo.” He rephrased his statement, weaker, almost trembling in breath between the words.
“What did you do?”
“You have no idea what you’re asking.” Snow’s mouth pressed into a hard line, but didn’t move away. If anything, he felt closer. He leaned forward. She was sure now: he was closer than he’d ever been.
“Then tell me.” Jo pulled him but there was no more space to give; their legs were touching, chests brushing. “Tell me something real. Tell me what this is.”
His eyes widened and Jo felt hers mirror them. Was she even asking about the wish or his ever-elusive magic anymore? Or was she seeking validation for the pull between them?
“Jo. . .” All words failed him just as they were eluding her.
Grammar and structure melted away as his silver eyes bore into hers. Jo swallowed hard. There was one thing left in her mind, a singular request that would not let her breathe again until it escaped.
“Stay with me tonight?”
“What? Why would you ask that?” The rasp of his voice was thickening to a velvety chocolate paste.
“Don’t let me be alone, not knowing this,” she begged softly. “It’s been torture waiting, and now I have to wait with knowledge I can do nothing with. Stay with me, at least until the others are stirring.”
“I can’t do that.” Even as he spoke, their separate personal space was condensing into a singularity that would suck them both in. “You know I can’t.”
“I don’t know anything. You won??
?t tell me anything. . . The one thing that I do know is that I want you here.”
“And I—”
When he cut himself off, swallowing down whatever he’d almost confessed, Jo found herself hanging on those two words to the point that a groan of frustration rose in her throat. Eventually, true to all prior form, Snow ended things with the tact of a four-year-old.
“I need to go.” For a man who could usually put the grace of a ballerina to shame, he’d suddenly turned into a boar. Snow half-pushed, half-steered her to the side.
“Why? Tell me one thing, Snow, please!” Jo demanded, voice raised, even as he opened the door. “Don’t shut me out again!”
He shot her a near-painful look, equal parts glare and nervousness, before his composure returned and he leaned forward. Her treacherous heart beat faster almost instantly.
“This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.” Something was at the point of breaking, and it wasn’t just the way his last couple of words cracked and shattered. “Staying distant, because of your magic—right now, this is all I can do.”
He was pleading with her to understand but giving her just enough to have only the vaguest idea that felt more like a shapeless blob than a tangible thing labeled “understanding”. Still, one thought came forward. A singular memory.
“You’d said something about my magic before, after the first wish.” Jo stepped closer, trying to pin him in place. “What did you mean then?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why?” Jo wanted to punch him and kiss him all at the same time.
“This is the only way we can protect you. Somewhere, you know that’s true.”
It was like being transported back in time. Had he not said something similar to her long ago? If he had, her mind couldn’t locate the memory; everything had gone soft. “What? Why would I need to be protected? And from what?” she asked no one, because the man who held all the answers had run from her once again.
Chapter 10