I quietly mouthed the words:
Clara
A Light in the Sky
“She’s not quite as pretty as you, but maybe when I’m done with her . . .”
I walked over to Elias and hugged him. It was true; I was stuck in some deep mud. But this mud did feel soft and warm.
Marna will pull out of it, whatever it is.
The thought did not soothe.
Elias stepped out of my arms and frowned. “What happened? You look so tired.”
“I’ll just leave you two alone.” Kirby stepped out of the shack.
I gently took hold of Elias’s head, squeezing it between my palms.
“We’re chasing wind. We’re going to a place you can’t name in search of something you can’t find. It’s not real. None of this is real. A Lightkeeper? What is that? You don’t know. Either of you. Especially the Other One, the you who calls me Clarita and wants me to read the stars. That’s crazy. This is crazy. And at home, things are happening. Real things. Real . . . things.”
Elias swallowed and stroked the plane, his fingers pausing on my name. “You should leave. You’re right. Everything you say is right.” He took hold of my forearms and pulled free, his strong hands clutching mine. “I’m presently of sound mind, and I release you from any promise you ever made to me or Mom or . . . the Other One.” He forced a smile, and sighed. “You should go.”
I lifted up my arms, and let them flop at my sides. “That’s not what I’m asking for! Can you give me anything more? A purpose for this trip. A reason.”
Elias climbed slowly back inside the plane. “Have you ever felt safe? Completely and utterly? That’s what I feel when I think of the Lightkeeper. I have no fears. I just know everything’s all right. I don’t feel that at any other time, except maybe a little with you.” He glanced around at his creation and hopped down. “I don’t know the reason the Other One is looking for this Keeper.”
I stepped nearer. “The Other One thinks it’s your enemy.”
“No. Not true. Can’t be.” Elias shook his head. “I would like to find out.”
I stood for a moment. “When did you get sick?”
Elias folded his arms. “Guess I won’t be needing the trailer.”
I shoved his chest, but it had no effect, and I tapped my finger on his skull. “Stay with my question up here. When?”
“I can get myself home. It’s 20,005 bumps in the road until we’re through Wisconsin.”
“Answer my question!”
“When.” Elias sighed. “Eight. It’s what Mom says.”
I started to pace. “Think about that. Both you and the Other One share a memory. A word. A phrase. Some impressions. It’s the same memory, before the one of you became two. Good for you, horrifying for him, but the same memory. If anyone knows how to set your mind to rights, it would be this Lightkeeper. Maybe this Lightkeeper can . . . reconnect you, and you’ll be just, shall we say, you. That’s a reason not to quit.”
“I don’t think it works that way.”
“But maybe?”
Elias grinned. “It would be medically impossible, miraculous maybe.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “An unheard of; miraculous maybe. That’s hope enough. Let me get the car.”
I walked away from the shack swelling with optimism. Why hadn’t I seen it before? The existence of a unifier before Elias’s split meant that unifier was more than a key to his recovery . . . On it rested the hope of his entire quest. Stars and Salem — all that talk was foolishness. But this memory was real, and worth the search. Medically sound reasoning? No. But at least logical to me. Whatever I had to do to discover the memory’s origin, I would do.
To heal a boy with a sick mind. To bring him back to life.
It couldn’t take away my shame, but if Little Thomas were here, he would have approved.
CHAPTER 16
My second trip into Salem was less frantic than the first, though it carried as much purpose. Somewhere ahead lay the key, the connecting memory in Elias’s mind. And although it seemed a miracle that it should be found, it also seemed the only thing worth searching for.
I was rather certain that I was the first Fiat to pull a plane sided by a boy with two identities through Salem, Wisconsin. That thought was fleeting. As I drove by the chocolate shop, the weight of my surroundings overpowered.
“It’s empty. There’s nothing here,” said Elias.
“An old prison and a combination sweet shop and U-Haul rental, but otherwise you’re right.”
“And this is where the Other One wanted to visit?”
“Salem is on the street sign, and that’s enough for him.” I slowed on Antioch Road, watching residents pause and stare in front of tiny houses. They were guarded, but I was too, and even through the glass our tension fed off each other.
“So, where do we go now?” Elias asked.
My stomach fell. Sanity provided me no answers.
“We need the Other One, the paranoid one. If I’m going to help keep you real, I need to step into his hallucination, and I need you to let me.”
“You want me to disappear?”
I looked off. No. The part of me who saw in Elias the same trusting eyes of Little T? No, that part wanted him to stay, and stay forever. But the Other Me . . . the me desperate to discover what he knew about my great shame? That me needed the Other One. For direction. For more sketches. For the truth.
Oh, what a lying mess I was.
“Clara? I mean, do we really need the Other One to keep going?”
“Still figuring out the process.” I turned back toward Elias. “I think the Other One gives me the narrative, speaks of the stars, and I am to interpret the signs.”
“Can you interpret?”
“Well, I can tell stories.”
“My mom tells stories.” Elias’s fingers tapped nervously. “But you have no clue what you’re doing.”
“That’s true. I enter Salem into my GPS and perhaps off we’ll go, but . . .” I pulled into Cliff’s Shooting Range and stopped the car. “He does seem to have ideas. They’re cracked, but they’re ideas. Maybe for the first time, we really do need him?”
Elias pushed out of the Fiat and slammed the door. I joined him and we leaned over the top of the car, staring at each other.
“I don’t want to slip. I mean, it’s frightening. I might never come back.”
“He might be our only way to get you out permanently. It’s a lot to ask, I know . . . Are you willing?”
Elias pushed both hands through his hair. “But I can’t just make him come. There’s nothing I can do to control that.”
Shots in the distance. I rounded the car. “Are you still taking medicine?”
He answered slowly. “Maybe.”
“Elias. I want you to hear this. I am not leaving you. I will not leave you. I will stay with you until we figure this out.”
He stared back, unblinking. “You want me to stop taking the stuff and see what happens. I already know. I get anxious. And my hands they, they start to lose their grip, and my feet go next, and then the floor opens and I’m gone. I’m down there. I see something like light, but the Other One, he doesn’t let me up. Without meds, he probably won’t need to.”
“And he’ll think he’s in charge.” I grabbed his hand and walked toward the aeroplane. I climbed in and gestured for Elias to do the same. The sun was going down. It seemed a nice place to spend the evening. “But he won’t be in charge. We’ll be using him to find this Lightkeeper and get you out, and hopefully it will be permanent.”
My heart ached. I’d used many people on my trip, but never someone I cared for. My victims had faces. They never had names.
Elias’s shoulders drooped, and his voice lowered. “Truth is, the stuff I take isn’t working anyway. Doc was going to make a change, and I was going to go off my meds completely before starting the new one. I suppose I could . . . I mean, I could do it now. It’s just that the pills, they’re like security — bad secur
ity, but security.”
“If you don’t want to, I totally understand.” I lay down on my back, looking up at Elias. “Come here.”
He bent over halfway, and I reached my hand behind his neck. “We don’t know how it works. But wouldn’t it be worth it if there was no more fear . . .” I pulled him closer. “No more slipping.” I pulled him nearer still, his face six inches from mine. “No more apart.”
He tensed. “I’m scared.”
“It is scary, leaving the familiar. Leaving the medication. Leaving —”
“No,” Elias whispered, his breath quick and warm. “I’m scared of you.”
I released his neck. “I am not exactly in a dominant position here.”
“You’ll leave. I mean, after a while of hanging around him, why would you stay? I’ll be gone and I’ll be a freak and then I’ll be all alone.”
I took a deep breath. “I will not go. I have only made one other vow in my life.”
Elias twisted around and lay beside me, shoulder to shoulder. We stared in silence at the deepening stars.
“Your vow.” Elias nudged me. “Did you keep it?”
I feigned sleep.
“Clara, I need to know if you kept it.”
Another deep breath.
Some questions are best left unanswered.
I woke with the barrel of a gun inches from my nose.
My breath caught, and I slowly reached over to pinch Elias.
“Let ’im sleep.” The gun tapped my fingers and I drew them back. “Ever killed anybody, Clara?”
Against the moonlit stars, the frame and voice hinted girl, but the gun and the question didn’t fit.
I shook my head.
She gazed at me. “But you’re running, right? You and him. You’re running from something big, maybe something you did? Something he did?”
“Do I know you?” I whispered. “Is it money you’re after? Perhaps I can help —”
“Get out.” She cleared her throat and glanced about. “We need to walk.”
A minute later, I was trudging through thick undergrowth, a girl with a gun stepping at my side.
“You knew my name,” I said.
“You left your car door open. That’s stupid number one around here. Stupid number two was not readin’ the signs. Range closes eight pm. Still here after that? Cliff authorizes me to plug you with a bullet. It’s been some time since I’ve pulled a trigger, but don’t think I’m rusty.”
She nudged me on with the barrel. Deeper we crunched, until there was no sign of sky and the path disappeared beneath our feet. Thick silence surrounded. Breath and the crack of branches — that’s all there was. And then, as we broke into a clearing, sound returned. The licking tongues of a flickering fire, fronting the silhouette of a small cabin standing just beyond. Crickets chirped and water bubbled, and my captor motioned me toward a log beside the blaze.
Think, Clara. You’ve been in strange scrapes before . . .
My mind woke up.
“What’s your name, then?”
She swept back her hair. My, she was beautiful, but in a different way than I’d known before. This girl was wild and fierce — traits I’d experienced in Kira — but more than that, she seemed noble. Dressed in army fatigues, she was an original, definitely one for my diary.
“Izzy, short for Lizzie, short for Isabelle, short for Isabelle Iv —, though if you call me anything but Izzy —”
“Yes, you’ll shoot me. So, Izzy, you brought me here for what end?”
Izzy gently set her gun in a guitar case, and plopped down on the other side of the fire. “He as good looking in the daylight?”
I offered a Kira smirk. “He is more than adequate on the eyes.”
“Thought so.” She reached into a box and pulled out an apple. Juice flowed down her chin as she ate. “So, you’re from Minnesota by the plates, but not by the accent.”
“Australia, actually.”
Izzy tossed the core into the air, grabbed the gun and fired. Bits of apple rained down on me. “Best not lie.” She set her gun back down. “Don’t think that because I like you, I won’t kill you.”
The breeze shifted, and the fire’s smoke blanketed me, stung my eyes. I squinted and shielded my eyes, my throat thick and sore. When next I risked a peek, Izzy had moved nearer.
“Let me tell you about killing. It hurts,” she continued, though her words didn’t seem meant for me. “For a long time, it hurts. And you’ll do anything to wipe the red off your hands . . .” She turned abruptly. “But you wouldn’t know about that, would you, Clara? Sophisticated Clara with the good-looking guy. Life has handed you roses. It hasn’t given all of us roses.”
I had no idea what to say, and I forced a smile.
“I’ve been stuck here a long time. I’ve been waiting for someone to show up and take the two of us away.” Izzy patted her guitar case. “The guy looks tame, but you have the eyes. You’re going to take me out of here.”
I closed my eyelids. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because, Clara from across the pond, after slinking around this town for years, it’s time for me to move on. This place has kept my gun loaded and kept me hidden, but it’s hard living alone, and on the run. I’m betting you know that. Minnesota plates this far into Wisconsin? You’re clearly heading east.” She leaned forward. “You’re going to take me with you. I’ve put in two long winters here. The real cold is coming. I don’t take up much room.”
“Izzy, this is complicated. It’s not a normal jaunt.”
“Okay.” She moved over and plunked down next to me. “Let’s simplify. I’m coming or I’ll kill you.”
No. Izzy was a big no. Three times she had mentioned killing in the span of five minutes. She was wild, or mad. Either way, she was unpredictable. Izzy couldn’t threaten her way onto this journey. One crazy was enough to look after.
“Then you’ll have to shoot me.” I stood, turned my back on the fire . . . and fled. Running, stumbling, toward the edge of the clearing in the direction I’d arrived. Remarkably, after fifteen minutes of searching, my feet found the trail, and I huffed back toward the plane.
I burst free of the woods. Ahead, a streetlight illuminated the aeroplane.
“Wake up, Elias! Wake up!”
I jumped onto the wing. The plane was empty. I peeked at the car, and my shoulders slumped. There he sat, passenger-side ready.
Izzy lounged in the back.
I slowly opened the driver’s door.
“Clarita! I don’t know how you do it. You found us a guard. She might come in handy.”
“Elias, may we talk a moment?”
“No need.” He nestled into his seat. “I agree with your assessment of the quest. She will be useful as we face the dangers ahead.”
More lunacy.
I climbed inside. “Hello, Izzy, short for Lizzie, short for Isabelle, short —”
“You might wanna drive. The night is partly gone.” She stroked her guitar case.
“Right.” I started the ignition and paused. There, resting on the console, was a second sketch, a second hazy, shaded, unclear sketch. I slowly reached down and took hold of it.
A slipping figure, all hands and mouth, with a face twisted in horror. All around the face was motion and emotion, like a tortured Van Gogh. It alone was the focal point of the terror.
Like Mum had been that night.
I lowered the sketch onto my lap.
“Does that interest you, Clarita?”
“It disturbs me.”
“And why would that be?” asked Elias. “You passed another test by providing a guard to secure our trip.”
Gift. Mentalism. How he knew the opening moments of the Great Undoing no longer mattered. I just needed to see the credits; that is, if my heart could endure the show.
CHAPTER 17
Our search for the next Salem took us through Chicago.
I knew it by the signs. I felt it by the tolls.
But I would not hur
ry. The best way to eliminate the limpet wedged in the backseat would be to make our travel so intolerably slow that she could bear it no longer.
I set the cruise control at forty and relished every honk.
“Clarita, why is everyone passing us?” Elias looked around. The disappointment in his voice was palpable, and tragic. I had gained a suspicious Izzy and I was losing a trusting Elias. The medicines’ effects were quickly passing, and the boy who placed his faith in me was long gone, but I told myself he was still there, somewhere beneath, looking up, trying to escape.
Meanwhile, my transformation was complete. I had forced Elias into this state, yes, for him but also secretly for me. For what I stood to discover from the Other One. I wasn’t like the boarders at Guinevere’s inn; I was far more hideous. I didn’t just wait for the Other One; I set him free.
My motives were as distinct as Elias’s personalities, selfishness and selflessness alternately driving my actions.
And at the root of it all was Little T.
That one epic failure drove everything.
“I don’t want to get pulled over,” I said.
“Speed up.”
The first two words from Izzy since we left.
“No.”
“Speed up.”
“No.”
Elias, now Jason, was clearly uncomfortable with feminine conflict. He fidgeted and crossed and uncrossed his legs. “Maybe we should go Clarita’s speed for an hour and then Izzy’s speed for an hour.”
“Speed up.” Izzy’s voice was soft and certain.
“No.” Again, I matched her resolve.
“I can’t have my guide and my guard arguing. How are we going to quietly find the Lightkeeper with all this bickering?”
“Toll ahead. Izzy, your turn to pay.”
Her face bunched in the rearview. “I will pay if you speed up.”
“No.”
We came to a halt. A Fiat pulling an aeroplane. I smiled at the tollbooth operator, a thin man with a pleasant face.
“Dollar ninety, please.”
I held my hand back over the seat. “You heard the gentleman. I need the toll.”
Fifteen seconds later, my palm was still empty.