Life Eternal Part 32

Noah adjusted his gla.s.ses, deep in thought. "Then she went with her doctor to his hospital in the American colonies."

"Gottfried," I said, deep in thought. "When she was there, she somehow transitioned from patient to nurse and headmistress. But she couldn't have survived long enough to be either of those as an Undead. They only have twenty-one years to find their souls." The lines of the notebook paper blurred as the dates swirled in my head. The realization came to me before the words to articulate it did, and I let out a strange squeak that halted conversation. Anya and Noah stared at me, waiting. My back went rigid as I looked up. "What if she used the secret while she was there?"

Noah held a finger to his lips in thought. "Isn't there a lake there?"

"A salt lake," I murmured, still unable to believe what I was saying. "With a statue of Ursa Major looking over it."

"A bear," Anya said in awe.

"Yes," I said, my pulse racing as I realized that the answer to my soul, to Dante's soul, had been at Gottfried all along.

Noah looked up at me with a small smile. "So when are we leaving?"

IT WAS THAT WITCHING TIME BETWEEN FOUR AND five in the morning when Noah and I boarded a train to Maine. The cars were rickety old things, mostly empty, as we walked through them and took two seats near the back. I wedged our shovels by the window, Noah's and mine. Anya wanted to come, but I hadn't let her. Someone had to stay behind in case we didn't come back.

With a groan, the train heaved forward, hurling us south, though I wouldn't have known it from the view. It was all black to me. Noah fell asleep almost immediately, his head slumping until it was resting against my shoulder. Gently, I s.h.i.+fted beneath his weight, trying to nudge him awake.

This whole search had started with something simple, just Dante and me; but now I was on a train, crossing the border in the middle of night with two shovels and Noah, the weight of his head pressing me deeper into the seat. I felt so far from where I had started that it seemed I would never be able to find my way back.

A conductor sauntered down the aisle in a black uniform. "Billets," he said.

I reached into my sweater pocket for our tickets and handed them to the conductor. He stamped two of them, and studied the third before handing it back to me. "Ceci n'est pas un billet," he said.

Taking it from him, I turned on my overhead light and gasped.

It was a worn photograph of a small stucco house with an overgrown garden that was overexposed with yellow California light. I knew that door, I thought, tracing its edges. I knew the carpet behind it, the way it felt plush between my toes. I knew the rooms beyond: the living room, the den, the stairs with the creak in the third step. Through the front window I could see a man and woman standing over the counter in the kitchen. It looked like they were laughing. My parents. My kitchen. My life.

I gripped the photograph, staring at the blur of their faces. I had never seen it before. How had it gotten into my pocket? Where had I been when it was taken? The longer I stared at it, the more agitated I began to feel. My eyes darted about the train car to the other pa.s.sengers, slumped in their seats. They didn't know, I thought. No one knew except for me. I gazed at the photograph, overwhelmed with regret. I was the only one who could have warned my parents. If only I had gotten there sooner. I could have saved Annette LaBarge, too. I could have saved all of them.

My eyes grew wet. I blinked. A tear fell onto my lap.

I blinked again, my eyes growing heavy, and the sky outside seemed to brighten.

A third time, and the leaves budded on the trees, as if it were spring. Exhausted, my head fell back against the leather of the seat, and my world disappeared.

Then it was morning. I was walking on a muddy road surrounded by a green birch forest. I saw no sign of life other than the twin ruts of tire tracks caked in the dirt. I didn't stop until I was in front of a log cabin hidden behind the weeds. A mailbox stood outside, labeled with the number 66. Beside it hung a sign that said: BEWARE OF DOG.

Crouching low behind the bushes, I waited until a car drove up the road where I had come from. From the bottom of the shrubs, I could only see four feet as they stepped out of the car, but I already knew who they were. Two Brothers of the Liberum. "How did you find this woman?" one of them said in Latin, his voice smooth and easy, like a teenager.

"I followed her through Europe," the second brother said in a low baritone. "I think she found something that might lead us to the Sisters."

"They never find anything," the other one said, kicking a rock. It landed inches away from my face. And without saying anything more, he opened the mailbox and placed a slip of paper inside. Looking both directions, they got back into the car and drove away.

At first I didn't move. I stared at the cabin windows, checking to make sure no one had stirred inside. When I thought it was clear, I opened the mailbox door. It made a loud screech. My eyes darted to the cabin, where I heard the sound of little footsteps. Quickly, I took the paper and vanished into the woods, just as a swarm of Undead children burst through the front door.

Before I knew it, I was on a train traveling south. In my lap was a photograph of a small stucco house with a garden. Through the window were the blurs of two people. I flipped the photograph over. All it said was Lydia Winters.

"Costa Rosa, California," a man announced over the intercom.

I got off and hailed a taxi outside the station and told the driver the address. He drove me through the tree-lined streets and neighborhoods colored with little square houses until he stopped in front of a stucco house. I took out the picture to compare it. It was the same.

I paid the driver and stepped out. There was a sprinkler on in the front yard, which skipped in a semicircle and then back again. I hesitated, and then jumped through it just before it splashed my ankles.

But before I could approach the house, the screen door opened. Startled, I jumped back and hid behind a bougainvillea as a girl stepped out. She was young, maybe sixteen, and looked fearless and carefree. Her long caramel hair was tangled and unkempt. Freckles spotted the bridge of her nose. She raised her chin in the air, as if sniffing something, and then turned to me, her eyes out of focus as she stared at the leaves that blocked me from view. She was wearing cutoff jean shorts and a baggy T-s.h.i.+rt. Her feet were bare as she stepped toward me.

"Renee? Who's there?" her mother called from inside. Music floated out from the open window.

She gave the bougainvillea one last look before turning. "No one," the girl said, her voice deeper than I had expected. Crisp. "I'm going to meet Annie now. I'll be back by dinner." With that, she slipped on a pair of sneakers from inside, and picked up a bicycle leaning on the side of the house. I watched as she hopped on and pedaled down the street.

After she left, I snuck out from behind the bush and darted along the side of the house to the back door. Lydia Winters was in the kitchen. The faucet was running.

I approached slowly. They were Monitors, after all. I didn't want to scare them.

"Robert, do you feel that?" Lydia said.

"Feel what?" a man called out from somewhere in the house.

A bee buzzed around my head as Lydia turned off the faucet. I swatted it away as the back door slid open. Lydia stepped outside, gripping a garden trowel in one hand, and before she could scream, I put a hand over her mouth and pulled her against the side of the house.

She kicked beneath my grip, trying to hit me with the trowel, but I was stronger than her. Slowly, I twisted her wrist until the shovel dropped to the gra.s.s. Squirming, she yelled something, but it was m.u.f.fled beneath my hand.

"Don't scream," I said. "I'm not here to hurt you."

It just made her thrash more. "Stop moving," I said. "I don't want to break your wrists."

A flash of fear shot through her eyes, but quickly transformed to rage.

"You're being followed by the Liberum," I whispered. At the mention of the brotherhood, she grew still. "I've been following them. I intercepted a note with your name on it and a photograph of this house. They know you found something in Europe. You have to hide it."

She had now grown totally still. Carefully, I removed my hand from her mouth.

"Lydia?" her husband called.

"They're coming for you," I said in her ear, just before I let her go. "Prepare yourself."

I woke up to Noah shaking me. "Renee," he said. "Renee." With a start, I opened my eyes.

"You were talking in your sleep," he said. "You were saying something about them coming. About preparing yourself." His hand was wrapped around mine. I slipped my hand out and held it in my lap, opening and closing my fingers as he touched my cheek and wiped it. "You were crying," he said.

"Was I?" I said, but I was still miles away, years away. Crumpled in my fist was the photograph of my home. I held it tighter, trying to hold on to the sound of their voices, to the feel of my mother beneath my grip. Dante's grip.

"He was warning them," I whispered, my voice cracking as I realized what Dante had done. He was an Undead, they were a pair of Monitors; they could have buried him in an instant, but still he risked his life to try to save them. "The whole time, he was warning them."

"Who?"

I glanced down at my sweater, the same one I had been wearing when Dante had showed up at my grandfather's house. He must have slipped the photograph to me when he had put his hand to my waist and kissed my cheek. Reaching over my shoulder, I touched the bandage covering the mark on my back and suddenly felt lonelier than I ever had before. "Someone from a dream."

When Noah turned to the window, I opened my fist and flipped the photograph over. A name was written on the other side. Lydia Winters. Below it was a message scrawled in a different hand; one that I recognized, one that pulled me back in time, until I could remember how the rain smelled on the muddy paths as we ran across the Gottfried campus; how delicate the water sounded as it dripped from his hair while he guided my chalk across the blackboard; how my skin tingled beneath his lips when he kissed my neck, my collarbone, my shoulder: It was all for you.

The sky was a dull gray when the train arrived at the station in Maine. The rain came down in a damp mist as we walked to the parking lot, where a line of black taxis was waiting. The driver of the first rolled down his window.

"Attica Falls," I said, and climbed into the backseat. The seats were made of cheap upholstery and the windows were tinted, which colored the snowy landscape outside in sepia, as if we were traveling through an old photograph. And in a way, I was.

Attica Falls looked exactly the same as it had last year, the potholed roads lined with dilapidated houses and little shops that might have been cute fifty years ago, but now just looked dreary. The snow flanking the street was dirty, and the stores all looked closed, save for Beatrice's and a souvenir shop. As we pa.s.sed the boarding house where Dante used to live, I closed my eyes, trying to see if I could sense him, but I couldn't feel anything.

When I opened my eyes, we were almost all the way through Attica Falls. I saw an old man carrying a bag of ice from the gas station to his truck. He watched us as we pa.s.sed, black water splas.h.i.+ng onto the windows of the truck as we rounded the bend to the main entrance of Gottfried Academy.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with the vacant feeling of the Undead. A plastic bag kicked around the street in front of us and then floated up into the sky. At my direction, the driver pressed on, dropping us at a snowy field at the edge of town.

Slinging my shovel over my shoulder, I led Noah to the well shaded by crab apple trees in the back of the field. The same place Dante had taken me last winter.

"What is this?" Noah said as I brushed the snow off the cover of the well. The air inside groaned as I lifted it off, letting out a burst of warmth.

"Maine has a tunnel system, too," I said, and lowered myself into the earth.

I led Noah through the tunnel, my muscles remembering the turns as if I had just woken up from spending the night with Dante and was running back to the girls' dormitory to shower before cla.s.s. We surfaced in the chapel, behind a corroded vent. Everything was still, the light filtering through the rose-colored windows like a kaleidoscope.

"No one can see us," I said as we crept through the pews. We pushed with all our weight against the chapel doors until they opened against the wind.

The rain was a cold mist when we stepped outside. A few feet away from us, a man in coveralls was chopping the trunk of a tree into pieces and throwing it into some sort of furnace. Noah and I both froze, thinking we were revealed, but he just tipped his cap and kept working. He must have thought we were students. Giving him a slight wave, we walked off, keeping within the shadows of the buildings. But as I gazed around at the campus I thought I knew, my pace slowed.

Everything looked the same, yet wholly different, like a piece of fruit that had become rotten from the inside out. The green was covered with ice and slush. In the middle, where the great oak used to be, now stood a pathetic skeleton of a tree. All of the branches on its right side had been amputated. In fact, most of the trees that used to line the walking paths had now been cut down, leaving severed stumps peeking out of the snow like headstones.

"What happened?" I said, and glanced at the stump beside us, which was tied with a tag. beetle pesticide, it said.

"It doesn't matter," Noah said. "Come on."

It's amazing how quickly some things return to you. As I ran across the snowy green to the lake, the sun a glazed red over the trees, it almost felt like I had traveled back in time to last winter. I stopped in front of the dismembered oak, breathing in the cold air and imagining that I was running back to the dorm after meeting Dante. What version of the past was that? Had I known then that Dante was Undead? That I was a Monitor? That we had the same soul?

Dusk fell over the trees as Noah and I ran toward the lake. It was completely frozen over, my feet slipping beneath me as I slid across its b.u.mpy surface. I stared down at the striations in the ice, which looked like thick blue ribbon candy, but I couldn't see to the water below. I didn't know what I was looking for; I could only hope that I would feel it.

I had almost made it to the statue of the bear on the other side of the lake when I heard a soft crack. I wasn't even sure I'd heard it; it could have been a tree creaking or a window closing in the distance. So I pressed on, my breath coming out in quick, shallow clouds, until something beneath me quivered. And before I could move, before I could even take one last breath, the ice broke.

Just before I could fall in, Noah grabbed my waist and pulled me to the sh.o.r.e, where I landed beside him on the crest where the snow met the ice. Lying back in the snow, I stared at the gray sky and was about to say thank you, when I felt it. A tug so slight it could have been nothing; except it wasn't. I had felt it once before, during my placement exam.

Digging his heels into the snow, Noah stood up, but I didn't move. Instead, I closed my eyes and let the thread of air wrap itself around me, leading me down, down into the depths of the lake.

Suddenly I knew what to do. I threw down my bag. Sitting up, I unb.u.t.toned my coat and pulled it off.

"What are you doing?" Noah said as I approached the hole in the ice.

"It's down there. I can feel it," I said, taking off my scarf. "About ten feet below, a little to the left."

"You can't go in there," Noah said. "It's too cold. You could die."

"How else are we going to get it?" Turning from him, I stepped off the sh.o.r.e and onto the ice. The hole was a few feet away. "Besides," I said, trying to control the s.h.i.+ver in my voice, "it's in the shallows. It won't be that bad," I said, my words turning to fog in the winter air.

"Renee, let me go first," Noah said from behind me. And before I could stop him, he threw off his coat and blazer and strode past me onto the ice.

"Wait!" I said, trying to stop him, but he had already reached the edge of the hole. And glancing at me over his shoulder, he jumped in. He broke the water with a gasp, and, his arms thras.h.i.+ng once against the ice, he sank into the water below.

"Noah?" I said, searching for any sign of him. "Noah?" I shouted again, and leaned over the hole and reached my hand in. The sharp pain of the cold shot through my fingers, making them numb. I gasped and pulled it back.

It had been almost a full minute. I was about to dive in after Noah when he burst through the dark surface of the water. He grasped at the edge of the ice, but it crumbled under his hands. Relieved that I hadn't followed him underwater, I grabbed his arms and pulled.

"Help me!" I said, but his body had already grown stiff. His s.h.i.+rt was hardening around him. "Please, Noah. Help me."

From somewhere beneath his clothes, I felt the muscles stir within him. I heard his legs kick in the water, pus.h.i.+ng against the ice. Using all my strength, I heaved, dragging him out of the lake and onto the snow.

I rolled him over, rubbing his face to warm it, when I noticed that he was clutching a small iron box to his chest, its sides held shut with clasps, its lid engraved with the worn crest of a canary.

"You found it," I said, wrapping his blazer and coat around him. His hair was hard with ice. "You actually found it."

Noah gave me a weak smile, which deteriorated into a shudder. His face was losing its color, and his lips were turning blue. Without thinking, I leaned over and kissed him.

When I pulled away, he gave me a sad grin. "I like this."

I laughed and rolled my eyes. "Okay," I said, taking his hand. "Do you think you can walk?"

He gave me what I thought was a nod and put his arm around my neck.

"Where are we going?" he said, as I crouched low. Once I was sure the path was empty, I led him across the green.

"Inside, so you can warm up."

The closest building was Horace Hall, which would be empty now that cla.s.ses were over for the day. Taking a chance, I walked toward it, Noah leaning on my side. We were almost at the entrance when I froze. The doors of the building opened and my grandfather stormed out, tapping his shovel beside him like a cane. His white hair was thin and matted to the sides of his head in the misty air. Thinking quickly, I pulled Noah to the ground behind a pile of snow. We waited, and when the doors to Horace Hall swung closed behind my grandfather, I helped Noah up and walked him inside.

The foyer was dark, the windows shaded by thick blue curtains. Beneath them, the radiators crackled with heat, the red carpet plush beneath my shoes as I set Noah down, holding his hand against the small of my back to make it thaw. Noah closed his eyes as his muscles relaxed. From the upstairs balcony, a pendulum clock chimed seven. Its low, lethargic sound reminded me of my grandfather's house in Ma.s.sachusetts.

With a groan, Noah hoisted himself up.

"No," I said. "Rest."

But he shook his head and held up the box from the lake floor. "Open it."

I hesitated.

"Go on," he said, thrusting it into my hands. It was surprisingly heavy, its dark metal carved with ornate shapes that covered its sides. Engraved on the top was the crest of a canary. I traced the wings of the bird, which were still lined with mud. Jiggling the clasps loose of the dirt and rust, I slid them down and opened it.

The inside of the chest was perfectly dry. Pinned to the inside of the lid was a preserved canary, its pale yellow wings spread open as if it were in flight. Only then did I realize what the riddle had been referring to. The best of our kind. Only the best Monitor could sense a canary, especially one submerged in water.

Beneath the canary was a smaller metal case, etched with a strange shape that almost looked like the outline of the canary with its wings spread. Drawn across it were dozens of lines and dots and triangles, swirling together to form a landscape. Carved in the center was the following phrase: Pour l'amour vrai.

"For true love," I whispered, finally understanding why Ophelia had decided to defy the pact her Sisters had made to let the secret die with them. She had been in love, just like me. Like Dante, she wasn't ready to die. Picking up the small box, I tried to lift its lid, but couldn't.

"It's stuck," I said, turning it upside down, looking for a seam. But before I could do anything more, the front doors of the building blew open, banging against the walls as the room grew cold.