ends, she tells me about the upcoming Halloween festival in town, and says she hopes to see me there, that maybe we can hang out. I say yeah, that would be great, and pretend to be cool, even though I’m flying inside.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IMAGES COME TO ME, AT RANDOM TIMES, USUALLY when I least expect them. Sometimes they are small and fleeting—my grandmother holding a glass of water and opening her mouth to say something—but I never know the words because the image vanishes as quickly as it came. Sometimes they are longer, more lifelike: my grandfather pushing me on a swing. I can feel the strength in his arms as he pushes me up, the butterflies in the pit of my stomach as I race down. My laughter carries on the wind. Then the image is gone. Sometimes I explicitly remember the images from my past, remember being a part of them. But sometimes they are as new to me as though they never happened before.
In the living room, with Henri running the Loric crystal up each of my arms, my hands suspended over flames, I see the following: I am young—three, maybe four—running through our front yard of newly clipped grass. Beside me is an animal with a body like a dog, but with a coat like a tiger. His head is round, his body barrel chested atop short legs. Unlike any animal I have ever seen. He crouches, poised to leap at me. I can’t stop laughing. Then he jumps and I try to catch him but I’m too small and both of us fall to the grass. We wrestle. He is stronger than I am. Then he jumps in the air, and instead of falling back to the ground as I expect, he turns himself into a bird and flies up and around me, hovering just beyond my reach. He circles, then comes down, shoots between my legs, lands twenty feet away. He changes into an animal that looks like a monkey without a tail. He crouches low to lunge at me.
Just then a man comes up the walk. He is young, dressed in a silver and blue rubber suit that is tight on his body, the kind of suit I’ve seen divers wear. He speaks to me in a language that I don’t understand. He says the name “Hadley” and nods to the animal. Hadley runs over to him, his shape changing from a monkey to something larger, something bearlike with a lion’s mane. Their heads are level, and the man scratches Hadley beneath the chin. Then my grandfather comes out of the house. He looks young, but I know that he must be at least fifty.
He shakes hands with the man. They speak but I don’t understand what they are saying. Then the man looks at me, smiles, lifts his hand out, and all of a sudden I’m off the ground and flying through the air. Hadley follows, as a bird again. I’m in full control of my body, but the man controls where I go, moving his hand to the left or to the right. Hadley and I play in midair, him tickling me with his beak, me trying to get a grip on him. And then my eyes snap open and the image is gone.
“Your grandfather could make himself invisible at will,” I hear Henri say, and I close my eyes again. The crystal continues up my arm, spreading the fire repellent to the rest of my body. “One of the rarest Legacies there is, developing only in one percent of our people, and he was one of them. He could make himself and whatever he was touching completely disappear.
“There was one time he wanted to play a joke on me, before I knew what his Legacies were. You were three years old and I had just started working with your family. I came to your house for the first time the day before, and as I came up the hill for my second day the house wasn’t there. There was a driveway, and a car, and the tree, but no house. I thought I was losing my mind. I continued past it. Then when I knew I had gone too far I turned back and there, some distance away, was the house that I swore wasn’t there before. So I started walking back, but when I came close enough the house again vanished. I just stood there looking at the spot where I knew it must be, but seeing only the trees beyond it. So I walked on. Only on my third time by did your grandfather make the house reappear for good. He couldn’t stop laughing. We laughed about that day for the next year and a half, all the way till the very end.”
When I open my eyes I am back on the battlefield. More explosions, fire, death.
“Your grandfather was a good man,” Henri says. “He loved to make people laugh, loved to tell jokes. I don’t think there was ever a time that I left your house without having a stomachache from laughing so hard.”
The sky has turned red. A tree rips through the air, thrown by the man in silver and blue, the one I saw at the house. It takes out two of the Mogadorians and I want to cheer in victory. But what use is there in celebrating? No matter how many Mogadorians I see killed, the outcome of that day will not change. The Loric will still be defeated, every last one of them killed. I will still be sent to Earth.
“I never once saw the man get angry. When everyone else lost their temper, when stress encompassed them, your grandfather stayed calm. It was usually then that he would bring out his best jokes, and just like that everyone would be laughing again.”
The small beasts target the children. They are defenseless, holding sparklers in their hands from the celebration. That is how we are losing—only a few of the Loric are fighting the beasts, and the rest are trying to save the children.
“Your grandmother was different. She was quiet and reserved, very intelligent. Your elders complemented each other that way, your grandfather the carefree one, your grandmother working behind the scenes so that everything went off as planned.”
High in the sky I can still see the trail of blue smoke from the airship carrying us to Earth, carrying us Nine and our Keepers. Its presence unnerves the Mogadorians.
“And then there was Julianne, my wife.”
Far off in the distance there is an explosion, this one like the kind that comes from the liftoff of Earth’s rockets. Another ship rises in the air, a trail of fire behind it. Slowly at first, then building speed. I’m confused. Our ships didn’t use fire for liftoff; they didn’t use oil or gasoline. They emitted a small blue trail of smoke that came from the crystals used to power them, never fire like this one. The second ship is slow and clumsy compared to the first, but it makes it, rising through the air, gaining speed. Henri never mentioned a second ship. Who is on it? Where is it going? The Mogadorians shout and point at it. Again, it causes them anxiety, and for a brief moment the Loric surge.
“She had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen, bright green like emeralds, plus a heart as big as the planet itself. Always helping others, constantly bringing in animals and keeping them as pets. I’ll never know what it was she saw in me.”
The large beast has returned, the one with the red eyes and enormous horns. Drool mixed with blood falls from razor-sharp teeth so large they can’t be contained within its mouth. The man in silver and blue is standing directly in front of it. He tries to lift the beast with his powers, and he gets it a few feet off the ground but then struggles and lifts no farther. The beast roars, shakes, and falls back to the ground. It forces ahead against the man’s powers, but it can’t break them. The man lifts it again. Sweat and blood glisten in the moonlight on his face. Then he doubles his hands over and the beast crashes to its side. The ground shakes. Thunder and lightning fill the sky but there’s no rain to go with them.
“She was a late sleeper, and I always woke before she did. I would sit in the den and read the paper, make breakfast, go for a walk. Some mornings I would come back and she would still be sleeping. I was impatient, couldn’t wait to start the day together. She made me feel good just to be around her. I would go in and try to rouse her. She would pull the covers over her head and growl at me. Almost every morning, always the same thing.”
The beast flails but the man is still in control. Other Garde have joined in, every one of them using a power on the mammoth beast, fire and lightning raining down upon it, streaks of lasers coming from all directions. Some Garde are doing damage unseen, standing away from it and holding their hands out in concentration. And then high up a collective storm brews, one major cloud growing and glowing in an otherwise cloudless sky, some sort of energy collecting within it. All Garde are in on it, all of them helping to create this cataclysmic haze. And then a final, massive bolt of lightning drops down and hits the beast where it lies. And there it dies.
“What could I do? What could anyone do? In total there were nineteen of us on that ship. You nine children and us nine Cepan, chosen by no means other than where we happened to be that night, and the pilot who brought us here. We Cepan couldn’t fight, and what difference would it have made if we could? The Cepan are bureaucrats, meant to keep the planet running, meant to teach, meant to train new Garde how to understand and manipulate their powers. We were never meant to be fighters. We would have been ineffective. We would have died like the rest. All we could do was leave. Leave with you to live and to one day restore to glory the most beautiful planet in all of the universe.”
