“Why didn’t my mother just take me with her?” Alexander asks.
“For the same reason our father didn’t take Adaline or me. We were too young to survive the journey.” Cooper explains.
“Well, I’m pretty sure I could survive some boat ride!” Alexander says back, floored at his mother’s decision.
“But it’s more than just that,” Cooper argues with him. “The sea is full of the atomic energy from the asteroid shower years ago and that has filled the waters with these inhumane creatures. They are similar to the animals that inhabited the sea before the shower, but they are far more deadly. I’m not even sure we could survive them now.”
“Okay, but I’m confused about why our father brought all these kids out here into the woods to what? Just wait for us?” I ask.
“The idea behind this was that if guards found us Mio and Cinder were supposed to tell them that we were just sick kids from the village and that we were sent out here because they wanted to lessen disease in the village. The reason we had to do this was because we couldn’t keep moving camp around to keep away from the guards. We had to stay in this exact spot so that you would find us. Plus, the guards had no good reason to bring a bunch of sick kids back into Garth. We made sure all of us were non-gifted and not wanted by the King,” Cooper says.
“So you’re telling me our father put a camp of children in the woods with Mio and Cinder to just wait seven years for me to show up because there was a good chance I’d have the gift according to their visions?” I ask, unable to believe his story.
“Yes,” Cooper says sharply. “Look, he was right wasn’t he?”
“Okay, so father knew that mother, Titus and I would get thrown in prison? He knew mother and Titus would die? Alexander and George going to work in the castle was all part of this plan to help us get to Libertas once we were old enough?” I ask, bewildered by the thought that my entire life is some plan.
“It was a fairly good plan. In the dungeon no one would see your green eyes to know you were highly likely to have the gift. Our father never mentioned the fact that mother and Titus would die. I don’t think he ever knew that would happen,” Cooper stops, letting his eyes drop.
I realize that he never even got to really meet our little brother. He probably doesn’t even remember what our mother looks like or what her voice sounded like. I reach and grab his hand, and a sense of belonging rushes through me. Like I finally put in the missing piece of a really messed up puzzle. Cooper looks up at me and I can see the tears forming in his eyes, those caramel colored eyes.
“You have his eyes,” I say. “You and Titus had the same caramel colored eyes.” I smile slightly, remembering Titus and how alike they really are.
Cooper gives me a slight smile before I pull my hand back and he continues. “Since Alexander worked for the castle, King Renon didn’t need to capture him for his gift. You were already following his orders.”
“But something still doesn’t make sense,” Alexander says, “Why did my father flee from the castle and leave me behind?”
Cooper clears his throat before continuing. “I heard Derith and Marin discussing it the night we came here. Since George was a Future Holder he had seen a time where King Renon had ordered for him to go through a mental restoration. It’s a process that would allow King Renon to take all of the visions your father has had and put them into his own head. It also would have resulted in your father’s death. After King Renon takes all his visions and disposes of his memories it leaves the body brain-dead, so George left once you were old enough to fend for yourself. If King Renon would have gotten hold of George’s visions of the future then he would have seen all of this. The plan would fail and we all would have lost our lives.”
“Well have you seen him since then? My father?” Alexander pleads.
“No, I’m afraid not, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t make it to Libertas,” Cooper adds shortly. “I don’t know what instructions Derith gave him.”
“Why do you have to have the gift to get into Libertas?” I ask, realizing I hadn’t thought it to be weird at first, but now I see that all these ordinary people wasted seven years of their lives living in the woods just to get a chance to go to Libertas. And there were more guards that fled with Alexander’s father, not all of them or maybe any of them had gifts. An act like that would get you killed if you were caught. “All of these people who don’t have gifts are risking their lives helping Alexander and I get somewhere that they aren’t even allowed to live in?”
“I don’t know much about life in Libertas, but when people first started to flee to the island it was known as a place of freedom for people with gifts. But that’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows really. People who go to Libertas and make it there
