Lightbringer

Riders.”

“The Riders?” Piotr smirked. “What is it you wish to know?”

“Everything.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Ask for something difficult next time?”

Wendy ducked her head, disappointed. It had taken a lot of nerve to finally work up to this subject, this deep and intricate part of Piotr’s life that he constantly hinted about but never outright explained. “We could start with something else, I guess.”

Shifting in place, Piotr shook his head. “Net, net, this is fine. It’s just…it’s fine.” He cleared his throat. “The easiest explanation sounds bad, do you understand? But it is a good word to use. The Riders are like a gang. A sort of posse?”

“A sort of posse.” Wendy raised one eyebrow and settled herself in for the explanation.

Sighing, Piotr adjusted his angle against her headboard and held his hands up, grasping for an eloquent explanation. “A group. A crew…people.” He sagged. “It is complicated.”

“It can’t be that complicated. You all hang out, right? So what else? Who’s the leader? Why do you call yourself Riders? I’m not asking you to solve the mystery of pi here, Piotr, just give me some background on where you go when you’re not, you know, here.”

“You speak…” he smothered a smile. “You are a strange one.”

“Stalling,” she replied with a wide grin. “Ahem. So, you all hang out, right?”

“Da,” he laughed. “We ‘hang out.’ Infrequently. Often, though, it is a Rider and a few Lost, like a family, but there are times when we congregate. Now, for example.” He smiled and his gaze was far away. “Once, before Lily and I had our time together, the Lost and Riders for miles around would gather every decade. Take trips together. Lily called these meetings tu’wanasaapi.”

“Tu’wanasaapi,” Wendy repeated, liking the way the word rolled off her tongue. “Fancy stuff. What was that all about?”

He shrugged. “It was a meeting of elders, I suppose. A time when we gathered and spoke, shared news and gossiped like old women. Now it would be considered…what was that word you used before? About flower children?”

“Hippies? New age?”

“New age! That is right! Our meeting for the tu’wanasaapi would be considered very spiritual; sitting in a circle and centering ourselves.”

Wendy snorted. “Centering, huh?”

“You laugh,” he replied seriously. “But many of the Lost were visited by the Light during those meetings. Many souls went on.”

“I wouldn’t dream of laughing at you,” Wendy said, holding up her hands placatingly. “Not when it comes to the Light. That stuff is serious business.” Moody now, Piotr had withdrawn and Wendy didn’t want him to be in a huff. “Okay, so that’s it then? You all just find a bunch of kids to hang out with—”

“To protect.”

“To protect,” she amended, “and then what? You just hang around until all the Lost have entered the Light? What then, do you get a prize? Maybe a cookie?”

He scowled. “If you cannot take this seriously—”

“Piotr, come on, please. You know me. I’m sorry. It’s just…I don’t understand why you guys would throw away your afterlives watching a bunch of kids you’re not related to. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s awesome; more people should take care of each other that way. But what do you guys get out of it? There has to be something, right?”

“You are not wrong. There is a reason.” Piotr crossed his arms over his chest and, sliding off the bed, began pacing tight ovals around her room, stepping over Jabber as he paced. “But first, there is something you must grasp: Riders are not common. This may seem strange to you, but teenagers are new. Historically speaking.”

Slightly annoyed that he was treating her like a child, Wendy rolled her eyes. “Well, duh. In the Middle Ages a girl became a woman as soon as she had her first period. You bleed, you breed, ’nuff said. No spot in between kid and adult.”

“Exactly!” Momentarily taken aback at her fast understanding, it took a second for Piotr to smile appreciatively at her quick mind. “It was the same thing for boys. There was a rite of manhood—jump a horse, kill a deer and you are a man.” He clapped his hands sharply, trying to explain without words the abrupt nature of the concept.

“And that ‘Monday you’re a kid, Tuesday you’re an adult’ idea bled over into the Never?”

“In a way.” Piotr ceased pacing and knelt near her, the cadence of his words increasing as he warmed to the subject. “To clarify: Lily has been around many centuries. She is fond of saying that, for most people, there is defining moment when they grow up.”

“Like…?”

“Your heart is broken for the first time. Or perhaps you learn there is no Easter Bunny. You wake up one morning and decide there’s no God. But one day, child; the next, adult. It is like a switch. In your head.”

Convincing Jabber to slink near with a wiggle of his fingers, Piotr stole a few quick pets off the back of Jabber’s head before the cat tired of the attention and hissed, darting away. “Elle calls it the real loss of innocence.”

“How so?”

“Once you have had it, there is no returning. A seed of doubt begins to grow. You are corrupted.”

Wendy could see where he was going, and thoughtfully tapped her tongue ring. “But not for everyone?”

“Not for all.” He shrugged. “With some people, that switch isn’t set to ‘child’ and ‘adult,’ ‘on’ or ‘off.’ There is a period of wonder… a middle space.”

“Like a gradient?”

“You understand. These gradient-people, maybe they don’t believe in Easter Bunny anymore, but they still believe in the Tooth Fairy. Or their first love burned but they are completely able to trust the next person just as much. They can separate the bad things and not grow cynical. There is still some innocence.” Clasping his hands together, Piotr smiled to himself and rocked back and forth on his toes, getting into the subject now.

Wendy laughed and Piotr looked at her strangely. “This is funny?”

“No, it’s not that. I was just remembering…when I was a kid, you could just go up to another kid on the playground and say ‘Want to be my friend?’ and play. Within a week, you’d have a new best friend. No worrying if they thought you were weird, you just ran off and had fun.” She grinned. “I can’t imagine doing that now.” Wendy leaned back and thought briefly of Eddie. She couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been a part of her life.

Piotr ran his hands through his hair, pushing the long hanks off his face. “You know this, but many adults pass into the Light with no fuss. Children are the same—most of them go into the Light easily, the remaining become the Lost. But those like me…” Piotr’s hands curled into loose fists. “We died when we were in-between child and adult. Those like me become the Riders, the protectors.”

“Eternally seventeen,” Wendy murmured. “Wow, suck.”

“It is not so bad.” He winked. “I eternally look this good.”

Wendy snorted and buried her face into a pillow to keep Jon or Chel from hearing her laughter. Finally, when her chuckles had subsided, she sat up and wiped the tears streaming from her eyes. “Well how many Riders are there, anyway? Just to know what your competition is, understand.”

He ignored the last. “In all the city? Perhaps ten of us, watching fifty or so Lost. Then there are hundreds if not thousands of Walkers, the White Lady, and now the Lightbringer.” Piotr grimaced. “These challenges that face us…it is difficult to stay upbeat these days. Even together we are outnumbered.”

Slowly, wanting to make sure she had all her facts straight, Wendy turned the conversation away from the Lightbringer and toward the Lost. This was a conversation she’d always wanted to have with her mother, but it had never been the right time. Piotr was filling some rather large holes in her knowledge. “If they need protection so badly, how can the Lost exist so long? Especially with the Walkers hunting them?”

Piotr gave her a look that said come on, you’re smarter than that. “They died with much life ahead of them. The unused years sustain them, give them strength. And should they choose to share some of this life, to strengthen the will to keep going…”

“Share…oh!” Wendy understood. “You guys take care of the Lost and they take care of you. Quid