"Your parents met at Duke when we were working on our dissertation. As the Keeper, your mother was living in the Tunnels underneath Gatlin, traveling between the Lunae Libri and the university to work with me. She wasn't living in the town, in the world of the DAR and Mrs. Lincoln. So she did move to Gatlin for your father. She moved out of the darkness and into the light, and believe me, it was a big move for your mom. Your father saved her from herself when none of us could. Not me. Not Macon."
I stared at the lemon trees shading Macon's grave, and past them, to my mom's gravesite. I thought about my dad kneeling there. I thought of Macon, braving the Garden of Perpetual Peace, if only so he could rest one tree over from my mom.
"She moved into a town where no one accepted her, because your father wouldn't leave, and she loved him." Marian held my chin between her thumb and her fingers. "She just didn't love him first."
I took a deep breath. At least my whole life wasn't a total lie. She loved my dad, even if she loved Macon Ravenwood, too. I took the Arclight from Marian's hand. I wanted to hold it, to have a piece of both of them. "She never found the answer, the way Mortals and Casters can be together."
"I don't know if there is a way." Marian put her arm around me, and I leaned my head on her shoulder. "You're the one who might be a Wayward, EW. You tell me."
For the first time since I saw Lena standing in the rain, almost a year ago, I didn't know. Like my mom, I hadn't found any answers. All I had found was trouble. Was that what she found, too?
I looked at the box in Marian's hands. "Is that why my mom died? Trying to find the answer?"
Marian took my hand and pressed the box into it, wrapping my fingers around it with hers. "I've told you what I know. Draw your own conclusions, but I can't interfere. Those are the rules. In the great Order of Things, I don't matter. Keepers never do."
"That's not true." Marian mattered to me, but I couldn't say it. My mom mattered. That part I didn't have to say.
Marian smiled as she lifted her hand, leaving the box in mine. "I'm not complaining. I chose this path, Ethan. Not everyone gets to choose their place in the Order of Things."
"You mean not Lena? Or not me?"
"You matter, whether you like it or not, and so does Lena. That's not a choice." She pushed the hair out of my eyes, the way my mom used to. "The truth is the truth. 'Rarely pure and never simple,' as Oscar Wilde would say."
"I don't understand."
"'All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.' "
"More Oscar Wilde?"
"Galileo, the father of modern astronomy. Another man who rejected his place in the Order of Things -- the idea that the sun didn't revolve around the Earth. He knew, perhaps better than anyone, that we don't get to choose what is true.
We only get to choose what we do about it."
I took the box, because deep down I knew what she was saying, even if I didn't know anything about Galileo and knew even less about Oscar Wilde. I was part of all this, whether I wanted to be or not. I couldn't run from it, any more than I could stop the visions.
Now I had to decide what to do about it.
6.17
Jump
When I crawled into bed that night, I was dreading my dreams. They say you dream about the last thing you were thinking about before you fell asleep, but the more I tried to not think about Macon and my mom, the more I thought about them. Exhausted from all that thinking about not thinking, it was only a matter of time before I sunk through the mattress into the blackness, and my bed became a boat...
The willows were waving over my head.
I could feel myself rocking back and forth. The sky was blue, cloudless, surreal. I turned my head and looked to the side. Splintery wood, painted a peeling shade of blue that looked a lot like the ceiling in my bedroom. I was in a dinghy or a rowboat, floating along the river.
I sat up and the boat rocked. A small white hand fell to the side, dragging a slender finger through the water. I stared at the ripples disturbing the reflection of the perfect sky, otherwise cool and calm as glass.
Lena was lying across from me at the end of the boat. She wore a white dress, the kind you saw in old movies, where everything is shot in black and white. Lace and ribbon and tiny pearl buttons. She was holding a black parasol, and her hair, her nails, even her lips, were black. She lay curled on her side, slumped against the dinghy, her hand dragging along behind us as we floated.
"Lena?"
She didn't open her eyes, but she smiled. "I'm cold, Ethan."
I looked at her hand, which was now up to her wrist in the water. "It's summer. The water's warm." I tried to crawl over to her, but the boat rocked, and she slumped farther over the edge, exposing the black Chucks beneath her dress.
I couldn't move.
Now the water was up to her arm, and I could see strands of her hair beginning to float on the surface.
"Sit up, L! You're going to fall in!"
She laughed and dropped the parasol. It floated, spinning, in the ripples of water behind us. I lurched toward her, and the boat rocked violently.
"Didn't they tell you? I've already fallen."
I lunged for her. This couldn't be happening, but it was. I knew because I was waiting for the sound of the splash.
When I hit the edge of the boat, I opened my eyes. The world was rocking, and she was gone. I looked down, and all I could see was the murky greenish-brown water of the Santee and her dark hair. I reached into the water. I couldn't think.
Jump or stay in the boat.
The hair floated downward, unruly, quiet, breathtaking, like some kind of mythical sea creature. There was a white face, blurred by the depths of the river. Trapped beneath the glass.
"Mom?"
I sat up in bed, drenched and coughing. Moonlight was streaming into my window. It was open again. I walked to the bathroom and drank water out of my hand until the coughing subsided. I stared into the mirror. It was dark, and I could barely make out my features. I tried to find my eyes within the shadows. But instead I saw something else ... a light in the distance.
I couldn't see the mirror anymore, or the shadows of my face. Just the light, and bits of images as they flashed by.
I tried to focus and make sense of what I was seeing, but everything was coming too fast, rushing by me, jerking up and down, like I was on a ride. I saw the street -- wet, shiny, and dark. It was only inches away from me, which made it seem as if I was crawling on the ground. But that was impossible because everything was moving so fast. Tall, straight corners jutting out into my field of vision, the street rising up to meet me.
All I could see was the light and the street that was so awkwardly close. I felt the cold porcelain as I gripped the sides of the sink, trying not to fall. I was dizzy, and the flashes kept coming at me, the light getting closer. My view shifted sharply, as if I had turned the corner in a maze, and everything started to slow.
Two people were leaning against the side of a dirty brick building, under a streetlight. It was the light that had been jerking in and out of focus. I was looking up at them from below, like I was lying on the ground. I stared up at the silhouettes in front of me.
"I should've left a note. My gramma will be worried." It was Lena's voice. She was right in front of me. This wasn't a vision, not like the ones from the locket or Macon's journal.
"Lena!" I called out her name, but she didn't move.
The other person stepped closer. I knew it was John before I saw his face. "If you had left a note, they could've used it to find us with a simple Locator Cast. Especially your grandma. She has crazy power." He touched her shoulder.
"Guess it runs in the family."
"I don't feel powerful. I don't know what I feel."