Unseen

The silky darkness that remained fell away from me and sought escape in the open cold air. I fell on the rocks, my face in my hands, my hair wild as a madwoman’s. The wind had torn away my clothes. My skin was bleached and abraded, and rich red blood flooded from the cuts to puddle on the stone beneath my bruised knees.

Pearl raised her spear, and the ba

“You haven’t lost your touch, sister,” she said. “But you will. The Mother isn’t as we knew her in the ancient days, awake and alive. And like her, we are not the same. Corruption can’t be unseen or unfelt; it can’t be healed, only endured.”

“Pearl,” I said, and raised my head to meet her eyes. “I’ll destroy you. I don’t wish to, but I will. Stop this before we have to raise our true forms.”

“Dream on, my sister,” Pearl said. “What I do must be done, to make way for what is to come. Only out of destruction can creation be born. Life in this place was an experiment, an accident of chemicals and light. It’s time to cease the struggle, and let darkness have its time. Who knows what new forms can come from that? Because it’s beautiful, my emptiness, the emptiness where you sent me so long ago. And it hungers, as life hungers. And it will feed, very soon.”

Under my knees, the shelf of rock suddenly broke loose, and my body tumbled out into the endless gulf, falling, spi

... until I crashed into my flesh, breathing hard, sweating and shaking.

All was darkness.

I no longer felt it was peace.

I waited for the death blow; surely, I thought, Pearl must have detected my presence so close to her seat of power. The next morning I spent tense and alert, waiting for any hint of an attack. My distracted behavior displeased the horses I was grooming, and I soon was the recipient of shoves and whi

This woman was far different from the warm comrades working the farm outside. I sensed from her that she held them, and me, in mild contempt. She was a wolf, hiding among the placid sheep, and she despised us even while she needed us.

This was the enemy I had been waiting for.

“Hello,” I said, and directed it generally at her and the children. The boys and girls echoed it back. The Weather Warden did not. She gave me another long, level look. I gave it back to her, and held out my hand. “My name is Laura. I’m new.”

“Clearly,” she said, and cocked a single eyebrow. She must have decided that being overtly rude would risk questions from the children, and so she shook hands with me. “Mariah,” she said. “I’m sorry, but we’re all quite busy. Kids, we need to be moving on. We’ve got lessons this morning.”

That brought out a general groan from the children. One of the older ones, a girl, was hidden from Mariah by the bulk of the horse between them, and I saw the fear that passed over her expression before she hid her face in the horse’s thick mane for a moment. I wondered why she seemed afraid, and the others didn’t. Possibly because this girl had seen something, or knew something more than she should have.

I edged up next to her, on the pretext of currying the horse. “What’s your name?” I asked her softly. She was a pretty thing, delicate and dark, with wide black eyes and a pointed elfin face.

“Zedala,” she whispered back. “Please, miss, can you find my parents? I want to go home.”

I glanced at her and saw tears in her eyes. Mariah was, for the moment, involved in gathering up the playful younger children, and I took the chance to hug the girl for comfort before saying, “Be brave, Zedala. All will be well.”

She looked hopelessly at me, and said, “You don’t understand.” I ached to tell her more, to promise her that she’d soon be free, but the risks were too high. Even this lovely child could be a trap, set to make me betray myself.

I forced myself to smile and pat her shoulder. “We’re all friends here,” I said. “We’ll take care of you. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Zedala!” the other woman called, and I saw the shiver that went through the girl. She quickly wiped the tears from her eyes. “Zedala, hurry up!”

“Yes, miss!” She gave me one more troubled, pleading look, and hurried off. I brushed the horse with absent strokes as I watched Mariah hustle away her eight small charges.

Zedala knew there was danger; that much was obvious. The others didn’t.

I needed to understand what she’d seen.

At lunch, I sat with Will and we split a small block of yellow cheese, some sliced ham, and fresh bread. It was delicious, and sitting so comfortably in the sun it seemed impossible to believe there was evil being done here, in the heart of this peaceful place. But the fear in Zedala had been real, and immediate, and I didn’t have the luxury of ignoring the pain of a child.

“Some of the children came to the barn this morning,” I told Will as I ate a slice of apple. We had no apple trees on the farm; I wondered if they traded for the fruit. “Why do they wear those uniforms?”

“We all wear uniforms,” he said, and reached for an apple slice as well.

“I know, but the colors ...”

“It’s just to identify what their powers are,” he said.

“Powers?”

“They’re special,” Will said, very softly. He kept his eyes focused on distant trees, but I thought there was a slight glitter there, a hardness that seemed very alien to what I knew of him. “They have gifts, not like normal kids. We have to protect them and train them for the end.”

“The end?”

“The end of civilization,” he said. “It’s coming, Laura. It’s why we’re here. We have to learn how to live without all those things so-called civilization has given us, all the toys and machines and pollution. These children are going to help us survive it, and in turn, we’re going to save them and protect them from those who want to hurt them.”

“Oh,” I said. It was what I’d expected to hear, but not from Will—not from someone I’d grown to like. “It seemed like they were a little frightened.”

He shrugged a little. “They have to learn,” he said. “Not all lessons are easy. It’s good for them to be a little frightened.”

I swallowed a piece of bread that seemed suddenly foul, and reached for the lemonade glass to wash the bad taste from my mouth. “I don’t like to scare kids,” I said. “Even if it’s for a good cause.”

“They have to be trained. Just leave it alone, Laura. Let the teachers handle them.”

“All right,” I said, and ate another apple slice. It didn’t taste as sweet as it had.

Will ate in silence as well, until the plates were empty and the glasses drained, and then he stood up and stretched. I watched him, aware of how the sun filtered through the clothes and outlined the strong lines of his body. Aware of the gentle intensity of the stare he turned toward me, as he offered me his hand.

I took it, and he pulled me up—against his body. I didn’t move away. There was an odd inevitability to this, a feeling of recognition, as if I’d dreamed this, or lived it in another life. I looked up into his face, into those lovely eyes, and felt myself falling into a great, gaping void from which there would be no return. It should have been frightening, but instead, it felt ... reassuring. Like coming home.