The Gift Read online

  “Hey, if The One says it’s so…”

  “Leave it to you to be launched into fame and fortune by a totalitarian thug.”

  “Shut up!” I start chasing him down the track, laughing in spite of myself. “You’re just jealous!” And Whit starts pumping his arms into a sprint, back in football mode.

  “No fair!” I call after him. He’s bigger and older, and of course he can run faster. A lot faster.

  For just a few minutes, we let ourselves be kids again. A brother and sister racing along the train tracks. Pretending that one of their best friends hadn’t just been murdered, that they weren’t on the run from half the world.

  With a burst of enthusiasm, maybe even fun, we run those last few miles to our destination-a little brick building that appears on the map with an X and the instruction: GO THROUGH SIGNAL HUT.

  “You have keys?” I yell to Whit, noting the chain and padlock on the door.

  “You have spells?” he calls back.

  Oh yeah-that’s right. I’m a witch. And Whit’s a wizard.

  Sometimes it’s hard to remember things like that when you’re busy running for your life. But I do have spells-and they do seem to occasionally work on chains and padlocks.

  And pretty soon we’ve actually escaped from the fiends of the N.O.

  For the moment anyway.

  Chapter 7

  HE IS SURROUNDED BY a dozen or more famous works of art that he’s had confiscated-works by the likes of Pepe Pompano, Pondrian, Cezonne, Feynoir-the best of the best. All banned and forbidden. All his now.

  “Bring me The One Who Commands The Hunt,” bellows The One. He can’t take much more of this incompetence, this stupidity, this repeated almost capturing of Wisteria Allgood and the very, very potent Gift that she possesses.

  As if on cue, the hunt commander appears in the doorway, looking-despite his gray hair and middle-aged paunch-like a dim student who has just arrived for a midterm he hasn’t studied for.

  “You failed to capture Wisteria Allgood. Is that correct? Is that true?”

  The commander nervously clears his throat.

  “Yes, sir,” he agrees. He’s heard unsettling stories of citizens who have tried to defend themselves in similar situations with The One.

  “And would you say today’s spectacle was anything short of a public relations disaster? I honestly want to hear your opinion.”

  “Well, you did execute the other witch in a most decisive fashion, Your Excellency. The citizenry was uplifted by -”

  “She wasn’t a witch! She was just a friend of the witch. Actually she was bait for the real witch.”

  “Well, but… still… she was a valued member of the Resistance, and your destruction of her was magnificent and uplifting to the public in its awe-inspir -”

  “The One Who Makes Up The News is going to have her work cut out with tonight’s broadcast. Do you have any good ideas about that? How we explain that we executed Wisteria Allgood and then, moments later, we suddenly happened to be chasing another red-haired teenage witch through the city plaza? Be honest. Be forthright. Be quick.”

  “Umm, well -”

  “Silence!” yells The One in a stentorian voice that seems to make the building shake.

  The next pause is deadly, truly deadly, and seems to suck all the air out of the room.

  Now The One sighs and finally smiles, if you can call it that. “Well, I suppose it could have been worse.” His suddenly bright tone entirely belies the anger from just seconds before. “Tell me, Commander, do I recall that all you huntsmen enjoy cigars? I’m sure that’s correct. Is it correct?”

  “Why, um, yes, thank you,” stammers the commander. He briefly wonders how he so suddenly has stumbled into his leader’s good graces. He accepts a very fine cigar. And then-a light.

  “I’ve always been fascinated with fire, Commander… Have you?”

  But the soldier doesn’t have a chance to answer.

  The glowing red ember at the tip of his cigar quickly expands. It runs up the entire length, then across the man’s face, over the back of his skull, and down his neck. Then the bright red, smoldering line races around and around his torso and arms, down to the tips of his toes-leaving the hunt commander, for the briefest moment, a statue of ash.

  Then The One taps his cane lightly on the ground, and the gray powder collapses in a soft plume of smoke.

  “You failed to capture Wisteria Allgood, and failure isn’t an option in this Brave New World.”

  Chapter 8

  Whit

  WOULD YOU THINK that I was completely mad if I told you that what saved us in that signal hut was a portal that sucked me and Wisty through several dimensions and hurled us back into our current hellish reality at a completely different location?

  A year ago, I would’ve checked myself into a psych ward for that, but crazy is the new sane in a society defined by New Order nutjobs. FYI, a portal is one of these elusive spots where the fabric of this world is… soft. But stepping through one can be anything but. It can hurl you into an entirely different place, time, or dimension… or sometimes force you into places you’d rather not be. Violently.

  Like, for instance, in this cramped pitch-black space we’ve landed in. For all I know, we might be locked in The One’s shoe closet. The air feels close, stale. My shoulder’s on fire and my head is pounding.

  “Whit? Are you here?” I hear a whisper. There’s a gentle shifting around about a dozen feet away.

  “Yeah.” I grunt, half dazed by pain. The sweet female voice is warm, soothing.

  “You okay?” the voice asks with concern. Celia? I imagine my long-lost girlfriend, kidnapped and killed by the New Order a lifetime ago. Coming closer, leaning over me, about to touch me, heal me, save me…

  “Mmmmmm…” I trail off, waiting for Celia’s scent, her arms around me.

  “You sound… hungover.”

  Oh. It’s Wisty. Of course.

  I groan. “It’s my shoulder. Got dislocated in the portal, I think.”

  “Seriously? I slipped right through that one like butter.”

  I roll my eyes even though she probably can’t see them. “Guess it was just the right size for your runty witch butt,” I croak out-affectionately, I swear. “So where d’you think we are?”

  “How about… a prison? Seems like our favorite crib these days.”

  I wasn’t so sure. “No. This smell-it’s not the smell of a prison. It’s something… good. Something that reminds me of…”

  “Home,” we both say in unison.

  Wisty releases a small flame from her fingertip to give us some light. I’m impressed at how she’s learning to control her hot little temper and putting her talent to good use. In the old days, I used to be the accomplished star around town-MVP varsity football player, plus a top-ranked runner and swimmer-while Wisty was mostly cutting class. Now she’s this hotshot witch who can glow, morph, zap, and do other cool stuff. Just not necessarily on command.

  In the dim light I see just enough to make out my sister’s shape and stacks of cardboard boxes labeled INCINERATE. “Books,” Wisty says reverently, paging through a few volumes from unsealed boxes. With my good arm I gingerly poke into a crate and spy titles by all kinds of famous authors, from B. B. White to Roy Royce.

  “Looks like a book-burning shipment,” I guess. The New Order is in the process of destroying just about every known book in the occupied Overworld written before the takeover.

  A stabbing pain rips through my bad shoulder, and I wince. “Speaking of burning… you gonna help me pop my shoulder back in, Wist?”

  “That’s positively revolting,” she says, but makes her way over to me anyway. “You need to learn a spell for that, Brother. You wizard types are supposed to be good at that kind of stuff, right?”

  “It’s worth a shot, I guess. Just give me a hand with my journal, okay?” Dad gave me this blank book before we were taken away that awful night so many months ago, and I carry it with me everywhere
. (Wisty carts around an old drumstick/wand that Mom gave her.) Most of the time my book’s blank and I use it to write in-usually sad love poems for Celia. But sometimes it fills with magazines, maps, whole works of literature… or, if we’re lucky, spells. I think wizards are supposed to be able to control what comes when, but so far it’s basically a crapshoot.

  Wisty takes it out of my pack and helps me flip through the pages for any sort of injury-healing spell, and we finally come up with this mouthful: Voron klaktu scapulati.

  “Sounds like devilspeak to me!” Wisty quips, impersonating a crotchety old lady talking about rock music. But the most amazing warmth spreads through my shoulder when I say it, and suddenly-just like that-it’s back in its socket. I raise my arm without a twinge of pain.

  “Guess we’ve sold our souls,” I say. “Now let’s figure out where the heck we are and how to get back to Freeland.”

  As we make our way to the rear of the cramped space, we figure out we’re inside a shipping container. I grab a few books for the kids back at Resistance headquarters-The Blueprints of Bruno Genet and The Thirst Tournament, among others.

  “You ready to face what’s out there?” I ask as we reach the door.

  “Or who’s out there,” Wisty echoes warily. “Lemme get focused, in case I have to light up or something.”

  On the count of three, we roll up the container door.

  And there, staring right at us, are… our parents.

  Chapter 9

  Whit

  WELL, AT LEAST it’s their heads anyway.

  Our parents’ photos are on a twenty-foot billboard, their faces looking lost and lonely in this abandoned rail yard. And below their mug shots are words that never cease to chill our bones:

  THREE MILLION B.N. REWARD

  For Information Leading to

  the Apprehension and Arrest of

  BENJAMIN ALLGOOD and ELIZA ALLGOOD

  for Heinous Crimes Against Humanity

  and the New Order

  Text messages to “Informant2020”

  or visit your local N.O. Intelligence Office

  Sure, we know our parents are wanted criminals-for the same bogus reasons we are. But having it in black and white for all the world to see-and slapping the pathetic price of three million beans on their heads!-is a cruel reminder that this nightmare may never come to a happy end.

  Wisty, as usual, reads my mind and throws me a semihopeful bone. “They’re still free,” she points out quietly.

  “At least they were,” I say, “whenever this poster was put up.” The paper does look a little weathered-faded, frayed, and even torn at the edges. We both fall silent as the powerful smell of aging books’ brittle pages-full of dreams, stories, tragedies, laughter, and imagination-seems to swirl out from the open door of the trailer and smother us with the bittersweet memory of home.

  How can you make peace with something when you don’t even know what that “something” is? We can’t know whether our parents are alive or dead or being interrogated in a New Order prison or… banished to the Shadowland like Celia. Are they suffering? Is there anything we can do about it? Or are we as helpless and useless as I feel right now?

  I punch the billboard so hard my fist goes right through the pressboard backing.

  Then I pull my hand out and try to pretend it didn’t happen. Wisty gives me a concerned look, and I shrug. I’m sure my knuckles are bleeding, but I don’t feel a thing.

  I glance at her worried, grief-strained face and quickly look away. I have an urge to hug her, but I need to show her that I’m not letting my emotions take over. I swallow a golf ball-size lump in my throat and take Wisty’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  There are no people on the outskirts of this eerie town. Just broken windows in warehouses. Streets strewn with rubble. The only new construction appears to be enormous video billboards and loudspeaker towers.

  As we make our way to the town center, I imagine what it might have once been like here. Quaint. I see a redbrick high school, jungle gyms, a park with a gazebo, an overturned tricycle. A pang of sadness grips me. It reminds me of our old town-church steeples, neighborhood grocery stores, and actual trees.

  Now I’m even more homesick. For Mom, Dad, home-even school. A little.

  “I wonder where everybody is,” Wisty whispers.

  “I don’t,” I answer, maybe a little too quickly. “I mean… I don’t really want to know.”

  And then I hear this: “You don’t?… don’t?… don’t?… don’t?… Why, Whit?”

  I whirl my head around. Wisty stares at me.

  There was definitely a voice. And it wasn’t Wisty’s. Or mine.

  It was Celia’s voice.

  Maybe this is a ghost town. Literally.

  Chapter 10

  Whit

  I’M OFF LIKE a missile to find her. It’s as if I don’t even have a choice. As if this is my fate.

  “Celia!” I run through barren streets, past empty shops, a police station with no police, a boarded-up middle school, a movie theater… I don’t see her, or anyone else actually. Everything seems so unreal here. Is it real? Am I dreaming up all of this desolation?

  “Celia!”

  “Whit, wait!” I hear Wisty’s voice coming from behind. The slapping of her sneakers against pavement. She’s trying to keep up.

  “Stop! Whit, please! You don’t know it’s her! It could be a trap!”

  I do know it’s her. You never, ever forget the voice of the one you love. Whether it’s a whisper or a scream or a distant memory, I know when it’s Celia. I guess Wisty doesn’t understand that. She’s never been in love.

  And then I hear Celia again. But not from too far away. It feels as if she’s all around me somehow.

  “You don’t want to know?… know?… know?… What happened to us?… us?… us?…”

  I can’t stand it-Celia feels so close now.

  Her voice is so loud that it’s as if she’s broadcasting right into my head. It’s unbearable… but also the most beautiful, incredible kind of pain. Torture I’d beg for. Does that make any sense?

  “I do! I do want to know!” I halt in my tracks, then I sink to my knees in the middle of the town square. “Where are you, Celes? I need to see you again.”

  “Look up, Whit. She’s right there.”

  It’s Wisty’s voice, to my left. And when I raise my head, I see what she sees.

  There is my girlfriend-on-screen. Celia, on a New Order propaganda board. Her gorgeous face is more than twice my height, and every inch of it is as smooth and perfect and beautiful as I remember it. It’s as if she’s a movie star.

  Chapter 11

  Whit

  “DID YOU FORGET about us, Whit? Did you forget about me?” Celia looks sad, making this even more painful for me. “I guess I can’t blame you for moving on.”

  “What are you talking about, Celia? I never forget you. Everybody knows that. I never stop thinking about you, trying to find you. People think I’m crazy!”

  “Maybe you haven’t totally forgotten me, Whit. But I’m talking about us. The lost, the kidnapped, the murdered. The Half-lights.” I shiver at her mention of the sad souls in the Shadowland. “I’m really not… me anymore. I’m part of something… bigger.”

  “Celia, you’ll always be you. The Shadowland can’t destroy you. Not for me. Where are you? The real you -?”

  “You don’t get it, Whit.” Celia breaks into my words and smiles wistfully. “I’ve got to give you credit, baby. You really are the most sensitive football hero who ever walked the face of this world. But you’re like a lot of guys in other ways, Whit. You’re such a boy. You see and care about and protect only what’s right in front of you.”

  “No.” I shake my head in disbelief at her words. “That’s not true. You know it isn’t.”

  Why is she trying to hurt me?

  “Yes, it is,” Celia says, her eyes boring into mine. “Case in point. Where’s your sister?”

  I w
hirl around in a three-sixty. Wisty is…

  Gone?

  “What the…?” I start tearing around the square, looking down alleyways frantically. “Wisty!”

  This can’t be. Has she been kidnapped?

  “You have to start thinking bigger, Whit.” It’s torture-Celia’s voice is coursing through me like a living force, and all I want to do is capture it, surrender to it. But my sister…

  “I know you’re scared,” she goes on, strangely unmoved by Wisty’s disappearance. “You just lost someone you cared about, and you don’t know how to deal with it. Think about that, Whit. It’s the key.”

  “Wisty!” I scream. The only response is the whisking sound of an empty plastic bag skimming across the town square.

  “Whit-up here. Look at me. I’m here to tell you more that you don’t want to hear. You and Wisty need to stop running away from the New Order. Stop running from The One.”

  “Never! I’m going to find Wisty, and we’re going back to the Shadowland-to find you. Not an image on a screen!”

  Celia’s thick, wavy black hair starts streaming out, tickling her lips. Almost as if it’s responding to the wind in the plaza. The plastic bag blows into my face. I tear it away in frustration.

  “Whit, are you listening to me? Do I need to get any louder?”

  My head will explode if she does. “I can hear you, trust me. You’re just not making sense at the moment.”

  “You and Wisty need to turn yourselves in, to save your parents-and the rest of us. It’s the only way. I think Wisty understands that… right, Wisty?”

  Celia turns her head, and there-behind her, up on the screen-is my sister. How can that be?

  “Wisty!” I yell. “How -?”

  “It’s okay, Whit,” Wisty says. “Everything is okay now. I understand our role.”