I pass the camel’s back—half a kilometer to go. The sun is warm on my face, situated high in the sky and slanted towards the east, which means I have at least five hours before I’m due back. I haven’t had this much free time in a great while; and with the bright sun and crisp, fresh wind pulling me from my dismal mood, I hardly care that I’ll be in trouble when I get back. I turn to see how effective my blanket cape is at hiding my prints in the hardened snow, and I’m afraid to see that it hasn’t worked at all today.
Nevertheless, I push forward until I spot the rounded shrub sticking up over the snow, then I race towards it, at first not noticing the very thing my eyes should be attuned to: that the snow at the base of the cave is tossed up and pushed around. But as soon as I reach the cave’s entrance, I know immediately that something is horribly off.
Approaching from the south, a single set of boot prints, double the size of my own, dot the mountainside, a perfect straight line cut into the snow leading from town to the cave. They seem to tromp around its opening, as though circling it. I’m flustered, certain there’s something else here I’m missing. And then it dawns on me. The prints—they lead into the cave, but they don’t lead back out.
Whoever they belong to is still inside.
Chapter Twelve
THEY’RE HERE! I THINK. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, THE Mogadorians are finally here!
I turn so fast I slip and fall into the snow. I quickly crawl backwards away from the cave’s mouth, my shoes tangled in the blanket. Tears well up in my eyes. My heart races. I manage to right myself and sprint as hard and as fast as my legs will carry me. I don’t even look behind me to see if I’m being followed, sweeping across the same snowy terrain I’d just hiked through, moving so fast I hardly take note of where my feet are falling. The trees below me begin to blur, as do the clouds above. I can feel the blanket hovering behind my shoulders, flapping in the wind like a superhero’s cape. I trip once and slide across the ground, but immediately scramble to my feet and sprint onward, jumping straight over the camel’s back, again crashing when I land. And then I finally dash past the birch trees and make it back to the convent; the hike there took nearly twenty-five minutes; the sprint back took less than five. Like the ability to breathe underwater, the Legacy of superspeed presents itself when I need it to.
I untie the blanket from around my neck, burst through the double doors, and hear the lunchtime clatter coming from the dining room. I hurry up the winding staircase and down the narrow hall, knowing it’s Adelina’s turn to take Sunday off. I enter the open room where the Sisters sleep. Adelina sits regally in one of the two high-back chairs, Bible in her lap. She closes it when she sees me coming.
“Why aren’t you at lunch?” she asks.
“I think they’re here,” I say, out of breath, my hands violently shaking. I bend over and rest them on my knees.
“Who?”
“You know who!” I yell. Then, between my closed teeth: “Mogadorians.”
Her eyes narrow in disbelief. “Where?”
“I went to the cave—”
“What cave?” she interrupts.
“Who cares what cave! There was a set of boot prints outside of it, huge boot prints—”
“Slow down, Marina. Boot prints outside of a cave?”
“Yes,” I say.
She smirks, and I instantly realize coming to her was a mistake. I should have known she wouldn’t believe me, and I can’t help feeling foolish and vulnerable standing in front of her. I straighten. I don’t know what to do with my hands.
“I want to know where my Chest is,” I say, not exactly in a confident voice, but not in a timid one either.
“What Chest?”
“You know exactly what Chest!”
“What makes you think I held on to that old thing?” she asks calmly.
“Because you would be turning against your own people if you didn’t,” I say.
She reopens her Bible and pretends to read. I think of leaving, but then my mind returns to the boot prints in the snow.
“Where is it?” I ask.
She continues to ignore me, so I reach out with my mind and feel the contours of the book, its thin, dusty pages, its rough-hewn cover. I snap the book shut. Adelina jumps.
“Tell me where it is.”
“How dare you! Who do you think you are?”
“I’m a member of the Garde, and the fate of the entire race of Loriens depends on my survival, Adelina! How could you turn your back on them? How could you turn your back on the humans, too? John Smith, who I believe is a member of the Garde, is on the run in the United States; and when he was pulled over recently he was able to move the officer without touching him. Just like I can do. Like I just did with your book. Don’t you see what’s happening, Adelina? If we don’t start helping, not only will Lorien be lost forever, but so will Earth and this stupid orphanage and stupid town!”
“How dare you call this place stupid!” Adelina steps towards me with clenched fists. “This is the only place that let us in, Marina. It’s the only reason we’re still alive. What did the Loric do for us? They pushed us onto a ship for a year, and then they pushed us out onto a cruel planet without any kind of plan or any instructions other than to stay hidden and train. Train for what?”
“To defeat the Mogadorians. To take back Lorien.” I shake my head. “The others are probably out there right now, battling, figuring out how to come together and how to get us home, while we’re stuck in this prison doing nothing.”
“I’m living my life with purpose, helping the human race with my prayers and service. And you should be, too.”
“Your sole purpose on Earth was to help me.”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
“Only in the literal sense of the word, Adelina.”
She sits back in her chair and opens the Bible on her lap. “Lorien is dead and buried, Marina. What does it matter?”
“Lorien isn’t dead; it’s hibernating. You said so yourself. And the point is, we’re not dead.”
She swallows hard. “A death sentence has been handed down to us all,” she says, and her voice slightly cracks. Then, in a much softer tone, she says, “Our lives were doomed from the beginning. We should do good while we’re here, so we may have a good afterlife.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because that’s the reality. We’re the last of a dying race, and soon we’ll be gone, too. And may God help us when that time comes.”
I shake my head at her. I have no interest in talking about God.
“Where is my Chest? In this room?” I walk around the room, casting my gaze along the ceiling’s edges, and then I crouch and peer beneath a few of the beds.
“Even if you had it, you can’t open it without me,” she says. “You know that.”
She’s right. If I’m to believe what she’d told me years before, when I could still trust the things she said, then I can’t open it without her. The futility of it hits me all at once. The boot prints in the snow; John Smith on the run; the sheer and utter claustrophobia of Santa Teresa; and Adelina, my Cêpan, meant to help and assist in developing my Legacies, who has given up on our mission. She doesn’t even know what Legacies of mine have developed. I have the ability to see in the dark, breathe underwater, to run at superspeeds; to move things with my mind; and the means to bring plants back from the brink of death. Anxiety sweeps over me, and at the worst possible moment, Sister Dora enters the room. She props her fists on her hips.
“Why aren’t you in the kitchen?”
I look at her and mirror the same scowl she’s giving me.
“Oh, shut up,” I say, and march out of the room before she responds. I run down the hall, down the stairs, grab my coat again and push through the double doors.
I look wildly around as I move within the shadows lining the side of the road. Though I still feel as though I’m being watched, outside nothing seems amiss. I race down the hill without letting my guard down, and when I reach the café, I enter because it’s the only place open. About half of its twenty tables are occupied, which I’m thankful for; I have the urge to be surrounded by people. I’m about to sit when I notice Héctor, alone in the corner, drinking wine.
“Why aren’t you at El Festín?”
He glances up. He’s clean shaven, and his eyes appear clear and sharp. He seems well rested; he’s even well dressed. I haven’t seen him this way in quite a while. I wonder how long it will last.
“I thought you didn’t drink on Sunday,” I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t. Héctor and Ella are my only friends at the moment, and one has already disappeared today. I don’t want to upset Héctor as well.
“I thought so, too,” he says, not taking offense. “If you ever know a man who tries to drown his sorrows, kindly inform him his sorrows know how to swim. Here, sit down, sit down,” he says, kicking out the chair across from him. I plop down in it. “How are you?”
“I hate this place, Héctor. I hate it with everything inside of me.”
“Bad day?”
“Every day is a bad day here.”
“Eh, this place isn’t so terrible.”
“How are you always so cheerful?”
“Alcohol,” he says with a sideways grin. He pours himself what looks to be his first glass from the bottle. “I wouldn’t recommend it to others. But it seems to work for me.”
“Oh, Héctor,” I say. “I wish you wouldn’t drink so much.”
He chuckles. Takes a sip. “You know what I wish?”
“What?”
“That you didn’t look so sad all the time, Marina of the sea.”
“I didn’t know that I did.”
He shrugs. “It’s something I’ve noticed, but Héctor is a very perceptive man.”
I look to my left and to my right, pausing to focus on each person here. Then I take the napkin off the table and put it on my lap. I put it back on the table. Then I put it back on my lap.
“Tell me what is troubling you,” Héctor says, then takes a larger sip.
“Absolutely everything.”
“Everything? Even me?”
I shake my head. “Okay, not everything.”
His eyebrows rise and then furrow. “Now tell me.”
I have a deep urge to tell him my secret, the reason I’m here and where it is I really come from. I want to tell him about Adelina and what her role was supposed to be, and what it has instead become. I want him to know about the others, out there on the run or fighting, maybe sitting idly like me, collecting dust. If there’s one person I’m certain would be my ally, who would help me in any way he could, then surely it’s Héctor. He is, after all, a defender who’s meant to hold fast and who was born into power and bravery by such simple means as the name he was given.
“You ever feel like you don’t belong here, Héctor?”