Across the Universe (11 page)

Chapter Eighteen

              I am smoke flying through my universe, but I am also tears and panic and terror. When I land on the beach I don’t take time to look at the lake or the sand; I just run toward Noah’s home and pray I get there before the Harbingers do.

              It’s dark outside, and the moon and stars are covered in a cloak of gray clouds. Every shadow that flickers past makes me jump and gasp. By the time I reach the yellow cottage with the blue door my heart feels like it’s trying to break free of my ribcage and my breath comes in panting gulps.

              I look in the front window but there is no one in the dining room. I can see the glow of lights coming from somewhere deep inside the house, and the muffled sound of laughter drifts into my ears. Rounding the side of the yard, I trail along the edge of the garden beds until I come to Noah’s window.

              A sigh of relief calms my nerves as I see Noah lying on his bed inside. His neck is propped up on pillows and a book is tipped overhead, obscuring half his face. The light from a desk lamp casts a yellow beam across the room.

              My heart slows its frantic pace as I knock delicately on the window. Noah looks up, his expression a mix of surprise and happiness when he sees me. Coming to greet me, he slides the panes open, leans his elbows on the frame, and bends his head out so that his nose nearly brushes mine.

              “I missed you,” he says.

              “Can I come in?” I ask, his kind words doing little to assuage the ominous feeling brewing in my gut.

              He frowns and steps back. “Of course. The rest of my family’s watching television in the living room, though, so you’ve got to keep your voice down.”

              I use my arms to leverage my body weight, swinging my legs up and over the frame and landing quietly on the other side. As soon as I do I rush up to Noah and throw my arms around him, pulling him in close.

              He must feel my body trembling because he sets one hand on the back of my head, stroking my hair, and asks, “What’s wrong?”

              I step back, letting my hands slip from around his shoulders and wrap around his fingers. “We’ve got to run, Noah. It’s not safe here anymore. The Harbingers are after you.”

              “But why would they be after me? I’m not a part of The House.”

              “I’ll explain later. But for now, we have to go.”

              He furrows his brow, glancing toward his bedroom door. “I can’t just take off. My parents will kill me.”

              “As long as you’re here, they’re in danger, too. All of them, even Lizzie.”

              He draws his body into mine and speaks soothingly. “Everything’ll be alright, Amara. You just need to calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

              I wrench free of his grip, putting enough space between us that he can no longer ignore the panic in my eyes and the tension in my limbs. “You’re not understanding me. The House isn’t safe anymore.
You’re
not safe. I tried to protect you, but I failed. And now they know who you are.
What
you are. The person controlling the Harbingers is going to send them here to retrieve you, and I doubt they’ll even flinch if your family or I get in the way.”

              “Amara—you’re not making any sense. I can’t come with you. I have school. A life. And even if I could, where would we go?”

              “Someplace far away that no one knows about.” I stride over to his closet, open the doors, and begin pulling his clothing off hangers, making a pile on his bed. “Pack what you can. Leave the rest. We don’t have much time.”

              Noah intercepts me, stepping between the closet and me and pinning my arms to my sides. I struggle against him but his gentle grip is also firm, and I can’t break loose.

              “You’ve got to listen to me, Noah!” I plead, my voice raising several octaves.

              “
Shh
,” he says. “My parents will hear you.”

              Silence grips the air as we stare at each other in defiance. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, my mind clinging to a danger my ears haven’t picked up on yet. Then it dawns on me.

              There’s no noise coming from the living room anymore. No more laughing voices or glowing light cast under the bedroom door. I break from Noah’s gaze and pad over to the exit, bringing a shaking hand to the knob. Noah opens his mouth to speak but I silence him with a finger to my lips.

              Easing the door open a fraction at a time so it doesn’t creak, I slip into the hall. Outside of the bedroom the house is cast in darkness. Shadows envelop the family portraits hanging on the walls, turning the faces pictured there into hollow wraiths with empty eyes. I feel Noah’s presence behind me as he follows me out into the kitchen, past cabinets and counters until we reach the living room.

              The couch’s back faces us when we first enter. Two heads crest over the cushions. A smaller figure cloaked in shadow sits on a loveseat on the opposite side of the room. The form doesn’t move or breathe or speak. I stop in my tracks, grabbing Noah’s arm before he can walk ahead of me.

              “Something’s not right,” I whisper. “Don’t go in there.”

              But Noah ignores me and steps beyond the couch anyway. My stomach turns into cold stone as a horrified expression passes over his face and he stumbles back to support his weight on a nearby end table. I follow in his tracks, knowing what I’m about to find but wanting to deny it all the same.

              Noah’s parents sit on the couch, their mouths open in silent screams. Dark circles line their eyes; their skin has become so pale the blue veins underneath jut out. Their chests are still; their stares are vacant.

              They look exactly like Dena and Oman did before they were cast into the void, only worse.

              Noah rushes over to the loveseat, dropping to his knees in front of the shadowy figure. I can’t bring myself to move any closer as he grabs onto the body to shake it. Lizzie falls over sideways, her gaping mouth and dead eyes caught in a beam of moonlight that filters in through the dining room window. She is a tiny thing—too young to have stopped breathing—and I nearly retch at the sight of her.

              Noah doesn’t have time to scream out, to grieve. A floorboard creaks behind us and we spin around, coming face to face with a Harbinger. The being lashes out with a skeletal arm, broadsiding me across the cheek, and I fly backward into Noah. We land in a pile at the base of the loveseat, struggling to untangle ourselves as the Harbinger glides closer.

              “Run,” I tell Noah as we stumble to our feet.

              “I won’t leave you,” he says, holding out a hand. His cheeks are wet and his eyes are scared. I slip my fingers through his and he yanks me into a sprint toward the front door.

              Breaking out into the moonlight, we dash down the driveway and onto the street. I can feel the Harbinger behind us, close on our heels. Its power washes over me, sapping my energy dry. The nearer the Harbinger comes, the worse the sensation gets. Soon my feet feel like lead and my heart slows. Still, I know Noah is beside me and that I have to protect him. The thought keeps me going even though I want to fall to the ground and go to sleep.

              We reach the beach on legs of jelly. I’m five paces from the surf when my body gives out and I collapse in the sand. Noah’s hand slips from mine and he staggers forward, trying hard to stay upright. The Harbinger glides closer and he finally goes down, his face landing in the edge of the water as it washes against his cheek.

              “Please,” he splutters against the lake foam, and then his eyes close and he becomes quiet.

              The world tilts and blurs as the Harbinger glides on. It’s only a yard away from Noah, maybe less, and as it passes by the place where I lay my desperation kicks in and I do the only thing I can think of. I raise a half-numb arm and grab onto the hem of its cloak, pulling hard.

              The Harbinger’s pace falters as its robe slides of its skeletal form. What’s underneath is hideous enough to make me scream. It’s oily and black, with tendrils of red muscle climbing like vines up its limbs. Its back is hunched and its head is recessed into its shoulders, looking more like a hunk of rotting meat than an actual skull. Two deformed feet, withered from lack of use with toes that curl into its soles, dangle inches from the ground as the Harbinger floats in midair. Two red coals burn where its eyes should be.

              Adrenaline stabs through my fatigue as the Harbinger turns back to Noah and glides over him. The being bends down, reaching out a skeletal hand to brush against Noah’s cheek. I roll over, groaning, and fumble through the sand until my hand closes around a rock. The stone is sharp on one side and heavy on the other. I let the jagged end dig into my palm, drawing a line of silver on my skin, and turn the blunt part outward.

              Rising jerkily to my feet, I fumble across the beach until I stand behind the Harbinger. It doesn’t see me—it’s too focused on Noah lying asleep in the sand. Raising an arm high overhead, I bring the rock down, down, until it smashes hard into the Harbinger’s skull.

              The Harbinger falls in a crumpled heap to the ground and its power over me releases. I’m still tired, but it’s a residual grogginess, as if I’ve just woken up from a bad dream. My vision clears and the Harbinger becomes a sharp image against the damp silt beneath my feet. It stirs, its eyes flickering a burning red, then black, then red again.

              I bend over it, raising the rock a second time, and then a third. Each blow creates a concave hole in the creature’s skull, coupled with the sickening snap of bone and rotting flesh. The Harbinger finally stops twitching, its decaying body melting into a pile of ash right before my eyes. The lake washes forth to meet it, dragging the remains into its watery depths.

              Noah groans and opens his eyes. I drop the rock and rush to his side, flipping him over so that he lies on his back in the sand, his head cradled in my lap. One side of his face is covered in mud and water. I use my hand to wipe it away as he blinks up at me.

              “My parents … Lizzie …” he trails off.

              “They’re dead,” I say, replying to the tears leaking from his eyes with a stifled sob. “I’m so sorry, Noah. This is all my fault.”

              He inches a palm across my forearm until his hand reaches mine. It’s his silent way of telling me I’m wrong. “The Harbinger?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

              “I killed it. But there will be more on the way. I’m sure of it.”

              “How did you—”

              I motion to the rock cast aside on the ground. Its surface is drenched in oily residue and stringy muscle that slowly disintegrates into flakes of ash.

              “Why is this happening? Why are those—things—after me?” he asks.

              “I’ll tell you everything. The whole story. But first we’ve got to get off this beach. We need to find a place to hide.”

              The air above me stirs, and when I look up plumes of black smoke swirl down from the gray clouds like a tornado funnel. There are hundreds of them, each one swirling and winding around the other, creating an impenetrable circle that slowly descends around the beach. We’re caught in the eye of the storm with no way out.

              “We have to get to a car, or a bus. Anything to get us away from these things fast,” Noah says, sitting up from my lap as he watches the black smoke wind down to meet us. “But first we have to get off the beach. Can we run through the smoke?”

              “Not a good idea. They’d choke the life out of us before we made it to the grass. But I think I know a way to get away and outrun the Harbingers all at once,” I reply.

              The funnel cloud that storms around us kicks up a great wind that whips at our hair and skin. Noah raises his voice to be heard over the noise. “And what way is that?”

              “Do you trust me?” I ask.

              The black smoke draws in tighter now, the circle growing ever smaller. Sand grinds against my exposed flesh, rubbing my skin red. Noah looks around him and then squeezes my hand, letting his gaze meet mine.

              “Always,” he says.

              With the Harbingers closing in around us, I wrap Noah in my arms. Then, closing my eyes, I reach.

Chapter Nineteen

              It starts with our hands and winds down our bodies like spirals. His fingertips become a plume of blue smoke, mine gray, and then our arms, our legs, our heads. We are clouds that drift up, up into the air, straight through the funnel’s eye into the night sky. Noah ripples with sparks as he drinks in the sight of the stars and moon above, but I wrap my smoke around him and pull him forward, plummeting around the curve of Earth.

              The Harbingers try to follow but they are surprised by the transformation and soon they lose us in the fluffy clouds that coat the atmosphere. We pass by cities and forests, roadways and neighborhoods. The people that dot the world below look like ants and we are merely observers, sweeping across a sky that no one notices us in.

              I feel the air turn warm and balmy as we fly out of the continent into other countries, other climates, other cultures. Round and round Earth we go until our speed becomes dizzying. I sense Noah’s grief releasing in his frenzy to get away from the beach, from his dead family and the threat of the Harbingers. The smoke is as much a catharsis for him as it is for me.

              I see a place that fits what I’m looking for and begin to dive. Noah resists me, trying to press up through the atmosphere. He wants to see the universe, the planets and galaxies beyond, but now is not the time. I temper him by swarming through the blue of his smoke, swallowing him in my gray, and bringing him back down to Earth.

              A field of grass stretches out before us—a plateau built into the side of a mountain. Trees surround the clearing, blocking off sight to the world beyond. I focus on turning our bodies solid again and we land in a patch of flowers, my arms still wrapped around his shoulders and my head tilted into the curve of his neck.

              “Where are we?” Noah wonders aloud.

              We step away from each other and survey the surroundings. The air is mild this high up, but still much warmer than the beach and the lake. A rocky cliff face creates a smooth wall on one side of the clearing and a ramshackle cabin is built in front of it. The wooden planks that make up the structure’s sides are washed colorless from time; the nails that hold the boards in place are rusted. A stone chimney juts out from the roof. On the opposite side of the clearing a bend is cut into the trees. Peering into the nook, I see a spring fed by a trickling waterfall traveling down from the rocky cliffs above.

              The sun rises over the trees, casting the sky in a brilliant blue. I walk over to the cabin and knock on the door, but no one answers. Noah wipes a circle of grime off the window with his shirtsleeve, peers inside, and then leans back on his heels.

              “Looks abandoned,” he says.

              I turn the wrought iron knob and walk inside. Light filters in through the dusty windows, illuminating the dust motes that hang in the air. The place is made up of one room, with one corner dedicated to a kitchen and another to a sitting area that surrounds a stone hearth. A metal frame holds a double bed on the opposite side of the room, the mattress threadbare and worn.

              I find a moth-eaten cloth in one of the kitchen drawers and wipe the rest of the windows clean. Noah sits on the bed, staring straight ahead at the wall. His expression is empty, blank. I walk over to him and sit by his side once I discard the cloth, grasping his hand in mine.

              “Will you be alright?” I ask.

              “I don’t think I ever will be.” He turns and looks me in the eye. “I don’t know if you can understand, being where you’re from. It feels like I’ve just lost my whole world.”

              I hold up my palm, showing him the streak of silver that oozes from the slice in my hand. “We bleed, just like you. We die, just like you. We’re more alike than you think. We might not have families or homes or towns, but all life in this universe—the
first
universe—was created to resemble us.”

              Noah wraps his fingers around my injured palm, fingering the skin around it gingerly. “But you don’t bleed red, and you live much longer. I guess that makes you unafraid of the end. You don’t have to think about it for billions of years.”

              “I’m afraid of
your
end. I have to keep you safe. And right now my own demise could come a lot sooner than I originally thought. The House is destined to fall. It’s been foretold. I’m assuming I’ll go with it when it does.”

              “Please, no. I can’t lose anyone else that I care about.”

              Noah leans into me, his glasses pressing into my shoulder, and all of a sudden I’m looking at a little boy—broken and crying for his parents—and his vulnerability is staggering. I want to cry with him but I have no tears left to shed.

              After a while he pulls away and busies himself on the other side of the room, opening cabinets and pulling out any cans of food that are still good. He fiddles with the tab on the top of one and then turns to me with red eyes.

              “It’s time for you to tell me what they’re after. Why I’m being hunted,” he says. His jaw is set in a hard line and I know he won’t back down.

              I stand, coming to the end of the bed and leaning against the metal frame. “You’re the Key,” I tell him. And then I explain what the Key is and what it unlocks and how the enemy of The House plans to use it. By the end of it all Noah has slipped down to the ground, his back pressed against the cabinets and his knees drawn into his chest.

              “How did you find me, then? Out of all the people on Earth, you chose me to talk to—me to interact with. That can’t just be a coincidence.”

              “We’re connected somehow. I can feel it. So can you, from what you’ve told me. It’s been foretold—”

              “Screw the prophecy!” Noah shouts. He grabs one of the cans off the counter and lobs it across the room. The metal bends and breaks from the force of hitting the wall and its contents spew out over the floor. Noah stands and begins to pace back and forth. “Life isn’t some magical prediction made by a Seer in some mystical House somewhere. None of this should be happening. I want to go back. Back before I knew The House existed, back before I was the Key, back before—”

              “—you met me?”

              His face softens and he approaches me, his eyes full of shame. “I didn’t mean that. I could never mean that.”

              “It’s okay if you did. I’ve caused you nothing but trouble since I came into your life.”

              He tilts my chin up with one finger and kisses me, his lips lingering across my jawline and down my neck. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. He forgives me even though his pain is a result of me being here in his arms.

              “What will happen to me after I unlock whatever it is I’m supposed to open?” he asks after a time.

              “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe you’ll be fine. Maybe whoever’s behind the attacks on The House will let you live. You won’t pose a threat to them once you’ve gotten them what they want.”

              “No; I don’t think that’s right. I think they’ll kill me. They’ll kill you, too. That’s why we have to fight against what the Seer said. Undo the events that have been foretold.”

              I smile slightly, the corners of my mouth twitching up and a renewed brightness filling my eyes. “Screw the prophecy,” I say, speaking the line with the same eloquence he wielded the words with before.

              “That’s right. Screw the prophecy,” he repeats.

              Then we head outside to lie in the grass, warming our tired bodies in the afternoon sun.

              After we both rest our tired eyes we awake to birds chirping around us, flitting through the trees. I am covered in dust and dirt and blood, and so is Noah.

              He watches from afar as I slip off my dress and wade into the nearby spring. The water is cool and soothing against my sore muscles. I dip my head under the water and pump my arms, watching as fishes dart out of my way along the rocky bottom. The waterfall scrubs the grime clean from my skin and when I feel fresh again I invite Noah to join me. He slides down the rocky side and paddles into the center of the spring, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing my skin to his.

              We drift together in the water for a long while, shivering under the waning sun, until the warmth of his touch heats my skin, and mine his, and we forget all about the world falling apart around us. We forget that he is a Key and I am a Watcher. We forget and create a moment that both of us will remember forever.

              Once night falls, Noah collects wood from the forest floor and lights a fire in the hearth. He heats a can of food in the embers and feeds it to me. The taste is bitter and metallic on my tongue, but it still intrigues me. We don’t have food in The House—only water.

              We find a quilt folded under the bed. The smell of the fabric is musty and damp, but the fire isn’t enough to keep the cold air from chilling us, and so we crawl onto the bed and pull the blanket up to our ears.

              Noah falls asleep immediately, his breathing falling into a steady rhythm that follows the same pattern as the flames flickering in the fireplace. I can’t do the same. In the night—in the dark—everything seems much more threatening, and I fear for Noah’s safety. He is the Key and I am his protector, for better or for worse.

              The forest comes to life at night, sounds of animals huffing and twigs breaking drifting into the cabin. I roll gently out of Noah’s embrace and walk to the door, slipping into the grassy clearing beyond. The stars and sky are clearer here than where Noah is from, and I silently wish I was floating among them as swirling smoke winding its way through galaxies and around planets.

              I know we cannot stay in this cabin on this mountain forever. Eventually, they will come for us. Away from Noah, I can’t pretend any longer. The gravity of my fate presses in on me. My breath quickens and my skin grows warm as I think of what’s to come.

              I want to listen to Noah and fight against the prophecy. I want to believe everything the Seer said can be reversed. But I also remember Elli’s words after I told her about Noah being the Key:
To try and play against the foretelling may not be wise
.

              So far, every time I’ve fought against the prophecy, I’ve led myself closer to it. Right now, as I stand outside the cabin where Noah sleeps so soundly, I realize I may be doing the exact same thing. I’m entangling myself with the Key, connecting myself to him in a way I’ve never connected with anyone else before. Now more than ever I’m terrified to lose him.

              A pair of strong arms slip around my waist and when I glance behind me, Noah is there. His eyes droop with sleep and his hair is flattened on one side of his head.

              “Is the bed not comfortable enough?” he asks.

              “Can’t close my eyes,” I say.

              He steps around me and kisses my forehead. I avert my gaze, staring at the places in the grass where his toes have matted down the foliage. The ground is tinged blue-green in the moonlight.

              “You can tell me if you’re scared,” he says. “I won’t fall apart if you do.”

              I gulp, bringing my eyes back to him. I can tell he speaks the truth. “I’m scared.”

              As soon as I admit it, I wish I hadn’t. The words churn my stomach and cause my body to tremble. Noah catches me as my legs give way, picking me up into his arms. My feet dangle in the air as he walks back inside and sets me on the bed.

              “You go to sleep,” he says. “I’ll keep watch for a while.”

              “I’m supposed to protect you,” I murmur.

              He pulls the blanket up around me and leans in close. “We can both protect each other.”

              I close my eyes and drift into unconsciousness, praying that he’s right, and that Elli’s wrong, and that when I wake up this will all be one long dream with the only real part being him.

Even as I sleep I can feel his arms around me, holding me so tight it’s as if he’s worried I might turn to smoke again and drift away.