Wordless (20 page)

“What do you see?” I asked, my throat tight for some reason I couldn’t name.

“When you’re happy, I see the laughter in your eyes, and the mischief when you’re being a shit. When you’re crying I see your pain, raw and bleeding, and when you look at me … ”

She took a sharp little breath. She couldn’t say it, because I hadn’t said it yet. I hadn’t even known it until then. And I still couldn’t say it, because my throat seized up almost painfully.

But I knew what she saw.

She stopped right before we reached the sidewalk at the far end of the field and turned around. She had tears in her eyes.

“Mostly I see you,” she said. “And you’re good.”

She looked scared herself. No, she looked …

And then I saw it, for the first time: her guard dropped, the doors of her eyes opened, and I saw
her
.

I saw something else, too, as she looked at me. Probably the same thing she’d seen in my eyes.

“Tavin,” she whispered. She didn’t need to say it, like I didn’t have to. And that made me love her even more.

Gods,
love
. It was strange, intoxicating, wonderful … and utterly terrifying. It was like riding a roller-coaster drunk. I sort of wanted to laugh, scream, and puke all at the same time.

I exhaled, my head spinning. “So you don’t just like me for my body.”

She shook her head once and smiled, the motion making a tear run from the corner of her eye. I caught it, leaving a wet, muddy smear where I’d touched her.

I stared at my damp finger, trying to ground myself. “Even though I want to, I probably shouldn’t touch you again until we get some soap. You now have another smudge of dirt on your left cheek.”

She laughed and lifted a sleeve to wipe her eyes. “Better? Cleaner, I mean?”

“Check, captain.”

“Okay.” She took a deep, steadying breath, blinking away her tears. “You need food. You’re about to fall over. Let’s go.”

Admittedly, low blood sugar was probably why I felt so dizzy, but not entirely. I felt like I was flying as I followed her down the sidewalk and into the town of Martigny. The world streamed by in a blur, as if nothing could touch me so long as Khaya felt the same way about me as I felt about her. We crossed a couple streets, hardly needing to look both ways since there were so few cars on the road, and Khaya scanned the signs on the buildings. Soon she stopped.

“This is about all I see.” She gestured at the sign above the wooden siding of a storefront, then read it aloud when she remembered I couldn’t read. “A
supermarché
—a supermarket. It doesn’t look very ‘super,’ but there’s not much else to this town.”

I shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

A bell jingled as we pushed the door open. Thank the Gods there was no one else inside except a portly man with a beret, blue overalls, and a big round nose reading a newspaper behind a wooden counter. It amazed me that just anyone could read, especially a guy looking like that. In Eden City, I would have pegged him as wordless from a mile off. A TV was playing over his head, unwatched. It looked even older than the TV in Drey’s garage that had broken years ago.

“Eh, bonjour,” the man said without looking up.

We picked up empty baskets and ducked into an aisle. Khaya snatched things off the shelves as she passed, mostly dried food, a lot of which looked suspiciously like energy bars even though I couldn’t read the packaging. She had to seize my arm when I spotted the candy bars. I gestured at them, hissing under my breath about how good they were, but she shook her head and added healthier-looking food to the basket. We crossed into an aisle with tools and plastic jugs that even I knew held motor oil, and that was where Khaya found some bar soap, toothpaste, and toothbrushes. She eyed a collection of bottles that looked like shampoo but passed them over with a small sigh.

In a back corner, I spotted a rack of T-shirts and sweatshirts, and Khaya sent me that way with a nudge, murmuring, “I’ll look for anything else we might need.”

There were different words on different sweatshirts, but I couldn’t read what they said and only cared about the color, anyway—the darker the better, to hide dirt. I took four black sweatshirts off the rack. I paused, grinned to myself, and replaced Tu’s with the next size down. It would still fit him, but snuggly. Like a muscle sweatshirt.

I was so pleased with my little prank that I didn’t notice the TV until I’d followed Khaya up to the counter, where she had put her basket and stood waiting for me. Earlier, the screen had been showing a soccer game, but now there was an aerial view of a forest, obviously filmed from a helicopter.

The trees were burning.

I didn’t need to be able to read the text flashing across the screen to know this was the forest we’d left behind. And my connection to it was especially obvious, since my picture was displayed in the upper right corner—the same photo that had dominated the giant video screens in Eden City.

Whether or not they believed I’d struck the match for the fire that nearly burned a massive swath of forest to the ground, every viewer would know I was involved. Not only was local law enforcement definitely tracking me, but I’d be hunted down by average citizens.

Like the portly man in overalls behind the counter. He was staring at the newspaper, not the TV, so I ducked my head to dig out a wad of Swiss francs. I passed them to Khaya without looking up and turned as if I’d forgotten something, hoping the shopkeeper wouldn’t notice me slipping out of the store.

But I didn’t slip away. I froze instead. Someone else’s face had filled the screen, even though my photo remained in the corner. He was gaunt and gray with tubes in his nose and mouth and tape on his eyelids, surrounded by hospital equipment. He looked horrific, but he was alive.

Drey was definitely alive.

Swanson’s voice suddenly became clear in the background, speaking English instead of French: “This is a message for Tavin Barnes, a plea. Turn yourself in. The only way this innocent bystander’s life can be saved is if you return to Eden City with what you stole. There’s nothing else that can save him.” There was a heavy pause. “He has roughly one day to live. Your choice.”

twenty-one

A day. Drey had only a day to live.

“Drey!” I shouted, startling the man at the counter. He glanced at the TV in surprise, but didn’t look at the screen for long. He looked back down at his newspaper. “Khaya, we have to go now. We have to see if there’s a cure—”

“Tav—” Khaya said in warning, then choked off my name. “Just be quiet.”

She probably didn’t want to give me away any more than I already had. I couldn’t stop staring at the footage of Drey, let alone sneak away. Fortunately, the shopkeeper seemed to be more interested in his paper than either the TV or me.

Or so I thought, until he slammed the paper down on the countertop and my upside-down face stared at me from the front page.

“You are … Tavin Barnes?” he asked, pronouncing my name with a heavy accent.

“Uh,” I said, right when Khaya said, “No!”

“I think you are Tavin Barnes.”

The shopkeeper ducked out of sight behind the wooden counter and returned with a rifle before either Khaya or I could blink. He aimed it right at my chest.

“You think you can just come into my store and I will do nothing?” he demanded.

“No, sir!” The line of stuffed deer and elk heads above the windows was all the proof I needed. The man in overalls was not only a reader, but a hunter. Fantastic. “I mean, I’m not Tav—”

“Now, you wait here while I make a phone call.” He held the rifle in one hand while the other reached along the countertop for an old corded phone. “If you do not move, I will not shoot.”

“Sir,” Khaya began. “Monsieur, s’il vous plaît—” she added in French. Of course she would speak French.

“Now, I do not know who you are, mademoiselle, but you are with a bad young man. He is wanted by the police and everyone in Switzerland.”

So I’d been right about that at least, even if I’d been wrong about everything else—like not simply robbing the store, or Khaya and I coming into town instead of Pavati and Tu, or Drey possibly having more than one day left to live. Chilled as I was, I’d broken out in a sweat. And hungry as I was, I would sooner have ejected the acid boiling in my stomach than eaten.

Khaya looked around, as if for some sort of weapon. But there was nothing living in the shop that I could see, not even a potted plant. And I’d left the gun in the backpack with Pavati and Tu. I actually wished Tu were here in all of his earthshaking, shirtless, macho glory.

“Sir, really, you don’t understand,” I said, trying a different tack. “We have to—”

“Be quiet,” the shopkeeper said, jerking the rifle for emphasis. Then he spoke into the phone in rapid French. All I caught was his name: Pierre.

As soon as he hung up, both of his hands were back on the rifle, which hadn’t wavered from me. Perhaps I should have tried something while he was on the phone, but I hadn’t been able to come up with any more of a plan then than now. Swanson was maybe my father, Khaya loved me, Drey was alive but dead in a day—it was all too much. I felt as brainless as one of the stuffed deer heads with glassy eyes. All I knew was that if I made any sudden moves, my chest would be turned to Swiss cheese.

Even if I couldn’t save myself, maybe there was still hope for Khaya. Hope for the world.

“Let the girl go,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “It’s me everyone wants. She didn’t do anything.” At least, Eden City wouldn’t have told the Swiss government any different.

Pierre narrowed his eyes. “How do I know that? She could be your—what do you call it?—your accomplice.”

“She’s not. I—I kidnapped her. She’s my hostage. But I don’t want her getting hurt in any of this, and you probably don’t either.”

Khaya was staring at me, her eyes wide. Then she blinked.

“He’s lying,” she told Pierre.

“Khaya!” I cried. “Tell the man the truth and get the hell out of here!”

“I can tell the truth: I’m not leaving you.”

“Stockholm Syndrome,” I said to Pierre, thinking of anything and everything as fast as I could, pulling up phrases from Drey’s scarier stories.
Drey
, I thought.
No, don’t think about Drey. Khaya needs to run. Focus.
“She’s just some girl. Please let her go.”

“You’re just a boy,” Khaya said, “who didn’t deserve to be dragged into this. If anything happens to you, it’s all my fault. Hear that?” She met the shopkeeper’s eyes. “This is all my doing. Your forest is burning because of me, that man on the screen is dying because of me, and anything Tavin has done is because of me.”

Pierre glanced back and forth between us, as if he couldn’t decide which one of us was crazier.

“You should know, Tavin,” Khaya said quietly, “Swanson is right.
There’s only one way to save someone from
the Word of Death. Andre Bernstein worked with my father, but it wasn’t on a cure. Modern medicine can try to slow Death down, but the end will come no matter what. Nobody, not even Herio, can stop Death.”

Khaya didn’t meet my eyes at first, even though I was staring at her, everything else forgotten.
There was no cure?
There was no cure.
Except for
…

“Except for me.” She finally looked at me, her eyes glazed with tears.“I made that up about the cure because I knew the only way to save Drey was for me to go back. And I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t let you go back, either, not by yourself. They would imprison you, and for what? Just so you could watch Drey die?” She nodded at the TV screen. “They’re hoping you’ll give me up, to save Drey. Maybe you
should
give me up. I’ll
…
I’ll let you. You could get your life back that way.”

And doom the world to a hostile takeover
, she’d forgotten to add. Never mind dooming all the Words. Khaya’s offer stunned me even more than her lie about the cure. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

“What are you saying?” the shopkeeper demanded. “Did you say
Herio
?”

“Yes. The Word of Death,” Khaya said, and Pierre blanched. “And I’m the Word of Life.”

“What?” His voice dropped in fear.

I shook my head, trying to focus on the here and now. “Khaya, you’ve got to leave! You’re more important than me or
…
or Drey,” I said, forcing the words out. “We don’t even know if he’s really alive. This could still be a setup.” I turned frantically to Pierre. “She’s lying. I mean, come on, does she
look
like the Word of Life?”

Khaya turned, lifting up her ragged shirt as she did. Not all the way, but enough for us to see the Words streaking her back like black blood. They were moving, altering, as both Pierre and I stared at them. She dropped her shirt and turned back around. “See?”

“Mother of the Gods,” he whispered, taking a step backward.

We all stared at each other, barely breathing. It wasn’t much longer before I heard sirens approaching, then tires screeching as vehicles slid to a halt outside. They had gotten here quickly. It was a small town; they must not have had far to come.

And then everything started shaking. I thought it was the cops, bombarding the store with cannons as though their handguns and rifles weren’t sufficient. But when the floor erupted, throwing shelves into each other like dominos, I realized it was someone else entirely.

Tu and Pavati hadn’t had that far to come, either.

The two of them came launching out of a tunnel in the middle of the store, tucking and rolling as they hit the ground, Words flying from their mouths like bullets. The floor dropped out from underneath Pierre, but not before his rifle went off. I would have ended up like my least favorite cheese if a powerful blast of water from a broken pipe hadn’t hit him at the same time, throwing his arms—and the rifle barrel—up and riddling the ceiling tiles full of holes instead of me.

In seconds it was over. The shopkeeper was buried up to his shoulders behind the counter, the earth packed tight around him as if his head were growing from some weird planter. The water from the pipe ceased flowing—or at least spraying like it had a mind of its own—but not before Pavati had washed the rifle out of sight.

Tu surveyed the damage with a satisfied smile. “We work well together, don’t we?” he said to Pavati. “Earth and water: the perfect team, even in nature. You know how water always caresses the earth, and the earth holds it … ” He rubbed his bare chest with a grin.

“You mean, how water always carves the earth into whatever shape it wants before leaving for the ocean?” Pavati said with a smirk.

“Cruel, cruel woman.”

“Uh, guys?” I said, and they both turned to me. “I hate to interrupt, but—” I gestured at the front windows, which let in the flashing of blue and red lights. “I think we’re sort of surrounded.”

That was when a voice, amplified by a megaphone, shouted at us in French. I didn’t understand quite what it said, but it was probably something like
we’ve got you surrounded.

“See?”

Tu scoffed, helping himself to a candy bar from the floor. “I’d like to see them try—”

There was a loud pop, a shattering of glass, and the clank of something metallic bouncing across the floor. A canister. It was also hissing, spewing white gas. My eyes started to burn, my throat prickling like I’d swallowed a porcupine.

“Tear gas!” I wheezed.

“How dare they!” Tu snarled.

I ignored him, sweeping the sweatshirts off the counter along with one of the baskets full of food, giving Pierre’s head a quick word of apology. Khaya already had the other basket on her arm, and as we turned to run for the tunnel in the ground, Pavati followed us with the backpack over her shoulders.

Except Tu wasn’t following. He was marching the other way. It took the jingling of the bell attached to the front door to make me realized he’d walked straight outside.

“We’ve got to help him!” Pavati cried, abandoning the tunnel. Before I could shout, she’d sprinted through the white haze and out of the store.

Khaya and I exchanged reddened, watery-eyed glances, then went after her.

We burst out into the chilly, fading sunlight just in time to meet the firing squad. I didn’t know what Tu had done or said, but he’d obviously pissed them off. Shots cracked all around us from the police cruisers ringing the small parking lot, their open doors shielding the officers while they pointed and fired at us. I would be filled with holes after all.

Or so I thought, but then none of the bullets hit.
Something
did, like little stinging pinches of sand that probably wouldn’t leave a mark. Tu was standing in front of us, chanting, and I realized that the bullets were disintegrating before they reached us … turning into particles of lead and copper. Might as well have been dirt clods fired at us.

The shots died, and the thundering echoes with them. Then Tu said a word that wasn’t in Chinese, a name for the cops that Drey would have called French—as in, “Excuse my French”—except it wasn’t French, and involved mothers. And then he crouched and pressed his palms to the ground.

Thunder rose again: Tu’s thunder. The earth shook, then cracked and lifted, splitting the parking lot into jagged chunks of bucking asphalt. And then there was a chorus of voices—Words—all around me, not only Tu’s.

Water and roots sprang from the fractured earth as if they were tentacles belonging to some wild, unleashed beast, tearing the guns out of the officers’ hands and flattening others to the ground. The water moved with a life of its own, like a liquid snake, twisting around and underneath cars to strike. So did the roots, lashing like whips. Pavati and Khaya knew how to wield their Words as capably as Tu.

For my part, I watched with my mouth open.

Tu’s voice brought me back to myself, where I stood next to an empty police cruiser on the only patch of ground that wasn’t heaving. The engine was still running, blue lights flashing; its occupant had been pulled away screaming by writhing roots. “Tavin!” Tu was yelling. “None of us know how to drive, so you’d better be able to!”

“You want me to drive?” I asked, staring at the car and picturing a high-speed chase down unfamiliar Swiss roads. “Why don’t we just duck back underground?”

Tu grinned, and it didn’t look friendly. “We will. Now get in!”

I hesitated. By now, most of the officers had fled or were lying stunned, the sirens left shrieking into the oncoming twilight. Still, the Swiss police had to have notified Eden City that they’d found me. The Athenaeum’s forces would be showing up in no time at all, and they had helicopters at their disposal.

After tossing the sweatshirts and grocery basket in the backseat, which I had to do through the rear door because of a metal screen between the front and back, I threw myself in the driver’s seat and the transmission into gear. Alien knobs and buttons and gauges gleamed all around me and the radio chattered wildly. I ignored everything but the steering wheel and gas pedal as Tu leapt in the passenger seat and the girls slipped into the enclosed back of the car with the supplies.

“Now what?” I asked Tu.

He hadn’t closed his door, and leaned to brush his fingers along the cracked ground, whispering to it as though it were a creature he was petting. The ground sure reacted as if it were alive, rearing up in front of us and opening a wide mouth down into the bowels of the earth, straight through the asphalt, broken pipes, and other chunks of what looked like concrete. The sudden movement flung vehicles and people
out of the way. I hoped no one was hurt by the rolling cars. They’d tried to shoot us, but I at least didn’t want to kill anyone.

The tunnel was wider than our stolen cruiser. The still-flashing lights on our car’s roof illuminated the dark entrance in an eerie blue glow.

“Now,” Tu said, “drive. But you might want to turn on the headlights.”