A Chosen Life (14 page)

“I ran outside to the park behind our apartment complex. The one I’d only been allowed to play at late at night or early in the morning when it was deserted. I headed toward the tallest tree I could see.”

Macy’s palms started to sweat, slickening her grip on the wheel. She could feel where this was going and she wished he would stop talking, but he seemed to be speaking without really thinking, letting things out he’d obviously held in for years.

“She chased me, but I found the angrier I got, the faster I could run. Before she could catch me, I launched myself at the tree and it swept its branches down and lifted me high in the air, far away from my mother. I shouted ‘I hate you!’ down at her on the ground. Those three words sent the tree into a frenzy. It started swinging its branches at my mom. One of them slammed into her head and knocked her ten feet away . . . ” his voice cracked. “I was horrified. The tree stopped moving and I climbed down and ran over to her. I can still see the blood gushing out of her head. I-I thought I’d killed her, but her eyes flew open and she looked around. People were rushing over, shouting and pointing. She reached up, put her hand over the gash, grabbed my arm with her other hand and started running. I don’t remember much after that. We spent a few weeks hotel jumping before she finally took us to Green River.” He sighed. “I never stopped wanting her to tell me the truth, but I could never let myself get that angry again.”

He barely paused for breath. “Things were better in Green River. She tried to let me have a kind of normal life. Dane came along and even though I was awkward and shy and eventually got labeled the town freak, I was pretty satisfied with my life. All except for the part that I had no idea what sort of experiment went wrong to make me able to do what I could. As I got older, my mom got sicker. Every time I’d slip and ask a question or make a comment about our wacked out life, she’d get all pale and clammy and I remembered my tenth birthday, so I’d bite my tongue. I tried harder to control my anger . . . ” His voice trailed off.

Macy swallowed, her eyes on the road. She was such a hypocrite. She didn’t understand Tolen’s life any more than he understood hers.

They were both misfits in their own ways.

She reached over and touched his arm, an action that surprised her almost as much as the reaction of her Kuna when her fingers met his skin. They tingled with heat—a pleasant heat. How strange.

He looked at her hand and then up into her eyes. The confusion on his face had to mirror hers. Did he feel it too? He held her gaze longer than should be comfortable. In that moment she felt something shift between them. He didn’t hate her anymore, but in that he must have also seen what she saw. That sometimes hate was better than like. The people you liked had a lot more power to hurt you. She pulled her hand back and turned to the road, her face warm.

She cleared her throat to cover the awkward moment. “I guess we both have things in our past we’d like to forget.”

He looked down and shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Look, I’m really sorry for what I said earlier. I should have kept my mouth shut. Bastian always tells me I need to think before I speak. I just don’t listen.”

“It’s okay.” He gave her a tiny smile and turned back to the window.

“Wait., Tolen.” He half glanced back her way. When the tiniest bit of light touched his eyes she made her decision without caring about the consequences. If the situation were reversed, she wouldn’t be nearly as patient as Tolen was being. He was used to being in the dark, left to wonder. Maybe she could show him that not everyone wanted to keep secrets from him. She bit the side of her lip. Well, she’d still keep just one. “I’ll tell you what I can,” she paused. “But there are some things I’m not allowed to.” His eyes narrowed. “Not yet,” she clarified.

He looked up. “‘Need to know’ right?”

It reminded her of their conversation by the river. He’d said then that he was sick of secrets. It didn’t help her feel better that he understood.

“Right. Sorry. Bastian has his reasons. He wants you to know, but he’s a firm believer that timing is everything. He doesn’t want you to know some things until he feels you’re ready.”

“Like what I am?”

“Well, I can tell you what you are. There are just some . . . details I’m not allowed to say.”

His eyebrow rose slightly.

She looked his way and shrugged an apology. “I remember when I was Chosen. Six is young enough that I still believed anything an adult said.” She gave him a crooked smile. “You’re old enough to be skeptical, but I promise everything I’m about to tell you is the whole truth.”

She looked at him from the corner of her eye again. His hands were clasped in his lap, his knuckles white. He held in a lot. He was way better at control than she was. She started to wonder if she would have better control if she had almost accidently killed one of her parents, and then shuddered away from the thought. “I’ll start with the basics. The first things Bastian taught me.”

He nodded. “Sounds fair.”

His careful mask had never fully returned. He looked at her expectantly and she took a deep breath. Well, the cat was already out of the bag—or the Raksasha already had the scent, as Bastian would say. Now all she could do was run with it.

“The first thing you need to understand is the life force—or what humans call the soul.”

“The life force is your soul?” He looked at her, his face skeptical.

“Yeah—don’t look at me like that. You’re thinking in human terms, humans don’t understand the true strength of one’s soul. The Hidden call a soul the life force for two reasons. Number one, it is the intelligence put into your physical body to give it
life
—it will still exist when your physical body dies. Number two, that intelligence was created with the immense energy to power and control the amazing machine of your physical body. Energy is the driving
force
, the strength needed to guide you. Make any sense?”

Tolen shrugged. “Why not? It’ll take a while to throw out my human notions and start seeing things the Hidden way. So why is it so important to understand the life force?”

“Okay, this is where it’s gonna get really weird.” She twisted her ponytail in her fingers. “Since we showed up, have you wondered why the Raksasha, and all those other Dark creatures, have never been seen by humans—why you haven’t ever heard about their freakiness on the news?”

“Definitely.”

Macy nodded in his direction and dropped her sucker stick in a hole in the door panel. “You ever study physics?”

“Are you kidding? I lived for physics. I was bound and determined to figure out the answers to my
issues
.”

“Come up with anything?”

“Not really.”

Macy nodded with a smirk. “Einstein and a few others came pretty close. I find the M-theory the most interesting.”

“Dimensional theory?”

“Right.”

“So . . . the Hidden is a different dimension?”

“Sort of.”

Tolen tilted his head. “Sort of?”

“Dimensional theory only answers some of the questions.”

He leaned back and stretched his arms above his head. “The likelihood being that the Dark are only visible to those that belong to that dimension—and since the Raksasha are obviously not from this dimension, humans can’t see them.”

“That’s my guess. When Bastian explains it, he uses all the Hidden terms and history that basically says things just are what they are and you have to accept it. I’ve always liked trying to see how humans explain things they don’t understand. It’s fun to put Hidden and human together. Like a puzzle.”

He looked at her with an odd expression, like he was surprised she would be interested in studying. She started to feel defensive before he said, “I didn’t think anyone else besides me liked to study the weird stuff.”

She shrugged, ignoring the pleasure she felt over them having something in common. “There’s a whole lot more to it than even I understand. I know that it wasn’t always like this though, that’s why it’s only a theory.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, back in the early days of this world humans
could
actually see the Dark. I don’t know how.”

Tolen nodded his head, totally involved. “Bastian keeps talking about the Balance. What exactly is it?”

“I bet you can guess.” She smiled.

Tolen looked out the window at the last remnants of the town and his eyes narrowed. “It must be the force that keeps the Hidden and human dimensions separate, yet capable of co-existing without destroying one another.”

Her smile widened. “You’re good. I think humans can see the members of the Hidden race that follow the Light because they’re made up of particles from both dimensions. Humans can feel the Dark’s effects when they are close by, but they can’t see them.” She snorted. “I never fully understood a child’s instinctive fear of the dark until I learned of the
Dark.
Darkness is so much more than just the absence of light. The Dark thrives in the night because all forms of light drain their power, although natural light is the strongest.”

“It makes sense,” Tolen tapped his chin, lost in deep thought. “If you bring relativity into play, anyway, how our actions affect time and space. It explains how you knew the Dark was headed toward my house.”

Macy nodded. “Exactly—you’ll be able to sense it too, once you learn to recognize the different vibes in the Balance.”

“But it doesn’t explain how the eight gifts work.”

“Sure it does. Think about it. We’re all made up of molecules right? And so is everything around us. The eight had the ability to manipulate them. Once they imparted those gifts into the Balance, the Balance could select who to give those same abilities to.”

“So we’re actually just manipulating molecules . . . ” He nodded to himself. “That’s what Bastian meant when he said ‘human’ is a relative word. We’re all interconnected as mass and energy, just different kinds.”

Macy wasn’t sure why his analogy made her uncomfortable. Maybe it had to do with the fact that she was human and he didn’t know it.

Tolen went on, oblivious. “This is finally starting to make sense. Funny that being a physics nerd finally paid off.” He gave her a sideways grin that turned quizzical when he saw her face.

She quickly rearranged her expression, nodded, and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel.

“So, why are there Chosen ones? Shouldn’t all those with abilities be fighting against the Dark?” he asked.

“They are fighting, in a much bigger war on a much grander scale. You’ve only seen it from the human side so far.”

He raised an eyebrow, the look on his face intrigued.

She glanced in the mirrors again. “The Chosen ones are needed because there aren’t enough Hidden kind to protect themselves, as well as the
oblivious
humans.” She could see he still didn’t understand and took a deep breath. This was a legend she didn’t care to re-tell, but he needed to hear. “It all began with your standard quest for dominance. In the beginning, there were Hidden who figured they were more powerful than humans for a reason. They wanted slaves. The Guardians, the group that leads the Hidden, freaked out and put a stop to it. But the idea was there and continued to grow.

“The Dark at the time was just matter in space; it seemed to be drawn to power, but it avoided the Light and all its attempts at contact. So the Hidden ignored it.

“Then the wars began over the freedom of the human race. The Guardians noticed the Dark matter seemed to be growing. They didn’t realize it was feeding on the contention of the people until it was too late—like a parasite it attached itself to the Hidden dimension layer upon layer, coating the areas of the worst conflict, but staying away from the strongholds of the Light. They felt the creepy effects of the Dark strengthening, especially at night, and the Light cautioned against seeking it out. The Guardians even sent messengers into the enemy camps, warning them that the Dark seemed to be focusing on their fighters—they were afraid of what the strange power might be after. They begged the other side to come to an agreement, to make peace . . . ” Macy chewed the side of her lip. “The freaks cut the heads off the messengers and sent them back to the Guardians in bags tied to their horses.”

Tolen shuddered in her peripheral vision.

She plowed on grudgingly, knowing what she had to say next was so much worse. “The idiots ignored the warning and went out after the Dark. Something unconscionable was born.”

She looked over to see goose bumps on Tolen’s arms and lowered her voice. “The Dark took them over. Rather than winning a slave race for themselves,
they
became the slaves for the Dark. It literally mutated them—took all decency out of them. Without even the tiniest bit of kindness or charity left inside them, they became the demons that spawned legend and the horrors of the blackest nightmares. They no longer cared about making themselves a grander race. They only wanted power and the Dark’s control of this world. They killed anyone—human or Hidden—that stood in the Dark’s way.

“People were dying everywhere. The Guardians sent out their Protectors, and the Radia Warriors were formed, but the Dark continued to grow in power and numbers.

“According to legend, the Radia Revolution was the bloodiest battle this world has ever seen. The Light won, but barely. Hundreds of thousands of people died. The alliance between humans and Hidden evaporated.”

Tolen blew out an exasperated breath. “Why?”

Macy sighed. “The humans figured it was the Hidden’s fault that the Dark had come—they thought if they broke off the alliance with the Hidden, then the Dark would leave them alone. They were afraid—or just crazy.” She shrugged. “They made this psychotic pact with the Guardians and a
Shroud
was created in the Balance, completely blocking humans from seeing the Dark from that day on.” She shook her head. “But the Guardians knew the Dark wanted to dominate all life, human included, and they didn’t want to leave the humans unprotected.

“So they begged the Light for a solution. One day the Watchers showed up with weird news. The Radia shards they had spent their lives guarding had split in two. One half had disappeared, but they could feel the broken pieces sending for them. They could see images of children who held the shards. This was a huge deal because the shards had astonishing powers and up until then, the Watchers were the only ones capable of taming them.