Forged by Greed (30 page)

Penelope watched Jatred. She sat down across from him and picked up half
of her sandwich. Bits of shredded lettuce and tomato slid from it to the
wrapper spread on the table. Jatred returned her glance, his eyes troubled. Penelope
managed a half-smile and turned to Georgeta.

“What did
you
get?” she
asked.

“Chicken teriyaki with a bunch of onions and stuff,” Georgeta said
through mouthful of food. “Oh, and the egg and bacon one. You?”

“I got chicken teriyaki too. It’s the best. And I got Big Philly. But
I’m not sure I can eat it all. I’m not so hungry.”

“Take it to go then. You’ll be hungry later. I always am.” Georgeta laughed.
She held a plastic tumbler with water in her hand.

“She eats as much as I do. And that says something.” Erik grinned,
his eyes on his sister.

“Liar. Nobody eats as much as you.”

“What was that?” Lusia shrieked, pushing her chair back. A few human
customers looked up in alarm.

Penelope glared at Lusia and tsked impatiently. They all felt it at
once—the ground under their feet rolled. The lamps hanging from the ceiling
swayed and flickered. A tower of plastic cups fell from the counter and landed
on the floor. The cups rolled in all directions. Everyone rushed outside, the
chairs scraping the floor, food abandoned on the tables. People yelled and
gasped, trying to get through the door. Erik put his arm protectively around
Penelope, dragging her with him. He turned back to find Georgeta. She followed
closely behind with the rest of the Winter kids. The last to exit were the
store employees. Their faces were distorted with horror.

When they got outside, the shaking stopped, but everyone stood
motionless, waiting for the aftershocks.

“Earthquake? Was that a real earthquake?” Lusia gasped, holding onto
Bogdan’s arm.

“Looks like it was,” he said.

“Did you hear about the other earthquakes on the news? In Alaska and
in Mexico they just had a really big one.” A short heavy-set woman in her late
thirties stood next to them, clutching a red purse in her arms.

The kids looked at her. Some shook their heads. One of the store
employees—a lanky teenager with a bad case of acne said, “They say we’re due an
earthquake. It’s been a while and, you know, this is Seattle… we get
earthquakes sometimes.”

“Let’s go home.” Lusia looked at Bogdan, pleading.

“Yeah, we should—” he started to say, but his cell phone shrilling
interrupted him.

Georgeta’s cell phone rang too, followed by Penelope’s. Each of the
teens got their phones out. Lusia’s phone was next. She squealed, startled, and
took it out of her purse. Everyone started talking on their phones, calming
down their worried parents. Erik noticed Penelope was shaking. He wrapped his
arms around her and said, “Where is your jacket? Let’s get out of here.”

“Guys, listen.” Georgeta waved madly at everyone, her phone pressed
to her ear. “Dad says
Kilimanjaro
erupted too. It’s all over the news.”

“It’s a
dormant
volcano! It
has never erupted before.” Lusia whispered incredulously.

“Erik, I want to go home now.” Georgeta looked at her brother, her
lips trembling.

 
“This is not a coincidence.
It’s starting to happen,” Jatred whispered to no one in particular. His eyes
narrowed.

“Bro, what’s starting to happen?” Bogdan asked.

Jatred looked at his friend. “Do you remember what your parents said
about mind transposition?”

“Yeah…” Bogdan said slowly.

“This just popped into my head, just like the stuff before. The
ten-thousand-year mark is when crazy things happen, like the volcanoes, even
the dormant ones, erupt. And a bunch of earthquakes and floods—”

Lusia shrieked, “You’re freaking me out. You sound like some kind of
a nutcase prophet.”

“Lusia, calm down. He’s right. That’s what my folks said this
morning. I’ll tell you more later,” said Bogdan.

“I’m getting my jacket.” Penelope turned around.
 

“Stay here with Erik, I’ll get it.” Jatred stopped her and walked
toward the Subway door.

“Jatred,” Penelope called after him. “You don’t remember this, but
you were crazy about her. Try to think about it. Don’t just dismiss it only because
it’s not in your memories. Just sayin’.”

He looked hard at her. “We all need to go home now.”

 
***

“Andy! Come here.” Bogdan’s mother’s voice carried a note of panic.
“Look at this.”

Andy crossed the room in a few long strides and stood behind Ivona.
She sat in an armchair. He put his hands on her shoulders, his eyes on the TV
screen.

A young handsome announcer stood in front of the camera. A massive smoking
mountain was visible on the horizon behind him. His stylish black Armani coat
was covered in gray ash, and so was his hair. He pointed with his hand toward
the volcano, holding the microphone in his other hand. Without taking his eyes
of the camera, he spoke in fast Italian. The translation on the screen appeared
right below his image. It read, “Although considered an active volcano,
Mount Vesuvius hasn’t erupted since
March 1944. The
volcano has been in a quiescent stage until today. The scientists are puzzled
over today’s eruption since there was no indication of any major activity. As
you can see,” he gestured around, “there is a lot of ash even here, over thirty
kilometers away. The evacuation plan is being executed…”

“First the earthquake here, then
Kilimanjaro,
and now this?”
Andy muttered.

Ivona put her hands over his and said, “Plus those two major earthquakes
today, in Alaska, and the other in Mexico. Much bigger than what we had in
Seattle. It’s the ten-thousand-year mark, isn’t it? There will be more. Much
more.”

Andy sighed heavily. He kept his eyes on the TV screen. When she
looked up, he met her gaze and nodded. “I’m afraid so. There are all kinds of
natural disasters happening almost daily all over the planet, but never in such
concentration. Not all at once, all over the world. This must be the
ten-thousand-year mark. It just started earlier than we have always
anticipated.”
 
 

They heard the front door open and close.

“Mom, Dad, I’m home.” Bogdan yelled. He walked into the family room.

“Oh good, you’re here. We were so worried. Look,
Mount Vesuvius erupted,” his mother said.

“What? Mount Vesuvius?” Bogdan sat on the floor
close to Ivona’s armchair. She leaned forward and put her hand on his head,
gently caressing his hair.

“Mom, stop.” Bogdan jerked his head away, and
moved closer to the TV. He sat on his heels, his damp t-shirt stretched over
his upper back and shoulders.

A local anchor of King 5 News station—a young blond woman in her late
twenties—cautiously smiled at the camera. She talked about the earthquakes in
Seattle, Alaska and near Acapulco, Mexico, elaborating on these unexpected
occurrences. She paused, pressing her hand to an earpiece in her ear, and the
smile disappeared from her face. The woman nodded and frowned, her eyes moving rapidly
as if searching for something on the table in front of her. Finally, she looked
at the camera and said, “We have just received another important broadcast,
this time from China. We will interrupt our news to give you these updates.”

The camera showed a middle-aged man in thick glasses, with receding
dark curly hair. He clutched a large microphone with the King 5 News station
logo on in one hand, and a big black umbrella in his other hand. Strong wind
tugged on his coat and the umbrella.

Nervously clearing his throat, the man said, “At least twenty-two
hundred people were killed, and more than four thousand were injured by a series
of extremely strong tornados and a severe hailstorm that swept over Hainan
Province today. Thousands of homes are destroyed, and the torrential rain has
continued for the last several hours.”

The reporter squinted and continued, “We are waiting for some feedback
from the meteorologists about this unusual and unpredicted turn in the weather
conditions. Until then, back to you, Amy.”

The phone rang and Ivona sighed. “It’s been like this for the last
hour. Everyone’s calling here, thinking we know what’s going on.” She stood up
to pick it up.

Andy glanced at Bogdan, who sat on the floor. His eyes never left
the TV screen. “I assume we will see much more of this strange weather, and maybe
even more volcano eruptions. I hope humans won’t start to panic as some of these
events are not easily explained.”

“Is this gonna continue? I mean, every day like this?” Bogdan asked.

“Nobody knows, but let’s hope things will get back to normal soon—at
least for a while.” Andy shook his head. “We have no idea what to expect since,
obviously, there are no records of the previous ten-thousand-year mark in
either of the Races’ archives. But I know from a various sources that every one
thousand years, when the Amulet has passed from the Summer to the Winter or
back, weird things have happened in nature. But eventually everything quieted
down within a few days.”

Bogdan looked at his father in silence.

“Jatred’s coronation is in only two weeks. Flying to Alaska might be
a challenge. But I think most of us will try anyway.” Andy sighed.

“What if the flights get cancelled?” Bogdan’s eyebrows shot up to
his hairline.

“We just have to wait and see. But, as I said, things might just settle
down by then.”

“This is freaky. Just all messed up.” Bogdan shook his head, getting
up to his feet. “I’ll be in my room.”

Both parents exchanged a quick glance then regarded him silently.
Ivona ended the phone call and motioned to Andy to sit next to her. Keeping her
mental shield up, she said with her mind, “I’m scared.”

Andy put his arm around her shoulders. He sensed her gaze on him and
managed a half-smile, trying to cover up his worries. “It’s only natural to
feel this way. I’m scared too, but we need to be strong for Bogdan’s sake.”

The phone shrilled again, and they both sighed.

“I’ll get it,” Andy said and heaved himself up from the sofa. “I
wonder who’s calling this time.”

   
CHAPTER 34

Human World, November 17,
late afternoon.

Savannah turned off the vacuum cleaner and stuffed it into a tiny
closet.

“Mom, I’m done. There is no more broken glass on the floor,” she said.
“We need two new picture frames to replace the ones that fell off the wall.”

Her mother sat motionlessly by the window, looking outside. She held
a glass of Scotch in her hand. When she didn’t comment, Savannah gave her a
worried look, shook her head, and went to the kitchen to turn the faucet on. “I
can’t believe we actually had an earthquake,” she muttered to herself.

A muffled cell phone shrill came from Savannah’s backpack. She wiped
her hands on a towel and got the phone out.

“Hello.” Her face lit up in a genuine smile. “I’m fine. We’re fine.
Where are you? What? You’re breaking up.”

She looked at the phone and saw a “lost signal” message displayed on
the screen. She put the phone on the counter, crossed her arms over her chest,
and waited. After less than a minute, she heard the familiar sound and picked
the phone up.

“Jatred, the connection broke. Are you okay?”

Her mother turned her head away from the window to stare at Savannah.
Her expression didn’t change. She looked passive, almost bored. She took a mouthful
from her glass, swallowed, and coughed.

“No, I’m not sure about tomorrow either. Something weird is going on
with all those disasters striking all over the world at once.” Savannah said into
the phone, turning away and walking out of the kitchen, out of her mother’s earshot.
“I’m kinda scared. I don’t know what to think. What? No, stay home. I’ll be
fine. I’ll call you tomorrow though.”

After ending the call Savannah walked into the tiny room, sat by her
mother, and picked up the remote control to turn the TV on. “How is your
headache? You shouldn’t drink when you take Ibuprofen,” she said. Her mom
didn’t answer.

Savannah rested her head on her mother’s shoulder. The woman didn’t
move, her eyes fixed on the TV screen. A middle-aged anchor in a bright-red
business suit nodded vigorously while her co-host, a man with thick eyebrows,
talked about the recent earthquake activity in Seattle.

“All the news stations are reporting the same thing. Nobody knows
why we had an earthquake, why all these volcanoes erupted today, why there are
tornadoes coming from nowhere. The scientists and weather people can usually
predict these things. But now they are helpless. No one has a clue what’s going
on.” Savannah said angrily.