If I Fall (14 page)

The leading Radical whirls on the door and pushes the younger man aside. He looks through the glass, a smirk sidling up his face. Turning on his men, he begins to laugh. A booming, guttural laugh that bubbles out from deep within him. They all join in until their mirth almost drowns out the distant cries.
Almost.

“Leave them there. They’ll be dead in a few minutes,” the man tells his colleagues. All four of them nod in agreement, still laughing at the ease in which they disposed of the Marked family. “Come along. Mr. Simmons said he saw two leeches take off up the stairs.”

As soon as they are out of sight, I rush for the doors. A thick smoke swirls on the opposite side of the glass and seeps out from underneath the door. Through its haze, I see the mother starting another fire with the stove. The three children sit on the floor, crying. Another figure, one I had not seen with the Marked woman before, bangs at the door, yelling incoherently. I squint, trying to see through the smog when the figure steps back and I meet the familiar light blue of her eyes.

“Dela?”

16
LIVING

Every muscle tightens. Every breath of air halts. Desperation seizes me, a plume of fire growing at the pit of my stomach. It spreads up through my arms and down through my legs. It burns at the tips of my fingers and toes. It burns brighter than the flaying flames behind my sister.

This fire, this energy, surges up inside of me until I have no choice but to release. With no warning, I run forward, slamming my body against the door and screaming at the top of my lungs. I bang my fists against the wood. Incoherent words jumble together into one desperate howl.

“
Dela!”
I scream. “Let her out! Let her out! Dela!”

Relentlessly, I pound at the door. My face wears a salty sheen of tears and sweat. Black curls have escaped Gertrude’s beautiful twist. They stick to my jaw and fly around my face as I shake my head from side to side.

“Open the door! Dela, open the door!
Please! Dela!”

She cries on the other side, her tiny hands smacking against the door in rhythm with my own. “She thought I was alone, El! She thought I was alone and told me she had a better place for us to go!” she yells. The words are muffled by the door and the cries of the disturbed night. “I don’t want to go with her, El. I don’t want to go. Please, don’t make me go.” Her cries are hysterical now. She can scarcely get the words out between each shuddering breath and racking sob.

“You don’t have to go, Dela. You don’t have to,” I cry. “Just open the door!”

She shakes her head wildly. “I can’t! She—she is keeping it locked with her mind,” she blubbers. “She’s like Mother. She can do things,” another fearful whimper bubbles out, “with her mind.”

A Telepathist? A thousand thoughts whip through my mind. I need help.
Dela!
There’s not much time.
Dela!
I need a plan.
Dela!
She will die! Get her out!
Dela! Dela! Dela!

“It’s so hot, El.” She leans against the door. I can see her gasping for breath as her lungs battle the ash and smoke.

“Stay close to the floor, Dela. I will not leave you!” I yell. “I will get you out! I promise!”

I search the room, looking for anyone who might help me. Only a few scattered persons still walk the ballroom.

“Dela! Are you still there?”

“I’m here, El. I’m still here.” Her voice is faint. Fear threatens to overtake me.

I bite back my tears, not wanting to scare her. “Can you sing a song to me, Dela? Can you sing a song for me?”

She does not answer, but before long her quiet voice begins to carry through the door.
“Rockaby, lullaby, bees in the clover…”

My heart contracts in adoration for my sister as she croons the song I used to help her sleep. I look past Dela at the Marked woman. She sits on the floor with the children, holding them tight. She thinks she is doing the right thing, that this will save them. She thinks this is a way out! But she is wrong. Death is no escape.

The Marked woman can take her life and the lives of her children, but she
cannot
take the life of my sister!

“Keep singing, Dela!” I yell as I search the room for help.

Two women stumble towards the doors, crying and moaning. A young girl lies on her back near an upturned chair. I cannot see her face, but I fear the worst. Neither of the two are any help to me. Then I see him. A man most likely in his mid-thirties running for the stairs.

“Sir!” I yell, following after him. He does not stop. “Sir! Please! I need your help!”

He hesitates on the second step and that is all I need. I grab onto his hand. He tries to rip it away and leave the frantic girl clinging to his arm in the dust, but I hold on tight.

“Let me go, child,” he says. His voice is deep, much deeper than I would have thought. Fear grows inside of me at the warning in his tone.

“Please. My sister—she is locked in the kitchen—she—”

The man jerks his hand back hard and I fall forward. My forearm smacks against a step. It throbs dully, but it is nothing compared to the pain in knowing I am running out of time.

Turning around, he continues his ascent up the stairs.

“You …
coward!
She will die!” I shriek. “She will die! You must help me!
She will die!”

Lost in my fury, my yells verge upon hysterical. My whole being becomes crazed as I hammer my fists against the marble step, needing a release. Within seconds, I am trembling like someone who has just escaped an insane asylum.

I am blinded by my tears and do not see the hands that abruptly wrench me to my feet.

The man’s voice is close to my ear as he says, “Do not make me regret this. I cannot Hold it for long, so explain quickly.”

I open my eyes and blink away the tears, until through the glassy haze, I meet the long lashes that frame his swimming black orbs.

“Hold wha—” I begin, but the answer stuns me into silence.

My world has frozen over.

Mouths hang open—the screams, the sounds, stopped in time. The silence is deafening. Nothing moves. People stand in their huddled groups, but they do not hold each other for comfort. They do not rub each other’s backs like Mother used to rub mine whenever a bad dream left me in a cold sweat. No, these people are motionless, still, immobile. They are lost in an infinite moment in time.

The moment drags forward. No one cries. Voices are caught in the air. If I look at the refugees’ open mouths long enough, I can almost imagine the noises that would have been. But my imaginings are not reality. No. The real thing is lost, vanished to this new silent world where everyone—
everything
—has paused.

Everything except us.

I open my mouth to speak, to ask one of the numerous questions that vie for the starting jump off my tongue, but the man beats me to it.

“It would seem we are not so different,” he states gruffly.

Instantly, I know what he speaks of and involuntarily make a move for my left wrist. He nods, a condescending smile playing across his lips.

“That’s right, child,” he says.

I shake my head. “But how could you have known?”

He smiles. “Two days ago I saw those same violet eyes beneath a bowler. Now, the same eyes come to me pleading for help. Only one thing would drive a young girl to dress as a boy and sneak onto a ship in these dark times.” He pauses. “So, what are you? A Telepathist? Mediator, perhaps?”

I shake my head. “I—I don’t know. My powers have not exactly—”

Before I can finish, he jerks my left arm forward and peels back my glove. His face is meant to be neutral, but I see the subtle shift in his eyes as he takes in my Mark. He grunts.

“I am losing the Hold,” he says, his voice strained. “Just explain what happened. Quickly.”

“My sister is caught in the kitchens with another Marked woman and her children. The woman has started a fire. I think—I think she means to commit suicide. Please. You must help me get her out!” I start out calm, but by the end of my explanation, I am blubbering like a fool. “She will die. We haven’t much time!”

He surprises me with a laugh. “There is always enough time in my world,” he utters, throwing in a wink for good measure.

I scowl, ready to scream at him, to tell him that this is no time for winks and laughter, but before I can so much as open my mouth, the Hold breaks.

The silence ends. The world floods back to life.

However, it is not the sudden motion that startles me, but the onslaught of noise. Rising and swelling, the abrupt sounds of the disturbed night hit me like a ton of bricks. The refugees’ voices pound in my ears. They join together into one thunderous harmony that makes me lightheaded. I reach out a hand and grab the man’s shoulder to steady myself.

“You get used to it after a while,” he says as he takes in my wobbly feet and the trembling hands cupped over my ears. “Keep close now, child.” My thoughts flash back to the night that started it all. Mother’s sweet whisper that urged us to keep close as we raced down our house’s worn steps for the last time. The memory steals the breath from my body, but somehow my feet manage to stay in the present, following after the man at a run as my mind still wallows in the past.

I snap back to attention as we come to an abrupt stop before the kitchen doors. Racing towards the little window, I peer through the glass. Four bodies slump to the floor before the stove. The Marked woman’s arms wrapped around the three young children even in death. The little hands held tightly in her own. Their faces are relaxed, as though they have fallen into a pleasant sleep, but I know the truth. I know about the inhaled smoke, the true reason for the Marked family’s closed eyes.

I know how it ended for this desperate family.

I know why.

And I know who is at fault.

But the one truth that burns brightest in my mind is that a fourth Marked child is missing.
My sister.
Wild violet eyes scan over the kitchen, but I do not see her. For a moment, the hope that maybe she had escaped on her own blooms inside of me.

Until I see the feet, jutting out from a tiny crumpled body that I know lies just against the door. Only her legs and feet are visible from this awkward angle through the window, but I recognize the pink chiffon and silk slippers. I recognize the pale white feet that used to run out of the house barefoot into my garden, Mother’s yells following them out the door, insisting the young girl put on a pair of shoes. I see the mischievous smile that would light the young girl’s face as she ignored Mother’s calls and sat down beside me.

“What kind of flowers are these?” she would ask.

And I would smile, always happy to share my knowledge of gardening with anyone who would listen. Dela was an excellent listener. She would nod and smile and ask questions, until, at last, Mother would stomp out of the house and insist Dela come back inside.

“But Mother,” she would say, “I want to live.”

And my mother would look at her dubiously and say, “What do you mean, dear? You are living.”

Then Dela would giggle and shake her head as though she understood a joke we could not possibly comprehend. “No, Mother. I want to
live.
I want to feel the mud squish between my toes and run through the grass to the beach and feel the cold water against my bare feet.
That
is living. Wearing uncomfortable shoes while being polite to people you do not even like at afternoon tea? Never playing? That is not living, Mother. That is not living.”

And not for the first time, I was taken aback by my sister’s strange maturity.

Mother would scoff, grab Dela by the arm, and usher her to the house as she said, “If I ever hear you talking like that again, you will get a bar of soap in that dirty mouth of yours, do you hear me? We do not speak like that. Young ladies do not speak like that!”

I always idolized my sister for that trait, for her willingness to dance along the line between what is proper and what is not.

I want to live.

Those four words echo in my mind as I stare at the crumpled body of my sister. My sister, who only ever wanted to truly live. My sister, who I had promised I would bring to America safely. A promise I am not about to break now.