Origin (41 page)

The day is brilliant. The sun pours over the river and the leaves, turning everything into white gold. I finally realize what felt so wrong inside me. My senses are dimmer. I can’t hear as much or smell or see like I used to. My muscles feel slow. For the first time in my life, I feel clumsy. At odds with my body. When I reach for my memory, it’s foggy and vague. Certain moments stand out, still in detail, but so many others are lost to me, as if trapped beneath glazed ice.

And yet…the world is no less bright. The breeze on my skin and in my hair is as soft and cool as it ever was. The birdsong in the trees is as sweet. The smoke-and-papaya smell of Eio is as exhilarating as it was before.

It slowly dawns on me what it is, the sensation that has bridged the gap between how I saw the world yesterday and how I see it today. It compensates for my lost keenness and even makes everything around me a little brighter.

Hope.

I reach into my pocket and pull out my necklace. The stone bird dangles between us as I hold it up, and then I give it to Eio. “Ami told me what this means.”

He looks from the bird to me. “She did?”

“Apparently, as long as I wear it, I belong to you.” I raise one eyebrow at him. “Sneaky of you, Eio.”

I turn around and hold my hair up so he can tie it around my neck. Once he’s done and I let my hair fall, he holds my shoulders and puts his lips right beside my ear.

“I thought I’d lost you when I saw you with that flower,” Eio whispers. “I thought it was all over. I couldn’t live if you died, Pia.”

“Funny. I was thinking the same thing about you recently.”

“There’s absolutely nothing funny about it!”

“I know.” I turn to face him. “I’m sorry.”

His hair hangs into his eyes, and I brush it away. “Eio, I truly
am
sorry. About…Uncle Antonio.” My throat thickens, and I blink away tears. “I’d give anything to go back. To stop him.”

He drops his gaze. “I know. Me too.”

The image of Uncle Antonio collapsing, his veins flooded with the venom of elysia, is all too clear in my memory. I fear it will never fade, as so much of my past has.

“He’ll be given an Ai’oan funeral,” Eio says. “He’d like that.”

I nod, and then the tears come. I press my face into Eio’s shoulder and weep. We sit on the mossy bank, and he holds me while I cry. There are tears in his eyes too. Eyes so like his father’s. I don’t know how long we sit like this. I weep sadness for Uncle Antonio, fury at Mother, relief that Eio is alive, and my own guilt for everything that’s happened.

“Pia,” Eio finally whispers. He presses his lips to my forehead, where they burn like a brand. “It’s not your fault. Look at me. It’s
not
your fault.”

“He’d be alive, Eio, if not for me.”

“It was his choice.” He holds my face in his hands, forcing me to look him in the eye. “Don’t dishonor him by blaming yourself. He gave us the greatest gift he had to give. By feeling guilty, you strip him of that gift and turn him into a victim. And he was not a victim, Pia. He lived a noble life and he made a noble sacrifice. Remember him like that, and you honor his life and his death.”

I nod slowly, letting his words sink into my mind. “Okay,” I whisper. “But…it’ll take some time.”

“I know.” He wraps his arms around me, holding me close. My cheek against his heart, I stare out at the river and swallow the rest of my tears.

“Aren’t you scared?” he asks.

“Why?”

“Because, well, you’re not immortal anymore. At least, as far as we know; just because you can bleed doesn’t mean you’ll grow old and die. Maybe you won’t.”

“How can we know?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

“What?”

He smiles. “You’ll just have to live.”

I stare at him and have to remind myself to breathe.

“I like the sound of that.”
I can die. Maybe even grow old.

I should be terrified. The future, which has always stretched out before me as interminably and reliably as the river beside us, is suddenly uncertain.
I can end. At any moment, I could just…cease. No longer be.

Unless Luri was right, and there is a somewhere else after this, where everyone drinks elysia and lives forever.
We were too
greedy, grasping for immortality too soon. Perhaps if we had only been patient, content to wait, we would all have forever in the end.

“No one should live forever,” I whisper. “Isn’t that how it goes? ‘There must be a balance. No birth without death. No life without tears. What is taken from the world must be given back. No one should live forever, but should give his blood to the river when the time comes so that tomorrow another may live. And so it goes.’”

“And so it goes,” he murmurs.

“Eio?” His eyes are still on mine, clear and blue and eternal, and I drink them in as if I were dying of thirst.

“Yes, Pia?”

I slide my hand up and trace the line of his cheek. “I think I can kiss you now.”

And so it goes.

F
our days I drifted on that river. Four days of hiding in the shadows and waiting in dread for someone to find me and shoot me, with gun or arrow or both. I ate what I picked off trees and drank the rainwater that collected at the bottom of my boat. The second day, I found Paolo’s body half-submerged in a small inlet, tangled in a mess of roots. It was horrible.

Confident at last that the others had gone, I turned back upriver. If I’d waited one more day, I would have missed them for good. They were packing the last of their possessions, preparing to disappear forever into their jungle, and Pia with them.

When she told me what had happened—how she drank the elysia, how it stole her immortality from her—I was astonished and saddened, though I tried not to show it. Such a wonder, that immortal girl I met in the jungle. She seemed elated with her mortality and almost charmed by the thought of death, albeit a distant and unproven possibility. For all I know, she might still be a vision of a seventeen-year-old goddess, haunting
the depths of the Amazon. But somehow, I just don’t think so. I think she was right, and Immortal Pia did die that day, along with Paolo Alvez. Creator and creation went down together. It seems almost poetic. When I asked Pia what was left then, she only laughed and said it was Wild Pia.

I stayed with them for three months. I wasn’t ready to face the world yet. My time with the Ai’oans healed me in many ways, taught me much about life and death and the struggle in between. But the jungle wasn’t for me.

I tried to take her with me. I even told her she could bring that boy, as long he washed off the face paint and put on a shirt. But she wouldn’t come. I told her she wasn’t really one of them, but that didn’t sway her either. She only said she was more Ai’oan than she’d ever thought possible, something about the jungle being in her blood, after all.

She did promise that one day they’d visit and that she dreamed of seeing the places on the map I gave her for her birthday. But even as she said it, I knew it would never happen. I saw in her eyes the fear Paolo drilled into her of the outside world. And perhaps, in this one regard, he was right. The world isn’t ready for Pia, and though she is no longer immortal, a part of her will always be tied to elysia. I suspect that the jungle became world enough for her.

I managed to salvage a few blank notebooks from the wreckage of Little Cam before the Ai’oans burned or buried what they could and left the rest to the hunger of the jungle. In them I recorded everything I’d seen and the things Pia told me around the fires late at night. I went to the jungle to find a fortune, but I returned with a story. Even if someone read this account and decided to investigate, they’d find nothing but the bones
of Little Cam and certainly no trace of elysia. Even so, I think I’ll burn the notebooks eventually. Maybe on the day I’m also ready to forgive myself. That day feels close, but not quite yet here.

Every day I think of them. Evie. Antonio. So many Ai’oans. Even Pia, in a way. They all haunt my mind, waiting for me in the shadows of sleep. Reminding me how fragile this life is and how easily it can be lost. Compelling me to live and to live well, while I still can.

Because sooner or later, we must all face eternity.

THE END

T
hank you to my early readers, whose insights are woven into the words of
Origin
: Jeanne Lewis, for your unfailing encouragement. Amanda Hilburn, for teaching me about firearms. Maria McNeil, for challenging me to dig deeper and examine the heart of the story. Courtney Webb, for being my emergency late-night reader and awesome little sister.

Thank you to Dr. Don Williams, for holding those Inklings II meetings and teaching us all that sometimes a circle and a line can be the same thing. Caela McCarthy, for not being too hard on me for making Eio shirtless, for all the trips to bookstores and deep discussions on the merits of YA fiction, and for your friendship. Anna Banks, for helping me make one of the best decisions of my literary career and for being such an encouraging coach through these months. Beth Revis, for taking me on as your Padawan and being generally brilly in all things.

Thank you to Marisa Russell and everyone in the marketing and publicity departments at Penguin; you guys are fantastically talented and made me feel like a rockstar. Greg Stadnyk, for blowing us all away with your artwork and for making
Origin
so delicious to look at. Ben Schrank and everyone at Razorbill, who believed in
Origin
so deeply from the beginning and for giving Pia a home in readers’ hands all over the world. Laura Arnold, my amazing and inimitable editor, for pure, undiluted magnificence. You didn’t just make
Origin
into a real book; you’ve helped me to become a real writer. And Lucy Carson, agent/superheroine, for gambling on me way back when, for making me change that ending, and for being the most savvy and tenacious champion
Origin
could have. You took a rough first draft and helped me find the true story beneath it. Thank you.

And ever and always, my family: Papa, for your undying enthusiasm and staunch support, whether that means driving ten hours to see my soccer match or telling complete strangers every detail about
Origin
. Grandma, for driving all those hours on that Southwestern road trip so that I could sit in the back writing this book. Daddy, for showing me how to love reading practically before I could walk. Mama, for ordering me so many years ago to stop thinking about writing—and to sit down and do it instead; it all started with you. Katharine and A.J. and LeslieAnn and Madelaine, for shining with so much life and love. And my Benjamin, for believing, for teaching, for cooking, and for letting me be myself and loving me anyway. I love you forever. And most of all, my God, for inspiring me and blessing me far beyond my worth.