Speed of Light (44 page)

The bunny’s going to hit the trees and snag
. It was too heavy, too close to the ground.

The main grouping of drivers lined up in their restart positions.

I saw Eddie Smith start around to the back of the pack.

We had about ten seconds to go and the trees were firmly planted between the track and the bunny.

I
heard nothing over the roaring thunder of the race cars spinning their tires around the track.

The frantic commotion in the infield drew almost everyone’s attention.

“That’s Meridian.” Fara handed me binoculars. “You see?”

“What is she doing?”
Is that it? The bunny?
“Is she trying to get the bunny onto the track?”

“If not, it’s okay. There are trees in the way,” Fara said, seeing me point.

“They’d know that.” I shook my head. “That’s not Nocti; that’s Meridian. Us.”

I closed my eyes and saw my mother’s eyes in my mind. My father’s smile as he said he loved me hours ago.

The wind caressed my face like my mother’s hands.

I did it with lightning.
I’ll ask the trees to bend
.

Bend, please bend
.

I focused on one tree. Its branches all spun and bowed as if in silent applause.

Help us. Bend
.

I opened my eyes and watched as the tops of the tree’s branches moved. It was like watching a butterfly relax its wings. I kept my thoughts focused and waited. Adding another and another until the whole line of them bent.

It’s working. It’s working
.

“Here comes a car!” Fara shouted. “It’s Smith!”

The bunny seemed to stomp everything in its path toward the track. Across the sandpit. The wind aggressively moved the pink inflatable over pine trees.

Did I do the right thing? Does she want the bunny on the track?

Time slowed down. The car accelerated as the pack of drivers seemed to decelerate.

I saw the bunny cross the first fence.

The second.

Onto the track.

The pack went past.
Safe
.

Eddie Smith seemed to speed up, trying to avoid a head-on collision with the bunny foo-foo.

Then the pink cloud of bunny material swallowed the racing car from our view.

I
ran to the lake’s edge. Was I right? Was the answer out in the open all this time? I heard the sirens of emergency vehicles and the crowd of spectators roar. The chatter of so many people talking at the same time created waves of sound, coming toward me from all directions. I found myself vaguely disoriented.

“Tens, where are you?”

“I’m watching Sergio and another kid about his age work on computer tablets. They’re walking toward the black trailer.”

“Like the one he used with the statues?”

“Maybe the same, I don’t know. Move fast, they’re waiting for someone to arrive. We’ve got less than four minutes.”

I glanced around. The black trailer was parked near the edge of the lake. I watched as activity, like an ant hive, grew in ferocity. I ran, forcing myself to take silent, shallow breaths. To my right, bright light exploded like the flash of the Creator’s camera.
Like when we took out Ms. Asura? “Tens, did you see that?”

“Supergirl, hide!”

I turned back and ducked behind a truck. I peeked my head around and saw an entourage of old men coming from the other direction, driving golf carts. I swallowed back a gasp as I focused on the evident leader.
“He looks like Rumi in fifty years.”

“I’m thinking the same thing.”

They stopped near the back of the truck. I was close enough to hear, “You’re right, sir. We don’t know what happened.”

“Find out! Call up to the Pagoda—one of our people should know. He was paid to run into all those cars. Can no one do what they’re asked anymore?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are you waiting for—open the doors!”

“Sir, I can’t call up to the boxes; we jammed the communications.”

“Don’t scream—I’m about to slide out next to you.”

As Tens’s thoughts registered, his hand brushed mine. He leveraged himself out from under the truck.

The old man spit and launched himself at the computer geeks, Sergio in particular. “You said we could stop them from talking, but not us.”

“I d-don’t know why it’s not … um … I’m trying to fix it.” Sergio’s voice shook with fear.

Kinda hard to feel bad for him
.

“Do you see what I see?”
I pointed at the tiny pipe flowing between bricks along the waterline. If I hadn’t been up in the tree, I never would have seen the movement of the water.
“The lake is fed by the artesian well.”

Tens answered me,
“How’d you see that, Supergirl?”

“Luck.”

“You see the bags lined up in that truck over there?”

I followed Tens’s head nod and saw bags with pretty pictures of healthy, flourishing corn and wheat.
“No one’s farming this land.”

“Nah, but done right, fertilizer makes for a big boom.”

Horrifying memories of the train derailment and inferno rushed to the forefront of my thoughts.
“If we get the computers and disable them, will that stop the explosion?”

“Possible. Lots of their electrical equipment is parked too close to the water. Not smart.”

“Why did I ever let you all talk me into using this ridiculous technology?” the old man mumbled. “We don’t have much time. Has my successor arrived? He’s late.”

“Sir, last we heard, he was on his way.”

Two of the Nocti conferred with heads lowered, whispering.

“Tens? They look scared.”

“Yep.”

“But why? I wish I could talk to Auntie.”

“You can, Supergirl. Call your window.”

“What?”

“You’ve done it before.”

“Not on purpose.”

He raised his eyebrows. I didn’t need to read his mind. I focused, closing my eyes, not because I needed to at this point, but because it still felt odd to be in both worlds.

“Y
ou did it!” Fara shouted as we watched the bunny capture Smith’s car in an obliterating embrace. The impact threw bits of car and pink material in every direction. Flames danced up the bunny’s face.
The fuel from the car must have leaked
.

“It’s not over.” I didn’t feel right.
Not yet
.

The tow trucks and fire trucks, ambulances, and a fleet of other vehicles raced toward the crash, spraying white foam on the invisible fuel.

Someone in a jumpsuit ran across the low cement wall
from the pits to the main track and frantically motioned cars to drive to their respective spots. I wondered if this was a team member or a Woodsman. It didn’t matter; the sight of a person on the track was so alien that all but one car pulled into the pit lane. As the drivers turned off their engines, people held their breath, their eyes turned to the screens and the fiery mess in turn three. The silence was oppressive.

Like a flash mob, people peeled out of the infield crowd and headed toward the lake. It looked choreographed and planned.
Nocti?

“Where’s my father?” I asked Fara.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“A
untie?”

I stood at my window and saw the living room of Auntie and Charles’s house in Revelation. I recognized the piles of quilts and crazy knickknacks from all over the world.
This isn’t here anymore; it burned
. But Auntie’s scents of apple blossoms and fresh grass told my heart this was real.

“It’s still here on this side because I remember it. Everything changes, sweet one, but nothing disappears, not completely.”

“Auntie!” I wanted to fling myself through the window
and hug her. Eat her chocolate cake. Talk about everything that had happened to me since Tens and I said goodbye to her and this place.

“We don’t have time for all of that. You know what you must do.”

“I don’t!” I disagreed.

“You do. Just as Juliet can call energy, so can you.” She nodded her head like I was being stubborn. “The world and its elements are yours for the calling. They move through your Light. Perimo wanted to kill you before you took over for our family. When he couldn’t do that, he wanted you to join them, right?”

“Yes.”

“You can call the window yourself to help souls over who have lost their faith in light and love. That’s a gift. I almost didn’t recognize it when your window changed with the soul’s desire. You can visit this between without needing to be in a place where the line is thin.”

“What does that do for me?”

“You’ll see in the years to come. It’ll allow you to aid the dying and the living both. It’s why the Sangre, Josiah, helped you. You’re special, more than a Fenestra. More than a lovely young woman.”

“But—”

“It’s time for me to go to the Light.” She gave me a gentle nod.

“What about your bones? They’re not buried. They’re not marked—”

“A Fenestra who goes through a Fenestra is never lost. Did you forget? I do not need to be buried. We move on when we’re ready; now you’re ready for me to go. It’s not the physical a soul is trapped by; it’s the emotion. You weren’t ready for me to leave you, so I didn’t.”

“Roshana’s wounds?” I asked, confused.

“Guilt, fear, terror. She’ll be healed of them when Juliet frees her. That’s why they say forgiveness is the ultimate gift, why karma is so important to our friends.”

“The Woodsmen?”

“We didn’t have them in Revelation. Too small a town, too quiet a life in my later years maybe. They’ll continue to aid you. Help you find more Fenestra, teach your gifts and your truths.”

I nodded. “But how do I stop the Nocti today?”

I heard a man’s voice call down the hallway.
Charles?

“It’s time for me to go. You’ve learned all I can teach you. And you’ve taught me.”

“What? How?”

“You’ve reminded me of what love that’s just starting out can promise to the world. Cherish Tens, let him treat you like the precious gift you are. Be strong for each other. The battle is only beginning. You can live on the tangible plane and still help souls, without skipping a beat. You are on your way.

“But, Auntie—”

“1-4-3.”

I blinked and found myself staring at the water of the lake. “I love you too.”

“Tens? You know how to swim, right?”

“Sergio is coming right at us.”

“What?”
I lifted my eyes and met Sergio’s fearful, troubled gaze.

I
saw flashes of light moving toward the infield. I wondered if my dad was dispatching Nocti as he came across them or if there was lightning on the ground.
The words
my dad
have such a delicious sound
.

“What now?” Fara asked.

The wind yanked at our clothes and I felt the heat from the roof through the soles of my shoes. I tasted cranberry sauce, Yorkshire pudding, pho, and rocky road fudge on my tongue.
There are victims already today
.

I reached out and took her hand. “We can’t make it to the infield to help Meridian, can we?”

“Not unless you can fly now too?” Fara joked. “But we don’t have to be down there, you know.”

I turned to her. “You’re right.” I’d called the firefly, the lightning. I’d asked the tree to bend. She needed energy and I could call it.

Fara faced across the track, her body positioned toward the straightaway of turns two and three, the far side of the complex. She started chanting. I recognized the words from confronting Ms. Asura.

I tasted the soul dust of generations who visited this place, from corn cakes to catfish to short ribs to peanuts.

I let my eyes unfocus and relax; I saw with my heart, the way Faye saw our light. I saw my mother’s smile, felt her arms, tasted her joys and heard her voice singing to me:

I began humming the tune as I remembered Kirian bringing me rosewater pastels he stole from one of the DG nurses because he knew I hungered for new flavors, of him giving me pretty fossils he collected, of crowning my head with daisy rings and planning a fantastic future with me. I let the pain of his betrayal go. I let the wind carry it away.

I thought of Mistress’s anger and the beatings I took, but stood taller instead of hunching in, because I survived and I was fiercer for it. I opened the fist of those memories, shoving them away into the wind.

I heard Bodie’s giggle as he tried to swing from the branches of my tree into the deep glen of the Wildcat creek last summer. I knew he and Sema both were healing, making s’mores by wood fire and running after fireflies, seeking their secrets. I had no words of gratitude to Joi for taking them in and giving them the family and future I hoped for.

I thought of the last patients at DG, Enid and her sister Glee, whose frailty was only of body and not of soul. I smiled in memory of their bond and squeezed Fara’s hand because I knew that feeling now. I knew what to accept and what to give.

I smiled, seeing Tony run toward me after the tornado, his embrace of all my wounds, his acceptance of the little I was able to give him in return. His anxious interior decorating that gave me a home and a bedroom like the ones I dreamed about in my early days of Dunklebarger, of pink and sparkles and cotton candy. Who stayed with
my mother’s remains because he knew without asking I couldn’t leave her again, not alone, not there. He taught me that faith was tangible and touchable.