The Disappearance of Ember Crow (4 page)

Harm to the Earth was not all that ended what you call the old world. Everything connects, Granddaughter. But not everyone sees those connections
. He twisted away, rolling through the water.
You must learn to understand your power
.

That was one piece of advice I didn’t need. “I know. Don’t you think I know? I could barely manage when I wasn’t having nightmares!”

Sleepwalking is your ability. It is not your power
.

“Then what’s my power?”

He swirled upwards, surrounding me in glowing coils until all I could see was shining blue light. His voice floated down from somewhere above.
Some truths cannot be told. They can only be discovered
.

“What does that mean?”

He didn’t answer, which meant I was supposed to figure it out for myself. I was still puzzling over it when he spoke again.
Your friend is not lost
.

My heart leaped in hope. “Ember? Grandpa, do you know where she is?”

She is where she has chosen to be
.

“Can you help me find her?”

Silence again. “Grandpa,” I called desperately, “if you know anything that would help, please tell me!”

He came swooping downwards until his huge head was level with mine.
Beware the angels
.

And he vanished.

I was alone in the cold depths of the lake, and I couldn’t breathe. Water surged, pushing me upwards to the surface. Within seconds I broke through and sucked in a lungful of air. On my second breath, an invisible force seized hold of my body, propelling me out of the lake and onto the shore.

I collapsed onto my knees at Connor’s feet.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

“Yeah.”

Air swirled, drying out my clothes until they were damp instead of plastered to my skin. I shifted into a more comfortable position on the sandy ground, watching as Connor sat at my side. “Thanks for pulling me out.”

He stared at me for a moment longer, making sure I really was okay. Then he asked, “Did you find out anything about Ember?”

“Kind of. As usual, Grandpa wasn’t making a lot of sense. He did say that Em’s not lost though. She’s …” I paused, trying to remember the exact words. “He said, ‘she is where she has chosen to be.’”

“That probably means she’s all right at least.”

“I hope so.”
And he said that I should beware the angels
… Only I couldn’t tell him that. Because Grandpa might have been talking about Connor.

I’d thought of Connor as an angel ever since Georgie pointed out how his perfect features resembled the old-world statues that flanked the entrance to the Gull City museum. Except why would Grandpa tell me to beware Connor? The only reason I could think of was because I might hurt him. Again. And if I told Connor about Grandpa’s warning, he’d know I was thinking that, and we’d end up in the same fight for the second time today.

“Did he tell you anything else?”

Had Connor sensed I was hiding something? “Grandpa wasn’t really interested in Ember,” I said quickly. “He’s worried about, I don’t know, the world. He was going on about connections. I didn’t understand it.” I rested my arms on my knees and added, “Maybe you could ask him. He said you’d been talking.”

There was an accusatory note in my voice and I winced to hear it. I hadn’t intended to sound that way, but I couldn’t take it back now.

“I could hardly talk to you,” Connor pointed out coolly.

I flushed and stared at the ground.

After a moment, he sighed and said, “Your grandfather and I have been speaking about when I was dead. And then not dead.”

My head jerked up. “You’re okay, aren’t you?”

His lips curved into a smile. “I’m fine. Just different.”

“Different how?” I grabbed hold of his arm. “Are you sick? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m not sick. And I didn’t tell you because you won’t talk about my death.”

“Oh.”

“I understand why, Ashala. It was worse for you than for me.”

“How could it
possibly
have been worse for me?”

He covered my hand with his own. “You were the one left behind. I know what that’s like. I watched you nearly die twice in Detention Centre 3.”

I should have pulled away from him. I couldn’t. It was taking every scrap of willpower I had not to move closer. “Connor. How are you different?”

“I am both more of this world and less than I was before.” He stared over the water. “Sometimes I am so … present in this place that I could tell you the individual shapes of every leaf on every tree. Other times it’s as if I am closer to something else. A greater spirit that underlies what is. But,” he added, his gaze shifting back to me, “you understand that. Don’t you?”

“Yes.” Because that was how it was for me as well. I’d felt it from the moment I arrived, long before I’d met Grandpa and realised I was descended from the ancient being who had brought life to the Firstwood. I’d always known that I was connected to this place. And now so was Connor.
He is of the forest. You are of the forest …
Connor didn’t have an animal, yet, and it occurred to me that maybe his link was with the forest itself. Or with Grandpa.

“Connor? I’m sorry you couldn’t talk to me.”

His hand tightened on mine; his blue eyes stormy and challenging. “Don’t be sorry. Be here.”

I will
.

But I swallowed those reckless words before they could escape.

Connor read the answer in my silence. He let go and rose to his feet. “We should search the lab.”

This was horrible. I hated it and I couldn’t fix it. “Yeah. We should.”

Then a voice roared into my mind,
GGGGRRRRRRRRR!

I jumped. Connor glanced at me questioningly, and I mouthed, “Jaz.”

Closing my eyes, I called out in my head.
Jaz?

No answer.

Jaz?

Oh. You can talk
.

Of course I can talk!

I was trying to speak to you in wolf language because you’d gone wolfy. Did I get it right?

Jaz, that’s … I mean, you can’t just growl. Who told you I was with the wolves?

Silence. He must be far away if it was taking him a while to respond. Jaz still had trouble mindspeaking over long distances, although he was getting much better at it and had a far greater range than any of the other wild children who made up his Tribe. Of course, he’d had more practice. Jaz had been the first kid to be adopted by the saurs, which was how he’d acquired some of the big lizards’ telepathic powers.

Finally, an answer came.
Daniel. Georgie. Connor. I have to keep up with the news now I’m the leader of my own Tribe, Ash
.

In other words he’d been gossiping.
Listen, Ember–

Is missing. I know
. He wasn’t having trouble reaching me anymore; he must have moved into range.
I tried to contact you a little while ago and couldn’t. Georgie said you were talking to your grandfather about Em
.

I was. He wasn’t very helpful though
.

Maybe he doesn’t know anything
.

I think he likes being tricky
.

You shouldn’t talk about him that way!

I forgot, sometimes, that Jaz – who wasn’t impressed by much on this earth – took my grandfather
very
seriously. Grandpa had created the saurs, the same way he’d created the trees and all the other life around here when the Reckoning ended over three hundred years ago. To the lizards, and to the children who made up the Saur Tribe, my grandfather was a creature of legend.
Sorry, Jaz. I’m a bit upset about Em
.

She’s probably gone to have an adventure
.

She’s
missing,
Jaz. She’s not on any adventure
.

You worry too much, Ash
.

And you don’t worry enough!
I sighed.
What are you calling for? Nothing’s wrong, is it?

Not wrong exactly …

Is someone hurt?

No, nothing like that. I need to talk to you in person, is all
.

When Jaz wanted to talk to me face to face it was usually because one of his Tribe members had been experimenting with their ability and there’d been some kind of disaster.
What happened? Did Giovanni drain another lake?

No! And it was totally unfair of you to blame him for taking that water when he was only trying to put out the fire
.

The fire you started. Please tell me nothing is burning, Jaz
.

I promised you we’d be more careful, didn’t I? I need to see you about Leader business. I’ve been waiting to speak to you for a whole
week
, Ash
.

He had? And “Leader business” meant something big, something that concerned both my Tribe and his.
Where do you want to meet?

On the grasslands. At the Five Sisters
.

Five Sisters was the saur name for a set of small hills grouped in a loose circle.
I’m a few hours away
.

I’m almost there. I’ll wait for you
.

I opened my eyes. Connor was watching me. “I have to go see Jaz,” I told him. “Leader business.”

He nodded, and I hauled myself to my feet. It seemed to take a lot of energy. The day felt long already, and I was no closer to finding Ember.

“You should change into dry clothes,” Connor said.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re shivering.”

“I’ll dry out on the way. It’s a long walk.”

“You don’t have to walk. We’ll fly.
After
you change.Aside from anything else, I don’t think you want Jaz to see the way you look right now.”

“What’s wrong with the way I look?”

“Your clothes are filthy and torn, and your hair is matted. You seem … a little mad.”

Really? I stared down at my grubby self.
He has a
point
. And “Leader business” sometimes meant I had to talk Jaz out of a stupid idea. It was better that I seemed as if I was in control. “Fine. I’ll change.”

It didn’t take long to reach the caves, or to put on a pair of Gull-City-blue pants plus a matching shirt and jacket. When I tried to fix my hair, the brush kept getting stuck in snarls. I made a trip to the storeroom where the Tribe kept useful things that we’d picked up on runs into cities and towns, and grabbed a pair of scissors and a mirror. Then I returned to the cavern that Connor and I had chosen as our room. It opened onto the forest, so there was more than enough light for me to see by as I started cutting through the tangles.

When I was done, I examined myself critically. My hair was now a ragged mop, the ends barely touching my shoulders, and there were red highlights that hadn’t been there before. I moved the mirror closer, checking out my eyes. There was definitely a hint of gold around my irises. I was still a little bit wolf, and I found that comforting. The Pack was with me, even though I wasn’t with them.

I stopped on the way out to tell Georgie and Daniel I was going to see Jaz. Well, I told Daniel – Georgie was totally absorbed in tying together bits of vine and string and objects into one of her maps of future possibilities. She didn’t say if she’d found out anything about Ember, and I couldn’t tell, because her maps always looked like giant messes to me. Then I rejoined Connor at the entrance.

The two of us soared upwards, slow until we cleared the trees and then fast over the top of the Firstwood. The wind rushing past made it impossible to talk, which was good because it meant I could focus on staying calm. If I panicked, he’d pick up on it, and I didn’t want him knowing how much it bothered me to do this. I’d loved flying with him once. But the two of us had been hurtling through the sky when we’d been attacked as we left Detention Centre 3. Now whenever we flew, I had occasional flashes of that sickening tumble to the earth, and the sound Connor’s body made as it hit the ground and broke.
If not for my grandpa …

Trying to distract myself, I stared down at the trees beneath me. We were moving too quick to see anything except a blur of green, but the Tribe were down there somewhere. They’d be spread throughout the Firstwood at this time of the day, going about the tasks that were part of making a life in the forest. I imagined Micah and Nell and Charlie and Jin, our Leafers, tending to the food garden. And some of the cooking team would be making the long trek to get honey from the waratah flowers. They got a bit obsessed with storing honey at this time of year, before winter arrived and the flowers became dormant.
Stefan and Benny and Mai, maybe
. Keiko was probably with them, for no better reason than that she never passed up an opportunity to wander through the forest. I had no idea who was on washing duty. I imagined golden-haired Trix and dark-eyed Andreas cleaning the breakfast dishes in a stream. Unless one of the Waterbabies was doing it, in which case they’d bring water to the dishes rather than the other way around.

Thinking of them all was enough to steady me as we left the Firstwood behind to fly above a sea of yellow grasses. On we went, until we finally floated down to land amid the hills that made up the Five Sisters. Jaz wasn’t here. I frowned and spun in a slow circle, searching for him. All I could see were rocky hills and long grass. And the grass wasn’t flattened the way it would be if a saur had trampled over it.
He said he’d meet us!

What if something had gone wrong, something to do with the Leader business he wanted to talk about? What if he was missing as well?

I cast a worried glance at Connor – and gasped as a fireball appeared out of nowhere and hurtled towards his back.

“Connor, watch out!”

He was already moving, flinging himself to the side. The fireball blazed into the space where he’d been, stopped dead, and vanished.

A black-haired, black-eyed boy popped up from out of the grass. “No fair, Connor! Ash warned you.”