Everton Miles Is Stranger Than Me Page 13

  No doubt about it, I’m a dragon, alright. I have spikes down my back, and I’m covered in glittering, deep red scales. I have leathery wings like a small airplane. I even have a long, luxurious tail that disappears off to a tiny point like every description of every dragon that ever was.

  I roll one enormous eye toward Everton’s cage, and he freezes with terror like a rabbit. I suddenly realize that I’m starving … and Everton might be tasty.

  STOP thinking that right NOW!

  There’s no point in trying to speak, so I say sorry to him in my head, then I drag my enormous belly across the deep red sand. I sound like a chain-link fence scraping across a road. Dragon scales are loud. Who knew?

  I clatter across the red beach and dip my scaly head into the red water. I don’t care if it’s safe. I’m a dragon, and I’m dying of thirst. I drink the red, bubbling, sulphurous ooze.

  It’s really not that bad.

  Abilith has done this to us, and I have to find him. I lean back on my talons, lengthen my throat, and shout with my dragon-voice into the red sky: ABILITH THE ROGUE! SHOW YOURSELF!

  My mighty bellowing roar echoes across the red lake and through the trees on the other side. A few screeching birds flee from surrounding trees, and an enormous, slithery fish-thing flops into the water from its hiding spot near the beach.

  But there’s no Rogue Spirit Flyer.

  There’s no one here but me and a terrified boy in a cage. Wherever we may be.

  Thirty-Seven

  I lose all sense of time. I almost lose all sense of myself, too.

  Whenever I wake up, I’m something else. It makes sense to try to stay awake and remain as just one creature, but it’s impossible. Wherever I am, Abilith is in charge of time, space, and reality. He changes my shape at his whim.

  I’m a dragon for a while.

  Then a huge snake.

  Then a horrible crab-like creature that reeks of fish (I’d really like to forget that one). I spend a lot of time in the red, burbling sulphurous stink with just my eyes above the water.

  I’m a kind of bird, combined with a lion. A gryphon, I guess.

  Once I wake up underwater, so for a while I’m a fish of some sort. Gills are quite an amazing invention.

  The next time I wake up, I’m a terrifying, gigantic spider hanging head-down from one of the spindly red trees. Another time I’m a huge girl-sized worm. I can’t lift my head, because technically speaking, I don’t have one.

  All through these various bodies, only one thing has been the same. Everton. He’s locked in his cage, staring at me with terror the entire time, so I try not to go near him. I also try not to think about how delicious he looks. Every single one of the monsters that Abilith turns me into is a meat-eater.

  No matter what Abilith does to me, I refuse to gobble up my friend.

  In another evil master stroke, Abilith has stricken Everton dumb. He can’t speak, so he can’t ask the monster he sees before him any questions. There’s no way for us to communicate with each other. And somewhere along the way, my father’s golden feather disappears, so even that recognizable bit of Gwendolyn is gone.

  I try to stay perfectly still until I sleep, but no one can sleep forever. I always wake up.

  When I wake up, I do a kind of mental body check and see if my feet feel further or closer to my head than they did when I fell asleep. I check to feel for feet at all, since they may be fins, or scales, or slippery skin. It’s a lot like Alice in Wonderland when she eats the mushroom, or is it when she drinks the liquid? In either case, she ends up turning into a monster. Like me.

  I spend a lot of time thinking about things like this.

  What else am I going to do? Food and water magically appear in Everton’s cage, once in the morning and once at night. There’s no food for me, though. Just the red water. And Everton. We’re thoroughly abandoned. However long we’ve been here, there’s no sign of Abilith. So the most we can do is look at each other from a safe distance. Or sleep.

  At first it leaves a person too much time for thinking.

  But after a while, it’s almost enough to drive someone insane. We have no control over our existence. We have no way of knowing if help and rescue is coming. I think about Celestine and how she said her brothers and sisters were chasing Abilith across the galaxy. I know they will keep looking for him, for us, but if he’s not here, how will they find us?

  So I try to think about Celestine, to send out thought waves that I’m Gwendolyn, with Everton, and please come and save us.

  Like I say, I have no idea how long Everton and I are on Abilith’s world. There’s no way to know. Seconds, days, months … an eternity.

  Then one day I’m a vast, grunting pig with enormous tusks and tiny eyes rooting around for something to eat in the oozy, briny, red muck (pigs can barely see, for the record). A fuzzy shape appears down the beach.

  It’s Abilith.

  I want to run at him. My pig heart goes a little berserk, and there’s some wild part of me that wants to tear him through with one of my tusks. I’m also starving, and the thought of his warm blood spilling onto the sand makes me dizzy. I squeal with a terrifying pig rage. Pigs have terrible tempers. Who knew?

  I hate him.

  I’m just about to rush at him with loathing in my heart, when suddenly … I’m Gwendolyn again. I’m a girl running along a beach on normal feet, breathing normally. This makes me so giddy for a second that I stop charging toward Abilith and look at my hands. Just normal hands, no feathers, scales, talons, or hooves. For a moment, relief sweeps over me and I slump to the sand, but someone runs up and grabs me. It’s Everton. Abilith must have released him from his cage.

  Everton clutches me for a second, close to his heart.

  “Gwendolyn! You’re alive! Those monsters were you?” I nod, but there’s no time to chat. Once he realizes I’m me and not an enraged pig, he charges toward our captor who stands with his hands on his hips and smiles. Everton gets close enough to spring, then bounces backward like he hit a wall. Abilith raises his hand at us.

  How are my little human guests?

  “Let us go,” Everton says, getting up. His voice is back, if a little rusty. It’s even and steely, and full of loathing.

  You sound angry.

  “You know the Spirit Flyers will find us and hold a Rogue trial, and you’ll be put to death. I would do it now if I could.” Everton circles Abilith like a cat about to spring. Abilith looks so calm and cool inside his force field, he’s still giving off that too-sweet scent that’s just a little stomach-clutching. Too sweet. And false.

  “Abilith, let Everton go. You don’t even want him, you want me.” I say this as calmly as I can, but there’s no way to stop the deadly rage in my voice.

  “It’s a good thing you’re behind a force field you coward,” Everton hisses. “I’d kill you with my bare hands.”

  Abilith raises an amused eyebrow.

  Now you’re just being rude. I come a long way to check on you and you insult me. And threaten me. Perhaps I should teach you some gratitude, Everton Miles?

  I can see that the Rogue is going to flatten Everton somehow, and the thought of being alone here forever makes me spring forward until I’m between the two of them. I’d like to say I want to protect Everton from harm, but honestly I’m thinking about myself at the moment.

  “Stop. Abilith, leave him alone. Of course we’re angry. You’ve kept us here against our will. You’ve kept us captive and you haven’t told us what you plan to do with us. You’ve turned me into monsters, and I’m starving. What do you want from us? The Spirit Flyers have rescued me once before, what makes you think they won’t do it again?”

  I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I’d say to Abilith if and when he showed up. My main plan has always been to remain calm, as calm as possible, and not to show fear. And also to keep him ta
lking until I can think of something, some way out of this prison.

  You’re not very bright, are you, Gwendolyn? I expected more from you. Do you think I would keep you in the same place? This is a new bubble world of my own creation. They will never find you here, and as you have no doubt noticed, I keep changing your shape. And Everton cannot be detected inside the cage, so even if the Spirits come close, they will not see two children. They will see only you, a monster.

  A fact. Why did he tell me that? Did I detect fear? What is Abilith doing here if not checking that we’re still safe? I’ve had a lot of time on my hands lately to think things through. My thought processes seem faster and sharper than I remember them before. Being alone with your thoughts maybe isn’t all that bad.

  “You’re lying. Because that’s what you are, Abilith. A liar, a deviant, and an outcast. You know that the Spirit Flyers are closing in, and that’s why you’re here. To check on us.”

  A flicker of fear crosses his face, but Abilith recovers quickly. He raises his arms and turns back into his feathered self, casting a giant shadow across the red beach, malevolence and heat hitting Everton and me like a fierce wind. The red sand starts to blow in our faces, the red water starts to bubble and burn. The red sky turns darker, darker, then almost black, while blood-red clouds form a thunderous booming.

  YOU. DO. NOT. CALL. ME. A. LIAR. GWENDOLYN. GOLDEN.

  “But that’s what you are. A sad, lonely, frightened, powerless, and friendless … liar.”

  As I say these words, I edge closer to Everton. I eye the beach. Where can we run? There’s no cover. Abilith grows in height until we have to strain our necks to see his face. His golden eyes look like fire from the beach, and he looms over us, the storm around us raging higher and higher.

  Everton tries to protect me. He puts his arms around me, but the sand whips so hard against us that there’s no protection anywhere. I try not to shriek as we huddle together beneath the enormous and rage-filled demon above us.

  That, Gwendolyn Golden, was a mistake.

  Then Abilith the Rogue splits the world apart, and Everton and I are falling, falling, falling through the blackest clouds, through a storm that never ends. My second-last thought is about demons and pitchforks, and the Monster Meets Her End, 1449.

  My last thought, though, is that unlike the girl in T. Bosch’s drawing, I’m not falling into oblivion alone.

  Thirty-Eight

  You can fall for an eternity.

  After a while you stop hearing the wind in your ears, or the scream of the person you are falling with. Your heartbeat stops rushing, and you become almost peaceful. There’s no talking in the falling world either. It’s not all that pleasant. Your voice gets shoved back into your throat, so you fall silently, like feathers, like ash.

  Falling isn’t all that different from floating.

  Everton and I fall and fall. We lock hands a few times, but it’s too hard to fall like that, so we have to let go. I sleep, I pass through hunger and thirst and anything remotely human and binding me to the world. I have time to think, slow and long thoughts. I think about Martin collecting bottles for Mr. McGillies. I think about high school, and how sad it is that I won’t be able to finish it. I think about C2 and Dr. Adam Parks, and Huckleberry Finn and Jim. At least those two had an ending, I think with envy. Even Alice got to the bottom of the rabbit hole. Maybe my ending will just be to fall forever and ever, which isn’t an ending at all.

  I think about my old dog Cassie and how worried my mother must be. My poor mother. Now two of her loved ones have gone missing because of Night Flying.

  We fall, we float, the wind rushes in our ears, for a long time. We fall for so long that I really have no sense of my body anymore, where it starts, where it ends, what it needs, what pains or delights it.

  Then … I hear a buzzing in my right ear.

  For a while, I ignore the buzz. But the buzz is insistent. Then it gets louder. I’ve heard this buzzing before. I already know what it is. I’m dulled from falling, but I can still panic. There out of the darkness an enormous black cloud hurtles toward us.

  The Shade.

  It roars like a giant black sky monster with all the sadness of the world rolled up into it. The roar gets louder, a tidal wave of pity and despair, the landing place for the lost and unloved of the world.

  The Shade is coming for Everton and me. We flee, or we die.

  “FLY, EVERTON!”

  “WHAT?”

  “FLY! FLY! THE SHADE!”

  Everton looks behind me, and his eyes widen with fear. The last time I met the Shade, I had no idea what it was, and I was new to flying. Not this time. Everton and I scream through space. We’re rockets, we’re comets, we’re stardust. We’re not falling anymore. Now we’re shrieking through the emptiness, fleeing for our lives. There’s a blackness, a void of despair filled with a thousand, thousand crying voices hot on our heels, but I have more strength now, more skill, and more importantly, I have Everton. We fly so fast that starshine zips past us, and I hear the voices in the Shade calling us: YOU CANNOT FLY, GWENDOLYN GOLDEN!

  So I just fly faster.

  Everton and I are streaks of starlight. Where are we going? How long do we flee? We shriek past planets, past asteroids, past whatever that was, a cosmic fury, perhaps … and the Shade is right there, just off our toes, calling and whining and weeping at us to give up and die in its arms.

  We fly for ages, but we can’t do this forever. We’re tiring, we fly, we fly, we fly … then I hear a shriek. I turn and the last thing I see is Everton’s terrified face as he disappears into the darkness chasing us.

  “DON’T SAVE ME! SAVE YOURSELF, GWENDOLYN!” His final words echo in my ears.

  What choice do I have? I don’t even hesitate, because what would be the point? All my life has led up to this moment.

  I turn and fly headfirst into the Shade.

  Thirty-Nine

  The stars are gone. The void is blackness and fear. And it’s cold. There is nothing. No sound. No movement. No colour. I’m surrounded by a solid black nothingness.

  I’m utterly alone. Which is surprising, because the Shade is made of lost souls that a few seconds ago were screaming my name. Now that I’m one of them, they don’t seem to care for me.

  “Everton?” I say, but the Shade is a noise-eater. My words barely leave my lips before they are silenced.

  “EVERTON!” I scream, but my voice is muffled and dies. There’s no screaming in the Shade.

  Maybe I’m dead, so I have no voice? I really don’t feel dead, though, that’s the thing. I lift my hand to my throat and there’s definitely a pulse. If I were dead, would I think to take my pulse? Would I have one?

  I walk a little, but it’s impossible to tell if I’m moving since there’s nothing to walk upon. I whisper “Everton!” a few more times, but my voice goes nowhere.

  There is only more nothing.

  I have two choices. Give up. Or fight.

  I’m not about to give up. I have to find Everton and get us out of here.

  What is the opposite of dead, I wonder? Very, very alive somehow. Who are the most alive people I can imagine?

  My little brother and sister pop into my head. Suddenly, I’m flooded with thoughts of C2. Being born, being little babies that my mom and I carry around in their car seats, one each. They’re toddlers that we chase through the park, then school-age kids that I hold by the hand and take to class. I think so deeply about my very alive brother and sister that it takes me a moment to notice the small change in the air around me.

  There’s a tiny lightening, a greyness in the black. I think harder about C2. I see Christopher wind up and toss a newspaper in a perfect arc onto a neighbour’s front porch. I see Christine’s angry little face, and I hear her shriek, “STINKY!”

  And something moves past me. With a gentle whoosh, a breath of wind bl
ows past my arm.

  Something’s happening. So I think harder about my life. About creating a goblet that doesn’t leak, and how Chas believed I could do it from the start. I think about Martin helping Mr. McGillies and the lovely bottle garden he and Everton created. I think about Jez walking me to Adam’s office. I think about Adam handing me the tissue box.

  “I want to live.” It just pops out of me, and I’ve never known something to be more true.

  More wind moves past me, and the darkness is lighter, greyer. There’s movement and I hear shuffling, murmurs.

  Then I see them.

  A thousand, thousand souls, dead, definitely dead, shuffle toward me, drawn to me, the live thing in their midst. Dead moths to my living flame. Figures shuffle all around me. A face comes close and I draw in my breath. An old man with limp hair and fallen eyes, or what would have been a man if he were alive, shuffles past on silent feet. He murmurs something I can’t make out. Then more faces pass by, all murmuring softly. Old women, old men, the middle-aged, the young. The children are the hardest. I simply cannot look at the pale, empty faces of the little children as they shuffle by.

  The dead move past, unseeing.

  I take a deep breath.

  If thinking about being alive draws the dead to me, maybe I can draw Everton to me as well? So I close my eyes and think harder about us. I think about a pair of dark blue eyes and a boy in workboots and a winter coat knocking at my window. I think about Celestine and her older brother guarding Everton and me in the moonlight winter garden of glass just so we can enjoy its beauty. I think about a boy in a cage who refuses to give in to fear.

  The darkness around me gets lighter, and the wave of trudging souls speeds up. I pay attention to my feet and begin to shuffle into the darkness, sweeping my arms in front of me. The dead veer away like a cloud in a gust of wind. Like a volleyball with me at the net.

  “Everton! Everton!” I whisper again and again, but there’s no answer. The cold makes my fingers and toes tingle. I shuffle forward, a spark of life pushing upstream against a river of death. I’m not giving up. I sweep my arms and whisper for my friend.