THEY’RE HERE! I THINK. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, THE Mogadorians are finally here!
I turn so fast I slip and fall into the snow. I quickly crawl backwards away from the cave’s mouth, my shoes tangled in the blanket. Tears well up in my eyes. My heart races. I manage to right myself and sprint as hard and as fast as my legs will carry me. I don’t even look behind me to see if I’m being followed, sweeping across the same snowy terrain I’d just hiked through, moving so fast I hardly take note of where my feet are falling. The trees below me begin to blur, as do the clouds above. I can feel the blanket hovering behind my shoulders, flapping in the wind like a superhero’s cape. I trip once and slide across the ground, but immediately scramble to my feet and sprint onward, jumping straight over the camel’s back, again crashing when I land. And then I finally dash past the birch trees and make it back to the convent; the hike there took nearly twenty-five minutes; the sprint back took less than five. Like the ability to breathe underwater, the Legacy of superspeed presents itself when I need it to.
I untie the blanket from around my neck, burst through the double doors, and hear the lunchtime clatter coming from the dining room. I hurry up the winding staircase and down the narrow hall, knowing it’s Adelina’s turn to take Sunday off. I enter the open room where the Sisters sleep. Adelina sits regally in one of the two high-back chairs, Bible in her lap. She closes it when she sees me coming.
“Why aren’t you at lunch?” she asks.
“I think they’re here,” I say, out of breath, my hands violently shaking. I bend over and rest them on my knees.
“Who?”
“You know who!” I yell. Then, between my closed teeth: “Mogadorians.”
Her eyes narrow in disbelief. “Where?”
“I went to the cave—”
“What cave?” she interrupts.
“Who cares what cave! There was a set of boot prints outside of it, huge boot prints—”
“Slow down, Marina. Boot prints outside of a cave?”
“Yes,” I say.
She smirks, and I instantly realize coming to her was a mistake. I should have known she wouldn’t believe me, and I can’t help feeling foolish and vulnerable standing in front of her. I straighten. I don’t know what to do with my hands.
“I want to know where my Chest is,” I say, not exactly in a confident voice, but not in a timid one either.
“What Chest?”
“You know exactly what Chest!”
“What makes you think I held on to that old thing?” she asks calmly.
“Because you would be turning against your own people if you didn’t,” I say.
She reopens her Bible and pretends to read. I think of leaving, but then my mind returns to the boot prints in the snow.
“Where is it?” I ask.
She continues to ignore me, so I reach out with my mind and feel the contours of the book, its thin, dusty pages, its rough-hewn cover. I snap the book shut. Adelina jumps.
“Tell me where it is.”
“How dare you! Who do you think you are?”
“I’m a member of the Garde, and the fate of the entire race of Loriens depends on my survival, Adelina! How could you turn your back on them? How could you turn your back on the humans, too? John Smith, who I believe is a member of the Garde, is on the run in the United States; and when he was pulled over recently he was able to move the officer without touching him. Just like I can do. Like I just did with your book. Don’t you see what’s happening, Adelina? If we don’t start helping, not only will Lorien be lost forever, but so will Earth and this stupid orphanage and stupid town!”
“How dare you call this place stupid!” Adelina steps towards me with clenched fists. “This is the only place that let us in, Marina. It’s the only reason we’re still alive. What did the Loric do for us? They pushed us onto a ship for a year, and then they pushed us out onto a cruel planet without any kind of plan or any instructions other than to stay hidden and train. Train for what?”
“To defeat the Mogadorians. To take back Lorien.” I shake my head. “The others are probably out there right now, battling, figuring out how to come together and how to get us home, while we’re stuck in this prison doing nothing.”
“I’m living my life with purpose, helping the human race with my prayers and service. And you should be, too.”
“Your sole purpose on Earth was to help me.”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
“Only in the literal sense of the word, Adelina.”
She sits back in her chair and opens the Bible on her lap. “Lorien is dead and buried, Marina. What does it matter?”
“Lorien isn’t dead; it’s hibernating. You said so yourself. And the point is, we’re not dead.”
She swallows hard. “A death sentence has been handed down to us all,” she says, and her voice slightly cracks. Then, in a much softer tone, she says, “Our lives were doomed from the beginning. We should do good while we’re here, so we may have a good afterlife.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because that’s the reality. We’re the last of a dying race, and soon we’ll be gone, too. And may God help us when that time comes.”
I shake my head at her. I have no interest in talking about God.
“Where is my Chest? In this room?” I walk around the room, casting my gaze along the ceiling’s edges, and then I crouch and peer beneath a few of the beds.
“Even if you had it, you can’t open it without me,” she says. “You know that.”
She’s right. If I’m to believe what she’d told me years before, when I could still trust the things she said, then I can’t open it without her. The futility of it hits me all at once. The boot prints in the snow; John Smith on the run; the sheer and utter claustrophobia of Santa Teresa; and Adelina, my Cêpan, meant to help and assist in developing my Legacies, who has given up on our mission. She doesn’t even know what Legacies of mine have developed. I have the ability to see in the dark, breathe underwater, to run at superspeeds; to move things with my mind; and the means to bring plants back from the brink of death. Anxiety sweeps over me, and at the worst possible moment, Sister Dora enters the room. She props her fists on her hips.
“Why aren’t you in the kitchen?”
I look at her and mirror the same scowl she’s giving me.
“Oh, shut up,” I say, and march out of the room before she responds. I run down the hall, down the stairs, grab my coat again and push through the double doors.
I look wildly around as I move within the shadows lining the side of the road. Though I still feel as though I’m being watched, outside nothing seems amiss. I race down the hill without letting my guard down, and when I reach the café, I enter because it’s the only place open. About half of its twenty tables are occupied, which I’m thankful for; I have the urge to be surrounded by people. I’m about to sit when I notice Héctor, alone in the corner, drinking wine.
“Why aren’t you at El Festín?”
He glances up. He’s clean shaven, and his eyes appear clear and sharp. He seems well rested; he’s even well dressed. I haven’t seen him this way in quite a while. I wonder how long it will last.
“I thought you didn’t drink on Sunday,” I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t. Héctor and Ella are my only friends at the moment, and one has already disappeared today. I don’t want to upset Héctor as well.
“I thought so, too,” he says, not taking offense. “If you ever know a man who tries to drown his sorrows, kindly inform him his sorrows know how to swim. Here, sit down, sit down,” he says, kicking out the chair across from him. I plop down in it. “How are you?”
“I hate this place, Héctor. I hate it with everything inside of me.”
“Bad day?”
“Every day is a bad day here.”
“Eh, this place isn’t so terrible.”
“How are you always so cheerful?”
“Alcohol,” he says with a sideways grin. He pours himself what looks to be his first glass from the bottle. “I wouldn’t recommend it to others. But it seems to work for me.”
“Oh, Héctor,” I say. “I wish you wouldn’t drink so much.”
He chuckles. Takes a sip. “You know what I wish?”
“What?”
“That you didn’t look so sad all the time, Marina of the sea.”
“I didn’t know that I did.”
He shrugs. “It’s something I’ve noticed, but Héctor is a very perceptive man.”
I look to my left and to my right, pausing to focus on each person here. Then I take the napkin off the table and put it on my lap. I put it back on the table. Then I put it back on my lap.
“Tell me what is troubling you,” Héctor says, then takes a larger sip.
“Absolutely everything.”
“Everything? Even me?”
I shake my head. “Okay, not everything.”
His eyebrows rise and then furrow. “Now tell me.”
I have a deep urge to tell him my secret, the reason I’m here and where it is I really come from. I want to tell him about Adelina and what her role was supposed to be, and what it has instead become. I want him to know about the others, out there on the run or fighting, maybe sitting idly like me, collecting dust. If there’s one person I’m certain would be my ally, who would help me in any way he could, then surely it’s Héctor. He is, after all, a defender who’s meant to hold fast and who was born into power and bravery by such simple means as the name he was given.
“You ever feel like you don’t belong here, Héctor?”
“Sure. Some days.”
“Why do you stay, then? You could go anywhere.”
He shrugs. “Several reasons.” He pours more wine into his glass. “For one, there’s no one else to take care of my mother. Plus, this place is my home, and I’m not convinced there’s much better out there. My experiences have taught me that things rarely improve with a simple change of scenery.”
“Maybe so, but I still can’t wait to leave. I only have a little over four months left at the orphanage, you know? And you can’t tell anyone this, but I think that I’m going to leave sooner than that.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Marina. You’re very young to be on your own. Where will you go?”
“America,” I say without hesitation.
“America?”
“There’s somebody there I need to find.”
“If you’re so determined, then why haven’t you already left?”
“Fear,” I say. “Mostly fear.”
“You’re not the first,” he says, taking a moment to empty his entire glass. His eyes have lost their sharpness. “The key to change is letting go of fear.”
“I know.”
The door to the café opens, and a tall man wearing a long coat and carrying an old book enters. He moves past us and takes a table in the far corner. He has dark hair and bushy brows. A thick mustache covers his upper lip. I’ve never seen him before; but when he lifts his head and meets my gaze, there’s something I immediately don’t like about him and I quickly look away. From the corner of my eye, I can see he’s still staring at me. I try ignoring it. I resume talking to Héctor, or rather I babble, hardly making sense, watching him refill his glass with red wine; and I hear next to nothing of what he says in reply.
Five minutes later the man’s still staring, and I’m so bothered by it that the café seems to spin. I lean across the table and whisper to Héctor, “Do you know who the person in the far corner is?”
He shakes his head. “No, but I’ve noticed him watching us, too. He was in here on Friday, sitting in the same seat and reading the same book.”
“There’s something about him I don’t like, but I don’t know what it is.”
“Don’t worry, you have me here,” he says.
“I really should leave,” I say. An odd desperation to get away has come over me. I try not to look at the man, but I do anyway. He’s reading the book now, the cover of which is angled toward me as though he wants me to see it. It’s brittle and worn, a dusty shade of gray.
PITTACUS OF MYTILENE
AND THE
ATHENIAN WAR
Pittacus? Pittacus? The man is watching me again, and though I can’t see the bottom half of his face, his eyes suggest a knowing grin on his lips. All at once I feel as though I’ve been struck by a train. Could this be my first Mogadorian?
I jump up, smacking my knee against the bottom of the table and nearly knocking over Héctor’s wine bottle. My chair falls backwards, crashing to the ground. Everybody in the café turns.
“I gotta go, Héctor,” I say. “I gotta go.”
I stumble through the doorway and make a mad dash for home, running faster than a speeding car, not caring if anyone sees. I’m back at Santa Teresa in seconds. I crash through the double doors and quickly slam them shut. I put my back against them and close my eyes. I try to slow my breathing, the twitching in my arms and legs, my quivering bottom lip. Sweat runs down the side of my face.
I open my eyes. Adelina stands in front of me, and I fall headlong into her arms, not caring about the tension from an hour before. She tentatively hugs me back, probably confused by my sudden display of affection, which I haven’t shown her in years. She pulls away and I open my mouth to tell her what I’ve just seen, but she brings a finger to her lips the same way I did to Ella at Mass. Then she turns and walks away.
That night, after dinner and before prayers, I stand at the bedroom window gazing out as darkness falls, scanning the landscape for anything suspicious.
“Marina? What are you doing?”
I turn around. Ella stands behind me; I hadn’t heard her approach. She moves through these halls like a shadow.
“There you are,” I say, relieved. “Are you okay?”
She nods, but her big brown eyes tell me otherwise. “What are you doing?” she repeats.
“Just looking outside, that’s all.”
“What for? You’re always looking out the windows at bedtime.”
She’s right; every night since she arrived, since I saw the man watching me in the nave window, I’ve been looking outside at bedtime for any signs of him. I’m now certain he’s the same man I saw in the café today.
“I’m looking for bad men, Ella. There are bad men out there sometimes.”
“Really? What do they look like?”
“It’s hard to say,” I reply. “I think they’re very tall, and they’re usually very dark and mean looking. And some might even be muscular, like this,” I add, doing my best bodybuilder pose.
Ella giggles, going to the window. She stands on her tippy toes and pulls herself up to see out.
It’s been several hours since I was in the café, and I’ve managed to calm down a bit.
I place my index finger on the foggy window and trace a figure onto it with two quick squeaks.
“That’s the number three,” Ella says.
“That’s right, kiddo. I bet you can do better than that, huh?”
She smiles, sticks her finger onto the bottom of the window, and soon there is the beginning of a beautiful farmhouse and backyard barn. I watch as my number three is absorbed by Ella’s perfect silo.
Three is the only reason I was allowed to leave that café today, it’s the distance from John Smith to myself. I’m now absolutely convinced that he is Number Four by the way he is being hunted; just as I’m convinced the man at the café was a Mogadorian. This town is so small I rarely see someone I don’t recognize, and his book—Pittacus of Mytilene and the Athenian War—plus his constant stare, are no coincidence. The name “Pittacus” is one I’ve heard since childhood, since long before we made it to Santa Teresa.
My number: Seven. It’s my only refuge now, my greatest defense. As unfair as it might be, I’m separated from death by the three others who all must die before me. So long as the charm holds, which, I assume, is why I was left alone and not attacked right at the café table. But one thing is certain: if he is a Mogadorian, they know where I am and they could take me any time they choose and hold me until they kill Four through Six. I wish I knew what’s keeping them at bay and why I’m allowed to sleep in my bed again tonight. I know the charm ensures that we can’t be killed out of order, but perhaps there’s more to it than that.
“You and I, we’re a team now,” I say. Ella puts the finishing touches on her window drawing, curling her fingernails over the heads of a few cows to give them horns.
“You want to be a team with me?” she asks in a tone of disbelief.
“You bet,” I say, and hold out my pinky. “Let’s pinky-swear on it.”
She smiles widely and hooks her pinky around mine. I shake it once.
“There, that settles it,” I say.
We turn back to the window, and Ella wipes her picture away with the heel of her palm. “I don’t like it here.”
“I don’t like it here either, believe me. But don’t worry, we’ll both be out of here soon enough.”
“You think so? We’ll leave together?”
I turn and look at her. That wasn’t what I had meant at all, but without thinking twice I nod in agreement. I hope it isn’t something I’ll regret promising. “If you’re still here when I leave, then we’ll leave together. Deal?”
“Deal! And I won’t let them hurt you.”
“Who?” I ask.
“The bad men.”
I smile. “I would appreciate that very much.”
She leaves the window and walks to another, again pulling herself up to look out. As always, she moves like a ghost, making no sound. I still have no idea where she might have hidden today, but wherever it was, it was clearly a place no one would think to look. And then an idea occurs to me.
“Hey, Ella? I need your help,” I say. Ella drops from the window and looks at me expectantly. “I’m trying to find something here, but it’s hidden.”
“What is it?” she asks, leaning forward in excitement.
“It’s a chest. It’s wooden and looks very old, like you might expect to see on a pirate ship.”
“And it’s here?”
I nod. “It’s here somewhere, but I have no idea where. Somebody did a very good job of hiding it. You’re just about the most clever girl I know. I bet you can find it in no time.”
She beams, rapidly nodding her head. “I’ll find it for you, Marina! We’re a team!”
“That’s right,” I agree. “We are a team.”