Chapter Twenty-Eight
Shona’s father is a Riser, and he’s on whichever side is after us. Maybe I made a mistake. It could be someone who resembles her father.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing does. I just want to go home.
I want to know if Lugh is okay.
Traffic speeds by on the narrow roads as if there isn’t a level of difficulty in braking and swerving around parked cars. My fingers tingle. I’m floating, the numbness making me feel weightless. I’m in another world. My brain is foggy.
As my mind clears while I hurry along the sidewalk with Marek, the images of that frog and that doorman coming back to life keep flashing in my thoughts.
I did that. Brought them both back.
Riser. Riser. Riser. The ghosts of Isabella’s tortured victims knew what I am.
Death Riser. Just like my parents.
I stop and glance back. Lugh is my only connection to them. To parents I never knew. He saved me. Took me to Dad when I was a baby. What am I doing? Those beasts can rip immortals to pieces. Could kill him.
“Hey,” Marek calls. “Why are you stopping?”
The wind flips my hair into my face when I snap my head in his direction. “We can’t leave. They’ll kill him.”
“What can we do?” Marek is practically stomping over to me. “He’s a god, and we’re not. We’re mortals. He can take care of himself. Besides, he told us to run.”
He holds his hand out to me. “Come on.”
Another glance in the direction of the library. I can barely see the roof from where we stand. “How did we get so far?”
“We’ve been walking a while.” His hand slips into mine, and he gives it a light squeeze. “Remember, he’s a trickster god. He was changing into an old man when we left. He’ll be all right.”
“I hope so.” I let him lead me down the narrow sidewalk, if you could call it that. It’s a slight ledge at best.
“Look, there’s a bus,” he says with saccharine optimism.
We take off, my Vans hitting the cobblestone street hard, hurting the soles of my feet. Marek bounds up the steps. “Scusate,” he apologizes to the round Italian man behind the wheel. He doesn’t move, making sure I get in before the door shuts.
“Grazie,” I say, my eyes locking with the driver’s. It’s like someone hit him with a stun gun.
He smiles. “American?”
I don’t answer him.
“Is okay,” the man says. “Bus comes every twenty-two minutes.”
After paying the fare, we find two vacant seats, but they’re not together. I sit across the aisle from a Chinese man in a wheelchair with shocking white hair and beard. He’s braiding thin red strings into a bracelet, a canvas knapsack on his lap. Marek gets the only other seat on the bus, toward the back. I smile at the man, then look out the window.
“Having a good time in Rome?” the man asks. His voice is smooth, a sound that if you listen to it too long, it could lull you to sleep.
I pull my stare away from the window and put it on him. “Yes, it’s such a beautiful city.”
“It’s a city for young lovers.” He smiles, his gaze forward, and I realize he’s looking at Marek.
“Oh, we’re not…” I’m staring at Marek. He runs his hand through his wavy hair. His face is weighed down with the strain of the morning. Not focusing on one thing, he’s searching for any threats. Making sure no person or thing is following us. There are shadows under his eyes. He must be as tired as I am.
I want to rub his shoulders, give him some relief. He keeps looking better and better to me. We’ve come so far. If we make it out of this alive, I don’t think I could let him go. With every kind thing he does, he takes a little bit of my heart.
“It is a great city for young lovers,” I say instead of finishing the other sentence I’d started. “What are you making?”
“Reminders,” he says, tying a knot at the end of one of the braided strings. “An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet. Do you believe in fate?”
“I’m not sure.”
His smile reaches to his eyes, deepening the wrinkles around them. “Those destined to meet will, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. Just as you and he. It was meant to be. Do you see the red thread between you?”
I try to keep all emotion off my face, not wanting it to show that I think the old man is a little bit out of touch with reality. But who am I to say. I lost my grasp on reality a few days ago. My gaze travels down the aisle of the bus to Marek.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Have faith,” he says. “Look again.”
Having faith isn’t my strongest trait. There was a time when I was happy. A time when Dad was around and our family was whole. All my scars are hidden, but they’re still there marring my heart. Losing parents will do that to a person. Faith is something for happy people. Not for someone jaded like me.
The bus slows, preparing to stop.
“Even the most broken of people have faith,” the man says as if he heard my thoughts. “If a man without the use of his legs can have it, so can you. Look again, Analiese.”
I’m starting to get used to people knowing my name. “Who are you?”
“My name is Yuè Lâo.”
The Chinese god of marriage and love.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say.
A smile so warm it heats my face spreads across his lips. “The proof is right there.”
I look at where he’s pointing. There’s a red line, so faint that if you didn’t know to search for it, you wouldn’t see it. The thread is wrapped around my wrist and stretches out to Marek’s.
I shift in my seat to face the man, and he’s gone. His wheelchair is almost down the ramp exiting the bus. A man in his twenties rushes over to aid him.
“I am not in need of assistance.” Yuè Lâo smiles. “Just because I’m in this chair doesn’t mean I’m helpless.” He comes off the ramp without help.
I lower my head and smile. A peace settles inside me that I know is the god’s doing. My hand brushes against something on my lap. It’s a red thread bracelet.
“I have faith in you, Analiese,” his voice whispers in the air to me.
I glance out the window, and he’s pushing his chair down the cobblestones. Pinching my fingers together, I slip the red thread bracelet over my hand and around my wrist. It reminds me of something my cousin wore when I visited my family in Israel a few years back. Many cultures have their versions of the tradition.
The red thread going from me to Marek isn’t visible anymore, but something is breathing new life into me.
…
The line into the Colosseum moves at a relatively fast pace around the spiral structure. The grand facade commands the sky, a noble ruin with the whispers of thousands of untold stories. Of people put to death for merely living in the wrong place or having the wrong belief. Of the roars and whimpers of animals silenced for sport. It’s a monument to a brutal past.
I rise on the tips of my toes, trying to see over everyone’s heads. Where is he?
The towering columns remind me of how small we are. How short our time is on this earth. The creators of this place, the spectators who cheered in the stands, this is their legacy. This is what they chose to leave behind for generations to remember them by.
Maybe he didn’t make it out of the library. I try not to think about what those beasts could do to Lugh. And trying not to think about it makes me think about it.
“He’s not coming,” Marek says. “It’s been over an hour. He’d be here already.”
He’s probably right, which crushes me. I haven’t known Lugh that long, but he was my parents’ friend. They trusted him. He helped them.
“I hope he’s okay.”
“Stop worrying,” Marek says. “You said yourself he’s a trickster. He probably just didn’t want to lead them to us.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
The line moves through the gate, and we enter the arena.
I might not like what the Colosseum represents, but the architecture astonishes me. We follow the other tourists along the designated pathway through the ruins. I pause, imagining the arena filled with over fifty-thousand spectators. A losing gladiator waits for his fate, the crowd pointing their thumbs down, his opponent ending the gladiator’s life with a blade across the throat. It almost feels real to me.
I shake the thought away. “So, any ideas of what your grandfather would’ve left here for you?”
“I’ve been here before,” he says. “When I was twelve. My brother was eight. This is the same walkway. My brother and I kept running around, pretend-fighting, and our mom kept scolding us. Gramps would tell her to leave us alone. That we were burning off energy.”
“Fitting for this place.” I pause and peek through one of the window-like arches at the many other ruins surrounding the Colosseum. It’s a fading memory of a time when people worshipped gods and goddesses.
I spot a woman with dark hair the length and style of Inanna’s nearby the Arch of Constantine.