Endure (22 page)

The air whooshes out of me. All this time, that's what I'd thought had happened, but knowing it still shocks me. My biological father frightened my dad to death. The horribleness of it makes my stomach clench.

My dad's hand moves across the hair on the top of my head. “I am so proud of you. We never told you so much about who you are, our history, and you—you are so strong and beautiful, Zara. You're so strong.”

I shake my head and laugh the kind of laugh that means you think someone is being silly. “I wish, Daddy. I wish I was. I wish you were still with us. I'm so glad to see you, but we miss you. We miss you so much.”

“I miss you and your mom and Betty, too, honey. So much.”

“Daddy? Why the books? Why did you hide pixie notes in books? Why not just write them straight out in a notebook or something?”

He smiles. “I thought people might find them and think I was crazy. If I wrote them in margins of books, people might think I was writing my own. I was young, Zara.”

“I wish you'd just told me. You and mom.”

“We wanted you to be safe. We wanted you to grow up free of fear.”

People around us murmur. Have they all been listening? I forgot they were here.

“Zara, we don't have much time.”

“What do you mean?” Throughout all of this, I've pretty much refused to blink because I don't want to miss one second of seeing him. Trying to memorize his face all over again, I watch his lips move as he talks.

“When we are done with what we are meant to do here, we move on to another place.”

The room goes silent. There are no murmurs.

I speak into that silence. “What other place?”

“Nobody knows.”

I whirl around to look at Hel because she must certainly know.

“What place?” I demand.

My dad's finger touches the point of my chin and gently turns me back to face him. “Not even she knows. But it's good. We know it's good and I can feel it happening. It's happening now, honey.”

“How can she not know? How can you know it's good? Daddy, explain this to me.”

Even as I speak, he seems to change, to glow. He unclicks the big silver diver's watch from his wrist. It has a blue face and lots of dials. I used to love it when I was little. We buried him in it.

“Take this,” he says, and slips it over my hand, onto my wrist. It's far too big for me and hangs off my wrist bones. “Know that I love you, that I always will love you no matter what choices you make, what paths you have chosen, and what paths you choose in the future. I will always, always love you, baby girl.”

I can feel my face squish into itself, the way it does when I try not to cry but the tears just want so badly to come. My dad smiles a sad, sweet, tender smile.

“You can't take something from Hel without giving something up in return,” he says. “I'm so sorry, Zara. It has to be something that matters to you.”

“But I just have my clothes and they are just
clothes
. . .” Then I realize I'm wearing Nick's anklet still. It's the only thing on me that matters even the tiniest bit. It's the one last thing I have from when we were happy together, and even though it's dorky I don't want to be without it, but still I squat and reach into my boot to unclasp it. A dolphin and a star dangle from it. The color changed again. Every time I change species, it changes. I have no idea why. In that short amount of time that I've been fiddling with it, my father has changed too. He's turned completely gold. He's shimmering with it, shimmering and beautiful. I hand him the thin chain. “Here.”

He takes it and tucks it into his shirt. “Thank you. Tell your mother I love her, and know, Zara—please, please know—how much I love you.”

“I love you too,” I whisper.

He taps the watch face on my wrist with his big, solid finger. “I am always with you. Always.”

He steps back.

“Daddy!”

And then he smiles, one final, slow smile that reaches his eyes. He tilts his head and mouths the words “I love you” just before the light coming out of him becomes too intense to witness. I close my eyes for the briefest of seconds and feel it—the rush of him leaving, the good soul of him hanging in the air like the sweet smell of magnolias in Charleston.

“He's gone.” I gasp as people around me start to applaud.

As I struggle to take it all in, Hel's arm wraps around my shoulder. “This is a halfway place, a step toward somewhere else.”

“What somewhere else?”

“Your father spoke the truth. I do not know.” She squeezes a little and then drops her arm. “However, I am positive that it is somewhere good for him. Do you not feel it?”

The gold of the air still shimmers around me. “I feel it.”

“It is not always so,” her voice warns and then lightens again. “Your companions await. You must go.”

My fingers reach out to touch the watch that dangles on my left wrist. It is there, solid, functional, and completely my dad. Still, it feels right and I am so glad it is there.

“You let me see him. You said it was an either-or situation. Either I see him or you tell me how to stop the end, but I got both.”

She doesn't answer my question, but instead leads me back toward the marble stairs. “Come with me.”

I follow, wiping at the tears streaming down my face. People stare at us as we walk up, make way for us as they come down the stairs. The balcony is empty when we get there. She leads me to an overlook. The courtyard below us has filled with people—all sorts of people of different races and genders and ages—and there are animals that I assume are weres, and there are tiny Tinker Bell–type people, flitting about the water fountains and resting on full-sized people's shoulders. There are a couple of people who might actually be giants, and there are pixies, blue in skin. Then, as I'm staring the room doubles and then triples in size and instead of looking down at hundreds of people, I'm looking down at thousands.

“What?” I start to say, but Hel speaks over me.

“Earn your army.”

“What?” I say again. “What do you mean?”

“They have nothing to lose, Zara. Make them fight for you when the time comes.”

“But I'm not even a pixie anymore.”

I swear she rolls her eyes the same way Betty does when she's completely exasperated with me.

“It does not matter,” she says, looking down at the thousands below us. “It is your character that makes the difference, not your species. Now begin.”

Begin? How do I begin? They stare up at me, thousands of eyes and heads, thousands of souls, waiting to listen to me, Zara White, former pixie queen, current human being. I remember failing so miserably when I had to first talk to our pixies. I'd been so immature. And now? Now the fate of our world might depend on this speech. I breathe in as deeply as I can and grab the railing. The marble is cold beneath my fingers. I want to make my dad proud of me. Actually, I want to make me proud of me.

“My name is Zara White,” I begin, “and I am asking for your help.”

I don't imagine everyone in their underwear or anything because some of them are pretty gross already and they need all the clothes they have to cover up wounds and sores and burns. It's never good to vomit in the middle of a speech. Plus, it just seems kind of pervy to imagine everyone half naked. Instead, I take a couple of big breaths to calm myself down.

“My name is Zara White,” I repeat. “I stand before you to swear that this will not be the end of the world, but a beginning. I stand before you to beg for your help.”

There's a murmur among them. Hoping it's not a disgruntled murmur, I continue. “Centuries ago there was a description of a great apocalypse that would befall the world, the Ragnarok. All but two humans would die. It is my responsibility to stop that fate, and I need your help.”

There is another murmur. I scan the crowd for Astley, Nick, Issie, and Amelie, but I don't see them there, can't find them among all the heads.

“I don't know what century you all are from, but the world is still full of goodness and badness. It is still full of love and pain. And each person in it holds the power to determine his or her own fate. Each person has a chance to live his or her own life to its absolute fullest, to choose to live kindly or not, to love or not . . .”

I spot Astley in the crowd. He nods at me and smiles. My heart warms from seeing him moving, looking alive, looking at me.

“But the side of evil, of unchecked needs and lust for power, is strong now, too strong, and it wants the world to end—the world that you all probably loved so much, the world that I love so much despite all its problems.”

Nick stands by Astley, just behind him and to his right. Despite the massive crowd around them, I can see his face. It looks like he's holding his breath. My ankle feels empty without the chain there, but it will be okay. We all have to feel empty sometimes.

“I'm just a human, but I know that I can't dare to forget, today or any day, that I have a responsibility to my friends, to my town, to my world. And I know that you were once of that world, too, and I know that you have left that world behind and that this place—this place—”

I remember my dad glowing so beautifully, so full of love.

“—is just one step in your journey, in all of our journeys, toward something bigger and more beautiful and more glorious. But that doesn't mean that we don't have a responsibility to others, to let them have the lives they need to have, to let them have lives free of terror, to let them have lives where they can be the best people they can be.

“I beg of you to help me when the time comes, to choose to fight for those you've left behind, for the world you've left behind. It is not perfect, but it is your legacy. It is not perfect, but it is a testament to years of human courage, of hardship, of joy. No, it's not perfect, but none of us are. Our lack of perfection doesn't mean that we should not be brave, love, and do perfect deeds. I know that when I think about the people I love that I dare not forget where it is I have come from. Do you? You leave behind you the heirs of humanity, and it is our duty—our absolute duty—to keep them safe. You have one more chance to do one more selfless thing. You have one more chance to save our world. Please join me when the time comes. Please show the world that evil does not always triumph, that good can overcome. Thank you.”

They are silent. Did I blow it? I think maybe I've blown it.

One small baby girl, maybe about five years old, yells, “Hooray!” and then there is applause—huge, thunderous applause. The balcony echoes with it and it sounds like horses stampeding to the rescue, like hope, really. Yes, like hope. My heart beats again. My eyes close.

“You have your army,” Hel whispers in my ear, and somehow I can hear it despite the noise of the dead clapping. The smell of vanilla and death is overwhelming again.

I argue. “But I'm not magic. You said that magic stops—”

“Sound the alarm. They will come.” Hel smiles at me. “Trust in yourself, Zara White. Have faith.”

And then she claps a rotting hand on my shoulder and says, “I hope when your time comes to pass, that you will stop here and not Valhalla.”

“Me too,” I say. “Me too.”

County Sheriff 911 Transcript

Boy: I can hear my name. Someone’s in the woods by the road saying my name.

911 Operator: What’s your location?

Boy: Can you hear that?

911 Operator: Sweetie, I need to know where you are so we can send help.

Boy: The Shore Road by Water Street. I’m walking. Oh . . . I can hear . . .

911 Operator: Hello? Hello?

It’s hard to find my friends again because of the milling crowd below and then I spot people moving aside, as if others are trying to get through to me. Nick is pushing his way through the dead, the others trailing behind him.

Issie’s thin voice yells, “Sorry! So sorry! Excuse us.”

It makes me smile. And then Astley must give up, because he soars up through the crowd and lands on the balcony next to Hel and me. He manages to land on one foot and wobbles a bit, but doesn’t fall down.

Once he’s steady, he looks to Hel and they exchange greetings that are formal and boring and then he sputters out, “Freezing us was decidedly uncalled for!”

She raises an eyebrow. “I needed to talk to Zara alone. Do you dare confront me in my own realm, Star King, and tell me my procedure is unwarranted?”

“Yes. No. It’s just—”

“You can see that your queen is unharmed and you have been unfrozen. Do not make me regret my hospitality,” she says with a warning tone, and then she retreats a few steps back and calls to a man to come attend her. The moment she is gone, Astley swoops me into a hug and lifts me up, spinning me around.

“You were brilliant!” he gushes. “So brilliant and queenly.”