The Moon Dwellers (12 page)

“I don’t know,”
Tawni
says
.
“I just know there was something.
Not love necessarily.
Just interest.”

“What difference would it make?
He’s a creep anyway.
Just like his father.
He comes down here and parades himself around, flaunts his power, allows his ugly mug to be put on every sun dweller magazine
.”
My nostrils flare
suddenly and I f
eel
my
face go red, heating up.
It i
s anger.
Direc
ted at Cole for the things he’
s saying about Tristan, particularly
about him being ugly.
They have
n’t said
any
name
s
but it is obvious who they a
re talking about.
Me and Tristan.

“He’s not a creep.
I know what I heard my parents say,” Tawni says.

“Yeah, right.”

“How long have we known each other, Cole?”
Tawni
asks
.

There is a pause, like Cole i
s trying to remember, or count the
days or something.
Then he says
, “
Five
years.”
Five
years?
I am
shocked.
I expected him to say three months, or
maybe six at the most.
They’ve
known each other
since
before the Pen.
They must’ve met in school
.
That changes
everything.
The
deepness of their relationship;
what level of fr
iendship I can
have with them;
what I can
share with either of them.

“Yeah,
five
years, Cole.
And how many times have I lied to you?”

“Never.
At least not
that I know of.”
Cole sniggers
to himself.

“Never—that’s right.”

“You might have just misheard, or misunderstood something.”

Tawni
’s voice is rising.
She is getting
emotional.
“No.
No
,
I didn’t.
I heard both my mother and my father say it before I ran away.
I wouldn’t have le
ft if I wasn’t certain.
They a
re spies for the President
, Cole
.
They kno
w things.
All I really needed to hear was that they were working for the sun dwellers, and then I was ready to leave
, run away forever
.
But they kept talking.
They said how Tristan i
s different
from
the President, different
from
his own brother.
How they didn’t think he would carry on the traditions of his father if he became President.
They were worried about that.
I always wondered why we had so much more money than everyone else.
I mean, I went t
o the same school as you
.
You couldn’t afford to eat, and I was eating with a silver spoon.
Kickbacks for their dirty work.
They were afraid the money would stop if Tristan took
over.
That’s how I know, Cole.
T
hat’s how I know!”

She
almost shrieks the last bit and I hear
Cole shush her, try
ing
to get her to c
alm down.
“Okay, okay,” he says
.
“I bel
ieve you.
Okay, maybe Tristan’
s al
l
right, but I still don’t get what that has to do with us, with Adele.
Just because he looked at her funny…”

“Not
funny
, Cole.
I
ntently, seriously, the way you look at someone that you might try to track down at some point in the future.
Particularly if you have the resources, which he obviously does.”

“What?” I hear myself say out
loud.
I mean
for it to be a thought, confined to the safety of my ow
n mind, but my wayward lips
betray
me.

Silence.
I slap
a hand over my mouth,
ho
ld my breath,
listen to
my heartbeat crunch in my chest like a miner’s axe on a slab of ore.

The door
i
s
flung open and Cole’s face i
s silhouetted against the lights in the corridor.
Some of the light sneaks
past his large frame and spills
across my face.
One of his eyes is swollen shut, his cheek beneath marbled with black, blue
,
and greenish yellow.

“A
re you spy
ing on us?” he says
accusingly.

“No.
I mean, yes.
I mean, I just saw you talking and wanted to hear what you were saying.”
Insert foot in mouth.
Translation:
Yes, I am
spying.
Bye
-
bye
,
new friends.
Hello
,
loneliness.

Cole looks like he wants
to hit me.

“Why didn’t you jus
t ask us then?”
The question co
me
s
from
Tawni
, who wedges
her way between us.

“As
k you?”
Again, the words pop from my mouth before I have
a ch
ance to stop them.
They sound
stupid.
Like,
Duh, asking would’ve been far easier
than sneaking into a broom closet and listening through a door
.
I try
to recover.
“I, uh, I just thought you wouldn’t, uh, tell me th
ese kinds of things,” I finish
lamely.

“What kinds of
things
exactly?” Cole says
.

Tawni
pushes
Cole back a bit with one arm.
I’m surprised she can
move him at all.
Her arm looks
like a toothpick compared to his ar
mor-like chest.
I guess she has
hidden strength.

To my surprise, she says
, “Cole, we need some girl time.
We’ll catch up with you later.”
Despite the evennes
s of her tone, her words sound
like a command, and a powerful one at that.

Cole stares
at me
with one eye for a second, and then melts
into the stream of bodies, disappearing in the mob.

When
Tawni
turns back to me, I say
, “Thanks.”

Tawni
off
ers me a hand and I take
it.
Unlike the previ
ous day in the yard, her hand i
s warm.
Without another word, she pulls
me out of the closet and le
a
d
s
me against the flow o
f human traffic.
Where
I’d normally bump and knock
into a dozen kids if I tried
such a maneuver,
Tawni
is
graceful, able to find the pat
h of least resistance.
I stay in her wake, protected.
I have
n’t felt protected in a long time.

Soon the crowds thin
and we are walking alone.
I am
surprised to find myself still
holding her hand.
I feel
like I s
hould shake it free, but it feels
so good—wonde
rful actually.
I guess I need
it.
Human contact, that is.
Having been deprived of hum
an touch for so long, my body is craving
it.
Last night’s dream had certainly indicated that.

We reach
a cell door
.
Not mine but the one next to it.
Tawni
’s.
Funny that I never kn
ew her and the whole time she was
sleeping right next to me, just a rock wall between
us.
Not that it matters
.
I’
ve
lost Cole’s brie
f friendship and I am about to lose Tawni’s
sli
ghtly longer friendship.
It’
s
time for my last
-
ditch effort to save it.

“Look,
Tawni
, I’m really sor—”

“It’s okay,”
Tawni
interrupts
.

Huh?
This time I manage
to keep my stupid remark inside my head, but I
’m sure my confusion i
s written a
ll over my face anyway.
I can
feel one cheek
lifted
weir
dly, the opposite eyebrow raised
, and my mouth contorted beneath my flaring nostrils.
If
Tawni
and I a
re the lead character
s in a magical fairy tale, it i
s obvious who
is
the
ugly stepsister
.
Not Tawni.

I realize
Tawni
’s back i
s to me
; she i
s facing the bed.
Thank G
od
, I think
.
Using my fingers
,
I manage
to mold
my face back into what I think i
s close to its normal shape.
Just in time, too.
She turns
around.

Her eyes blaze
with a sort of fire.
Not real
fire, but determination.
It is unexpected.
She just looks
so thin,
so frail.
Although she towers above me, I feel
so much bigg
er than her.
At least normally I do.
But now she looks strong, like maybe her bones a
re made of a tougher ma
terial than I thought.
I wait for her to speak.

“Your father is alive,
”
she says.

Chapter Four

Tristan

I
like
calling the Tri-Realms the
underworld
.
For to me, that’s what it i
s.
At times it feels more hellish than if I were
at barbecue with a bunch of demons and zombies, roasting t
he undead on a fiery spit.

I long
to feel the wind tousle my hair, the sunlight on my face.
Not the fa
ke sun my father’s engineers have
create
d, but the real thing.
There i
s nothing like it.

The underworld i
s so
different.
Dark, gloomy—it feels dead to me.
Like it i
sn’t natural that any form of life other than
the
spiders and snakes and bats should occupy it.
Certainly not humans.

And if we live
in t
he underworld, then my father i
s the Devil himself, shrewd, evil, self-serving.
They say that blood creates
an unbreakable bond.
If there
is
a bond between my father and me—created by blood, DNA,
or something else entirely—it i
s as brittle as
talc
, cracking and crumbling while I was still in my mother’s womb.

I see
her face again
—the moon dweller with the shimmering black hair—
so beautiful,
so strong,
so sad, like s
he i
s crying invisible
tears.
Reaching out, I try
to touch her, to com
fort her.
But each time I try, she seems
further aw
ay, as if some unseen force i
s
keeping us apart.
I ru
n, pumping my arms and legs harder and hard
er, trying to keep up wit
h her, but never able
to close the gap
.
Finally, when I think my legs will
collapse beneath me, she stops.
I approach
, my heart fluttering, my body trembling in anticipation of feeling
her skin against mine.
I hear a slight whir
r
and feel a
whoosh o
f air as something flies
just past my ear.
A flaming arrow.
No!
Already a spot of blood i
s seeping through her whi
te tunic where the arrowhead has
pi
erced her breast.
The flames a
re licking at her
clothes, charring them.
I try
to run to her, to douse the flames, to pluck the arrow
from her skin
and stop
the bleeding, but my feet won’t move.
At first I think I’m in shock, that I’m simply too weak-minded to gain control of my body, but when I look at my feet, they a
re encased in stone.
He
moves past me.
The archer.
I can’t see his face, but I’
d recognize his gait an
ywhere.
My creator.
I scream
at him to
Stop, please stop!
but he ignores
me, instead blowing softly on the flames, fueling them until they
spread.
I have
to turn away—G
od, how desperately I want
to turn away—
but
I ca
n’t.
C
an’t.
Ca
n’
t even close my eyes.
I watch her burn.
She is brave—doesn’t even cry out, but I can
hear her screams anyway.