Part 24 (1/2)

We emerged on a flat rock ledge, on the inside rim of the Yellowstone caldera, looking out over a wide, flat plain. It was dark, starless. The leading clouds of the storm were already overhead. More thunder. Hot wind whipped our hair and clothes, bullied its way through the dry evening cold. The slender windmills atop the ridge were spinning furiously, making a droning hum.

”There,” said Mom. She and others were pointing to the west, where a dark-orange glow lit the underbellies of the clouds. A spear of lightning zigzagged down, causing a flash in the distant pine trees. The orange light illuminated gaps in the cloud columns, canyons rising high into the sky. They were called pyroc.u.mulus clouds. Dry thunderstorms where, though there might be rain falling somewhere thousands of meters up, the little amount of water evaporated while it was still in the sky. The storms got nicknamed lightning rains because lightning was the only thing that made it to the ground.

This one was different though, bigger, fueled by the smoke of the Three-Year Fire, which had finally found us.

I didn't like being out there. In fact, it might have been the most scared I'd ever been. All I wanted was to be back inside, and yet, there was my mom, Nina, her face to the scalding wind, holding on to her hat, watching the ridgeline with the same antic.i.p.ation that I had watching a breakaway in soccer.

The orange grew, and then the flames appeared, their brilliance reflecting off the white poles of the windmills along the ridge.

The fire had been moving around the American West for two years. For the first year and a half we'd counted its age in months like it was a toddler, but then it was too old for that. There were no resources or people to fight it, so it just burned and burned. n.o.body knew how long it would last. It was a question of fuel. How many years would it take to burn every last tree in the American West? The answer turned out to be three years and one and a half months.

Aside from a near miss in month six, this was the first time it had ever come to us. Maybe, in a way, we'd felt left out.

It moved like some vicious, primitive predator, a swarm of ants, a herd of velociraptors leaping over the caldera rim and devouring the pine trees in bright bursts of sparks. The flames looked fluid, streaming down the hillside, and soon they were flooding the whole valley. When I saw it the next morning, all the green and yellow was gone, the land painted gray, the trees brittle black twigs, the river choked with ash.

All by our hand, someone would say, or said, long ago.

As the fire stampeded by and brittle gray flakes snowed down on our hair and eyelashes, Mom rested her hand on my shoulder. ”Isn't it amazing?” she said. I knew she didn't mean amazing like strictly good, but her voice was low with awe, if not excitement. Others around us seemed struck too, maybe because we had heard so much about this terrible thing, and now here it was, its marauding demon gaze finally falling on us.

I didn't know if I thought it was amazing, or if I was terrified or what, but I looked up and saw Mom's expression, and it was one I remembered many times after she left, not a year later: her eyes gla.s.sy and wide with wonder, her mouth slightly open, like seeing this, being this close to it, was spiritual for her. I don't remember her ever looking at Dad or me that way.

The trees began to pop. Big, terrible cracks as trunks exploded, branches collapsing into the flames.

I started to cry.

Mom looked down at me, and I tried to hide it. I didn't want to ruin her moment.

”Owen, it's okay. You're okay....”

”Owen, you're okay.”

I opened my eyes to find Lilly on her knees beside me. Her hand was on my shoulder. The heat of the Yellowstone fire was the SafeSun on my face. I looked around and saw that we were in the little clearing on Tiger Lilly Island.

It took me a second to understand where I was, or when I was. I'd really felt like I was back in Yellowstone, with Mom, six again. And I had a sinking feeling now. That night when the fires came had been terrifying, but it had been a relief to be back there, like none of what came next had ever happened, like it would never happen... except it all had. I was never going to be six again, and my life from then to now was never going to be undone, or redone. It just was.

My brain shuffled again, like it couldn't quite find the present. I pictured the world inside the skull, Luk's city under ash skies, that night at Yellowstone. That was what linked the two memories: that weird sense of being witness to the end, and the real acceptance that the world you knew wasn't permanent, that it was fragile and temporary and could be destroyed at any moment. My genes had seen it before, and again.

”Try to breathe,” said Lilly.

I looked up at her, the recent past finally cementing itself. We'd run from the temple, swimming away, but then I'd stopped, things had stopped. I hadn't been able to breathe.

I tried now. It worked, but it hurt. I tasted the metal lake flavor. Remembered it pouring into me. ”Okay,” I croaked. ”That's the last time I'm doing that.”

I heard Lilly laugh quietly. Felt her fingers brush across my neck. ”It's your gills.”

”What?” I reached up and touched them, only to find that they were barely there. The slits, which had been deep, had connected my throat to the water, now felt like shallow indentations. ”They're gone,” I said vacantly.

”I had to drag you out of there,” said Lilly. ”Pump your chest all over again. And you s.h.i.+vered like crazy all night, sweating, too, but I wrapped us both up in the blanket and held you, and by this morning you were warm again.”

I listened to this. Looked at Lilly sitting there in her baggy sweats.h.i.+rt and shorts. I had spent the night wrapped in Lilly's body... and I didn't remember it. ”Thanks,” I managed to say. ”Again.”

Lilly shrugged. ”You know me, professional Owen saver.” She smiled, but only for a second. ”When I was pulling you, I saw that your gills were moving less. I think they gave you just enough oxygen to keep you alive until we got here, but...why are they gone?” She touched her own gills.

”Luk said they were a side effect of activation,” I thought out loud, ”of everything reorganizing....”

”I don't think I understood any of that,” said Lilly.

”Oh, right.” I struggled to sit up, and then told her about the time inside the skull: Luk, the Atlanteans, the Qi-An, and the Terra.

”Well,” said Lilly, sounding a little shocked by it all, ”I guess it wasn't the bug juice. Marco will be disappointed.”

”Yeah,” I said. ”And so I think my gills disappearing is maybe just part of the changing.”

”Leech should have called you Frog-boy instead of Turtle,” said Lilly.

”What's that mean?”

”Sorry”-Lilly pointed her thumbs at herself-”one of my CIT duties is leading nature walks. But so when frogs change from tadpoles to adults, they lose their gills and tails and grow giant mouths in, like, a single night. You're not going to grow a giant mouth, are you?”

I smiled, but also felt around my face. ”I don't think so.”

”So, you're one of three Atlanteans,” said Lilly. ”The Aeronaut.”

”Yeah,” I said, ”at least, I guess I will be.” I saw that she was frowning, looking away. ”You're one, too,” I said. ”You're either the Navigator or the Medium. We'll know when we find your skull.”

Lilly's lips were pursed. ”Right,” she said.

”What,” I said, ”you don't believe me?”

”No, I do.” She turned and rummaged through her red bag. ”Here.” She handed me half a chocolate bar.

”Thanks.” My throat hurt with each swallow, but the chocolate reminded my body about food.

”It's just a lot,” she said.

”Yeah,” I said.

”I mean, I know I'm the one who was all, 'We have to get out of here and figure out what's going on,' but,” Lilly said slowly, ”I stabbed someone. I could have killed him. Taken a life.” She stared at the ground beside me. ”I keep hearing the sound the knife made when it tore clothing and skin. I keep feeling how it caught on his ribs when I pulled it out....”

I reached out and rubbed her knee. ”You were brave,” I said. ”You got us out of there.”

She shrugged. ”Maybe.”

I shook my head. ”All of this is hard. I mean, these changes are happening to me, and I can't control any of it. It's like I'm just along for the ride.”

”Like p.u.b.erty wasn't hard enough,” said Lilly. She managed to smile. ”But you did make a choice, Owen. When you ran, back in the Preserve. You made the choice to find that skull, to know why this is happening, to take control. All we can do now is try to find out what's behind all this.”

”I guess.” That made it sound a little better. ”So, now what?”

”We can't go back,” said Lilly, gazing off in the direction of camp. ”The boats were out searching for us all night. And I saw flashlights in the woods. But even if they weren't looking for us, I mean, what we saw down there...”