* * *
When Leslie
woke next it was morning. Light streamed
in through the windows, illuminating dust particles as they drifted lazily
through the air. Leslie sat up and
stretched. Her neck was stiff from
sleeping on the couch.
The house
was silent. Quietly, as though any
unnecessary noise was taboo, Leslie tiptoed through the house. A clock in the kitchen read 10:05. Did I
really sleep so late? Leslie thought.
Where is everybody?
Leslie made
her way upstairs, still on tiptoe.
Gray’s door was closed, and she didn’t want to disturb him. She slipped past the door and peeked in the
next room. Doctor Monroe was slumped
over the table asleep with his mouth open and his glasses askew. One hand rested on a pile of papers covered
with scribbles and mathematical calculations.
She walked over to him and gently shook his shoulder.
Doctor
Monroe woke with a grunt. He blinked and
looked up at Leslie.
“Did you
find it?” asked Leslie.
A sleepy
smile lit upon the doctor’s face. “I
found it—at seven this morning. You can
check on Gray if you want.”
Joy flooded
Leslie’s body. She swooped down and
hugged Doctor Monroe tight, scattering papers everywhere. “Thank you!
Thank you! Thank you!”
Doctor Monroe
pushed away from Leslie, looking surprised but pleased. He sat up and straightened his glasses. “Well, are you going to see him or not?”
Leslie
tried to hide her smile and failed. She
spun around on one foot and did her best not to run out of the room. She nearly collided with Ravenstorm outside
of Gray’s room.
Ravenstorm
gave Leslie his signature glare. He held
in his hands a redwood staff and a pocketknife.
With no more explanation than his glare, Ravenstorm opened the door and
stepped inside Gray’s room. Gray was
sitting up in bed looking out the window.
Remnants of breakfast sat on a tray next to the bed. He looked over as Ravenstorm entered.
“Here are
the items you requested,” said Ravenstorm, handing Gray the staff and the
knife. “I’ve already said the
preliminary prayer over the staff.”
“Thank
you,” said Gray.
Ravenstorm
nodded sharply, then exited as silently as he’d come.
Once
Ravenstorm started down the stairs, Leslie entered the room. “Hey,” she said.
Gray had
flipped open the pocket knife and was staring at the staff as though
contemplating where to cut the wood first.
He looked at Leslie and smiled.
“Hey,” he said back.
Leslie
looked Gray over. His face was pale, and
there were dark circles under his eyes, but he looked much like he had when
he’d first come to her house—exhausted, but otherwise all right. She asked, “How do you feel?”
“Good,”
said Gray. “The pain’s gone. Doctor Monroe said I’ll have to have more
treatments over the next month or so, but I’m on the mend.”
Leslie
smiled, but still she worried. “And you
haven’t noticed anything strange—anything that’s not quite right?”
Gray
thought for a moment before shaking his head.
“No, everything’s fine. Why?”
“No
reason. Just making sure,” said
Leslie. She walked over to the bed and
traced the pattern on the bedpost with a finger. “What’s the staff for?”
Gray looked
at the redwood staff and pocketknife in his hands. “Oh, this is what I need to guarantee that I’ll
make it home,” he said. “A team of Spell
Weavers in my village invented it. If I
carve runes on it and add just a touch of my own blood, then I won’t have to
stand precisely in the sea foam at sunset.”
He lifted
the pocketknife and made the first cut on the wood. A shaving fell to the blanket. “I want to have it done in time to return
today.”
Leslie’s
hand fell to her side. She watched as a
second and third ribbon of wood joined the first. “Today?” she asked, half in shock.
Nodding,
Gray continued his work on the staff. “I
don’t have any time to waste. If I was
so close to death, I can only imagine what is happening with my village. If Doctor Monroe can gather enough of the
ingredients for the cure, then I’ll leave as soon as possible.”
“But you
have to give yourself time to recover,” Leslie protested. “You look like you barely have strength to
stand.”
A smile so
sweet that it broke Leslie’s heart crossed Gray’s lips. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be perfectly fine. I have to think of the others.”
Leslie
forced herself to smile and laugh. “You
always think of others before yourself.
It’s your biggest fault.”
“If that’s
my biggest fault,” said Gray, “then I don’t mind it.”
The
doorbell rang, and Doctor Monroe ran past the door and down the stairs, his tie
flying behind him as he went. Leslie
heard him cry as he opened the door, “Thank you! You have no idea how much this fast of a
delivery means to me.”
The door
slammed, and Doctor Monroe stomped up the stairs. He appeared in the doorway with his arms
filled with a small box and two pots filled with star-shaped flowers. The flowers’ blossoms were large, with
vibrant yellow petals that changed to red at the very tip. “Leslie,” he called,” come with me. I need your help. Gray, stay in bed working on whatever that
is.”
Leslie
followed Doctor Monroe to his improvised lab.
He set the pots and the box carefully on the table. Triumphantly, Doctor Monroe gestured to the
flowers. “This is the missing piece of
the shifters’ original cure. I have a
botanist friend nearby who grows these in a greenhouse. I’ll use the plants in one pot to make some
of the cure, then I’ll give Gray the other pot and this box of seeds so that
they can grow the flowers and keep making the cure for as long as they need it.”
“So what do
you need me for?” asked Leslie.
“You are
going to help me make the cure. Many
hands make light work.”
With that,
Leslie was given a pair of goggles, some latex gloves, and a dissecting knife
and was put to work. Doctor Monroe gave
her a list that looked a lot like ingredients for a strange exotic salad. Leslie ground up seeds, sliced leaves, boiled
roots, and generally made a mess of the room.
Activities in her AP Chemistry class included making solutions in the
lab, but this required so much more precision than anything she’d done
before. Exactly 3.7 grams of this, two
grains of that, five liters of something else, over twenty ingredients in
all. Cook it all for twenty-three
minutes at ninety-three degrees Celsius, then let it cool to room temperature.
After
Leslie and Doctor Monroe had finished with each batch, Ravenstorm chanted over
the beakers and flasks. The solutions
changed from a muddy brown to a vibrant purple.
Each time, Doctor Monroe tested the batch by using a dropper to transfer
some of the liquid to a slide containing a drop of Gray’s blood. He checked the blood under the microscope,
and each time he said, “Good. It worked.”
Leslie and
Doctor Monroe poured the solution into small test tubes, corked the tubes, and
placed them gently into a padded backpack.
Then the process began again.
They worked until all the flowers in the first pot were gone and the
other ingredients had been depleted. Doctor Monroe placed the box of seeds in the
top of the backpack and zipped it shut.
“Let’s go
check on Gray, shall we?”
Doctor
Monroe picked up the backpack and led the way into Gray’s room. Leslie followed close behind carrying the
flowers. It was late afternoon, and
sunlight streamed through the bedroom window.
Gray was
already on his feet. He held the staff
in one hand. It was covered in intricate
designs—circles within circles, spirals, and curves that reminded Leslie of
rolling waves. It was incredible. No matter how long Leslie looked, she kept
finding more details she’d missed before.
She’d had no idea that Gray had that kind of talent. It was only after several moments that she
realized that parts of the red staff looked wet and were a darker red. Leslie looked at Gray’s hands. One had a strip of gauze across the palm.
“You’re
looking well,” said Doctor Monroe.
Gray stood
taller. His soul binder glittered on his
chest. “I’m healed, thanks to you.”
“Not
completely.” Doctor Monroe handed Gray
the backpack. “Inside this are one
hundred doses of the cure, as well as instructions on how to make it. There are also seeds for the flowers, which
must be planted in fertile soil in a greenhouse and cared for daily. I also have this plant for you so that more
doses can be produced as quickly as possible.
You will need to take one dose whenever your symptoms return—every three
days or so—for about a month. You got
all that?”
Gray
shouldered the backpack. “Yes. What language are the instructions written
in?”
Doctor
Monroe slapped a hand to his forehead. “I
knew I’d forgotten something. I wrote
them in English—well, my English—and I gave a copy to Alistair to translate—”
“And I have
the completed translation right here,” said Professor Brown from behind Leslie.
Leslie
jumped, nearly dropping the flowers.
Professor Brown strode over to Gray and handed him a sealed envelope,
which Gray placed in the front pocket of the backpack. “You’re planning on leaving tonight?”
“Yes,
professor,” said Gray. He shook
Professor Brown and Doctor Monroe’s hands.
“Thank you both for all your help.
I wish there were some way to repay you.”
“Don’t
worry. There’s no debt due,” said Doctor
Monroe. He hugged Gray, then turned
around and hugged Leslie as well. “You
two take care. And Leslie, don’t be a
stranger. Keep in touch.”
“Yes,” said
Professor Brown. His low tone sent a
shiver down Leslie’s spine. “Keep in
touch.”
“I will,”
Leslie promised. She smiled at Doctor
Monroe and tried to smile at Professor Brown.
He stared at her like she was a puzzle he had to solve, and her smile
wavered.
“Come on,”
said Gray. “Let’s hurry. It’ll be sunset soon.”
Grateful
for the distraction, Leslie slipped out of the room in front of Gray. She hurried down the stairs, grabbed her
purse from the living room, and met Gray by the front door. Ravenstorm was waiting there for them. Great,
thought Leslie. One more person I don’t want to see.
Ravenstorm
held Leslie’s keys in one gloved hand.
He dangled them in front of her. “You’ll
be needing these, I think.”
Leslie
snatched the keys from Ravenstorm. “Thank
you,” she said as she sped out the door.
Her car was
parked on the curb. Leslie ran across
the lawn and unlocked the car, setting the flower pot on the back seat. Gray shook Ravenstorm’s hand and met Leslie
in the car as Leslie was buckling her seatbelt.
“They’re
good people,” Gray said as they drove away.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget them.”
Leslie didn’t
respond to Gray’s comment, though she wanted to know if he sensed anything
strange about Professor Brown or Ravenstorm.
She decided it didn’t matter.
Gray was leaving, and she didn’t want their last minutes together to be
tainted with an argument about Professor Brown.
She forced herself to ask, “Where do you want to go?”
“What do
you mean?” asked Gray.
“We’re
heading to the beach. What part of the
beach do you want me to drop you off at?”
Gray didn’t
have to think about his answer. “Let’s
go to where you found me. I’ll be able
to find my way home from there.”
Leslie
nodded. Where she found him—it felt like
a lifetime had passed since Leslie found Gray half-dead on the beach and she’d
called 911. Why did it have to be that
beach? “Okay.”
The state
park was serene, empty. Other than a few
clouds near the horizon, the sky was perfectly clear. Birds flitted back and forth between the few scraggly
trees that grew upon the sand dunes.
Leslie felt a lump in her throat as she pulled into an empty parking
stall. She forced it down.
Gray got
out of the car first. He slung the
backpack over his shoulders, grabbed the staff, and peered out over the
ocean. The blue-grey waves crashed
against the shore, their endless murmuring voices hinting at secrets within
their depths. The sun, a warm gold disk,
was near the horizon. It sent flashes of
light dancing across the water.
“Come on,”
said Gray. “We have to be ready before
the bottom of the sun first touches the sea.”
Leslie
grabbed the potted plant and followed Gray as he walked down the dunes and onto
the white sand. Tiny white clam and
purple mollusk shells dotted the shore.
The only other person on the beach was Mrs. Winthrope to the north. Leslie worried that she might look and see
what they were doing, but she looked off somewhere to the northwest, forlorn in
her old dress with her shawl pulled around her.
Gray walked
to where the waves rushed over the sand and quickly carved out a hollow in the
sand. It deepened with each passing
wave, and Leslie wondered if his efforts would prove worthless. But perhaps it was the action that counted,
not the hollow itself.
After
drawing one last line in the sand, a
trench that extended from the hollow all the way back to the sand dunes, Gray
turned to Leslie. “Thank you,” he
said. “Thank you for saving my life.”
Leslie
wanted to burst out crying. Instead, she
pulled Gray into a hug. Her chest ached
from holding back the tears. Let him stay here forever. Please.
Don’t let him leave.
Somehow
Leslie kept from crying. “Stay safe, you
leopard brain.” I’ll miss you.
“You
too. Keep running. Don’t ever stop,” Gray whispered in her ear.
Leslie
opened her eyes. The sun was creeping
closer and closer to the horizon. She
stepped away from Gray and thrust the flower pot into his hands. “You’d better hurry. The sun’s going to set.”
Gray gave
her one last smile, a smile that could break hearts, and turned away. He stood in the center of the hollow, now
almost completely obliterated by the waves, and faced towards the setting
sun. He clenched the staff in one hand
and slammed the end into the sand in front of him. Resolute, he watched the setting sun.
Leslie
stood back from the waves. She nearly
dashed forward to join him, nearly called out his name, nearly stepped forward
to see if she could stand in the foam at the precise moment when sand, sea, and
sky met. But she didn’t.
The bottom
of the sun touched the horizon, sending a sheet of gold across the sea. The wind picked up, and for a moment she saw
it: a winding golden path that shimmered and shifted among the waves. The gold enveloped Gray, the staff, the
potted plant. And then he was gone.
A wail
split the evening air. Mrs. Winthrope
stumbled into the ocean, her arms extended towards the place where Gray once
stood. She had been watching after all. “Take me with you,” she cried. “Please take me with you.”
Leslie
stood, numb, listening to the woman sob.
And though her heart ached, though Gray was gone and the sunlight was
fading, she found she had no tears to cry.
* * *
The End...
...Or is it?
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