47

It had taken Kyle and Charlotte days to clean the mess their mother had made and months for the stink she had left to leave the house. Sometimes, when Kyle and Charlotte were meditating in the living room, they could still smell little whiffs of the scent her decomposing body had spread.

Now Charlotte and Lieke were sitting in that living room, on the other side of a brand new coffee table that had been taken from one of the many empty houses in the area. The small piece of furniture was hiding under a rug, its threads were woven in a psychedelic pattern. On the rug Charlotte had placed all sorts of crystals and stones, in many unnatural shapes and sizes. Several sticks of incense were burning on a side table.

On the other side of the stolen coffee table a few of her clients were seated on poofs and beanbags. Some of the others stood behind them.

In total there were about eleven teenagers in the room.

“They branded all things related to the Universe and mysticism as being for simpletons and crazy people,” Charlotte spoke conspiratorial.

“Who is they?” One of the girls asked.

“The mainstream,” Charlotte answered swiftly, before continuing. “They want us to look away, at the stuff that they have selected for us, the stuff that they deem appropriate.”

She shuffled the cards like a practiced poker player.

“Such as?”

“You name it,” Charlotte shrugged. “The news, the talkshows, the series we are allowed to see on Netflix and HBO have been carefully crafted and selected to keep us guessing.”

She started laying her first tarot cards.

“But we,” she referred to herself, Lieke and the girls they were visited by, “have always known there was something bigger going on.”

“Hmmhmm,” some of the girls responded, others just nodded.

“They told us to focus on fantasy and fiction, but the thing is… that was just the reality that they made for us.”

Charlotte looked through the new window of the living room, she closed her eyes dramatically and let the rays sunshine warm her pale skin. She inhaled and exhaled with conviction and continued to lay the cards out.

The girls got exited seeing the Sun card, the Chariot card and the Ace of Cups. What they didn’t know was that Charlotte had swiftly shoved the Tower back into the deck when it popped out. They couldn’t use that kind of energy right now. There had been enough Tower-moments in their recent past.

“Remember what my sister told us during class?” Lieke asked solemnly.

“ ‘Questioning the Web, the fabric of reality, will either lead you to a psych ward or to your Rebirth, and the peculiar thing about that journey is that when you arrive at your final destination you might not sense a difference’,” she repeated her big sister.

Lieke was secretly incredibly proud how her quiet, odd sister, one of the few relatives she had left, had stepped up after the Fuckening had occurred over Christmas. Marith had lived most of her life as an outcast, used and abused, but most of all misunderstood by the world. Lieke had come to accept her as she was long before she had learned about the parallel shadow world that lingered in these mountains, but ever since that fated night, now about six months ago, she had grown closer to Marith than she ever thought she would.

Marith had mentored the local girls as if they were her own children, teaching the leftovers at the local high school alongside Vanessa and a few other survivors that weren’t Pupils. She had been there during the birth of Bart, after she had saved both Lieke’s life and that of him, her baby. And afterwards she had nannied him as if she was an overly protective grandmother.

Lieke had learned that Marith and the other Pupils possessed a knowledge of all things ethereal, spiritual and theological that went far beyond what could be learned through books, documentaries or Youtube videos.

“It’s an illusion,” Lieke continued, oversimplifying Marith’s words, as Charlotte laid her cards. “And the collective, which is the rest of the world, believes it. That’s what makes this so hard.”

The girls fell silent. Lieke knew she was losing them.

“What Lieke is saying, is that the reality that is forced upon us is not the highest reality,” Charlotte spoke slowly and mysteriously.

“Right,” Lieke nodded.

“I know that this cushy reality and everything that you trusted has been crumbling for the better half of a year now. This means that we need to look deeper at the areas that we weren’t allowed to look at before.”

“Such as?” One of the girls asked, impatiently cradling her pregnant belly.

“Such as the energy that our soul emits, the astral plane, our place in the Universe and the levels of consciousness we all have access to.”

“How do we do that?”

“We need to cling onto each other, onto the energy that is just up for grabs here, between the lakes. Trust the visions that come to you, while you meditate. That is how you will open your third eye.”

“Why?”

“Because energy is the only truth out there,” Charlotte went on, desperately trying to keep the mystique going. “Our consciousness is energy,” she emphasized. “And it is more real than anything else in this world, because energy is all there is.”

The girls in the back sceptically shifted their weight from one tired leg to the other.

“This is beyond science,” Kyle’s little sister spoke, waving away any doubt.

She wore rings with precious stones on every finger of her hand. She had raided her mother’s jewellery boxes after her death, including the ones in the safe. Lieke thought it was a bit overkill, but Charlotte, being covered in every mineral under the Sun, looking like a disco ball, did add to the show of it all.

“What about our pregnancies?”

“Yeah, Lieke had Bart like seven months after she was… you know…”

“Impregnated,” Charlotte finished for her.

“That means were are close,” another girl said nervously.

Nobody knew what the children that would come out of them were going to be like. Would they be orchids, dandelions or belladonnas?

“Yes,” Charlotte said, nodding to indicate that she understood their concerns.

She swooped the cards off the table and re-shuffled them. She was doing a group-reading. Those were notoriously unreliable, but the thing with Charlotte was that she didn’t really need the cards. She just used them so that the girls had some tangible proof of her prophecies.

“I see no complications,” Charlotte said, nodding at the cards she was laying out in front of her.

“M-my mother miscarried twice before she had me,” one girl spoke with a trembling voice.

“Don’t worry about it,” Charlotte said immediately. “That’s not in the cards for you.”

To take away any anxiety Charlotte repeated the reading with two different decks. The same messages kept coming out. The readings repeated themselves.

“Pay up, buttercups,” Charlotte demanded, when she was finally done.

The girls reluctantly shoved some inheritance money over the rough, little carpet on the table in front of Charlotte.

“I am taking this with me,” the impatient girl said, snatching one of the many mountain crystals in the room and putting it in her purse.

“You’re going to need it,” Charlotte assured her darkly.

Lieke smirked, watching the girls leave the house. “Have you used these cards at all?” She whispered.

“Nope,” Charlotte answered nonchalantly. “I don’t need them. They are pretty, but just for show.”

“You’ll make a fine Prophet one day,” Lieke said, after every last one of their former fellow high school students had left.

“Hopefully that day is someday soon,” Charlotte answered with a sigh, counting the cash. “I can’t be in the dark like this much longer,” she added dramatically.

Now that she knew why Kyle was such a weirdo and what he and his friends were capable off she wanted a piece of it. But she also knew she would have to wait until after her pregnancy was over to be called to her Rebirth.

Jonathan’s feet landed on a springy forest floor with regular intervals. Spring had come early that year. The air was fresh, in a comforting way, not in a sharp or prickly way. Not that it mattered. The Runners thrived under any and all conditions. Harsh conditions tended to bring out the best in them, but the fact that the snow had mostly melted, apart from the perpetual white blankets on the highest peaks, and that the Sun was out was a nice surprise for Jonathan.

He breathed in, his lungs filled themselves with the highest quality mountain air on the planet. He glanced around, peeking through the foliage and alongside the massive tree trunks all around him with keen, prying eyes. The forests looked so perfect it was as if they had been colour graded in photo editing.

He exhaled and accelerated. Running just hit different when he didn’t have to fear for his live.

He was glad to be back.

With a little smile on his face, one that he was unaware of, he reminisced about the previous months. It was all still so clear. He hoped he would get to keep these memories forever.

He had been to Rome and Jerusalem with Anica, making a pit stop in Budapest, where they had met with Anton and Alexander.

The Runner and the Oracle had wanted to spend some quality time together since Anica being on Earth semi-regularly wasn’t acutely dangerous to her or the continuation of the Web anymore.

Jonathan’s parents had been released from the clinic and had returned to his childhood home, making the house a bit too crowded for his liking. While staying at Lucille’s place in the Bellevue he had bumped into Vanessa, who had been clearing out Gene’s apartment. The Mage had inherited the lake house and invited him to come live with her.

Initially Lieke had been bothered by the fact that Gene had left the house to Vanessa in his will, but soon both the Merryfield sisters had realized that there was nothing there for them anymore, nothing of value or nostalgia to come home to.

The Elders had put the Pupils in their wills, because their actual ancestors often didn’t realize they were still alive. The Pupils had inherited all their properties, estates and bank accounts. Gene had made the wills, that Vanessa and Marith found in a safe in his apartment.

Vanessa had invited Jonathan to come live with her. He gladly accepted her offer. Lucille’s apartment had too many memories and was also filled with mold.

He decided to pack his things and sort through his grandmother’s belongings to prepare for the move. While doing so he came across old photo albums. He learned that Lucille and his “grandfather” had travelled a lot more than he realized.

Surprisingly, most of their travels involved visiting capital cities in Europe. Or maybe that wasn’t surprising at all, Jonathan thought. Living in Sweet Lake must have made them hunker for new people, old cultures and beautiful architecture. Having a break from the trees was important every once in a while.

Anica had agreed. The Peru-born Prophet had never left South-America before her own Rebirth, so the decision to visit Rome, Budapest and Jerusalem was easily made.

When their magical travels to Israel had come to an end Anica had needed to return to her duties, that largely involved her being in the Clock in the Sky, where the Watchmakers were. Since Anica’s way of travelling didn’t require tickets of any kind Jonathan had decided to fly to Istanbul to meet with a certain Mage. Jonathan, Nate and Marith had agreed that it was of great importance to keep the ties with one of the most potent Mages on the planet, who also happened to have been a key player in their struggles with Samuel, warm.

The Chain had come to terms with the fact that the Kid was defeated, but not eliminated. He was still out there. They could feel the residue of his impact.

The Kid had become a stitched wound in the darkness, a ripple in the Web and no more than a dispersed cloud on a blue sky.

After the massacre of the nymphs Samuels body had found his way back to his tomb, where he would stay indefinitely. The Pupils had slapped his body onto the slab of marble that he had laid on for thousands of years and left him there. They didn’t dare to put his heart back in his body, so they kept it separately, somewhere deep in the Corridors.

The Elders, and every other victim of the Kid, got a proper farewell. Jonathan had organized a church service in the church the cliff that Nick had managed to build. As per usual nobody had known where Nick had gotten the personnel to finish the project, but he had somehow pulled it off.

Jonathan had led the service, reading from Lucille’s most cherished Bible.

The attendance had been modest. There hadn’t been any rain and people hadn’t been holding up black umbrella’s. The Elders had not been mourned long or hard, except by the Pupils. Most of their relatives hadn’t really known about them and the few people that had known them as their grandparents had been drinking the Dew unknowingly.

After the service the Pupils had gathered on the edge of the cliff to scatter the ashes of the deceased that had requested cremations.

“I can’t believe most of us are orphans now,” Kyle had said, pensively looking over the lakes and the villages, hugging Charlotte with one arm and Amber with the other.

“Adult orphans,” Amber corrected.

“Yeah, but still orphans.”

“Well, you know what they say,” James started.

Jonathan had closed his eyes and drawn a patient breath, because he knew that whatever was going to come out of James’s mouth was likely going to be horrendously offensive.

“The f in orphan stands for family,” he finished.

“James, no. Just no!” Vanessa told him, in her elementary school teacher voice.

“This is so much worse than what I was expecting and that says a lot at this point,” Amber muttered.

Jonathan hadn’t been sure whether he wanted to laugh or toss him off the cliff.

“What?” James had said indignant. “It was Kyle who said that you cannot spell funeral without fun.”

“I was beside myself,” Kyle said, which was the truth.

Since the majority of James’s potions had no effect on Pupils Kyle had been experimenting with some heavier stuff - that had been surprisingly easy to get by in Sweet Lake - to deal with it all. None of the creatures he had met while tripping had been able to help him, so hard drugs had been a short-lived whim.

“Please just stop!” Lisa had ordered James.

Marith had been quiet, as ever, her very pregnant sister by her side. Nick and Nate had attended the service as well.

The six Pupils that had unexpectedly joined the North-American Chain hadn’t been at the service either. Their tourist visas had been about to expire, so in January they had flown home, only to return at the beginning of June.

They had jumped into their respective Mailboxes this time, arriving in Sweet Lake and falling into the bed in the atrium. The six had been cold, wet and exited to be back.

Jonathan could smell the sap of the young plants and flowers he was surrounded by and the resin of the endless sea of pine trees that flowed over the mountains. He pushed his senses to explore further, to travel further.

The local youth was running around the shores of the lakes as happy as they could be under the circumstances. He could hear them, and almost sense their presence, many kilometres down the mountain, as if in a lucid dream.

The homeless crisis had been solved miraculously. Well, not exactly miraculously. The housing shortage was solved by over half the population of the tri-lake area dying at the hands of the Kid and his accomplices, but it had been solved nonetheless. Vacant properties gave the young people of the area a decent shot at life. There was room to thrive and to grow.

The three towns had become an ecosystem in and of itself. It had become an enclave of young people that took care of each other. They fed, clothed and home-schooled one another.

The tasks of the Pupils had shifted from fighting the Kid to taking care of and supporting the local community. The Pupils had become the wounded healers of the leftovers. Nurturing and educating the young ones of society had been a nice change from preventing an apocalypse.

But as so often death leaves a shadow. In this case only the remainders of the Chain could remember.

James had concocted potions for the parents of the pregnant girls, the few that were still alive. It made them mellow and understanding. The substance consisted of Sweet Lakes glistening water, Morning Dew from Spectre Lake and Mist from Sound Lake. Or something like that. Jonathan often didn’t pay attention when James was talking.

To the half-hearted protests and concerns over ethics from his fellow Pupils James had said “I cannot un-Mountain Dew what has already been Mountain done” and that had marked the end of that discussion.

While the birds and the bees did what they had become birds and bees for, while caterpillars turned into butterflies and while the chipmunks and squirrels were working on gathering a new stack of nuts for winter Jonathan flashed by each and every one of those creatures at a mind-bending speed.

He started to recognize the boulders and the fallen treetrunks. It was almost as if the putrid smells of the women lingered between the trees, but he knew that was just his imagination. He would probably remember that stink on his deathbed, many years away from that run.

The magic that had held the women together had simply vanished after the nymphs had been taken care off. The women had collapsed, shattering into barely identifiable body parts. An had created a flowing river down the main road that had forced their remains into the forest, back to nature.

Their severed arms and legs and lumps of meat had frozen solidly again, between layers of fresh snow. The smells had swiftly disappeared.

By the time the walls of frozen ice had started to melt again, to make place for a new season, there were no traces left of the women ever having been there.

As An had put it, “Slush to slush, snot to snot.”

“Otom?” Bart babbled full of doubt.

The chubby, blond baby was sitting in his mother’s lap, looking around at all the adults with bright, blue eyes.

“Very good!” Lieke and Charlotte cheered him on.

“And then what?”

“Winner?”

“Yay!” The large humans celebrated.

“What comes next?” Vanessa asked him with a friendly smile.

Bart gave it some deep thought, looked around at the forests and his sunny surroundings and then proudly proclaimed “Sping!”

“Give us the last one, big guy,” Nick encouraged.

“Summaaah!”

“Yeah, good job!” Nick tried to high five Bart, but all the baby managed to do was raise a tiny fist, so Nick fist bumped him instead.

“This shit is creeping me out, man,” James almost hissed, from behind one of the barbecues. “Babies that age should still be shitting themselves,” he muttered to himself.

“That kid is going be a quantum physicist by the time he’s two,” Kyle said quietly when he saw James’s face.

“Right?” James agreed, shaking his head, while flipping some burgers.

It was a bright afternoon with blue skies. Not one cloud dared to make an appearance. Spring had come early that year. When Marith focused she could hear the gentle taps the paws of the insects made and the swift flapping of their wings. The ferns had unfolded themselves, looking like green explosions, and the flowers Vanessa had planted around the house were in full bloom.

Marith noticed how the windowsills and the outside of the house had been sanded down and repainted. Even the roof looked like it had been replaced. Vanessa and Jonathan had been busy.

Most of the people attending the reunion sat on logs and camping chairs around a big campfire, lit inside a circle of rocks. The Runners, each possessing the strength of a thousand Dutch farmers, had placed the trunks of fallen trees around the bonfire in the shape of a crescent moon.

Kyle, An and James had dubbed themselves the “grill masters” and they were barbecuing like their lives depended on it. Meriyem, Lisa and Theresa were preparing the salads, sauces and hamburger buns in the kitchen. William and his dad had brought the sodas and the marshmallows. Anton and Alexander had taken care of anything alcoholic. Jonathan had brought plastic cups, napkinds, briquettes and firelighters from the store. Marith and Lieke had given birth to a Charlotte Russe of questionable quality and Amber had taken some unsold pastries from the Sweet Tooth in case anyone would still be hungry after all of that.

Olive laid by Nick’s side on a cushion they had brought with them from the house. The dog finally started to look like her own self again.

Cleaning the Corgi up had turned out to be an impossible task. No dog shampoo on the planet had been able to get the stink out of her fur. Nick had ended up having to shave her. He had been forced to let her wear ridiculous dog-jackets that Marith and Lieke had picked out in order to keep her warm.

In the aftermath of the Fuckening Nick had initially been shocked none of the authorities had shown up to put him in jail, as he had been driving around town in a stolen school bus filled with under aged girls.

The night it had all went down he had rushed the young women to the clinic in Sweet Lake. For some reason that hospital employed the world’s most understanding nurses. Nobody had questioned his intentioned and not a soul threatened to press charges. Nick later found out that the hospital personnel knew more about what was going on in the area than he did.

He learned that the lack of repercussions for anything that had happened over Christmas had a lot to do with Marith’s British friend poisoning the water supplies of the tri-lake area and, while he was at it, the supplies of some of the bigger towns in the county as well.

He wondered if the Pupils had ever used those drugs on him before, but he decided he didn’t want to know. Judging by their shifty behaviour and the word salad they deployed as they attempted to explain the process and the workings of the “weather” James was catching he sort of already had an answer.

Olive rested her head on her front paws and let out a slight sigh. Her ears moved towards the sounds around her, but she couldn’t keep her eyes off of the nine swans in the lake.

When the conversation amongst the Pupils fell silent they followed her gaze towards the water. The lake showed its natural teal and turquoise hues again and it appeared to be glistening at last.

The lone swan Will had been feeding anytime he had been fishing, before Harold had feasted upon it, had finally found a suitable partner. They had nested in the backyard of the lake house, after Jonathan had been offering them the more fancy bird food. Many of Lucille’s old birds had migrated with the Runner from the Bellevue to the lake house. They lived a life of complete and utter freedom, but came by often to catch a easy meal.

The girls from the kitchen occasionally came outside with platters of hamburgers. Vanessa, Marith, Juliette and Amber kept offering their help, but they wouldn’t take it.

The Pupils tried to enjoy their dinner in peace, but any time a brief silence would wash over the group Jonathan would find a way to force a story about Rome, Budapest or Jerusalem onto anyone that would listen to it for a second or third time. He had become quite skilled at making a segue from a regular conversation into something he had seen in Europe.

Marith felt a little strap tighten around her heart as she thought of the great time Jonathan and Anica must have had in Europe. She wanted that for Nate and herself as well, but they had been otherwise engaged.

The four of them had been living in the Pine mansion for the past six months, rebuilding their lives.

Nate and Nick had worked on their relationship as brothers, which had an absolute priority over travelling around the globe. They had even gone to therapy in Sound Lake a few times.

Marith had mostly become a caregiver for her pregnant sister. After the birth, which had been almost too magical and easy, she had taken on the role of a grandparent. And so had Nick and Nate, on occasion. Witnessing their fatherly instincts kick in with a baby in the house had made Marith unreasonably happy.

Their mother, however, hadn’t been there for any of it, not for Gene’s funeral, not for the birth of Bart and not for Lieke’s graduation. Marith suspected that Lieke had never told her what had been going on and that was probably for the best. How could you explain these things to someone who hadn’t been there to witness any of it?

Marith was secretly happy for Lieke. She would have had to endure unconstructive comments about her baby and her physique anyway. Nobody needed or deserved that. Especially not her beautiful, little sister. She couldn’t use that kind of stress and strain in such an amazing period of her life.

Tales were told, jokes were made, pictures were taken, glances were exchanged and eyes were rolled. Occasionally laughter billowed across the group. That laughter became louder and louder as the alcohol flowed copiously and the evening started to set in.

The story of how Vanessa, William and Brad had created an energy field to capture Samuel’s soul and force it into a pipeline that the Watchmakers had made sure led straight into the Empty was being recounted.

This tale tended to be told slightly different each time, depending on the level of intoxication of the narrator, but the essence was always the same. The Pupils had fulfilled their divine destiny by sending Samuel back to his own personal hell.

Marith smirked at Brad’s boisterous ways. He was getting to the part where Charlotte, Lieke and the Pupils had been waiting for Jonathan and Marith to return from the Inbetween.

“And then finally, after the most intense moments of our lives, Vanessa saw their souls return and we knew everything was going to be alright!” Brad finished, spilling some beer.

“If you knew everything was going to be alright then why were you crying?” Pedro wondered.

More laughter arose from the group.

“I am a sensitive guy, alright?” Brad countered, before he sat down.

Marith laughed out loud, which was a rarity.

An secretly made a picture of the group at exactly the right moment. Lieke was the only one to notice. She told him to send it to her with a simple hand gesture. An nodded and did as she ordered.

Marith had gotten nothing but praise and respect in the previous months, for the way she handled Christmas Eve. She reluctantly let people adore her and the outcome of their battle with Samuel.

Deep down inside however, she felt inadequate. After careful consideration she had come to the conclusion that if Samuel hadn’t wanted to be put away, in the Empty, he would still be here. She would have lost. He would have probably let her live - she knew him that well by now - but he would still be around.

The thought of something bigger than Samuel, a creature far more powerful than him, probably asleep like he was himself, being out there send shivers down her spine.

Marith had learned that there was a darkness darker than the darkest darkness any human being could imagine. She also knew that somewhere in the Universe there was a lightness lighter than the lightest lightness any living creature could fathom. That fated day, six months ago, Marith had experienced both.

The Fuckening, as the local teenagers had started to call it, had made her realize that sometimes trauma is just trauma. More often than not there is no silver lining. Having to pretend that there is an upside to something horrible happening is the biggest trash Marith had ever heard. Society expecting victims to embrace the positives of trauma is as toxic as forcing introverted children to socialize, as harmful as considering cheating “a mistake” - while everyone knows it is a conscious decision on the part of the cheater - and as painful as having to forgive people who did horrible things.

Marith wasn’t big on forgiveness in general and she saw that as a strength. She didn’t waste much energy on grudges either. She just didn’t mess with the things and the people that had taken away her peace at some point in her life.

“We’re sorry for your loss,” was what the Mage had heard about a million times in the last few months.

Marith was indifferent about her loss and unsure of how to respond. Her parents had a talent for bringing out the worst in people, of damaging them and then blaming their victims for being damaged.

There had been no tears, there was no sadness. All that she experienced was a dull stillness. The Mountain Dew had zero effect on the Pupils, but Marith couldn’t grieve her father’s death. The abuse had been her Dew.

A good person would be sad, devastated even, and a healthy person would mourn him, but Marith was neither a good person nor mentally healthy, so she just trotted on through life like she had always done. Only this time she had Nate by her side… and the emptiness, of course.

The emptiness that Marith carried was her narcotic. Without it she would have to feel the full weight of her past. The emptiness had become an unhealthy coping mechanism that served her better than actual drugs. The best thing was that most people didn’t know how she did it and the ones that did know were doing the same thing. It seemed to be a flawless system.

The emptiness inside the Pupils was a layer of cushions, a soft wall between them and the cold, hard, shitty reality of being alive.

There was a little black orb, filled with nothingness, hovering somewhere in between both halves of Marith’s brain. It was always there, buzzing, emanating a certain energy, that she couldn’t block out or get rid of.

It, whatever it was, wasn’t an entity, it usually wasn’t watching her and it wasn’t actively bothering her either. It was just there, like an unwanted guest in her house, that had died two weeks earlier and was now just stinking up the place. There was no point in a burial. It would disappear deeper into the dungeons of her mind, but the issue would still be there, except now it would be unsupervised. She had told herself that by keeping it on the surface she would be able to keep an eye on it. She could keep the illusion of control alive that way.

She carried the orb in her head, but it weighed heavy on her shoulders. The Empty had gotten a hold on her, because it could. Her trauma’s had opened the door for the little black orb to float right in.

She had been ripped out of the Empty by Nate and Watchmaker, but the Empty had not been extracted from her. There was a void residing in her, a spiritual emptiness, that, as of yet, she hadn’t been able to fill.

The Sun was slowly creeping towards the horizon. Vanessa put a pile of blankets on one of the tree trunks. An fired up the many garden torches they had stuck between the pebbles of the shoreline with one single grandiose gesture.

Jonathan had taken several strings of multi-coloured Christmas lights from the convenience store and decorated the house with it after he and Vanessa had renovated the outsides completely.

William switched the electricity on, without lifting a finger. Their surroundings bathed in the glow of the merry bulbs. Keymaker looked proud. His son’s talent was developing rapidly and in interesting ways.

Marith looked out over the calm, glistening water and the little waves that softly brushed the shoreline. She imagined each of those waves being a year of the unnaturally long life she likely still had ahead of her.

Her mind involuntarily brought her back to what Samuel had told her before his death. His insidious, manipulative words swirled through her head, as they had done for months. To this day she wasn’t exactly sure what had and had not been true. She knew there was truth to at least some of it.

Being confined to the Empty doesn’t stop me from fulfilling my purpose, the Kid had whispered.

Which is what exactly? Marith had asked defiantly.

I change the world in acceptable dosages, so that nobody will understand what is happening or where things are going. The people that complain, will be silenced, because they differ from the group. People will blame each other and in the end nobody, except maybe some Pupils, will resist me. The mobs are blaming and fighting each other, while I suck on their madness and remain firmly in the saddle that I have constructed for myself.

She knew he was right about that. The greatest weapon was not a bomb or a gun. It was the control of information. To control the world’s information was to control all the minds inside of it.

An uneasy feeling tugged at her and then it yanked. A sensation as if she leaned back beyond the tipping point on the legs of one of those cold, hard school chairs pulled at her stomach.

Sounds were sucked away from her, as if she was drifting through a vacuum. The forests, the animals and the other Pupils didn’t produce any waves, or at least not waves that reached Marith’s ears.

She heard no rustling or creaking coming from the walls of trees, no sizzling from any of the barbecues, no muffled rumblings of cutlery and china from indoors, no crunching pebbles under footsteps.

It was as if she was in a padded room with plugs jammed deep into her ears.

Everything that was vague became sharp and anything that was sharp before now faded to the background.

She felt watched, but she also knew that she shouldn’t move. Getting up to run away, seemed like the last thing she would ever do.

In one smooth, but panicked, movement she pulled the timepiece from a pocket in her hoody and flicked it open. She looked at the face of the clock and her heart skipped a few beats. The colourful, swirling dust clouds that were supposed to hover above it had made place for pale, lacklustre shards of mist.

Was nobody else noticing this?

She looked up at Nate. Her mouth moved, nothing came out.

The silence got louder and louder and louder until it was broken by the clapping of four big wings. The eagles made a nose dive behind the campfire and soared over the barbecues. Kyle tossed chunks of raw meat at them with barbecue tongs. They fished the chicken out of the air with ease.

Marith breathed in abruptly and looked up to stare into Nate’s eyes, searching for hers. “Are you here?”

“I am back,” Marith whispered with a little nod.

Nate stroked her hair and then rubbed her back, which is something he did when he was worried.

The Kid’s absence marked his presence. His energy continued to rummage through her mind.

She shivered and Nate folded one of the blankets that had been handed out around her.

“Did it happen again?” He whispered after some hesitation, tightly wrapping an arm around her.

“Yeah,” Marith whispered back, her mouth dry.

He knew about the turmoil that went on inside of her, even though he couldn’t fathom the extend of it. He knew he couldn’t reach her anymore, not like he used to be able to, but he did know that he would forever be there for her as best as he could.

He kissed her temple and stared into the fire with her, while the others kept talking and joking amongst themselves. Nobody seemed to have noticed Marith’s episode, which was a good thing. The couple wasn’t quite able to explain those yet.

Anica was quiet. She had been quiet most of the afternoon and into the evening that hadn’t changed. Marith figured it must be quite overwhelming to be on Earth when she was used to being in the Clock. She knew what an overstimulated brain felt like more than anyone, so she didn’t think too much about it.

“What do you predict?” Pedro asked Anica.

“A Great Awakening,” she answered dreamily, but without hesitation.

“What does that mean?” Charlotte wondered.

“That young people all over the planet will wake up to fight the systems that are in place. They will have special talents like us and they will demand freedom. Now that the Kid is put away there is space for others like us to stand up and be empowered. There will still be Chains, but I can see them grow much bigger than the one we have here.”

“Interesting,” Charlotte said, “the nymphs alluded to that as well.”

“Those were lying, scheming monsters,” An almost whispered.

“Even the devil mixes in a little bit of truth with all the lies,” Jonathan brought in.

“Then that means you guys are going to find a bunch of new Pupils,” Lieke started, softly rocking her sleeping baby in her arms.

Marith knew exactly where this was going. Behind closed doors they had been having this conversation for the past few months at least once a week.

Kyle and Brad started snickering. Amber and Meriyem just nodded.

“Do you guys think I could be one of them?” She wondered.

“Let’s go to the cliff,” James said, with a nod towards the giant, looming rock to his left, now almost covered in the shadows of the night. “I’ll toss you off like a stuffed animal.”

“We don’t even know if she is one!” Marith hissed at him.

“The Mailbox won’t open if you’re not one of us,” Vanessa spoke seriously, to deter both Lieke and Charlotte from whatever they were thinking about.

“But the fact that Marith was able to save Bart and myself by using the Inbetween proves it right? That I am one of you?”

Nate smiled at her warmly. “All of this… everything that has happened and that is still happening, is happening for the first time ever, as far as we know. Everything we attempt to do is an experiment. I am not comfortable taking that risk just yet. Are you?” He asked Lieke.

Lieke swallowed and stroked the modest wisp of hair on Bart’s head. “I guess not, not now,” she answered, being very aware of the fact that she was a mother.

The conversation continued, but Marith pushed it to the background. She had heard it all before, a million times, to be exact. The teenagers didn’t understand what they were excited about, they had no clue what was waiting for them after their Rebirth.

The Mage gazed through the flames, her eyes resting on Anica sitting on a log on the opposite side of the horseshoe the Runners had shaped around the campfire. Her eyes followed Anica’s towards the moonlight dancing on the calm waves of the lake. The evening was starting to become chilly. The swans had left the water and were guiding their family back to the nest, next to the shed where Vanessa and Jonathan kept the firewood.

Nate sat down next to her, holding two hamburgers, each neatly folded into a napkin. Marith knew one of the girls in the kitchen had done that for him. She politely took one of the burgers and held it in her lap. Across the fire Anica did the same, as Jonathan joined her on the log again.

A slight breeze travelled across the water to gently slap the Pupils in the face. The wind carried the sweet lightness of spring, the warm promises of a summer filled with love and friendship and a hint of something devilish that the Runners and the Mages couldn’t quite process.

Nate abruptly stopped chewing and straightened his back with a jerk. He breathed in loudly through his nose, even though he was resisting doing so. Marith could feel him shivering right next to her. Something unholy took over his nervous system, even if for a few fractions of a second.

She knew that something similar had likely just happened to Kyle, Charlotte, Amber, Lisa, Theresa, Meriyem and many unknowing human beings across the planet.

The young Oracle put down her dinner and shifted uncomfortably on the dead tree underneath her. Just like Nate she perked herself up and breathed in uncomfortably.

Marith imagined each and every possibility under the Sun rushing through the wiring of Anica’s brain at once. Any vision, prophecy or hunch that was perceived by both Rebirthed and non-Rebirthed Prophets on Earth squeezed themselves through her mind, like a sandwich was being slammed through a keyhole.

The potency of the information she was receiving would be deadly to anyone that wasn’t Oracle.

Anica was instantly reminded of why she usually only kept the company of the Watchmakers, in the Clock in the Sky. Up there her senses were shielded and the divinations were filtered. No vision or prophecy could overwhelm her. On Earth she was exposed, forever taking the risk of a seizure being triggered inside of her.

“What is it?” Jonathan whispered.

He won’t be gone for long, will he? Oracle asked Marith and only Marith, while simultaneously answering Jonathan with a sweet and polite “nothing”.

She wove her fingers through his, while shifting her gaze towards the pale Mage.

Marith stared back at her from across the sea of dancing flames.

No, she answered, he won’t be.