And Callista and Thad…were they still left behind? Were they even still alive?
“I…tried,” I said, voice cracking. I was not going to tear up. I was not going to let Anon see me even weaker than he already thought I was. Because I had tried. I had put everything I could into getting the Blade, to finishing what I hadn’t managed to do two lives ago. I’d lost everything for this stupid plan, and yet Anon, in all his forms, only looked at me like I was the worst disappointment of a person he’d ever met.
“When has trying ever been good enough for you, Mr. Asher?” he said. “You are not a try-er. You make things happen. You live when you should die and you fight when you should give up. So don’t tell me that you ‘tried’.”
He shook his head again. “I should blame myself. Perhaps I haven’t instilled in you how important you are. Perhaps you still have no idea that the entire world rests on your shoulders.”
His voice was getting lower, shoulders falling in resignation. I didn’t want to see him giving up like that because it meant that he was giving up on me. But what could I say in my defense? He had a reply for everything.
“What do I do?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” he said. “You do nothing.”
“But what about Callista and Thad?” I said. “And the Blade?”
“The Guardians have it now,” he replied. “There’s nothing you can do.”
He shoved his gloved hands into his pockets. “It’s over, Mr. Asher. It’s time for you to let this go.”
“But where do I go?” I couldn’t get my voice much higher than a whisper. What little I’d built up from the ashes of my lost life was now crashing around me again, like it’d been made of sand all along. I didn’t have anywhere to run even if I wanted to.
“It doesn’t matter,” Anon said, now with pale, bald skin again. “I can’t risk helping you anymore.”
He gave the already-destroyed phone a final crunch under his boot. “They won’t find you for a while. Stay away from phones and don’t check your email. Use the cash.”
As he said this, he was already starting to turn away from me. But his departure was all too soon. I still had no answers, no direction.
“I—I can’t do anything?” I said, desperate to hear something from him. If he was giving up on me, I knew I didn’t have any hope. I was like a ship approaching a harbor without a lighthouse, a pilot with no ground control.
He shrugged with a reluctant surrender.
“You can die,” he said, empty of any malice but still edged with ice. It was spoken just as simply as he might have told me the time.
“Come back in seventeen years,” he told me. “You’ll have a better chance then. I’ll be waiting.”
And with that, Anon pushed from the ground with the tips of his shoes and was carried over the trees.
He disappeared from view. I was left in the hush of the park. Empty. Alone.
I found a park bench, and sat.
Early morning walkers strolled by, but didn’t acknowledge me.
Pigeons fluttered down to the grass around my feet as if I wasn’t even there.
I was a statue bent over with my head resting in my palm, as the sun rose like a golden coin and threw my ever-shrinking shadow across the dewy grass.
A fountain trickled nearby, water splashing in a static noise.
A driver slammed on the brakes, tires squealing against pavement.
I lifted my hand to stare at it. What have I become? I thought.
With no one around—not that I truly cared anymore—I allowed my scales to slide out from under my skin, each poking forth slowly before overlapping with those beneath. They were like tiny panels, mirroring slightly so that I could see a misty reflection of my face, as if my hand was a shattered mirror. Would seeing those scales enmeshed with my own skin ever become natural? Would they ever allow me to go back to just being Michael Asher again?
My eyes shifted and I saw the only answer I needed in the irremovable silver ring around my finger. Even the birthmark I’d had all my life had been blotted away by a new one.
Such a fitting metaphor for who I was now. The old Michael had transformed. The snake had shed its skin for a new one.
But not entirely, I countered. Most of my real skin still remained just as most of my identity did. But I couldn’t deny it: enough of me had changed. My old life had withered away and fallen off just as my birthmark had. I was bound like a slave to this ring: a slave to the silver. This was my reality now.
As time wore on and the brightness of day began to shine against my face, I managed to lift myself from the bench and take to the air again. I could have turned in any direction and it would have been just as good as any other, because there was no real destination anymore. I didn’t have a family to rush and save. I didn’t have a Blade to go hunting for, or a letter from Anon to track down, or anything left at all for that matter.
But habits had a strange way of working in me, so I chose to fly toward the cliff where our trio had taken refuge so many times. To my surprise, as I neared it, my eyes caught the form of someone who’d already gotten there before me. I saw her hair flying from the heavy wind: Callista! I swooped down and landed hard on my feet.
“You made it!” I gasped, dashing over to her in disbelief. She dropped the sleeping bag and ran for me too, standing on the ends of her toes so I could wrap my arms around her. I crushed her to me so tightly that she was lifted from her feet, and I didn’t even try to hold back my tears of relief as they dried against the shoulder of her shirt.
“I thought for sure you were caught,” I said, still not letting her free. It wasn’t like I’d be able to, anyway—her arms were wrapped around my neck just as tightly.
“I knew you were alive or else I wouldn’t be here,” she said, voice muffled. But she was gasping small sounds of relief with tears at the same time. We both trembled, the terror of the ambush still racing through us. Her arms were scraped from the scuffle in the crypt, both of us covered with gashes that showed through lines of dried blood. But at least having her there made things better in a tiny increment.
Something was missing, though. I let her slide down to her feet, holding her by the sides of her arms, glancing around the precipice in case I was mistaken.
“Thad?” I said, not wanting to hear the answer. I felt Callista’s arms loosen.
“I—I saw him…taken away.” She had to force herself to say it. I wanted to disbelieve her but a single look at her face told me how certain she was. Her eyes were bloodshot, cheeks red and lower lip shaking.
My hands dropped from her sides. Not Thad.
She looked like she wanted to say something else but instead she turned and went back to the work she’d been doing. Two of the black sleeping bags were sitting near the end of the cliff, and she seized one of them and ripped it apart, shaking the stuffing out over the edge before tossing the material away. She continued with this on the other, as I sank to lean against the rocky wall. Not Thad. We needed Thad. He should have been there trying to regroup us, trying to convince Callista and I that things weren’t nearly as bad as they looked. How could he have been left behind? He was the strongest of all of us!
I guess I knew the answer to that. After all, he was Thad. He probably tried to take on our attackers at once so we could get away. It was just the type selfless thing Thad would do without hesitating.
Callista tossed the last sleeping bag over the edge, a strong wind sending the stuffing whirling like snow, the last of any evidence we’d been there. The air hit us in gusts like a storm was approaching, sending waves through my hair as I sat in the corner. Callista walked over to join me and we pressed close beside each other.