Last Day of Love

Last Day of Love: Part 7 of 8

When I arrive they are waiting, sitting around a perfect campfire. They're drinking nettle tea from small tin mugs. The night is black and frigid.

Though they don't acknowledge my presence, they must sense me, because slowly and in unison they begin to clap. I feel their breath focus in on me as the power of their shared inhalation lifts me off the ground.

I hover ten, then twenty feet above the campfire and try not to think of Shiloh. The exaltation is undeserved, out of place. My family stands and applauds. The unprecedented joy on their faces renders them indistinguishable in the firelight. In their eyes glistens a pride I've never seen before.

I watch my shadow on the ground beside the fire. The control of my aunts' and uncles' breaths is infinitely more precise than mine. I envy and hate them.

They exhale and lower me softly to the ground. My boots touch earth and the weight of my body returns. My eyelids are too heavy for me to look at anyone.

Albion motions for the others to sit down and comes to stand beside me. He and I are the same height, but tonight he towers over me.

"Your Passage was successful," he says.

It is not a question.

"You feel lighter now," he tells me. "Freer."

I am heavier, enslaved.

"You are confident of your role and identity in the universe."

I've never been more lost or alone.

"You have questions."

Now I meet his eyes. "Yes."

"Take your time. You may ask anything. Our secrets are yours."

I set my backpack down. It sags with gloomy lightness. I reach inside my coat and pull out the first card, which I lay on the ground before the fire.

"I want to know the significance of the number six."

Albion nods. "When our forefather-"

"Leander," I say. I'm named after him. He's the original Seedbearer, the ancestor from whom we all descend.

"-when Leander escaped the confines of Atlantis," Albion continues, "he made landfall in the Waking World and sired six children with six women. These children are the original six Seedbearers. They found each other after Leander's death and vowed to carry the lessons of Atlantis into perpetuity. From that moment on, there have always been six living Seedbearers, and there must always be six living Seedbearers. It is essential to our strength."

I look at him, then across the fire at my two aunts and two uncles. Chora, Starling, Critias, Albion . . . and me. That's only five. "Someone is missing," I say.

I expect them to mock me or change the subject, but things are different than they were yesterday.

"His name is Solon." Albion's jaw tightens. "He is a disgrace and was banished."

So this is the last one Albion said I am not like.

"What did he do?" I ask.

"It was what he would not do that exiled him," Chora says.

Albion waves her off. "He went through the same Passage that you completed, that all of us completed. But Solon could never truly free himself. A passion enslaved him, and probably still does."

My face reddens. "Where is he now?"

Albion looks far to the west, as if his gaze could see across an ocean. "Do not fear him; he is no threat. His is a meaningless life, but he must live it to ensure our meaningful ones. Do you understand?"

"I think so." In the hazy way I have come to understand so much about my family, I have a sense of how each Seedbearer is linked inextricably to the others. Our breath connects us. We live as one organism-which means that we die as one, as well. "If one of us dies-"

Albion nods. "All of us die."

"How long has Solon been gone?" I ask.

"We have lived almost seventy-five years without him. His punishment is permanent, his exile absolute."

"But he won't die?"

My aunts laugh their cruel laughs.

"He does not have the means," Albion says. "Do you understand?"

My hands are stiff when I draw the second card from the envelope. My aunts and uncles nod as I place it on the ground. The black crown and the tombstone look ghostly in the dancing firelight.

"Yes," Albion says. "Power and death derive from breath."

I wait for him to continue.

"Many times you have seen us employ the Zephyr-the name for the power of our collective breath. It is our weapon and our shield. It can influence the tides, the weather. It is a power unmatched in this world. You have it in you, too." He raises an eyebrow. "You may have experimented with it?"

I repress thoughts of Shiloh. "I have."

"You will improve. The Zephyr derived from Leander. It intertwines our lives. It is also our weakness. Only one substance can kill us, but a single breath of it is death. This poison is a rare strain of the plant known as artemisia. It killed Leander and each of the eleven Seedbearers who have died-always voluntarily, always in the first moment of a new and stronger Seedbearer's life."

"Is that how my mother died?" I ask.

My family's shared glances answer yes, but I can't let myself care. "Where do you get artemisia?"

"We possess the only remaining quantity in the Waking World," says Chora. She holds up a small metal chest. I've seen it before. It is one of five orichalcum relics salvaged before the flood. As her fingers trace the clasp, Albion walks over to her and places his hands on hers.

"Simply know that it is here, Ander, and well protected. Your life is never in danger as long as this chest remains with us."

"If it's so deadly, why not destroy it?" I say. "Why do we keep it?"

"We keep it to help one Seedbearer pass out of this world when a new and stronger one enters-like you. We keep it because we may perhaps one day be forced to choose death over life. But enough poisonous talk. There is another card."

COPYRIGHT: Lauren Kate. All Rights Reserved.