The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

Unraveled, pt. 1

I had to find him. He had to be our point of origin, and as I suspected when I began this hunt, he'd have the answers.

But first I had to speak with Lizzie. She had to talk. I'd been thinking back to the conversation I'd had with Hannah in Bigfork. She said she only had visions about the Survivors, and so in Salem she had them about the fourteen would-be Survivors and about her father (and about the Bloods, but I wasn't sure how this fit in). But she had them about her father, and no other adults from Salem. Wouldn't that mean that Raven wasn't in Salem, as I'd deduced? Or if he had been, that Hannah would have seen him in her visions?

Or it meant that Raven was Hannah's father, which was a haunting conclusion I didn't want to draw.

When we got to Seattle, we called the various parts of our scattered troop and asked them to assemble in the Survivors' City. We met at the gates at dawn, a week into May. As patches of snow at the middle elevations began to give way to the ground underneath, I realized we were nearing, maybe even within, our original window for when the war would take place. How close were we?

"Where's Parker?" Valentin asked when Mark and I arrived by ourselves. I looked at Mark, whose original disappointment and betrayal had boiled into anger and resentment on the flight, and asked him to tell the story. He obliged.

Hannah and Sarah were waiting for us, but Lizzie was nowhere in sight. "Did you find my father?" the youngest elder asked me.

"No," I said.

"Did you find what killed him, then?" she asked, running to keep pace with me as I walked to the square.

I sighed. "Not yet, but I'm close."

"We should leave her be, I think," Sarah said to Hannah, her hands on Hannah's shoulders.

I turned to look at her, and Hannah's dejected expression made me feel bad. She had been such an ally. I owed her more than this. "Wait," I said to them as they walked the other way. "Hannah, you can help."

"I'll do anything," she said.

"What was your family name in Salem?"

"Raven," she answered.

I dropped my head. "Thank you," I said, and turned on my heels. There was only one thing to do. I went straight to Andrew's house and knocked on the door.

"Daughter Sadie?" he greeted me with a question mark.

"I need to talk to her. You know that what she has to say is valuable. I need her help, Andrew. Now. She'll know where to find me," I said.

He kissed my forehead and closed the door.

I walked into the forest and sat against the tree I'd first started hiding behind when I was sixteen years old, 129 years before. I thought of the things I'd carved into it, the questions I'd asked, hoping someone would answer if I made them visible. I thought of the way Noah would follow and sear off the bark, erasing my heretical questions, absolving me of my sins. As early morning brightened into day that faded into night, I thought about how I missed him. Lizzie kept me waiting, so had plenty of time to do so.

            She knew this was my refuge. She respected my privacy in this place, and never came looking for me here. But on this day, finally she did. Seeing her there, after we'd been so jarringly distant from one another, I felt like we were separated by a two-foot-thick wall of glass: doomed only to look at one another but never to connect again.

            I could tell her mind and heart were torn over her failure to help me. She tasted regret on her tongue. But why? She could change it, if only she would.

            "Did you find what you were looking for?" she asked. I saw in her mind a flash of her conversation with Andrew. We are in dangerous times, Lizzie. Now is not the time to hold grudges. Now is the time to seek solace in the ones you love. Go to her. She needs you, he'd said. It was only on his urging that she had come at all. Had he not intervened, how long would she have continued in this charade?

"I found some of the pieces of an unfinished puzzle," I said stiffly. "But did I find a way to destroy our kind? A way to defend ourselves? Or even the person or thing who has this information, which is so crucial to the protection of this family? No. I didn't find that." Guilt emanated from her. I didn't care. I laid in on thick because I was sure she had the answers. She had kept me out of her mind, out of her past for a reason.

And, even now, she said nothing.

"Lizzie, I need to tell you what we did find, though, and I need you to hear me. There were at least two people in two different countries who called me a Survivor. There were symbols I can't explain or translate. There were dead people, stashed away in a hidden town that our magic unlocked. And people who spoke of an old Survivor, a kind of monster who had maimed or killed or imprisoned them or those they loved," I explained.

She was rocking back and forth uneasily.

"They called him Raven," I said, quietly.

            She froze.

            "You know him?" I asked.

            "I know no monsters," she said coldly.

            "You aren't going to tell me anything?" I asked. She didn't respond. "Fine. Then I'll tell you what I think. I think Raven was Hannah's father. I think he made us what we are, or made the elders that way, and then you all created the rest of us. I think you knew he was evil, you knew you shouldn't trust him, but you were so scared of becoming a witch that you'd listen to anyone who didn't want to hang you for your crimes. I'm even going to guess you did something terrible, likely for him, and the guilt weighing on you is why you won't tell me what you know. I understand that you're afraid, Lizzie. Whatever he bid you to do is not your fault. But we are in trouble now, and I need your help to get to him."

            Infuriatingly, she remained still.

            "I went to Salem," I said. She looked up, her eyes wide, shocked to learn it was still there. "It's not the same as it was then, but parts survived. I went to the dungeons. I saw where they kept you. I heard how terrible it was." I watched her fingernails dig into her skin. "I can't imagine what it was like, but I can imagine that you must have some resentment toward Hannah's father. From what I've read, he may have been the cause of the whole witch hunt. The reason for the witch trials. The instigator of what history has decided was the hysteria of misguided teenage girls. He let all of you take the fall. He wasn't there with you in the dungeon, was he? He didn't care what happened to you," I said. I felt guilty for coming on so strong, but I would do anything to get her to talk.

            It worked.