Several of the elders, led by John, began to circle off to the side. It didn't take my senses to feel the animosity radiating from them. Soon several circles formed as I walked through the crowd hand-in-hand with Everett, flanked by the Winters. Survivors from all the generations backed away from us.
For fifteen tense minutes, I stood near the bonfire with the Winters as night fell, trying not to discuss the obvious. Then a small group from the generations below mine approached us.
"Sadie?" one of them, Cassie, said. She was in the youngest generation and had stopped aging at about sixteen. "Can you tell us stories?" She nodded to the two girls and one boy behind her.
Noah walked up behind them. We hadn't spoken yet. He watched me carefully, waiting to see what I would say, how far I would take this. Would I tell the youngest of them what I had seen in the world outside? Would I tempt them more than I already had, alienate the elders more than I had?
He knew what I knew. The message of Anthony's speech would resonate most with the youngest members of my family, the ones who had not experienced centuries of life in our family, who were not content with isolation. I couldn't bring myself to be upset that this was the case—hadn't I wanted to spark their curiosity? But I was worried. None of them had practiced trying to control their powers the way I had for years before I left. They hadn't read thirty-five thousand books or spent decades learning and preparing to live among humans. If any of them walked away from the family, they would be more frighteningly unprepared than even I was. How would they get along then in a culture they could never understand? In a wholly different world? It would be disastrous.
I suddenly wondered what I was doing, why I was here, and why I had come back at all. I wanted my whole family to have the opportunities I had given myself, but at what price? I wasn't trying to destroy the family my elders had created; that had never been my intent. But I did not understand why my family had isolated themselves. Maybe the elders had no choice. Maybe my family needed to stay where it was and as it was to stay safe. I realized only then that I had always assumed isolation was about naivete, but what if it was about more than that? What if they simply couldn't protect their family in a world they knew nothing about? Or what if there was more, a reason for being inside these walls I could never have imagined?
But what if it were possible for my family to transition to living in the real world? They wouldn't be able to do it alone. Maybe I'd been called back to my family so that I could help them. Maybe this was my purpose. I realized this could be God's work for me to do here.
Before I could answer Cassie, John intervened. He had been watching the interaction carefully. "Cassie!" he bellowed across the square. "Stay away from Sadie and her heathen friends!"
Anthony snapped his head around. "Heathens?" he screamed, overreacting. Patrick and Mark jumped to attention and faced John, their gazes menacing in the flickering firelight. Adelaide looked at me and then turned to face John with her family. Ginny and Everett stared at me, panicked. "We are not heathens, you self-righteous son of a bitch," he hissed.
"Anthony, don't do this," I pleaded. I could hear his thoughts, feel his outrage. I suddenly saw how disastrously—how violently—this could go. I looked at Everett in a panic. He gripped my hand tightly.
Anthony ignored me and walked toward John. Noah grabbed the young girls and backed away until they all stood with the elders. Soon they were all on one side and we were on the other, staring each other down.
"Godless and depraved home wreckers, that's what you are! Did you come here just to destroy my family for sport?" John spat.
"We came here for all the reasons I said," Anthony defended. "You cannot ignore the world out there. There are six billion humans on this earth. For every one of you there are four million people that your God created. There is art. There is love. It is time to see it. If you loved your family, you would let them go."
"We stay here!" John screamed. "That is a part of being this family. We stay here! Together!"
"Tyrant!" Anthony growled, charging at John's chest.
"Barbarian!" John roared.
I couldn't stand still. I launched myself into the fight, and Everett followed. He pushed his father backward, but I was no match for John.
"Andrew, help me!" I yelled, pushing my weight against John. Andrew hesitated, horror in his eyes, and he didn't move. None of the elders did. "Noah! Anyone!" No one came to my aid. "Stop this!" I screamed.
"These vile people!" John screamed, his mouth foaming. "Coming into our home and insulting our family!"
"Your home? This is a prison!" Anthony seethed. I instantly felt terrible. I had called it that myself. "You've trapped your family here for long enough. If they want to go, you should let them! You cannot protect them forever!"
"We can! We will!" John snapped back.
Sadie, make it stop, Ginny pleaded in her mind.
Trying, I said.
Anthony and John continued to throw insults back and forth at each other.
"You ridiculous child of Lucifer!" John barked.
"Bible-beating despot!" Anthony roared.
"Stop!" I screamed as loud as I could manage. "Stop fighting! Listen to me! I know better than anyone how hard it is to be loyal to a family like this and be part of a world like that," I said, throwing my hands in the direction of the city gates. "But we don't need to tell the Winters how to live their lives and they don't need to tell us how to live ours," I said, as forcefully as I could. "The last thing outcasts like us need is a rivalry. Surely we can find a way to understand each other."
"Don't lie, Sadie," Patrick yelled. "You can't count yourself as one of them. You're the only one who has seen the error of their ways!" This definitely did not help my family's view of me.
"I am a child of both worlds," I said. "We can find a way to reconcile our beliefs."
"I'm sorry, Sadie," Anthony said. "We cannot condone what's happening here. We're leaving," he said roughly. "Now."
"Good riddance!" John yelled to a chorus of support.
"No!" I cried.
"Let them go, Sadie," John spat.
"You are welcome to come with us, Sadie. We would welcome you as a member of our family," Anthony said. These were the kindest words he had ever spoken to me.
"If you go with them," John warned, "you will be dead in our eyes." His words were a crushing blow. I looked to Andrew, who wouldn't meet my gaze. Lizzie was crying into his shoulder. "You may have left us once and received forgiveness, but we will not extend the favor again."
"Please don't make me choose," I said. I had left my family once, and that had been nearly impossible. The last few days of knowing they had not forgotten me meant the world to me.
But in those same short days I had begun to feel so normal among the Winters, a real family. And Everett! Every bit of me ached at the memory of his touch, of that kiss. How could I stay?
I was dancing on the drawn line in the sand, watching the Capulets and Montagues staring each other down.
I looked at Everett, fearing I was about to lose him. Me, his fair Juliet. He, my Romeo.
"Decide, Sadie," Anthony snapped.
I hesitated.
Anthony snarled. My hesitation was enough to alienate him.
Everett took a step toward me, but Anthony and Patrick grabbed him, and without another word, the Winters ran away.
I'm so sorry, I heard Ginny say. I love you, Sadie. We all love you. Find a way to come back to us.
I watched them bound over the city walls out of my sight and into the darkness.
I fell to the ground and pounded my fists into the dirt. I was so close to the fire that its heat burned my skin. "No!" I screamed. "No! No! No!"
Lizzie emerged from the crowd and came to my side. Hannah and Sarah were on her heels. "Andrew, take care of that," she said gesturing to the fire. The huge bonfire was out in an instant, and I felt the cool air take its place. I couldn't move. My knees and forehead were pressed into the dirt. I couldn't lift myself from this position.
Lizzie tried to lift me up, but I fought her. I didn't want to look at the family of Survivors standing there in the darkness, the glowing green eyes missing from the pack. I didn't want it to be real, so I stayed down.
"Sadie," John said. I hated him. "You made the right choice. Your place is with your family. You have been following Satan for too long. But now you are home. You have proved your loyalty to God and to this family," he cried, his voice excited and proud.
I finally stood up, my face and hands and legs covered in dirt. "You know nothing about what I've been following. You know nothing about me!" I charged. If John were ever proud of me, I had done something truly wrong. "You think you've done right by driving them out of here? You think you have saved us? You've just alienated these youths who want to go even more now, shown them that you can't even make peace with those like us from the outside. You've shown them you are everything they were afraid you were, and so now they'll want to go. And they will leave, John, just like I left. We could have had allies out there, but now you've run them off!"
John grabbed my shoulder. "Take that back, child! Don't you tell me that my family will fall apart!" I fought him off.
"Your friends left us, too, Sadie. Aren't they to blame?" Catherine argued, coming to John's side.
But a dark smile grew on John's face. "Oh, I get it now," he laughed cruelly, his tension draining. "Don't you see, Catherine? They didn't leave us," he smirked. "They left her."
I shot my arm directly at his throat and picked him up off the ground, stronger, then, than I had ever been. "You've ruined everything," I hissed as he squirmed in my grasp. I threw him forcefully to the ground.
I dug the Range Rover keys out of my pocket and threw them on the ground and looked at the youngest generations. "There's a car for you parked on the road. There are books in it. You want to learn about the world, that's a good place to start," I fumed. "I'm sorry, Lizzie," I managed to say.
Before I knew it, I was running.
It was too late to join the Winters. My hesitation had turned Anthony against me. But I couldn't stay here anymore.
This morning I had two families, and now I had none.
I ran at my full speed through the trees and across the mountains, the underbrush tearing at my skin, ripping violently at my clothes. I ran until I hit the glassy, black water of Swan Lake. I left myself sink into its icy depths. I wanted so badly to be released from this body and from this life.
I might never see Everett again. The thought cut at me like razors. I had waited almost a century and a half to feel love and in less than twenty-four hours of having it, it was already lost.
I couldn't get the look on his face as Anthony and Patrick dragged him away from me out of my mind. It cut at me, too.
I felt the weight of the water pressing in on me. I breathed it in through my nose and mouth until I puked it back up in the water. And I prayed—literally prayed—to drown.
I closed my eyes and thought of Romeo and Juliet. At least they got to die at the end.