Beautiful Chaos(128)

I heard a sound like a massive stone door opening for the first time in a century, or an enormous stone being pushed out of the mouth of a cave.

It was water.

Slowly coming up, returning to the field from whatever old pump or well the hose was attached to.

I pushed harder. Water started to run through the dirt in rivulets. As it ran down the dry trenches in the field, it created tiny rivers that formed small rivers, which formed decent-sized rivers that I knew would eventually flood the path entirely, to form even bigger ones as far as I could see.

An endless river.

I ran fast as I could. I watched the spokes of the wheel turn faster, pumping the water harder, until the wheel was moving so fast that it looked like a blur. The force of the water was so strong that the irrigation hose split open like the back of a gutted snake. There was water everywhere. The dirt was turning to mud beneath my feet, and I was soaking wet. It was like I was riding a bike for the first time, like I was flying—doing something only I could do.

I stopped, out of breath.

The Wheel of Fate.

I was staring at it, rusty and bent and older than dirt. My Wheel of Fate, here in my hands. In my family’s old field.

I understood.

It was a test. My test. It was mine all along.

I thought about John, lying on my bedroom floor. The Lilum’s voice when she said he wasn’t the Crucible.

It’s me, right?

I’m the Crucible.

I’m the One Who Is Two.

It was always me.

I watched the field as it started to turn green and gold again. The heat subsided. The fat bee flew off into the sky, because the sky was real, not just a painted bedroom ceiling.

I heard the rumble of thunder, then the crack of lightning, and I stood in the middle of the field, holding the rusty wheel, as the rain began to fall.

The air hummed with magic, like the feeling I had the first time I stepped onto the beach at the Great Barrier—only a hundred times stronger. The sound was so loud my ears were ringing.

“Lilum?” I shouted with my Mortal voice, sounding small in the middle of the massive field. “I know you’re here. I can feel it.”

“I am.” The voice echoed down from above, from the blinding blue sky. I couldn’t see her, but she was there—not the Mrs. English Lilum, but the real Lilum. In her nameless, formless state, all around me.

I took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

“And?” It was a question.

I knew the answer now. “I know who I am. And what I have to do.”

“Who are you?” The question hung in the air.

I looked up toward the sky, letting the sun fall on my face. I said the words I had been dreading, since the moment they first whispered themselves in the deepest, darkest reach of my mind.

“I am the One Who Is Two.” I shouted it as loud as I could. “I have one soul in the Mortal world and one soul in the Otherworld.” My voice sounded different. Sure. “The One Who Is Two.”

I waited in the silence. It was a relief to finally say it, like a crushing weight had been lifted off my back. Like I had been holding up the burning blue sky.

“You are. There is no other.” There wasn’t a trace of emotion in her voice. “The price must be paid to forge the New Order.”

“I know.”

“It is a crucible. A severe test. You must be sure. By the solstice.”

I stood there for a long time. I felt the cool air and the stillness. I felt all the things I hadn’t felt since the Order had changed.

“If I do this, then everything goes back to the way it was. Lena will be okay without me. The Council of the Far Keep will leave Marian and Liv alone. Gatlin will stop drying up and cracking open.” I wasn’t asking. I was bargaining.

“Nothing is certain. But—” I stood there and waited for the Lilum to answer. “There will be order again. A New Order.”

If I was going to die, there was one more thing I wanted. “And Amma won’t have to pay whatever price she owes the bokor.”

“That bargain was made willingly. I cannot alter it.”

“I don’t care! Do it anyway!” But I knew she wouldn’t, even as I said it.

“There are always consequences.”

Like me. The Crucible.

I closed my eyes and thought about Lena and Amma and Link. Marian and my dad. My mom. All the people I loved.

All the people I’d lost.

The people I couldn’t risk losing.

There wasn’t a lot to decide. Not as much I thought there would be. I guess some decisions are made before you make them. I took a step and found my way back into the light. “Promise me.”

“It is binding. An oath. A promise, as you call it.”

That wasn’t good enough. “Say it.”

“Yes. I promise.” Then she said a word that wasn’t in any language or even any kind of sound I could understand. But the word itself sounded like thunder and lightning, and I understood the truth in it.

It was a promise.

“Then I’m sure.”

A second later, I was standing in Lilian English’s parlor again, while she lay collapsed in the flowered chair. I could hear my father’s voice coming from the other end of the phone in her hand.

“Hello? Hello—”