Phoenix

“I wanna drive,” Pete said. Jewel just looked at him. “Oh come on,” he said. Jewel ignored him. “Okay,” he said, “at least let me sit in the front seat.” It was my turn to stare him down. “No really,” he said. “There’s no reason why I have to sit in the back.” Jewel looked at me across the roof of the car. We were all wearing new clothes. Mine were itchy.

“He’s got a point,” she said, unlocking the car and popping the trunk. I stuffed the sacks of our old clothes in the trunk with the emergency kit Jewel always carried in there before I came around the passenger seat. Pete already sat with his feet up on the dash.

“Fine,” I said, opening the door and climbing in the back. “But at least scoot your chair forward a little bit.” Pete ignored me, so I jammed my knees into the back of his seat.

“Ow!” he said, “Sit behind Jewel.”

“Boys,” Jewel chided, adjusting the rearview mirror. “Let’s please act like we’re older than five.”

Jewel drove the car back to the freeway and we were soon headed south again. I thumbed through the hiking guide I’d picked up from the check-out line. Utah was really, really red. Every picture showed strange rock formations reaching for the sky. Every picture showed red landscapes with windswept verdantly green trees seeming to glow against the dirt.

Except that one, I thought, finally finding a page that showed a picture of pines. I turned the book sideways to see the panoramic picture. Then I shook my head. Quit getting distracted.

The radio fuzzed out and I looked up, staring out the window. I wasn’t sure where we were now, but where all the pictures of Utah looked red, if I had to pick a color for this landscape it would be yellow. Endless rolling hills of yellow stretched in all directions from the car, dotted by patches of snow. Boring, lifeless rolling hills.

“Are those antelope?” Pete said suddenly.

“Where?” I asked. Sure enough, off in the distance a herd grazed in the yellow hills between patches of snow. Well, at least the landscape wasn’t completely lifeless.

“Let’s play the alphabet game,” Pete said.

“Have you seen lots of cars or signs or stuff?” I asked. Pete shook his head as a car passed. Sure enough, there was an “A” on the license plate. He nabbed it.

The landscape became slightly more interesting and we were to “G” by the time we crossed over the bridge into Idaho.

“Nix,” Jewel said. She hadn’t participated in the slow game. “Have you decided where we’re going?”

I looked down at the forgotten guide book in my lap. One landscape looked much like the next. How was I supposed to pick? I flipped through a few pages and Pete called out “G”. That just wasn’t fair.

A photo in the book suddenly caught my eye, drawing my attention from the game. I read the caption. “Observation Point,” I said out loud. It was like getting hit with a bucket of cold water: my senses suddenly sharpened to such clarity that I was certain of what I was looking at. This was the landscape from my vision, the place where the Darkness had taken Light. This was the place Lucius had pressed into my mind as he was dying. I knew it like I knew my own name, with such obvious familiarity that there was no room for questioning.

“Okay,” Jewel said, “where’s that?”

“Zion National Park,” I said, tilting the book to read the caption.

“I think we need some lunch,” Jewel said. She pulled the car off the freeway.

“Where are we?” I asked. The vast emptiness we’d been traveling through was suddenly gone and we were driving through a city. Concrete barriers walled off the view of the city for the most part, but there were more cars and some buildings peeked up over the walls.

“Boise,” she said.

“Boy-see?” Pete laughed, copying the way she’d said it.

“Boh-see?” Jewel tried again, her green eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror.

“Whatever,” I said, shrugging. “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter.”

We found a Wendy’s and Pete ordered the whole menu.

“No wonder you’re so big,” I said, eyeing him as he wolfed down a burger. Somehow he managed to stuff a box of fries in too while he was eating that burger. “You eat like a—“

“Like a what?” he sneered, purposefully letting lettuce fall out of his mouth. I pressed my lips together and shook my head.

“We are not five,” Jewel reminded us. She finished her Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger and found a bank where she got a cash advance off of her credit card.

“Isn’t that super expensive?” I asked. Guilt wrapped me like a cloak. This whole trip was ridiculously expensive. If this didn’t work out the way I thought it would, Jewel was going to have a lot of explaining to do to her parents. And it was all my fault.

“I don’t want to hear about it,” she said, folding the bills and placing them in her wallet.

“But why?” I asked.

Jewel looked at her credit card as she slipped it into the wallet. “I don’t think we should use it anymore.” Her eyes came up to meet mine and though she smiled, there was uncertainty there. She didn’t know about this anymore than I did. We were 500 miles from home running toward uncertainty.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I—“

“Hey,” Pete said. “Dude. If she didn’t want to do it, she wouldn’t. Right, Jewel?”

She looked over at him and smiled. I’m pretty sure he didn’t see the uncertainty. He smiled back, just a big kid on an exciting adventure.

The day wore on and the miles piled up behind us. I had never before so wanted to escape a car, but we had to get to the red desert--Zion National Park it seemed--before our electronic trail was followed. We hit “z” on the alphabet game just as reached Salt Lake City. The freeway curved around the heart of the city, tall buildings reaching toward the sky around a central square. Around the city, the mountains loomed, like fingers on a cupping hand, and the city center sat in the palm of that hand.

“Oh crap,” Jewel suddenly said. My eyes met hers in the rearview mirror and I saw the red and blue lights of a highway patrol car coming up behind us. “Pull the knob on top of the seat,” Jewel instructed calmly as she pulled off, “and get in the trunk.”

“What?” I said. How could she be calm? I was freaking out.

“Get in the trunk,” she said again. “I have a bad feeling about this. I wasn’t speeding. Something is going on.”

Again with the calm. It was infuriating.

Suddenly I couldn’t obey fast enough. I felt a little like I was doing yoga as I pulled the knob and flipped the seat forward. I scrambled into the trunk over the top of the flipped forward seat and pulled the seat back until it clicked. I waited in the dark, smashed in with the water and extra clothes. Something poked into my back. The trunk smelled of exhaust and gasoline. The car rolled to a stop.

“License and registration please,” the officer said.

“Sure,” Jewel said. “Why did you stop me?”

“Just wait here,” the officer said, ignoring her question.

“What’s going on?” I heard Pete ask.

“I don’t know,” Jewel said to him. “Just act natural. Nothing is going on here. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

It seemed like we waited for eternity.

“Wasn’t there somebody else in the car?” the officer asked.

“No,” Jewel said. “Just us.” Her voice sounded perfectly normal.

“You have Washington plates and a Washington ID,” the officer said. “But you’re only sixteen. Are you traveling on your own?”

“No,” Jewel said. Her voice sounded sweet. I could tell she was smiling. “My brother goes to UVU. I’m visiting him.”

“Is that your brother?” the officer asked. He must have indicated Pete somehow.

“No,” Jewel replied smoothly. I had to hand it to her. If it had been me in the driver’s seat, I would have given us away by now. But Jewel just acted like this was perfectly normal. My heart hammered so hard in my throat, I felt like I was going to throw up. “He’s my cousin. He lives here, in West Jordan.”

“Do you have ID, son?” the officer asked.

“No,” Jewel answered for him. “He’s only fifteen.”

“I believe I asked him,” the officer said. “Do you have ID?”

“No,” Pete said. His voice sounded a little rough. “I’m fifteen.”

“You don’t have a school ID or anything?” the officer asked.

“I’m homeschooled,” Pete said. His voice didn’t sound right, but at least he was thinking on his feet.

“Okay miss,” the officer said to Jewel. “Be careful and have a nice day.”

The engine started again and I heard the blinker clicking behind me. The car lurched as it entered traffic again. I waited and waited. Every second seemed to last forever as I crouched in the dark. It seemed like an hour before the seat through which I had crawled opened again, opened from the front. I did my special yoga moves again, pulling my knee all the way up to my chin, and climbed back into the seat.

“What was that all about?” I asked, settling into the back seat.

“I don’t know,” Jewel said. Her eyes met mine in the rear view mirror. “It was weird, right?”

“My parents know I’m gone,” Pete said. “And they know that I went with Jewel. If I still had my phone, I’m sure it would be blowing up by now. Maybe they called the police.”

“But Pete,” I said, “How would they know to look for us here?”

“I don’t know,” Pete said. “Maybe they’re tracking the plates?”

“Well,” Jewel said, “We have to ditch the car.”

“What?” Pete said. “We still have a long way to go. How are we going to get to wherever it is?”

“I don’t know,” Jewel said. “But we just got pulled over for no reason. It’s gotta be something with the car, right?”

Jewel pulled the car off the freeway on an exit called “1300 South” and we sat in the parking lot of a scary looking building whose sign read “Nightmare on 13th.”

“Did I miss something?” I asked, gesturing toward the building. “Is it still Halloween?”

“I guess they take their spook alleys seriously in Utah,” Pete said.

“You’ve got to turn your phone back on,” Jewel said suddenly.

“What?” Pete said.

“We need to find a bus station,” Jewel said. “Turn on the phone.”

“No,” I said. “If he turns it on, we’re going to get tracked.”

“How else are we going to find the bust station?” Jewel asked.

“Drive around,” I said. Pete just looked at me. “What?”

“It’s a big city,” he said. “We will get lost.”

“Okay,” Jewel said finally. “Let’s just ask somebody.”

“We can’t do that,” I said. Pete nodded. Now Jewel was looking at both of us.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, trying to think of a reason. There really wasn’t a reason other than that the thought asking someone for directions kind of made my skin crawl. “We just can’t.”

“Why?” Jewel asked.

“I hate asking for directions,” Pete growled. Jewel gave him a flat-eyed glare.

“That’s stupid,” she said. “Look, we’ll just go to that 7-11 and ask for directions. I’ll do it.” She started the car and drove over to the convenience store.

“I’ve never been on a bus before,” I said as she was getting out of the car. Jewel gave me that flat-eyed glare, but she went into the store.

Pete looked at me. “Really?” he said. “Never?”

“Well, yeah, like a school bus, but not a real bus,” I said. “I mean, everybody’s been on a school bus, right? I don’t actually remember riding in one, but—“

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t either.”

We sat there in silence until Jewel came back with a map drawn on a napkin. She followed the directions as interpreted by Pete. After a few wrong turns and U-turns, we were parked outside a Greyhound Bus station.

“Okay,” Jewel sighed, looking longingly at the car. “Here’s where we leave her.”

“We don’t have to—“

She cut me off with a look.

“Yes we do,” she said. “Just like we had to do this. Just like we can’t use Pete’s phone. We have to do this. Now, come on.” She opened the door and popped the trunk. We divided the supplies from the trunk into the backpacks that Jewel had purchased for us. With all the water, they were super heavy, but I had a feeling we’d need everything we had. Maybe we’d need more than what we had, but I couldn’t think about that.

“I hope I got enough cash,” Jewel said. She shouldered her pack over the puffy coat she’d bought at Wal-mart. It started to snow, white flakes floating downward like feathers. The snow was so big and light here, not like the sandy, powdery snow we got in Washington. I watched it sparkle in the fading light.

“Come on,” Pete said. He walked toward the station, tugging the beanie down over his ears. We followed him into the station.

“We need to go to Zion National Park,” Jewel told the attendant. The woman smacked her gum and checked her computer screen. “We have a few seats left on the six twenty-five,” she said after a few minutes. “But they’re not together.”

“That’s fine,” Jewel said. “We need three.”

“Okay, hon,” the woman said. “Round trip or one way?”

“One way please,” Jewel said. A warm feeling rolled through me hearing her speak those words. Jewel believed me, believed in me, enough that she was purchasing one way tickets. It kind of made me believe in myself just a little more too.

“One hundred fifty-nine dollars and thirty cents,” the woman said. Jewel handed over the cash.

“You guys running from something?” the woman said, thumbing through the money.

“No,” I said. “We’re just trying to get home.” The words didn’t even sound like a lie.

It’s because they’re not, I realized. We are trying to get home.

The woman smiled with her unnaturally red lips.

“Sure you are,” she said. “That’s why you’re buying a ticket instead of having your parents pay for a ticket—“

“Just give us the tickets,” Pete growled. The woman’s eyes went wide and her hand shook a little as she handed the tickets through the little hole in the glass. “Thank you,” Pete said. He might have smiled, but it just as easily could have been mistaken for a grimace.

We picked seats in the waiting area. The bus wouldn’t leave for a while. The sun set behind the western mountains and the world shifted into full darkness outside.

Just like Eloria, I thought. The Darkness is everywhere.

We climbed onto the bus and Pete fell asleep right away. He sat with his head dangling back over the seat behind him, his mouth hung open. He was snoring. Maybe he really had slept poorly on the motel room floor. After a time, Jewel’s head came to rest on my shoulder. I smiled at her closeness before I realized that she, too, had fallen asleep.

I closed my eyes.

Lexia, I thought. Lexia.

Wind blew across my face and I opened my eyes. Inky blackness surrounded us, and my feet pounded the cold, frozen ground. It was so dark I had a hard time seeing the horse trotting next to me. Princess puffed and blew, her strength finally beginning to wane, but she trotted on, refusing to give up.

I hadn’t been here, but somehow I remembered. Hours upon hours of running. Falling into streams to drink, and then running. The terrain changed from mountain paths to broad sweeping plains. And still we ran.

“You are back,” Lexia observed, she ran too, her steamy breath curling over her head.

“How close are we?” I puffed. “To the Seven Pillars?”

“It is not far now,” Lexia said. I looked up at her on horseback in the darkness and saw her pale face. Her brows knit together as she scanned the horizon, and her mouth drew down at the corners.

“It’s so cold,” I said. My breath puffed in a white stream. “I don’t think we can stay out here much longer without some heat. Should I try to…” My mouth went dry and I swallowed, trying to work moisture back into it.

“We have to keep going,” Lexia said. She glanced up at the sky, her face wearing disappointment when she couldn’t see stars. “We do not have long.”

“What was it like?” I asked, trying to distract myself from the way the cold burned into me. “Before.”

Her attention turned back to me and I saw light glint in her silver eyes. How was it that, even in this dark, there was still light in her eyes?

“It has been so long since there was peace,” Lexia said. I remembered the images flying through my mind when Jewel kissed me, the way the world had been filled with hope. “The hills sang with life. But I hardly remember it. It all changed when the Darkness showed her true heart.” Cold pressed in on me. The only thing to do was run harder.

“I have to get off,” Lexia said. It might have been hours since she last spoke, I didn’t know. My feet skidded to a halt, uncertain of how to stop moving after so long. The horse stumbled to motionlessness and Lexia fell more than dismounted. Princess stood with her head low. Lexia came to her head, stroking the mare and whispering in her ear.

I stretched, soothing the exhausted muscles, nearly falling when I bent. I shuffled on uncertain legs, working feeling back into them.

“Are you well?” Lexia asked. She stood with her palms on her thighs, arching and flexing her back.

“The job is not yet done,” I said. Lexia straightened from beside the horse, folding her arms and pacing a few steps.

“That sounds like the real you,” Lexia said, biting her lip. Her eyes glistened with unshed exhausted tears. “We have to keep moving.” She took a few steps and fell to her knees.

“Lexia!” I shouted.

“I am fine,” she said, pushing herself back up.

“You need to rest for a while,” I said.

“There is no time,” Lexia said, scrubbing the tears away from her eyes. “We have to get to The Seven Pillars, we have to find a way into that other world. We have to find Light.”

“It isn’t even dawn yet,” I protested. “We can rest until dawn--”

“There will be no dawn,” Lexia said. “There has been no dawn for almost two days. There is no later. There is only now, for as long as it lasts.”

I shook my head, trying to deny what she said, but I knew it was true. I might not remember the last two days exactly, but my legs did. My body did. I looked at that poor horse standing there, legs splayed, head down. I looked at my poor sister, starving and exhausted, with such an expression of determination burned into her face that it made me ache to see it. She started walking, leaving her horse, leaving me if I did not follow.

“You have to rest,” I insisted.

“No,” Lexia sighed. “We have to save Light before Eloria dies.”

I endured the loony bin, and spiders, and fire and everything else I had gone through to get to this horrible, dark, cold place.

“Why?” I asked, feeling profound emptiness. “There’s nothing here to save.”

“Phoenix,” Lexia growled, standing up. I was shocked by the tone of her voice. “The prince should never speak so. There is everything to save. We cannot give up.” Lexia’s voice hissed out of her and she staggered into a jog.

This world is a frozen wasteland, I thought.

Kill her and end it, the Darkness suggested. You can go home, and stay there, once she’s dead.

I stood still for a moment, thinking about that. Lexia shambled on ahead, barely managing to put one foot in front of the other.

At least she’s alive here, I thought. And though I would rather lay down and die that continue onward, I started to run.

For now, the Darkness whispered.

I would not give up, not when there was the merest chance of success. I would not. I picked up my pace, overtaking Lexia.

We left Princess and descended the path before us. It dropped off gently now, becoming more stone than soil. Princess whinnied pitifully behind us, but she didn’t come trotting up behind us. She was even more spent than Lexia and me.

On the horizon in front of us, the merest sliver of light began to appear. I thought I was just seeing things at first, and then Lexia looked up and I saw the sun reflected on her pale cheeks.

“Sunrise,” Lexia breathed. “I did not think to see another.”

Before us, the trail became more visible in the pale light. It dropped steeply into a canyon, red-streaked and water smoothed. In the distance above the red sand, seven pillars stood in a rough circle.

We were close.