They Who from the Heavens Came (The Wisdom, #1)

That night, Oz dropped them home again in the Ferrari. When Oz pulled the car in front of Itzy’s house, she turned to him and asked the question that had been running through her mind all evening.

‘Was Seth worried I was going to turn out like our father? Is that why he came rushing over to train me?’

Oz nodded. Amber streetlight flooded the car and turned his black hair blue. ‘Something like that. You are my sister, after all. It’s only natural to suppose we might be similar.’

His words were like threads of tinsel floating through the air. She tried to catch them, hold them. ‘Did you have those rages, too?’

He laughed bitterly. ‘Why do you use the past tense?’

‘Then….’

‘They hit me all the time. But I’ve learned to control them.’

‘But Seth said you trained him. So who trained you?’

Oz’s eyes expanded and he grinned at her. ‘I did.’

Itzy was knocked back with surprise. ‘How?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure what finally did it. But I got into meditation, that sort of thing. The Buddhists have something called mindfulness, where you stop fighting the emotions and just accept them. Half the problem, and the reason the anger consumes us so much, is that we try so hard to make it stop because we think it’s bad. But it’s really just another emotion, like happiness. We need it, or we wouldn’t protect ourselves, or even understand when we’re happy. So I practised and practised until, one day, I realised it had started to feel easy. I sort of….’

‘Owned the emotions,’ she concluded for him.

He smiled again. ‘You sound like Seth.’

Itzy blushed in spite of herself.

‘But you have to understand,’ Oz said, ‘that process took me years. And Seth…well, it was easier with him, because I already knew what to do. But it still took a long time. But you….’ He looked at her like she was a rare bird he hoped wouldn’t fly away. ‘Apparently, you’ve already mastered it. Overnight.’

A question lingered in his words, but Itzy wasn’t sure what it might be.

‘Um….’ She fumbled for the right thing to say. ‘Do you think it’s because of that 2012 thing? Am I part of the change?’

He considered the idea. ‘Maybe.’ He didn’t sound convinced.

‘So when are you going to show me what you can do?’ she changed the subject.

Oz laughed. ‘Not now. Really, I’m not trying to be mysterious. It’s just…not something I can show you here.’

‘Here in the car, or…?’

‘Anywhere near houses. Or people.’

Curiosity strangled her, but she could see Oz wasn’t going to tell her any more. ‘So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow? For our road trip?’

Oz sighed. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything I can say to change your mind…?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I want answers, Oz. Something tells me these crop patterns are important.’

He hung his head in defeat. ‘I suppose you’re right. It’s just…anything our father was involved in has to be trouble. Hasn’t it?’

Itzy didn’t know what to say to this, so she leaned over and kissed her brother’s cheek. He looked startled by the gesture, but didn’t swat her away.

‘Goodnight, Oz,’ she said, and she got out of the car and headed up the path to her house.

* * *

When Itzy was inside, she called her mother’s name, but got no reply. The lights were out and the house felt desolate and abandoned. Itzy flicked on a light switch and squinted in the illumination. She was halfway up the stairs when her phone rang. She pulled it from her jeans pocket and read the name on the screen: Gwen.

She eagerly answered the call and dashed up the stairs to her room. She shut the door and flopped onto her bed.

‘Gwen!’ she said.

‘Itzy,’ said her aunt, her voice evidence of a smile on the other end of the phone.

It was still so strange to think Gwen was all the way across the world. Gwen and Stephen had grown up in northeast England. When Itzy was a little girl, Gwen would visit them in London every few months and take Itzy out. Gwen had introduced her to the joys of making sand castles on one of their long drives together up the eastern coast; she had taken Itzy on a boat to see seals lounging on the rainy beach; she had bought her books about dinosaurs and space, puzzles of ocean scenes, and taught her to make friendship bracelets with embroidery thread.

Stephen and Myra’s divorce had rocked Gwen almost as much as those directly involved. She’d moved to London and swept in like Itzy’s second mother, to take care of her while everything fell apart around her, but her former light-heartedness had gone. Then one day, when Itzy was thirteen, Gwen had come by the house to say goodbye. She’d moved to Toronto the following day. But she sent postcards, and she never forgot Itzy’s birthday the way Stephen always had, despite witnessing the birth; or the way Myra had done ever since she’d been seduced by the charms of a man named Jack Daniels.

‘You alright?’ Itzy asked now.

‘I’m fine. But more importantly, how are you?’

Itzy wanted to tell her she was fine, too – that she was doing better than she’d expected, because she had distractions, friends – that she had lived for seven years without her father, and she could make it through the rest of her life without him, too. But what came out was, ‘Why didn’t you tell me we’re descended from aliens?’

There was a sharp, audible intake of breath down the phone line. ‘I’m glad you’ve been spending time with your brother,’ Gwen finally remarked. She sighed. ‘Oh, Itz, I always thought you should know. It was your father who wouldn’t hear of it. I think he was afraid your mother might take you from him if she found out he was filling your head with that sort of thing.’

‘Because she’d think he was mad?’ Itzy guessed. She leaned on her side, sandwiching the phone between the bed and her head, so she didn’t have to hold it. She reached behind her head and yanked the band out of her hair, letting it spill thickly over her back.

‘Is that what you thought when Oz told you?’ Gwen asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And now?’

Now, Itzy didn’t know what to think. Her head swirled with thoughts that conflicted with every idea she’d ever had about life, the universe, everything.

‘I trust Oz,’ she said at last.

‘That’s good,’ said Gwen. ‘He’s always been a good kid. He reminds me of my brother – when my brother was in one of his better moments.’

Itzy felt tears swell in the backs of her eyes. Gwen seemed to be the only one she could cry around, and now she felt perhaps she needed that. She was carrying too much. She was only seventeen. She shouldn’t have had to deal with such weight.

I killed him, Itzy wanted to shout. I wrote a story and it came true! She wanted Gwen to tell her how horrible she was, that she had no right to happiness, after what she’d done. She wanted to be punished.

But instead, she said, ‘I wish you were here.’

Gwen let out a long, deep breath. ‘Me too.’

‘I miss him,’ Itzy told her. ‘Or…I miss part of him, anyway.’

Gwen sighed again. ‘I do too, Itzy. Whatever else he was, Stephen was my brother, and I can’t help that I loved him.’

Itzy closed her eyes, imagining Gwen was in the room with her, instead of sitting in some foreign house in Canada. ‘What do you think his note meant?’ Itzy asked that figment of her aunt.

‘I don’t know,’ Gwen said, her voice weary. ‘Your father was always more interested in these things than I was. Our parents – your grandparents – were both Descendants. They had a tempestuous marriage, to say the least. In the end…well, this is another thing we’ve never told you before, but your grandfather took his own life, too.’

Itzy gasped sharply, but Gwen carried on speaking. ‘I always knew about our past. It didn’t strike me as outlandish until I was a teenager, because I was just so used to the stories. I mean, I wasn’t about to rush out and tell everyone, of course, but in my own way I always believed.’

‘Why?’ asked Itzy. ‘It was only stories, right? They couldn’t show you anything to prove it, could they? What if they were all just part of some deranged cult?’

Gwen laughed. ‘I suppose that’s a possibility. But some things…you just have to reach into your soul and feel the truth in them.’

‘Like faith,’ Itzy decided.

‘More than faith,’ Gwen corrected. ‘You feel it, too, don’t you? You want to laugh it off, but it speaks to something inside you and you’re scared to admit you believe.’

Itzy squeezed the emotion out of her eyes. ‘You’ve always known me too well,’ she said. ‘So you don’t know what he meant,’ she returned to her earlier question.

‘No. I’m sorry. I really wish I did.’ Gwen fell silent. The space between them filled with unanswered questions.

Itzy’s emotions broke out of her in a torrent. Gwen sat on the line, her phone bill rising, and listened to her niece’s outpouring, until the waters ran dry and Itzy lay messily on her bed, with no accurate sense of time.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice nasal from congestion.

‘Don’t be,’ Gwen said gently. ‘You have every right to be upset. And I know you, Itzy – please don’t hold it all inside and pretend everything’s fine, while you secretly fall apart. Remember there’s strength in admitting when you can’t cope on your own.’

* * *

They spoke for another twenty minutes before Gwen had to go. When the call ended, Itzy flicked on the fairy lights and sat at her desk, where her old friend – the notebook – lay in wait. There was a black pen beside it, crying out to be held.

Just two days ago, she’d been terrified to write anything ever again. Now, after all she’d learned, an idea raced through her mind. Maybe she could use her talents to do something good, for a change.

She picked up the pen and wrote.

The story was about a woman who had once been confident and bold, but had let everything slip away when she’d had her heart broken by a man who had never deserved her. Her life fell into disarray, until she was a fraction of the woman she’d once been. She moved herself to the countryside, where her nearest neighbours were three miles away. All she wanted was to be alone, where no one would try to stop her from quietly disintegrating.

One day, she fell down an unfinished well at the back of her long garden. She was trapped there for days, with no companionship, no one to dispel her fears of death and no one to tell her she would be alright. Night was the worst. It was so dark out there, with no streetlights.

When she stared up out of the hole, all she could see were stars. They shone in a way they didn’t in the city, where she’d grown up. Without the benefit of being able to see her surroundings, she developed literal tunnel vision. The black receded and soon she was swimming through the stars.

By the third day, her fears fell away and she started to miss the dark, when the sun was up. The light was too harsh and left black spots in her vision. Now she longed for night. She had learned to see how bright it could be, if she looked at it the right way. It made her think of the Chinese concept of yin and yang: light gave way to dark, and dark to light. You couldn’t have one without the other, and each was beautiful in its own right.

She also grew to enjoy those long hours when she was left alone with her thoughts. She discovered things about herself she’d never known. Most importantly, she was more resilient than she’d realised. She hadn’t imagined she would get through the ordeal, and yet she was doing it. She was hungry, but she was starting to forget about the pain. Her thoughts were sharpening. She pretended she was an ascetic, deliberately fasting.

The next day, it rained. She leaned her head back and opened her mouth wide, savouring the water as the blessing it was.

Then she came up with a plan. Because the well wasn’t finished, the inside was made of crumbly clay that came up under her nails if she clawed at it. The rainwater loosened it even more. She decided to dig, to make the wall of the well slope, so she could crawl her way up and out of the hole. It might take days, but she knew she could do it.

That was the key, that self-knowledge she had lost at some point and now reclaimed. As long as she believed, she could do anything.

Hour after long hour, she scraped away at the wall. She slipped into her thoughts, letting her hands work on autopilot. Two days later, she stepped aside and saw the beautiful simplicity of the angle she had made. It wasn’t much, but she thought it might be enough. So she started to crawl.

At first, she slipped back down into the hole. But she didn’t cry. She didn’t allow herself to panic. She simply tried again. She would get through this. She had to.

It was morning when she began her ascent. It was already dark when she finally threw her hands over the top of the well and hauled herself out. She lay on the ground panting, trying to catch her breath.

Then she rolled onto her back and stared up at the stars she had grown to love so much. They called to her. They seemed to descend and draw her up by the hands so she was standing, even dancing. She bathed in their light – the first moment of freedom she’d felt in years.

She realised it hadn’t been that man who’d held her back for so long, but herself. Her own mind and sense of self-loathing had been her greatest obstacles.

She staggered into her house, into the bathroom, she gasped at what she saw in the mirror. Her clothes were torn and covered in dirt. Her skin was smeared with brown dust. Her hair was a tangle of twigs and soil and leaves and who knew what else.

But her eyes – they shone like the stars in the night sky.

‘That’s you,’ she told herself. Then, she amended, ‘That’s me.’

She’d been a stranger to herself for so long, she’d forgotten how beautiful she was.

In that instant, she knew she couldn’t mistreat that dazzling creature inside her any longer. There was something precious there in the mirror, something that needed protecting. She couldn’t sacrifice it to the memory of a man who had made her believe the woman in the mirror didn’t exist.

The woman’s name was Myra.

* * *

When she finished writing, black sparked all around her. It danced off her fingertips and swirled in the air. Itzy ignored it and stared at the words on the page, this time recognising them as her own. She hadn’t gone into one of her trances. For the first time, she’d written something consciously –

yet she was convinced it held power.