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

‘What are you going to do to me, child?’ Quetzal asked softly.

He sounded so confident, Itzy didn’t think anyone had ever dared challenge him. But Aidan did now.

The air changed. Itzy felt her lungs contract violently. She had to get out.

She and Myra fell to the floor and clawed their way across the room, out, out, out, dropping in the doorway. Everything seemed to be shining, burning even. What was Aidan doing?

Itzy struggled to stand. She helped her mother up and held her as they watched. How was it that such brutality and such tenderness could exist in the same body? What had Quetzal done when he’d made Aidan? Had he even known?

‘Stop that,’ Quetzal commanded. Any softness had gone from his voice.

He stepped toward his creation, like Frankenstein to his monster – which was a terrifying comparison, because the monster had been Frankenstein’s end.

That was when Itzy understood what Aidan meant to do.

Itzy thought she must be seeing things, because Aidan’s body looked like it was on fire. He was a flame that had ignited itself and now radiated heat, threatening to scorch whoever dared touch him.

‘Itzy,’ Myra began in a shaky voice. ‘What is he –’

He put out his hand.

Quetzal flinched, but he was too late. The flame raced up his arm, engulfing him. His cloak caught fire. The ancient symbols burned away and fell to the floor in heaps of ash. The fire licked at his face and found his hair.

Myra cried out – even screamed. All the while, Aidan just stood there, watching his father burn.

Itzy couldn’t let it happen. No matter what Quetzal was, she couldn’t let Aidan be a murderer.

She closed her eyes. Black sparked like a halo around her head, and she let the letters swim in front of her. They were hazy and grey, but her mind’s eye squinted so they were visible, clearer, and she forced them together. They struggled and kicked against her will, but she was too strong for them. They would make a sentence – and it was simply:

STOP.

The fire went out. Aidan blinked as though he’d been in a trance and had only just woken from it. He looked confused.

Smoke rose from Quetzal like dragon’s breath. When it drifted away, Itzy could see that half his hair – long and black like her own – had been burned away. His cloak was half-gone, revealing the pulsing muscles of his arm. The gold of his skin was charred to match his hair, but through the smoke she could make out the remains of marks like tattoos. One side of his face was now covered in red, throbbing blisters. His former majesty was gone, leaving him a hideous disfigured mess.

But Aidan had not killed him.

Myra made a noise like a shocked sob. Itzy clutched her mother tightly.

‘Itzy,’ Aidan made out in his stupor. His voice was hoarse and stunned.

‘I couldn’t let you do it,’ she told him. She didn’t move from her place across the room.

‘You see,’ Quetzal said as he coughed ash out of his throat, ‘she commands you.’ He pointed tiredly at Aidan. ‘You’ll do anything she says. She is the only one in all of the universes who can control you – because you live for her. You need her. Your sole purpose in life is her.’

‘Aye,’ Aidan agreed in a low voice, ‘but not because she holds the Wisdom. It’s because I love her.’

Quetzal laughed pitifully and dusted the remains of his cloak from his arms. ‘You think you love her.’

‘I don’t think it,’ said Aidan.

Quetzal recovered himself somewhat. ‘You do! And it’s touching, it is, but you don’t get it, do you? She doesn’t hold the Wisdom. She is the Wisdom! Do you have any idea what that means?’

It was clear Aidan did not.

‘It means,’ Quetzal continued, ‘that she made this.’

He swept his hand around the room, and finally gestured out the door, and through the window, in all directions.

‘Everything in our sphere of existence is her. You –’ he pointed at Aidan ‘– are really here because of her. She wanted you, so she made you. Do you understand that?

‘The story is written in her soul – I’ve seen it in my cube. Itzel Loveguard was a lonely little girl living in an abusive household who wanted some way out. So she made up stories in her head, to escape into. Sometimes, they would bleed into her dreams, too. Even in sleep, she was writing, changing things around. That’s what Itzel Loveguard is. That’s what she does. She makes up stories, and they come true – and she’s been doing it all her life.

‘When she was three, her parents were fighting and it scared her, so she hid in her wardrobe. She wished herself away from the situation – she invented an excuse for what was happening. She invented us.’ Quetzal pounded his chest in indication. ‘She made the Ancients. And as she grew up, she added to the story. She developed it. She threw in any old idea that came into her head from the stuff her archaeologist father used to tell her about, and she made it all real.

‘I didn’t know it until I saw what her friend could do. He made another reality pop into existence, without even thinking what he was doing! But she…she’s stronger. She had her power before any of you did. She was a freak, an anomaly of the human race, and she hated it. So she made others who were like her, so she would be less alone.

‘That’s why it happened in 2012 – not because the year meant something, but because her father used to frighten her with stories about the end of the world. She used that to make something better for herself. And the splitting, as you call it?’ he barked at Aidan, as though Itzy and Myra were not in the room listening to him. ‘A rationalisation for Stephen Loveguard’s schizophrenia.’

Quetzal took a long breath. ‘She wanted a brother, so she gave herself one. She wanted someone to fall in love with – someone handsome and intelligent and strong and understanding – so she made you.’ He struck his hands in the air in Aidan’s direction.

Exhausted, he said, ‘Aidan, she made me make you. I had no choice. We’ve all been travelling a predetermined path for a long time, and the person in charge –’ he pointed at Itzy ‘– is her. Now tell me: bearing in mind you have no choice but to love her because she’s forcing you to – would you still call that real love?’

Aidan’s mouth was open in what could not adequately be described as shock. His expression matched Itzy’s own, and he seemed unable to meet his girlfriend’s eyes. She wondered if he would ever look at her again. For a long moment, she was terrified perhaps they would never be able to go back to what they had once been. How could they, after all they had just heard?

Then Aidan said quietly, ‘I would.’ He let his voice rise as he explained, ‘Anyone who believes in God would say He has a plan for them, too. And part of that plan is the one, the person yer made for. Well, alright.’ He nodded in Itzy’s direction. ‘So I was literally made for her. By you, and by her. But that doesn’t take away the feeling inside me. And I don’t care where it came from, because it’s the first good thing I’ve ever felt in my life, and I will not let ye tell me it’s meaningless.’

Itzy felt her heart flood with love for him. Never had he looked as beautiful to her as he did now, as dishevelled as he was. She wished she could stop time and just look at him – look and look and look.

Then she realised that if what Quetzal said was true, she could probably do that.

No, no, no. How could she have created this? And if she’d made this world for herself, what did that mean? Again the paradoxes hit her like an anvil. How could she be descended from the Ancients if –

‘The Ancients only exist because of me,’ she finished her thought out loud.

Quetzal started and turned to her. At last, he said, ‘Yes.’ He glanced at Aidan and said, ‘See? She’s remembering. She’s remembering who she is.’

‘Hang on,’ Itzy said. She carefully unravelled herself from her mother’s shocked grip and waved her hands to clear away everything that was frustrating her. ‘I’ve heard that before. I wrote that. Mum….’ She turned to her. ‘It was about you. It was supposed to help you learn who I was, but not run away from me when you did. I was scared you’d think I was mad, or reject me, or….’

Myra pressed her daughter’s hand. ‘Itzy,’ she said sadly. ‘I would never –’

‘You don’t know that,’ Itzy interrupted. ‘If what Quetzal says is true, you can’t know how you would have reacted if I hadn’t written that story. But then….’ An idea struck her with painful clarity, and now she needed to know one thing. ‘Is this all some sort of dream? If I made you, then is none of this…?’

Quetzal shook his head and hurried over to her. He stopped a few feet away. He seemed uncertain as to how close it might be acceptable to be to his…god.

‘No,’ he told her. ‘It is not a dream. Hear me when I say you made everything real. That’s your power – you create. Yours is the source of all our magic, and like your own Creator – whoever He may be – you imbued us all with life. I know this because of the memories in my head and the life I have lived.’

Quetzal glanced sideways at Aidan. ‘And I know because of him. Because you made me make him, and yet he has become something I don’t recognise or understand. And because now I believe when he says he loves you.’

He focused his eyes on Itzy’s once more and explained gently, ‘You created us. You granted us the most precious gift of all: existence. And you gave us the blueprints for our lives. But then it was our choice what to do with that. The only way you could get rid of us now would be to kill us.’

Stunned silence hung in the air like one of Aidan’s unnatural chemical reactions.

Then Aidan was somehow at Itzy’s side. ‘What was your story about?’ he whispered.

She looked in his stormy eyes and saw his desperation. She saw how much he hoped she might tell him a tale that began, Once upon a time, and ended with, And the girl and the boy lived happily ever after. And she knew she would disappoint him.

Itzy swallowed and said softly, ‘It was about a queen who was put under a spell to forget who she was and think she was an ordinary girl. She had to remember her true self in order to break the spell.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Quetzal spoke with growing excitement. ‘I read it. And in the end, what did the queen do?’

Itzy spoke as if she were not in charge of her own words, but was outside her body, listening to herself talk. ‘She let the emissary take her home to reclaim her kingdom.’

The pieces fell together before her eyes. She turned to Aidan – and to her mother – and to Aidan again.

‘You have to let me go,’ she told them. ‘They need me. They’re….’

She looked helplessly at her hands, the hands that had held the pen and created all those stories she had thought were just words on a page.

She found herself thinking of something Seth had said, about being alone. The Ancients had left them behind, he thought. It was like their creator had given up on them.

She was suddenly reminded of another story she’d once written. It was about a girl who escaped the darkness of her life by making up stories. She lost herself in them to the point that, in time, she fell in love with one of her own characters. Then one day, she met him – in the flesh. He had the same name, the same family, the same past. Just like that, her story had come to life. It was like a fairytale come true.

The trouble was because her own past had been so tempestuous, all she had ever created for her characters were tragedies. It meant all her creations suffered in reality just as they had in her imagination.

As her story whirled through her mind, Itzy realised she knew what was happening to the Ancients. And she knew what she had to do for them.

She stepped forward and turned to look at Aidan and her mother at once, already feeling a mile away from them. ‘They’re mine. And they’re dying. I can’t just abandon them.’

Was that really her voice saying those words?

Aidan grabbed her hands. His eyes bored into hers with feverish intensity. Itzy may have had the power to create Aidan, but he still had the power to melt her insides just by looking at her. Yes, he was very good at manipulating matter.

‘What about me?’ he asked. He seemed to search her face for something that would make him happy again. ‘I need ye, too. Ya heard him.’ He motioned to Quetzal. ‘I don’t think I can exist without ye.’

Itzy smiled. She placed her hand on his face and shook her head. Everything about her seemed older, somehow – wiser.

‘You can,’ she said, ‘because I need you too. That’s why I made you. I’ll be back,’ she promised.

Aidan’s eyes wobbled, which seemed to surprise even him. Suddenly, his mouth was on hers, as if he could hold her back with a kiss.

She fell into his embrace and held him tightly, running her hands over the fabric of his clothing, trying to feel every part of him and solidify the memory of it in her mind.

Then Quetzal pulled her away from him. ‘It’s time,’ he said.

* * *

Seth gunned the engine and tore the car around the final bend in the road leading to Itzy’s house. Before he could stop the car so they could all pile out to save the day at the last second (that was how the scene had been playing out in his head during the brief drive), something stomped in front of the vehicle so suddenly that he had to slam his foot down on the breaks and veer sideways.

They skidded down the road, just missing the leg of the gigantosaurus.

‘For God’s sake, Oz!’ Seth shouted. He slammed his fist against the steering wheel. He missed and made the horn sound, causing them all to jump. ‘Get your damned dinosaur under control!’

Oz extended his arms and closed his eyes. He sent the skeleton spinning. Its bones dissembled one by one. They seemed to take an unnaturally long time to break apart, perhaps because the creature was just so big. Finally, they fell into a heap in the middle of the road. Seth flicked his wrist and turned the bones to ash, which blew sideways in the breeze.

‘Fantastic,’ Seth said as he flung open the car door. ‘May as well leg it – it’ll be just as quick.’

The four of them leapt out of the car and ran down the street. Melody started screaming, ‘Aidan!’ at the same time Oz shouted, ‘Itzy!’

Seth flicked his wrist and flung a glowing orb of light into the air. It hovered just above the Descendants, allowing them to see the street. As they reached Itzy’s front garden, her door flew open and two figures stepped outside.

One was definitely Itzy, and beside her was another Ancient. He looked like Horace, but his eyes burned like the sun, and none of Horace’s hatred marred his golden face. Still, he didn’t look like someone you wanted to mess with.

Most unsettling was that Itzy didn’t look like she was under duress. She stood beside Quetzal like she belonged there.

Behind them came Aidan and Myra, wearing matching expressions of shock.

‘Itzy, please,’ Aidan was saying as he followed them out. ‘Please, please reconsider.’

‘Itzy!’ her mother cried. ‘You don’t have to do this!’

Seth heard her answer, ‘Yes. I do.’

Itzy spotted her audience, standing not ten feet away. She raised her hand in a shy wave. Seth could tell Oz wanted to run to her, to see if she was alright. But something held him back. Something held them all back. It was like Itzy was wrapped in an emotional bubble they couldn’t penetrate.

They watched as the Ancient, who looked as though he’d been burned alive, spread out what was left of his cloak. It shimmered in the air and grew feathery, like a bird. As if she’d done this a thousand times before, Itzy climbed onto the Ancient’s back and wrapped her arms around his thick giant’s neck.

She didn’t look like the same girl Seth thought he knew.

Then he realised the difference: this Itzy knew she was special. He didn’t know how or why, but it seemed she had finally truly ‘owned’ her powers. They were no longer just something she could sometimes do; they were part of who she was.

Then they took off into the sky, still so dark Seth couldn’t even see the stars, and flew in the direction of the unfathomable shadow that loomed overhead.