Chapter 35: The Broken Star
19:57. Tuesday. April 24th.
The Hidden Cove
The yellowy tonic tasted terrible. Caroline mentioned something about pain and phase-slug mucous, which not only sounded disgusting but left the flavor of burnt hair and acid stuck to the roof of Rory's mouth.
Despite the tonic's unpleasant flavor, he was glad to have it on board. His head swam in a warm cloud of contentment as he thought about all the patients he'd sedated. "Not so bad..." he mumbled to himself.
Caroline rooted around his ribs for the blood moth larvae using hook-nose tweezers. He felt no pain, only the occasional pressure spike as he reclined beside the fire, toasting his feet with his legs kicked up on a rock. Above them, the starry sky stretched horizon to horizon. Watching the stars, he discovered he'd started humming.
Khloe sat beside him in a blue camp chair with her wounded foot atop a piece of driftwood. The adrenaline had worn off, leaving them both spent. While Rory hummed, Khloe stared at the fire, blinking at the coals. He understood. He'd taken the mind-blowing plunge into the Cove and knew how the many questions clogged up his thoughts. Or maybe it was the shock or the tonic. She'd been silent since they'd sat down.
When Caroline returned from the cave, announcing everything was in order, he felt relieved that Jacklyn wouldn't kill them. "Oh... good."
Khloe barely nodded.
There was more good news. The psybelles were safe, and Jacklyn searched the cave for hiding sporelings. Caroline seemed upbeat, dipping her finger several times into the steaming iron cauldron hanging over the fire. Presumably at the right temperature, she tossed in an assortment of odd ingredients from the leather satchel she collected from the tent. Fat green scales, a handful of spotted yellow leaves, and what Rory was certain was a leathery bat wing. He chuckled. "Witches brrrew," he'd whispered to Khloe in a high voice. His drunken attempt to get her to laugh failed; she just stared. Caroline mixed the solution and tasted it before adding another scale from her patch-covered satchel, then ladled it into a pair of mugs. Rory took his and wrinkled his nose at the smell. Caroline urged him, and he drank, gagging. Khloe accepted hers without a word but didn't drink. Caroline whispered something. Khloe nodded and sipped without a grimace.
A few minutes later, Rory's head swam lazily among the stars.
"Ah, found it," Caroline said, drawing his attention back. He felt the pressure against his rib increase. Then a pinch and he looked down in time to see a long, bright orange tape-worm extracted from his side. "It was heading for your lung."
"Whoa." It was all Rory could muster. He might have felt scared, but the tonic washed away his worry too. Caroline whipped the worm into the fire, where it hissed and popped. Rory smiled.
"I didn't feel a thing," he slurred. "This stuff is... something." He thought for a moment. "Will I remember this?"
Caroline chuckled as she packed his wound with white gauze. "You'll both remember, but you might be stiff in the morning. I haven't been able to work out that side effect. More bat leather, perhaps?"
Ah ha, it was a bat... Rory looked over at the steaming cauldron. "Wing. Cool."
Caroline leaned back. "Congratulations, Rory. I believe you'll live."
She rose and walked over to Khloe, who didn't look up. Caroline touched her shoulder, and Khloe's eyes drifted from the fire. The older woman whispered something and pointed to her foot. Even stunned, Khloe nodded, and her eyes seemed to refocus as she watched Caroline pull back a flap of sandy skin hanging from the bottom of her foot. She didn't flinch, which meant the tonic was working, but her brow furrowed.
"What are you thinking, dear?" Caroline asked, rinsing the sand off with a canteen.
"I... uh. I guess I keep asking myself why?"
"Why what?" Rory asked.
"Why didn't she tell me?" She pulled out the cloudy ruby from her pocket. "Why didn't she trust me?" She turned the stone over in her hands.
It took Rory a moment to catch up. The tonic thickened his thoughts. Her grandmother... He found Caroline staring at him behind her white blindfold. Umm, what? She tipped her head toward Khloe. Oh. Oh!
"What, uh. Happened?" Rory said. Caroline raised an eyebrow, then returned to work, rinsing Khloe's wound.
Khloe clicked the stone against her thumb ring. "Depends on who you ask. Gam-Gam was always searching for things. Mushrooms, or places that don't exist, or having long conversations with her jewelry. I think she found what she was looking for and went." She shifted in her chair, admiring the sky. "Seeing this place, I think I understand why she had to go."
She shifted in her chair and sighed. "My family, though, well, my dad, blames me for her disappearing—says it's because I didn't come home enough, so she got sad and lost her mind. Which, you know, maybe he's right. I was the only one she talked to before I left. But I figured that also means she would have told me.... something about-." She looked up for the first time, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "- this."
"Why didn't you go home?" Rory said.
Khloe's head lulled over. "I mentioned I got some terrible advice before?"
He nodded, vaguely remembering their walk under the cherry blossoms back when everything seemed simple.
"My advisor," Khloe said. "That asshole convinced little freshman me that my accent—he called it too rural—would prevent me from ever being taken seriously by medical schools. I wanted to be a doctor so bad, the first in my family, so I believe him. I took speech lessons and practiced in the mirror every day until I spoke without an accent. But when I went home, it all came right back. Undid some of the work. It was like living a double life. So, I made excuses and stopped going home. Told myself it was for the best. That the sacrifice was for my dream. I find out later, during my medical school interviews, that they don't care what I sound like as long as I can think. It crushed me." She scowled. "I gave up all that time with her. For what? Trying to be someone I'm not?"
"Damn..." Rory said. He felt a distant frustration, but the medicine snuffed it out. "Sorry, Khloe. That sucks."
Khloe shrugged. "The stuff my dad says, I know it's not true - most days, at least. He made up the story because he's scared and doesn't know why. None of us did."
"Doesn't make it hurt any less," Rory said, feeling an ache grow in his chest.
Khloe shook her head but stayed quiet.
"You did nothing wrong, dear," Caroline said, setting down the canteen. "People reach for any story with meaning when they hurt."
"But why didn't she tell Khloe?" Rory said. Khloe looked up and smiled, and the ache in his chest dissipated.
Caroline's brow creased as she adjusted her tweezers. "I doubt it was mistrust. My guess is she was trying to protect you."
Khloe didn't look convinced. "I hope that's true."
Caroline paused, lifting her gaze to meet Khloe's. "It is."
That drew a sliver of a smile from Khloe as Caroline resumed her work.
"Protect from who, though?" Rory pressed.
"Before I answer that, Rory, you need context." Caroline submerged her tweezers in a cup of a clear solution that smelled like the tonic. She flicked off the excess liquid and went to work on Khloe's foot. "Understand, there are large gaps in our knowledge, but from what we've gathered, we know that many thousands of years before the Sumerians started tabulating on clay, there was a terrible and devastating event that wiped out most of the world. Our ancestors who survived worked tirelessly to erase themselves, and the event, from history."
"Pre-Sumerian?" Khloe mumbled. "That's... four thousand years ago."
"Try ten," Caroline said.
"Ten thousand?" Rory whistled. "But why...?"
Caroline wrinkled her nose and then jerked the tweezers back. "Ah! Got it." She drew out a long worm from Khloe's foot and threw it into the flames. Rory shifted in his seat as the larva sizzled.
Khloe paled, watching the worm burn. "How?" she asked slowly. "There is nowhere to hide anymore. The world has filled in. The internet..." she trailed off.
"Our maps are more detailed, yes, but they aren't filled in. Hidden places exist. I know, I was raised in one among a village of Wyth."
Rory looked away from the fire and out at the miraculous beach, mulling Caroline's words. He blinked. Something didn't quite add up. "So, the Wyth hide for thousands of years?"
"And we didn't hide, per se," Caroline thought, then returned to Khloe's foot as she spoke. "We lived on the fringes, trying to influence society where we could, keeping humanity away from the disasters of the past. Over time, that interaction with civilization earned us many names. The Chinese named us gui po. The Romans called us druids. The Protestants burned us as witches. And in the 1960s, the American government dubbed us hippies and malcontents after we tried our hand at modern politics. For a couple of years, I'd thought we'd broken through."
"Did you have a favorite name?" Khloe said. Rory perked up for the answer.
"Hmm. I've never been asked that..." Caroline drifted off. "Of all our titles, I suppose my favorite has always been from Arabia. They called us djinn. It's nice to think people search for us, even if it's for three wishes. The bit about lamps is amusing." She slid another worm out of Khloe's foot. "There we are." The worm burned while Caroline gathered her gauze. "I just need to pack your foot now, Dr. Seeker."
"Thank you. Um, so..." Khloe tried to work it out through her stupor.
"But someone is hunting you," Rory said. "So that means others survived, right? Not just the Wyth?" A terrifying thought followed. "Do they have Aspects too?
Caroline nodded. "Our earliest records call them the Broken Star, but we call them the Merged."
Who? Rory loved reading about the Illuminati, Stonemasons, and Templars growing up. He and Patrick would make their own secret handshakes and send each other hidden messages with cryptic icons, the kinds of things kids love.
Caroline wrapped Khloe's foot in white gauze, moving with the steady grace of practiced hands. "Like the origins of the Wyth, theirs too is veiled by time, but to answer your question, Rory. Yes, they have Aspects." Oh.
"Why didn't they just use the Aspects to take over?" Khloe said.
"Both sides are careful to keep any conflict in the shadows. If the Aspects and casting become public knowledge, we assume it would only be a matter of time before whatever destroyed the world would do it again. Another apocalypse benefits no one." She put down her gauze and inspected her wrapping job.
Merged. What a weird name. Rory shook his head, swimming and foggy. He caught Khloe looking at him, mouth open in questioning. Rory shrugged. He felt like his chair was floating and spinning. A log popped, and the stack of wood collapsed a little, sending up a swirling cloud of glowing embers. They looked like fireflies against the dark sky.
"All done, Dr. Seeker," Caroline said proudly, returning her supplies to her satchel.
Khloe leaned forward and inspected the dressed wound. "How did you do that with a blindfold on?"
"Jacklyn has provided me ample opportunity to practice," Caroline said, setting up a third camp chair between Rory and Khloe. She lowered herself down with a relieved sigh and held her hands out to the fire. "But you meant my vision. I suppose, simply put, I see emotion instead of light. Or rather, I see the world and its people as they really are, not how they want to be seen."
Khloe muttered something and inhaled while Rory tried to picture it. He wondered how he could use such sight as a nurse, able to know what a patient or a family member felt. Seeing sadness and knowing how to intervene or seeing hesitancy at the bedside gives a parent more opportunities to help. No more guessing. What a gift.
An intrusive thought butted in and pressed a word against his mind. Merged.
"Why're they called the Merged?" Rory said, slurring a little.
Caroline gestured to her necklace. "There is another way a mythstone can be used to cast. It is possible, through terrible means, to fuse oneself with an Aspect and share its power."
"That sounds cool..." Rory said, uncertain if it was.
"But a body should only hold one soul, Rory." Caroline snatched up a long stick and jabbed it into the fire. "The Merged are abominations and violate everything the Wyth teach. Their group, the Broken Star, corrupts the Aspects to gain and retain power."
"Oh, uh, uncool." Rory corrected.
"Uncool." Khloe echoed, her eyelids half drawn.
"Despicable." Caroline hissed, rolling over a glowing log. The fire flared anew, adding a layer of heat over him as he looked up at the stars. Part of him wanted to ask more questions, but the rest didn't care. This tonic is potent stuff.
"Look what I found!" Jacklyn called out. Rory jerked, half asleep. His vision lagged, making his head spin. He closed his eyes momentarily, feeling the heavy blanket of fatigue. When he opened them, he spotted Jacklyn walking up, holding a sporeling's claw in one hand and leading a small troop of them down from the cave.
"They live" Caroline leaped from her chair and ran towards them.
Jacklyn and Caroline embraced, drawing a smile from Rory. He enjoyed seeing them both happy. They talked briefly before Caroline called over the golems, and Jacklyn marched straight at him. Rory tried to sit up, but he felt too heavy - the sand too warm.
"Hero!" Jacklyn said, startling him. She stood over him. "You have something you want to ask me."
"I do?" His thoughts felt like sludge.
"Yes. Another kid?"
Rory blinked, and something ignited a thought. "Conner?"
"Conner?" Jacklyn said. "Whose Conner?"
"Roo-oom 10?" Khloe slurred.
Rory stuck out his thick tongue, willing it to form words. "Thhh. Boy scout. Drowning." He hurried, feeling himself sink. "Like Tommy," He pointed at the white jacket lying in the sand beside Khloe. "Badge." He pointed at Jacklyn. "Consult."
"What?" Jacklyn said.
Khloe's eyes closed, but thankfully, she nodded, seeming to understand. "T'morrow?"
Rory smiled. "Zacly."
"Anyone wanna tell me?" Jacklyn said.
Khloe's head drooped onto her chest, and she snored.
Rory fought it, wanting to make sure he was clear. "Help. To-morr-ow. Eight. Dress nice." He paused, and his eyes slid closed. "Nicer."
"Another no-hoper?"
Rory grunted yes and let his head rest for just a second.
"Alright, hero," he heard Jacklyn in the distance, her voice sludge-y and warped. "Eight..." He was vaguely aware of someone moving around him, and as sleep took hold, the last sounds of the crackling fire faded. Overwhelmed, he let his thoughts go.
Conner. Broken Star. Aspects. Hidden. Hidden...