Page 19 of The Infinite Glade (The Maze Cutter #3)

CHAPTER TEN

Day of the Dead

D arkness filled the sky around them, and slowly all her favorite colors of “the day of the dead” filled the sky, too.

Green and turquoise hues danced upward. Faintly, the colors were there within the night sky.

Ximena had never seen anything like it. Storms had occasionally colored sunsets yellow before a terrible lifting wind, but rarely pink or red, never the teal of Abuela’s hand-painted pottery.

“What is all that over there?” Jackie asked. “Some kind of colored smoke signal?”

Ximena didn’t like feeling as if she knew less than the islanders. “Yeah. Qué pasa?” she asked.

“Man. It’s brighter every day.” Erros drew another puff on his cigar.

“Brighter every night ,” Cian corrected Erros.

“Wait, we were out here, along the coast—we never saw this at night before?” Isaac asked before turning to Jackie, “. . . did we?”

There was no point in Ximena’s intuition fighting her eyes about what she saw. Something wasn’t normal, but she was too in awe to be scared. “It’s . . . unreal,” is all Ximena could mumble.

“Um . . . Frypan, is this what the sky looked like before that whole solar thing happened?” Jackie stood so close to Old Man Frypan that her shadow from the fire overlapped his. “Is there going to be another Flare?”

“I don’t think so. . . . I don’t know. I’d like to think I’d remember something like this, but they made sure I didn’t remember much of anything.” Frypan rubbed his forehead.

Cian packed up some of his other supplies. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. It’s part of the Sun’s evolution. We just happen to be alive to witness it.”

“What’s that mean?” Isaac asked. “I thought the Evolution everyone talked about was human evolution, not the Sun’s?”

“Is the sun going to explode? That would suck.” Jackie took a step back.

Ximena wanted to think that was an absurd idea, but her inner-knowing held the word explode in her mind, as if that were exactly what caused the colors. “Tiny explosions . . .” she said. “The colors are sparks in the atmosphere from all the tiny solar explosions . . . ?” Jackie was right in a way.

Cian and Erros just looked at each other. Their silence confirmed it. Adults always had trouble telling teenagers when they were right. Why was it so hard to admit?

“How? Why?” Ximena asked.

Erros shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

Jackie seemed distressed. “We’re dead, aren’t we? This is the end?”

Ximena wanted to grab the girl by the shoulders. She hated how the islanders jumped to the worst possible conclusions.

“Well?” Cian looked to his brother, “you want to tell them everything, go on then . . . tell them . . .”

“I can’t . . .” Erros rubbed his fingers over his upper lip. “And if I can’t even explain it to a bunch of Immunes”—Eros pointed at Jackie and Isaac—“Then how will I explain it to the Sequencers?”

“You keep saying that word, sequences,” Isaac commented.

“Sequence- ers ,” Erros corrected him, but didn’t say more until Ximena’s and the others’ expectant and waiting looks forced him to. “Humanity and its evolution is a sequence, one that grows exponentially, doubling and doubling in size and technology.”

Cian snapped a fallen twig in half and drew a circle in the loose dirt directly in front of the fire.

A terrible-looking circle that spiraled around itself again and again.

“But not just in all the good things . . . humanity multiplies in evil, too.” Cian looked at his brother.

“You don’t just have to use words to explain things, pictures help. Remember that, okay?”

Ximena felt that truth vibrate through her bones.

Humanity had multiplied in evil.

If the sky was any clue to what was coming, things would get worse before they got better.

Trust isn’t born with Orphans, it’s earned.

Minho didn’t like Alexandra guiding their path. “We should have gone out farther around this. It’s too shallow.” Ocean rocks jutted from the water on both sides. “Rox, can you see anything up ahead?”

No answer.

“Roxy?” Minho said it louder. Where in Level Hell was everyone?

“Minho . . . come look! Quick!” Roxy waved at Minho from the back of the ship.

Behind the Maze Cutter , in the opposite direction of the sky where Minho steered, there were red and pink lights.

The Remnant Nation had flare guns for alerts, but nothing in those colors.

. . . Minho had spent hundreds of night-watches on the wall, staring up at the night sky, but he’d never seen this before.

“It’s weird, I know,” Orange said, motioning to the wheel. “Roxy asked me to give you a break so you could go look. I guess it’s some phenomenon or something.”

Minho looked back at the sky. “It’s alright, I got it.

The waters are too shallow here and—” Something caught his attention.

Commotion from the others. Sadina waving that damn book around , the one Alexandra had been eyeing from the moment they found that crazy Pilgrim.

The woman held her hand out. “She’s going to take Frypan’s book.

” Minho looked at Orange and then back at Sadina and Alexandra at the end of the ship.

“She’s obsessed with Sadina and her family.”

“Yeah.” Minho watched Alexandra as the same exact fingers she’d shoved down a man’s throat to kill him grabbed the book from Sadina’s hands.

Minho couldn’t take it anymore.

Orphans own nothing. Not even what they’re given.

“Go . . . I got this,” Orange said, taking over the wheel.

Old Man Frypan had given that book to Sadina. It was a part of her family’s history. If Minho had the privilege of a family history, he’d have protected it with his life—and he’d do the same for his friends. His hand traced the trigger of his gun as he walked the deck to Alexandra.

“It’s simple,” Alexandra was saying, gently caressing the book just as she had the Great Master’s face before she killed him. “Everything comes back to the digits and the Flaring Discipline.” She marveled at the cover and the pages. “I’ll hold on to this so it doesn’t get lost or damaged.”

Alexandra spoke with Sadina as if the girl were stupid, which she wasn’t. Naive, yes. Stupid, no. Minho truly despised this woman.

“No,” Minho said loudly. “Give her that back.” He reached for the book but Alexandra pulled it away from his grasp. He should have broken her fingers when he had the chance.

“Hey . . . it’s alright . . .” Trish’s eyes held a strange panic in them that Minho hadn’t seen since Isaac and Old Man Frypan separated with Jackie and Ms. Cowan.

“Steady . . .” Roxy said with an arm held out against Minho. He fell back into a soldier’s rest position, which is never a position of rest but a less threatening stance. He just wanted to protect their lives and their belongings. Didn’t anyone see that?

“That book is hers ,” Minho said with more than a hint of threat in his voice, despite the calm stance.

“It’s her family’s story. Don’t take it away from her.

” He couldn’t understand why the islanders were looking at him like he was crazy.

Orphans didn’t have much, but at least they had respect for each other.

Alexandra was not fazed. “Oh, you see, I wouldn’t dream of taking it away .

I want to do the opposite—to keep it safe .

” She hummed along and turned away from Minho with her killing cloak.

Minho stepped forward, wishing he could choke her with her own Pilgrim’s wool right there and then.

Have her meet the same end as the Great Master.

“It’s okay, son.” Roxy grabbed Minho’s arm. “Let her see what she can find in it and maybe she can help us untangle something with those digits.” She patted Minho on the back encouragingly, but it felt like she was trying to pat out flames of war.

He took a deep breath.

“We’re safe with the Godhead,” Trish insisted. Minho could think of a dozen dangerous things safer than being with the Godhead. That woman had brainwashed these people.

“Precisely. What better way to protect this special artifact than to keep it with the Godhead.” Alexandra danced her fingers through the pages and the word Godhead sent Grief Bearer–sized lashings down Minho’s body.

“Keep it safe with the Godhead?” Minho mocked her and pointed back to the shores that were no longer in sight.

“Your city burned to ashes and you’ve said nothing in retrospect or regret about it.

No guilt. No sadness. Just an acceptance of defeat.

” He turned to the others, everyone staring at him with wide eyes.

“The people who once trusted the Godhead—and even those who refused to—they’re all dead or dying right now.

. . . Because of you . Tell me how all your dead Pilgrims were safe ? ”

“Minho!” Roxy pulled him closer to her, but he resisted. He stood tall.

“It’s true.” Minho straightened his shoulders. “Answer me, how are those dead along your shores considered safe, Goddess?”

“Man . . .” Dominic sighed and covered his face with his hands.

“You guys refuse to acknowledge what’s happening right in front of your eyes. She’s a terrible person, and a worse leader. She could be leading us right into a place that doesn’t even exist right now. Or a place where we’ll be held captive and killed!” He pointed toward the icy ocean ahead.

Sadina took a crack at him. “Minho . . . this is the Godhead . . . we’re in her?—”

Minho walked fearlessly up to the supposed Godhead, and no one, including Alexandra, moved.

He stood in front of her and made sure to take up as much of her personal space as possible.

“Sadina received the book as a gift from a close friend, and she won’t be giving it away, not even to the Godhead.

” He grabbed the top of the book and pulled it, but in a quick snap she pulled it back.

“Don’t. Stop!” Sadina yelled. “It’s my choice, thank you very much.

“You’ll fling it into the ocean, knock it off!” Trish screamed. “Stop!”