Kei

  Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.

  --Vernor Vinge

  A young man stands next to Anton, smiling slightly as the other teen laughs. The chuckling redhead notices me, and raises a hand in greeting.

  “Oh, hey,” Anton says, almost surprised. “I was just thinking about you. It’s time you met another new student—"

  “Dante?” I breathe. “You’re here? You’re… real?”

  Suddenly my arms are wrapped around him in a crushing grip. Really crushing. My grip slackens as I realized my strength has come upon me again, and I am relieved to see no pain in his face as I stare at him, only confusion.

  “Who?” he asks, blinking at me.

  I let him go and step back, and fight back a flush. My mind playing tricks again. My mind and its faulty memory. The chin and cheekbones look right, and the eyes, but I haven’t seen him since I was twelve. And clearly he doesn’t recognize me.

  “How do you know my na—” he begins. He pauses. “Kei?”

  “You remember!” My eyes widen. I don’t grab him again. He’s always been tough, but I could crush an elephant in my relief right now. Maybe a mountain.

  Despite his dark skin, I could swear he is going pale. “But how? Kei, they said you drowned! You and your dad. How are you here?”

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  “Nah, she survived the shark,” a voice says near my elbow. “Didn’t you see the video?” Anton gives him a knowing look. “It’s wild, man.”

  Dante just stares at me. Then he picks me up in a hug that makes mine feel like a whisper of memory.

  We hold each other for a long minute.

  Then I hear Anton snort. “All that suspense over what might happen if you two got together. Anticlimactic, really…”

  Suddenly something cracks open inside my chest. All the pent up pressure inside my heart releases in a rush of power and passion. Memory and madness. Whatever sealed away my past, this moment is my key.

  I inhale with a gasp and suddenly release Dante. I can feel energy coursing through every fiber of my body and I shudder as it grows painfully intense.

  I’m no longer helpless as I was in the Nexus, but the force is building relentlessly and distantly I can feel my power stirring all around us now, reaching into everything. Everywhere. Everywhen.

  I look at the strange darkness within the ring, and realize what my power was feeding then. What it’s feeding now.

  I take a step back. My face is going pale as I look at Dante and muster a single whisper.

  “Run.”

  And then my Gift erupts all around us, like a tidal wave hurling us skyward and then dragging us into its depths.

  I can see my past on the Island, my time fleeing Kestrel with my Dad, and then my future splintered into dozens of possibilities. More, the longer I look at them.

  And for an instant that stretches into an eternity, I am in those places, living those moments, one with those lives.

  And then it has ended.

  And I look up from where I’ve fallen on the soft grass.

  The sky is calm, and blue, and full of fluffy clouds. And peace.

  I look to my left. There’s Dante, as he so often is, laying in the grass beside me. We’re cloudwatching, of course. A perfect afternoon for it, now that school’s done.

  I look to my right. And there’s the old castle where we meet for lessons, here on the Island.

  A thought comes to me. “Dante,” I begin.

  “Hmm?” he says, still staring skyward.

  “Where we doing something? Just now? I remember a fountain.”

  There’s a pause. “I remember a dream.” For a moment there’s just the sound of the breeze, and children laughing in the distance. Our friends. “I think there was a fountain in it. And Dragons. Lots and lots of little Dragons.”

  I sit bolt upright and look my hands, and then at him.

  We’re children. I mean, really children. Not just teenagers out of their depth. And I know we shouldn’t be kids now, even though that’s who we’ve always been.

  And something strange and powerful moves within me, and for once it’s something more than just my Gift. There’s someone inside of me. Some part of me is a stranger.

  Some part of me is a secret.

  And it’s watching.

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