CHAPTER 39 - ILLUSIONIST

Something slams into my chest like a cannonball and knocks me over. Not my chest though, my… I reach out and catch the falling figures that are Selma’s party having returned and crashed into my shield. I guess I really did put it up. Howard pulls me to my feet and wraps his arms around me.

“Negative Space and Energy Sensing,” he whispers proudly with an overly emotional emphasis on ‘and’. I feel like a five-year-old being congratulated on using both a fork and a knife at the same time. He releases me kind of awkwardly, and I get the impression I should have been holding Sophie the doll under my arm. I look to the others instead.

Selma is looking at the ground beneath her as if it’s going to attack her, Brody is looking at me like I spewed fire and am now the most fascinating thing around. Rose is looking to locate the culprit behind her new howering experience, and the other four I don’t know. I place them all gently back on the ground.

“It’s not pretty, and it’s barely standing, but it’ll do,” Selma tells us and ignores the howering stunt completely.

“Lizzy can fix it,” Brody says quietly.

“Where’s Victor?” I ask.

“He’s still at the building, Trevor hasn’t been by yet.”

“I need to talk to him, can you take me?”

“Sweetheart, we need you to stay here until we leave,” mother argues, evidently having read/ figured out what happened.

“Brody can do that better than I can, I’ll be right back.”

“No,” Mother says, and the urgency in her voice makes me not argue. “Criss has something. Someone’s approaching.”

“How far off?” Rose inquires. “I can’t sense anyone.”

“Sasha,” Howard answers. “She hasn’t exhibited any gifts.”

“Then why would they send her?”

“They didn’t think we’d notice her,” mother replies with a look at me. She cost me everything, and if I go back to school I’ll lose everything again. “Poor girl,” she says quietly. I look at Howard. What does he know that I don’t? I knew Sasha for years. Or, I suppose I thought I did. I force the thought from my head.

“Brody, we need cover. Any bright ideas?”

“Tell her to leave. Mind control.”

“They’ll send someone else. She’s powerless, and we’re almost ready to leave, I just need her to not see us,” I reply.

“What does it matter what she sees? They know we’re here,” Rose injects.

“It matters what she doesn’t see. I have a plan. That is, I have a plan if we can get Victor here. Possibly… I might have a plan if it works.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Brody demands.

“Then it doesn’t.” He studies my face. I’m not going to tell him. He’s great in an unassigned crisis, but I won’t tell him this. I don’t know how he’d react. He kneels down to the ground.

“She doesn’t have x-ray vision.” He holds up a handful of dirt in front of me.

“You don’t mean… I can’t do that, I can’t control that much.”

“You managed it fine just now,” Howard replies.

“For like two seconds,” I bite back, knowing he wasn’t actually biting in the first place.

“That’s exactly the same thing you have to do now,” Brody interjects. “Just hold a small line of dirt up like a screen.”

“Holding it up and holding it away isn’t the same thing, and this is much heavier.” Plus, losing the grip on air just means there’s no shield, losing the grip on dirt means burying us all.

“Earth, wind, fire, water,” mother recites quietly. “You have control of the elements, don’t you?” she asks Brody.

“Well, yeah, but it’s… It’s not like that.”

“I know they’re different dear, and that water acts differently to earth, but what if you two just work together on it. You might not have a lot of practice with earth, but if you can just move it up Lizzy can hold it in place with a shield.” And she thinks between the two of us we can do it. This is like telling a dog owner to protect a group of children from a pack of wolves.

“Lizzy, what did you father always tell you?” she reprimands me. I’m no soldier, this is not my job. I’m a freaking seamstress, not a rebel, not an honor student, not someone who knows how to take care of children, not someone who knows how to teach children, not someone…

“Lizzy,” mother tells me sternly again. No. No, I am not that person. I am not someone capable of doing anything just because I put my mind to it, I am not someone you should trust with your life, and definitively not the lives of innocent children being hunted down, I am not the person you rely on, I am not…

“I’m sorry Lizzy, I wouldn’t normally do this…” Uncle Howard places a hand on my neck, and a new image flows in front of my eyes. I’m staring up at the mobile hanging above me. I like the way the stars were dancing with each other, and it looked like fun. I wanted to join them. Suddenly the whole thing came crashing down on me, and I started crying in shock. Mother came into the room, and when I saw her I just wanted her to pick me up and hold me. She was by my side in a second, but it took her a second to find her balance again.

“You are going to be all kinds of trouble, aren’t you Elisabeth.” She smiled and picked me up. It was nice to be in mother’s arms. It was safe. She asked the sergeant to secure the mobile to the ceiling instead and to make sure it couldn’t be pulled out. The memory changes to a few days later. Hale is sitting next to my crib and he’s making the stars actually dance. They wave in and out between each other, sometimes waltzing, sometimes breakdancing. I want to do that too. I try to pull the stars closer to me, but they won’t budge. They are so far up, I can’t touch them. I reach out my hands, and they all come closer - with the ceiling still attached to them.

“Mother!” Hale calls with laughter in his voice. I hear the door open, but I can’t see mother. I reach out and touch one of the stars.

“Could you go get a chair for me, Hale?” A moment later mother’s head appears next to me. She wraps her arms around me, and I let myself fall into them.

“You are supposed to be sleeping you little rascal.” But she’s smiling, and she kisses my forehead. “I can’t leave you alone, can I.” She didn’t mean it as a question, but I answer her with a laugh anyway. The memory changes again, and this time I’m older.

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“But Sophie needed a new dress,” I defended myself against mother’s accusing stare at the state of my curtains.

“You don’t ruin the curtains for that,” she told me sternly.

“But you just said the other day that we needed new curtains, I figured if they were ruined the sergeant would have to agree with you.” She almost laughed at that.

“I meant new curtains for the living room.”

“Then you can just hang the old curtain up in here,” I assured her. She looked down at the fabric draped over Sophie’s one shoulder and falling elegantly down her like a fancy evening gown. Well, as elegantly as it could fall over a stuffed doll with no curves.

“Come here,” she told me. Uncle Howard was standing in the doorway, almost laughing at us.

“You have a real talent there Lizzy.”

“Her name is Elisabeth,” mother corrected him.

“Whichever, you still have a talent my girl.” I smiled up at him and hugged Sophie closer to me. Mother took me to her’s and the sergeant’s bedroom and pulled out two old, dusty boxes from under the bed. One of them was wooded and tall, the other was plastic and wide. She opened the first one and showed it to me. It contained thread in one compartment, a pair of scissors in another as well a bunch of other things I wasn’t sure what were. Another compartment was filled with buttons, and a fourth had a small box needles and a roll of fabric containing sowing needles. The second box contained fabric. Different kinds, different patterns, different sizes.

“When your father comes home you and I are going to go looking for some new fabric for your curtains, and it will come out of your allowance. You will help me sow them, and then we will sow that dress together.” She nodded at Sophie whose dress was held together by the power of my mind alone. “And next time you want your doll to have a new dress you come ask me, and we’ll find some fabric in here for you, okay?”

The memory shifts again to after we came home from our shopping trip with starry fabric for my curtains as well as enough fabric for a new dress for me. A new image replaced that, and it’s of the entire family with mother and I wearing matching dresses and the guys all wearing ties of the same fabric.

It all shifts again, and this time we’re in the garden, playing baseball.

“I get it, okay, you can stop it now.” I’m a Langdale, I was never told I couldn’t do something, I was never taught to hide. If I can’t get over myself and do this… Only, it will mean I’d have to work together with Brody.

“What is the problem dear? I don’t understand this hesitation,” mother asks. I want him out of here, I want him gone, far away before they come. They know where we are, as soon as they get our numbers we’re done for. I want him gone. “I see,” she says pitifully. “You wanted the screen, it’s time to decide what you’re willing to pay for it.” Not him. Not anyone. The whole point is to get them out of here safely, get them to the old school building Mr. Patrick owns. Okay then, think. What do we do? If Brody stays and helps with the screen… I’ll still need him gone by the time they come. So if we get the shield up, get everyone out… Hold on a second, getting everyone out will require massive amounts of energy, enough that they’ll know we’re up to something. Even if I can’t feel it, it would be naïve to assume they don’t have someone in the InT who can. Even if they don’t, I’m sure Joseph can. Which means we need a cover for that too. So what if we do both at the same time then… Raise a giant hill of dirt all around us at the exact same time as everyone transports. Except in order to keep the dirt up, we’ll either need Brody or I’ll need to hold it up with a shield, and they can’t transport through that. So we’ll leave a door open, towards the back. Transport everyone out of the bubble through that, once they’re out I’ll close the door myself, that won’t require enough outswing in the energy level to raise suspicion. But I still need Victor to cover them. Okay then, Selma gets Victor, then they all leave, Brody lingering only a second longer than the others, and then it’ll just be me here in a dirt bubble. That could work I suppose.

“Get me, Victor,” I request of Selma.

“We need Trevor first, but I’ll go check how it’s looking at their end.” She goes to the border behind the house, out of sight of Sasha.

“Brody, we’ll need to erect a wall all around us at the exact same time they transport.” Mother, you will need to inform one of the Transports to linger a second, and then take Brody with them.

“Lizzy,” Howard warns me. I know, I know, hiding things from Brody won’t win me points, but I don’t know if he’ll be okay with this, and I can’t afford to risk anything.

“Have the children sorted and ready,” I tell Howard. He does as I request without further comments, but his face tells me he doesn’t approve. Brody looks at me with a furrowed brow. Good thing he hasn’t taught himself to read minds.

“Back again,” Nico calls from his post. I let Selma back in and discover to my delight Victor is with her. I hardly wait for them to reach our meeting spot before calling out.

“If you can hide our energy, can you do the opposite too? Can you make it seem like we’re all still here?”

“Possibly. I’ve never done that before.” He reaches out a hand towards me, and I take his. Touch amplifies familiarity, and familiarity is crucial. He closes his eyes and focuses.

“Brody?” mother asks. He closes his eyes.

“The real one is stronger,” he says. “Feels brighter, warmer.” I should have known he could do energy sensing, in truth, there isn’t really much he can’t do.

“Is there enough of a difference that someone at the school would be able to tell?”

“Joseph, perhaps. But he won’t be looking that closely, he won’t want to be here at all.”

“Can you do that with all of them?” I ask Victor. “It doesn’t have to be individual, as long as the combined power is relatively unchanged, and the number of sources remains the same.”

“Shouldn’t be too difficult, depending on the time of course.”

“I’m guessing it won’t take them long to come knocking once they feel the power surge of the transportation.”

“You want us to leave, but make it seem like we’re all still here,” Brody deduces. “That’s why you want the screen? They’ll assume we’re doing something dangerous likes preparing to attack.”

“And they’ll be surprised,” I reply.

“And they’ll be ready to attack,” he warns.

“As long as they don’t have someone with x-ray vision, it’ll be fine.”

“None of the Nature teachers I met had that, but if it’s the InT coming there’s no knowing.”

“I’m betting it’ll be a mix of both.” We get the transporting groups lined up, sorted like last time in smaller groups. Sasha can still see us, but there’s nothing to do about that now. I instruct every adult and every relatively controlled child to raise their right hand towards the sky when I give the signal. I don’t know what Sasha will think of this, but it should leave them all wondering for a little bit. Brody is by my side, ready to raise the earth on my mark, every transporter is ready to leave on my mark, I am ready to reshape the shield to let them out and keep the earth up, and Victor is ready to make it seem like we’re still here. Everything will have to happen at the same time, within no more than one second, or the officials will know something is up.

“Everyone ready?” I ask to draw out the inevitable moment. My heart is raising. This could all go horribly wrong. If we don’t get the timing right, they will know, and they will launch an attack. If I don’t get the shield right, we all get buried alive. If mother hasn’t followed my request, Brody will end up in the basement again.

“Ready,” Howard’s reassuring voice sounds across the green hills. Okay, then, there’s nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. I breathe in. I breathe out, and I feel the air move around me.

“Arms up,” I order. Shield up. Dirt up. “Go.” I open the door in the shield. First group leaves. Victor masks our movement. Second group leaves. Brody grabs hold of my hand. The third group leaves. The transporter next to me looks at me.

“Go,” I whisper with Brody’s fingers strangling my wrist. They leave. The rest leaves. The sound of a hundred people landing on the ground simultaneously tells me I wasn’t wrong, they weren’t going to let us use that much energy without acting. We’re surrounded. Somewhere out there Victor and Selma stand hidden, waiting for my signal to break the illusion and leave.

“You should have gone with them,” I tell Brody.

“You shouldn’t be here alone,” he argues, his fingers unrelenting.

“Ready?” I ask.

“On your mark.” I take a deep breath and steady myself. This is it, this is where it all goes wrong or goes right. Brody is here, which he wasn’t supposed to be. That’s one thing gone wrong. Everyone else is safe though, that’s one thing gone right. It doesn’t matter, this isn’t about counting. Either Howard was right and they’ll take my offer of a deal, or they won’t, and fighting is inevitable. Wonder if the Langdale council would send assistance.

“Now,” I determine. Together we send the dirt flying out in all directions, revealing us to the outsiders and them to us. I push the stone by my right foot, signaling to Victor and Selma to leave. Brody notices, and let’s go of my wrist. No more transporters to take him away now. The dirt settles slowly, clearing the air and the view.