She gasps, and Grandma pops into the doorway with a spoon gripped in her fist. She points it at me; her eyes narrow. “Don’t think for a second I’m falling for that, young man. Leave her be, or I’ll send you out to sleep in the barn.”
My grandma isn’t one of those plump, sweet grandmas you see in movies. Nope, Grandma is a youthful terror who knows how to accurately wield a spoon for maximum damage. I know when to back off.
“Yes, ma’am.” My manner is contrite, but my heart isn’t, and Grandma knows it.
She fusses over Kera as they return to the kitchen. “Don’t let him manhandle you like that, sweetheart.”
“Oh, I do not mind,” comes Kera’s soft, innocent admission.
Hearing that causes a huge grin to attack my face, and my heart gives a little jump.
Grandma’s censor finds me before nudging Kera out of sight. “You should. He’s a wicked boy, our Dylan, and it’s up to us to teach him some self-control.”
“I will try.”
I heave a sigh. Kera loves Grandma and will do anything she tells her to do. I’ll be starved for affection in no time if Grandma has her way. I can just imagine Kera spiraling into a moody teenage girl if I don’t kiss her. Has Grandma thought of that? I don’t think so.
From in the kitchen I hear Grandma talking. “Since you and Dylan arrived, the vegetables in the greenhouse have blossomed. Whatever it is you two are doing, I can’t say I’m upset about it. Unless I should be upset.” She pauses. “What are you two doing in there? Should I be upset?” Scooter, Grandpa’s maniac of a dog, starts barking. There’s an awkward pause in their conversation. “Kera?” Grandma asks. “What’s wrong?”
The kitchen door booms open and slams shut. I hear footsteps race down the porch and into the yard.
I ditch the TV and go into the kitchen, and see only Grandma. “Where’d Kera go?”
“I don’t know,” Grandma says with a shrug. “One minute she’s snapping green beans and the next she hotfooted it out of here like a dog after a squirrel. You don’t think she saw another…monster?” She whispers the last word as if saying it aloud will make one materialize.
“No,” I say with confidence. The special connection Kera and I share isn’t sending out any alarms.
I don’t like her suddenly running off. It’s becoming a habit. She seemed so happy a few minutes ago. So relaxed. I peer through the window. I don’t see her or anything that would make her leave. “I’ll go check on her.”
“I hope I didn’t say anything to upset her. Maybe she doesn’t like green bean casserole.”
I plant a kiss on Grandma’s forehead, something I’ve never done before, and her cheeks flush with pleasure. “That’s just crazy,” I say. “Everybody likes green bean casserole.”
I duck out of the house and make my way past the back gate. No sign of Kera anywhere. The forest takes a deep breath and quivers with anticipation as I enter. I touch the trees. Feel the bark skitter under my hands. There are advantages to being a first. Nature and I are one. Whatever I want, happens. I can make trees uproot and replant. I can make flowers bloom in winter. Fruit ripen in the spring. Send vines climbing until they reach the stars. I can make it rain or shine. The wind howl. The earth rise or fall.
The disadvantages to my power aren’t small, though. Since my death and resurrection, I’ve become a walking emoticon. The first part of me wants to take over, but I fight to keep the new me suppressed. Sometimes I’m good at it, a lot of the time I’m not.
What’s really disturbing me is my sudden taste for fire. As I make my way around the trees, I call it forward and watch it dance in my palm. Last night, I sat in my bed, watching it tumble over my hands. I could’ve set the house on fire, but when I’m in the mood, the danger I’m in doesn’t seem to matter. I have to play with the flames.
Grandpa claims I lack discipline. I’ve never had much need for it before. I’ve always been that guy who gets into harmless trouble and can easily talk my way out of it. I don’t have any experience with being a jerk with a sudden pyro obsession. I snuff the fire out and feel my jaw tighten.
Honestly, I don’t like this new me. Whatever Grandpa’s plan is, I hope it works. Since I don’t trust myself, I’ve got to trust someone.
My search for Kera turns up crickets and june bugs. It’s just my luck the rain from earlier dampened the air and everything smells like seared wood and wet ash. Eventually I find myself standing in the area where Faldon, Teag’s sage, attacked me. There’s a tree, standing in the middle of a patch of ground where it’s charred black and brown, with a ragged scar running from mid-trunk on up. It’s the tree where I entombed Faldon. I killed him. It doesn’t matter that the only way to save others was for him to die. I lie awake and torture myself with scenarios where no one dies and everyone lives happily ever after.
I tried to burn the tree, because when you sink to the depths of bad where Faldon had gone, you’ve got to make sure he’s not coming back, but the people who managed to rescue my mangled and bruised body put the fire out. Now the top portion of the tree is scraggly and the bottom part is a charred mess.
I place my hand on the trunk. The scarred and burned bark crackles under my fingers. Did he know I only entombed him because he would’ve killed Grandma and Leo? I had to protect them.
“I wish things had turned out differently,” I say to the tree, and then feel stupid for saying anything at all.
The burned crust shifts and a face appears in woodsy dips and grooves. I jump back, marveling at what I’m seeing. The lips split and a raspy voice says, “Dylan.”
By now, I should be used to crazy stuff happening around me. I’m not. I can feel my heart jumping around like a hamster with hiccups. “Faldon?”
The voice scrapes out of the wood like sticks rubbing together. “If you’ll allow me, I will help you.”
The tree is talking to me. If anyone else said they’d gone into the forest and talked to a tree, I would’ve been the first to point out the nearest therapist, but it’s happening to me. In my recent experience, there’s nothing odd about talking trees, except…
“No offense, but you’re dead. You do know that, right?”
“I am aware of my limitations. You do remember that before you trapped my spirit in this tree, I was a sage? I am also your grandfather.”
Nice of him to remind me, but apparently he needs a refresher course in reality. “Yeah, and you tried to kill me. You brought a whole new slant to my dysfunctional family I could’ve done without.”
“I was following an order I could not break.”
“Whatever gets you through the night.” If he wants to cling to that lame excuse, who am I to stop him?
“Dylan, you are still in danger.”
“I know.” A monster showing up in my backyard pretty much tipped me off to that fact. The firsts aren’t a live-and-let-live kind of people. I can only hope I didn’t pick up that genetic code from my dad.
“You know less than you think. You and Kera have absorbed Navar’s power. It’s big and raw and a hundred times more powerful than any other firsts. I still have little understanding of how he achieved that strength. What I do know is that you cannot accept that kind of power and not have it change you.”
My gut churns, but I don’t let my worry show. “So there might be a jealous first out for my head? Got it covered.”