Page 134 of White Lights
“I don’t want to go in there,” she says.
“Too bad. It’s my favorite place on campus. It reminds me of home.”
“Home?” Dez asks. “You mean Heaven?”
“No, I mean my first home on earth.”
Dez studies him. “Where are you from, Rafe?”
“Where all White Lights are from,” he says. “The Garden.”
“The Garden of Eden?” Dez says. It makes sense, and yet it’s crazy to stand here just talking about such things. Like Rafe just told her he was from Dayton, Ohio.
“Where exactly is the Garden of Eden?”
“Lost,” Rafe says quietly. “No one knows anymore. It was lost a long time ago in a war that blurred the boundaries. What you’ve been taught to call the Big Bang was that war’s final blast. All of us were dragged into it. Many didn’t make it out. But before Yael fled the Garden, she took a clipping from one of the pomegranate trees.” Rafe runs his hands along the rustling edges of the topiary maze. “She brought it here and made this. That’s why we built the school on this site.”
Dez touches the leaves, bristling with wonder. Leaves from the Garden of Eden. They’rewarm. The strangest feeling in the frozen night.
“What are we doing here, Rafe?”
“You asked me once how films get into the mortal mind,” Rafe says. “Would you like to see it?”
Dez thinks of her brother, how Rafe went to him as he died. “Yes.”
He puts out his hand. She takes it.
The false moon hanging in the sky offers the only light. Pebbles crunch beneath their feet as they walk. A young owl coos high and trebly in the pines. Dez feels lost and claustrophobic, as if the walls are pressing in around her. She holds fast to Rafe’s hand as he leads the way down narrow corridors, around angles of branch and shadow.
“Left, right, left, right, left, right,” Rafe says under his breath, moving deeper into the maze. Suddenly, he stops, and Dez realizes they’ve reached the small clearing at the center.
“We’ll need to fly now.”
“Oh,” Dez whispers.
“Soon you’ll be able to do this yourself. But for now, I’ll need to carry you. Is that okay?”
“You’re asking my consent to fly me with your angel wings?” Dez laughs. “I consent.”
He smiles, lifting his golden scarf from his shoulders and placing it carefully on hers. When Dez reaches up to touch it, it shimmers inher fingers, a fizzy sensation she can almost hear. It’s warm and more supple than anything she’s ever felt.
He bends down to loop one arm under her knees, one arm around her back, then lifts her up. Dez hears awhooshexplode behind her, but before she can look over her shoulders at Rafe’s beatingwings, she feels a sudden lurch in her stomach.
The world disappears beneath her as they rise, out of the labyrinth and into the wider maze of sky.
THEY’REFLYING.
Dez knew Rafe could fly, but she hadn’t allowed herself to dream of what it would feel like to be in the air with him. She looks up but can see no sign of the wings lifting her skyward. She knows they’re there, though, as surely as Rafe’s strong arms are wrapped around her.
The spires of Acheron dwindle below. She sees the labyrinth’s baroque symmetry, then the landing strip covered by sleek obsidian jets. The mountains stretch in all directions, filling the horizon with cold glistening peaks. Dez feels too alive and free to have only minutes ago been trapped in Moriah’s office, lectured to and threatened and treated like a child.
How can there be anything but this?
“Hold on,” Rafe says. “We’re crossing thebarbelo.”
Dez’s arms tighten around his neck. As before, on the night Dez first came to Acheron, crossing thebarbelobrings a jolting shift in gravity. First comes a blinding flash of light. Then Rafe drops in the sky like a wounded bird, just as his jet had done. Dez stiffens, terrifieduntil she hears the mightywhooshbehind her and knows that Rafe’s wings are lifting her up again, like a boat’s sail filling with the wind of life.
On the other side of thebarbelo, the sky around her blooms—still night, but everything is different. She gasps.
