Darkhaven

Cecelia agreed to let me into her sacred study space on Sunday. By the time I rolled out of bed and got around to her house, it was after lunch. She greeted me with a cursory hug and hurried back to the enormous study table. It was meticulously laid out with towers of texts, five-subject notebooks with colour-coded labels and folders containing loose notes and class handouts all carefully sorted and filed. She had about a square foot of space in the middle for working. Her laptop had been evicted and was charging on an extra table, an addition since the last time I’d been here. Even by Cecelia’s standards of organisation, this was a new level.

I sat, pulled a box of barbeque Shapes out of my bag and waved them in between her nose and her maths workbook. She shook her head. The silence stretched, filled only with my munching and her pencil scratching.

‘Should we work on English?’ I hadn’t bothered bringing maths stuff; we took different classes.

Cecelia held up a hand, eyes still on the maths problem, working steadily until the end of the page when she finally arrived at her answer. ‘Uh, sure.’ She placed her pencil back in its neatly labelled caddy, glanced back down at the page and stiffened. ‘Oh no.’

‘What is it?’

‘I’ve made a mistake.’ She picked up an eraser and began working back through the lines of numbers. I put the Shapes away and dug out A Tale of Two Cities (I’d checked it out this time), along with a bag of crispy M&Ms. I propped the bag against a stack of books and began to read.

‘Can you stop that?’ Cecelia’s voice was clipped.

I crushed and swallowed the M&M I’d just popped in my mouth. ‘Stop what?’

‘The noise. The crunching.’

‘Oh. Sorry. Do you want some?’

‘I wasn’t asking for any, just for you to let me concentrate.’

I thought about slapping Two Cities down on the table, but I placed it gently.

‘Cecelia, are you okay?’

She paused in the middle of erasing the offending line of numbers. For a moment it seemed like she was going to brush me off and continue, but she grappled with herself for a fraction of a second too long. We’d been best friends for years. I put my hand over hers, stopping the eraser that seemed to be possessed of a fault-correction will all its own.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked again. I knew it would push her over. Her eyes glistened with tears that she fought to contain.

‘Not really,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so afraid that I’m going to fail.’

‘You aren’t going to fail. Look at this desk.’

She laughed wryly. ‘Being organised isn’t enough to get you over the line. And I have to get into medicine, Gabby.’

‘There are other pathways than a perfect score, you know.’

‘Yeah, but Dad did it. And Bryce.’

I sighed. Cecelia’s older brother Bryce had been a model student, Dux of the school, had his name on all the UWA honour boards and was now the best intern at his hospital. ‘Your dad will love you regardless.’

She laughed half-heartedly. ‘Are you sure?’

I put on a thoughtful face and pretended to weigh the situation. ‘Actually, it’s not certain. He might decide you are unfit to be a doctor and make you renounce the family name.’

Cecelia giggled. ‘He’ll send me to study librarianology, or whatever it is. Something he knows I’ll suck at.’ Nancy had been a librarian before leaving work to raise her four children. She had tried to instil a love of books in all her family, but Robert said fiction was for dreamers and only Fiona, the youngest, was an avid reader. And me, of course. After Dad realised I had no interest in windsurfing or spending too long in the summer sun, he left me at Cecelia’s where Nancy had delighted in having another bookworm in the house.

I laughed too. ‘Maybe. But don’t worry, he’ll still pay for your tuition and expenses. Nancy will make sure of it.’

She sobered. ‘I don’t think I’ve laughed for weeks.’

I looked at her face, her pale skin gone sallow. Her eyes were dark and worried, with bags under them.

‘Please look after yourself, Ceel. Eat an M&M.’

Cecelia rolled her eyes at my choice of sustenance, but she took one.

‘I’m sorry I got snappy. I just feel like my nerves are on the brink all the time, and the slightest little thing just sends them over the edge, you know? I can’t really explain it.’

She didn’t need to. I knew exactly what she meant, even if it was for different reasons. I shivered at the thought of what, or who, waited for me at Darkhaven on Tuesday. Donovan.

Cecelia pushed her maths away and picked up her English file. ‘Come on. Let’s go over essay structure, and then I have to kick you out so I can work on chemistry.’

***

By the time Cecelia moved on to chemistry, I’d well and truly had enough of studying, but I wasn’t ready to go home just yet. I declined Nancy’s offer of a lift and wandered towards the bus stop, mindlessly flicking through socials on my phone. There was nothing interesting. I opened messages, went to Keraun’s conversation and typed Up for a walk? Then I paused, finger hovering over the send button. I was way too young for a relationship, or so Dad said, and although I argued with him about it, that was just to be disagreeable. He wanted me to have a crush, a date for the ball, but nothing serious. And he was right. I did feel too young. What if it was like, the real thing, and I screwed it up with my stupid inability to make rational decisions? Stephen had warned me away from Keraun, despite not knowing what he was, but it was probably still good sense. Keraun was a who-knew-how-old god so accustomed to magic he barely noticed when he used it, and I was a teenage human girl who couldn’t pick a university or decide what flavour milkshake she wanted and fell into a quivering heap whenever there was an unexpected loud noise nearby. But the more reasons I thought of to avoid him, the more I just wanted to press the stupid button.

So I did.

He was waiting for me at the end of the street, in his usual casually-coolly-untidy black-and-white outfit, an enormous dorky grin stretching from one ear to the other. He had his sunglasses on. I figured he had to wear them in public where people might see his eyes if they changed.

‘That was quick. Almost like you knew I was going to message,’ I remarked, not breaking my stride as I turned the corner. He fell into step beside me.

‘I didn’t know,’ he replied with earnest honesty. ‘But I was hoping.’

So whatever this was, it was mutual. Maybe. Or maybe he was just toying with me. I reminded myself that he was, literally, a god.

‘Do you always wear the same thing?’

Concern creased his face as he looked down at his white t-shirt and black jeans. ‘Is there something wrong with it?’

I laughed. He was genuinely puzzled. ‘No, but us humans usually have a more varied wardrobe. And we get cold in winter.’ I indicated my black bomber jacket that I’d zipped up against the nippy wind coming off the ocean.

Keraun didn’t answer. I glanced across. He was now sporting a deep blue, woollen jumper. I pursed my lips. ‘If I was cold, and asked to borrow that, would it work?’

‘You are full of questions today.’

‘Everyone has questions for God.’

He huffed. ‘I’m not God. Just a god, kind of. Ask me about weather.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘All of creation to talk about and you want to discuss the weather?’

‘Sure. It’s, like, my thing. See, I’m even picking up the lingo.’

I laughed. ‘Until you said “lingo”.’ We reached the end of the road and came out at a beach car park.

‘Which way?’ Keraun asked.

I shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

We wandered south for a while before I couldn’t wait any more. ‘So would it work?’

‘Would what work?’

‘Your jumper.’

‘Sure. It’s real. I just didn’t have to shear a sheep, spin the wool and knit it together to make it.’

‘So you conjured it out of thin air?’

‘I conjured it out of wool. I’m best at meteorological effects, obviously, but my status in the Sol Group means I can manipulate the matter of this world with subtle magic. To a small extent, anyway. A jumper is simple enough. A car or something more complex is another matter. Stealing is much easier.’

‘How does it work? Creating a world and humans and all this.’ I waved my hand to encompass the ocean and horizon.

‘Well, we were like you, once. Human beings with the same sort of thought processes you have. And we evolved. Once you get to a certain stage, you become aware of … truths.’ He paused.

‘Truths?’ I prompted, skipping around a seagull that wouldn’t give up its chip and get off the footpath.

He fidgeted under his jumper. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you really. Some things you aren’t meant to know, yet.’

‘Come on. I’ll add it to the list of things I can’t tell anyone. Please.’

‘Okay. This is already in your writings, I suppose, just not that many read it, and fewer still understand. I’ll see if I can explain it. Remember what I told you, that you so elegantly rephrased, about humans shaping their own interactions with the world?’

I nodded.

‘Well, once a race of advanced beings gets to a certain stage, they become capable of creating a new world. A planet, basically, with the requirements for evolution and spiritual awareness. They can leave their own planet, travel –’

‘Wait, you have a planet?’

‘Sure. One of several in the Cyrea system. We can travel to other star systems –’

‘You’re an alien then?’ I burst out, then ducked my head.

He frowned. ‘I suppose so. Can I finish?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, mollified.

‘We find a suitable place in the universe for a new world. We sort of create the star, but it’s already there too. In a way. Husa, this is hard. We shape it. Like painters, we create all the little details of the natural world, its planetary systems, and we manifest life. We design the framework that allows for growth and evolution. Plants and animals thrive, sometimes on multiple planets, sometimes on one, sometimes it goes to plan, or better, and sometimes it fails. If it works, we add human DNA like ours. And then we watch. We’re like caretakers. Initially, we have a lot of control, but slowly things start to look after themselves. I only joined the Sol Group recently though.’

‘The Sol Group?’ I glanced at him, my mind awhirl, and nearly tripped on a crack in the footpath.

‘The people who look after Earth,’ Keraun said. A frown marred his face for a moment, then smoothed away. ‘Anyway, the new humans grow and evolve. Not physically, much, that’s pretty set, we’re fundamentally the same all over the universe, but spiritually. Again, you can fail, and there are points where that is more likely. If you succeed, you will eventually be able to travel the universe and start your own world.’

‘What happens if we fail?’

‘You become extinct. We start again.’

‘What about our souls, if the human race becomes extinct?’

He shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. We believe all souls come from a single source, a place both outside and encompassing the universe. Multiverse, whatever it is. I still have a lot to learn.’

‘So you’re not really a god at all,’ I mused. I regretted saying it aloud, worried he might take it the wrong way, but he smiled.

‘Alien is technically more accurate. God is just a word humans made up to explain the notion that someone created you, which is essentially true. What we do is not dissimilar to you creating a baby. You did the work to start the physical growth, but the soul? It’s still a mystery. Another kind of magic.’

I thought of his impossible lightning strikes, whipping cars off the road with the passengers unharmed. ‘Tell me more about magic.’

‘I’m what they call a Vi magician, able to manipulate space with energetic magic.’ He gave me a sly smile. ‘That’s how I get around so quick. And it makes me good at the weather stuff, although that’s more subtle magic.’

So cavalier. ‘And it is, like, proper magic? Or is it all just advanced science?’

‘We use both. Most civilisations do, although some lean more into technology, and others more into magic, especially Pamavianda, the energetic magic. It’s kind of odd that Earth doesn’t have Pamavianda.’ He frowned. ‘I’m disclosing all the secrets. Markarios is going to be so mad at me.’

‘Markarios?’

‘Boss of the Sol Group. Keeps the rest of us aware of the big picture and sorts out any conflicts.’

‘How many of you are there?’

He mocked offence. ‘Only one of me!’

I elbowed him. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Twelve in the Sol Group, who are mainly focussed on monitoring Earth. But as a race, our population is in the trillions. We span several star systems.’

I let my mind boggle as I gazed out across the horizon. Fat, puffy clouds were building up in the distance, just visible against the sky as the sun began to sink behind them. Somewhere, way beyond the blue atmosphere that I was familiar with, there was another sun, lighting up a planet that Keraun had grown up on. ‘How old are you? What was it like, growing up?’

He didn’t answer straight away. I thought he was avoiding my question, but when I looked across, his face was thoughtful.

‘It’s hard to say. Cyrean time moves a little bit faster than Earth’s, and I’m nineteen there, so maybe eighteen Earth years. I spent six years in Abell, which only counts for one Cyrean year, but then the past three years here, and that’s slowed me down slightly. It gets complicated. I’m way too young for this job.’ His face darkened at that, although I had no idea why. ‘But time doesn’t really have the same meaning for us. Most Cyreans now live into their thousands. Once you have that sort of lifespan, you stop counting the years so much.’

Okay, this friendship, or whatever it was, was definitely a bad idea. Although I was going to be around for a while too, presumably. But a thousand years? I hadn’t thought about it like that. The wind tugged at my hair.

‘We are still a young race, in the scheme of things. This is only the second life system we’ve created, and the first that I’ve been involved with. I grew up like any kid, I guess, playing on the hillside of my parents’ home. My family has been involved in the Sol Group for generations, so my sister and I were groomed for the job from a very young age. I never really got a choice.′

‘Is that why you tried so hard to give me a choice?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Who knows how much choice we really have? Even immortality isn’t forever, it’s just a nice way of saying you can’t die by accident. At some point, a Cyrean becomes aware that it is time to die, and they do. There’s some fancy name for it, but we call it the Change. It’s peaceful.’

We wandered on for a while as my mind swam. My phone rang – Alex. I felt a flicker of intuition that I should respond, but I was learning about aliens and magic. I messaged Alex to say I’d be home later, then turned the phone off. ‘So do you know what’s happening to me? With the genetic thing, and my body regenerating?’

‘Not really. Most civilisations advance through natural evolution, although Earth is running a bit behind. If this works, it might catch you up. The ability to survive just about anything should mean you can achieve interstellar travel faster, but there are some other things you don’t have, like Pamavianda magic. Accelerating evolution artificially is tricky.’

‘Could I maybe visit your star system one day?’

Keraun peered at me. ‘Would you want to?’

I shrugged, but my mind swirled at the possibility. I wondered if his home planet had beaches to walk along. ‘Sure.’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘We have a long time to figure that out.’

I tried to ignore the fluttering in my chest when he used “we” and “a long time” in the same sentence, and changed the subject.

We walked and talked for hours. He told me about other star systems he’d visited with his parents and how the thing he most wanted to do was travel the universe for a while, but his parents were strict about him following the family legacy and working on Earth. His sister Eftychi was older than him – by several centuries – and also worked in the Sol Group alongside their parents.

Just after sunset, we left the beach footpath to venture into a burger bar, where Keraun opted for a chicken and brie burger and, after I oscillated for five minutes between beef and chilli, beef and bacon or lamb with mint sauce, ordered me the beef and bacon with lamb, jalapeños and mint sauce added. It was monstrous. And amazing.

‘See. If you can’t decide, just mash your options together until you have what you want,’ he advised. Melted cheese and cranberry sauce dripped between his fingers.

‘Do you even need to eat?’ I asked when I finished my mouthful. I was starving, but I was also mindful of not looking like a dog that had just been given a meaty bone.

‘Not for nutrition. But I can still experience things. That’s really the whole point of manifesting a physical appearance.’

I continued the questioning as we walked back. He was from a race called Cyreans. Yes, he could actually die, but very few things in the known universe could kill him – mostly highly evolved life forms who probably wouldn’t kill a sentient being anyway. When his Change came, he would know, and he would choose to lie down and die. He had been involved with Earth and the Sol Group for the past three years – a short time compared to his sister’s two hundred, and she was still considered new – but he hadn’t done much with the weather lately other than strike down the occasional offensive driver. The earliest human civilisation was the Abellites. “Husa”, long since departed from the known universe, had been the first to discover how to use subtle magic and create new worlds. A god of gods.

We arrived at the car he was claiming today – a sleek, silver sedan. He caught my doubtful glance at the badge on the rear bumper.

‘It’s fine. I know about the bad ones. This is a later model.’

‘Why don’t you have something cool?’ I asked as we climbed in to the plasticky interior. He took off his sunglasses, which he’d been wearing all evening.

‘What would be cool?’

‘A Maserati. Or a Lamborghini. You’re a lightning-wielding alien god. You can have any car in the world, and you get hold of stuff that’s boring, broken down or both.’

‘They’re practical.’

‘A Maserati would get you through the traffic faster.’

‘It doesn’t. People hold you up just so they can ogle the car. Where to?’ he asked.

I saw the time on the dashboard – eleven-thirty p.m. Oops. I turned my phone back on to several missed calls. ‘You’d better take me back to Alex’s before I get into some epic trouble.’ Hopefully Alex hadn’t called Nancy. I thought of asking Cecelia to cover for me, but I didn’t really want to tell her where I’d been all evening either.

‘Keraun,’ I said as he parked on Alex’s street, ‘I wanted to say thanks. For helping me with the rally driving thing. You were right. It was better with you there.’ I remembered his statement, but I wasn’t about to say anything with the words “I wanted you” in it. I didn’t need intuition to know that would be awkward.

It was awkward anyway. Keraun met my gaze, eyes just beginning to smoulder. ‘You’re welcome.’

I picked up my bag and was halfway out of the car when he spoke.

‘Is that why you called me? Just to say thanks?’

Sheesh. What did that mean? ‘Uh, maybe,’ I replied, without meeting his gaze. I could feel those strange eyes burning into my back. ‘Bye, Keraun,’ I said as I shut the door.

After Keraun drove boringly away in his sedan, I unlocked the front door, taking care to be quiet. The scents of fresh tomato sauce and parmesan cheese wafted from the dark kitchen. I found the source in the fridge: takeaway from Harrys, ravioli and lasagne, stacked on the top shelf. A foil package revealed garlic bread. I was a bit puzzled – Italian was our special meal, not something we did on any old weekend. Craving something sweet, I opened the freezer for a frozen fruit yoghurt thing that I remembered seeing a box of yesterday, but before I dug one out, I came across pistachio gelato. I grabbed a spoon and took the tub to the table. There was a note from Alex sitting on my place mat.

Gabby

I got dinner for us but you didn’t make it home. Leftovers in the fridge.

I rolled my eyes. Where else would they be? Then I saw the next line.

Something’s come up and I have to fly out first thing. You can stay here while I’m away if you want. Good luck with exams.

Alex.

A wave of guilt swept in, quelling my appetite for gelato. This had been his goodbye dinner. I should have known when I saw the Italian in the fridge. Actually, I should have known when he called me. I was supposed to be all intuitive.

And then I remembered. I had known. I had realised his call was important – he’d obviously wanted to talk to me about not going back to Dad’s, which was curious – and I’d chosen to ignore it to spend time with some stupid alien god-boy. I sighed and slumped on the table. My chest ached. My brain hurt. I was probably still going to flunk exams – and whatever Donovan was planning for me – and now that I actually had to face Dad and go back to the Taskforce, I was more nervous about it. So much for being superhuman. To top it off, I’d just skipped out on Alex for our last meal together for the next however-many weeks and I wouldn’t see him to fix it. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and was about to press call on Cecelia’s number when I recalled that it was nearly midnight. And she was just as likely to bite my head off these days. Zenna was online. She answered on the second ring.

‘Hey Gabs, what’s up?’

‘Not much.’ Now that I had someone on the other end of the phone, the despair that had threatened to engulf me moments ago ebbed away, replaced by a wave of fatigue. The silence stretched while I toyed with my bracelet and searched for an excuse for the call.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, fine. Tired,’ I said.

‘You can talk to me, you know.’ Zenna’s voice was concerned.

‘I’m okay, Zenna, I promise. Just feeling a bit stressed about exams and stuff.’ More the stuff part. Stuff I couldn’t tell my friends about.

‘Okay.’ I could hear mouse clicking in the background; she was working on something.

‘How’re your things going?’ I asked.

I heard a chair move. ‘I’m getting there. Maybe.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know. Do you have time to chat?’

I could hear a touch of something deeper in Zenna’s voice. It was an edge that I hadn’t heard since her cousin died two years ago. ‘Sure.’

‘I…’

Silence. I waited, but she didn’t continue. ‘Zenna?’

‘I’m here.’

‘What’s going on?’

Her breath hitched.

‘Zenna, talk to me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Are you…’ I tried to think of how to say it. ‘Hurting yourself?’

Nothing.

I bit back my frustration. ‘Please tell me what’s going on.’

She sniffed, tried to cover it with a cough. ‘I don’t know how to explain.’

‘Try.’ I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t want to presume, or make her feel worse, but a sob scratched down the phone and my chest squeezed. ‘Please,’ I said.

The phone grew hot against my face. ‘Is it school?’ It was a stupid question, but I wanted her to say something. Anything.

‘I’m fine,’ she whispered.

Except that. ‘You have to let me help, Zen.’

‘You can’t. No one can.’

A sigh slipped through my lips. I hadn’t meant it to. But I wanted to help her, and she was pushing me away, through a door I didn’t have the key to.

‘I’d better go. Night,’ she said, all in a rush.

‘Night,’ I replied. ‘I’ll see you tomo—’

She’d already hung up. I put my phone down, folded my arms on my place mat and buried my head in them.

***

A firm, gentle hand rested on my shoulder. I jerked awake.

‘Wha—oh.’ I looked around. It was still dark, but the gelato had melted into a green pool in the tub. I must have fallen asleep at the table.

‘Imshorryalx,’ I mumbled, too groggy for separate words. I squinted as a light fell across the table. Alex was pulling his pre-prepared breakfast shake out of the fridge. He packed it into his backpack and filled a water bottle.

I took a breath and tried again. ‘Sorry I missed dinner.’

Alex smiled, but it didn’t quite fill the distance in his eyes. ‘It’s okay. Go to bed, Gabby.’

He leaned down to kiss my forehead, and then he was gone.