All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [93]
“Feel free to examine the stones,” Mr. Ma told them.
Fiona noted that the stones made a rough ring. No grass grew between them. The earth there was hard and cracked. It reminded her of the sterilized dirt in Hell, and she suppressed a shudder.
Jeremy went to one stone and reached out to touch it . . . hesitated, then pulled his hand back.
Mitch took out an art pad and, and examining one severely cracked stone, started sketching. Amanda stood close and admired his work.
Jezebel bowed to one of the monoliths with grave solemnity.
Fiona and Eliot inspected one that stood upright, a pillar that could have been a sandblasted termite mound.
“I feel something,” Eliot whispered.
Fiona took a deep breath and inched closer. There was something. Almost not there . . . something . . . sleeping?
She held out her hand.
She had no intention of actually touching the stone, and yet her fingertips pulled closer and did just that.
The rough texture became smooth like polished marble, then yielding like flesh. For a moment, Fiona could make out features, faded and forgotten and dreamlike: the suggestion of a cheek and eye where she touched, and there a leg, part of an armored chest, the barest outline of a broken, square-tipped sword.
This felt older than stone.
She blinked, and the stone was just rough sandstone. And she wasn’t touching it, either.
Yet the feeling of its different smoothness lingered on her fingertips.
“Weird,” she murmured.
“You heard it, too?” Eliot whispered. “The crying?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind,” Eliot whispered. He looked pale in the sunlight.
Before she could ask him to explain, Mr. Ma came to them. He smelled of exotic black tea. “I ask that you keep your violin in its case,” he said to Eliot in a hushed voice. “These memories need no further coaxing.” Although his voice was friendly, his eyes were dark and deadly earnest.
“Yes, sir,” Eliot immediately replied.
“You are a good boy,” he said.
Fiona and Eliot shared a confused look.
Mr. Ma went to center of the circle. “We begin,” he announced. “Stay within the circle as I awaken them.” His spread wide his callused hands.
Team Scarab gathered closer around Mr. Ma.
Fiona noted that Robert stood opposite her, trying not to look her way. With his hair wind-tousled and in his eyes, he appeared every bit the rebel despite the Paxington uniform.
Was this where they were now—not even looking at each other?
She had done everything this week to avoid thinking about Robert—even reorganized the books in her room thematically instead of alphabetically.
Maybe there wasn’t a solution to the problem of her being in the League of Immortals and Robert being an outcast from the League.
Best to rip their relationship apart—quick, like a Band-Aid off a fresh scrape.
Sarah Covington moved closer to Robert. “How exciting,” she whispered to him with that slight Scottish accent that all the guys went crazy over (and Fiona bet wasn’t even real). She was standing way too close to him.
But if Fiona was letting go of Robert, then what did that matter? She narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth. Sarah took no notice.
Mr. Ma inhaled and held his breath. The wind stilled.
A sound started from the inside of Mr. Ma, a deep bass hum that he twisted into some eastern Indian dialect that was part song, part funeral dirge, part wail. It made the hairs on her arm stir.
Clouds covered the sky. They boiled away and left night overhead, stars shining, but not the ones Fiona recognized in the normal summer sky; these were brighter and a hundred times more numerous.
Fiona heard crying. She cast about to see who it was, but it was no one from Team Scarab.
The sound came from the stones.
She felt their sorrow and the pain wash through her. It was the first time in months since she had felt so much or so deeply. Droplets of rain appeared and trickled down the sides of the rocks.
Fiona wanted to go to them, touch the stones, and comfort them . . . but she felt to do so would break the spell.
So she waited and watched.
The sky lightened.