I’ll know the secrets that have always swirled around me, vapors I’ve been forbidden to inhale. When I complete the Passage I’ll be a Seedbearer, like the aunts and uncles who raised me. Every member of my family goes through this ritual on the night we turn eighteen. “Happy birthday,” he tells me, lifting into number thirteen. On a slanted plank between his bed and the wall, Critias begins his hundred push-ups. It’s only one night in the woods, but I will take my entire childhood with me. “I’m packed.” I glance at the backpack I’ve been filling slowly for months. He looks younger than Albion, though both of them are thousands of years old.Īlbion looks at him.
In the twin bed across the room, my uncle Critias stretches stiffly and sits up. Only his shape and his effect on the temperature tell me that I’m not dreaming.
His voice is clear but somehow never disturbs the silence. Like all my relatives, his movements make no sound. “Are you packed?” Albion closes the blinds above my bed, erasing the knife made of moonlight that was splitting my chest in two.Īlbion makes a room feel cold. My uncle doesn’t wait, enters my dark room. The Passage is what matters, not the life I’ll lose.Ī knock on my door startles me. My secret dies in the woods tonight, along with a thousand smaller passions. And though she knows nothing of my existence, I’ve known her all my life. I won’t be what I am today.īecause for as long as I have known Eureka, my love for her has defined me. I’ll still be Ander-blond and pale, immune to illness, able to blend into any background-but I won’t be me anymore. I’ve never danced entangled in another’s limbs, never flirted in a hallway or teased someone and walked away.Īnd yet tomorrow, when I give up love, everything will change. I’ve never slipped my arm around a waist, hoping for encouragement to let it stay. I’ve never kissed a girl, never asked anyone out.
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