Нил Шустерман - Shuttered Sky

As they grappled with the incongruous suggestion, Winston flinched in pain, and they lost their grip on him. He fell to the ground.

Maddy, who they could now sense was somehow the very essence of Deanna, glanced down at Winston. “What happened to him?”

“The Vectors happened to him.”

Dillon shook his head. “He went looking for trouble and found it.” Dillon took a step closer. “C’mon, Winston. We don’t have time for this.” His eyes flashed like the shutter of a camera, opening for a fraction of an instant, then closing again, releasing a directed quantum of his peculiar radiance. Winston’s broken spine transformed, the jag­ged bulges receding, the serpentine curve straightening. He opened his eyes to see them all looking down on him.

“Aw crap—did I get buried?” he asked. “What year is it?”

Tory helped him up. “You weren’t even dead.”

He took in his surroundings and deflated. “Damn—you mean I still gotta do this thing?”

The waves were pulsing out from the top of the cliff with greater intensity now. From this angle, Tory could see all three Vectors stand­ing side by side beneath the huge stone arch.

“The scar is weakening,” said a voice behind them. “Can you feel it? In few minutes it will tear wide.” They turned to see Okoya. Tory still could not accept that he was on their side. She stepped aside, keeping distance between herself and him. There had been too many betrayals, so she watched him with distrustful vigilance, waiting for the next one.

Dillon looked down from the Vectors, his eyes following the path of stairs leading down to the sea. “We’ll make our stand there,” he said. “At the base of the stairs.”

There was a round platform there. A stone zodiac. A clock that measured superstition instead of time. Well, thought Tory, what better place for spirits conceived of the Scorpion Star to fight for humanity than a zodiac circle; that hopelessly human attempt to define an in­conceivable cosmos—a task almost as impossible as the one they were charged with.

Yet now that they were in the presence of the long lost Spirit of Faith, this task before them no longer felt so impossible.

As the pulses from the Vectors continued to intensify, the Shards gathered on the Zodiac circle with Okoya, the unlikely coach, standing off to the side.

“What now, Okoya?” Dillon asked.

“At any second the sky will tear open and when it does, you’ll have to stop the Vectors from drawing the others through.”

“Oh, is that all?” said Michael.

“You have a power that is beyond even my understanding,” Okoya told them. “I can’t guide you in its use.”

“How the hell are we suppose to know what to do?” shouted Winston.

But Maddy put up her hand. “We’ll know,” she said, with such certainty it calmed everyone’s fears.

Meanwhile, standing in the Thiran gate, the Vectors continued to emit their waves of sibilant, spatial discord. Space itself began warp­ing, twisting, stretching the knotty scar until it could no longer hold. It tore apart with such force that the sky shattered.

The force of the fracturing sky sent a powerful earthquake rumbling across the island. It splintered the Thiran gate. The top of the rectangular arch fell, instantly crunching and killing the host bodies of the three Vectors, and those deaths freed the Vectors to fly to the edges of the hole and call to their kind. They were more than mere guiding beacons; they were impellers, pulling their dark species from the dying void of their universe along the axes of length, depth and time toward this new place of plenty. Now above the island of Thira was a gaping hole to the Unworld and a second hole beyond that; like smashed double panes of glass. Through the first hole were the red sands and ice sky of the Unworld. And through the second hole was darkness so absolute it dimmed the light of the rising sun.

To the masses that crowded the bay, which now rolled with a violently shaking earth, it appeared as if heaven itself had rended and they opened their minds and hearts, ready to receive whatever glory was about to be bestowed on them.

At the base of the stairs, the five Shards were barely able to stand. The granite Zodiac circle beneath their feet cracked and heaved. Dillon stepped to the center. His whole life, all of their lives, had been meant for this moment. He looked to Maddy. “No fear,” he said, and reached out his right hand. She took it and instantly the others were there as well. Michael took his left hand, Tory wrapped in Michael’s arm; and pressed against Dillon’s chest. Winston moved in, finding his place, and a syntaxis of five exploded within them.

Dillon let loose everything, detonating his own containment. He felt his soul, his power stretching beyond the island to the shores of the mainland, to the coast of Africa, to the heights of heavens and the depths of the earth. He could feel life being pulled from death every­where. The island greened, and the bay filled with kelp from Winston’s powerful surge of growth. The clouds burned away to the edge of the horizon. All was scoured by Tory’s purifying presence, and Deanna’s peace, which now resided in Maddy, flooded every heart more pow­erfully than the shattering sky. They could feel all these things raging wildly out of control but all these wonders still did not overwhelm the darkness of the breach, and all their efforts had no effect on the Vectors.

“It’s not working!” Dillon shouted. “We’ve done something wrong!”

Dillon could feel the full contingent of creatures—thousands upon thousands of dark spirits moving towards the breach from their world of living shadows—an infection that would poison this world, this universe, for all time to come. What have we done wrong? Okoya, some­body, help us! What have we done wrong?

Lourdes had moved to the nearest cove, her controlled crowd now standing behind her. She had promised Dillon she’d have the best seat in the house, and now she watched in an ambivalence that was turning into deep dread as the sky tore apart and the darkness beyond made itself known.

She had felt Deanna’s return only moments before. There was no mistaking it. So connected were they still that a birth registered within the core of her soul just as a death would. Lourdes could feel Deanna’s conquest of fear whittling away at the stone of her own heart. It was almost enough to move Lourdes, but not quite. So she stood there and watched as the sky split open, revealing a demonic womb, hell crown­ing in the breach, ready to push through. And now the only thought she could find within her was this:

I have brought this about.

Not the Vectors. Not Okoya. Me.

Because of her, Dillon was failing. They all were failing. Their mighty powers stretched beyond the horizons, but had no effect on the Vectors and the darkness. She was responsible for the failure of the Shards, and that was a weight she could not bear.

You were always the weakest of us.

Dillon had planted that thought into her, and she could not tear it free. Those words of Dillon’s echoed within her, fracturing her resolve. She was the weak link. This was not happening because she chose the Vectors, but because she was not strong enough to resist them—and in this moment when she should have shared triumph with the Vec­tors, she could feel nothing but defeat, loss, and her own sense of inadequacy. With a single thought, Dillon had stolen her victory.

I hate him, she said to herself. I hate them all for making me responsible. I hate them for needing me. I hate myself for needing them. For loving them still.