The 49th Mystic Page 7

  My heel throbbed a little with each step, but the pain was already fading.

  “Hi, Rachelle.”

  Sue sat behind the counter, watching the television. The president was talking—I’d never seen him but I knew his voice well. So this is what a television looked like. And this is what Sue looked like. Plump, with tangled blonde hair, totally different than I had pictured her.

  “All done today? Your father left about an hour ago.”

  She knew nothing about CRISPR.

  “I’m going to go find him,” I said.

  She glanced up. “You need any help?”

  “Have I ever needed help?”

  “Well, David’s usually with you when you come . . .” She couldn’t tell that my eyes were working. I supposed they looked the same to her as on any other day. I was under the cover of my own self. Incognito.

  “It’s okay, I got this, Sue.” I headed for the front door, grinning. “By the way, I like your green dress.”

  “Well, thank you, dear.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I was halfway out the door when things clicked in Sue’s head. “How did you . . .”

  The rest was lost when the door swung shut behind me.

  I looked at Eden for the first time. Bright green trees and manicured lawns. The buildings, the road, what might be a hawk in the blue sky. It was all new and stunning. I’d seen all these kinds of things before, in my dreams, but never here, in Eden, and never awake.

  The sky . . . The sky was the only thing that looked different. Brighter and bluer than anything I had seen or imagined. Definitely bluer than the sky in the desert world.

  Seeing really was like dying and going to heaven.

  Running wasn’t something that had ever come easily to me in my waking life. It’s hard to run when you’re clicking and seeing only shapes. As a consequence, I had spent most of my life walking—and carefully.

  Now that I was able to see, my feet dared me to run and I couldn’t resist. I bounded down the sidewalk, then turned down the street, headed for the center of town.

  “Woo-hoo!” I cried, jumping in the air and pumping my fist. I was like a superhero in this world, able to skip and jump and spin and shout at the top of my lungs if I wanted to, and I almost did.

  Instead, I slowed to a walk, breathing in clean, cool air. No need to rush things. I should relish each step.

  Seeing, you do not see . . . The phrase from my dream that obviously wasn’t just a dream filled my mind. I might not be able to see whatever I was meant to see, but I was seeing for the first time in my life, and it was intoxicating.

  I caught sight of my shoes and stopped on the sidewalk. My favorite white Converses. They were more tattered and stained than I’d realized. Maybe I should listen to my father and get a new pair.

  It took me five minutes to reach the center of town, walking normally, glancing over as I passed several people. They just saw me as Rachelle, the blind girl they didn’t quite know how to treat.

  To me, on the other hand, they looked brand new. I had no clue who each of them was, because I knew people only by their voices and no one was talking. But I didn’t want to stare and give myself away. Not before my father knew.

  I walked down Third Street and past the grocery store, which was busy enough—two cars and three pickup trucks were parked out front. I was tempted to walk in and see what all the groceries looked like but decided I had my whole life to discover those things.

  “Hi, Rachelle.” The voice belonged to Cindy Jarvis, who had just come out of Bill’s Hardware to my left. “You okay?”

  I stopped and turned to her, unable to hide my smile. “Yes.”

  “My, aren’t we chipper today?” The woman was prettier than I’d imagined. Which might be why Bill Baxter, the owner of the hardware store, had a thing for her in secret, judging by the way he talked when she was around.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” I said. And then, without thinking, “I’ve never seen such a blue sky.”

  She took a puff on one of those electronic vaporizers and glanced up. “It is a nice day.” She paused. Eyes back down, studying me.

  That’s right, I thought. I can see! I can see everything you can see. And seeing you, I can see why your boss has a thing for you. Yup, that’s something I’ve already seen. So see, I can see even better than you.

  The door opened and a boy my age stepped out.

  “You can see the sky?” Cindy asked.

  But my eyes were on the boy. I didn’t know who he was yet, but I could see how he looked. A foot taller than me with wavy brown hair. And blue eyes like mine, which looked amazing with his dark hair. Even more amazing with the blue shirt he was wearing, sleeves rolled up around strong muscles.

  A part of me that didn’t know any better fell in love with him at first sight. I was, after all, still a sixteen-year-old girl, and although boys had never really been a part of my life, I could see now why they should be.

  He stared at me for a few seconds. “Who can see the sky?” he said.

  Peter. This was Peter Moses, the son of Simon, the Judge. The same Peter who had never given me a second look that I knew of. The boy I had sometimes imagined being kissed by.

  That was in my dreams. In real life, I didn’t dare talk to him.

  I could feel fear pulling me under like sinking sand as I stared at him. And the thought of falling back into fear terrified me more than the fear of talking to him.

  So I impulsively stepped up to him, searched his face and eyes, and said, “The sky’s as blue as your eyes, Peter Moses.” I reached up and touched his cheek. “I never realized that you were so pretty.”

  He blinked but stood perfectly still.

  “Rachelle?” a voice yelled. I spun to the sound of my father’s voice. He was running down the street past the church.

  “Don’t touch her!” he yelled. To me: “What are you doing? How did . . .”

  I ran to meet him, feeling like a goddess treading among mortals. And to me he looked like a god—beautiful and strong.

  “I can see!”

  Then I was in his arms, being swung around. He held me tight for just a moment, then set me down and held me at arm’s length, staring at my eyes.

  “What do you mean you can see?”

  “I can see.” I swept my arms wide, looking at the tall trees by the church and the blue sky with fluffy clouds up high. “Everything! I can see everything.”

  At least a dozen people within earshot of my announcement stopped what they were doing and looked at us. RG and Miranda were running down the street from the direction of the hospital. I was suddenly the center of attention. My life had just been made new.

  “But honey, CRISPR doesn’t work like that,” my father said, still stunned. “You . . . You blacked out. You . . . We thought you were in a coma.” He remembered where he was and glanced around.

  “She can really see?” Cindy asked behind me. A circle of sorts was forming around us. “What’s CRISPR?”

  Miranda and RG burst through the gathering crowd.

  “It wasn’t CRISPR,” I said to my father. “I was healed in a dream. A man . . .” I stopped, realizing how absurd it would sound.

  “What dream?” Cindy asked. “You can really see, Rachelle? Like normal?”

  “I don’t know what normal is,” I said, “but I’m looking at the flowers on your shirt and they’re green. Pretty flowers.”

  She glanced down as if to confirm what she obviously knew.

  “What man?” Bill Baxter had joined us on the street and was looking me over.

  “Vlad Smith,” my father said, putting his arm around me as if to protect me. “A healer who visited the hospital today.” He began to shepherd me away from them. “Please, give us some room.”

  With that he hurried me away, followed closely by RG and Miranda.

  “It’s true?” Miranda asked, hurrying to catch us. “We should run some blood work.” And then, when I didn’t respond: “But how�
��s that possible? Nothing we did could have caused such radical spontaneous remission.”

  When we were far enough away from the small crowd, all now talking excitedly, my father turned to me, eyes misted with tears. He cupped my cheek with his hand.

  “You really can see? I mean, yes, but . . . You can see my face? My eyes?”

  “For the first time.” I smiled at him. “I always knew you were handsome, but didn’t realize your eyes were so blue. Just like mine.”

  I don’t think he’d believed this day would ever come. I know I hadn’t, not really.

  “Who’s Vlad Smith?” I asked.

  “No one, honey.”

  But Miranda didn’t let it go. “You don’t actually believe—”

  “Of course I don’t.” He glanced at the chattering crowd. “Better for them to get lost in some harmless metaphysical psychobabble than ask more questions about CRISPR.”

  “You told them about CRISPR?”

  “No. But I might have let the word slip.”

  “Who’s Vlad Smith?” I asked again. “Tell me.”

  So he quickly told me how the man had come while I was sleeping and pricked my finger before reciting something about seeing.

  A moment of confusion darkened my mood. There was Justin; there was Shadow Man. Who was Vlad? Shadow Man had insisted that he would blind me again, but I could see, really see.

  “He said that?” I asked. “That he’d come to heal me and give Eden sight?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “What else did he say?”

  My father pointed me toward home. “He said that things aren’t really what they seem. Like the wool’s been pulled over our eyes. And he claims to know more than Simon.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know. No. I doubt it.”

  “But I can see. So maybe he did something good, right?”

  He shook his head in wonder. “Yes, you can see.” Kissed my forehead. “But I can’t say he had anything to do with it. I think spontaneous remission—”

  “Spontaneous remissions don’t present in two hours,” Miranda interrupted. “Not like this.”

  “We don’t know when it started. Could’ve been keyed up for months now without our knowledge. She can see, that’s what’s important.”

  “I should talk to him,” I said.

  “Not a chance,” my father said. “I don’t want you anywhere near him, not until we know more.”

  “David?”

  We all turned toward the church, where Simon Moses stood, staring at me.

  “She can see?”

  My father took my hand. “Come on, honey.” He led me toward the Judge. “Let’s show them.”

  THERE WERE four of us and four of them seated at the table in the council chamber. I knew them all by their voices but was amazed by the difference between how they looked with echolocation sight and eyesight.

  The four of us were me, my dad, Miranda, and RG.

  The other four were Eden’s governing council.

  Simon Moses, the Judge, whom I had always thought of as God’s authority on earth. I had a deep respect for him. He had soft but firm eyes, which suited him well. Simon had always been kind to me. Like a rock, but genuinely caring.

  Linda Loving, who had a genuine heart for the community’s well-being, the children in particular. She kept looking at me and smiling.

  Maxwell Emerson, who was in charge of all resources, meaning money, food, and energy. He wore a new blue suit that was too tight across his large belly. Bald, shiny head. I’d always heard a distant, uncaring quality in his voice, and seeing him now only deepened the impression. The flesh around his eyes drooped like big teardrops. I felt a little sorry for him.

  Barth Caldwell, who was in charge of security. He reminded me of what I thought a bulldog looked like. Or a Rottweiler. A good-looking one who was as tall as he was thick. Black hair and bushy eyebrows. He made me nervous.

  That was them, seated across from us with Simon at the head of the table. My father had just recounted all the details concerning the injection of CRISPR and the entrance of Vlad Smith. I should say, all the details except Smith’s claims that something was wrong in Eden.

  All four had listened with eager attention, and at times bewilderment. It isn’t every day that blind people just start seeing.

  “You’re saying this Vlad Smith actually healed her?” Barth asked. “That this little parlor trick of his somehow opened her eyes?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. I’m just filling you in on what happened. Nothing more.”

  “God doesn’t heal that way.”

  “You don’t know that,” Linda said. “Jesus healed the blind using mud.”

  He glared at my father, which surprised me. We’d come to give them the good news, but Barth looked like we’d just told him the hydroelectric plant had blown up. As I saw his reaction, fear began to creep back into my mind.

  Barth scooted his chair back and walked to a liquor cabinet, illegal everywhere but in here, evidently. “The president’s declared a national state of emergency, freeways are being closed along the East Coast to keep people from clogging them up, nothing’s flying east of Denver. Salt Lake will be next. We need to shut down the road. Whoever Smith is, he’s got to go before he causes any more trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Linda glared at him. “Have some decency! Rachelle can see, for crying out loud.”

  “You’ll have to forgive his manners,” Simon said, looking at me apologetically. “Tough times.”

  I smiled. “It’s okay.”

  Barth lifted his glass toward me. “I’m happy for you.” To Simon: “But this character’s a problem.”

  Simon acknowledged him with a slight, nervous nod. He faced my father. “Who else knows about him?”

  My father shrugged. “Everyone in the square. By tomorrow, everyone in town. You can’t keep a lid on something like this.”

  The Judge slowly leaned back, face drawn. What struck me was how upset he was even without having heard the details my father left out. It made me wonder if the Judge really was hiding something.

  I decided then that I didn’t want to be in that room. The sooner we got out, the better.

  “Where is he now?” Simon demanded.

  “I don’t know. He just walked out.”

  “Find him.” He drilled Barth with a glare. “Find him now.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard.” The councilman drank the last of his liquor and set his shot glass down.

  “Find him and bring him to me. Then seal up that tunnel. No one gets in without my express permission. You hear? Not a mouse.”

  “Why not just throw him out?”

  “Because I want to know what he thinks he knows.” Simon’s eyes shifted to Linda. “Call a town hall meeting for tomorrow night. I want every last soul there. The last thing we need right now is someone exerting authority based on a parlor trick.”

  His reaction had me thinking about my dreams again. It was something the Roush had said about how I could know this was a dream by asking the right questions.

  Right there in those chambers, everything seemed real. But that’s also how I’d felt when I was in the desert. What if this was the dream and I couldn’t really see? I couldn’t shake that feeling. The fear of that possibility pushed me over the top.

  “Can I ask a question?” I said.

  The Judge turned his head. “Of course.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that something’s wrong with Eden?” My voice was thin.

  All eyes were on me. A shadow crossed my dad’s face, and I regretted asking the question. But it was too late now.

  “What do you mean, wrong?” the Judge asked.

  “I mean . . . What if we’re blind and don’t know it?”

  They just looked at me, including RG and Miranda.

  Simon finally forced a polite grin. “What makes you ask that?”

  “The man in my dreams.”

  “What
man?”

  “Actually, it was a fluffy white bat.” I held out my hand to show size. “Two feet tall, called a Roush.”

  Silence.

  I felt a little foolish. But I had only asked a question. Maybe I should have left out the part about the bats.

  My father came to my rescue. “Metaphorically speaking, I think we all have our blind sides, even in Eden. You know that better than most, Rachelle.”

  “Blindness,” the Judge said, “is the condition of the world. Not Eden.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  For a long moment that I thought might not end, Simon just stared at me. Then he abruptly stood and walked out.

  “Meeting adjourned,” Barth said, grinning.

  My father was looking at my arm. I glanced down and saw that, seated the way I was, my T-shirt sleeve had ridden up my arm a bit, exposing a mark on my shoulder.

  I reached over and pulled my sleeve all the way up. There, on my arm, was a circle about three inches in diameter. Like the one I had in my dreams. But how was that possible?

  “What is it?” Linda asked.

  I touched it with my finger, then rubbed it. A tattoo, not fresh but old, if I wasn’t mistaken. My mind spun.

  “Where did you get it?” my father wanted to know.

  I quickly pulled my sleeve back down. “I’ll explain later.”

  But I knew there was no way to explain it.

  THAT DAY in Eden was without question the best day of my life. On one hand, everything was topsy-turvy because a part of me—the part with a tattoo from another world—couldn’t stop wondering what was really happening. What was the 49th? Was it real like the tattoo on my arm? Was there really light in my veins? Of course not, so it all had to be in my mind. Symbolism, like my father insisted. If the 49th was real, that would mean Shadow Man was also real, right? I couldn’t accept that thought.

  On the other hand, being able to see filled me with wonder. And once I let go of my fear that I would fall back into fear, I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.

  It faded a little when Miranda worried aloud that my sight might only be temporary, a psychosomatic alteration prompted by dreams so vivid that they’d convinced my mind to manifest sight. Classic epigenetic spontaneous remission, she said. When people believe—really believe—then genes change and the body follows, regardless of religion, creed, or history. But when belief wanes, conditions revert.