The Oak Hotel - Watty Awards 2013 Finalist

Chapter Forty-eight - Kana Hove

Chapter Forty-eight

Kana Hove

They both knew that, at least for the time being, Sapana was no longer with them.

“Where did she go?” Lincoln asked.

Smiling, Kayleigh said, “Probably up there to see the girls.”

Hand in hand, they ran across the ridge of the hill, passing the place where Kafír’s portal had dropped them off an age ago.

“It’s so strange,” Lincoln said, catching his breath.

In what would one day be the center of the city, the girls stood in a rough circle. They were talking, but their voices did not carry.

“Is it okay to walk over and listen?” Lincoln asked.

Kayleigh shrugged, though wanted very much to hear what they were saying.

Sapana’s voice returned:

Nothing the de’Malange speak will ever be private to either of you. I want you both to stand here, though. There’s something special for you to see.

So they stood silently and watched.

The girls continued to confer on some unknown subject a moment more before they all walked slowly backward. It was difficult to tell, but Lincoln was sure he saw smiles play across the lips of several of them. It was uncanny, as well, how much they resembled their physical bodies back in Castle Rock. Lincoln turned to look at Kayleigh, who seemed to sense his thoughts.

“I feel real, too,” she said.

We manipulated basic forces to mimic our old bodies. I don’t think we really thought about what we were doing. We just wanted to be “real” for a while. Kayleigh is a bit different. She didn’t have the power of the Ydra within her. We’re giving her this temporary form as we speak.

Lincoln wanted to scream, angry at the blithe way Sapana spoke of Kayleigh.

Before he could say anything, the ground beneath them shook violently and Kayleigh clung to him. The deep reverberation increased, causing them to drop to their knees.

Here it comes, Sapana said.

First, there was an explosion of grass, dirt and other natural debris. Kayleigh and Lincoln jumped, then stared in awe as something enormous pushed slowly and unsteadily upward from the ground. Lincoln at once had the image of a child pushing a square peg through a round hole. Clearly, this wasn’t something that should normally happen. The giant red mass of stone did not have an easy time rising through tons of barely yielding earth. The girls, standing so dangerously close, moved not at all. Their smiles were, if anything, wider and filled with greater wonder.

When the motion of the stone pillar finally stopped, the ground beneath it knit together as if pinched by giant, unseen fingers; this motion caused the mass to shake one final time. It took a further two minutes for the dust to settle to the ground. The de’Malange, covered in a sheet of greyish silt, brought their arms up as one. With eyes focused and minds in union, they held their palms up to the monolith. The rough rectangular prism vibrated, the sound moving from painful cacophony to harmony. When the tone closed in on perfection, the girls calmly took a few steps back until they were each about twenty feet from the rock’s face. The outer hull fell away, shearing from the side of a now perfectly symmetrical cylinder.

Lincoln turned to Kayleigh and they exchanged grins. The Tower of Quercus, they realized, had just been created.

*     *     *