Luminosity Read online

  How can I explain flying to someone who has never flown before? It felt like being in the planetarium, when Mr. Burnett would spin the world and stars flew by like tunnel panels past a car. It made me dizzy, and happy, and insignificant all at once. The smallness of cities and lakes and trees made all of my problems—my mom, the move, the dress fiasco—seem even smaller.

  Egret steered us above the clouds. There was a piece of land floating in the air, and on top of it grew the lushest forest I had ever seen. Like something out of a history book, the trunks were larger than the span of my arms and the leaves greener than anything a paint machine could combine.

  I told you my parents did landscaping and lived like the 1900s, her voice whispered in my head as she flew us straight into the woods. I just may have neglected to mention that one of them was an Igreefee. My mom is part of the witch-Igreefee study abroad program, and the first one besides the great Allanah to live among the Igreefee.

  “What’s an Igreefee?” I asked, then ducked as a branch came at my head. The pathway we flew on grew smaller and smaller, but Egret seemed to know her way.

  They’re a group of magical people who were made around the end of the reign of dragons.

  “Made?”

  By the Artists, or by the Maker herself. Basically they have environmental powers, but for centuries they never used them because the powers are meant to protect the Maker from harm. They left the use of magic to the wizards and witches, or, of course, to the dragons.

  “The dragons?” My heart pounded. “Are you telling me—?”

  Those pictures in your locker? True. Those conspiracy theories you read about? Also true. All of those things exist, and much more, including our little red friend back there.

  “And Draman? Is that planet real too?”

  Of course. King Grian is the leader of that planet, and the first Sun Dragon in years who is also part human. He’s the one leading the universe-wide attack on those red guys, or at least trying to lead it, though he’s in his midsixties now and not quite as good with a sword as he used to be. Not like Merlin, though—that old man is blind as a bat and just as crazy.

  I felt like Egret was reading me a bedtime story, only every magical character was real and I had to believe in them because I was flying on the back of a giant talking bird.

  Egret landed next to a huge sequoia in the middle of a clearing. Among the circle of trees around us were many tents, and from the tents, curious green faces emerged. When Egret transformed back into a human, she wore only a bikini top and shorts made from green leaves. Perhaps that was her only choice, or perhaps she wanted to hide her leather jacket and spikes from her parents.

  “What happened?” a green man wearing a crown of woven sticks asked Egret. “And why did you bring the human? You know our rules.”

  “This is Luke; I know him from school. We were attacked in Eagle Park, so I had no choice but to carry him here.”

  “On your back?” The man looked down, apparently disgraced that Egret had allowed a human to ride her, and whispers began in the crowd. “We are not pack mules—”

  “Papa, you’re not listening to me. We were attacked by an incubus.”

  The whispers stopped.

  “Down there, in plain sight of humans? But why would an incubus do such a rash thing?”

  “I have a theory.” Egret turned to me. “Luke, can you give me your pencil?”

  I looked down at my empty hands and then patted my pockets. “Uh… I didn’t bring anything with me.”

  “Yes, you did.” Egret stepped closer to me, so close that I could see the pores in her skin. “Reach into your pocket and hand me your pencil.”

  “I told you, I didn’t—”

  “Hand me your pencil, Luke.”

  To humor her, I reached into my pocket. Sure enough, a pencil had appeared. However, when I withdrew the pencil, it looked nothing like the mechanical ones we all used at school. Instead, this pencil was cut from a tree branch and sharpened by a knife.

  “See,” Egret said triumphantly. “I knew the second he could hear my thoughts. He’s an Artist.”

  Chapter Three

  AFTER I called my mom with Egret’s cell phone and told her I was staying the night at a new friend’s house, I met the Igreefee back outside the tent at the fire. Darkness was coming, shrouding the forest in a creepy black blanket that could hide incubi in any fold.

  “How do you know they won’t attack us here?” I took a bowl of steaming green soup from Egret and propped it on my lap. “Especially because they’re apparently looking for me.”

  “Protection spell,” she said, then slurped from the rim of her bowl. “They can’t get in here no matter how hard they try. And usually, they don’t try very hard—Igreefee blood is of little use to them.”

  “And what’s so great about my blood?”

  Egret exchanged a look with her father. Before she could say anything, however, an old woman wrapped in a bearskin blanket emerged from a tent nearby. She must have been important, for she, too, wore a stick crown and was attended by several other women on her long trek from the tent to a log by the fire.

  “Luke, meet Chima, my grandmother. She’s the great-granddaughter of Chipeta, you know, from the stories…,” she trailed off. “Right. You don’t know.”

  “Nice to meet you, Chima.” I extended my hand, and Chima took it in her bony one. She looked over a hundred years old, perhaps even a hundred and twenty, if that were possible for an Igreefee lifespan.

  “And you, my daughter.”

  Egret and I exchanged a grin. Apparently, Chima was so blind and deaf that she thought I was a girl, and neither of us wanted to correct her.

  “So tell me more about my powers,” I said. “Can I make anything appear like the pencil? How come I never knew about this special talent before? How did I get it?”

  “We have the same questions for you,” Egret’s father, who was apparently named Chova because one of the former Chavas had disgraced the name and necessitated a variation on tradition. “Artists can have many levels of talents, just like wizards and witches, although the Artists did not have the Council’s need for tests and divisions. Perhaps making your own pencils and pens is all you can do; perhaps you can create galaxies. We do not know. We are pretty convinced that an Artist’s powers were often awakened by a traumatizing event—in this case, being chased by an incubus.”

  “You say ‘were.’ Are the Artists gone?”

  Chova looked into the fire. “They were slaughtered by the incubi about seventeen years ago. It was not unusual for an extraordinarily strong incubus to get through the portal that the Maker devised—after all, that’s how we had the Artists in the first place—but for all of them to escape their black hole prison was unheard of. Until they killed what we thought were all of the Artists, of course.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Previously, the incubi would seduce women upon arrival on Earth, and sometimes, an Artist would result. We knew the incubi wanted these offspring, but never in our wildest nightmares could we imagine they would eat them to gain power. And apparently, the blood of one’s own offspring is the strongest of all.”

  I gulped. “So you’re telling me my dad’s an incubus who wants to eat me alive?”

  “I’m sorry, Luke.” Egret put her hand on my arm. “I didn’t want to say anything, but you’re in grave danger. Once the incubi kill all the Artists—which means you, since you’re one of the only ones left—they will come for the Maker. If they destroy her, the incubi will have free reign over the entire universe to remake it how they see fit.”

  “And this Maker? Where is she?”

  Egret pointed to the giant sequoia in the middle of camp.

  I stared up at the tree, trying to see the top. “The Maker is a tree?”

  “She’s inside the tree. We think. Actually, she could be the tree. We were too busy transforming and flying around the island to discuss those details at the time.”

  Unti
l that point I had taken the news well, or at least appeared to be taking it well, but I had now reached my threshold on external stimuli. My body began to shut down: first my hands began to shake and then my arms and then my legs. My chest grew tight, and I struggled to move air into and out of my lungs.

  “Are you okay?” Egret asked, waving a hand in front of my face.

  “I just need some air.”

  “Want me to come?”

  “No. Thanks.” I struggled to stand from the log, almost lost my balance, then steadied. Every step from the fire loosened my chest slightly, and by the time I reached the forest, at least I didn’t feel like passing out anymore.

  How could my mother have kept this from me? When I was younger, she had told me my father was someone who had traveled through space for a living before his accident, so I’d assumed he was an astronaut. When I’d searched her bedroom as an older child, I’d found a shoebox of pictures in the top of her closet, all of a man in a space suit or in his NASA casualwear smiling at my mother or putting his arm around her. My mother didn’t like to talk about this person, and when she discovered the shoebox had been touched, she moved its location.

  Now I wondered if that man with the very white teeth and buzzed head had been her boyfriend before an incubi came into her bed. If he had been scared off by her pregnancy or if she had broken up with him before he found out. Had she worked less before, and spent more time in the human world instead of space?

  Had my birth ruined my mother’s life?

  Egret eventually joined me, even though I’d told her not to. She sat down on the fallen tree where I’d found comfort and put her arm around my shoulders, which felt better than I wanted it to. After all, she’d been very clear on where her interests lay, and it wasn’t with me.

  “You’ve had a rough day.”

  “Tell me about it. I’m still trying to process the whole ‘your dad’s a demon’ news; I haven’t even gotten to the Artist stuff yet.”

  “Now you see why I insist on no relationships. My whole life is about preparing to defeat incubi, waiting for the Maker, and trying to save my people from extinction. Making time to call my girlfriend and ask her about her perfectly normal day just doesn’t make the priority list.”

  She squeezed my shoulder, and I shook my head. I would never have guessed Egret’s “no relationship” clause had a logical—or rather, magical—explanation.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I think I know someone who can help. He’s another Artist, and I believe he can guide you through the process of learning your powers—if you want to. But you’d need to take the rest of the week off from school, and I know how important that astronomy test is.”

  “Important enough for you to cheat off mine.”

  How strange, that we teased each other as though we’d known each other our whole lives when we’d only just talked for the first time. Being around Egret felt natural, even more natural than being around my mom.

  “Maybe. But either way, do you want to do it? I can have one of the women call and pretend to be your mom, and they’re quite skilled at signatures too.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it. Why not? If I have to be the son of a demon, I might as well find out the benefits package that comes with the job.”

  “Good choice, Space Boy. Now come back to camp, okay? If you’re going to start training with Merlin tomorrow, you’ll need plenty of rest.”

  I followed her back to camp, where she found me a spot in a friend’s bachelor tent. The friend was still out at the fire, apparently trying to convince a girl to go to a wizard ball the Igreefee had been invited to, so I made myself at home on a straw mat and spare pile of animal furs. Many of the other Igreefee had gone to sleep, and the forest was even darker and lonelier than before.

  “You look like you belong here,” Egret whispered as she watched me get into bed.

  “This camp feels safe. I like it here; I like your family.”

  “Good. Because after your training, you’ll probably be spending a lot of time here, at least until we know you’re safe outside of our protection. Now get some rest, Luke. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

  Egret closed the flap behind her, and then I heard the whispers of two girls. Through the partially closed tent flap, I watched my new friend put her hands on another Igreefee girl’s shoulders and then pull her in for a kiss. The girl was beautiful, curvier and softer-looking than most of the Igreefee, and she wore a brown suede dress and brown feathers tied into her green hair. Was this girl the reason Egret had broken up with Izzie? Or did she keep her two lives separate by juggling multiple girls at a time?

  Their kissing grew more urgent, so I looked away. My gaze went to the fire, and then to the two red eyes staring at me from the flames.

  What happened next was a blur. One minute I lay in the bachelor’s tent watching my crush make out with her girlfriend, and the next, I stood next to the fire pouring a bucket of water over it.

  “What are you doing?” Egret’s date screeched. “Only Chima or Chova is allowed to put out the great fire—”

  “Shut up, Grace,” Egret said. “Luke, what happened?”

  “Eyes,” I said as I sat, panting, on one of the logs. “The red ones.”

  “Here?” Egret looked scared for the first time. “They shouldn’t be able to get through our spell.”

  “What’s going on here?” Chova demanded as he rubbed sleep from his eyes.

  “Luke saw incubus eyes in our fire, so he put out the flames,” Egret explained. “I know our rules, father, but what choice did he have?”

  “You did the right thing, Luke,” Chova assured me. “These are dark times, and some traditions must be broken for the protection of our people. Egret, I want you to take Luke to Merlin’s right now, before first light. You know the way. Have him carry the royal staff just in case.”

  “But Chova, that staff is traditionally reserved—”

  “Grace, I know your mother is headmistress at the school, but I do not need one of your history lessons right now. As leader of all Igreefee, I think I understand when to lend my staff better than you do.”

  “Yes, Chova.” Grace bent her head humbly.

  “Now go, daughter. Luke needs protection stronger than we can give him, and there’s no time to waste.”

  With a carved wooden stick in one hand and Egret’s bird feathers in the other, I sailed away from the Igreefee camp as suddenly as I’d entered it. Even though I’d only spent a few hours there, the forest dwelling had already begun to feel like home—especially because the Igreefee weren’t afraid to tell me the truth, something my own mother seemed incapable of.

  “So… Grace…,” I said to start a conversation after what felt like an hour of silence had passed. “She seems nice.”

  You’re a terrible liar. She’s an annoying know-it-all, but you have to admit, she’s hot.

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  How about you? Egret asked. Did you have a special someone or two back at your old school?

  “Never.”

  I didn’t mention Lacey; I wasn’t even sure she counted. Lacey had loved me, and she’d told me as much, but the Luke that Lacey loved was not the one I wanted to be. Sure, there had been a few awkward moments between us when dancing at junior prom had led to something more or a spin the bottle game that had gotten out of control, but to me, those didn’t count. I’d felt like an actor in a play, a Romeo kissing his Juliet, but after the curtain closed, I wanted to take off the costume and be myself again.

  That’s a shame. Those pretty blue eyes and that long blond hair deserve some appreciation. Wait, you are into girls, aren’t you?

  “Quite interested.”

  Before she could question me further, a pair of red eyes appeared in the clouds on our right—and then another, and another.

  “Incubi are everywhere!” I yelled, as though Egret couldn’t see them with her own eyes. “What should we do?”

  Use the staff, she instructed. Just press the en
graved circle in the middle and aim.

  I found the circle and pressed. A beam of green light flashed like a camera, and then the incubus closest to us flew backward several feet.

  Good. We’re only about ten minutes from Merlin’s house, so just keep pressing that button whenever they get close. The sorcerer will have his own protection spell in place.

  I did as she commanded. Most of the incubi realized what was going on and retreated, but one incubus in particular kept coming back. Like a wild dog, he bared his white teeth and flew at us, and the staff was the only thing able to hold him back each time. The incubus tried to lunge around the circle of light, and even to swim through its force.

  “You don’t think…?”

  Your father? Could be, by the way your blood is making him crazy, or perhaps an uncle? I guess I can see the family resemblance. Now hold on!

  Egret plunged downward toward a small city on another floating piece of rock and then, by swooping left, adjusted her course to a small pinprick of light on the outskirts.

  Almost there.

  She strained to move faster and faster, while the incubi threw their bodies down at us like hail by tucking their legs into their torsos. The most persistent incubus somehow got through the light and onto Egret’s wing, and no amount of shaking could release his grip.

  Get him off! she yelled, or he’ll stop us from entering Merlin’s house.

  I poked the incubus with the staff, then hit him with it. Stubbornly, he clung to a fistful of feathers and pulled, sending us into a barrel roll that turned my stomach. Finally, using the other side of the staff, I aimed directly for his red eyes.

  Bingo. The staff connected with the socket, and the incubus released one arm in order to hold his bleeding eye. Aiming for his other hand, I thrust again, and this time shook him off. He sailed through the air, hit some kind of invisible force field that flashed blue on impact, and disappeared.

  Then we hit one too, but instead of rejecting us, the force field sucked us through as though it was made of Jell-O instead of magic. We fell to the moist grass, where we lay, panting, for several minutes.