behind, doesn’t care she’s being rude, doesn’t care for anything other than running as fast as she possibly can.
Bea can’t remember the last time she ran like this. Occasionally she’s dashed for a train in the underground, darting between closing doors, breathless. But with wobbling body parts, cramping muscles, and aching lungs, it’s not a nice feeling. In Everwhere, it’s different. It is magnificent.
Bea runs faster than she’s ever run, hurtling through the mists, feet darting over moss and stone so swiftly they seem to never touch the ground. She’s light as a feather, a single swift arrow of muscle and breath. She is air, and the force of her body powerful as a hurricane. Bea grins into the wind, hair whipping back, heart pounding, lungs pumping. She runs on and on.
Far away, a whisper on distant winds, she hears him still calling.
Bea picks up such speed that she’s no longer taking great steps over the stones, she’s sailing over fallen tree trunks, legs stretched out in a perfect balletic leap. With another, Bea lifts into the air. She rises higher, higher still, above rivers and rocks, through falling leaves, beyond the thinnest branches of the tallest trees, soaring up into the moonlight.
Now that she’s flying she remembers it all.
Scarlet
“If all that is true,” Scarlet says, “then I don’t see what I’m supposed to be able to do in self-defence. I might as well surrender right now.” And, in the wake of losing her grandma, Scarlet doesn’t particularly care for life much right now. She sits with her resurrected mother in a glade, a circle of stones pressed into the mossy ground. Scarlet sits on one side of the circle, Ruby on the other.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ruby snaps. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’re far stronger than you think, and you’ve not even tested yourself yet, so how would you know? I always told you never to give up, not ever—”
“I’m sorry.” Scarlet tears a vine of ivy from a nearby branch. “Forgive me if I can’t recall your pearls of mothering wisdom.”
Ruby ignores the barb. “You have fire at your fingertips, yes? On Earth, you can’t make much more than sparks. But here you can set light to fields, you can burn through entire forests, you can—”
Scarlet frowns. “How do you know that?”
Ruby shrugs. “What do you think I’ve been doing for the past ten years?”
“Oh, I don’t know, joining circuses, robbing banks—whatever you fancied, I imagine, being finally unencumbered by a daughter you never wanted.”
Ruby is silent. When she speaks her voice is a whisper. “I did. I wanted you more than anything else in the world.”
“You had a fucking funny way of showing it.”
“I sold my soul to get you. The consequences were more than I expected.”
Scarlet frowns but says nothing.
“For the last ten years, I’ve been hiding from your father and doing my research.”
“I don’t—”
“For goodness’ sake.” Ruby meets her daughter’s gaze and holds it. “There is a soldier stalking you here, right now. If he finds you, he will kill you. So, please, will you just give it a try?”
Scarlet is about to protest again but, at the furious determination on her mother’s face, closes her mouth and clenches her teeth. She doesn’t know how to ignite the fire at her fingertips, how to summon it on a whim. But she’s aware that it always sparks when her emotions are heightened. Scarlet looks at Ruby, focuses on channelling all her feelings of hatred and anger into the palms of her hands.
At first, Scarlet feels nothing.
Then her hands start to heat as if she were holding two burning-hot coals. As she stares down, a sudden flare of electricity arcs from the centre of each palm, cutting through the fog, the two uniting into a single bolt. For several moments, as Scarlet stares open-mouthed, it curls and sparks like an electric eel. Then, all at once, it dives, piercing the trunk of an ancient oak, splitting it down the middle. The almighty crash of the sliced tree as it falls sends shockwaves that tremor through the ground at their feet.
For a second the falling leaves are suspended, immobile, in the air. Scarlet stares at her mother, who stares at Scarlet, speechless.
The soldier watching from behind a willow tree takes a step back.
Liyana
“I know how much you love water,” Mazmo says, coming to a sudden stop.
Liyana stumbles, stubbing her toe on a stone. “I don’t remember telling you that,” she says, reaching down to rub her toe.
“The