The sparkles dissipate like raindrops and don’t come back together until she lowers her hand.
“Well, if whatever it is isn’t right…” Kyrian’s voice is clear and steady behind me. “What would you fix?”
“Everything,” I whisper. “If I could, I would fix everything.”
And just like that, the sparkles disappear, the murals they were creating fading like they never were. Which gives me an idea. It’s a wild idea and I have no clue where it even came from. But I feel the need to make it right—to show the truth—burning inside me, lighting up my insides and making it hard to breathe.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, don’t have a clue what Icando. I just know I have to try.
As the idea spins more and more brightly in my mind, I drop to my knees on the torn-up floor.
“Are you okay?” Fifi drops down beside me. “Do you feel sick?”
“I’m fine,” I answer as I reach for a broken tile. It’s red and jagged and I know exactly what I want to do with it.
I press it into the floor right in front of me. Then reach for another.
But before I can grab on to the second tile, every single tile in the room—except for the one I pressed into the floor—shoots straight into the air.
“Is it happening again?” Arjun demands as they hang in the air all around us. “Tell me it’s not happening again.”
“It’s not happening again,” Kyrian assures him, his voice dry as dust. “Whatever this is, it’s something totally new.”
He’s right. It is new. Brand new. I can feel the novelty and the power of it deep inside me as the tiles start vibrating.
“Um, thisisnew,” Fifi says, cautiously reaching out a finger to touch one of the tiles close to her. But the second she makes contact, it shoots off in another direction. “Well, that’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Or ever,” Arjun adds.
I wait for Kyrian to pile on, but he’s just standing there, watching me with those shimmering, electric-green eyes of his. And that’s when I know exactly what I’m going to do.
I reach for one of the tiles in the air, half expecting it to run from me the way that other one did from Fifi. Instead, it all but jumps onto my palm, along with six or seven of its closest neighbors.
I press them into the ground as best I can, then reach for more tiles and do the same. Then I reach for more and do it again. And again and again and again and again and again. I do it over and over, until my already-hurt back is throbbing. Until my hands ache and my overused fingers cramp. And then I do it some more.
I cover the entire floor with the broken tiles, building another mosaic. One that isn’t abstract this time. One that has perfectly clear pictures in it. One that tells the real story and not some made-up myth to make the gods look good.
Except when I get to the end, when I have just one more tile to place, I reach into the air to grab it. Only nothing comes.
“There are no more, Ellie,” Fifi says in a voice filled with awe. “You’ve used them all. And it’s beautiful.”
“But there’s one missing,” I tell her. “It’s not finished.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Kyrian says. “Maybe it’s not meant to be finished.”
“Maybe,” I answer, but his words don’t sit well with me. It doesn’t feel right to have done all this only to leave it unfinished in the end.
“What is it?” Arjun asks softly, his eyes glued on the people in the middle of the mural. A large man with olive skin and a salt-and-pepper bun on the top of his head. He’s holding the hand of a much shorter woman with curly black hair and a small box tucked under her arm. At their feet, a young child plays.
Far above them in the sky, a vulture flies freely by. I almost told the story with Agatha, but since a vulture took her place, it seemed right to show him.
“It’s the truth,” I tell Arjun. “If the gods can write history any way they want to, then I can rewrite it the way it really happened.”
“Oh my gods, Ellie.” Fifi’s eyes fill with tears. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard!”
“It really is,” Kyrian agrees softly. But there’s a sadness in his eyes when he asks, “Do you think they’ll let it stay?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him, the sadness invading me as I bend over to stretch my aching back.
