If I just died here, I wonder what would happen to Xolotl. He’s killed so many others, and he plans to kill more. Can I really stop him, no matter what I do? I’m pretty sure I can’t. But he seems to keep taking me along in spite of the nuisance I am. . .why? Something bad must happen to him if something bad happens to me, or why would he be suffering to keep me around like this?
Clearly it’s not as hard on him as, like, dying, but could my dying do him some harm? And if so, isn’t it my moral obligation to do it?
I think about just letting the cold, awful water drag me under.
Forget training.
Forget convincing him not to be who he is.
Maybe I could best do my part to slow him down just by giving up in this moment. The water would take care of the rest, right? And if it doesn’t, if he stops me from dying, that will tell me something even more important.
It’ll confirm that my death is very bad for him.
And I’ll finally have a real weapon to use against him when the time is right. I slide down into the depths of the river easily, my senses sharpening on just two things—the cold darkness surrounding me, and the pull on my chest coming from Xolotl.
For the first time, I’m taking the easy way. Sometimes it feels like my whole life has been some kind of fight. The idea of surrendering is entirely foreign, but also freeing. There would be no more anger, no more pushing or flailing around against the impossible.
I can just let go.
But as the air in my lungs expels, I realize that I can’t do it. It’s not who I am. I don’t know how not to fight. My arms and legs pump, and I kick and flail around, and suddenly my face is breaking through the top of the water, and in that same moment, I realize that something else is propelling me forward, something that’s not coming from my own inertia. I sail out of the water and up, up, up until I’m flying across the second half of the river and up into a copse of trees on the far side of the bank.
“What was that?” His eyes flash. “You think you can just kill yourself?” He clenches his fist, and a tree behind him explodes, shards of wood and eviscerated leafy chunks raining down on our heads. “I told you to use your powers and follow me.”
I don’t explain myself. Doing that feels like a surrender. I glare.
“You’re mine.” He growls. “You don’t get to give up when things are hard. We never surrender. We are anger. We are death. We’re fiery justice.” Another tree goes down, this time engulfed in flames. “Why aren’t you saying anything?” He slams his hands together and then spreads them wide, and an enormous chasm opens in the ground beneath his feet, widening as the world around us trembles.
So much for not drawing attention to his existence.
“You must learn to draw on my magic, or you’ll never be of any use to me.” He steps closer, seemingly entirely unconcerned about the massive crack in the earth he’s just stepped to the right side of. “Now, close that back up.” He points. “Or it’ll surely spread and kill lots of the humans you worry so much about.”
“No one’s dying from that imminently.” I shake my head. “You made the mess. You should fix it.”
“You agreed to train.” He points again. “So fix that, or I kill the entire population of that little city ahead. What did the sign say?” He narrows his eyes. “Sparks.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I huff. “You just agreed to this deal because you’re afraid I’ll kill myself. When I even get close to real danger, you yank me out of the river. So tell me the truth. What happens to you if I die?”
“You aren’t asking the questions, human. You aren’t calling the shots. I am.” His nostrils flare. “Are you going to fix this, or should I show you how many people I can kill all at once?”
“If I can figure out how to fix this mess you made.” I point. “Then you’ll spare that city?”
He nods, eyes narrowing.
I breathe in, and I reach out with my senses as much as possible. I can smell the deep scent of clay, moisture, and dank earth rising from the crack beside us. I hear a groaning and cracking and popping sound as the fissure continues to spread. And what’s strange is that I feel a sort of imbalance underneath me that isn’t related to my dripping misery or the ground’s trembling. I reach for that.
And then I pull as hard as I can.
There’s a groaning sort of sound, but nothing else happens.
Xolotl laughs.
My hatred for him surges even higher, and I wish desperately that I had just died in that river. The town of Sparks might go down either way, but at least he might have been hurting about it. I reach for that same off-kilter feeling, and this time, I throw all my weight into it, and I pull.
There’s a great heaving sound, and the fissure stops spreading.
That’s it. I don’t close it, but I stop it from widening. “There.” I drop my hands on my hips. “Now you clean up the rest.”
Xolotl stares at me for a moment.
