The Power of Six

“Others poured out of the diner to see what was happening. The Mogadorian had no choice but to let go of me to face the men.

“‘The keys are in the motel room!’ Katarina yelled. She looked at me with these big, huge, desperate eyes. She was panicking. We both were. I jumped out of the truck and sprinted back to our room for the keys. Those men in Texas, they were the only reason we got away then; they saved our lives. When I came out of the motel room with the keys, one of the Texans was aiming a gun at the Mogadorian.

“We have no idea what happened after that because Katarina sped away and we didn’t look back. We hid the Chest a few weeks later, right before they caught up to us for good.”

“Don’t they already have the Chests from the first three?” Sam asks.

“I’m sure they do, but what use are they? The second we die the Chest unlocks itself, and everything inside becomes useless,” she says, and I nod, knowing that much from past conversations with Henri.

“Not only are the objects worthless,” I say, “but they completely disintegrate the same way the Mogadorians do when they’re killed.”

“Wicked,” Sam says.

And then I remember the sticky note I found when saving Henri in Athens, Ohio.

“Those guys Henri visited who ran the They Walk Among Us magazine?”

“Yeah?”

“They had this source who apparently caught a Mogadorian and tortured it for information, and he supposedly knew that Number Seven was being trailed in Spain and that Number Nine was somewhere in South America.”

Six thinks about it a moment. She bites her lip and glances in the rearview mirror. “I know for a fact that Number Seven is a girl; I remember that much from the ride in the ship.” The second this leaves her mouth, a siren blares behind us.

Chapter Five

THE SNOW STOPS ON SATURDAY NIGHT. THE SCRAPING sound of shovels against asphalt fills the night air. From the window I can see the faint silhouettes of residents throwing snow to less cumbersome places, readying themselves for the morning walk for Sunday obligations. There’s a certain tranquillity to the town at work on a quiet night, everyone bound by the same cause, and I wish I was out there among them. And then the bedtime bell tolls. In the room fourteen girls find their beds within the minute, and the lights are shut off.

The second I close my eyes the dream begins. I stand in a field of flowers on a warm summer day. To my right, in the distance, the outline of a jagged mountain range stands against the backdrop of the setting sun; to my left lies the sea. A girl dressed in black, with raven hair and striking gray eyes, appears out of nowhere. She wears a smile, both fierce and confident. It’s just the two of us. Then a great disturbance kicks up behind me, as though an isolated earthquake has just begun, and the ground is split open and torn apart. I don’t turn to see what’s actually happening. The girl lifts her hand, beckoning me to take it, her eyes locked on mine. I reach for it. My eyes open.

Light streams in through the windows. While it feels as though minutes have passed, in reality the whole night has gone by. I shake my head free of the dream. Sunday is the day of rest, though ironically for us it’s the busiest day of the week, starting with a long Mass.

Ostensibly the large Sunday crowd is because of religious devotion within the community, but really it’s because of El Festín, the grand dinner that follows Mass. All of us who live here must work it. My place is in the cafeteria line. It’s only after dinner that we’re finally free. If I’m lucky we’ll finish by four, then we’re not due back until the sun sets. This time of year it comes a little after six.

We rush to the showers, quickly bathe, brush our teeth and our hair, then dress in our Sunday best, identical black-and-white outfits that leave only our hands and heads showing. When most of the other girls have fled the room, Adelina walks in. She stands in front of me and fixes the neck of my tunic. It makes me feel much younger than I really am. I can hear the throng of people filing into the nave. Adelina remains silent. So do I. I look at the gray streaks in her auburn hair, which I hadn’t noticed before. There are wrinkles at her eyes and mouth. She’s forty-two but looks ten years older.

“I had a dream about a girl with raven hair and gray eyes who reached her hand out to me,” I say, breaking the silence. “She wanted me to take it.”

“Okay,” she says, unsure of why I’m telling her about a dream.

“Do you think she could be one of us?”

She gives the collar a final tug. “I think you shouldn’t read into your dreams so much.”

I want to argue with her, but I’m not sure what to say. So instead I utter, “It felt real.”

“Some dreams do.”

“But you said a long time ago that on Lorien we could sometimes communicate with each other over long distances.”

“Yes, and right after that I would read you stories about a wolf who could blow down houses and a goose who laid golden eggs.”

“Those were fairy tales.”

“It’s all one big fairy tale, Marina.”

I grit my teeth. “How can you say that? We both know it’s not a fairy tale. We both know where we came from and why we’re here. I don’t know why you act as if you didn’t come from Lorien and you don’t have a duty to teach me.”

She puts her hands behind her back and looks at the ceiling. “Marina, since I’ve been here, since we’ve been here, we’ve been fortunate to learn the truth about creation and where we came from and what our real mission is on Earth. And that’s all found in the Bible.”

“And the Bible isn’t a fairy tale?”

Her shoulders stiffen. She furrows her brows and flexes her jaw.

“Lorien isn’t a fairy tale,” I say before she can respond, and, using telekinesis, I lift a pillow from a nearby bed and spin it in the air. Adelina does something she’s never done before: she slaps me. Hard. I drop the pillow and press my hand to my stinging cheek with my mouth wide-open.

“Don’t you dare let them see you do that!” she says furiously.

“What I did right there, that’s not a fairy tale. I am not part of a fairy tale. You are my Cêpan, and you are not part of a fairy tale.”

“Call it what you will,” she says.

“But haven’t you read the news? You know the boy in Ohio is one of us; you have to! He could be our only chance!”

“Our only chance at what?” she asks.

“A life.”

“And what do you call this?”

“Spending our days living the lies of an alien race is no life,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Give it up, Marina,” she says, and walks away. I have no choice but to follow.

Marina. The name sounds so normal now, so me. I don’t think twice when Adelina hisses the name at me or when one of the other girls in the orphanage yells it on the way out the school doors, waving my forgotten math book. But it hasn’t always been my name. Back when we were aimlessly looking for a warm meal or a bed, back before Spain and Santa Teresa, before Adelina was Adelina, I had been Geneviève. Adelina was Odette. Those were our French names.

“We should change our names with every new country,” Adelina had whispered when she was Signy and we were in Norway, where our ship landed after months at sea. She’d chosen Signy because it had been written on the woman’s shirt behind the counter.

“What should my name be?” I’d asked.

“Whatever you want it to be,” she’d said. We’d been at a café in the middle of a bleak village, enjoying the heat from the mug of hot chocolate we’d shared. Signy had stood and retrieved the weekend’s newspaper from a nearby table. On the front page was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Blond hair, high cheekbones, deep blue eyes. Her name was Birgitta. My name had become Birgitta.

Even when we were on a train and the countries zipped past the window like trees, we’d always change our names, if just for a few hours. Yes, it was to stay hidden from the Mogadorians or anyone else who might be following us, but it was also the one thing that raised our spirits among so much disappointment. I’d thought it was so much fun, I wish we’d traveled over Europe several times. In Poland I was Minka and she chose Zali. She was Fatima in Denmark; I was Yasmin. I had two names in Austria: Sophie and Astrid. She fell in love with Emmalina.

“Why Emmalina?” I’d asked.

She laughed. “I don’t know exactly. I guess I love that it’s almost two names in one. Either one is beautiful, but you smash them together and you get something extraordinary.”

In fact, I wonder now if that was the last time I heard her laugh. Or the last time we hugged or made proclamations about our destinies. I believe it was the last time I sensed she cared about being my Cêpan or what happened to Lorien—what happened to me.

We arrive at Mass just before it begins. The only available seats are in the very last row, which is where I prefer to sit anyhow. Adelina shuffles to the front where the Sisters sit. Father Marco, the priest, begins with an opening prayer in his always-somber voice, and most of his words are muffled beyond recognition by the time they reach me. I like it this way, sitting through Mass with detached apathy. I try not to think about Adelina smacking me, filling my mind instead with what I will do when El Festín finally ends. None of the snow has melted, but I’m determined to make it to the cave anyway. I have something new to paint, and I want to finish the picture of John Smith that I started last week.

Mass drags on forever, or at least it feels that way, with rites, liturgies, communion, readings, prayers, rituals. When we reach the final prayer I’m exhausted and don’t even bother pretending to pray like I normally do, and instead sit there with my head lifted and eyes open, scanning the backs of the heads of those in attendance. Almost all of them are familiar. One man sleeps upright in his pew, arms crossed and chin touching his chest. I watch him until something in his dream startles him awake with a grunt. Several heads turn his way as he gathers his bearings. I can’t help but smile; and as I look away, my eyes find Sister Dora scowling at me. I drop my head, close my eyes, and feign prayer, mouthing the words that Father Marco recites up front, but I know I’ve been caught. It’s what Sister Dora thrives on. She goes out of her way to catch us in the act of doing something we shouldn’t.

Prayer concludes with the sign of the cross, finally bringing an end to Mass. I’m up out of my seat before anyone else, and I hurry from the nave to the kitchen. Sister Dora may be the largest among all the Sisters, but she shows surprising agility when it’s needed, and I don’t want to give her the chance to catch me. If she doesn’t, I might escape punishment. And I do, because when she enters the cafeteria five minutes later as I’m peeling potatoes beside a gangly fourteen-year-old named Paola and her twelve-year-old sister, Lucia, she only glares at me.

“What’s up with her?” Paola asks.

“She caught me smiling during Mass.”

“Good thing you weren’t paddled,” Lucia says out of the corner of her mouth.