The Survivors

Chapter Nine: Juliet and her Romeo, pt. 2

Several of the elders, led by John, began to circle off to the side. It didn't take my senses to feel the animosity radiating from them. Soon several circles formed as I walked through the crowd hand-in-hand with Everett, flanked by the Winters. Survivors from all the generations backed away from us.

For fifteen tense minutes, I stood near the bonfire with the Winters as night fell, trying not to discuss the obvious. Then a small group from the generations below mine approached us.

 "Sadie?" one of them, Cassie, said. She was in the youngest generation and had stopped aging at about sixteen. "Can you tell us stories?" She nodded to the two girls and one boy behind her.

Noah walked up behind them. We hadn't spoken yet. He watched me carefully, waiting to see what I would say, how far I would take this. Would I tell the youngest of them what I had seen in the world outside? Would I tempt them more than I already had, alienate the elders more than I had?

 He knew what I knew. The message of Anthony's speech would resonate most with the youngest members of my family, the ones who had not experienced centuries of life in our family, who were not content with isolation. I couldn't bring myself to be upset that this was the case—hadn't I wanted to spark their curiosity? But I was worried. None of them had practiced trying to control their powers the way I had for years before I left. They hadn't read thirty-five thousand books or spent decades learning and preparing to live among humans. If any of them walked away from the family, they would be more frighteningly unprepared than even I was. How would they get along then in a culture they could never understand? In a wholly different world? It would be disastrous.

  I suddenly wondered what I was doing, why I was here, and why I had come back at all. I wanted my whole family to have the opportunities I had given myself, but at what price? I wasn't trying to destroy the family my elders had created; that had never been my intent. But I did not understand why my family had isolated themselves. Maybe the elders had no choice. Maybe my family needed to stay where it was and as it was to stay safe. I realized only then that I had always assumed isolation was about naivete, but what if it was about more than that? What if they simply couldn't protect their family in a world they knew nothing about? Or what if there was more, a reason for being inside these walls I could never have imagined?

 But what if it were possible for my family to transition to living in the real world? They wouldn't be able to do it alone. Maybe I'd been called back to my family so that I could help them. Maybe this was my purpose. I realized this could be God's work for me to do here.

Before I could answer Cassie, John intervened. He had been watching the interaction carefully. "Cassie!" he bellowed across the square. "Stay away from Sadie and her heathen friends!"

  Anthony snapped his head around. "Heathens?" he screamed, overreacting. Patrick and Mark jumped to attention and faced John, their gazes menacing in the flickering firelight. Adelaide looked at me and then turned to face John with her family. Ginny and Everett stared at me, panicked. "We are not heathens, you self-righteous son of a bitch," he hissed.

 "Anthony, don't do this," I pleaded. I could hear his thoughts, feel his outrage. I suddenly saw how disastrously—how violently—this could go. I looked at Everett in a panic. He gripped my hand tightly.

  Anthony ignored me and walked toward John. Noah grabbed the young girls and backed away until they all stood with the elders. Soon they were all on one side and we were on the other, staring each other down.

 "Godless and depraved home wreckers, that's what you are! Did you come here just to destroy my family for sport?" John spat.

 "We came here for all the reasons I said," Anthony defended. "You cannot ignore the world out there. There are six billion humans on this earth. For every one of you there are four million people that your God created. There is art. There is love. It is time to see it. If you loved your family, you would let them go."