Free Lightning Rider by Jen Greyson Page B

two. 
    “We’d been playing by the creek behind our house like a million other afternoons,” Papi says quietly. “The sky turned dark, but we were in the middle of a make-believe swordfight and ignored Mamá’s warning to come in. I backed Rafe into the middle of the river. We were laughing and splashing. Then Rafe slipped, and the water soaked him to his waist. I moved in for the kill, but he faked and nearly got me, so I fought harder. The water was churning, but we didn’t care. We’d played by that river our entire lives, so much it was like a member of the family. We’d seen it swollen to overflowing and back down to a trickle. This was just a harmless late-summer wash.
    “Rafe fell again, and this time he went under the water. He’d done this before, hid underwater until he was behind me, so I circled to fend the sneak attack. The water was up to my waist, and I got pushed a few feet downriver. I kept circling, but Rafe didn’t surface. Then I panicked. I felt around for him with my arms, but the muddy water made it impossible to see anything beneath the water’s surface. The current carried me farther away, and I searched the bank for Rafe, but he hadn’t climbed out. I screamed his name until Papa hauled me from the deep water. We found his body a mile downstream.”
    “Papi?” I keep my voice soft as I pull him from the memory with a touch on his arm. He’s trembling.
    After a moment, he focuses and says, “No. No, a few weeks wouldn’t have been enough for my father.” He looks at Ilif. “He died a year later.”
    “How?”
    “Lightning.”
    Ilif purses his mouth. “With his mind closed to arcs, he still could have called lightning to him and been susceptible to a direct strike. Without the ability to redirect the energy, he’d be killed. He knew that.”
    “Maybe he didn’t care,” I say. My heart hurts. 
    “He was a shell by then,” Papi says. “He’d turned in on himself, and we barely saw him. I don’t think he ever forgave himself for not saving Rafe. For not being there.”
    “Nor have I.” Ilif sits back down. “I hope someday you’ll know how hard I searched for you all these years. I’d nearly given up hope when you triggered the monitor.”
    “Monitor? You’re monitoring us?” I knew this guy was a Grade A jaghole.
    Ilif looks at the floor for a second, then meets my challenging stare. “I must.”
    He shifts to Papi, sensing weaker prey. “I spent years writing the program to track you. It’s for your own safety.”
    Papi might believe him, but I’m not buying any of Ilif’s bullshit lines. I want more info. “So we just chant and shoot off to wherever?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “How do we travel?” I ask. His one-liners and dismissals are torque to my internal throttle. 
    “Evy, let him answer,” Papi says, clearly on the wrong side of this interrogation.
    “A genetic enhancement,” Ilif says. “While you’re learning, the amplification of a compound makes it easier to arc with minimum disorientation. The compound allows your body to assimilate the energy from the lightning and harness it as a mode of traveling.”
    “Come again?”
    Ilif’s mouth twists, and I wonder how long it’s been since he talked to anyone other than scientists. He starts again. “A simple trinket made of a certain compound—a material composed of two or more elements—aids you in channeling and directing lightning.”
    I ponder a long-ago classroom and the wall-sized periodic table. “Oh, like zirconium or aluminum?”
    He addresses Papi. “Yes, but also plant-based, like wood. The purpose of the meditative chant you read is to slow the natural chaos of your thoughts. Once you master that, you’ll likely no longer need the chant. You will require only a talisman, designed and crafted of your specific compound. In fact . . .” He pauses to study me. “You must already have it on you to have arced already. Quite extraordinary really, that you read the correct