Anna's Cry

“Anna, there’s someone at the door for you.”

I looked up from the strawberry patch, my heart fluttering in my chest. Today was the day that everything would change, even though I wanted nothing more than to stay in my backyard. To do nothing but stay in the place I called home.

Mom wouldn’t survive if I did that though, and neither would Lilly or baby Grayson.

As soon as I walked in through the back door, I just about turned around and slammed it into the matching emerald green trim.

“No.”

“Anna Vensie, you be polite and hear him out.”

The sneer on my face didn’t disappear, looking up and down at a boy who liked to use his powers to torment others. Powers that he took for granted. Not that it seemed entirely uncommon with this generation of kids from what I saw the closer we go to turning sixteen.

“I need a healer in my group, and you’re the only one in a seventy-five mile radius that can do more than a small cut.”

I lifted a hand as if to show my mother- but she had conveniently slipped out into the garage as I turned my head. Flashing me a small look that said to try. Something far easier; if it hadn’t been Benjamin Kinn, the wizard with one lone spell.

One that could hardly be called a spell at all.

I sat down on the sofa opposite of him with my arms crossed, unconvinced. “You’re an amateur leading the group. Is there a senor that’s coming with us?”

“Better, someone that’s already graduated. Remember Derrick?”

This sounded even more suspicious to me now. Derrick was nineteen, which meant that hanging out with a bunch of fifteen and sixteen year olds sounded really far-fetched. Older kids, especially ones that technically stepped their toes into the adult world? They didn’t hang out with those of us still in school.

Then again- the world was changing. Something that even I was still adjusting to ever since the second moon appeared. The memories of looking up at only one of the moons strangely fuzzy. As if the glowing purplish, green rock had always been there spinning around it. Reflecting and changing the ring around it in the sky from every shade of the rainbow.

It was as beautiful as it was terrifying; believing that our last moments together would be huddled together on the grass when I was seven. My mom clutching us close as watched the comet approach at the last minute. How it was expected to collide somewhere; and how no one was sure of what devastation it might cause.

Somehow; the moon’s gravity had pulled in the object like a magnet last minute. Light enough to spin instead of colliding. To dance around it over and over again as it spun around the earth.

But not without consequence.

People began to die, older people. A lot of people.

My mom had talked about viruses as if this wasn’t anything new the year the windows were boarded up. We ate a lot of beans and rice. Everyone wore masks and I was ordered to wash my hands until they were raw and then wore gloves full of lotion to bed only to wake up and repeat the process the next day.

It wasn’t until grandma died that anyone was scared. That mom got sad. The world changed…

I was nine. Grayson wasn’t born and my sister Lilly was five.

“Well?”

“Well, what, you haven’t given me any details or what kind of pay I’d get. There’s plenty of jobs I can do down at the hospital when I hit sixteen anyways. You’re also not the first person to come over.”

“You’re still accepting visitors which means you want more than what the hospitals will pay you. Which probably also means a longer lifespan considering the amount of energy used each time you have to heal someone.”

I tightened my lips, irritated. “What’s the job.”

“We go through one of the portals to the other side. The gates. Whatever you want to call them. One that’s yellow, which means there isn’t anyone over there. Then we follow the map to get some treasure that Derrick wants to find.”

“He said you needed a strong healer?”

“It was recommended. He’s paying us all a thousand before and a thousand after, and the job takes maybe four hours max. We just have to get some fruit from a tree.”

I tried not to have my eyes light up at the mention of two thousand dollars for what might be considered a hike in the woods. Yellow Mists (because that’s what I called the portals) were not as dangerous as a Red or Purple Mist that appeared in houses. Things don’t usually come out of them; but they could be very inconveniently placed if someone didn’t go in and try to close them.

However; that didn’t mean people couldn’t bring things out of them, which is why there were companies that hired people to close them. Or companies that hired groups to grab items out of them. As well as a few of the braver kids that liked to go in and collect things; even though we had all been warned of the dangers of the other side.

“Derrick wants a full group but he doesn’t care we don’t have experience?”

“He probably makes more money if we’re green, and can pay us less. It gives us experience on our sheets before graduation. You know how important it is to have us go through the gates a few times before we graduate especially if it’s in more than just green ones.”

“The Mists aren’t something we can just go through without caution.” I told Benjamin, folding my arms and trying to collect my thoughts. Benjamin was being cautious though, getting a group together that clearly wasn’t just his buddies and him. Then going out of his way to humble himself to recruit me instead of contacting someone else further away or a weaker healer. “I want Three Thousand or I’m out.”

“What.”

“I take the biggest toll if anyone gets hurt and this is a yellow. Three.”

“Fine.”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise, shocked that he didn’t fight; and that using the bargaining chip of being a healer had actually worked. In a few hours, I would make more than my mom did in an entire month. Which meant we would eat like kings.

I could already taste the salmon, the bacon and even the chocolatey brownies my mom loved to make when we used to have coco powder.

When we could afford those things.

“When do we leave?”

“When’s your birthday?”