Lilum? Where are you?
Half of a rusty bicycle lay in a heap by the side of the road. At least, it looked like part of a bicycle. I could see where the metal had been sawed off in the middle and a hose threaded through the frame. It had been rigged to water the field. A pair of muddy rubber boots stood in the dirt next to the bike wheel. In the distance, the fields stretched as far as I could see.
What do I have to do?
I looked back down at the rusted half of a bike, and I knew.
A tide of helplessness washed over me. There was no way I could water the field. It was too big, and I was just one person. The sun was growing hotter, and the leaves were turning browner, and soon the field wouldn’t be gold at all, but burnt and dead, like everything else. I heard the familiar hum of a swarm. The lubbers were coming.
Why are you showing me this?
I sat down in the dirt and stared up at the blue sky. I saw a fat bee, drunkenly buzzing in and out of the wildflowers. I felt the soil beneath me, soft and warm even though it was dry. I pressed my fingers deeper into the dirt, dry as coarse sand.
I knew why I was here. Whether or not I could finish it, I had to try.
That’s it, isn’t it?
I yanked on the hot, muddy boots and picked up the rusting metal wheel. I held the handlebars, pushing the wheel in front of me. I started watering the field, one row at a time. The wheel groaned as it turned, and the heat prickled my neck as I bent into the job, pushing as hard as I could through the bumps and ruts of the field.
I heard a sound like a massive stone door opening for the first time in a century, or an enormous stone being pushed out of the mouth of a cave.
It was water.
Slowly coming up, returning to the field from whatever old pump or well the hose was attached to.
I pushed harder. Water started to run through the dirt in rivulets. As it ran down the dry trenches in the field, it created tiny rivers that formed small rivers, which formed decent-sized rivers that I knew would eventually flood the path entirely, to form even bigger ones as far as I could see.
An endless river.
I ran fast as I could. I watched the spokes of the wheel turn faster, pumping the water harder, until the wheel was moving so fast that it looked like a blur. The force of the water was so strong that the irrigation hose split open like the back of a gutted snake. There was water everywhere. The dirt was turning to mud beneath my feet, and I was soaking wet. It was like I was riding a bike for the first time, like I was flying—doing something only I could do.
I stopped, out of breath.
The Wheel of Fate.
I was staring at it, rusty and bent and older than dirt. My Wheel of Fate, here in my hands. In my family’s old field.
I understood.
It was a test. My test. It was mine all along.
I thought about John, lying on my bedroom floor. The Lilum’s voice when she said he wasn’t the Crucible.
It’s me, right?
I’m the Crucible.
I’m the One Who Is Two.
It was always me.
I watched the field as it started to turn green and gold again. The heat subsided. The fat bee flew off into the sky, because the sky was real, not just a painted bedroom ceiling.
I heard the rumble of thunder, then the crack of lightning, and I stood in the middle of the field, holding the rusty wheel, as the rain began to fall.
The air hummed with magic, like the feeling I had the first time I stepped onto the beach at the Great Barrier—only a hundred times stronger. The sound was so loud my ears were ringing.
“Lilum?” I shouted with my Mortal voice, sounding small in the middle of the massive field. “I know you’re here. I can feel it.”
“I am.” The voice echoed down from above, from the blinding blue sky. I couldn’t see her, but she was there—not the Mrs. English Lilum, but the real Lilum. In her nameless, formless state, all around me.
I took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
“And?” It was a question.
I knew the answer now. “I know who I am. And what I have to do.”
“Who are you?” The question hung in the air.
I looked up toward the sky, letting the sun fall on my face. I said the words I had been dreading, since the moment they first whispered themselves in the deepest, darkest reach of my mind.
“I am the One Who Is Two.” I shouted it as loud as I could. “I have one soul in the Mortal world and one soul in the Otherworld.” My voice sounded different. Sure. “The One Who Is Two.”
I waited in the silence. It was a relief to finally say it, like a crushing weight had been lifted off my back. Like I had been holding up the burning blue sky.
“You are. There is no other.” There wasn’t a trace of emotion in her voice. “The price must be paid to forge the New Order.”
“I know.”
“It is a crucible. A severe test. You must be sure. By the solstice.”