by Libba Bray
Isaiah dipped just as Sarah Beth tossed the rock. It sailed over his head and hit the water with a splash.
She started to go after it. Isaiah stopped her. “We ought to be getting back now or I’ll hear about it.”
They tromped back toward the farm through the tall grass, the two of them giggling over some private joke. But when they reached the edge of the yard, Memphis was there, and he looked unhappy. He took Isaiah by the arm and pulled him behind the barn.
“Where’ve you been?” Memphis demanded.
“Fishing,” Isaiah said sulkily. “I was hoping to catch something for supper.” It was his first lie to his brother, and it was surprising to him how easily it came.
Memphis let out a long exhale. “All right, Shrimpy. But you’ve got chores to do. We’re guests here, remember? You can’t just go running off whenever you feel like it.”
“Look!” Sarah Beth shouted.
Memphis and Isaiah came around the barn. Sarah Beth was pointing to the sky.
Overhead, storm clouds were rolling in above the prairie wheat. The wind had picked up. Isaiah could taste the wet in it. In the field, Mr. Olson stopped the tractor and took off his hat. Two fat drops hit his upturned face. “Rain,” Mr. Olson said, as if on a prayer. Two drops became two more until it was a downpour. Rain had come at last to Bountiful.
“Grab the buckets!” Mr. Olson ordered.
Sam, Memphis, and Henry hauled out every tin pail and wooden bucket they could find. Bill and Jericho helped lead the animals back into their pens. Isaiah and Sarah Beth ran in tight circles, whooping and hollering. Theta stretched out her arms like a scarecrow and let the rain soak her. Ling and Mrs. Olson came out from the kitchen to see.
“Have you gone crazy?” Ling asked.
“Yes! We are rain-struck!” Theta called back. Drenched to the skin, she Charlestoned in the softening earth.
Mrs. Olson put out her hand. “I’ll be! Rain at last!”
The crops bent with gratitude under the weight of the water. It was a proper blessing of rain.
“I reckon you all are good luck,” the farmer said. “First real rain we’ve seen in ages.”
“Sarah Beth! Come in out of it, honey. You’ll catch cold,” Mrs. Olson called.
Sarah Beth rolled her eyes so that only Isaiah could see. “What did I say? Always bossing us around.”
Isaiah grinned. Before she left, Sarah Beth looked right into Isaiah’s eyes. “We brought down the rain, Isaiah. You and me. We did that. By sharing our moon glow. I always believed you and me would be special together, but now I know it’s true.”
And Isaiah had no reason not to believe her.
The rains lasted two full days and put everyone in a fine mood.
“That’ll help the crops for sure,” Mrs. Olson said. She opened the kitchen window so that they could listen to the patter of it collecting in tin pails and, farther on, to the roar of the river coming to life with new water. To celebrate the little miracle, she’d baked a lemon cake with a sweet icing that was so good Isaiah ate two pieces.
Isaiah liked being on the farm. It was so different from his life in Harlem, but he enjoyed both. Feeding the piglets was one of his favorite chores, and he would let the squealing runts sniff at his fingers, laughing at the tickle of their noses and tongues against his skin. His absolute favorite thing, though, was caring for the kittens. He would pick them up one by one and hold them to his chest. Sarah Beth didn’t seem to care about them one way or the other. Mostly, she liked playing with her dolls or sharing moon glow. But every chance Isaiah got, he’d scrabble under the porch and care for the babies, watching as their fur came in, noticing the personalities that were emerging.
“The orange one? I call her Mopsy. She’s gonna be the troublemaker. I can tell already by the way she scoots the others out of the way to get to the mama,” Isaiah said to the others as they set about their work on the farm, painting and planting, milking and baling hay. He loved talking about the kittens. His kittens, as he’d come to think of them.
“That a fact?” Bill said, half listening.
It bothered Isaiah some that nobody really paid attention to him. Nobody except Sarah Beth.
Mr. Olson walked through then, a real serious look on his face.
“Something troubling you, Mr. Olson?” Bill asked.
“Anybody leave the door to the henhouse open?”
“Isaiah?” Bill asked.
Why did everybody always want to blame him? “No, sir. I latched it up good, just like you showed me.”
Mr. Olson shook his head. “Well, a fox must’ve got in there somehow. There’s four dead chickens, by my count. A real mess. They’ve been eaten right down to the bones.”
Over lunch, Evie and Sam finally shared their good news with the others.
“Well, this calls for a celebration!” Mrs. Olson said. “I’ve got some homemade grape juice.”
“Oh, glory be!” Evie said.
“Uh, Lamb Chop? I think it really is grape juice,” Sam whispered.
Evie caught Jericho’s gaze once, across the table. It was impossible to read what he was thinking. She wished she’d had a chance to tell him privately first, but Sam had been so excited he’d blurted it out immediately. And anyway, Jericho had a sweetheart. She decided not to let it worry her.
“I’ve had lots of suitors over the years,” Sarah Beth announced suddenly as her mother poured everyone small glasses of deep purple juice. “Very important men. They bring me all manner of fancy things from their travels. Lace handkerchiefs and ruby ear bobs. Every last one of ’em wants to marry me when I’m old enough.”
Not one soul had set foot on the farm since they’d been there, and Mr. Olson had said Sarah Beth had no friends. It was as if she lived in her own fantasy world, and Memphis wondered how on earth they’d be able to use her gifts with their own in order to fight the King of Crows when the girl seemed to have a hard time facing reality.
“Our Sarah Beth is very popular,” Mrs. Olson said, playing right along.
“I’m sure she is,” Sam said, flicking a glance Evie’s way. “Which one you gonna marry, then, Sarah Beth?”
Sarah Beth pushed a fuzzy ringlet over her shoulder. “The one who promises to make me his queen.”
“Well, that’ll be one lucky fella,” Sam said and winked, to Sarah Beth’s delight.
“Eat your carrots, dear,” Mrs. Olson said.
“How old is your daughter?” Henry asked Mrs. Olson after their lunch. He and Theta washed dishes while Evie and Ling sat at the kitchen table drying.
“Fifteen. But her mind is like that of a child of ten or eleven. The doctors don’t think she’ll ever mature much beyond that.” Mrs. Olson inhaled as if she hadn’t breathed so deeply in years and needed to remind herself that she could. “She’s a little girl in so many ways, and always will be.”
“I tell you, you’ve brought good luck to this farm,” Mr. Olson said, barging into the kitchen and dropping the day’s newspaper on the table for Ling, who liked to pore over its pages every day. He grabbed one of the clean glasses and filled it with milk, which he guzzled down, leaving the glass on the counter for his wife, who dutifully dunked it into the tub of water for a washing. “Got the planting done and brought the rain. And I never seen Sarah Beth so happy. She almost seems normal.”
Evie was shocked by the casual insensitivity of Mr. Olson’s remark. She saw Ling stiffen, too. No wonder Sarah Beth seemed odd and lonely and a bit sour. Evie felt sorry for Sarah Beth, and she resolved to treat her with kindness.
“Oh no,” Ling said. She had opened up the Bountiful Daily Bee. “Listen to this: ‘Jake Marlowe to Test New Machine,’” she read. “‘Promises the Eye of Providence will supply the nation with energy for generations to come. Already, the United States military is securing a portion of Death Valley, making it a restricted zone for the inventor’s latest experiment.’”
“Isn’t making things a restricted zone Mr. Marlowe’s specialty?” He
nry said with a sneer.
“Death Valley? That’s a long way from Hopeful Harbor. Why Death Valley?” Sam asked.
“More importantly, it means he’s nearly ready to go again. And once he does…” Evie didn’t finish, but everyone understood the stakes. “Does it say when, Ling?”
Ling skimmed the article and shook her head. “It only says later this month.”
“That could be three days or two weeks from now,” Theta said.
“He can’t do it without us, though, can he?” Henry asked.
“Unless the King of Crows has shown him a way,” Ling said.
“What’s this?” Jericho tapped an article on the opposite page. “‘Mysterious ghost towns reported,’” he read. “‘Authorities are perplexed by recent stories of vanishing towns. Gideon, Kansas, once a thriving little spot known for its charming Main Street, is now only home to piles of dust and debris, its people mysteriously gone, much like the famous lost colony of Roanoke, Virginia. Other towns seem to have dried up as well, including two here in the Cornhuskers State—Singing Springs and Pine Bluff—with no word as to the whereabouts of the inhabitants, though in all three places, the graveyards had been desecrated.’”
“We have to get to work right away!” Evie said, standing quickly. She grew dizzy and nearly fell over.
Sam helped her back to her seat. “We’re not doing anything till you’re well enough.”
“Maybe the rest of us can work while you get stronger,” Ling said.
“Sarah Beth said it has to be all of us,” Henry reminded them.
“I can do it,” Evie said, wincing from the pain in her side.
“Lamb Chop. We just got engaged. I won’t lose you,” Sam said.
Evie caught Jericho’s eye for just a second and blushed. “Okay,” she said. “But I won’t sit it out much longer. We can’t afford to wait.”
“Nebraska. Do you suppose he’s making his way here to find us?” Theta asked.
“Don’t know, but he’s collecting an awful lot of dead along the way,” Sam said.
Evie asked Jericho to meet her on the porch. Now he was standing in front of her, and she felt as nervous as if she were facing an entire army of ghosts.
“Jericho,” she started. “I’m sorry. I should have told you before.…”
“Yes. Probably. Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thank you. I don’t suppose you could be happy for me, could you?”
“I’m not not-happy for you,” Jericho said. After a pause, he added, “I will always regret what happened… what I did… at Hopeful Harbor.”
“I know,” Evie said. “Your sweetheart—”
“Guadalupe,” Jericho said and smiled.
“Guadalupe,” Evie repeated. How was it possible to feel relief, happiness, and jealousy all in one go? “Do you love her?”
Jericho blushed. “I’d prefer to keep that to myself.”
“Right. Of course. Pos-i-tutely. Say, do you remember that Ferris wheel ride up in Brethren?” Evie blurted out.
Remembering that night had kept Jericho going at times—and held him back at others. A ghost of a memory. “Yes. It was a great view from up there.”
“Yes. A truly spectacular view,” Evie agreed.
“Really clear night, as I recall.”
“Yes. Lots of stars.”
“A very… nice evening. Well, before we were chased by a murderous religious cult and nearly killed.”
Evie laughed and Jericho laughed and there they were again, all the things that kept them tethered still firmly between them. But perhaps the tethering had grown looser.
“If Sam’s right and there are all those other universes out there, perhaps in one, you and I have settled down with a pack of smart, unruly children,” Evie said after a moment.
Jericho only smiled. He looked out at the unbroken line of rural Nebraska. “This is the only universe I really know anything about, Evie. And you are marrying Sam. And I have a sweetheart named Lupe. And we have a mighty big fight ahead of us, something more important than this.” He took a deep breath. “You and I weren’t meant to be.”
“Except as friends?” Evie asked hopefully.
Jericho shook his head, gave a little laugh. And then he smiled at her. A real smile. He stuck out his hand. “Sure.”
Evie gave it a solid shake. It felt like a prelude to good-bye, somehow.
Like putting away old things to make room for the new.
While the others returned to the farmwork, Evie sat reading a dull article in the Saturday Evening Post while Mrs. Olson worked on a piece of embroidery. It was just the two of them in the parlor. Evie figured this was her best chance to ask Mrs. Olson more about Sarah Beth. “Mrs. Olson, I hope you don’t mind if I ask you about Project Buffalo.”
“No, that’s fine,” Mrs. Olson said. But Evie could tell by the way the woman straightened her spine and stared at her needlework that she did mind.
“It’s only that I saw Sarah Beth’s chart. It said they didn’t recommend proceeding. Do you know why?”
“I suppose you’d have to ask them,” Mrs. Olson said, a bit defensively, and pulled the needle through her sampler.
“I wish I could,” Evie said as kindly as possible.
Mrs. Olson kept at her embroidery. “At first, Sarah Beth’s visions weren’t all that peculiar,” she said a moment later. “She might know precisely when it was going to rain, or when someone would be coming for a visit. She said she heard spirit voices.”
Like she’d heard Isaiah, Evie thought. Perhaps Sarah Beth had been hearing other Diviners, much like Sam’s mother did.
“But then it all changed,” Mrs. Olson said.
“Changed how?”
“Sarah Beth told us she had an imaginary friend, a man in a stovepipe hat. That’s when she started having the upsetting visions.”
Evie tried to keep her voice calm. “Upsetting how?”
“We had a handyman named Jack. One day, Sarah Beth told Jack that he was going to die. A fall from a horse that would snap his neck. That’s what she said, ‘You’re going to snap your neck.’ Well, I made Sarah Beth apologize! But she insisted she’d seen it ‘in a dream.’ That’s what she called her visions. Three days later, a snake spooked the horse Jack was riding. The horse bolted. Jack fell off. He died of a broken neck. Well, after that, most of the farmhands left. Some because the farm was failing and the money was gone, others because they feared Sarah Beth. Then she started having more of her fits. It frightened us. We’re just ordinary people. We didn’t understand a lick of what she was saying, talking about soldiers being sucked up into the sky and a land of the dead. ‘The dead are coming.’ That’s what she’d say. Until a few weeks ago. Then she said, ‘The dead are here.’”
Sarah Beth Olson had been seeing glimpses of the future for a long time, but no one had been listening to her. Could she see what lay ahead for the Diviners?
“You love her very much, don’t you?” Evie said.
“A mother always loves her children,” Mrs. Olson replied.
Evie had heard her mother say the same thing, but it wasn’t true. Evie’s mother had loved James beyond imagining. He brought her joy. Her love for Evie was an obligation and an open wound, and Evie was the salt. But she believed that Mrs. Olson loved her daughter—and that she was frightened of her, too.
Mrs. Olson dropped her embroidery into her lap and turned to Evie. “Oh, please promise me you’ll look after my Sarah Beth. The doctor said a bad fit could kill her. She’s all we have.”
Evie held Mrs. Olson’s hands and looked into her eyes. “She’s one of us. I promise we’ll look after her, Mrs. Olson.”
“Thank you.” Mrs. Olson smiled like she had a naughty secret to share. “I don’t suppose I could interest you in a little more pie?”
Evie grinned. “You most certainly could.”
She followed a suddenly chatty Mrs. Olson into the kitchen.
“Lands’ sakes!” Mrs. Olson exclaimed, stopping
short in the doorway. “How did this mess get all over the floor? I just swept it right after lunch!”
“If it’s mud, I blame Sam. He’s an absolute slob,” Evie said, coming up behind her.
“Not mud,” Mrs. Olson said, reaching for the broom. “Daisies, of all things! Bunches and bunches of rotted daisies.”
ALL OF US TOGETHER
“It’s time. We can’t put it off any longer,” Evie announced the following day over Sam’s objections. It was Sunday afternoon. Their chores were finished. Mr. and Mrs. Olson had gone to a neighbor’s farm a few miles away for the men to play horseshoes while the women quilted. The Diviners had the farm to themselves. “Marlowe and the King of Crows are already steps ahead of us. We can’t afford to wait.”
“All right. But what do we do?” Henry asked. “All we’ve learned how to do is destroy ghosts.”
“What if we feel them, the dead, inside us again?” Ling asked. To think there’d been a time when she hadn’t feared spirits at all. But after Gideon, she was terribly afraid.
“Now we’re all together, it’ll be different,” Sarah Beth said. “Isaiah and I’ve already been working on our powers. Isn’t that right, Isaiah?”
“Isaiah? Is that true?” Memphis asked. He did not sound happy.
Isaiah shrugged and avoided Memphis’s gaze.
“You’re all scared on account of what happened in Gideon,” Sarah Beth said. “That’s what he wants, is to get you good and scared. So you’ll doubt your gifts. So you won’t fight back. You can’t trust what he says.”
“The last few times we used our powers, we weren’t thinking; we were reacting, out of fear,” Ling agreed.
“How do you know all of this?” Jericho said to Sarah Beth.
“Because I used to talk to him,” Sarah Beth answered. “I know how he thinks. I know how he tricks and lies. We have to get our powers good and strong so we can take him out. If he goes, the dead go with him.”
“You’re sure about that?” Jericho said.
Sarah Beth stared him down. “Yes.”