by Libba Bray
“She is owed to me.”
“Nobody’s owed to anybody,” Theta said.
“She brought me back.”
“She made a mistake! She tried to fix it.”
“She and I are bound together for all time. And now you have bound yourself to me as well. We are coming for you. For all of you. You cannot win against us.”
Elijah, coming for her, like she was his to claim. Just like Roy.
The anger that had been timid a moment ago slithered inside her now, a dragon begging to be let out. Theta had started this life in a fire, and the fire had become a part of her. The fire was awake, and she was ready to let it roar.
“Leave now,” she commanded.
Elijah stepped forward. The flames overtook Theta. “I’m going to light you up like a goddamned Christmas tree, you backwoods son-of-a-bitch.”
Theta would not remember how it started. Rage has a way of blotting out reason and memory. It was as if she were transported to another fire, the one that swept through her village when she was only a baby. She was vaguely aware that she had run screeching toward Elijah and grabbed him by the throat. The fire caught on the dried kindling of his Confederate shroud. Somewhere in the part of the brain where memories are stored, she noted that when he screamed, it sounded for all the world like a murder of crows shrieking into the night. Theta was there, setting Elijah alight, but she was also standing on the edge of her village in the snow, watching the cabins burn orange, watching her people running out only to be shot by wicked men with secrets to cover up, watching the snow bloom red with blood. She was there as her frightened mother gathered Theta into a blanket and into her arms and tried to make a doomed run for it. Even after the men had shot her down, she’d crawled to a tree to spirit Theta inside. There was so much fire within Theta, she felt as if she could burn for the rest of her life and it wouldn’t be enough.
“Theta! Theta!” Evie’s voice brought Theta back into her body, which hurt as if she, herself, had been burned. Sweat ran down her back. She blinked. Elijah was gone, a pile of ash at her feet. All around her, the dried corn was on fire. The fire was spreading fast. And she was stuck in the middle of it. Through the burning corn going black, through the smoke, she saw Evie racing for the pump and bucket. Mr. Olson stumbled down the steps. Mrs. Olson came out just behind him and put a hand to her mouth.
Sam and Jericho and Bill had joined Evie at the pump. They raced toward the blazing corn, tossing bucket after bucket of water on the flames. She’d done this. She and her fire. She was out of control. Just like at the asylum. Just like at Sarah Snow’s memorial. She couldn’t be trusted. She couldn’t trust herself.
Memphis was running toward her.
“No,” Theta screamed. “Stay back!”
“Theta, hold on!” Memphis yelled. He tossed another bucket of water on the corn, putting out enough of the fire for her to make a run for it. “Come toward me, okay? Just don’t look back!”
Theta cried out as her bare feet touched the smoldering corn silk. Smoke filled her lungs, making her cough, but at last she was through. Jericho worked the pump furiously, filling the buckets and handing them off, everyone working together to contain the blaze. Theta saw Bill Johnson step to the edge of the corn and put his hand on the ground while the others were running around. She saw him draw the oxygen from that fire to put it out. She knew it cost him to do that, and as she watched gray pebble his dark hair, she felt responsible for this, too.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It’ll be all right,” he said and patted her back. “It’s out,” Bill announced to the exhausted, filthy crew.
“Once I let it go, I couldn’t control it, Evil,” Theta said quietly a few minutes later as Evie escorted her back to her room. “It was everything I was afraid of.”
Evie sat on the edge of Theta’s bed. “Well, maybe we need to lose control sometimes.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“All right, then. What if you thought of your fire less like this thing that has power over you and more like an object you can read?”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“What is it saying to you? What does it want you to know? At least, that’s what I think about.” Evie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t understand any of this, but maybe if you let it know you’re in charge, you will be.”
“I thought I was, until I wasn’t.”
“There has to be a middle ground between holding it in and setting fire to an acre of corn.”
“Half an acre,” Theta mumbled.
“What if we practiced together?” Evie suggested.
Theta thought about all that corn, now blackened to ash. “I don’t know, Evil.…”
“Who was it who went with me to rescue Sam?”
“Me.”
“That’s right. And now I’m going to help you. That’s how it works.”
“How what works?”
Evie kissed Theta on the cheek. “This crackers little thing called friendship.”
PURPOSE
The next morning, after they’d gathered the eggs and put away all the breakfast dishes, Evie led Theta past the barn and out farther, into a pasture sweet with tall green prairie grass and cows that grazed and flicked their tails, disinterested in the two determined figures tromping past them.
“You think you should warn Clarabelle over there that she might end up a steak?” Theta joked and rubbed her palms against the sides of her dress.
Evie glanced over her shoulder at the cow. “Nah.”
“What about you, Evil? Aren’t you scared that I’ll…?”
“Petrified.” Evie held out her hands.
“But I could… you know.”
“You won’t. Remember: You’re in charge of the fire. It’s not in charge of you,” Evie said.
“I’m in charge,” Theta said. “I’m in charge here.” She glanced over at Evie. “But just in case, you might wanna back up, Evil, and let me try one on my own.”
I’m in charge, Theta thought. The fire boiled up inside her, a howl wrapped in rage, but then she grew afraid and it went away.
“Theta, darling. You can do this.”
“It’s so much,” Theta said.
Evie waited for her to say more.
“I used to feel numb a lot. When you grow up like I did, having to perform onstage and then having to perform so people… so…” Theta swallowed. “So they’ll love you. It’s easier just to push it all down. But now, ever since we all got together and started moving our atoms around or whatever it is Ling says it is, well, I can’t be numb anymore. I feel everything, Evil. I’m so”—Theta’s mouth opened a little wider, like there was a scream prying its way out—“angry all the time. I don’t know what to do with all these feelings coming up inside me. I don’t know where to put ’em.”
Evie often felt a sadness that had no borders, as if she’d been set adrift on a great sea of lonesome with no way back home. She would do anything not to feel lost in all that awful loneliness—drink, jump out of cakes, kiss boys, shop. “It’s easier not to feel sometimes, but that just means when it comes back—”
“It’ll come back threefold,” Theta said.
“There’s a lot to be angry about,” Evie said.
“There’s a lot to be sad about,” Theta said.
And this, for some reason, made them both fall down laughing till tears came.
“We are pos-i-tutely perverse, Theta!”
“Completely crackers, Evil.”
“Do you want to try again?” Evie asked.
“What the hell. Let’s go.”
This time, Evie held Theta’s hands.
“Are you sure?” Theta asked.
“Pos-i-tutely,” Evie answered.
When Theta Knight finally willed her fire to blossom, what she felt was alive. It was as if the scar tissue of her past was kindling for this new, cleansing fire. It burned away shame. This fire was fuel. Theta was fully awake in her body. She rejoiced in this fact, i
n this body, fully hers. She was letting the fire in slowly, listening to it like Evie had suggested. She could hear Evie asking, “What is it telling you?”
It’s about time, Theta thought. Having Evie near gave her confidence. “I’m going to try to direct it,” she said.
“All right. I’ll hold your arm, instead of your hand, then. But I’m right here, by golly!”
Theta put up her hand and imagined sending the fire out in a straight line, as if it were a piece of fishing line. Her hand warmed, and in a moment, the fire shot forward toward a dying tree.
“Come back,” Theta murmured. “Come back.”
The fire sucked back up into her hand, which smoked slightly. The tree was barely singed.
“How was that?” Evie asked.
“Good,” Theta said and burst out smiling. “Real good.”
“All the cows are safe and accounted for.”
“Well,” Theta said. “I guess it’s a start.”
From the sunroom window, Ling watched Evie and Theta in the field. Ling had judged Evie harshly before, but she was starting to have a complicated respect for Evie now. No, she and Evie would never be best friends, but Ling was starting to understand that you didn’t have to be best friends with someone in order to work with them. The two of them shared a common purpose, and they could work together toward that purpose.
“I think we might do better if we had a common goal in mind,” Ling said later, when they had gathered in the pasture once more. “I think we should try to enter the land of the dead.”
Shortly after they’d arrived in Bountiful, Ling and Jericho had told everyone about the night they’d managed to make brief contact with that other world. She reminded everyone of that now.
“Why wait for him to find us? Why not surprise him at home?” she said.
“That’s a bad idea,” Sarah Beth said.
“Why?” Jericho asked.
“It’s not a good place. Somebody could see us. He could see us. Right, Isaiah?”
“Right,” Isaiah said, looking defiantly at Bill and Memphis.
“Waiting around isn’t safe, either,” Ling said. “I vote we try.”
“All those in favor, raise your hands,” Memphis said, raising his. One by one, the Diviners agreed. All except for Sarah Beth and Isaiah.
“I don’t wanna go,” Sarah Beth said. She seemed genuinely frightened, and Evie thought about the girl’s near-death experience. She wanted to tell Sarah Beth that she understood. After all, it had happened to her, too.
“It will be all right,” Evie said.
“How do you know that?” Sarah Beth said.
“I promised your mother I’d look after you, and I will,” Evie said, hoping to make Sarah Beth feel better. “Here. Let’s stand in a circle.”
“If nothing else, we’ve really mastered facing one another in the round,” Sam said.
Evie kicked him.
“Now what?” Isaiah asked.
“I have no idea. Oh, why couldn’t Sister Walker and Will have managed to teach us something?” Evie said.
“I don’t think they knew, either. They created a problem they couldn’t solve,” Ling said. “I think it’s always been up to us. We’re just going to have to take some chances. Accept the risks.”
“That’s easier to do when it’s the stock market and not when you might, just possibly, blow up half of Nebraska,” Henry said.
“Hands,” Ling said with great irritation. “Think of a portal.”
There was a tug. Portal, Ling thought. Portal. She had the slightest sense of Memphis beside her thinking the same thing. Energy was building between them, stretching into the others. It was like a wild horse, exciting and terrifying. Ling felt pressure rising inside her, and then, all at once, they were standing in the land of the dead. A sound like wind on the top of a mountain raged in her ears. She saw her friends in the circle looking like wispy ghosts of themselves, fighting to take more solid form, and then, in a whoosh, it was gone. They were back on the prairie again, looking at one another with wide eyes.
“Don’t you see what this means?” Ling said later as they drank cold Coca-Colas on the porch.
“Why, yes!” Henry said excitedly. “Just as soon as you tell me!”
“That’s how we heal the breach,” she said.
“Still not on the trolley,” Henry said.
Ling placed her empty Coca-Cola bottle on its side. “It’s like a tunnel connecting the two dimensions. We are here.” She placed a pebble at one end of the bottle. “And the land of the dead is here.” At the other end, she placed another pebble. She removed the bottle. “Without our powers, the only way to punch a hole into the King of Crows’s world is with the Eye. But using our powers, we”—she put the bottle down between the two pebbles again—“create a tunnel that connects the two dimensions.”
“Okay. Then what happens?” Memphis asked.
“We go into the land of the dead, find the crack, and seal it up. Then we come back out and seal the hole we’ve created.”
“But what about Marlowe’s machine? Won’t he just create another rip into that world?” Henry asked.
“If we destroy the Eye in that dimension, I don’t think the one here will work anymore.
“What’s to stop Jake Marlowe or anybody else from doing it again?” Theta asked.
“We can’t guard against every act of malfeasance,” Jericho said. “We have to do what we can when we can.”
“Malfeasance,” Sam sputtered. “Holy cow, Freddy, do you read the dictionary for fun?”
“I also know the words nuisance and irritant.”
“Let’s go again,” Ling said, rising from the porch and heading to the yard. The others followed suit.
“I don’t think we should,” Sarah Beth said, still sitting on the steps.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel right. Isaiah? Do you feel it?”
Isaiah didn’t want to admit that he didn’t. “I…”
“Aw, c’mon, Sarah Beth, you’re not chicken, are ya?” Sam goaded.
Sarah Beth narrowed her eyes at the insult. “Fine!” She stomped back to the circle and squeezed Evie’s and Sam’s hands tightly. It was like an electric current stinging. The insect drone was everywhere, along with the faces of the dead. They could feel the dead moving through them, thousands strong. Evie wanted to scream but she could scarcely breathe from the unholy pressure. And then, mercifully, it was gone.
“Wh-what was that?” Theta said, coughing.
“Sarah Beth? Sarah Beth!” Isaiah shouted.
Sarah Beth writhed on the ground, her body contorting with a violent seizure.
“She told you!” Isaiah shouted. “She told you!”
“How is she?” Evie asked Mrs. Olson once she’d emerged from Sarah Beth’s too-quiet room.
“Resting. She’ll be all right,” Mrs. Olson said tersely. “You promised to look after her. I reckon your promises don’t count for much.”
“I’m sorry,” Evie said, but Mrs. Olson didn’t want to hear.
LIFE AIN’T ALWAYS FAIR
The next morning, everybody was acting awfully glum because of Sarah Beth, and so Isaiah took it upon himself to see to the kittens. Then he would have something to tell her when he went to visit. But when Isaiah got to the kittens’ sleeping spot under the porch, there was nothing there. He called and called for Mopsy.
Theta and Evie were gathering eggs in Theta’s apron and talking quietly about something serious, it looked like. “You seen the kittens?” he asked them.
“No, honey,” Theta said.
He asked Memphis and Bill and Sam and Jericho, but nobody had seen the kittens. Mr. Olson came through the field. Isaiah thought he’d ask him. Surely Mr. Olson would know.
“Mr. Olson, I can’t find the kittens,” Isaiah said, and some terrible feeling perched inside him, like when he thought he was going to throw up but hoped he wouldn’t.
Mr. Olson looked down at the ground
. “They’re gone.”
“Gone where?” Isaiah asked.
“I drowned ’em in the river.”
Isaiah felt as if somebody had clean punched him in the chest. He could scarcely breathe. “Why?” he asked, careful not to sound rude, but it cost him to do it.
“Son, I’ve got nothing to feed a bunch of kittens. I can barely keep this farm together. It’s better this way. They won’t suffer,” the farmer said and went into the house, letting the screen door snap behind him.
The mother cat crawled back under the porch. Isaiah could hear her mewling for her missing babies. Bill reached out and put a hand on Isaiah’s shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“He killed ’em, Bill. They were living things, and he just coldhearted killed ’em.”
“Sometimes folks think they’re doing a kindness picking the lesser evil. Reckon he thought it was better to do it quick rather than let ’em starve slow.”
“I would’ve fed ’em. I would’ve found a way,” Isaiah said, inconsolable.
“You not gonna stay here to tend ’em. They wadn’t yours.” Bill crouched before Isaiah so he could look him in the eyes. Tears streamed down the boy’s cheeks. “Life ain’t always fair, and the choices we gotta make sometime ain’t always clean, Little Man.”
“I would’ve fed ’em! I would have!” Isaiah blubbered and fell into a full cry. He wiped an arm across his wet eyes and ran off toward the shelter of the cornfields.
“If I’d known, I’d’ve put those kittens down gentle,” Bill said to Memphis as they worked side by side tilling the hard earth and planting more seed. It had gotten to him, seeing Isaiah all broken up like that. “You oughta go to the boy. He needs you.”
“I need to see to the planting.”
“Go on. I’ll do this.”
Memphis found Isaiah in the corn with his face buried against his arms, which were resting on his knees. Memphis sat down beside Isaiah. Every chance Memphis got, he was coming up with words. But now words failed him.
“I’m sorry, Ice Man.” It was the best he had.