She looked away, unable to repress a grimace of disgust, and Rascal flapped up onto the bar beside her. He apparently didn’t want to risk his delicate little paws amidst all that broken glass. Emily couldn’t blame him.
The shelves that lined the back wall were bare, save for cobwebs and the odd sliver of bottle glass, but beneath the bar top, all along its length, were drawers and cupboards of various sizes. She might be able to find something, an old stein perhaps, to catch some rain water in. They’d need water to drink soon.
She crunched her way through the litter, making as little noise as she could. Rascal kept pace with her, the click of his claws on the oak of the old bar top a comforting counterpoint to her own careful steps. He watched her with mild interest, perhaps hoping she’d produce some tasty morsel.
Most of the cabinets and drawers were empty, but as she worked her way farther down the bar, she began to find odds and ends in a few of them. Most were little more than trash, evidently deemed worthless by the proprietors when the tavern had been abandoned. A broken knife, its blade rusty and its handle caked in something thick and dark, rattled in one drawer. A handful of gold holders, each with Marianne’s beautiful face stamped on its head, lay at the bottom of an earthenware jar in a cupboard; well, it was a little dirty, but it would serve as a cup, anyway. She took it out and set it on the bar, then continued her search.
Scraps of decaying paper, yellow with age, were scattered everywhere. Most of these were blank, but a few had what looked like scribbled notes on them, though in the gloom, Emily couldn’t make out what they said. Orders for food, probably.
She was gently sliding the last drawer closed, slightly disappointed that it was empty, when she heard something shift in its depths. Frowning, she pulled it back out again, peering into its rear corners, and saw a flat, square object standing on its edge against the back panel, perhaps three inches per a side. It was almost invisible in the gloom, and it was little wonder she’d not seen it at first—it almost seemed to blend in with the dark wood around it.
Cautiously, she reached in and lifted it out of the drawer. It was cold and hard and coated in a film of dust. Its edges and corners were slightly rounded, and it felt like an object that had been exquisitely crafted with the utmost care.
Rascal watched her impassively as she used the front of her jerkin to polish the trinket, clearing its surface of the grime.
The thing seemed to be made of two squares of glass held together by a narrow, tarnished frame. There was something round embedded between the panes, but in the dim light, she couldn’t see what it was. Still, it looked strangely familiar.
She glanced across the room. There wasn’t much light coming into the building, but perhaps if she held it up to what little light there was, it would be enough.
As she came back around the bar and headed toward the windows, she heard a noise behind her. She turned to see Corbbmacc propped up on one elbow, blinking at her owlishly in the gloom. His hair was tousled, falling into his face in an unruly mass. Inexplicably, Emily felt heat rising to her face.
“What did you find?” he asked in a stage whisper, casting a quick glance over to the still sleeping Celine.
“I don’t know yet.”
She turned away and continued across the room, acutely aware of Corbbmacc’s gaze on her back. It was funny; she hadn’t been embarrassed at all when she’d first woken up beside him, but now she felt distinctly shy, and she couldn’t seem to bring herself to meet his gaze.
She heard the soft flap and thud of the rugs being tossed aside, and then the creak of the boards as he came to join her at the window. She willed the color she knew must be in her face to go away—afraid what he would think if he saw it and not sure why it mattered so much anyway.
Dammit, Corbb, she thought a bit ruefully, couldn’t you just wait a minute for me to come back over there?
In the end, it didn’t matter. She raised the little square to her eyes, letting the meager light filtering in through the grime and rain shine through it.
There was a brief moment, surreal in its distinctness, where Emily didn’t know what she was looking at, but did know that she should. It was a little like running into someone famous in the checkout lane of the local supermarket and being totally unable to remember their name. The thing was so obvious—so plain—and yet utterly alien taken out of context.
Abraham Lincoln’s face shone out at her, caught between the panes of glass and stamped onto the surface of a good old American penny.
There was something else, too; something etched into the glass below it, and she squinted, trying to read it. Corbbmacc leaned over her shoulder, straining to see what she was looking at.
“What is it?” he asked, but Emily did not respond.
At last, the words came into focus, and though she could read them well enough, it took a moment for her brain to fully process their meaning. When it did, the force of it was like a punch to her gut, and all of the heat drained entirely from her face.
Tricentennial Commemorative Penny
In memory of the Old United States, 1776–2052
Minted in the New Republic of Texas, 2076
Emily shook her head, trying to clear it. This was too much—too much to take in all at once. Just twenty little words—just twenty—and yet it felt as though her whole perception of the world was coming undone. This was worse than when she’d found the dictionary and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the library at Seven Skies. The notion that she was at some unimaginable time in the future was still an abstract one. It had remained so, even when the mermaid had explained how the two worlds had been brought back together. The chasm of time between her life in Minneapolis and the time and place in which she found herself now was so immense that her mind had simply accepted it. No, it had simply ignored it. It was unfathomable, and so she hadn’t even tried to internalize it.
But now, this was something entirely different.
She went on staring at the little plaque in her hand. “1776–2052” it said. The United States, her home—her country—would cease to exist in her own lifetime. Or would have, had she remained there.
But that was not all of it—not even the worst of it. Her teammates were dead, coach Anders was dead…
Casey was dead.
They were all gone; all dry and dusty bones in the ground. For how long now? Centuries? Millennia? How many years?
She felt Corbbmacc’s hand on her arm, and, numbly, she allowed him to guide her back to Celine and the corner of the room where they’d bedded down the night before.
Gently, he coaxed her to sit on the floor against the wall, and he wrapped one of the rugs around her. It was only then that she realized she was trembling, and there was wetness on her cheeks. Was she crying? Why was she crying? She didn’t remember crying.
Of course Casey was dead. They were all dead. Why should this hit her now?
Dimly, she was aware of Celine sitting up beside her, and of her and Corbbmacc’s low voices. She didn’t listen. Her mind was full of too many thoughts—too many terrible thoughts. They swirled through her head like autumn leaves stripped from their branches and scattered to the four winds.
Pain flared in her palm, and she realized she was clutching the little glass square so tightly that its edges, despite their roundness, were digging into her flesh. She forced her fingers to relax. She forced herself to breathe. In and out…in and out…
Suddenly, Emily was aware of Celine sitting beside her. She didn’t know how long she’d been there.
“S’a’right, Em. Can I see it?” Celine gently tugged the plaque from her fingers. Emily let her take it reluctantly and watched as Celine held it up to her eyes.
“Give it back, please,” she whispered, and Celine held it out to her at once.
“No,” Emily said, a little louder. “I mean, when you’re done. Okay?”
Celine nodded.
She went on studying the penny for another minute, turning it this way and that. Emily dou
bted she could read the inscription, even if the light had been good enough. Words like “tricentennial” and “commemorative” had just never come up in the brief time Emily had had to help Celine with her reading.
But then that thought, too, was snatched away and sent tumbling into the void to be replaced by a hundred others.
“It’s from your world, ain’t it?” Celine asked at last, not taking her eyes from it. “From where yeh came from, I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a funny-lookin’ old codger,” Celine commented.
For some reason, that made Emily snort a short laugh, and in its wake, her tears tapered off and her mind began to settle.
Corbbmacc crouched down on her other side, holding the earthenware jar she’d left on the bar. It was cleaner now and filled with sweet, clear water. She hadn’t even heard him open the door, but it was plain he’d gone outside to rinse and fill it with rainwater. His hair was plastered to the sides of his face now, and water streamed from his freshly sodden clothes.
“Have some,” he told her, and before she could reach up to take it, he had pressed the rim to her lips and was tilting it.
She drank, and whether it was Celine’s comment, the water running down her throat, or the obvious concern on Corbbmacc’s face that proved the most effective, she didn’t know. She was beginning to feel better, though, and was grateful.
“I’m sorry,” she told them. “It was just…”
She broke off, trying to think how to express the feelings that were roiling inside her.
She turned to Celine. “You were there—on the island.”
Celine nodded.
“They brought our worlds back together. Yours and mine. They did that, after they had left them separate for so long.”
Again, Celine nodded.
Emily took a deep breath. “I hadn’t really thought about it much. But if the worlds were brought back together, merged as two halves of a whole, why haven’t I seen more of mine—more than just a few bits and pieces? Something more substantial than those books in Marianne’s library and a few fragments here and there. Mostly, this is still your world. This is the Haven.”
“Mayhap we just ain’t been in none o’ the right places to see it,” Celine said. She handed the plaque back to Emily. “Yeh ain’t really seen much of things ’ere, Em. It’s a big world. May be that it ain’t as big as yours, but it’s big enough.”
“Maybe,” Emily said. “But what if…” She felt a tightness in her throat and she swallowed hard, trying to loosen it. “What if we haven’t seen any more of it because there isn’t any more of it? What if it is all gone?”
She felt Corbbmacc’s hand on her arm, and she turned to look at him. His expression was calm, but there was a deep and strange emotion in his eyes that Emily couldn’t quite read.
“Does it matter, Em?” he asked. “I mean, you haven’t told me much about…about your life before. But it doesn’t seem like you left much behind that was worth missing.”
Emily bit her lip, trying to think how to explain.
“My life was fucked up,” she said at last. “I can thank the goddamned wizard for that. But not everything in the world was terrible. Hell, not even everything in my life was. There was music, and art, and books, and movies, and good things to eat. There were good people, too.” The image of Casey filled her mind, and she felt her eyes sting with tears again. She blinked them away. “There were terrible things, too, but there are in any place, I think. I just can’t bear the thought that it’s all gone.”
“Yeh’re here, Em,” Celine said. “As long as yeh are, it ain’t all gone.”
Emily shook her head, but she didn’t argue.
For a while, they sat in silence, and Emily stared down at the little piece of history between her hands. It couldn’t be all gone, could it? Burnt-out husks of automobiles, a few books, Coca-Cola signs, and random trinkets like this plaque couldn’t be all that there was left of the world she came from, could they? And why did she care so damned much? There was a whole world around her, far more wondrous than the one she’d left behind. She’d found the greatest friendships of her life here. True, she’d nearly been killed on more than one occasion in the last few weeks, but on balance, was it better or worse than the hell of Danvers Avenue?
“We’re not going to be able to go anywhere until the storm dies down,” Corbbmacc said softly. He wasn’t looking at her. His gaze was trained on the rain lashing at the windows across the room. “We’re safe here, and dry…”
He paused as Emily reached up and flicked a drop of water from the end of his nose.
“Well, reasonably dry, anyway,” he amended. “So tell us about it.”
“About what?”
“About your world. About where you come from. I get the impression you’ve told Celine more than you’ve told me, but I’m sure you’ve got things you haven’t shared with either of us yet. Tell us something good about Mini-Apples.”
Emily laughed, remembering the trouble Garrett had had with the name of her hometown.
She thought back to her old life. What she really wanted was to show them pictures, play them her favorite songs. She’d never been very good with words. She’d probably done more talking to her friends here in this world in two months than anyone, save Casey, in the entirety of her whole other life.
And then an idea came to her.
She pulled the leather drawstring pouch from where it hung at her belt—the one that Marcom had thrown from the mountaintop. She opened it, reached in, and pulled out her phone.
The screen was cracked, and the last time she’d turned it on, it had only had about a quarter of its charge left, but it wasn’t doing her any good just sitting in this pouch, the battery draining away to nothing. She’d use whatever was left to share a piece of herself with her friends.
Remember your friends.
She hit the power button on the side of the phone and held her breath.
The screen came to life as the little gadget booted up, the familiar Apple logo blazing forth and seeming to her now like a forgotten relic of a bygone era—a hieroglyph on an ancient scroll.
The lock screen appeared, and Emily’s eyes moved out of habit to the date and time without thinking about it.
According to her phone, still locked to the relative time of her old life, it was 8:37 on Saturday, February 4th. That gave her another nasty jolt. She’d turned seventeen three days ago and hadn’t even known when it had happened. Did it matter? She wasn’t sure.
She moved her gaze upward, intending to check the level of her battery, when something else caught her eye.
On the far left end of the status bar, where the phone had displayed “No service” when she’d looked at it in the room she and Celine had shared at Seven Skies, there was a question mark icon she’d never seen before.
And beside that, there was the small, glowing indicator of a single bar.
She had a connection.
Casey
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was the light of the westering sun, shining almost directly in her face, that brought Casey back to wakefulness. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to slip back into oblivion. Something hard was digging into her back, and each breath she took was laced with the scent of freshly cut grass and the sour tang of chemical fertilizer. Her tongue tasted like old batteries. Nothing good would come of waking up.
But her mind latched on to these discomforts, and despite her best efforts, set out to remember where she was. Somewhere south of Minnesota was all she could come up with. The jumble of images that made up the last few days of her memory was a patchwork of random highways, dirt roads, rest stops, and the comforting burn of the vodka. Always the vodka. It was the only way to keep Emily’s voice out of her head.
You can’t keep me out forever, you know, her friend murmured in her mind as if summoned by the thought. You can’t keep running.
“Fuck off,” Casey muttered, and she put an arm across her eyes, cur
sing her subconscious and the guilt it was feeding off of. And it had to be her subconscious, because the alternative was worse—crazy people heard voices.
A sound came to her then, carried on the breeze that caressed her cheek. She frowned, trying to make sense of it. It sounded like a small crowd of people clapping and cheering. Almost as soon as the applause had begun, it was drowned out by the low rumbled of an electric guitar.
With a groan, she opened her eyes, rolling over onto one elbow and away from the sunshine.
She was lying beneath a tree, one of many, and surrounded by a rolling expanse of neatly tended and impossibly green grass. She had no idea how she’d gotten there, and that realization caused faint alarm bells to ring in her mind. She’d been drinking too much—not a lot too much, just a little. She shook her head. It didn’t matter, but God, she was thirsty.
She looked toward the sound of the music, but a small hill and cluster of trees at its crest blocked her view. A mother with a pair of toddlers sat at a picnic table amidst the trees, their backs to Casey. Otherwise, she couldn’t see anyone else.
The guitar shifted from roaring chords to a surprisingly melodic pattern of notes and was joined by the rapid staccato of a high-hat and the pulse of a kick drum. The effect was almost tribal, and the tune sounded more like a Celtic folksong than rock and roll.
Casey scanned the ground around her, the need for a drink burning in her throat, but her purse was nowhere in sight. Damn. She must have left it in her car.
Haven Divided (The Dragon's Brood Cycle Book 2) Page 14