by Nick Lake
I sit.
He sits too, on a rock. In the Dreaming, as in all things, there is balance, he says. He is speaking quietly so that the elks can’t hear. There is First Woman and First Man, says Mark. There is the Crone, who is the energy of destruction. And there is Coyote, who is the energy of chaos.
Coyote? I say, thinking of the coyote I saw after the car hit me, and again by the car, in the forest.
Yes. Also, there is the End, and there is the Child. That is balanced, as it should be. But the Crone has captured the Child, and this is what has given her the power to stop the rain. But by taking the Child she is hastening the End.
Which means what? I say. I don’t understand. It’s not real. This world isn’t real.
It is real, it’s just different. We must rescue the Child, and kill the Crone, to break the spell of no rain.
Or what?
Without rain everything dies, he says. The Child is very young. Defenseless. She will not survive long in the Crone’s care.
Suddenly I flash back to my recurring dream—the child in the hospital, crying for someone to come, crying for help. What if … what if the dream has been trying to tell me something? Warn me about something?
You mean the Dreaming will end? I say. If the Child dies?
He shakes his head sadly. No. The Dreaming. Your world. Your everything.
I stare at him. Are you serious?
I am very serious, he says.
I am thinking that this is all crazy—the Dreaming, talking elks, wolves baying for blood. I don’t understand him at all. But I do believe him.
What do I have to do with all of this? I say.
You’re the only one who can save the Child, says Mark.
Why?
But he doesn’t answer, because—
3…
Chapter 21
I snap into the room in the motel, cold liquid dripping from my face, my hair.
What the—
Then I see Mom standing over me, an empty water glass in her hand.
Sorry, honey, she says. You wouldn’t wake up.
Mom! I’m soaking. What the hell?
She pulls a face. Sorry. Sorry. Hey, when I was a girl guide, in Alaska, this was how they woke us up every morning at camp.
You were a girl guide?
Yep.
Wow. I can’t imagine this AT ALL. I mean, 0 percent. My mom is the least girl-guide person in the world. She’d get the cross-stitch badge no problem, but before this week, the closest she’s ever come to the outdoors is those pictures of Scotland she makes. She would never even come climb the little mountains next to Phoenix with me.
I was a terrible guide, she says.
Yeah, no shit, I say.
Okay, Okay, my bad, she says. She tosses me a towel. Get dry and get dressed. It’s eleven a.m., sleepyhead. They’ve stopped serving breakfast here.
I put on my CAM Walker and then pull my slit jeans over it, and grab my T-shirt and sweater. It’s so much colder here than in Phoenix; I can feel the air creeping through my clothes, wanting to chill the life out of me.
Okay, overdramatic, but it’s what I feel. Like the cold is leaching something from me. Some force. For the first time I get what Mom means about the rain.
Anyway, I walk into the main room and Mom and Luke are standing there with their bags by their feet.
Finally, Sleeping Beauty appears, says Luke.
I mime gut-busting laughter and Mom rolls her eyes. We thought we’d go to a diner, she says. In town.
Okay, I say.
Then I see her glance over at the still-full coffee cups of wine on the table. Luke, you want to take the bags to the car? she says. We’ll follow.
He nods with that kind of oh-yes-girl-stuff nod and picks up the bags, leaves the room.
Mom goes over to the cups and takes them to the bathroom—I see her tip them into the sink, then rinse them out. Weird. She comes back into the room and claps her hands together, like, let’s go.
I’m sure the maid would have gotten those, I say.
Yes, yes, she says. I don’t like to leave a mess. I was a guide, remember?
She smiles but I don’t. I’m looking at the bottle of wine, the still half-full bottle of wine that she has left on the table, like she doesn’t consider that to be mess. What gives?
There’s something obvious here, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Then Mom puts HER fingers on my arm and steers me out the room, and then down to the car.
Luke drives us back into town and we find a parking spot on the main drag opposite the Western Frontier diner, close to the corner with Gene’s Western Wear on it. He gets out and inserts coins into an old-fashioned parking meter and we walk to the diner—or rather Mom and Luke walk, and I do my elegant CAM Walker shuffle.
We go in and get a booth close to the entrance. Luke tosses the car keys onto the table, and they slide to a stop by the ketchup, which comes in a bottle shaped like a tomato. Mom orders me a strawberry milkshake and burger, and a hot dog for herself. Luke goes for home fries and a steak.
Our server’s name is Candy, and she has a smiley-face button on her uniform. She doesn’t have a smiley face on her FACE, though. She looks like we just ran over her cat. Who knows, maybe we did. Or maybe she’s met Luke before, and she thinks he’s going to tell her a story about attending a scene in a diner where someone chopped off their hand.
I almost want to show him the scars all over my legs, and say, you ever see anything like that?
Anyway, my shake comes, and it’s good.
Leaves blow past, outside.
Candy brings us our food, and just about holds herself back from spitting in it in front of us. She hands Luke a steak knife and takes away his normal knife.
And then Luke’s mouth drops open, and doesn’t close.
He’s facing the other way to me and Mom—we turn in our seats and see the TV mounted on a bracket on the wall. It’s on mute, you can see from the little red symbol in the corner of the screen, a speaker with a line through it. But that’s not really what I’m looking at.
No, what I’m looking at is footage from the hospital CCTV cameras, of me and Mom leaving Phoenix General, me in my wheelchair. Closed captions flash up.
You’re not going to believe this, Veronica, says the male anchor, but police think these images may just show An—
I turn around as I feel Mom moving very quickly. She has Luke’s steak knife in her hand, like it just jumped there from the table, all of its own accord.
I’m so sorry, Luke, she says.
Then she brings the knife down like a hammer, and it goes through Luke’s hand like, well, like you know what. It sticks in the table too, because when she takes her own hand away it’s standing up like a flag in a burger bun.
Luke stares down at it, and his mouth goes, O-O-O-O-O-O.
I’m guessing his scream is loud. But I’m deaf. I only hear like 10 percent of it. That 10 percent is bad enough for me, though. I feel like my stomach is falling out through a hole in my pelvis. I guess that’s shock.
Mom grabs the car keys and my arm, and pushes me out of the booth and then out the door. Candy is rushing to Luke, behind us, who is still just staring at the blood gushing out of his hand like a whale’s blowhole spraying red, and all this is happening but only like half a second has gone by.
If anyone chased us, we’d be screwed, because I’m going as fast as I can on my CAM Walker, using the weird rocking gait that you have to use with it, not knowing why Mom did that and why we’re running, and Mom is not an athlete. But we get to the Honda without anyone stopping us, and I guess that’s because they’re freaking out about Luke’s hand and trying to help him, and then a little scary voice at the back of my mind says, yeah, she knew that would happen, that’s probably why she did it.
And then I’m in the car, and Mom shuts my door and gets in the driver’s seat and pretty much floors it, and the tires smoke as we gun it out of there.
Chapter 22
You’re Anya Maxwell? I say as we drive out of Flagstaff and onto I-17 again.
Mom says she heard sirens behind us, but we figure they won’t know what car we’re in—no one even stepped out of the diner when we ran. So they’re not going to be able to follow us. That’s Mom’s thinking, anyway. I don’t know if she’s right.
Yes, says Mom.
Wow, I say. Anya Maxwell is kind of a legendary figure—she smashed her husband’s head in like fifteen years ago with a kitchen TV. He bled out and got electrocuted too—the Double Death, they called it. Later it turned out, because all her friends came forward, that he’d been beating her and raping her for years, and she’d just snapped. So she became a sort of heroine to some feminists, and then got even more famous when she skipped bail and disappeared, totally.
It’s a bit like that whole Elvis-being-alive thing—people say, if someone’s a bit mysterious, maybe she’s Anya Maxwell. That kind of thing. Now, the idea that this woman is my mother is just disorienting. All my life, she’s been Shaylene Cooper, and now she’s Anya Maxwell, and it’s like someone just took a big tug on the earth beneath me and pulled it a thousand miles along, like a rug, so I’m living on some totally other part of the world.
You cut off the TV in the motel room, didn’t you? I say.
Yes. I couldn’t afford for the news to come on.
Wow, I say again.
We pass a sign that says APACHE/YAVAPAI NATION 3 MILES: it is pointing down a side road. I think of the Dreaming, the elks and the Crone and the Child, and whether if we went down that road I could find some wise elder or something, ask them some questions.
But we continue past it, and the forest keeps flickering past.
Eventually Mom pulls over at a rest stop. There’s a short section of desert south of Flagstaff, similar to the scrubland where we saw the petroglyphs, then you get up onto the forest plateau again, where the pines start to crowd in. There’s a sign that says PRESCOTT NATIONAL FOREST 5 MILES. It doesn’t occur to me to ask why we’re heading back in the direction of Phoenix.
I just …, she says. I couldn’t go to prison. Not with you. You were so young—losing you like that, it would have broken my heart. So I took you, and I ran. I changed my name. I changed my job.
So … Alaska …
A lie. I’m sorry. I had to keep you safe. Her hands when she gesticulates don’t look human anymore; they look like starfish flapping. And it’s a cliché, but my head is spinning. I mean really spinning, like vertigo. I feel like I’m going to throw up.
Then Mom saying “lie,” like that, makes me think of something—of the coyote, before my accident, saying there will be two lies and then there will be the truth. My dad wanting to kill us, that was the first lie, right? So what if this is the second?
I feel as if my body is dropping through thin air, my stomach rising.
Anya Maxwell didn’t have a daughter, I say slowly.
They kept you secret, says Mom. To protect you.
Right, I say.
She frowns at me. From my reputation, you know. And from knowing that I killed your dad, I guess. Then when I took you they never changed the story, I don’t know why. Maybe it would have looked weird.
Uh-huh, I say. Mom, are you lying to me right now?
She looks so shocked I instantly feel bad. What? Why would I lie to you about this? You’re my only girl. My little princess.
And you’re Anya Maxwell.
Yes. Anya Maxwell, who had a daughter the authorities kept quiet, and who knew that people would be looking for her. For her and her teenage girl.
Oh, I say, realizing something. So when we were with Luke, you didn’t break our engine just to change cars, you did it because …
… Because I knew they’d be looking for a woman and a girl. Not a family. Or what seemed like a family.
Suddenly, everything is clear. That line on the closed caption:
Police think these images may just show An—
Police think this may be Anya fricking Maxwell.
Though I guess the person typing out the closed captions probably wouldn’t have included the fricking. This, though—this is why Mom stabbed Luke through the hand, nailing him to the table. So that he wouldn’t pick up on the news story.
But…, I say. Can’t you turn yourself in? I mean, I’m older now. I could come visit you, we could—
No way, says Mom. The DA was pushing for the electric chair. It was California, remember?
California? I say. I thought we lived in Alaska.
Well…, says Mom. I had to protect you.
God, I say. But your husband … my dad … he was hurting you.
There’s no material evidence. Only witness testimony.
She starts to cry, suddenly, and something clicks inside me, some cog, and I lean over and put my hands around her. Then my stomach flips and I pull away.
Luke! I say.
Yeah, says Mom, still crying. That was unfortunate.
His hand … In my head, it runs again, like a rewound video—the blade, sticking out of his flesh, the blood spurting. The memory of it is jagged in my head, uncomfortable, sharp-edged. It hurts me; I can’t imagine how much it hurt him.
It’ll be fine, says Mom. No arteries.
It’ll be FINE?
She closes her eyes, for a moment. Sorry, she says. Sorry. It was the only thing I could think of. You know I wouldn’t normally do that, right? You know it was wrong?
Uh, yes, Mom, I know it was wrong. You impaled his hand. And what do you mean you wouldn’t normally do that? You were all ready to smash his head in with a rock.
She blinks. But I didn’t.
Because I tripped you!
Sorry, she says. Sorry. I did stab him. I did, and I’m sorry for it. I wish I hadn’t had to. But he would have seen, or heard. You understand that, don’t you? He would have realized. Who I was. Who you were.
Yes, I say.
And then … I would have lost you. I can’t lose you.
She’s crying hard now, and I touch the tears on her cheek. It’s Okay, Mom, I say, I get it.
Thank you, she says.
We sit there for a while in silence.
Then Mom takes a long deep breath, scrubs her face with her hands. She turns to me. A glint in her eye. Anyway, she says slowly, now he’ll have a story to tell about himself, for once.
I can’t help it—I laugh. It’s awful, it’s terrible, but I laugh. And then Mom is laughing too, and we sort of have to hold on to each other, because we get all hysterical. It’s funny! And also tragic and disgusting and appalling. But funny too!
When we come back to our senses, Mom starts the car and pulls out, indicating carefully. We follow I-17 another few miles. Forest flickers past the window of the car, the trees different and the same. It’s like someone is shuffling a deck of cards, with pictures of trees on them. Then Mom sees a sign for the Prescott National Forest again, and she turns off. We pass a gas station, fluorescent lit, and Mom pulls up.
Wait here, she says.
She goes into the store and I wait. The engine is still running. I watch a wasp crawl across the windshield. I start to feel nervous—we’re the only car parked here—but then Mom reappears, shielding her eyes from the low late-afternoon sun. She walks back to the car at what I think she imagines is an inconspicuous pace, only it looks suspicious to me.
But, you know, I saw what she did with the steak knife, so it’s not like I’m an unbiased observer.
I watch her pull something from her pocket, something dark like a Taser. Her face is all cold and hard determination.
Two lies, and then the truth.
I pull back into the seat, as if I could push myself through it, as if I was made of ectoplasm, thinking about how this was a person who would make a knife stand out of someone’s hand just to stop them from watching TV, and that this is a person, too, who knows that when I’m with her I slow her down.
A person who killed my dad.
A person w
ho was willing to smash Luke’s brains in with a rock, and leave him to die in the middle of nowhere.
A person, I suddenly realize, who just might hit me with ten thousand volts and leave me behind, leave me to wake up on a curb as policemen ask me questions and I just blink at them, like, what the hell?
I keep my eyes on her hand, raising the black object, and I brace myself.
Chapter 23
What’s wrong with you?
Mom gets in and hands the black something to me—it’s a basic cell phone—keys big enough for a giant to operate. Then she gives me another one, identical.
I am shaking. Nothing, I say. Nothing.
One for you, one for me, she says. Your job is: program my number into yours, and vice versa.
What? Why?
They’re prepaid. No contract. The cops don’t know we have them.
The COPS? What is this, TV?
Okay, the police, whatever. Just keep yours on you.
We’re together, I say.
We may get separated, she says.
I roll my eyes. I can’t believe you got us burners, like on The Wire, I say.
Mom shrugs. What can I say. I love that show. Charge the cell tonight and keep it safe.
So we’re on the run. And we have burner cells. It would be bitching if it wasn’t so totally weird and awful. In my mind’s eye, a flash, like firework-afterburn: Luke’s hand again, the knife sticking out of it like a flag.
Mom checks a big fold-out map she also got in the 7-Eleven, then opens her purse, takes out her old cell phone, and tosses it out the window. Then she pushes the lever from P to D and we pull out, pine needles crunching under the tires. At a fork, Mom takes another turn onto a smaller highway.
It’s not the same road we were on before, and we follow it for maybe an hour—I don’t know; I program the numbers into the cells, but then I think I fall asleep for a while.