by Alex Wells
Mag made a horrible noise then, like she was choking almost. It took Hob a moment to realize she was laughing, or maybe crying, or both. “The Weatherman. You shot the Weatherman.” Her hand went tighter around Hob’s. “Didn’t even give a day before you started slayin’ dragons for me.”
“That can’t be so,” Hob whispered, though she squeezed Mag’s hand just as tightly. “Weathermen don’t ever set foot on a planet.” She’d never seen one in person before, but she knew as much about them as any common spacer did.
“Believe it,” Mag said. “That’s what they called him. And the things he did to me, Hob…” Her breath caught. “Lickin’ blood off my hand and crawlin’ into my head and– and–” She swallowed hard.
The Bone Collector went so absolutely still and silent that Hob lifted her head to look, then reached out and brushed her fingers against his knee, just to make sure he hadn’t turned to stone. His eyes went a little wider at that contact, rolling down to stare at her, then flicking back to Mag. “You are certain he is dead?”
Hob let her hand fall back down to the sand. “Most folk I know don’t recover too well from a round through the neck and another in the heart.” She huffed out a breath, trying to remember; there’d been something else important to tell him. “After I shot the guards, he tried to get me to come quiet-like, by singin’ at me. Kind of like you did, only you’re a lot better at it.”
His face tightened down in fury, a strange expression she’d never seen on him. He slapped her hand away when she tried to touch his knee again. “Monster,” he hissed, then surged to his feet and stalked away.
“Why’s he so mad?” Mag whispered after a moment of shocked silence.
“Guess he don’t like Weathermen,” Hob commented to the sky, shaking the sting from her fingers.
“When they tell you to do somethin’, you want to do it,” Mag said. She sounded a little stronger now, less like she was going to be sick. “They put me in a room with one. I thought I was gonna die when he touched me, but I couldn’t even move a muscle to try to get away.”
“Don’t make no sense to me,” Hob said, not because she disbelieved Mag – she’d seen the Weatherman herself; she’d believe just about anything after those few minutes – but because nothing made sense with what she’d already known. “They fly the rift ships. To spacers, they’re practically holy, like little gods instead of men. You pray to ’em in the hopes you’ll make it through the rift alive, and it ain’t really a joke. Speak ill of one and it’ll get you beat, in the cargo hold. But they just do mumbo jumbo with math and – and spatial mechanics.” She pronounced the words like they were from a foreign language, and they might as well have been for all they made sense to her. “They don’t go drinkin’ blood or singin’ or any of that nonsense.”
“This one did.”
“I believe you. I don’t fuckin’ understand it, but I believe you.” Hob squeezed Mag’s hand again. Trying to square the monstrous thing she’d shot – still made her sick to think about it – with what she’d always been told about these might-be superhuman navigators gave her a headache. She focused on the important facts for now. “Well, unless they got spares wanderin’ around, that one’s got two bullets through him and won’t be botherin’ you no more.”
Mag laughed. “That’s somethin’, at least.” Her laughter turned into sobs; she curled into a ball on her side, one hand over her face, her other still tight around Hob’s. “I didn’t think you’d come for me. I didn’t believe in you. I’m sorry, Hob.”
“Hey, hey now.” Careful, like she might break, Hob rubbed Mag’s back. It hurt to see her so upset over doubting someone she had every damn right to doubt. “I ain’t given you much reason to think I’d come. And I’m sorry too. I shoulda been there already. Shoulda never gone away to begin with. I just wasn’t brave enough.”
Mag laughed. “That don’t even make sense.”
Hob couldn’t put it to words, didn’t want to either, like that would make it all more real, bring up ghosts that she was still trying to escape. “Don’t worry about it. Whether it makes sense or no, I’m here now, right?” She sat up, scooted across to Mag, and pulled the other woman into her lap.
She knew she should tell Mag that her father was dead, and maybe now was the best time, since she was already crying. But these tears seemed more like release than sadness, and she didn’t want to stop Mag cold when she was just starting to feel alive and hopeful. It weighed heavy and burned in her throat, but it was a secret that could keep for a while longer. Phil was already dead; he wouldn’t get any deader.
The Bone Collector returned, stopping a little away from them, hands clasped loosely behind his back. Hob only stole one look at him, and she didn’t care for what she saw: he watched them like a scientist would watch a strange animal, taking in Mag’s tears as another interesting result to be cataloged.
* * *
They kept traveling until they reached the mine in Pictou, where the Bone Collector looped Mag’s arm over his shoulders so he could lead her to the blankets and help her lay down. Hob at least was moving under her own power this time. “I’ll make you both some coffee. That seems to make you feel better,” he said. The inflection on you made her think of his casual mention of humans earlier. Not you, not human.
Coffee started, the Bone Collector sat down next to Mag. After four trips, she was far worse for wear than Hob. Without asking, he took up her right hand, curling her fingers around his and pressing her knuckles against his lips, eyes falling half shut. Mag looked away from him, fixing her eyes on Hob, her face gone pale.
“It’s OK, Mag. He’s passin’ strange, but means well enough. I think.” If she hadn’t known any better, the gesture would have looked tender, but she was starting to think the man didn’t even know the meaning of the word. Quiet and soft was easy to mistake for gentle when you’d seen precious little of either, but it seemed more a matter of constitution rather than an empathetic choice coming from him.
“He ain’t gonna try to drink my blood?” Mag asked in a whisper.
“He tries and I got a knife with his name on it.” Whatever odd history she might share with the Bone Collector, it was nothing compared to her and Mag.
“OK.” Mag closed her eyes tightly for a moment. “I want to go home. But I was supposed to leave on the ship, you know that right? But they locked me up, and all our money’s gone. And if I tried to leave again…” She shuddered.
“Your mama told me that.” Her head felt clear, and she sat up, leaning against the stone wall of the mine. It would have been better for Mag to get away, go to a better planet and get her family moved. But a selfish, mean corner of Hob’s heart was glad she was still there. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea to send you home either, for other reasons.”
“I don’t–” Mag stopped, her eyes going a little wider. “Hob, he’s gone all cold,” she whispered.
Hob leaned in to take a look at the Bone Collector, and then thumped back on the wall. “He’s turned to stone. Does that too, regular enough. Can’t say I’m a hundred percent sure, but I reckon that means he’s thinkin’ real hard. He’ll be all right in a minute.”
Mag giggled, covering her mouth with her other hand as if to keep crazier laughter from escaping. “Turned to stone. Be right as rain in a minute. Oh, is that all.” She shook her head. “But… wait, what do you mean, other reasons?”
It wasn’t fair, to drop it on her like this, trapped in a mine with her hand held captive. Stall, she told herself, stall until Mag could at least move. “They know who you are. They know where to find you. Wouldn’t be surprised if they went looking.”
Mag swallowed hard. “What about Mama and Papa?”
“I don’t know. We’ll talk to the Ravani – your Uncle Nick – real soon. And see if he’s got any ideas. Mayhap another of the mining towns would take you in, like over at Shimera.” She fell silent, staring at the wall above Mag’s head. The marks made from chisels and axes, the butt ends of drill
holes for explosives made sharp shadows in the lantern light.
“There’s more, isn’t there,” Mag whispered. “Hob, tell me.” She tugged her hand, trying to pull it from the unyielding fingers of the Bone Collector.
“In a minute. I’ll tell you everything when he lets you go.”
That seemed to scare her even more. Hob wished she could just kick the damn statue, wake the man up that way. But after all he’d said when she’d brought him Phil’s fingerbone, she was scared to do it.
Color rippled through him; Mag yanked her hand away and shoved herself upright. “Tell me!” she screamed at Hob.
“Your papa, Mag.” Hob kept her words measured and calm as the Bone Collector stood and moved away, face tight. He disappeared down one of the shafts, leaving them alone with the weight of awful news waiting to be told. Coward. Unfair, maybe. It wasn’t his burden. “I found him out in the dunes not far from Segundo. Shot in the back, from a helicopter.”
It was like telling Mag’s mama had been, but worse somehow, because Mag didn’t scream. She just covered her face with her hands and sobbed, and when Hob tried to touch her she jerked away and choked out, “Leave me be.”
Hob knew that when Mag wanted to be left alone, she damn well wanted to be left alone; she stood, headed the same way the Bone Collector had. He waited for her just up the tunnel. The sound of Mag’s sobs echoed behind them.
“She cannot stay here,” he said. “And she cannot leave this planet. The voice of the world is in her blood. If she leaves, she will die.”
Hob stared at him. “Voice of the world? The fuck you talkin’ about?”
He smiled. “If any of us leave, those like me – and Nick – and you… we die. We changed to fit this place. We don’t fit anywhere else any longer.”
Not that she’d ever really entertained ideas of leaving, but the thought still made her feel a little trapped, claustrophobic. The dark stone walls surrounding them didn’t help. Screaming about it now wouldn’t make a difference, though. Punching him wouldn’t, either, even if she was damn tempted. “Fine. So why can’t you take her in?”
“She wouldn’t be able to take care of herself. The way I must live out here is not something a human can survive.”
There it was again: human. She’d never shied away from bluntness, and she was damn tired of all the mystery. “Define human.”
He smiled at her. “Not us.” From the intensity in his light eyes, staring right through her, Hob knew that she was included as one of “us.”
She took a step toward him, so close their noses almost touched. “Then why don’t you tell me, what makes the difference between us and them? You said Mag had changed too.”
“She’s different. She’s…” He didn’t back up even a centimeter, his breath washing over her lips. “I don’t have words that can tell you. There’s a war, in her blood. The world versus the other. I don’t know which will win, but I will not have her here if the world loses.”
“The world. You keep talking about the goddamn world. What’s so special about this place?”
“Everything.” He smiled, slowly reaching up to rest his hand on her left cheek, her blind side. She hated the wobble that put in her as he leaned forward to rest their heads lightly against each other. “There’s a song in this world,” he whispered, “like what I sang for you, but more, so much more. It is change, unmaking, remaking. It is the universe unraveled into the rifts.”
“It’s Weathermen navigate the rifts,” Hob said. It was the only thing she felt she still knew for certain. What are you, sat on the tip of her tongue, but she’d asked him that before many a time, and he’d only ever laughed at her.
“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head ever so slightly. He smoothed his thumb over her cheekbone and she couldn’t stand it any more, because she liked it too much. Hob shoved him away, and he only smiled. “They are but a bit of twine to leash a wolf.”
* * *
Mag had herself more together when Hob came back, leaving the Bone Collector and his damned mysterious smile behind in the tunnel. Eyes red and face pale, she had at least stopped crying. She had a cup of coffee clutched between her hands like a lifeline. Hob got a cup for herself – smelled better than anything she’d ever had on the base – and eased down to the floor.
“So it’s not safe for me to go back to Rouse,” Mag said, not looking up from her cup. “And I got nothin’ but the clothes on my back.”
Hob nodded. “I was thinkin’ we could take you to Ludlow or Shimera, get you set up there. The workers in both places know how to keep their damn mouths shut.”
“What about Mama? If they killed Papa…”
Hob cursed; she hadn’t even thought that far yet. “We can probably move her out to the same place as you. But we’re gonna have to be smart about it. The Ravani will know how to do it. He’s cunning as fuck, your uncle.”
“OK.” Mag took a gulp of coffee that probably should have scalded her, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Just got to roll with it.”
“Nick’s got money, too. He’s a stingy old fart, but I know he’d give you and your mama the shirt off his back if you needed it.” It felt weird, talking about Nick Ravani as anything other than Old Nick after three years of him being just that, the monkey on her back and the devil on her shoulder. It was strange to be reminded that he came from somewhere, and, however briefly, he’d made her a part of that origin as well.
Mag nodded. “Then let’s go. I… I need to see the sky. I feel like I’m still in a damn prison.”
“The Ravani has sent two of your fellows here. I hear them at the surface,” said the Bone Collector.
Out of the corner of her eye, Hob saw Mag jump, her head jerking around to look at the man. His sudden appearance was a shot up Hob’s spine as well, but she’d be damned if she’d give him the satisfaction. She stood, offering her hand to Mag. She had to wiggle her fingers to get her friend’s attention. “Then we shouldn’t keep ’em waiting. As much as we appreciate your hospitality.”
“Need you to do somethin’ for me, Hob. Afore we go.” Mag turned her wrist over, showed the black lines tattooed there. “And there’s… under the skin…”
Hob reached out to feel the round, hard thing under Mag’s skin, knowing what it was already: a little silver button, a transmitter, just the sort a clever boy could leave scattered along on the sand like a trail of bread crumbs. Short range, at least, because nothing long range worked out here. She felt sick, and sicker still knowing what Mag wanted her to do. “You sure?”
“Can’t go to a town still marked like this.” Mag’s face was pale to the point of being green. “Quick, afore I change my mind.”
She didn’t want to do this, at all. Not when they’d only just gotten back into the same damn room again, when they’d been clinging to each other’s hands. She felt like she’d cut Mag enough with words and actions. And yeah, it might be necessary now, it might be something that Mag wanted, needed her to do. But it would still hurt. Pain was still pain.
“Please, Hob,” Mag whispered.
It wasn’t fair. But she was also just thinking about herself again, not what Mag wanted. “It’s gonna hurt.”
“I know.”
“I can take away the pain,” the Bone Collector said, in the same sort of tone he might use to remark about the weather.
Hob didn’t question it. She wasn’t going to question anything about the man for a good long while. “Will you let him?” she asked Mag.
The look Mag shot her was pure panic, for a moment. Then she bit her lip. “Yeah, that would be… better. All right.”
The Bone Collector knelt next to Mag as Hob heated one of her knives up in her hand, pouring fire into it until the blade glowed. Mag stared at him with wide eyes, and flinched back at first as he leaned in close, then slowly relaxed. He had his forehead resting lightly against the side of Mag’s head, lips by her ear, first whispering words that Hob couldn’t understand, and then singing softly to her – a different
song from the one he’d sung to Hob.
Hob grabbed her wrist and cut the marked skin with her knife, sinking the tip in to pop the damn silver button out into her palm. The knife seared the flesh shut behind it, and Mag didn’t so much as whimper. It was a small mercy, and she could be glad for it. She could be grateful to the man, even if it made her feel passing strange when, head still, he looked at her from the corner of his eye. Hob closed her fist around the transmitter and clumsily tried to focus more heat on it like she’d seen Nick do before, until she felt the casing warp and melt. She dropped the blackened, twisted thing on the floor and tried not to taste the combination of charred metal and her friend’s burnt flesh in the back of her throat.
* * *
Coyote and Dambala were waiting at the surface. Coyote looked half ready to faint when Hob and Mag walked out of one of the cellars, his face sallow with the shock under his spiky black hair, though Dambala took it in his stride. He volunteered to ride ahead to Rouse, to let Old Nick know the plan and see what could be set in motion. Hob and Coyote took Mag to Ludlow. Mag knew people there, the representatives that sometimes had come to Rouse to talk to Phil – even if she still wasn’t entirely certain what they’d come to talk about.
One of the crew leaders, Clarence Vigil, met them at the gate. “My house is your house, long as you need. I owe your da more than you can know.” He offered Mag a hand to help her off the back of Hob’s motorcycle.
Mag had enough time for a bath, a change of clothes, and a cup of coffee before Old Nick showed up. He looked like he’d aged twenty years in just two days, his skin gray and sagging, his single eye bloodshot. Hob had never seen him look so old. Really old, not like crusty old fart old, like she always teased him about. It made her a little sick, made her wonder if maybe this was all some bad dream. He slid an arm around Mag’s shoulders and just held on to her for a solid minute before they disappeared into Clarence’s parlor together.