“You should definitely take the day off,” John said. “I mean, you have to get through the whole poof thing. People say it’s kind of intense.”
“Sounds like it,” Mary said vaguely. She dropped the diaper into a second bucket, this one half filled with water. The water smelled of bleach. The bucket rested in a little red wagon so that it could be hauled to the beach. There, laundry workers would do an indifferent job of washing it in the ocean and send it back still stained and itchy with sand and salt.
“You’re ready for it, right?” John asked.
Mary glanced at the watch. Francis’s watch. She’d taken it off while she was washing. How many hours left? How many minutes until the big one-five?
Mary nodded. “I read the instructions. I talked to a person who’d been through it. I did everything I was supposed to.”
“Okay,” John said unhappily. Out of nowhere, John said, “You know Orsay is lying, right?”
“I know she cost me Francis,” Mary snapped. “That’s all I need to know.”
“Yeah! See? Look what happened from him listening to her.”
“I wonder how Jill is doing with them,” Mary wondered aloud. She was on to the next diaper. With Francis gone and no one entirely trained to take over for him, Mary had even more work than usual. And not the best work, either.
“She’s probably okay,” John said.
“Yeah, but if Orsay is this big liar, maybe I shouldn’t have let her take Jill,” Mary said.
John seemed baffled by that, not sure how to respond. He blushed and looked down.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Mary said quickly, interpreting his look as concern for Jill.
“Yeah. Just because Orsay is, like, lying, that doesn’t mean she’d be bad to Jill,” John said.
“Maybe I’ll go check on her,” Mary said. “In my spare time.” She laughed. It was a running joke that had long since stopped being funny.
“You probably should just stay away from Orsay,” John said.
“Yeah?”
“I mean, I don’t know. I just know Astrid says Orsay’s making everything up.”
“If Astrid said it, it must be true,” Mary said.
John did not answer, just looked pained.
“Okay,” Mary said, “this load can go down to the beach.”
John seemed relieved to have a chance to get away. Mary heard him leave, wagon wheels squeaking. She glanced into the main room. Three helpers there, only one of them really motivated or trained. But they could handle things for a few minutes.
Mary washed her hands as well as she could and dried them by wiping them on her loose-fitting jeans.
Where would Orsay be at this time of day?
Mary stepped outside and took a deep breath of air that didn’t smell like pee or poop. She closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation. When she opened them again she was surprised to find Nerezza walking quickly toward her as though they’d arranged to meet right now and Nerezza was a bit late. “You’re—,” Mary began.
“Nerezza,” the girl reminded her.
“Yeah. That’s right. It’s weird, but I don’t remember having really met you before the other day when you came and got Jill.”
“Oh, you’ve seen me around,” Nerezza said. “But I’m no one important. Everyone knows you, though, Mary. Mother Mary.”
“I was just coming to look for Orsay,” Mary said.
“Why?”
“I wanted to check on Jill.”
“That’s not why,” Nerezza said, almost smiling.
Mary’s expression hardened. “Okay. Francis, that’s why. I don’t know what Orsay told him, but you must know what he did. I can’t believe that’s what Orsay wanted. But you need to stop it, not let it happen again.”
“Stop what from happening?”
“Francis stepped out. He killed himself.”
Nerezza’s dark eyebrows climbed. “He did? No. No, Mary. He went to his mother.”
“That’s stupid,” Mary said. “No one knows what happens if you step out during the poof.”
Nerezza put her hand on Mary’s arm. It was a surprising gesture. Mary wasn’t sure she liked it, but she didn’t shake it off. “Mary: The Prophetess does know what happens. She sees it. Every night.”
“Oh? Because I’ve heard she’s lying. Making it all up.”
“I know what you’ve heard,” Nerezza said in a pitying voice. “Astrid says the Prophetess is lying. But you must know that Astrid is a very religious person, and very, very proud. She thinks she knows all the truth there is to know. She can’t stand the idea that someone else might be chosen to reveal the truth.”
“I’ve known Astrid a long time,” Mary said. She was about to deny what Nerezza had said. But it was true, wasn’t it? Astrid was proud. She had very definite beliefs.
“Listen to the words of the Prophetess,” Nerezza said, as though imparting a secret. “The Prophetess has seen that we will all suffer a time of terrible tribulation. This will come very soon. And then, Mary, then will come the demon and the angel. And in a red sunset we will be delivered.”
Mary held her breath, mesmerized. She wanted to say something snarky, something dismissive. But Nerezza spoke with absolute conviction.
“Come tonight, Mary, in the hours before dawn. Come and the Prophetess will speak to you herself, I can promise that. And then, I believe, you will see the truth and goodness inside her.” She smiled and crossed her arms over her chest. “She’s like you, Mary: strong and good, and filled with love.”
SIXTEEN
16 HOURS, 42 MINUTES
IN THE HOURS of darkest night, Orsay climbed onto the rock. She had done it many times, so she knew where to place her feet, where to grab on with her hands. It was slick in places and she sometimes worried that she would fall into the water.
She wondered if she would drown. It wasn’t very deep, but what if she hit her head on the way down. Unconscious in the water, with the foam filling her mouth.
Little Jill, wearing a fresh dress and no longer clutching her doll quite so tightly, climbed behind her. She was surprisingly nimble.
Nerezza was right behind her as she climbed, spotting her, keeping an eagle eye on her.
“Careful, Prophetess,” Nerezza murmured. “You too, Jill.”
Nerezza was a pretty girl. Much prettier than Orsay. Orsay was pale and thin and seemed almost concave, like she was hollowed out, caving in on herself. Nerezza was healthy and strong, with flawless olive skin and lustrous black hair. Her eyes were incongruously bright, an amazing shade of green. Sometimes it seemed to Orsay that her eyes almost glowed in the dark.
She was fierce in defending Orsay. A small knot of kids was just at the base of the rock, already waiting. Nerezza had turned back to speak to them. “Lies are being spread by the council because they don’t want anyone to know the truth.”
The supplicants gazed up with faces full of hope and expectation. They wanted to believe that Orsay was the true prophet. But they had heard things. . . .
“But why wouldn’t they want us to know?” someone asked.
Nerezza made a pitying expression. “People who have power usually like to hold on to it.” Her tone of knowing cynicism seemed to be effective. Kids nodded, mimicking Nerezza’s older, cooler, wiser expression.
Orsay could almost not remember what life had been like before Nerezza became her friend and protector. She’d never even noticed Nerezza around town. Which was weird because she wasn’t the kind of girl you overlooked.
Then again, Orsay herself was relatively new in town. She’d been living with her park ranger father in the Stefano Rey National Park and only came down to town long after the coming of the FAYZ.
Orsay had developed her powers before the FAYZ, though. At first she hadn’t known what was going on, where the bizarre images in her head were coming from. But eventually she figured it out. She was inhabiting other people’s dreams. Walking around inside their sleeping fantasies. Seeing what they saw, feeling what they felt.
Not always a great thing to experience. She’d been inside Drake’s head, for example, and that was a snake pit no one wanted to witness.
Over time her powers seemed to have expanded, developed. She’d been asked to try to touch the mind of the monster in the mine shaft. The thing they called the gaiaphage. Or just the Darkness.
It had torn her mind open. Like scalpel blades had sliced through all the barriers of security and privacy in her brain. And after that, nothing had been quite the same. After that contact, her powers had risen to a new level. An unwelcome level.
When she touched the barrier she could see dreams from the other side. From those out there.
Those out there . . .
She could feel their presence even now as she climbed the rock and neared the barrier. She could feel them but not yet hear them, not yet step into their dreams.
She could do that only when she touched the barrier. For on the other side, outside the barrier, on the other side of that gray, implacable barrier, they touched it, too. Orsay saw the barrier as thin but impenetrable. A sheet of milky glass just a few millimeters thick. That’s what she believed, what she felt.
Out there, on the other side, back in the world, parents and friends came as pilgrims to touch the barrier and try to reach the one mind capable of hearing their cries and bearing their loss.
They reached out for Orsay.
She felt them. Most of the time. She’d had doubts at first, still did at times. But it was too vivid not to be real. That’s what Nerezza had told her:
Things that feel real are real. Stop doubting yourself, Prophetess.
Sometimes she doubted Nerezza. But she never told Nerezza that. There was something forceful about Nerezza. She was strong, a person with depths Orsay couldn’t quite see but could sense.
Sometimes Orsay was almost afraid of Nerezza’s certainty.
Orsay reached the top of her rock. She was surprised to realize that there were now dozens and dozens of kids gathering on the beach, or even ascending the base of the rock itself.
Nerezza stood just below Orsay, acting as guard, keeping the kids back.
“Look how many have come,” Nerezza said to her.
“Yes,” Orsay said. “Too many. I can’t . . .”
“You must only do what you can do,” Nerezza said. “No one expects you to suffer more than you can bear. But be certain to speak with Mary. If you do nothing else, prophesy for Mary.”
“It hurts,” Orsay admitted. She felt bad admitting it. All these anxious, hopeful, desperate faces turned toward her. And all she had to do was endure the pain in order to ease their fears.
“See! They come despite Astrid’s lies.”
“Astrid?” Orsay frowned. She’d heard Nerezza saying something about Astrid before. But most of Orsay’s thoughts were elsewhere. She was only partly aware of what went on around her in this world. Since that day when she had touched the Darkness she had felt as if the whole world was just a little bleached of color, the sounds muffled. The things she touched she seemed to touch through gauze bandages.
“Yes, Astrid the Genius is telling these lies about you. She is the font of lies.”
Orsay shook her head. “You must be wrong. Astrid? She’s a very honest girl.”
“It’s definitely Astrid. She’s using Taylor and Howard and a few others. Lies travel quickly. By now everyone has heard. And yet, look how many have come.”
“Maybe I should stop doing this,” Orsay said.
“You can’t let lies bother you, Prophetess. We have nothing to fear from Astrid, the genius who never sees what’s right under her nose.”
Nerezza smiled her mysterious smile, then seemed to shake herself out of a daydream. Before Orsay could ask her what she meant, Nerezza said, “Let’s let the Siren sing.”
Orsay had only heard Jill sing twice. Both times had been like mystical religious experiences. It didn’t matter what the song was, really, although some songs almost made you feel like you should do more than just stand there listening.
“Jill,” Nerezza said. “Get ready.” Then, in a louder voice, she addressed those on the beach. “Everyone. We have a really special experience for you. Inspired by the Prophetess, our little Jill has a song for you. I think you’ll all really enjoy it.”
Jill sang the first lines of a song that Orsay didn’t recognize.
Hushaby, don’t you cry,
go to sleep little baby . . .
The world closed in around Orsay like a soft, warm blanket. Her own mother, her real mother, had never been the kind for singing lullabies. But in her mind it was a different mother, the mother she’d wished she had.
When you awake, you shall have
all the pretty little ponies . . .
And now Orsay could see, in her mind’s eye, the blacks and the bays, the dapples and grays, all dancing through her imagination. And with them a life she had never had, a world she’d never known, a mother who would sing . . .
Hushaby . . .
Jill fell silent. Orsay blinked, a sleepwalker waking. She saw her followers, the children, all so close together now, they seemed almost to meld into one. They had shuffled ever closer to Jill and now pressed against the rock.
But their eyes were not on Jill, or even on Orsay. They were on that angel-decorated sunset and their own mother’s faces.
“Now it’s time,” Nerezza said to Orsay.
“Okay,” Orsay said. “Yes.”
She pressed her hand against the barrier. The electric jolt burned her fingertips. The pain was still stunning, even after so many times. She had to fight the compelling urge to pull back.
But she pressed her hand against the barrier, and the pain fired every nerve in her hand, traveled up her arm, searing, burning.
Orsay closed her eyes.
“It’s . . . is there . . . is Mary here?”
A voice gasped.
Orsay opened her tear-filled eyes and saw Mary Terrafino toward the back. Poor Mary, so burdened.
Mary, so terribly thin now. Starvation made so much worse by anorexia.
“Do you mean me?” Mary asked.
Orsay closed her eyes. “Your mother . . . I see her dreams of you, Mary.” Orsay felt the images wash over her, comforting, disturbing, blessedly distracting from the pain.
“Mary six years old . . . Your mother misses you. . . . She dreams of when you were little and you were so upset when your little brother got a toy for Christmas that you wanted.”
“The skateboard,” Mary whispered.
“Your mother dreams that you will come to her soon,” Orsay said. “It’s your birthday again, so soon, Mary. So grown up now.
“Your mother says that you have done enough, Mary. Others will take over your work.”
“I can’t . . . ,” Mary said. She sounded stricken. “I can’t leave those kids alone.”
“Your birthday falls on Mother’s Day, Mother Mary,” Orsay whispered, finding her own words strange.
“Yes,” Mary admitted. “How did you—”
“On that day, Mother Mary, you will free your children so that you can be Mary the child again,” Orsay said.
“I can’t leave them behind—”
“You won’t, Mary. As the sun sets, you will lead them with you to freedom,” Orsay whispered. “As the sun sets in a red sky . . .”
Sanjit had spent the evening watching a movie starring his adoptive father. Fly Boy Too. He’d seen it before. They’d all seen every single one of Todd Chance’s movies. And most of Jennifer Brattle’s movies. Just not the ones with nudity.
But Fly Boy Too was of particular interest for a twelve-second clip that showed an actor—or maybe it was an actual pilot, who could tell—flying a helicopter. In this case he was flying a helicopter while trying to machine-gun John Gage—played by Todd Chance—while Gage leaped from car to car of a speeding freight train.
Sanjit had replayed that same twelve-second clip a hundred times, till his brain was swimming and his
eyes were glazed over.
Now, with all the others in bed, Sanjit took the late, late shift with Bowie. Or maybe it was the early, early shift.
He sat down in the deep armchair by Bowie’s bed.
There was a goosenecked floor lamp that arched over his shoulder and shone a small circle of light on the book he opened. It was a war novel. About Vietnam, which was a country next to Thailand, where he’d been born. Evidently there had been a war there a long time ago, and Americans had been in that war. That wasn’t what interested him. What interested him was that they used a lot of helicopters and this particular novel focused on a soldier who flew a helicopter.
It wasn’t much, but it was all he had. The author must have done some research, at least. His descriptions sounded good. Sounded like they weren’t just made up.
This was not the way to learn how to fly a helicopter.
Bowie flopped his head angrily to one side, as if he was having a bad dream. Sanjit was close enough to put his hand on Bowie’s forehead. The skin was hot and damp.
He was a good-looking kid, Bowie was, with watery blue eyes and goofy teeth. So pale that sometimes he looked like one of the white marble gods Sanjit had seen in his long-lost childhood.
Those were cool to the touch. Bowie, not.
Leukemia. No, surely not. But it wasn’t a cold or flu, either. This had gone on way too long for it to be the flu. Plus, no one else had gotten sick. So it probably wasn’t that kind of thing. A catching thing.
Sanjit really did not want to have to see this little boy die. He had seen people die. An old beggar man with no legs. A woman who had died in a Bangkok alleyway after having a baby. A man who’d been stabbed by a pimp.
And a boy named Sunan.
Sanjit had taken Sunan under his wing. Sunan’s mother was a prostitute. She’d disappeared one day; no one knew if she was alive or dead. And Sunan had found himself on the streets. He didn’t know much. Sanjit had taught him what he could. How to steal food. How to escape when you were caught stealing food. How to get tourists to give you money for carrying their bags. How to get shop owners to pay you for guiding rich foreign tourists to the shop.
How to survive. But not how to swim.
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