by Laura Bickle
I pulled the laces closed at the back and stood in the mirror, regarding myself. It felt like something out of a dream. An illusion. The white reflected in the candlelight off my skin, making it seem like I was more luminous than I could ever hope to be. My hair hung unbound over my shoulder, and my blistered feet were hidden. I stood up straight and moved my callused hands behind my back.
For a moment, I had a glimpse of what I would have been like if I had lived another life.
Not that I wanted to be married. Elijah had asked me and I’d said no. Plain unions were made of duty and solemnity. Submission to God and one’s husband. A pragmatic statement of commitment before the community. I had always felt that there was a bit of resignation to it. But this dress and what it represented seemed something apart from that, a fairy tale made of spun sugar.
For now, no one was watching, and I sank into that illusion, reveling in it. I tried to memorize every bit of it, from the weight of the skirt to the feeling of satin against my skin. I gave a twirl, and the skirt moved as if it had a life of its own. Maybe that was the idea.
But the illusion was too heavy. I struggled to get the dress off, feeling as if it had devoured me, was smothering me. I fought through layers of lace until I could breathe again.
In the end, I picked a dark blue dress for my date with Alex. It was the one I felt most comfortable in. I had no idea if it was considered stylish or not. It was made of a softly draping column of fabric, pooling at the neckline and sweeping over my waist and hips. The hemline reached the tops of my feet, where a good Plain dress should. However, it exposed much more than a Plain dress: my arms and collarbone were bare, and it dipped low in the back. But it looked like the night sky, and that was something I was familiar with.
I took a pass through the undergarments section of the department store and picked out some that I thought would work with the dress. I tucked the Himmelsbrief into my bra. Experience had taught me never to be without it. Everything they had was much fancier and more complicated than what I was used to. The same for the shoes. I tried walking up and down an aisle in a pair of high heels, but stumbled and nearly turned my ankle. I didn’t know how English women did this—it must have involved years of practice. I settled for a pair of silver flat sandals that tied at the ankle.
I had saved the cosmetics counter for last. I felt a pang of sadness, again remembering Ginger applying makeup to my face when she had been alive. My fingers slid over the golden tubes and mirrored compacts.
I gathered some items at random, then pulled a stool up to the counter and leaned in toward a mirror. I played with the pots of color, dumping one across the counter and dropping a lipstick on the floor with a sharp crack that shattered the tube. I applied the paints and peered at myself in the mirror.
I looked like a caricature of myself, as if a child had drawn me in crayon. I wiped most of it off, leaving behind only the stubborn waterproof mascara and sheer pink lipstick. Better. I still looked like myself, only slightly more glowy.
With more than a bit of nervousness, I walked past the fountain to climb the escalator stairs. Horace whickered at me. I think it was because I smelled like perfume and not sweat. I gripped my candle tightly and watched my feet, mindful not to trip.
A low whistle emanated from above.
I looked up. Alex stood at the top of the steps. He was leaning against the rail, dressed in a tuxedo. His hair was damp and combed back from his face. He looked . . . really amazing. And so unlike himself.
I blushed, looked down to pick up my skirt from the hip to climb the stairs. When I reached the top, he took my hand and kissed it.
“You look gorgeous,” he said, against my knuckles.
I felt my face flush more deeply, and was glad that I’d not left on any of the cosmetic blush. Alex’s fingers brushed the shoulder of my dress.
“I like this,” he said. “Very Grecian. It suits you.”
I looked up and found my voice. “You look nice too.”
He offered me his elbow. I stared at it until he folded my fingers into the crook.
“Dinner awaits,” he said, leading me to a grouping of patio furniture that he’d arranged around one of the fire bowls. Fenrir curled around the bottom pedestal of the bowl, drowsing. Heavy china plates were set on the wrought-iron surface, and I fingered the brocade cloth napkins.
“This is lovely,” I said.
He pulled my chair out for me. The iron squeaked on the marble floor, and he winced. “Wait until you try the popcorn.”
I grinned.
Dinner was the richest meal I’d ever eaten—and the most eccentric. Alex fed me chocolate-covered cranberries, hot chocolate, and camping entrees.
“They’re MREs,” he said, around a mouthful of something that purported to be beef stew. “The military makes them. But they’re also supposed to be popular among campers and survivalists.”
“It’s delicious,” I said, twisting the pepper mill to deliver six kinds of gourmet pepper onto my MRE. I meant it—hot food without fear of contamination was something to be treasured.
A pop sounded from the fire, and I jumped, nearly knocking over my hot cocoa. The pop was followed by a flurry of others, like hail on a metal roof.
“Popcorn’s ready,” Alex said. He turned toward the fire bowl to pick out our foil packages of gourmet popcorn. He dropped one in front of me with a pair of tongs and tore it open. I took a hot morsel and dropped it into my mouth.
“It’s good.” I grinned.
“It ought to be,” he said, around a mouthful of his own. “It’s supposed to include French cheese.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had French cheese before.”
“And we may never have it again.” He raised his mug, which was a ridiculously dainty cup shaped to look like a cupped leaf. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I said.
“To beauty. Yours.”
My cup stilled in my raised hand. I wasn’t sure that I could toast that. It felt vain. But anything seemed possible tonight. My uncertainty must have showed.
“You really are lovely,” he said. Sincerity shone in his eyes.
My fingers crept self-consciously to my unbound hair. I was unaccustomed to thinking of myself in that way. “Am I beautiful when I’m dressed as an Englisher?” I asked. I was only partially teasing. I wanted to know the truth of what he thought.
“Nope. You’re beautiful when you’re covered up to your neck in Plain clothes. You’re beautiful when you’re plucking a chicken. You’re beautiful when you’re caked with mud. You’re beautiful when you’re praying. When you’re soaking wet. And when you’re lying awake, fretting, thinking no one is watching.”
I lifted my fingers to his lips to still them, but he went on: “You’re beautiful when you’re powerful. And especially when you let your guard down. When you trust.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Are you sure that’s not just because I could be the last woman on earth?”
He reached out to touch my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Bonnet, you’d still be the most beautiful woman on earth if you were one of seven billion.”
I smiled. He was much more eloquent than I would ever be. Eloquence was not really something Plain people valued. But Alex’s words and his deeds were consistent. And that was important.
When the fire had died down and Fenrir began to snore, Alex took my hand. He pulled me to my feet and kissed me. He smelled like some kind of artificial aftershave, but tasted like hot chocolate.
He turned on a battery-powered CD player and grimaced at the sound. “Barry Manilow was all I could find.”
“I don’t know Barry Manilow.”
“For the best.”
He placed my hands around his neck and settled his around my waist. He swayed to the music, and I tried to follow, feeling self-conscious. I stepped on his feet twice. I think that I was supposed to be letting him lead, but I lacked the experience to follow well. Meanwhile, Barry Manilow was singing about a girl named Mand
y, who Alex said he used to believe was Barry’s dog, but then he saw a television program that said that was just a myth.
After Barry Manilow fell silent, I let Alex draw me behind him, away from the fire to the part of the department store that held the four-poster bed with the velvet coverlet. He had turned down the covers, added some blankets, and ringed the bed with candles.
“This is beautiful,” I said.
“I thought we both deserved a little romance.”
He cupped my face in his hands, kissed me. I put my arms around his neck, feeling the kiss deepen. His hands slid so that his thumbs rested on my collarbone, and I shivered to feel that touch in such a leisured, unhurried fashion. His body was warm against mine.
I suspended thoughts of love for now. I didn’t know what love really was. I was still sorting that out for myself. Whatever Alex and I had negotiated between ourselves suited us, and I resisted the idea of putting a label, an obligation, on it. I felt like the boundaries of my morality were growing more fluid, and that was both good and bad.
One of his arms slid around my back. He leaned back against the bed, taking me with him.
The Himmelsbrief fluttered out of the neckline of my dress. In another time, another place, we might have let it lie there on the floor.
But he paused to pick it up, to tuck it under the pillow.
And it was that amount of care that showed me what we had was a different sort of love.
Not perfect. It was, at times, clumsy and bumpy. Driven by outside forces and circumstances.
But it was unselfish.
And that was what mattered to me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
One of the most enduring lessons I had learned on this journey was that nothing ever stays the same. Not for long. That was in direct opposition to what I’d been taught as a child: to preserve order and to value the predictability of day-to-day life. This new world was constantly in flux, and we moved with it, as if pushed by a great and terrible river.
But sometimes we found ourselves washed up on a tiny island. Times like these were precious. But they had to end. We always had to jump from the safety of the island back into the river again.
At the department store, we had loved, slept, eaten, and gathered provisions. We stripped the camping department bare. We had found a tent, warm boots, a camp stove, a fancy metal stone that sparked fire, and a nesting set of camp dishes and cutlery. There were flashlights and batteries and even a radio. It never captured anything but static while we were in the store, but Alex assured me that it might be different elsewhere. I pretended to believe him and carefully read the cold rating systems for the sleeping bags. Fenrir was helping me; he had tunneled into one and installed himself as an immovable lump in the bottom. Horace had dismembered all of the scarecrows on the lower level, and his sides felt firm and round as he digested their limbs.
When we were ready to go, when Horace was packed up and the backpacks were full and propped beside the glowing mannequins, I came to Alex. He had dressed himself in the warmest coat he’d found, which he called his pimp coat. It was a long black leather coat with a bizarre gray and black furry lining.
“It’s like Blade meets Jersey Shore,” Alex said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It would take too long to explain and would reduce your faith in humanity.”
“Ja, thanks, then.”
I had dug through the women’s department and found a long dark gray coat. It was lined in velvet and possibly the warmest garment I’d ever seen. I’d picked out some tall warm boots without heels and plenty of traction, and gloves and warm leggings.
I had found myself a dress that was as close as possible to an Amish dress. It was dark purple, and long-sleeved, reaching nearly to the tops of my boots. The neck was fancy, with ruffles that reached up to my chin. And there were ruffles on the cuffs. But it was, by and large, plain. I put my bonnet on and walked out to meet Alex and the animals.
He nodded in approval at me. “You look beautiful, Bonnet.”
“Thank you,” I said. The idea still seemed unfamiliar.
He reached down to unlatch the metal grate. I squinted. It had been too long since I’d seen full daylight. I’d grown accustomed to the faint half-light of candles and the softly glowing luminescence of the mannequins. I shaded my eyes with my hand.
“Oh,” I breathed.
It had begun to snow. The ground was coated in a thin layer of white.
And there were not any other footprints. Not for miles.
I saw only the sketchy tracks of sparrows as we walked away from the town. There was a certain safety in that. But it also confirmed that we walked in an empty world.
I buried my face in my hood. I had wanted to be away from any threats. Part of me even wanted to be a coward, to stay at the department store until the caramel popcorn ran out. But it seemed the farther we moved away from threats of Darkness, the closer we moved to threats from nature.
Fenrir relished the snow, bounding like a puppy. It stopped falling around midmorning, allowing the cold eye of the sun to burn through pearly clouds. But until then, the wolf skidded after it, and bit at the white flakes. Alex made him a snowball and tossed it far. Fenrir tried to maul it to death, but it broke apart on impact. He wound up only rolling in the snow. Horace gave him a pained snort.
“Wolves are supposed to love snow,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
“The rest of their prey is starved. Weak. They can spot it easily in the snow. Winter is their harvest season.”
“That’s damned cheerful, Bonnet.”
I held up my gloved hands. “It’s the truth!”
If any one of us were to survive the end of the world, it would be Fenrir. He found two rabbits before the afternoon. The first one he gave to us. The second one he devoured on his own. I figured he was probably tired of jerky and gourmet popcorn.
We moved north, along a freeway. Alex said that if it was safe, we could follow it west and north to Canada through Michigan and hopefully reach Saulte Ste. Marie without being molested by city vampires.
And it seemed safe. There were no human tracks this far. We appeared to have God on our side.
Especially when we found the fireworks factory.
Alex paused at a guardrail at the edge of the road, staring at a boxy metal building. The rotted and frozen remains of a produce stand stood outside in a gravel lot. There were no cars.
The last time we’d come upon a structure like this, Alex had steered us away. I asked why.
“It’s an adult bookstore,” he’d said. I could swear that he blushed.
“Aren’t most bookstores for adults?” I was familiar with libraries. Unbeknownst to my parents, I had frequented the one in the town near our home. Most of the books there were for adults, but some had been for children. I supposed that, in the English world, perhaps there were separate bookstores for adults and children.
“Nnnnoooo. This is a euphemism. For pornography. Magazines with naked women and videos of men and women in the act. In a lot of acts, really. Sometimes men and men. Women and women. Doing stuff that you really can’t imagine. With props.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Trust me, it would blow your mind. Maybe . . . if you really want to, we’ll go on the way back after the end of the world is finished.”
“Oh.” My brows drew together, and I looked back over my shoulder. I was curious, but not curious enough to risk entering a den of vampires who had been slavering over pictures of naked people. And whatever else was in there.
But Alex was quite keen on this building. The cartoon figure of a superhero was painted on the side, sporting a cape and shooting magical blue fire from his hands. The sign read CAPTAIN BLOWTORCH’S FIREWORKS.
I squinted at it. “I saw fireworks every year on the Fourth of July. They set them off in the nearby town. They were pretty.”
“And also highly flammable. And probably better than any other weapon we could find
against the vampires . . . if the place hasn’t been cleaned out.”
“It’s worth checking,” I agreed.
We walked down the exit ramp to the store. Fenrir sniffed vigorously along the side of the building. He caught a vole and swallowed it in two bites.
There were no windows in the small metal building. That made me a little nervous. Alex tugged on the front door. It was locked with a padlock. I supposed that was a good sign. Nothing had gotten in—or out—in a long time. And there were no tracks but ours in the dusting of snow.
“Locked. But not for long.” He produced one of the tools from the camping aisle: a flexible cable saw. He tugged it through the hasp of the lock, back and forth, until it fell in pieces and metal dust on the ground.
He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s see what we’ve got in here to fight the vampire apocalypse, eh?”
I lifted my flashlight as he opened the door.
The fireworks factory was nothing more than a pole barn set up on a gravel floor. Picnic tables were arranged on the gravel, and they were stacked high with wooden boxes and brightly colored cardboard bins. I swept the light beam around, up into the rafters, into corners, searching for vampires. I saw only an opossum with its babies scuttling along the floor.
Alex let loose a low whistle as he peered into a box labeled NUCLEAR GLITTER MELTDOWN. He held up red white and blue colored boxes in two fists. There were eagles printed on them and a backwash of fire. “Jackpot.”
“What is that?”
“Not sure. But if we follow the instructions and set fire to it, it promises a ‘blaze of wrath.’ Also plenty of ‘glittery aftertrails.’”
I picked up a stick labeled MORTAR FURY CANNON. “This looks promising.”
“Swweeeeeet.”
Alex and I did some quick calculations about the amount of additional weight that we could carry. Horace was saddled up with almost a hundred pounds of gear, and we didn’t want him to break a leg now that there was danger of ice. We decided that each one of us could carry an extra bag of anti-vampire weaponry if we committed to walk on foot with fifty additional pounds for the horse.