But that was all gone now. For days, there had been only the awful thing behind the wall, and the waiting. It was time to go.
Max had said he would get her home, and she believed him. But he was taking too much time coming. Small people shouldn’t have to wait so long, she thought. Wasn’t that the use of being small?
She sighed. This morning, even Kate would not wake. She slept beside Susan, her dirty feet poking from under the covers. There would be no games of stones, no Barbie school or party, nothing at all to help fill the long hours while Susan and Laysia talked or looked into the worn books on the shelves. As usual, Nell was crouched at the stone wall near the garden, her face pressed to the cracks, talking steadily at the wailing thing on the other side. Laysia worked nearby digging carrots, looking strained as the beast shrieked and pounded.
“Come away from it,” Jean said to Nell.
Thud, squeal, thud, squeal, went the beast behind the wall. Jean flinched. “Do something with me.”
“Not now,” Nell said.
She called the thing by name, and Jean ran away, hating to hear that. It was not a person behind the stones. No matter what Nell said, it was not.
A nightmare would be better, she thought. A nightmare would end with waking up, with Mom slipping into her room in the dark, with her head pressed against her mother’s chest, the steady thump thump of it slowing her own heart to match. Here there was only thud and squeal and the hateful hissing of the cloud that kept Max on its other side.
She wandered behind the cottage to the mossy place beneath the tall trees, wondering when Max would come. She pulled out the wad of his letters and selected one. She could tell which was which now, even without unfolding them. This particular letter had grown furry, she’d handled the paper so much.
Dear Jean,
I’m sorry I didn’t get to come over yesterday. Please don’t be sad about it. I’m just trying to get us home, and to do that, I have to learn as much as I can. Every day is filled up with so much stuff, I can barely sleep. Yesterday I asked Tur Kaysh why the air crackles when we change things. Remember how it does that? I don’t know if you felt it, and half the time I didn’t notice it in the beginning, but now that I do, I can feel that shiver in the air. He was surprised I felt that, and he called me a bright light. No one ever called me that at school back home, I can promise you that! He said that I need to see how the pattern of the world is at our fingertips, and if we understand the order of it, we can change things. That’s how rebellion ripped a hole in the world to begin with, he said. After that all the learning leaked out, and everything went dark. He pointed west when he said it, and I knew he meant the Domain. It’s only the sanctuary that’s still trying to fix the problem. I asked him if it wasn’t too big a job, just for the few of us here. He said no, anything can be done if you understand the order of things. I think it’s like that probably at home, too, but here the pattern isn’t locked, like it is there. So you see, Jean, anything can be done, even opening up windows. I’ll get to that any day now, I just know it. You can tell the others what I said, and maybe they’ll be a little better about the waiting.
See you soon,
Your brother,
Max
She sighed and folded the letter and put it away. She hadn’t seen him soon, and she wanted to know when she would. How much learning could a person do? Wasn’t he done yet? She retrieved her Barbie from the grass and held her up to the light. The doll’s smooth plastic features smelled faintly of home. Thorns had ripped her pink dress, and one of her tiny arched feet was stained green, but she was still beautiful. She was a birthday Barbie, though she hadn’t been given on a birthday. Jean remembered the day her father had brought her home, in a box of glossy cardboard, Barbie standing elegantly behind clear plastic, smiling out as if from a store window.
She wanted to go home.
“Jean?”
The girl’s voice surprised Jean. She looked up. The clearing on which the cottage sat didn’t go very far, and a little way from where she played with her back to the house, the long-necked trees stood in the warm morning, the leaves waving now and then with the humid breeze. The gray and black trunks made lines that kept the shadows in, and she couldn’t see into them. Who was it? It couldn’t be one of her sisters.
“Who’s there?”
She stood, swinging her doll by its legs, and ventured to the edge of the trees. Again, the voice came from the shadows.
“It’s me, remember? You came to my house. I got lost — I — I need help.”
Jean took a step beneath the trees and blinked. Not far off, standing shyly beside an elm tree and picking at its bark, stood Liyla.
“Hi!” the girl said. “Remember?”
Jean raised her hand to wave back wonderingly. Where had Liyla come from? Maybe she’d brought her here by thinking about her.
“C’mere,” the girl said. “You know me. Remember?”
Jean glanced back at the house. No one moved there. Laysia was on the other side, in the garden. But Jean did know Liyla. She moved toward her.
“How’d you get here?”
Liyla smiled, her lips spreading to reveal those sharp teeth.
“I didn’t like the city anymore. I left. I heard there were places to go here, in the woods. Is it true?”
Jean nodded.
“Can you show me?”
Jean looked back again, over her shoulder. A small cloud of insects buzzed in the sunlight near Laysia’s house.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I should go alone.”
Liyla’s smile widened. Her eyes were very round. “I’ll be with you, though, right? And we know each other.”
Still Jean hesitated.
“Maybe I should get Susan. She’ll want to know you’re here.”
Liyla grinned and nodded. But as Jean turned to go, the girl caught her hand. “Wait,” she said. “We don’t have to bother her yet. I’m tired. I thought I’d rest awhile. I’ve been walking so long. You want to stay with me? Just right here?”
Jean didn’t like the feel of Liyla’s hand. Those sharp, clawed fingers. And despite the heat of the day, Liyla’s touch was cold.
“Okay,” she said, pulling her hand gently back. “Just for a little while, I guess.”
Liyla sat down among the tree roots that jutted up from the ground like bent fingers.
“Come on,” she said. “Sit down, why don’t you?”
Jean sat. But she inched backward when Liyla tried to move closer to her. There was something odd about the girl, different from before. She fidgeted too much. Her eyes darted out into the forest, then back to Jean.
“Does your mother know you’re gone?” Jean asked her.
“What?” Liyla jumped a little and reddened beneath the roughness of her strange face. She brought her hand up to smooth her wild hair.
Jean stared. The girl’s collar had dipped, revealing a wide, ugly scab that ran down into her chest. All around it, the hair that had coated Liyla’s skin was gone. Liyla saw her looking and jerked her shirt back in place.
“I got splashed with some tea,” she said.
“Oh.”
Jean wanted to leave. But it wouldn’t be nice, she thought, to simply run from the girl. She was alone, too, after all.
Liyla kicked at the knotty side of a root, trying to worm a toe under it. She looked again into the forest.
“Hey,” she said, smiling suddenly. “Want to play something? A game I know?”
Jean shrugged. “What game?”
“It’s a follow game. You know, I’ll do something, and you see if you can match it. We play it all the time back home. Want to?”
Jean tilted her head. She hadn’t noticed Liyla being much interested in playing before. But maybe it was being alone like this and far from home. Jean understood that.
“Just right here?”
“Sure. We won’t go far.”
“Okay.”
Liyla stood and stretched her arms. �
��I’m first,” she said. She hopped on one foot over the roots, making a bouncy circle around the tree. “Now you.”
Jean did the same. When it was her turn, she hopped backward over the roots. Liyla tried to follow and lost her balance. But she only laughed when she fell, an unsettling, fluttery sound.
“My turn,” Liyla said. She wound her way, skipping, around several trees. Jean followed. Then Jean climbed to a low branch, and Liyla did the same.
“You’re a good climber,” she said. “But can you run?”
She took off at a sprint then — and Jean followed, Barbie’s yellow hair flying. When she caught up to Liyla, the girl was panting, bent over double.
“You’re good,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Little, but fast.”
Jean smiled. She turned, but she couldn’t see the house.
“We’d better go back,” she said.
“Okay.”
Liyla was still smiling when someone grabbed Jean from behind.
Jean kicked and squirmed and tried to scream, but a hand was over her mouth, a thick, gnarled hand that smelled like wet dog. And then she was moving, so quickly she could not wriggle away. One minute Liyla was smiling, and the next the smile was a grimace as Jean flew past her, fighting, pinned to someone large and swift moving.
“This way!” she heard a man growl, and the trees whipped by as she was jostled and bounced, her captor’s ragged, moist breath against her neck.
They didn’t go for long. Over another hill, and she saw them, hundreds of soldiers of the Genius, their red cloaks garish and out of place in the muted, sunlit wood.
“We’ve got one!” the guttural voice called. Jean could feel the scratch of his whiskered face against the back of her head. The soldiers lounging against the trees looked up. One nodded briskly, turned, and ran off.
The man carrying her slowed to a walk. He marched past the others, who peered at her and laughed when she thrashed and tried to wrench free. She kicked and fought as they hurried up another rise and down a small hill, to where the forest thinned into a wide, low clearing. Tents like red spiders crouched in the dirt there, and felled trees, their stumps wet and yellow as skinned knees, sat beneath a haze of new sawdust. The man carrying Jean breathed hard, jogging again toward the largest of the tents. A soldier stood at attention there, holding a flagpole in his rough hand. Jean stopped squirming. At the tip of the pole, lashed with a red wire, hung Kate’s Barbie.
Ker emerged from the tent, dressed in a long red tunic, leggings, and a half skirt that flowed behind her so the back brushed the ground just enough to have picked up a crust of sawdust around the hem. She saw Jean and smiled.
“Well done,” she said. “I knew you would become a good, obedient girl yet. Come here.”
Her shoulders slumped, Liyla slipped past Jean and moved toward the woman. She didn’t turn to look in Jean’s direction.
Ker smiled her ghastly blunted smile and blinked with eyes like slits at the girl. “The Genius always keeps his promises,” she said to her. “And he remembers his friends.”
Liyla nodded faintly, head down.
But Ker had already moved past her, and she was beckoning in Jean’s direction.
“This way,” she said, indicating the tent behind her. “Here. And put her down. She is our guest, after all.”
Jean found herself slung to the ground. Immediately, she turned and slammed her doll across the knees of the red-uniformed man behind her. He wrenched it away and handed it over her head to Ker, whose smile widened.
“The mate. He’ll be pleased. What cunning things these are.”
She reached down and snatched Jean roughly by the wrist.
“Careful, now,” the woman hissed. “You’ll want to be on your best behavior here. The Genius does not abide disobedience. Even from guests.” She dug her fingers into Jean’s skin for emphasis.
Jean didn’t want to go into the tent. Her breath came in rasping gasps and she drew back, trying to force her heels into the dirt, to keep Ker from pulling her forward. But the woman was strong, and she leaned down to Jean’s ear.
“You’re not with the others now, child,” she whispered. “No strange wind will save you this time. Obey me, or you’ll see what comes of those who don’t.”
She yanked Jean upright, hard, and thrust her forward into the tent.
The air was sticky inside, and the light came red through the canvas. Toward the back, the Genius sat in a stiff jacket of ruby brocade, too heavy for the weather, his raw, unnatural face flushing with the heat, and his knobby hands clenching wetly at the arms of his chair. His black dog lay beside him, but as Jean stumbled in, it raised its head.
The Genius leaned forward and rubbed his perspiring palms on his legs.
“Well,” he said, “so the girl did it after all.”
“She did,” Ker said. “This is the smallest one. And I’d dare say the weakest.”
The Genius grinned, and his ugly, too-large teeth made Jean shudder. “Oh, I remember her,” he said. “This one especially. We know each other, don’t we, child?”
“You don’t know me,” Jean said, and she blushed to hear her voice shaking.
The Genius only grinned wider, his square teeth like stones in his mouth. “Oh, but I do. You’ve lived here so long.”
He tapped his head when he said it. The man was crazy, just like Nell had said.
“I’d thought you were bigger, older. But our memories play tricks on us, don’t they?”
She found nothing to say to that, and the man looked at her a little longer with those wet eyes of his, pale as shells. His face was hairless as a worm; he had no brows or even lashes. Only the bony edges of his forehead and cheeks, too sharp, framed those hollow eyes.
At last he turned to Ker.
“Will they come for her, then?”
Ker shoved Jean closer so she nearly fell; she caught herself several feet from the Genius.
“Such a pretty thing?” Ker said. “I believe they will.”
“Let me see her,” he said. And Ker jabbed her again, so she’d go close. The ugly hand came up to her cheek, and the Genius ran a finger along it. His touch was gritty as sandpaper.
“So perfect,” he said. “Just like the miniature. And this time, really mine.”
Ker leaned over and took Jean’s hand, forcing her palm flat. “Everywhere. Look here, at the fingers. See how straight they are? And the nails?”
Jean struggled, but the woman’s grip was heavy as cement, and Jean felt the Genius’s humid breath across her knuckles. He took her hand in his, cupping it in his gnarled palms, and laughed.
“And the others so near. If it’s as our mysterious friend says, this will be a most rewarding trip. Soon, now, I’ll have them all.”
He touched Jean’s face again, wetting his lips with his tongue as he swept those pale eyes from her forehead to her chin. “Leave her with me,” he said to Ker. “She’s a wonder to see. And send for the girl. I want to hear again what she was told.”
Jean didn’t wait to hear what Liyla had to say. The minute Ker loosened her grip and turned to go, she ran, not even thinking of the soldiers outside or, worse, the black dog. But it pounced before she’d taken three steps, knocking her into the dirt and holding her there, its feet on her back and its teeth at her collar. Jean squirmed as it pressed its wet nose into her neck, growling, until the soldiers pulled the beast off her. When they dragged her back to the Genius, he at least no longer wore his sickening smile.
“Bind her,” he said to the soldiers, and they tied her so tightly to a chair that her arms stung and her back, forced straight, ached with stiffness.
For the first hour, she tried to free herself, concentrating on the ropes and trying to pull them to pieces, strand by strand. When that didn’t work, she hoped she could at least make the wind blow, as Susan had, and knock the ugly Genius from his chair. But she managed none of it. Her heart pounded too insistently in her chest, and the shaded area around her seemed to frac
ture into a hundred jagged pieces. In the end, she was too small, too frightened.
The morning wore on, and old men in fancy uniforms came to the tent, to peer at her and examine her Barbie, which rested now on a table beside the Genius’s seat, next to a long blade with a red enameled grip. They leaned over Jean with their terrible, ferocious faces until her breath caught in her throat, and she closed her eyes against the sight of them.
“See! See!” the Genius told them as they pressed closer, rancid with sweat and sour breath, touching her face and hands. Nausea engulfed her and her head swam. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, muffling sound, but not enough to block the Genius’s awful voice.
“Take a look at our answer,” he said. “Take a look at the face of the future!”
Jean whimpered and felt as if she were choking. At last the awful men were gone, and Liyla came back, head down, walking in an odd, tight way as she entered the tent. She answered the Genius in a quavering voice. Yes, she had seen the house, just where they said it would be. There were several more like this there. All girls. They would come for her. Yes. Definitely. Soon.
He nodded, and she crept aside to stand silent and hunched in a corner near Jean’s seat.
“Look your fill, girl,” the Genius said, noticing. “Soon you, too, will have a face like that. All of us will.” And he smiled without showing his teeth.
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