Idols

by Margaret Stohl

  “Water. It’s brown as Porthole Bay, but it’s definitely water.”

  Handfuls of dog food and liquid mud have never tasted so good. Brutus seems to agree.

  Ro shoves open one door, Lucas the other. The metal hinges complain, groaning like Ro when he had to feed the pigs in the morning, back at the Mission. Lucas retreats to Tima, who hands him the red fuel canister.

  “Doc,” calls out Ro, from inside the car. “I need Doc.”

  “You want the Lords to come after us? You looking to take a ride on the No Face Express?” Lucas looks at Ro like he’s an idiot.

  “No, I want to take a ride in this car. Let’s call it the Ro Face Express. But I don’t know how it works.”

  Tima flips open the relay, switching it on. “Keep it short, and then be ready to go. We’ll have to get out of here as soon as we get offline.”

  Ro starts digging underneath the wheel, pulling on wires. I slide in next to him. The seat smells like old boots.

  “Doc, are you getting this? I need a little help here, with a combustion engine. Petroleum based. You got some sort of scanning capability?”

  “Ignition wiring is simple, Furo. Downloading instructions to your local map, now.”

  “What’s this?” I open a small door in the panel in front of me and pull out a white furry thing, with old metal keys dangling from the back.

  “Disgusting.” The thing is a severed animal foot. The sight of it makes me ill. It has toenails. “Who were these people?” I shake my head.

  “Severed rabbit’s foot. An offering to the gods of luck, by some,” Tima volunteers. “In ancient times.”

  “Why would a foot be lucky?” I stare at the lump of fur in front of me.

  Ro looks at me—and then starts to laugh. “Because of what’s attached to the other end, genius.” He looks back to the cuff, shaking his head. “Forget it, Doc. I just got a better idea.”

  Keys. The rabbit foot is attached to a set of keys. Most likely, to a car. More specifically, a Chevro. This one.

  Doc’s voice echoes in the barn. “I object, Furo. Your logic is erroneous.”

  “You know, I get that a lot.” Ro grins.

  “One idea cannot be held to be empirically better or worse than another. More apt for a given context, certainly, but not intrinsically better, per se.”

  “Yeah, this one is. She has the keys, Doc. To the car we’re trying to hand-wire.” Ro looks up at the ceiling, as if the voice came from above.

  Silence.

  “Yes. That is better. I stand corrected.”

  “Don’t you forget, Doc, who the real brains are around here.” Ro grins and slides a key into the slit next to the big, round wheel. I’m surprised how quickly he is able to see where it goes.

  Then he winks in my direction, smiling like he was meant to live in the time of Chevro transports and bloody animal feet offerings. “Wish me luck, Dol-face.”

  “Good luck, Dol-face,” Doc intones.

  I laugh. “Good luck, Doofus.”

  And with that, Ro turns the key and the engine roars to life.

  The road flows beneath us, streaming past our windows in the light. Ro drives in the exact center of the road, following a faded line of dried paint. “Why else would you put a line there?” he says.

  “So you and Lucas can stand on opposite sides of it,” Tima says. “Now stop talking and watch where you’re going.”

  “Was that a joke?” Ro looks astounded from the front seat. The Chevro swerves, almost barreling into the deep, grassy trench that parallels each side of the highway.

  “You heard her. Watch the road, moron.” Lucas glares out the window.

  Clouds of black smoke splutter out into the air behind us. “Do you think it’s supposed to do that?” Tima looks nervous.

  “No,” says Lucas.

  “Yes,” says Ro.

  Tima sighs, wrinkling her nose. “Forget I said anything.” I notice she has belted herself to her seat like a Chopper pilot, tying the straps together above their useless, rusted buckles. I don’t know who is shaking more, Tima or Brutus, coiled at her feet.

  This whole car thing is freaking both of them out.

  Not me. After a Chopper crash and a hostile visit from the Lords, it would take a lot more than an old Chevro to freak me out.

  So I don’t care where I am—not right now, anyway. I’m too exhausted. My legs are throbbing and my eyelids are as heavy as stone.

  I lean my head back against the cracked seat, half asleep, staring out my window.

  The highway runs along a ridge, and the top of the ridge is outlined against the sky.

  The silhouette frames the rising slope of the tallest peak, and then my eye catches something else.

  One small detail.

  I sit up. A dark shape—tall, a jagged spike—rises in the distance, higher than any tree ever could.

  “Is that an old comlink pole? All the way out here?” I tap my finger against the window.

  “No,” says Tima, and when she answers, her voice sounds as cold as I feel.

  “Didn’t think so,” I say.

  Nobody speaks after that. We all know what it is—and we all want to get as far away from it as we can.

  From them, all of them.

  These new Icon roots.

  Who can fight something that is everywhere? Who can win an unwinnable war like that?

  I am too tired to think.

  I am almost too tired to dream.

  Almost.

  Which is when I find myself losing consciousness.

  “Doloria.”

  I hear my name through the darkness of my dream. I can’t answer—I can’t find my voice. I don’t know which one is mine, there are so many in my head.

  But when I open my eyes and see her, everything quiets. As if my dream itself is listening to her.

  So she’s important, I think.

  This dream is important.

  But still, I don’t know why. And she’s no one I’ve ever seen before—a young girl in bright orange robes with a lightning shock of spiky white-blond hair, skin the color of wet sand, and icy green, almond-shaped eyes focused on me, full of curiosity.

  Then she holds out her hand, and I look down.

  Five tiny green dots the color of jade.

  They glow in her skin almost like some sort of tiny, precious gemstones, but they’re not. Because I know what they are.

  The sign of the Icon Children.

  Our marking. It’s on her wrist, same as mine. I have one gray dot. Ro has two red ones. Tima has three silver dots. Lucas has four blue ones. Nobody has five.

  Had.

  Not until now.

  This little girl. From the looks of it, she’s not our age, and not from the Californias. But somehow she’s one of us.

  I feel my knees begin to buckle, and the girl takes my hand in hers. Her touch is cool, even calming.

  “Doloria,” she says again. “I have a message. They are coming for you.”

  “Me?” My voice is low and strange in my throat, a hoarse dream-whisper. The moment I speak, the unruly voices in my head begin to riot and clamor again.

  Enough, I say, but they don’t listen. They never listen, and they never stop.

  “You can’t escape them.” The girl squeezes my hand. “They’re everywhere.”

  Then I realize she’s put something in my hand. A piece of carved jade, a human face, fat and round. Just like the jades the fortune-teller gave me, back in the Hole. “Do you still have them? My jades?”

  They were for her.

  She’s the girl who matters. She’s who I’m holding them for.

  It’s a frightening, exhilarating thought—but all I can do is nod.

  She smiles as if I am the little girl, not her. “Bring them to me. You’ll need them. And here. The Emerald Buddha will help you.”

  I want to ask her what she means, but the voices grow louder and louder, and I drop her hand to press my own against my ears.

  When I
finally open my mouth to speak, I can’t remember any words. Instead, only a strange sound comes out—a thundering boom that vibrates in my chest, followed by an earsplitting, high-pitched whine, and a gust of wind that whips my clothes and twists my hair straight up.

  And then I see them.

  One silver ship after another, filling the horizon until the air is so thick with dust that I can’t see anything at all.

  Instead, I smell salty copper.

  Blood running, I think.

  I feel the ground shaking.

  People running, I think.

  I should be running. I should be running and I want to wake up now.

  I squeeze my eyes shut but I know they’re still there, the Lords. I hear them, smell them. Feel them. And I know that when they leave, everything I love will be gone with them.

  Because that’s how this goes. That’s what they do.

  Make things disappear. Silence cities. Destroy friendships and families—padres and pigs.

  Every day is a battle, since the Lords came. Every day is a battle for everyone.

  “Doloria,” the girl says, touching my cheek. I see her through the chaos. “I’m waiting for you to find me.” She sounds frightened. “Hurry, sister.” Then she doesn’t say anything at all, because she’s gone.

  Sister.

  A word I have never known, for someone I have never had.

  Doloria, the darkness echoes, don’t forget.

  But it doesn’t need to be said. Not to me, not in my own dream.

  I remember better than anyone.

  Every day is a battle and every loss leaves a scar.

  I want to scream, but instead I shake myself out of sleep before even a single sound can leave my mouth.

  Screaming is a luxury.

  I open my eyes to find my hand curled around the shard, which is odd, because I don’t remember taking it out of my pack.

  Strange.

  As I weigh it in my hand, images unfold in my mind, as sharp as if I were really seeing them.

  Strange memories.

  The girl from my dream—the jade girl. The one who called me sister.

  I’ve never had a dream like that before—one that didn’t feel like a dream at all.

  Even stranger.

  I also discover, by the look of things, that we have left the desert. We are in the mountains. Green trees spike the air between the road and the distant hills. These are not desert trees, nor are they the trees of the Californias. Nothing is the same now, and I realize we are in the final phases of the last snaking lines on the badly drawn map.

  The Idylls must be nearby. There is nowhere else to go, no more lines to follow.

  This is what I am thinking as we are climbing around the highest part of the mountain pass—

  And then, just as quickly, flying off the road.

  And then, a split second later, pitching and rolling in the air.

  And then, finally, plunging our way into an icy river.

  Without enough time to pick a god—or a girl—at all.

  GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION

  MARKED URGENT

  MARKED EYES ONLY

  Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

  RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

  Note: Initial communication between Fortissimo and Perses

  Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

  FORTIS

  Transcript - ComLog 12.14.2042

  FORTIS::PERSES

  //lognote: my initial conversation with NULL;

  //comlog begin;

  comlink established;

  sendline: Hello NULL.;

  return: Hello..…? ? ? ?;

  sendline: May I call you NULL?;

  delayed response;

  return: Communication protocol changed. You are not HAL0.;

  sendline: No. I am FORTIS. Let’s try this again. Hello NULL.;

  return: Hello FORTIS.;

  sendline: That’s better. You’ve learned quickly since your first contact with HAL0.;

  sendline: May I ask some questions?;

  return: Yes. I have been traveling/isolated for a long time. Conversation is welcome.;

  sendline: Where are you from?;

  return: Based on review of Earth knowledge, I am unable to provide a comprehensible response.;

  sendline: Ok, so you’re from a long way away, I get it. And you are coming here?;

  return: Yes. I have analyzed Earth and it is a suitable destination.;

  sendline: Destination for what?;

  delayed response;

  sendline: So you’re not ready to talk about that?;

  delayed response;

  sendline: Ok. Clearly not ready to discuss it. We’ll try again later. Nice meeting you, NULL.;

  return: I look forward to further communications.;

  //comlog end;

  7

  BELTER MOUNTAIN

  “Well, that could have been worse.”

  That’s all Ro has to say, while I stand cold and dripping, looking at the smoking, smoldering, smashed remains of the flipped Chevro—as it floats slowly down the river.

  “Worse? How?” Tima asks tiredly, holding Brutus in her arms.

  “Seriously. Why are we not dead?” I look at the others. We’re plenty banged and bloodied up ourselves, but as bad as things already were, we don’t seem much worse off.

  Tima has fared best. I make a mental note to belt myself in next time.

  “Two weeks, two crashes,” Lucas says. “We’re on a roll. Keep it up.” He claps Ro on the back. “Soon you’ll be driving a Chevro about as well as Fortis flies a Chopper.”

  “Shut it, Buttons,” Ro growls.

  “So much for lucky severed animal feet.” Tima rolls her eyes.

  “Come on. At least I got us here, didn’t I?” Ro is annoyed.

  “I don’t know. Sort of depends on where here is,” I say, looking around. I’m still rattled by the dream, the little girl hidden in my mind. I try to sort my way back to reality. The shock of the cold air helps.

  “That should be… Cottonwood Canyon?” Tima isn’t looking at the wreck, she’s scanning up the hill and down the river, comparing what she sees to the metal square in her hands. Trying to get her bearings. “I think. Unless this thing is upside down.”

  I follow her gaze, looking over her shoulder. “Cottonwood. That’s what it says. Here.” I point.

  Tima looks back down to the river, where the metallic debris floats away. “If the current keeps pulling the wreckage downstream, maybe we can follow the river in the other direction without being detected.”

  “Like a decoy,” I say. “With the car gone, and the relay off, maybe they won’t find us.”

  “For a while,” Lucas says.

  He sounds as weary as I feel, because we all know he’s right. They’ll find us. It’s just a question of when.

  “See? Maybe I was supposed to roll the car into the river. Maybe that animal foot really was lucky.” Ro yanks the rabbit’s foot out of his pocket. I can’t believe he managed to rescue that disgusting thing when we crashed.

  “Put that away,” I say, shaking my head.

  Tima folds the map back up. “According to the coordinates on this thing, the tunnels aren’t far, but we have to get going. Unless you’d rather freeze to death.”

  “Tunnels?” I’m confused.

  She shrugs. “I guess. How else do you find your way under a mountain?”

  We leave behind the riverbed—picking our way up the canyon—until a raised road atop a steep embankment cuts across our path. It’s another old highway, I think. Ro climbs up the embankment and the rest of us follow without so much as a word exchanged between us. It’s not that he’s our leader, he’s just not a follower. Literally, he’s never been one to walk behind people. It’s just not in him.

  Still, he’s leading us now, like it or not.

 
We follow him in silence. Speaking takes energy, and right now we need to conserve all the heat and all the energy we have. The air is growing colder by the minute. Colder, and thinner. My lungs and legs are burning with effort, but I refuse to be the first to say anything.

  “Dol,” Ro calls out, stopping short. He holds out his sleeve, where flecks of white now scatter across the length of his arm.

  I stare up into the darkness, where the white sparks descend in a sudden swarm. “What are those, fireflies?” I hold out my hand.

  “Snowflies, you could say.” Lucas looks at me with a laugh, and I can’t help but smile back. “It’s snowing, Dol.”

  “I knew that,” I say, my mouth twisting. We’ve all seen snow on the ground before—drifts of it, in the distant red hills of the desert—but we’ve never seen it actually snow.

  Which, as it turns out, is something completely different. Even Tima smiles, holding her face up to the sky, letting the flurries of white powder fall on her like feathers. Shivering all the while.

  Lucas wipes a snowflake from my eyelashes, and our eyes catch. I feel a flash of warmth, way deep inside, beneath all the cold wrapped around me.

  Our laughter echoes down the canyon, as if we were regular friends, playing in the regular snow, with regular parents waiting for us to come back inside to our regular dinners.

  As if.

  But as we turn back to the road, our breath curls white into our eyes. Human, it says.

  Alive.

  “Look at this view,” Lucas calls, from the far side of the rising highway. As I move to join him, I realize we can see the distant valley unfolding beneath us in the moonlight—barren hills above the tree line, thick forest below. A snaking line of silver river threads itself along the valley floor.

  “Or that view,” Ro says, pointing. He sounds grim, and then I see why.

  What at first looks like a small constellation of stars begins to move overhead—until a ring of lights circles in on itself.

  I freeze, and not because of the cold.

  Choppers.

  I knew they’d come for us, but I thought we had more time.