by L. J. Hatton
Jermay stumbled out of thin air beside me.
“Where’s Klok?” I glanced side to side, and up onto the bridge, but didn’t see him anywhere. “Didn’t he make it?”
“He was right behind me,” Jermay said. “I saw him activate his disk.”
If the disks were damaged enough to skew our landing, then Klok’s might not have been able to register his commands at all. If the warden caught him, then the Commission would know my father lied to them. They’d pull Klok apart to duplicate him. I couldn’t let that happen . . . I wouldn’t.
“There!” Jermay pointed to the over-street where a hulking figure was running our way. I never thought I’d feel so happy to see Klok’s fake face.
“You made it!” I leapt up and grabbed his neck.
Dorcas’s fears were founded; my father had created a life in Klok. I could hear a heartbeat; he breathed in and out. The Commission would have murdered him.
“Continuing to run would be better than stopping to hug. But thank you.”
He hugged me back.
“You are so you,” I told him, then ran, with Jermay at my side.
We hit the main road and pushed harder, until my ankles screamed for mercy inside boots that barely let them bend. I put my focus there, leaping off the pain to propel myself forward. I ignored the weight of my coat, and the blouse with its dragging tails that picked up stones with every step.
Fear swelled, only to be confined by the coat and crushed to powder with the next agonizing impact of my heel against stone. This was a performance, like any other, and I had to see it through. Pain was an ally; pain was applause. The kind that came as our feats escalated, and this was our Grand Escape. It seemed impossible, so the payoff would be more spectacular in the end . . . so long as everyone kept clapping, and I could convince myself the distant whoosh was something other than the sky-eye overhead.
I had no idea if we were even going in the right direction until a pair of figures appeared up ahead, wearing brown coats over white dresses and holding hands as they kept up a deliberate pace toward the horizon. Winnie and Birdie didn’t know there was reason to do more than walk, yet.
“Run,” I tried to shout, but swallowed a mouthful of dust.
I was falling farther back, the illusion of applause broken by stuttering steps and a hacking cough. One of Klok’s arms caught me, dragging me along like a toy on a string.
Winnie and Birdie whipped around, responding to something in Jermay’s voice, which I only half heard through the din of rumbling metal. The same sound from the night we lost the train.
This was no act. There was no Show. The Show was dead, and so were we.
The sky-eye swooped by, leveling out over our heads. It didn’t matter how fast we moved now; we couldn’t shake it on foot. It seemed a cruel and taunting fate to fail after so long, but hope is like that. You hang on with both hands, and then one, and then your fingertips, until you’re clinging by the nails, feeling them burn and splinter. In the end, you don’t give up on hope; it’s ripped out of your grasp while you try, in vain, to get another grip.
We were overtaken, surrounded by bodies in camouflage so the world became a wall of brown and tan, with plumes of sand pitching over the top from the sky-eye’s rotors. The five of us ended up in a circle back-to-back, shrinking in because “closer together” was the only direction we had. Arms linked, hands and fingers intertwined, determined never to let go.
If there had ever been a time for Birdie to prove Mother Jesek right, and disappear, this was it, but she was only a little girl with a knack for hiding in tight spaces. We were trapped in the wide open.
“We’ll be okay,” Jermay whispered to me. “Somehow . . . you’ll see.” He squeezed his little finger around mine, breaking our rule that the promise was supposed to go unspoken, and insidious hope wound its way back inside me, threading through my organs like a fast-spreading disease.
A blast of wind swept the road when the sky-eye finally set down, blowing dirt into the sweat on my face. Its side panel slid open; the row of uniforms inside split to allow someone through—the warden. My warden, as he seemed a personal plague. He’d removed his coat, and stood before us wearing a smile that might have passed for amicable if there hadn’t been something sinister behind it.
“Hello, Celestine.”
CHAPTER 15
With his hair blowing wild, and the oncoming trucks churning out charred exhaust behind his head, the warden looked like a creature from one of the stories my father told me as a child, only more terrible for the fact that he was real. I didn’t glance away. Nagendra always said that the moment you blink at a snake is when it strikes.
“The name’s Penelope, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“And if I do?”
I didn’t answer him.
“Thought as much.” He tapped me under the chin before pacing back toward the others.
“Let them go, and I’ll come with you,” I said.
I could save them. I could repay Winnie, and protect Klok, and make my father proud. Four for one was a good trade.
“Penn, no!” Jermay shouted. “You can’t trust—”
“Now that, I take exception to,” the warden broke in. “The value of my word is absolute—I do not lie, young man.”
Heat built in my face, threatening tears I wouldn’t give the warden the satisfaction of seeing. My hands burned, igniting my wrists, then my elbows and on up my arms. I was dancing in the bonfire with Evie. If I could dance with fire, what threat was a man with no name?
I was the daughter of Magnus Roma.
I was the fifth daughter of Magnus Roma.
I was Celestine.
Fall, fall, fall. I chanted silently to the skies.
“Let them go,” I warned.
Fall, fall, fall . . .
The heat set a blaze inside my chest. Gone was that feeling of a cord connecting me to the heavens. They were burning me up, instead.
Just one, I begged. Give us a diversion. Give us a chance.
After that, they could crush me with the warden and his men, and I would leave this life happier than I’d ever been while living it.
Fall, fall, fall . . .
“I suppose you’re—technically—the only one I need alive,” the warden taunted, pretending to consider it. “It might be less hassle, at that.”
“No!”
“Markesan, your weapon,” the warden said. He held out his hand, and someone stepped forward.
“Stop baiting her before she brings the sky down on our heads,” a woman said, as she slapped the gun from her hip into the warden’s palm.
“And here I thought you weren’t a believer,” the warden said.
“Because she’s not supposed to be possible,” Markesan answered. “But I saw what happened at the train, and so did you.”
“It was a circus; I saw a lot of things. It’s time to separate the parlor trick from reality.” The warden gestured for Markesan to return to the line. “I should probably start with the little one. No sense making someone so young witness something so messy.” He pointed the weapon at the position I assumed Birdie occupied behind me.
“Please don’t!” I begged.
“Then stop me.” He shrugged. “Show me what you’re worth without your sisters holding your hands and your father tacking your feet to the ground.”
The fire hit my knees and burned my strength away, knocking me to the dirt.
Fall, fall, fall . . .
I kept the chant going, praying that, if nothing else, I’d burn so bright I’d take the warden with me into the ashes.
But the Sunday morning sky stayed blue and perfect.
Right up to the point it turned gold, and the fire turned to freeze.
Ozone and ice, a whisper of power building to a roar that stopped the world.
I was going to fly off the Earth and shatter against the horizon.
The warden’s people looked up, searching the sky for burning rain, while my attention went to Sister Mary Alban’s medallion, now glowing bright. It floated up and out of my father’s coat, hovering around my neck as though someone had lifted it with invisible fingers.
“What are you doing?” demanded the warden.
A thrum, not unlike the artificial beat of a golem heart, matched pace with my pulse. I felt strength returning to my body by degrees the longer I rested in the medallion’s light.
“Penn, is this you?” Jermay asked.
I shook my head, pulling up against his and Winnie’s hands. Behind me, Klok was rat-tatting something. Beside me, Winnie jerked on my hand, and I heard a sobbing cry that could only have come from Birdie, frantic in the wake of the warden’s casual threat to kill her.
“Don’t let her go, Winnie,” I shouted. “Don’t let her break the chain!”
The power flowing from the medallion wasn’t my doing, but I knew it was meant to help. It was the same phenomenon I’d experienced with the creeper light inside that awful warehouse. The medal was trying to explain itself.
Current raced across our chain of hands. I heard Jermay’s yelp and Winnie’s squeak, followed by another cry from Birdie, then Klok’s frantic beeping as it hit them each in turn. The golden hue that had coated the world when I was on my knees became a wall of amber light, curving around us at the precise distance required to contain us all. To the warden, we must have looked like the man on the medallion, surrounded by a halo.
“Stop this!” The warden tried to reach through the barrier; a power surge threw him backward.
“Birdie, don’t you dare run,” I called when she jerked on Winnie’s arm again.
I had no idea what to do next. Even if we pressed our way through, using the barrier to split the blockade, the warden would follow until fatigue made us drop. A shield wasn’t enough. We needed an escape.
“How many rabbit holes are left?” I asked Jermay.
“Three.”
And there were five of us.
“Klok can carry Birdie,” Winnie said.
“And you and Jermay can share one. Leave me the last one. The medallion can guard our retreat, but only as long as I’m here.”
I shifted my hand to Jermay’s shoulder to keep our circle intact while he ripped into his pack. So far, the force field was holding, flinging off each attacker who came too close.
“Klok has too much mass to carry a passenger,” Jermay said, handing out the remaining disks.
“I’ll take Birdie,” Winnie said, still holding her hand.
“What about you?” I asked Jermay.
“You and me, like always,” he said, holding up the last rabbit hole.
“Don’t let your mind stray, or your body will follow,” I told Winnie.
“They won’t get us to the next town, but they’re a head start,” Jermay added. “Get as far as you can, and keep running!”
Winnie threw the first disk onto the ground; Birdie hopped onto her back. The disk swirled to life, and they jumped in, disappearing from sight. Our shield shrunk in to make up the difference.
“Stop!”
The warden’s gun was no longer lowered, but raised and pointed straight at my head.
“Your turn,” I told Klok. “We’re right behind you.”
The warden twitched his wrist sideways and fired his gun as Klok leapt into the rabbit hole’s vortex.
Jermay and I hit the ground, but the medallion held. A ripple started at the point of impact against the shield, flickering like rings in a pond. All of the slack rushed out, and once it had processed the bullet’s momentum, a shock wave flew in all directions. In its wake, everyone outside was laid flat. The trucks and sky-eye were still intact, but most of the people weren’t even conscious.
“Hurry,” I said to Jermay. “We can be gone before they’re moving.”
He threw the last disk on the ground. It did nothing but lie there like an actual hole. He picked it up and threw it again.
“The water must have choked it,” he said. “It’s dead. We’ve got to get off the road and hide.” He threw his satchel’s strap over his head.
The medallion’s field began to weaken as we moved. We found a ditch and squeezed in beneath the bushes as it fizzled.
“Tell me that thing’s got another trick or two in it,” Jermay whispered, nodding to the medallion.
It was unresponsive, laying flat against my coat.
“I think we killed it,” I said, and struck it with my palm.
The warden’s followers jostled branches, shoving the ends of rifles into the bushes to poke around. One skimmed my shoulder as it jutted between me and Jermay, others sliced the air above our heads. Boots stopped close enough that I could have tied the laces together.
Shadows from the leaves around us blocked most of the light, but I was able to see Jermay’s eyes widen as the rifles came again and again. He leaned forward, closer, until I expected him to fold in two, but instead he put his hands on either side of my face and kissed me so quick that he breathed in my surprised squeak.
“I should have done that when we were talking at the river, and if we’re dead, I’m not losing my last chance.”
I would have answered, if my flummoxed brain could have figured out what to say, but another rifle nearly smashed us both in the head.
“This can’t be our last chance,” I said. “There has to be something. Try the rabbit hole again.”
“Penn—”
“Try it! What can it cost us?”
He set the disk down, but it was still inert.
The warden’s men switched to a new tactic, ripping the bushes up out of the ground, and they were coming our way.
“What’s wrong with you?” I shook the disk as hard as I could. “Work!”
I felt a shock. The disk wobbled in my hand, flopping onto the ground, and began to spin.
“It’s working!” Jermay laughed, but I didn’t. I stared at my hands, wondering if the rabbit hole had recognized me as my father’s daughter the way Mary Alban claimed her medallion had. Maybe it worked for his sake.
Jermay stepped into the vortex as the bushes around us were ripped away. A branch knocked us apart.
“Penn!”
His fingers dissolved before I could grab them. The rabbit hole closed over his head, leaving the blank disk behind with me.
I was alone—well and truly alone. I didn’t even have the golems anymore.
“We’ve got her!” someone shouted. “The boy disappeared.”
A foot came down heavy between my shoulders, holding me to the ground with a grown man’s weight.
Keep running, Jermay. Don’t you dare double back.
I kissed the tips of my fingers and laid them to the ground over the circle that had carried him away.
“Where’d he go?” The man standing on me snatched the rabbit hole off the ground. He kicked me with the toe of his boot. “What’s this? What’s it do?”
“Manhandle that girl again, and you’ll be more concerned with what I do.” The warden approached from the side and pushed him off.
“She’s one of them. We have standing orders about—”
“She’s one of mine, as are you—according to your orders. Leave her be.”
He offered me his hand, but I stayed in the tucked curl I’d assumed when I was kicked.
“Did he hurt you?” the warden asked. He knelt down to pry my arms away from my stomach; he was a lot stronger than I’d anticipated.
“I barely touched her,” the man protested. He started to say something else, but before he could, the warden was on him. His forearm had the man pinned to a tree and turning colors from fear and lack of air.
“If she’s damage
d, I’ll be holding you responsible.”
Everyone was watching them, and that gave me my chance, slim as it was. I shot to my feet and through the nearest gap between bodies, passing close enough that I knocked two of them down as I went.
I was caught almost immediately.
Hands grabbed for me, and I was shoved back to the ground. I tasted blood in my mouth and wiped it away, in case the warden planned on keeping up this weird compassionate act and tried to do it himself.
“I guess I’ll have to keep a closer eye on you, won’t I, pet?” he asked, smiling down at me.
“I’m not your pet.”
“Better mine than someone else’s.”
I couldn’t catch the air to answer back. Something clamped around my body, a tight restraint I couldn’t see or reach, and despite myself I winced.
“Your tricks only work once,” the warden said.
“It wasn’t a trick, I—Ahhh!”
Whatever had me, it cinched tighter, biting into my flesh below my ribs. My back bowed off the ground.
“What’s wrong with her?” I heard one of the uniforms ready a rifle, then several others followed suit, whispering about my being possessed by aliens or worse.
“Arms down!” the warden ordered. “What’s happening? Penelope, talk to me.”
“Falling apart . . .” I think I said.
I was being scattered by the wind. It was exactly the feeling I’d had when I used the rabbit hole.
“Jermay?” I struggled to say his name out loud.
“The boy’s gone.”
Yes, he’d gone, but maybe he was coming back.
Was it possible? Had he found a way to return for me?
The invisible something kept squeezing. One of Nagendra’s snakes. It had wrapped around me, and now it wouldn’t let go.
No . . . that didn’t make any sense. Nothing made sense.
I was fading.
“Is this Magnus’s coat?” The warden was on his knees again, and frantic. He turned my head, so I was looking him in the eye. “Is it? Did the coat belong to your father?”