“How about now?” I can tell she’s trying to keep the I told you so from her voice, and somehow that makes it even worse. “Knee or hands?”
“Your choice,” I say. She laces her hands together and I put my left foot on them, bouncing our long-ago agreed-upon three times before she launches me into the air. I heave the rest of my right side across the saddle, the high pommel horn digging into my sternum before I can right myself. Cas checks my stirrups and hands me my reins. “All set?”
“Guess so.” I take one last look at Cress, trying not to cry. Abandoning her out here alone feels ungracious, at best.
A few tears escape but Cas and Len have the good grace to ignore them, continuing their low-level bickering until we reach a clearing.
“The camp is just through there,” Cas says, pointing to a copse a little ways off to the east, the sun beginning to sink into the hills behind her. “Don’t be too long, okay? We’re on watch, so we’ll say we met you here. It’s up to you to say why, if anyone asks.”
“If anyone even sees,” Len says, taking another swig of whiskey.
Cas seems disappointed. But I’m disappointed, too. My childhood best friends aren’t exactly my enemies, but they aren’t on my side, either. Sure, they’re sorry my dad is gone, but what about everything else? My whole life is gone and they’re here living in some time-warp Garden of Eden. Though it’s near dark, the land is so much greener than I remember it. There is water and birdsong where I remember dust and vultures. Cas and Len are freckled and healthy and well fed. And I’m pale and exhausted and hungry and bitter.
I try to feel something besides resentment, but I’m coming up empty. And then I think I should start paying attention because the clearing is starting to close in around me. I begin to whistle, so as not to surprise whoever is behind the line of cottonwoods.
I hear the telltale chock of a shotgun. The horse underneath me does, too, coming to a halt before I even touch the reins.
I sit back and lift both hands. I use my best stage voice to carry across the distance. “Hello? My name’s Syd. I’m looking for a camp of Survivor diplomats. I have some supplies for you from the City.”
“Are you a Survivor, Syd?” A low, warm voice comes from the trees. A woman steps out. She’s black, her hair braided back into swirls. She isn’t exactly frowning at me, but she’s not smiling either.
“For all intents and purposes. I’m from the City. To the west,” I say. Hers is a complicated question. I’m not sad I didn’t get sick, but Survivors wear their survival as a badge of honor. And passing for one without having survived anything, well, it’s a stupid kind of guilt, Danny used to say, but it’s guilt all the same.
“Me too. Though we haven’t been back in years.”
I nod. “I know you’ve all been at this for a while.”
“If you’re from the City, why do you travel with New Charitans?”
“It’s kind of a long story, and I have to get back to Cas and Len.”
“Wait, you don’t mean Casandra and Len Willis?”
“Yes.” A slice of dread zips through my stomach. “How—”
“The Governor’s children?”
“Um, look, I don’t . . .”
She holds a finger up at me, as if she’s thinking on the fly. I have a horse and some distance, and the gun she’s holding isn’t cocked at me anymore. I could make a break for it.
She shifts her weight. “Do you happen to know if Perry Willis made it back inside? I’d like to talk with him.”
Perry is Cas and Len’s eldest brother. Though I didn’t see him as often as the other Willis kids because he attended boarding school back east, he hated me. The feeling was mutual. His disdain for the romance between Troy and me had been raw and unveiled. When the word got out that we were leaving for the City, Perry cornered me. “You leave nothing but trouble in your wake,” he’d said. “If you left yesterday it wouldn’t be soon enough.” He’d certainly be delighted to see me again.
“I haven’t been back for a while. But, I can try to get word to him if it’s possible.” If Perry Willis is the key to diplomatic success in New Charity, you could knock me over with a pinecone, but all the same, this woman must have a reason for asking.
“Drop the supplies and back up, please,” she says.
“Wait, aren’t you going to tell me your plan?”
“Plan?” She laughs. “I don’t even know you, or if you’re telling the truth about who you are. Why would I tell you my ‘plan,’ were I to even admit I have one?”
Dread is shoved out of the way by annoyance. “I guess it was pretty stupid of me to think you diplomats had something else up your sleeves besides attending goodwill dinners.”
The shotgun rises to her shoulder again. “Supplies, please.”
Wait until I tell Doc how these people treat their own. I hope he hasn’t wasted any of my SpaghettiOs on them. It takes me a minute to undo Cas’s confounded knots, but when I do, I drop the bag in front of the horse, who shies to the side. The motion scares all three of us. “Sorry,” I say. “Out of practice.”
She nods, and I back the horse up about ten paces.
“Where are you going now, Syd?” She unloads the shotgun, pocketing the shells, and picks up the bag.
“New Charity.”
She looks up, eyes narrowed. “How are you allowed in if you’re a Survivor?”
I’ve become accustomed to trusting the people around me, but some warning bell sounds in my head, and for once I listen. “Family emergency.”
“I see. You’re neither us nor them.”
“I guess that’s true.” Though I’d never put it quite as succinctly.
“Well, should you see Perry Willis, tell him that Nelle Harris Mangold asked for him, okay?”
“I’ll try,” I say, hoping I can remember all three names without mangling them.
“Be careful in there,” she says. “Things aren’t all as they seem.” I’m sure she doesn’t mean to be condescending. But it sounds that way, and it pisses me off. We’re on the same team, for the same reason, and, for good or for bad, this is my hometown.
“Here’s what you can tell the rest of the oh-so-helpful diplomats, Nelle Harris Mangold: My name is Cressyda Turner and I’m going to open the reservoir when I get inside. So get yourselves ready.” I gently pull my right rein over the horse’s neck, and nudge my left heel into her side.
“Cressyda Turner, wait!” Nelle calls. “You don’t—”
I don’t hear or care what else she has to say. How it’s hard or dangerous or unlikely. I’ve already nudged the mare into a lope that’s turning into a gallop on her way back to her friends and home and dinner, and, just as soon as I open the reservoir’s floodgate, I’ll be doing the same. I lift a hand to wave good-bye. The wind is loosening my hair and I feel like the baddest damn ballerina cowgirl in all the land.
By the time the twins escort me through the steel gates of New Charity, the gigantic steel horses of my memory standing tall and corporeal—with a new shining guard tower alongside—the only kind of badass I feel relates to my very unfortunate rear end. My inner thighs are chafed, and my teeth feel as if they’ve been jarred half out of my mouth. I know how to ride, but when I let my mind wander, I forget how to keep my seat. The dim scraps of sunset don’t allow me to do much scoping, and so I focus on the road ahead of me to keep the horse under me from bolting toward the Willis place.
When Len halts his horse in front of the ranch, my onetime home, I don’t feel much besides disorientation. I can barely stand when I drop down from the saddle. Cas is already behind me, once again propping me up when I almost fall into the dirt.
“Been a while,” she says. “You’ll get the hang of it.”
She’s so close to me that I have to focus to keep my face from betraying how much I’d like to shove her into the nearest pile of horseshit. “Is she always this goddamned cheerful?” I ask Len.
“Depends,” he says. “Sometimes it’s worse.”
<
br /> She gives us a dirty look as she unties my portion of gear from her saddle. She deposits the bags on the front doorstep before I can even sort out the knots on my own saddle.
“Mind if I turn your porch light on?” Len asks. “The Deacon said he’d leave the house open for you.”
I find myself blinking at him. “Yeah. Sure, go ahead,” I mutter, goggling at the fact that I am in possession of a porch, let alone electricity. Marveling that they have no idea what a big deal it is to watch Len enter the unlocked front door of my dad’s—my—house and flip a switch and have light flood forth on command. No one is afraid of what will be illuminated. Mostly it’s just moths. And Cas, shooting daggers at Len, who has paused to share his whiskey with me once again. “Should probably just leave a flask. You’re gonna need it in a few hours.” He pulls a small bag from the side of his saddle and tosses it to me. “For your muscles.”
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Little help, Len?” Cas mutters.
No one talks for a bit. My things are piled in a pitiful-looking heap in the front entryway. Everyone falls still, and we stare at the mess.
“Do you need anything? It looks like you might—” Cas starts.
“Let’s let Syd get some rest and we’ll talk about inventory in the morning,” Len says, clapping her on the shoulder. “Dinner tomorrow night? Our house?”
“You sure?” I ask. “I’ll be fine; I brought food.”
“Definitely come,” Cas says. She points at a bag that’s fallen open. “I bet something besides tuna sounds pretty good.”
“I don’t . . .” I stop myself. I don’t want her charity. But I know I may need her help. “I’m sorry, Cas. I’m really tired, and I didn’t even know if I’d be able to get here. It’s just—”
“Emotional. We understand,” she says.
I shove my hand in my pocket. My fingers close around a flat piece of metal and I pull it out. It’s Buster’s rabies tag, in the shape of a bone. From when there were still things like rabies tags. Mina must have slipped it in my pocket.
I think about showing it to the twins, to try and explain how big this journey really is, but I can’t expect them to understand something they have no reference point for. In any case, I’m glad for the reminder of the tag. I need to take all the help I can get: get in, get out, get home. “Thanks,” I say. “For everything.”
“It’s nothing,” Cas says. “I’ll come by tomorrow and see if you need anything, okay?”
“Whatever you do, don’t be late for dinner,” Len says. “You’ll miss cocktails. That’s the part that makes the rest bearable.”
It has been seven full years since I last set foot in this house. Even so, it looks and smells and feels the same under my fingertips, though maybe a bit more like my dad—more sweat and dirt. I know the number of steps to the bathroom without needing to count, and the light switches are where they are supposed to be under my fingers. And when I press them, I can’t keep from crying, so I keep them off for the time being, opening the heavy old curtains instead, welcoming in a bright half moon.
I think that I am safe running my hands over files of my dad’s paperwork on the kitchen counter, his coat, his wallet, things I don’t yet know how to face. In the living room, I stand in front of the couch and flip on the TV. There is only one channel and it is a film—an advertisement, more accurately—about the Sanctuary.
The film is grainy and rose tinged, and the speaker is droning on about the gifts of the Spirit, and the sanctity of the land and the sky. About the pride the Spirit has in New Charity. The narrator waxes poetic about the Spirit made manifest in the breath of the New Charitan horses and the velocity of the Basalt River. And then it thanks the community for their sacrifice in something called the Blessing. I search for the mute button and, failing, shut the whole thing off. Why is the TV even here and plugged in? The dying ficus tree in the corner is more entertaining.
On the coffee table in front of me, there’s a small blue book, with a gold hasp and small lock—like one of my childhood diaries, though I’ve never seen this one before. I turn it over and over in my hands. I tug on the lock, but to no avail. I have no idea where to even start the search for its key.
It still feels strange going through my dad’s things, as if those things, like him, aren’t really mine. It doesn’t help that I have the sneaking suspicion I’m being watched. Sure enough, I look up to find Uncle Pi at the door, watching me through the screen. “May I?” he asks, gesturing at the door.
He’s always lived in the guesthouse. Even when I was small. And he’s never had to ask to come in before. I’m sure it feels as much an excision to him as it does an intrusion to me, with neither of us in the right. This house isn’t exactly mine, but it isn’t anyone else’s either.
“You don’t have to ask,” I say, not sure if I really mean it.
He nods in equal insincerity, closing the screen gently behind him. My dad always used to let it slam, causing my mother and Uncle Pi—a softer, rounder version of his brother with the same dark eyes—to grimace and flinch. Pi’s always been the quietest of the quiet. Even his footfalls are soft on the stone tiles.
“I wish the circumstances were different, Syddie,” he says. “Give your uncle a hug?”
He hugs me, but not too hard. After he lets me go, and I pretend like I don’t see his tears, I start with a joke. “What will you drink?”
The corners of his mouth furrow. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Who would I tell?”
Pi walks over to an air-conditioning intake panel in the hallway and pulls it out and up. Inside, a closet of sorts holds boxes and boxes of wine.
Now it’s my turn to frown. “You have to hide the wine? What happened, did the Sanctuary ban drinking?”
“Public drunkenness isn’t allowed,” he says, removing two bottles and replacing the panel. “But you can have Sanctuary-sanctioned spirits. Spirit spirits, if you will.” He laughs at his pun. I’m still adding this all together. “These bottles are not sanctioned. Your father and I bought this for his going-away party. It’s now a well-aged Cab, probably be worth quite a bit, you know, if . . . well.”
“If things hadn’t gone to hell?”
Pi uncorks a bottle and pours two glasses, handing one to me.
“Going-away party? Going where?” The wine is red and full and deep.
“The City. But he, ah, never showed up to the party.”
“Never showed up to the City, either.” I’m perplexed by the little jump of joy my heart gives at the thought he even tried. “I didn’t know he even got serious.”
“Your father battled some demons over the last decade, Syd.”
“Haven’t we all?” If he wants to talk demons, perhaps he can tell me how he’d have felt about the medical tents and the helicopters and the fires and the mass graves. About my mom and Danny and getting used to the dark and the sounds it makes.
But Pi gives me the same why-do-I-put-up-with-this-shit look as when I painted his car with the barn primer when I was eight. My dad was the one who yelled and screamed, while my mother laughed and pointed out that it was an improvement over the car’s prior color—decidedly puce. It had remained primer-colored until we left. And just like every other memory, eventually I let it and New Charity and everyone in it just disappear.
My mom didn’t help matters. She didn’t badmouth my dad or his change of heart; she simply stopped mentioning him altogether—as if I’d spent fourteen years with a mother and father, and the years following as an immaculate conception.
Pi takes a deep breath, resetting his temper in the way that used to infuriate my dad. “I’m glad you’re here, Syd. It’s good to see you. I see so much of them both in you.”
I don’t want to get choked up already, so I dodge his niceties. “So what else is new? How’s the Sanctuary? Have you found any new music lately?”
Pi shrugs, and climbs onto one of the barstools in the kitchen. “Well.”
“Tha
t good, eh?”
“Things are different from when you left. You might not see it, but when the illness came, things changed for us, too.”
“Do tell,” I say, hopping up onto the counter next to the humming fridge, letting the track lighting overhead bore into my eyes.
“You might have been too young to remember, but the Bishop and I have never seen the Spirit in quite the same way. His future for the Sanctuary is a much more disciplined one than we had before he came. And he asked a lot of the people of New Charity.”
“Like Spirit spirits?”
“It’s more than that, Syddie,” he says, taking a moment with his wine. “Everyone was scared, and, well . . .”
“He preyed on their fears?” I offer.
He shakes his head. “That sounds worse than it is. The Blessing was his way of making sure we would survive.”
“Blessing?”
“You’ll see what I mean in the morning. Members of the community were asked to give of themselves to bless and protect New Charity, even as the world around us faltered.”
“Didn’t want to, say, bless and protect the rest of us, though?”
“With our limited resources?”
“Seems like you folks are doing okay to me.”
“Wait until morning. Look out the window and tell me what you see. Then tell me the Spirit hasn’t moved over this place.”
“All I’m saying is, I wish the Spirit had moved over some other places, too. Why is the Bishop’s blessing geographically limited? Why is the reservoir closed? Why is the town’s gate closed? Why can’t anyone have any fun? Seems pretty simple, Pi, the guy is a bully and New Charity is full of sheep.”
“Tormented, sure. But I don’t think he means any harm.”
“That’s supposed to make things better?”
“He’s still in mourning over his daughter. She left to marry someone in the City shortly before the Bishop came to us. She died in a car accident. Her fiancé lived, and the Bishop’s been trying to find a way to forgive the guy—the City, really, or its culture—ever since.”
“And so he saves New Charity and leaves the rest of us to rot?”
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