Terra Nova

by Shane Arbuthnott

  “Took you long enough,” she said.

  Her brothers went to the other doors, breaking them each in turn. Her father roared commands to the patients in his best captain’s voice, and even in their drug-addled states, they responded. Molly and Ariel hurried farther down the hall. The door at the end was open, and on the other side a mass of people were gathering, many in Disposal uniforms. So they weren’t completely unprepared then. Just mostly. She called every wind she could reach and sent them down the hall, slamming the door shut before anyone could come through. She closed her eyes in concentration and kept up the pressure on the door as the guards tried to push it open. Ariel, at her side, added her own winds.

  “You okay, Moll?” her father shouted behind her.

  “Yeah! We can hold this for a while. Are the patients out?”

  “Almost all!”

  “Remember to check for spiritual devices,” Ariel said.

  Something was hammering on the other side of the door, trying to break it down. But the iron plating added to ward off spirits also made it impervious to battering rams. If Molly and Ariel could keep the winds up, no one could reach them. Her family was clearing the rooms just behind her now.

  “Patients are clear” she heard Kiernan say as the last one followed her father out.

  “Remember the igneous lamps in the rooms,” Molly said.

  Molly and Ariel backed down the hall, getting ready to make their exit. The pounding on the door had stopped.

  “Ariel, can you check outside?” Molly asked. “They could come around the building to attack from behind.”

  Ariel flew away. Molly could hear her family banging through the rest of the sanatorium. “Almost done?” she shouted. No one answered.

  The winds she was directing at the door suddenly shifted, bending sideways into the corners. Molly refocused them, bringing them back against the door. But a moment later they slipped off again. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t keep them pressing on the door.

  The doorknob began to turn.

  “Hey!” Molly said. “Hey, I can’t hold the door! It’s—”

  The door opened a crack, and a single arm came through. A thin, pale arm with a dark-gloved hand. Molly tried to still her trembling as Arkwright stepped through.

  She pressed her winds forward, but they skipped away from him, barely ruffling his clothes. They couldn’t—or wouldn’t—touch him.

  “I thought you might return,” he said. “I hoped you might.” He took a slow step toward her. The skittering winds found the door and slammed it closed behind him.

  “Da!” Molly shouted.

  Arkwright was halfway down the hall now. Molly dropped her winds and backed away around the corner. Arkwright sped up, his legs awkward and stiff yet carrying him forward with surprising speed. “Time to return to us now, Molly. Enough of this futile struggle.”

  Suddenly Ariel was at her side again, bringing a torrent of wind to bear on Arkwright. For a moment it pressed against him, and he paused, but it slid away just as Molly’s winds had done. Arkwright moved forward.

  “Why won’t the winds touch him?” Molly shouted.

  “I do not know, Molly. Something about what he is, what he has done to himself, perhaps. But we have no time to puzzle it out now! Molly, it’s time!”

  Molly swallowed, still walking backward. “I don’t know if I can. I mean, I know it worked when I practiced before, but this is—”

  “You must, Molly! The others have almost cleared the spirits. They need but a moment more, and we need to give it to them.”

  Molly flexed her fingers. “But I—”

  “Molly, now!”

  She balled her hands into fists and focused, feeling something bubbling up inside. Fear, frustration, anger, rage—not directed at herself this time, but at the man in front of her. The man who had changed so many lives, ruined so many, all to keep himself walking on those feeble legs a little longer. The man who had captured her and stolen from her without even a hint of remorse.

  Her skin hummed and crackled, and electric blue arcs sprang up along her arms. They were hot, but they didn’t burn her. Not anymore. She extended her arms, and the lightning jumped from her fingers to Arkwright, striking him in the chest. But it didn’t seem to affect him. He strode forward, wreathed in electricity, face as expressionless as ever. And then, like the wind, the lightning veered away, unable to hold him.

  “All clear!” Molly heard her father roar from the common room.

  She turned the lightning away from Arkwright and instead poured it into the ceiling above his head. The broken lamps crackled with electricity, and the tiles burst into flames, falling down on Arkwright’s head. He stumbled and fell to his knees.

  “Go!” Ariel shouted, and Molly released the lightning as they both turned to run down the hallway, through the common room and out the hole in the back wall. Small spirits flitted through the air and along the ground with them, out onto the grassy hills, toward freedom. As Molly emerged she saw Legerdemain descending again, already scooping up the bewildered patients in complex knots of wind. Molly caught a glimpse of Theresa, shrouded in winds, and the wide-eyed look of surprise on her face almost made Molly laugh.

  Ariel wrapped herself around Molly, and they rose to follow, all sailing up into the air and toward the safety of the clouds. Gunfire rang out behind her, and Molly turned to see Disposal agents on the grass below, but nothing struck them. She didn’t see Arkwright emerge, and she turned her eyes away, back up to the sky.

  Rory was just ahead of her, wrapped in warm orange winds, arms wide, laughing like he had just heard the best joke of his life.

  We did it. He couldn’t stop us.

  Molly felt a thrill rise up in her chest, like the lightning but so much warmer, so much brighter, and she spread her own arms too. Her laughter joined Rory’s, echoing across the brightening sky.

  “I can’t believe we did it! That was aces, Moll!” Rory was pacing back and forth, clapping his hands and gesturing wildly. “When Legerdemain came down I thought he was going to flatten the bloody building. Almost did! But we did it! Went off without a hitch! That never happens to us, you know. Something always goes wrong!”

  Maybe that’s why I feel so nervous, Molly thought. Her own excitement had faded quickly as they fled the sanatorium and set down on a remote corner of the eastern shore. Now she kept her eyes on the sky, watching for ships.

  The patients were ranged across a nearby hill, most of them lying down, some clutching the earth like they might never let it go. The adrenaline from their flight seemed to have worn the edges off the medication, and they were watching her and the spirits with wary eyes. The smell of dew-soaked stone and moss was undercut by the scent of urine—one or two of the patients, confused and terrified, had peed themselves during the flight. Molly didn’t blame them.

  Theresa, meanwhile, looked even more nervous than Molly did. She sat at the crest of the hill, sharp eyes roaming the landscape. Molly walked up and sat next to her.

  “We shouldn’t stay here,” Theresa said.

  Molly nodded. “But we need to talk about what comes next.”

  “Yes. I suppose we do. What are your plans exactly?”

  “We don’t really have any yet. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

  Theresa laughed under her breath. “You really are just fifteen, aren’t you? No plans at all?”

  “I want to change things. Not keep freeing spirits here and there, but change the way people do things. Change their minds. And we don’t know how to do that, but I thought you might. You said Haviland Industries was afraid I would talk back. Well, I want to talk back.”

  Theresa sat forward, and some of the nervousness left her eyes. “So you were listening after all.”

  “Yeah. So where do we go from here?”

  Theresa was silent for a moment, her gaze far away. “The first thing we’ll need is the journal. Haviland’s journal. You’ve still got it?”

  “I have it,�
�� Molly’s father said from behind them. He pulled it out of the bag slung over his shoulder, handed it to Theresa and sat down beside her.

  Theresa leafed slowly through the journal, handling the pages delicately with her fingertips. “Good. Do you have a printing press?”

  “Umm, no,” Molly said. “But we tried that anyway. We made copies by hand and distributed them, but—”

  “You’ll need more copies, well done this time—not handmade copies but proper replicas that look like the real thing. And the journal alone isn’t going to change anyone’s mind. Everyone’s too invested in Arkwright’s version of history for that. But we need to get it into people’s hands anyway. It’s like seeding the ground. We’ll still need the rain, but first things first. Who do you know who might have a press?”

  FOURTEEN

  The Unionists were easy to find, if you knew where to look. Molly remembered they had mentioned a textiles factory on the west end of the industrial district at their last meeting, so she, her father and her brothers set up watches on the three textiles factories in that region. Soon they noticed people surreptitiously handing out pamphlets at one of the factories, and sometimes passing baskets of apples through the windows when the foremen were out having a smoke. After they had watched for a while, Kiernan and Molly followed one of the pamphleteers to a nearby market, where he bought himself a sandwich and sat to eat. They sat down at the table with him, their caps pulled low over their eyes.

  “Oh, crud, is this your table? Sorry, I—” He stood to leave, but Kiernan grabbed his sleeve to stop him. The boy was around Molly’s age and clearly nervous. Molly understood. The Unionists were almost as unwelcome as spirit sympathizers in Terra Nova. Molly raised her cap.

  “Recognize us?” she said softly.

  The boy’s eyes widened, and he sat back down. “It’s you,” he said. “’Course I recognize you. You busted me out of a factory not three months ago.”

  He looked vaguely familiar—he had bronze, pitted skin, a delicate mouth and the permanent bags under his eyes that characterized the factory workers—but she’d seen so many faces during her time working with the Unionists.

  “Glad you’re still out,” Molly said, pulling her cap back down. “We need your help. We need to meet with Bascombe.”

  “You do?” He wiped sandwich crumbs off his chin. “I’m…I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to tell anyone where we stay. They told me—”

  “It’s okay,” Kiernan said. “Can you tell us your name?”

  “It’s Abdel.”

  “Abdel, could you take a message to the leadership for us? Would that be okay?”

  “I…I think so. They haven’t said anything about that.”

  “Okay. Tell them we’ll be at the Bantam’s Rest tomorrow morning at ten. We hope they’ll be there.”

  “Sure. Okay, yeah. Bantam’s Rest, tomorrow at ten.”

  Molly nodded. “Thanks.” She and Kiernan stood up.

  “Hold up!” Abdel said. “I, um, well, I never had a chance to say thanks before. That factory was an awful place, and they don’t let you leave once you’re in. You…well, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” Kiernan said, and Molly nodded.

  They turned to leave. Molly scanned the crowd, but no one in the busy market seemed to be paying them any attention. She stuck to her brother’s side as they made their way back out of the city.

  They arrived at the Bantam’s Rest a little before ten the next morning and made their way inside. This early, only the staff was around, and Carver, the surly owner, hadn’t dragged himself out of bed yet. The cook knew them, though, and she opened the back door to invite them through. In the storage room there was a trapdoor. The cook pulled it up.

  “Don’t leave this way. Use the outer stairwell,” she told Molly as her father and brothers descended.

  “We will. Sorry to bother you so early.”

  The cook shrugged, and they waited in awkward silence as Theresa climbed slowly down. Once she was in, Molly jumped down, not bothering with the ladder. The cook kicked the door closed above them. Molly couldn’t see anything in the dark, but she heard someone crossing the room and unlocking the outside door.

  Molly’s father found the lantern and lit it, then cursed. “Almost out of oil,” he said. “We’ll need to save it for the meeting. Means waiting in the dark.” They all nodded, and he extinguished the light.

  The pub’s cellar was quiet. All they could hear were the banging pots in the kitchen and the shushing of a broom across the floor. Someone was speaking, and Molly could just barely make out the words.

  “…what she’s like now, but even when she was young she sympathized with the spirits. She spent hours with the engine, only leaving when the engineer chased her away. It was dangerous, but our father never stopped her. I think he was a little afraid of her.”

  It’s Brighid. Her voice sounded strange, crackling and hollow. She can’t really be here. It sounds like one of her speeches about me.

  “Sounds like they’re broadcasting her on the wireless now,” Theresa said. “Smart. They’d never reach most people just through the projections.”

  A radio, Molly thought. They’d never had one aboard the Legerdemain.

  The broadcast went on. “When I raised the issue with my father, about Molly’s behavior, he told me to leave her be. I did. I shouldn’t have. But I was scared, and I was young. I left the ship as soon as I was able.”

  You left the ship, sure enough, but not because you were scared. You left because you thought money and position were more important than family.

  She felt a hand on her own. Her father’s rough, thick fingers, wrapping around hers and squeezing. Molly held his hand lightly, afraid that clinging too hard might make him withdraw.

  “Try not to listen,” he whispered. “It’s all nonsense.”

  “She sounds pretty certain,” Molly said.

  “Your sister’s always been good at convincing herself she’s the victim. And I don’t think I…” Her father fell into silence, and the speech went on, outlining Molly’s failings and flaws. “She’s wrong. About all of it. But it’s not entirely her fault, I don’t think,” he said finally. She held her father’s hand tighter, and he didn’t let go.

  “You’re okay with this?” Molly asked. “I mean, with us going on helping the spirits? You kept telling me I should stop.”

  She heard the fingers of his other hand scratching at his chin. “Well, I had some time to think. Truth is, I still wish you would stop. But I don’t think you will. And it will only make things worse if I’m always arguing with you.”

  “So you gave up on convincing me?”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “Oh.” She tapped her heel against the stone floor. “You don’t have to do it though. If you don’t want to. I mean, I like having your help, but it’s up to you.”

  His hand tightened around hers. “You think that’s what I want? To send you off on your own? I just—”

  “Footsteps,” Rory said. “On the stairs outside.”

  The doorknob rattled just as Kiernan lit the lantern again, and they all blinked against the sudden light as the outside door opened. Bascombe stepped through and closed the door behind him. He wore the same ragged vest as before, but his coat was gone. His face looked more shadowed than Molly remembered.

  “Only you?” Molly’s father said, dropping her hand.

  “Too dangerous to travel in groups now,” Bascombe said. He nodded to them all, his eyes settling on Theresa. “Who is this?”

  “Theresa Walker,” she said.

  “I know your face,” Bascombe said, one hand still on the door. “I’ve heard your name.”

  “You have. I spent years dismantling your cause, back when I worked for Arkwright.”

  Bascombe’s face darkened. “Yes, I remember. Your campaign against us did more damage to the union cause than even the police crackdowns.”

  “That’s exactly what it was meant to do,” Theresa said
.

  “Do you have any idea how many people, how many children—” he started, then bit off his words. “No. This is not the time for that.” He looked to Molly. “You trust this woman?”

  “We met in the Twillingate Sanatorium. She’s no friend to Haviland Industries now.”

  Bascombe glowered at her again but nodded once. “Okay. Did you call me to begin our work together again? In your absence, things have only gotten worse for the workers.”

  “We’ve actually come to ask you for something,” Molly’s father said. “The pamphlets you distribute. Do you have your own printing press for those?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Molly’s father held up the journal. “We need to make copies of this.”

  Bascombe came forward and took the book. He examined the cover but didn’t open it. “This is the journal you say is Haviland’s?” Molly’s father nodded. “Didn’t you already distribute this?”

  “We need to do it properly. Printed, bound,” Theresa said.

  “All official like,” Rory added.

  Bascombe sighed and handed the journal back. “Look, we have common enemies, but don’t mistake that for a common cause.” He looked around at them. “I know you. Despite my better judgment, I even like you. But I am no friend of the spirits. I simply consider a few rogue spirits an acceptable price to pay to see people freed from an unjust system.”

  There was silence in the room. Molly waited for her father to speak, but he simply stared down at the journal. She turned to Theresa, but Theresa was watching her, and she gestured for Molly to say something. Molly swallowed.

  What was it Rory said? The new Molly, who speaks and convinces?

  “I know you don’t believe us,” Molly said. “And I doubt I’ll change your mind today. But what makes more sense to you? That every single spirit is wicked and intends us harm? Or that the same unjust system that can lock children in a factory until they’re too sick to work might do the same thing to spirits? You already know you can’t trust Haviland Industries and the other manufacturers. Why would you take their word on the spirits?”

  “Because they’ve hurt people I know,” Bascombe said softly. “I don’t need anyone else’s word on it.”