Book of the Just

by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

  Ngara sighed. “I opened the doors for you to see what was and what is and what will be.”

  “Are you saying I’m going to turn into my father?” Mouse felt the power in her flare with a flash of anger.

  “I say nothing. The truth is in the dream.”

  Angelo was waiting with the other men around the fire pit where the Martu shared their food and their stories. Savory scents of roasting lizard meat and roots greeted the women as they drove in from the surrounding darkness.

  “How was it?” Angelo asked as he wrapped his arms around Mouse.

  “Interesting,” she replied, but the children were already tugging at her shirt, begging her to come dance with them to celebrate her initiation. Mouse bathed in the firelight and the warmth of inclusion. Her unnatural abilities and oddness had kept others at a distance during her childhood. Later, the knowledge of what she was—her father’s daughter, an immortal, hunted prey—had kept her on the run and isolated. Angelo’s love had driven away much of Mouse’s loneliness, but being part of a community satisfied a hunger for belonging that was too big for one person to fill.

  As she spun with the children around the fire, their feet keeping time with the clack of the rhythm sticks and the shifting vibrations of the didgeridoo, Mouse stole a glance at Ngara. The old woman seemed as she always had. She caught Mouse’s eye and smiled, her face lit with an easy delight.

  By the time Angelo slipped his hand in Mouse’s and pulled her away from the fire toward the little shed that served as their home among the Martu, the chants of welcome, Ngara’s ease, and the children’s joy had driven away Mouse’s worry about the Dreaming and what it meant. But when she told Angelo about her first vision, the flutters of foreboding came back.

  “It wasn’t real,” she said, as much to herself as to Angelo. She pushed against the reawakened disquiet. “The music and the paint and whatever that herb was, it all played against my mind. Made me vulnerable.”

  “You, vulnerable? To what?” Angelo asked.

  “What’s the one thing that’s been driving me all my life? My fear that I’d end up like my father. It’s no wonder that’s what my mind showed me.”

  She was working hard to believe her own explanation and to dismiss the magic she’d felt in the moment. It was easy to do while standing in the clean, electric light, sheltered in the tidy, boxed-off shed. But the nerves pricking at the back of her neck pestered Mouse with the truth of what had happened out in the wild of the outback.

  “It was all in my mind,” she said.

  “None of that matters, though, does it?” Angelo asked. “Ngara knows who you are—there’s no way we can stay.”

  “Why not? She’s known all along that I was something . . . odd. So nothing’s really different, is it?” Mouse could hear the lie in her voice. She could tell from his face that Angelo had heard it, too. “Well, she seemed fine tonight. Let’s just wait and see how it goes.”

  “That’s the hundredth time you’ve said ‘Let’s wait’ when I’ve mentioned leaving. What’s—”

  “Actually, it’s only the eighth,” she said playfully as she lay back on the bed. “The first time was—”

  He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it at her. “Quit showing off and stop dodging the question. Why don’t you want to leave?”

  They had come to Australia to hide—from her actual father and from Angelo’s spiritual one, Bishop Sebastian. They’d spent nearly a year hopping from one country to another, trying to hide their trail. As hard as it had been on her, it had taken an even greater toll on Angelo. Mouse had seen the strain on his face morning and night. No routines. Never normal. Always afraid. When they fled Israel after she’d healed from what her father had done to her at Megiddo, Mouse had thought she and Angelo could be a home for each other, even on the run, but it was hard to make a home in the back of a bus, or on a train, or in some rent-by-the-hour motel at the end of a dark alley.

  About a year ago, Mouse had known she had to do something. Angelo was wearing out. She needed to find someplace off the grid where they could settle for a few weeks, maybe even months, to let Angelo rest. She’d brought them to the outback, away from everything, and then pushed them even deeper into the desert, where they’d stumbled across a small Martu community at the borders of Karlamilyi Park. Mouse and Angelo had expected to stay only a few days and then move on, but the Martu people had taken them in as if they’d been stray dogs wandering in from the desert. They fed them, gave them a home, and made them part of the community. Mouse worked at the clinic helping the ngangkari, the native healers, tend the sick and elderly. Angelo helped with the endless labor it took to survive in the desert, constantly hunting food or water. It had been a blessing, a type of sanctuary Mouse had never thought to find.

  And she didn’t want to leave.

  “I like it here,” she said. “We’re safe.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “As safe as anywhere.”

  “You told me that the only safe place was on the run. What’s changed?”

  She couldn’t tell him that he was what had changed. At first, having him running with her had made everything easier. She had someone else to keep watch while she slept, someone to help her strategize the next move, someone to talk to. Someone to love.

  But that last had made it harder, too. She couldn’t stand seeing his eyes dark, watching all of his curiosity and wonder at the world turn into fearful scrutiny and suspicion. Everyone was a potential threat, an agent of Bishop Sebastian’s Novus Rishi or a puppet controlled by her father. Angelo had become obsessed with her father—she supposed it was born from seeing what he had done to Mouse at Megiddo. Enraged by her empathy, her father had unraveled her like a yarn doll and left her, not to die, but dead already. Dead in a way that she had never really believed possible for an immortal. Angelo had sat beside her broken, bloodless corpse for three days, refusing to mourn. His faith had called her back.

  Ever since, he talked constantly of finding a way to protect them. A year ago, he had started having bad dreams and had grown quick-tempered in his exhaustion. That was when Mouse knew she needed to find someplace where they could at least pretend that life was stable and safe, somewhere they could play at being normal.

  And he had gotten better since they’d settled in the shed out in the middle of nowhere with people who accepted them as they were. He wasn’t quite the playful, ever-hopeful Angelo he had been, but Mouse wasn’t ready to give up the idea that with a little more rest he could be—that time could undo the taint Mouse’s life had left on him.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” he asked her now. “You think I can’t handle it on the run.”

  “It’s just . . . I like how we are here, Angelo. It feels like a real life—simple, but happy. Normal. I’ve never had that.” She sat up with a smile and pulled him down onto the bed with her. “Don’t you like how we are here?” She slipped her leg into the gap between his.

  “I like you wherever we are.” He bent down to kiss her. “I just want us to be safe. And I don’t want you making a decision that puts us at risk because you think I’m too weak to handle it. I know I’m not as good at running as you are, but you’ve had lots more experience than I have.”

  “Are you calling me old?”

  “If the poulaine fits.” He ran his finger along the painted patterns on her face and down her neck. “What are these?”

  “Ngara painted them. They’re part of the ceremony.”

  “From the Dreaming?” His fingers kept playing along the lines and swirls, making her skin quiver, her body moving to meet his.

  “Some from the one I called up. Others belong to the dream they gave me.”

  “They gave you a dream?” Angelo lowered his mouth to kiss the bare skin between the patterns, a creamy contrast to the black and white paint.

  “About the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades,” she said, her voice soft.

  “Do these patterns run over your whole body?”

 
Mouse laughed. “Yes, they do. See?” She pulled her shirt over her head, exposing the painted Dreaming that crisscrossed her chest and abdomen. “They even go around to the back.” She turned and stretched out across the bed. Angelo traced the set of zigzagged stripes along her shoulder blades, and Mouse moaned softly.

  “Tell me about these Seven Sisters,” he said.

  As with her own Dreaming, the story lost some of the magic in the retelling—partially because they were in a metal shed on a squeaky bed and not under the stars. But also because Mouse wanted it that way. If she accepted truth in the dream of the Seven Sisters, she had to accept the truth in her own dream as well.

  She told Angelo about her second vision but kept her voice soft with seduction and her focus on his hands as they trailed along her skin. When she explained what Ngara said about how the star descending at the end was meant to show Mouse where to find the Sisters’ secret, Angelo’s hands stilled.

  “Ngara thinks there’s something in that cave that can help us?” he asked.

  “Help us get revenge. You have someone in mind?” Mouse asked, teasing.

  But Angelo’s mood had shifted. “I don’t care what it’s meant for, Mouse. If there’s a chance there’s something in that cave to help protect us—something we can use against your father—”

  “Or yours.” Mouse pushed herself up.

  “They’re not the same. The Bishop and his group are powerful, but they’re only human. The only resources they have are money and influence and—”

  “Eyes and ears everywhere.”

  “As long as we stay off the grid, they probably aren’t going to find us. What’s stopping your father?”

  Mouse knew he was right. Bishop Sebastian and the Novus Rishi were driven by an obsession to fight evil, a battle they understood to be real and immediate, and one they were prepared to win at any cost. They wanted Mouse to help them do it—whether she wanted to be an Armageddon warrior or not. But the Novus Rishi were merely flesh and blood. Staying ahead of them was only difficult, not impossible. She couldn’t say the same about her father. If he decided he wanted Mouse, he could take her any time, in any place, and there was little she or Angelo could do to stop it.

  “We don’t even know there’s anything out in that cave, Angelo. It’s just a story an old woman told around a campfire.”

  “You said you saw the stars move.”

  Mouse looked away.

  “Do you think it was just a story?” he pressed.

  She wanted to say yes. She wanted to laugh at all of it—her dream, their story. She didn’t want any of it to matter. Because she didn’t want anything to change. But she couldn’t silence the caterwaul of warning—her seven-hundred-year-old instinct told her that something was coming.

  “Ngara said it was for revenge,” Mouse said sadly. “I don’t want revenge. Do you?”

  When he finally answered, there was a steeliness in Angelo’s voice. “I’ll do anything to keep us safe.”

  “Seeking vengeance isn’t—”

  “Even if it was meant for revenge, Mouse, that doesn’t mean we have to use it that way,” he said. “Besides, the story you just told me suggests that maybe this secret the Sisters are giving you is the same thing they used to get rid of a predator. I’d sure love to have something that could do that, wouldn’t you? Something we could use to shake off the people hunting us?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then let’s go find it.”

  “We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  “We’ll figure it out. We’re good at this stuff. And I’m tired of just waiting for the next crisis—I want to do something to be ready.”

  Mouse chewed at her lip.

  “It’ll be fun, anyway,” he said, his tone lighter with the assurance that he’d won her over. “Going on a quest. In a cave.”

  “In the dark. With bugs.”

  “Come on, where’s my adventurous Mouse? My mighty—”

  “Don’t you do it!” she half shouted, half laughed, as she threw a pillow at him. He caught it and tossed it back at her. She pulled it to her chest and sighed. “Okay. We’ll go tomorrow.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. “Now let’s get back to finding out where those patterns go,” he said, tugging at the top of her shorts.

  Mouse stilled his hand. “How about we wash them off instead? They itch.”

  The truth was she wanted to be free of the dreams, as if pretending they hadn’t happened would silence the foreboding.

  “I’ll see if there’s any water,” Angelo said with a twinkle in his eye. The outstation had an old cattle bore where they could draw water, though the quantity and quality depended on how long it had been since the rainy season.

  He came back a few minutes later to find Mouse pacing. “I warmed it at the fire,” he said, putting the bucket down and dipping a rag in the water.

  “It smells good.” Mouse unfastened her shorts, let them fall, and then kicked them over to where her shirt lay crumpled on the bed. “Desert oak needles, right?” They were floating in the warm water and sending up a musky, woodsy scent.

  “You’re showing off again,” he said.

  She took the rag from him and squeezed the water over her leg, making rivers of gray as the black and white streaks melted into each other. The murky water ran onto the floor and disappeared between the wood slats. While she wiped away the pictures, Mouse’s perfect memory played out the ceremony in detail, her mind trying again to make sense of it all.

  “Stop worrying,” Angelo said softly as he took the rag and ran it across her back. He lifted her hair and let the warm water trickle over her neck. “That’s the last of it. You’re clean.”

  In her mind, Mouse had worked her way back to the moment in her dream when she had become her father. She felt the flare of anger again. No matter what Ngara thought, no matter what truth was in the dream, no matter what happened, Mouse would never let herself be like her father.

  She turned and pulled Angelo’s face down to hers, her kiss filled with urgency, not just for passion but escape. Mouse’s mind normally worked on countless levels at the same time—a buzz of problem solving, floods of faces and words, a salvo of sounds and smells all accosting her at the same time. Even now, she could hear the didgeridoo still rattling by the fire at the heart of the outstation. A dog had leaned up against the side of the shed and was scratching at fleas. A camel off in the far distance brayed, and Angelo’s heart thrummed against hers. She was used to her mind being so full, but sometimes it became too much. Like now. She needed the images from the dreams to go away. She needed to hold fast to the happiness of life here in this moment.

  Angelo had an uncanny knack for driving out all that mental noise. It was quiet with him. Calm. He knew what Mouse wanted, and he gave it to her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, her skin still wet, and pulled her down to the bed.

  Later, when Angelo had gone to sleep, Mouse lay in the silence, letting her fingers play along her chest. The paint was gone, but she could feel the patterns on her skin as if they were still there, undulating and warm to the touch. As she traced the pictures, she let her mind rest in the fog of half-sleep. She was back atop Megiddo, her father looking down on her as she died. He was laughing. The stars were laughing behind him. And then he was telling her something. In her memory-dream, she would always see his mouth moving, but she could never hear his words.

  Until tonight.

  Mouse sat up, suddenly awake. Ngara was right. The truth was in the dream.

  There is good news, Mouse could hear her father saying in her mind, the memory clear now. It seems I finally have what I want. And you have a brother.

  As she shivered with the excitement of remembering and the fear of knowing, Mouse put her hand on Angelo’s shoulder to wake him. But then her mind tossed all the pieces into place at once. Angelo would understand how dangerous this was—Armageddon-level dangerous. He would call Bishop Sebastian. Bishop Sebastian would want Mo
use more than ever. He saw her only as a weapon, a weapon he meant to use against her father. Mouse didn’t want to be used as a weapon.

  She pulled her hand back. She couldn’t tell Angelo about her brother until she had a plan. The guilt of keeping yet another secret from him lodged like a brick in her chest. She rolled away from him and found herself face-to-face with a little lizard that clung to the side of the crate-turned-bedside-table. The lizard blinked slowly at her in the glow of the camp lantern.

  “I have a brother,” Mouse whispered to the little lizard. Despite her worry at what it all meant, the words spread like sunshine through her. She wasn’t alone in the world anymore. She had a brother, someone just like her.

  Mouse closed her eyes and with a soft, happy sigh drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A wash of wildflowers spilled out over the ridge, the purples too soft and yellows too inviting for the harsh outback. But it wasn’t the sudden beauty that made Mouse sigh. It was the dozens of dead camels scattered across the valley, their bloated bellies rising like islands among the sea of flowers.

  “I wish they wouldn’t kill them.”

  “The camels don’t belong here,” Angelo said. He’d gone out with the Martu men once for a culling, chasing down the herds, guns popping and echoing against the hills as the beasts toppled into the dust. The camels were invasive, brought in by white colonists a century ago, and killing them was an act of survival and stewardship for the Martu. Not for Angelo, though. He’d stayed home at the next slaughter.

  “We don’t belong here either,” Mouse tossed back.

  “But we’re not feral.”

  Mouse turned to look at him, her eyebrow raised. Her hair was matted with sweat and tangled by the wind, and she had smears of red desert dirt on her face. They’d driven an hour from the outstation and then left the jeep miles back at the end of the rutted path. Angelo looked just as wild as she did.

  He laughed. “Well, at least we don’t eat everything in sight.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. “And we aren’t likely to fall into the watering hole, die, and contaminate the only drinking water for miles.”