by Sean Platt
“I thought you said something about boots,” the girl told her.
“I didn’t.”
“I don’t have any boots.”
“That’s okay,” Clara said, “because I didn’t ask for them.”
“And I especially don’t have man’s boots.”
Clara looked at the girl again, this time taking her in from head to toe. She was wearing a fine blue dress — the kind of thing Clara’s mother used to make her wear for fancy balls, back in Heaven’s Veil. A strange thing for a ride in an apocalyptic ark. Clara fought an urge to take their conversation sideways, to ask where the girl had been when the water started rising.
She was watching Clara right back, as if in expectation. Her skin was almost as dark as Ella’s, but her eyes were emerald green. It was a curious look, and Clara found herself spellbound.
“You heard me say something about men’s boots?”
“Or a man in boots,” the girl answered.
Clara turned in the opposite direction, finding the area behind her still empty. Some of the Lightborn, once they’d found their way out of the ship’s pitch-black underbelly, had been antsy. Logan had nodded to Clara knowingly (deferring to her as the group’s new leader, perhaps) and risen to take them away, leading them like a chaperone. Clara had felt the group’s anxiety but didn’t want to go along. And now, looking at the green-eyed girl, she wondered if there’d been a reason. Maybe she’d heard her the way the girl seemed to have heard Clara’s thoughts about the stranger with his scuffed brown boots, and she’d stuck around to have this very discussion.
“I might have been mumbling,” Clara lied. She’d been silent, but her mind had been active — yawning back to a vision of the man by the campfire, wondering if what he’d seemed to be telling them all was true. “What else did I say?”
“Dunno.” The girl wrinkled her nose. “Did you say you went camping or something?”
“You don’t know if I said it or not?”
Again the girl shrugged. Perhaps the oddity was dawning on her. Clara tried to sympathize but couldn’t. Ever since she’d been inside her mother, she’d heard the thoughts and feelings of others. She didn’t know what it was like to suddenly waken to a latent ability.
Or more accurately, being woken to one. By Clara’s mere presence, if she had to guess.
The girl seemed uncomfortable, probably trying to decide how she could think Clara had spoken without any details about what she’d said. But mental and spoken communication weren’t the same. When speaking mind to mind, answers occasionally came before the questions. You sometimes smelled aromas before knowing their source.
Clara turned herself around, rotating without standing. Once fully facing the girl — the two of them nearly knee to knee on shoddy wooden benches as if preparing for a game of patty-cake — Clara smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Zoe.”
“And of course you already know mine.”
“Clara.” The girl’s face wrinkled again as she tried to recall if Clara’s name had been said aloud before her friends had left to go exploring.
“That’s right. Do you want to play a game?”
“My brother has Go Fish,” Zoe said.
“Not like this. It’s a pretend game.”
“Okay.”
“We close our eyes and pretend we’re somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. This ship is smelly.”
Zoe laughed. “Okay.”
“What kind of a place do you want to imagine?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about if we pretend we’re camping? You said camping.”
“Okay.” Zoe reached for a pair of long metal rods lying along one wall, apparently as leftovers from construction that never existed. “These can be our hot dog sticks.”
“No, we don’t do it like that.”
Zoe held the rods then set them slowly back down. “Then how?”
“We close our eyes.” Clara closed hers, to demonstrate.
“Okay. Now what?”
“Now we take turns filling it up.”
Clara looked around inside her mind, watching the scene come into being like a 3-D model rendered. It was the same campsite she and the Lightborn had visited with the man in boots, but this time he hadn’t created the space. This time, Zoe was doing it.
“How do we fill it up?”
“Just put something there. In your imagination.”
A pink dinosaur, human sized and standing on two legs, more cute than menacing, popped into existence in a small green hat.
“Nice. I like his hat,” Clara said.
When Zoe said nothing, Clara opened her eyes. Zoe was staring at her.
“Whose hat?”
“Close your eyes,” Clara said.
After a second, Zoe did. Then Clara did the same.
“My turn.”
Clara pictured a dwarf with a nose so big he could barely hold it up. The nose was bright red and dripping.
Zoe laughed.
“What?”
“I just imagined something else. A little guy with a big nose.”
“Hey! It’s supposed to be my turn.”
“Sorry,” Zoe said.
Clara turned the imaginary dwarf into a troll. It growled, and leaped. Zoe gave a tiny shriek, and when Clara opened her eyes this time, Zoe gave a tiny embarrassed laugh.
“Something just kind of freaked me out.”
“In your own imagination?”
Zoe looked slightly away, frowning. The answer, from Zoe’s perspective, was probably Sort of. Other people’s thoughts always struck Clara as obviously foreign no matter how well they meshed with her own. Each thought had an accent, and a discerning mental ear couldn’t help but gather the accents of others. She knew something was strange but had no frame of reference.
But children, unlike adults, had malleable perspective. That’s the whole reason Clara had been sure, once they were aboard the ships, that this was possible.
Adults had to be convinced. Their minds, through the passage of years, set like concrete.
But not children. Children could still convince themselves to believe.
“It was the troll, wasn’t it?” Clara asked.
Zoe nodded without thinking then stopped to wonder why she was nodding.
“Close your eyes, Zoe. I want to show you something.”
Clara focused.
“What just popped up around the campsite, Zoe?”
“Dunno.”
“I think you know. Look behind the pile of logs.”
Zoe laughed again. “What are you doing here?” she said to something that didn’t exist.
“What do you see, Zoe?”
“It’s a pig. Why did I think of a pig around a campfire?”
Clara inserted a clown.
“Probably the same reason you’d think of a clown.” Then Clara added two elephants, a spotted leopard, and a banana tree. “Or those elephants. Or the leopard. Or even that banana tree over by the pond.”
When Zoe looked over, she seemed almost ready to run. This playmate was no fun after all. This playmate, Zoe seemed to have decided, could do black magic.
So Clara sent her emotional mind toward the girl’s, cupping it in a nonphysical palm. Her mind touched Zoe’s, and second by second the girl began to relax. It was like hypnosis. It wasn’t easy, coming psychically alive for the first time.
“What’s my mom’s name, Zoe?”
“L … Lila.”
“What about my dad?”
“R … ” But then rather than finishing the name, Zoe’s hand went over her mouth and she said, “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“He … ”
Clara slowly opened her mind, sending out only what Zoe needed to know. She’d picked up on the fact that Clara’s dad was dead and that had been expected, but Clara hadn’t realized Zoe would know her father’s misdeeds as well — knowledge that Clara could see on Zoe’s fac
e even now, as the girl groped for proper expression.
Clara took Zoe’s hands in hers, feeling rattled. She’d had the feeling that the Lightborn would be able to rouse the dormant minds of non-Lightborn children since before the big waves — that they’d be able to “light up the connections,” to use the cowboy’s expression. But she hadn’t realized how smoothly it would happen. Zoe’s mind, as Clara peered inside, was wide open. And through that mind, Clara could see Zoe’s brother’s. And her brother’s friend. And the kids that friend had met on the vessel, all of whom were a level up, above them now.
In Clara’s mind, connections lit like Christmas bulbs coming alive.
“What’s happening?” Zoe asked.
And behind that first question, Clara heard a hundred others.
Clara wasn’t entirely sure. So she gave the only answer she had.
“What no one expected.”
CHAPTER 45
For the first few days, as the food held out — shrink-wrapped dry goods like crackers and preserved meat sticks, plus bottled water and juices — Lila occupied herself by watching the tablet, staying amused with its stored media, taking a strange and savage pleasure in knowing they had no connection to get more media, and that for all they knew, they were the planet’s only survivors and that no media would ever be made by humans again.
She watched reruns of Piper’s favorite old show, which just so happened to be her late mother’s favorite old show. Friends. It had been old when the world ended the first time, when humanity learned it wasn’t alone. And it seemed ancient now — memories of a day gone by when people had no more pressing concern than getting to the coffee shop to sit around on an orange couch, worrying about their ongoing relationship issues.
Lila watched the show, numb, playing the tablet too loud, without using the headphones she’d found in one of the compartments. Hours passed.
For the next few days, after the dying satisfaction of watching mindless entertainment had lost its edge, Lila watched the waterline, occasionally popping the sub’s top to scan the horizon. Kindred told her to be careful, but that was a laugh; if there were humans left, they’d have better things to do than concern themselves with one and a half rebellious viceroys. And if there were still Astrals? Well, there would be worse things, after days in an endless ocean, than getting shot to bits.
Lila’s father told her to watch for land if she had to go topside. But that was a laugh.
Piper said nothing. She’d kept to herself since the electrical equipment had come inexplicably back online — divorced, it seemed, from the power that should have come from the engines. None of them were mechanics or engineers, but Lila knew that something was fishy with the sub and that they were all pretending it wasn’t so they wouldn’t break the spell, causing ruin. And since that time — since that little bit of sub-related magic — Piper had been strange. Almost secretive. She woke some nights screaming, clutching a small purse she’d found — a purse she wouldn’t let anyone else touch. And Piper would say that she remembered nothing of the dreams. And she’d look at Lila with wide eyes and repeat the same: It’s nothing. I don’t remember why I was scared, only that I had a bad dream.
But Piper looked at Lila as if she thought Lila knew something. As if whatever she knew, Piper didn’t want her to know. So she kept to herself more and more, clutching her purse, peering inside it, obsessing over the sub’s broken navigation, seeming to pretend that she knew a way to go even if there was no way she could. There was no GPS. Only a nonsense heading. A place toward which Piper kept them pointed, without notes or calculations.
After five days, the food ran out.
After seven, Lila remembered that Peers was an enemy. But she forgot why, exactly. There’d been a time in which she’d had all sorts of problems with the man. She’d considered stabbing him once she found something sharp — that thought had come on day two. But she hadn’t killed him and couldn’t remember why. There was something between them, so for the sixth and seventh days she sat across the sub and stared until he looked away, over and over again. And when he went topside to look futilely for land as Piper tweaked the controls, mumbling to herself, Lila considered following him up and shoving him overboard. There must still be sharks in the ocean. She could cut him before knocking him into the water. Let Peers bleed and the predators come.
On the ninth day, Lila found herself forgetting her own daughter. Worse: She remembered that daughter suddenly one day and realized that not only had she forgotten Cora but that she’d been forgetting her for days now. But Cora might still be alive. Cora might not have been killed by …
??
Or she might not have perished in the …
??
Except that her daughter’s name wasn’t Cora, it was Clara. Clara. Clara. Clara. Lila repeated it over and over like a chant.
“Lila. You look like shit.”
Lila’s father, talking to her, looking a whole lot like shit himself. It took her a long time to remember why there were two of him, and once she remembered that, she couldn’t recall the circumstances that had created the second. Were they twins? Was the other her uncle?
“Are you okay? How’s your … your head?”
Lila was annoyed by the question. She hadn’t hit her head. But then she realized why her father was asking, and it wasn’t about Lila at all. His head wasn’t all that well, and he seemed to be seeking company in some sort of mental misery.
“Why?” she asked him.
“Have you been having dreams?”
“Why?”
“I’ve been thinking about when you were a kid. Do you remember that?”
Of course she didn’t. What a stupid question.
“Do you remember that, Lila?”
And he, the great Meyer Dempsey, who might be a twin, didn’t remember either. At least that’s what Lila thought.
“Do you remember what it was like, growing up in Colorado?”
Had Lila grown up in Colorado? She thought it had been somewhere else.
The questions were too hard. Lila went to lie in her bunk. She fell asleep, and dreamed of eight people, crossing the desert.
CHAPTER 46
Carl’s arm snapped out as if it were spring loaded. Without opening his eyes, he wrapped his hand around the wrist of someone much smaller than him. Someone whose arm — if they were doing what he thought they might be — he could break like a twig.
“Carl! Jesus! You scared me!”
Only then did Carl open his eyes. Lawrence fell a half step back but came up tight in Carl’s grip and stopped.
“What you doing, Lawrence?”
“I just wanted to check the maps.”
Carl felt fully awake. For the past two weeks, he’d been sleeping right where he was, below the wheel on the big ship’s bridge. He’d never figured out how to operate the freighter, but that was okay. The engines had come on without him touching a goddamned thing, and now turning the wheel seemed to be the only thing required. Any fool could turn a wheel. Never mind all the other things that should go into navigating an ocean vessel.
“Ain’t no point,” Carl said, “unless you figured out how to read the stars.”
“I was just curious where we were.”
“Don’t matter where we are.” Carl’s upper back was still slouched against the console where he’d been dozing when Lawrence made the mistake of trying to steer. “We’re in water.”
“I think we’ve been going north,” Lawrence said.
“Yeah. To more water.”
“I can only guess at how fast the engines are turning.” He looked around, then said in a half whisper. “Carl, nobody’s watching them.”
Carl let go of Lawrence’s wrist. “Guess the gas tank is still full. Don’t need watching.”
This had come up before. But Carl was a practical man, and it was Carl — not these others — who’d decided to try and steal a big ship. It was also Carl who’d decided to pull all the other poor suckers from their shit
ty little shuttle-target boats. If the engine situation wasn’t broke, Carl felt no pressure to fix it.
Lawrence’s eyes flitted around as if the man felt guilty. Then, seeing that they were alone, he sat. Carl slowly stood, shaking his head clean of cobwebs (couldn’t get them all; shit was foggier all the time) and sat as well. He put one hand on the wheel — guiding their ship on its trip to nowhere made him feel better.
“Everyone is worried,” Lawrence said.
“’Bout what? There’s food enough. And it’s raining plenty.”
“The food is fine.”
“What, then?”
“You, frankly.”
Carl turned another hard stare on Lawrence. The man didn’t flinch, and finally Carl said, “I’m fine.”
“My wife keeps dreaming about you.”
“That’s your problem.”
“Billy, too. And Wendy. It’s the same dream, Carl.”
“Good the fuck for them.”
“You’re in the desert.”
Carl looked out across the endless water. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”
“And you’re with other people. Seven others. One is a kid. And one of them … ” His face twisted, trying to articulate. “It’s like two of them are kind of one person.”
“Fascinating.”
“None of this sounds familiar to you?”
Carl turned back to the water. The answer was that, yes, it sounded crazy familiar. But these were crazy times, and the last thing this little floating commune needed after two weeks with no hope of an end was rumor or superstition. Those kinds of things, given the way they’d all been lately, could lead to panic. Or worse.
“No.”
“But there’s more. Roman Sands. Do you remember Roman Sands?”
“’Course.”
“Where was St. Augustine’s? Can you tell me?”
Carl’s lip curled. He should know, but didn’t.
“Fuck if I know.”
“Carl, that’s where my son was christened. Before the Astrals came, it’s where I was married. People came from all over the world to see us there, and now I can’t remember where it was or what it looked like.”