“Officially, the point is terrorism, not magic,” Roche said. “Now, do you want to talk to Caro?”
No, Will thought. “All right.”
Minutes later, he was seated across from his ex-wife in one of the six-by-six booths the Wendover staff had dubbed “squirrel cages,” watching a marshal cuff her to the table. A screen on the far wall offered a view of the courtroom; a keypad on the desk let her text her defense attorney during proceedings. No need for that now, though—a lawyer was present.
The newest raw spot on her scalp was oozing.
Caroline the Alchemite bore little resemblance to the Caro who had rappelled from the roof of a student residence tower to the deck of Will’s apartment when they were undergraduates; the woman who’d climbed K2 without oxygen on her twentieth birthday. The woman who had shared his bed and dreams, who’d worked two jobs while he attended grad school, who’d soothed their son’s night terrors while writing her bioethics thesis was gone.
These days, Sahara was first in her thoughts. “What did that bastard do to the Goddess?”
“Want me to find out how she’s doing?”
“Still the negotiator, William? I’d have to do something for you, right?”
Never fight the subject on her own terms. Will produced a file, sliding out two news clippings: an account of an Alchemite’s death in Wichita, first. Just after Sahara’s arrest, her followers had taken to wearing orange jumpers similar to prisoners’ uniforms. It made them easy to spot; this one had been beaten to death in his home, which had then been looted—the killers, naturally, were after chantments.
The second clipping was about a woman who’d had the bad fortune to resemble Sahara: she had been drawn and quartered in Bogotá. He let Caro read, saw her blanch. She passed the pages to her lawyer with a shaking hand.
“Caroline, tell me where Ellie and Carson are. Whoever you’ve left them with, she isn’t safe; she can’t protect them.”
She shook her head.
“Sahara can’t watch out for her flock. The army’s chipping away at your leadership.…”
“We’re coming out even there,” she muttered. It was true. Hundreds of soldiers had vanished in the skirmishes of the past six months. A few had been killed; when desperate, the Alchemites powered their chantments by drawing the life out of the people they were fighting—and any unfortunate bystanders. Vamping, they called it.
Will fanned three last pages out in front of her. “You weren’t the only mother in the cult, Caro.”
“I am the Prima of Wind, Worker of Miracles,” she hissed. “I am soft air washing away the sins of the technofilth—”
Her gaze fell on the pages.
It was the biggest weapon he had, a police report detailing the fate of a minor Alchemite and her three children. He had not spared her the photos. Caro let out a long keening breath. For the first time since her arrest, she was rattled.
“Caroline?”
Tears ran down her face, and Will felt a shred of hope. She tried to pray, stuttered, looked at the images of the bodies. Then her expression closed, shock bleeding out, hate brimming in. The fleeting glimpse of his kids’ mother was gone.
She launched herself across the table, clawing at him with her free hand.
Will stood his ground. A gust of power from his enchanted ring heaved Caro back. Her arm jerked against the restraint of the handcuff and she teetered, pinned and off balance. Will had to fight not to slump. Magic was tiring; it would have taken less energy to step out of reach.
“Ellie and Carson, Caro. They’re not safe out there.”
“Filthwitch puppet,” she bellowed, regaining her feet. “I’ll cut their throats myself before I see them back with you!”
Will’s hand flew to his gut, as if he’d been punched. “We’re done, then,” he heard himself say. Abandoning the papers, he walked out.
Roche had been watching through the glass. “You okay?”
“Did you hear her?” It was sinking in; the army couldn’t get the kids back. He’d been wasting his time.
“Will,” Roche said. “Snap out of it. I’ll get the team on it, work up a new strategy. Try drugs on her, maybe.”
Cut their throats myself …
“She’s locked up; she can’t harm anyone. Will, you listening?”
“I’m okay.” He forced his numb lips into a smile.
“Trial starts again in five.”
“Five.” Six months, the trail cold, and anything could be happening to Carson and Ellie. They should be in school.…
“Where are you going?”
“I need a protein shake. The ring.”
“Of course.”
“Arthur,” he said. “I know you’re trying. Thank you.”
“See you in there.” Roche almost saluted, then turned the gesture into a weak wave before walking away.
Will took a last look through the one-way mirror of the squirrel cage, at the woman who had been his wife.
“She’s bleeding,” he said to the marshal on duty. “Can you get her treated?”
“Of course, sir.”
He stumbled across the base to the officers’ lounge, a dimly lit bar with big flat-screen TVs. Off-duty pilots crammed the place, waiting for more trial coverage.
Near the bar sat a fridge filled with protein shakes.
As Will opened the fridge, the magic gate formed silently beside him. He could write a note, explain his departure. He could send a text message and be gone before Arthur received it.
He fingered the shakes. He thought of stealing one, bearing something from the old world into whatever lay beyond the magical gate. He examined the plastic bottle, the stamped red expiration dates, the foil seal.… This faltering world of technology had been such a marvel. Would the land of the fairies have refrigeration, or hot running water? It seemed unlikely.
Closing the fridge, he slipped through the bramble-framed magical gate.
Nobody saw him go.
CHAPTER TWO
MORNING ARRIVED IN INDIGO Springs, but it did not bring the dawn.
The shattered remains of Astrid Lethewood’s hometown rested beneath a dense thicket of magically contaminated forest. Earthquake-tumbled buildings lay in pieces in the understory, the concrete rubble interspersed with steel beams, plastic refuse, and the knotted roots of overgrown cedar and spruce.
Though daylight could not penetrate the matted canopy overhead, it wasn’t dark: the glow of raw magic suffused everything it contaminated. The massive trunks of the alchemized trees cast a lambent blue-white light. Their glimmering, fast-growing roots eroded ancient bedrock and cement building foundations with impartial ruthlessness. Blades of grass and seed cones shone; motes of dust hung in the air, winking like stars.
The trees had crushed cars and shoved whole homes aside as they shot upward, like a thousand fairy-tale beanstalks … and then died. Even magical plants needed sunshine, and most of the affected trees had lost the race to the sky. Much of the luminescent tonnage overhead, as a result, was deadwood.
As the federal treason trial raised its curtain in Utah, as Sahara Knax threatened judge and jury and Will Forest finally lost faith in the system, Astrid was planting tomato seedlings.
She had erected a makeshift greenhouse atop one of the few buildings that had weathered the disaster—the Indigo Springs Grand Hotel. The hotel was the center of her world, in a sense: when she escaped government custody, six months earlier, she had found it standing here, stately and solid, defying overgrowth and tremors alike. Here, in the heart of the enchanted forest, she had begun pruning out the tons of sun-starved vegetation around the building. By reducing the dead trees to chips, she had carved out an open space at ground level, a clearing both supported and illuminated by the trunks of the surviving trees.
Beyond and above the perimeter of the clearing, the forest remained overgrown and impassable. The tangle blocked out daylight, but it also shielded them from ground assault and from Roche’s planes.
As if
summoned by her thought, a jet howled past, rattling the panes of the greenhouse.
“You could just make tomatoes using magic.”
Astrid had not been alone, even in those early days. Mark Clumber had been with her ever since she got away from Roche. An ill-tempered sound engineer with mismatched eyes, Mark had always seemed like a big-city con man to her, not a hometown boy. In reality, they’d known each other since kindergarten.
“Gardening helps me think, Mark,” she said.
“Plants won’t grow without real light.”
“I’ve chanted the helium tank over there—it’ll make sunshine.”
Mark frowned. “Government might pick up the heat.”
“Then what? They bomb us? They’re already bombing us.”
“Astrid—”
“You’ve been keeping the air force out of here.”
“Doesn’t mean I want you making my job harder.”
If they were mobile, protecting themselves would be simpler, a game of hide and seek. But Astrid was tied to Indigo Springs. The magical well was here, and they had to defend it.
“It’s a teeny bit of sunlight, Mark.”
The two of them had never liked each other: it was one of the reasons she trusted him now. Sahara had flattered them both—then lied. She’d agree to something, then do as she pleased. And that was before she’d lost her mind.
These days, Astrid preferred honest dissent.
“Today it’s sunlight. Tomorrow you’ll want to put in a landing strip for the jets and see if you can win the pilots over to Peace, Love, and the Magical Way.”
“Think that would work?”
He covered his face in his hands, moaning.
Astrid relaxed. “You’re not angry.”
“The bombing runs have been off target, haven’t they? Nobody’s getting to the well as long as I’m around.”
True, so true, a voice tittered. She shook it away, like a mosquito.
“So,” Mark harrumphed. “Sunshine?”
With a magician’s flourish, Astrid lay her hand against the rusty helium tank. Waxy drops of golden light wobbled into the air, filling a nonexistent balloon that shivered liquidly as it grew. It rose to the scooped-out ceiling of the clearing, splatting against the trees and coating them in light. The encampment brightened, and Astrid felt warmth on her skin.
“Waste of power—vitagua throws plenty of light to work by.” Mark gestured at the glowing tree trunks.
“Cold light. Anyway, it’s not extravagant. I’m just borrowing some of the sun shining on the canopy.”
Mark gave her the look that meant he wished her priorities were in line with his. Thankfully, he seemed as tired of speaking the words as she was of ignoring them.
“Aren’t you guys watching the trial?” Patience Skye appeared on the hotel roof, apparently from nowhere.
Patience, like Mark, had been in Astrid’s house during their standoff with the police last September. Sahara had dunked both of them in vitagua.
The raw form of magic was cursed, and direct exposure turned people to animals—“Frog Princed” them, Mark liked to say. It stripped away their emotional armor, amplifying psychological weaknesses.
Astrid had found a way to arrest the process. It wasn’t quite a cure; it hadn’t cured Sahara’s greed for magical power. But she had managed to keep Patience and Mark from going crazy or devolving into animals.
The treatment involved fusing chantments into their bodies, items that drew the contamination into themselves. It was an okay compromise, and someone thus treated could make use of the magical powers embedded within the chantment.
Patience had been the first attempt. Astrid had fused three objects into her: one gave her stunning good looks, while a second allowed her to pass through solid objects. The third had been a shape-shifting chantment. But three objects had been too many. Patience’s appearance changed at random and entirely against her will.
“Patience, I need a favor,” Astrid began. Then Everett Lethewood—Astrid’s mother, sort of—appeared on the hotel roof beside them.
Like Mark and Patience, Ev had been exposed to raw vitagua. In his case, the contamination had revealed something he said he’d known all along. Ev wasn’t female, hadn’t been meant, he said, to live in a woman’s body.
Her Ma, really a man? At times, Astrid still didn’t quite believe it. But when she treated Ev’s contamination, Astrid gave him the ability to change a person’s sex. Ev hadn’t hesitated: his body now was as male as he claimed his spirit had always been. He hadn’t shown any inclination to change back.
Patience spread her arms wide, drinking in the sunlight. She was short-waisted and petite today, with Japanese features and a buzz cut. “These sunglob thingies work at night?”
“No. You gotta have sunshine to borrow sunshine,” Astrid said. “And they burn out. Someone will have to make new ones.”
“Good job for new volunteers, I suppose,” Mark said.
“It’s a relief to see daylight,” Patience said, basking. “I’ll do it if no one else will.”
“I have something else in mind for you,” Astrid said.
“That so?”
“We need someone to speak for us in the unreal,” Astrid said. The magic she was restoring to the ordinary world was coming from a realm her father had called Fairyland. The trapped residents of that realm were demanding their freedom … and Astrid had promised to give it to them. “The pressure on the magical well is increasing.”
“How much?” Mark demanded.
She shrugged. “They’re pushing. Testing me.”
Patience clucked, an old-woman noise that reflected her age more accurately than did her appearance. “They got every right.”
“I’m committed to getting the vitagua back here where it belongs, you know that. But I need time.”
“The question is how much time, sweetie?”
“However long it takes to get the body count down—”
“I’m for no body count at all,” Ev said.
An awkward pause: it was already too late for that.
“You’ve seen the Big Picture,” Astrid said. “We have to take it slow, equip people to deal with the emergence of magic.”
“Fine,” Patience sighed. “I’ll go play ambassador.”
“Pop? Would you go with her?”
“Me?” Ev’s weather-beaten cheeks reddened. “I’ve got a job. I’m helping the trans folk coming through Bramblegate—”
“We can send ’em to you for gendermorphing,” Mark said.
“Young man, I don’t much care for the way you give cute names to every little thing, and that word especially—”
“I’ll make a second chantment for the hospital, Pop,” Astrid interrupted. “The medics can do gender transitions here.”
“There’s Two-Spirited people in the unreal, Ev,” Patience said. “Some of ’em might want morph—transforming too.”
Ev glowered. “Astrid’s trying to get me out of here before someone drops a nuke on her head.”
“Nobody’s getting nuked, Pop.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” She knew the future—bits and pieces of it, anyway. There were disasters in the offing, terrible things, but nothing like that.
“Roche knows that if he lobs a nuke at us, we might manage to send it back,” Mark said. Shortly after their escape, the government had fired missiles into town. Some had exploded harmlessly, far from the magical well. As for the rest, the four of them—with the help of a growing pool of volunteers—had sent them off course. They detonated missiles above the forest, out at sea. They’d even sent one back to the Bonneville Salt Flats, where Roche was holed up, blowing it up a few miles from the Wendover air base just to make a point.
Sabotaging unmanned missiles had been no small feat. Magic took power. Diverting those first barrages had left them starving, kitten weak, and half frozen. But Roche got the message. Now he sent manned flights, planes with napalm. Will must have told him
that Astrid wouldn’t harm the pilots.
“The point of Sahara’s treason trial is to show that the government is in control of the magical outbreak,” Mark said. “They can’t go nuclear on us without seeming desperate.”
Ev relaxed. The chantment Astrid had embedded in Mark—his eyeglasses—made it impossible for him to lie.
Astrid took his hand. “Pop, I’m not coddling you. Sending you to the unreal shows I’m serious about keeping my promises. Please go. Remind the Roused we’re on the same side. They have something I want, remember?”
“Jacks Glade.” Pop nodded. “Okay. Patience can calm people down, I’ll … gendermorph the transgendered folks there.”
Astrid felt a surge of relief. The grumbles, those little voices she kept hearing, claimed Ev was going to survive this crisis. But knowing the future didn’t keep her from worrying.
“Astrid?” Tuning forks hung around their necks quivered, projecting a lilting Irish voice. “There’s a newcomer caught in Briarpatch. I think it’s Will Forest.”
“Is it Will day?” she said, pleased.
“Gee, I guess we’re all saved,” Mark muttered.
“Don’t be a grouch.” Astrid headed through the nearest archway of brambles.
She stepped out onto the intricately patterned marble floor of an old train station. Gleaming rose-colored stone stretched between its crumbled walls. Scarred oak benches with thick leather upholstery formed a gallery to one side of the gate, across from a big ARRIVALS board that still showed the time of day in cities around the world. Two dozen people were gathered on the benches, watching a glassed-in television that was tuned, naturally, to Sahara’s trial.
Over where the departure platforms had been, columns of frozen vitagua rose skyward, casting their oceanic glow.
As Astrid crossed the marble floor, she became part of a small crowd flowing through the archway; the train station was their primary transportation hub. Anyone who passed through the gate of brambles ended up here.
Mark appeared at her side, hustling to catch up.
“You’re coming?”
“Would I miss the big reunion?”
They crossed the plaza, stepping among the blue glowing columns and murmuring “Briarpatch” in unison. Blue light washed out everything … and then they were at the rim of a pit of blackberry canes. Will Forest stood in its midst, his hand—the one with the chanted ring—snagged in blackberry thorns.
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