“Ah,” Sahara said, gazing fondly at the writhing, bastardized copy of herself. “That we knew already.”
A lump rose in Juanita’s throat: “I don’t know anything else. I swear, I don’t.”
“Shhh.” Sahara’s hand mimed drawing a tear off Juanita’s face. “You ordinary mortals. Your souls are more fragile than mine. Why is that, Juanita?”
“Because you’re divine?” Juanita mumbled.
“Exactly.”
Passion was wandering the dream courtroom, peering into the faces of Juanita’s hostages: Mamá, Benita, the judge.
“Sahara, I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll avoid Gilead—”
“Oh, I want you to keep speaking to Gilead—he’d get so curious if you went cold on him now.”
“I’ll convert,” she offered.
“Hold on, Passion,” Sahara said.
The tattooed woman all but snarled.
“I’ll convert,” Juanita said again. “I’ll accept the Age of Miracles. I’ll pray to you. I’ll stay with you to the end, as you predicted.”
After an interminable pause, Sahara nodded. “All right, tell you what. Give me your faith, and we’ll sacrifice someone who isn’t too dear to you. What do you say?”
“I—”
“Juanita?” A purr, in stereo—it came from the Fyreman too. “Mamacita, or a coworker?”
“Coworker,” Juanita said. No, oh no, please …
“Coworker what?”
“Coworker, beloved Goddess,” she said, clumsily sketching an Alchemite gesture in the air.
“She’s lying,” Passion said. “She doesn’t believe.”
“Just pick someone, my bloodthirsty angel.”
Passion pursed her lips, assessing the Wendover staff before laying her hand on one of the junior marshals.
“Oh, brilliant—she’s guarding my cell,” Sahara said. “I can watch her go. Juanita, your first task as a faithful Alchemite is to pay close attention.”
“Yes, beloved Goddess.” Stomach churning, Juanita stood, eyes wide, still trying to identify people who were missing from the dreamed hit list, silently reciting names. But the basement faded, and now they were in the cell block, standing in the hall as the youngest of the Federal marshals put a hand on her chest and then doubled over.
“Don’t you dare shut your eyes,” Sahara said.
The guard’s mouth opened, but she did not scream—she chirped. Birds were coming out of her mouth in a rush, and her skin was shifting and rupturing as beaks broke through, fluid-slicked avian heads cutting their way out through her arms, neck, chest, a flock that soon obscured their victim.
“Now you say: ‘Praise the Earth, praise the wind, praise the sun,’” Sahara said over the cacophony of cheeping.
Shakily, Juanita stumbled through the phrase.
A Klaxon buzz-sawed the nightmare apart and she jolted awake, lunging for her wastebasket, belly heaving. She retched, mentally clinging to her list of suspected Alchemites. She was afraid to say the names aloud.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WILL HAD BEEN SURE Janet would be dead when he got back to Indigo Springs. He’d seen the medic’s portrait in the ballroom, and she’d landed hard when she fell off the trolley in Atlanta. But as he reached Emergency with Astrid in his arms, Janet was the first person he saw. She was whole, dirty, and holding another of the healing chantments, a mitten.
“We need help here,” he called.
“Lay her down.” Letrico frisked along her arms in little spikes of lightning as Janet placed the mitt on Astrid, pouring power into her. The belly wound closed; Astrid’s color returned.
Janet reached out, and Will pulled back.
“Your wrist, Will.”
Dumbstruck, he followed her gaze. His hand was hanging at an odd angle. With Astrid hurt, it hadn’t registered.
“I must’ve—when that fellow hit the trolley…”
“Take your ring off.” He obeyed, and Janet placed her mittened hand on his. There was a pop, a disturbing sensation of bones jerking into place, puzzle pieces snapping together. Pain he’d been ignoring went away, and his mind cleared.
His tuning fork buzzed: Mark. “Is Astrid okay?”
“Yes,” Will said.
“No. She should be awake.” Janet drew more letrico into the mitten. Another medic, a wiry Latino whose arms were covered in prison tattoos, rolled a plastic ashtray over Astrid’s abdomen, apparently using it as an X-ray—Will could see her insides through it.
Astrid’s eyelids fluttered. She mumbled something—
“What?” Janet said, leaning close.
“Was that … did she say vote-rigging?” Will said, perplexed.
“No,” Astrid said, voice stronger.
“How are you, kid?” Janet asked.
“Hurts.” She tried to rise, moaned, and collapsed.
“Let us look,” Janet said, waving Will away. They wheeled the gurney into a treatment room and pulled a curtain.
Will stepped back to give them some privacy. He needed time to think about what had just happened.… Kissing Astrid had felt more natural, more right than he would have guessed.
The idea of blindly following a prophecy into a romantic relationship, of all things, rankled. But there was something between us almost from the start, he thought. An energy …
Instead of solitude, he found the foyer crowding with anxious volunteers, all looking for him.
“Is she patched up or not?” Mark headed up the pack.
Will shook his head. “She must have sea-glass inside her.”
A worried murmur.
“Janet will think of something,” Will said.
“Glass killed her dad,” said Mark.
“She’s not going to die.”
“You think I’m overreacting?”
“I didn’t say—”
“What happens to us if she dies?” Mark said. Volunteers were showing up by the dozens, all of them angry or scared.
“She’s going to be fine,” Will repeated.
“Just one of those thugs almost took you all out,” Mark said. “What if they get into town?”
“They’ll burn us alive,” said one of the scientists, a pale, spindle-limbed blonde with a South African accent.
“What do you expect me to do?” Will said.
Mark said: “Astrid’s been handling you with kid gloves, Forest. But she has this idea that you’re the guy who takes over for her.”
“That’s my choice to make.”
“It’s not fair to the rest of us,” Spindle-legs said. “She thinks she’s going to bind you to the well, and in the meantime there’s no backup for her.”
“Your kids are in dreams now—they’re safe.”
“I’m not going to apologize for wanting my daughter cured,” Will said.
“You’re putting us at risk, Will.”
“I’m not stopping Astrid from choosing someone else.”
“She’s not even looking,” Mark said. “She’s convinced you’re the one.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“If Astrid dies, the well closes. Then we die,” Mark said. “What happens to your kids after that?”
“Yeah, man, who’ll help you if not us?”
“Stop it, all of you.” It was Olive, as it often was, who broke into the clamor. “Will, wouldn’t you have a better chance of curing Ellie if you could make chantments yourself?”
He groped for an argument.
“This is about you being afraid to truly join us.” Her tone was stern. “As long as you aren’t initiated, you might walk away. Shop for a better deal. Go back to Roche.”
“Or join the Alchemites,” someone muttered.
“I’d never—” The disbelieving faces silenced him.
Olive said, “You abandoned the government. Why not ditch us for the people who actually control the padlock chantment?”
It was logical. He had never given the volunteers any reason to think he’d be loyal. But part of hi
m was hurt by the suggestion. “Sahara Knax is a lunatic.”
Olive said, “Will, I sympathize with the position you’re in, I do. But you need to buy in to what we’re doing. Show us you want to save the world … or tell Astrid you’re out.”
With that she left, taking most of the crowd with her.
“Will?” That was Janet, calling from beyond the curtain. Her hands were bloody; behind her, Astrid was unconscious. “We can’t pull out the sea-glass. The fragments are resistant to magic.”
Will swallowed. “Is she dying?”
“We’ll keep healing her, pouring in letrico,” Janet said. “It should work until we figure out an alternative.”
Just what they needed: another problem. “Okay.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You overheard that?”
“Did I overhear a shouting match happening ten feet away? I’m old, Forest, not deaf.”
“Janet, my children are out there. I have every right to be a self-involved wreck.”
“It’s unfair, I’ll give you that.”
“I’m no more a god than Astrid.” His family was in flames, and they expected him to take the world on his shoulders. “I don’t relish the idea of playing one.”
“You don’t have to,” Astrid said, opening her eyes.
He straightened her blankets. “I think I maybe do.”
She searched his face. “And … us?”
Commit, Olive had said.
He caressed her cheek. “You’re not still in love with Sahara, are you?”
“How many times do I have to say it? No.”
“Jacks Glade?”
“I love Jacks, but getting involved with him—no. Fire and water.”
“Then we’ll see, okay?”
“The gentle path,” she murmured.
“Gentle,” he agreed.
Her eyelids fluttering, Astrid groped for his hand as she fell back into sleep.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IT WAS TEOQUAN WHO christened the wind point Pucker Hill. As in “pucker up and blow.” He’d said it with a little Jiminy Cricket singsong, leaving Ev to wonder why someone who’d spent centuries under a glacier could know music from Pinocchio.
Never mind that. He wasn’t thinking of Teoquan. Or Patience. He certainly wasn’t thinking of Teoquan and Patience.
Fortunately, there was plenty to occupy him at the Hill.
He had imagined that salvaging the pile of concrete and steel and turning it into a letrico mill would be something like an old-fashioned barn-raising. Get supplies, make a plan, erect a functional structure. One, two, three.
Eliza had recruited about twenty of the Roused, most of them Two-Spirited or transgendered, people he’d gendermorphed, to join him at the hill. Of the Roused, it was they who came closest to accepting him. Even so, they started by gently disabusing Ev of any notion that he—that anyone, really—might be in charge of this operation. They’d mounted an elaborate ceremony, complete with singing, dancing, speeches, and a modest feast, to pave the way, spiritually, for the construction.
Ev knew better than to say so, but as far as he was concerned, ceremony was no substitute for getting things done.
The Indigo Springs engineer, Thunder Kim, showed up shortly afterwards, carrying a metal footlocker filled with construction chantments and blueprints for the turbines. He’d hit the same wall: instead of just building something, the Roused picked his designs apart, butting heads with one another over architectural issues. For a long time, the only thing they seemed to agree on was that Thunder’s design was plain wrong. Their discussions were passionate … and maddeningly unhurried. Ev had despaired of them ever reaching consensus.
Now, though, the crest of Pucker Hill was home to a terraced pyramid, Meso-American in its general outlines, but clad in sculpted West Coast masks. The turbine was within, out of sight; letrico weavers stood on a parapet atop the pyramid, converting electricity from the plant into nuggets of letrico.
Thunder had imagined building cottages to house the settlement, but they were building a communal home, an enormous, circular earth lodge supported by scavenged steel beams.
The breeze that powered the turbine wasn’t the only thing blowing in from the real: there was moisture in the incoming air. Filtered water drizzled down the pyramid steps, carving out a little streambed that inched toward the city. It was little more than a drainage ditch, and it ran dry about a mile from the hill, but that hadn’t deterred the unreal’s peculiar vegetation—chalky grasses and reptilian flowers had taken root on its banks. There was even a sapling the color of ivory, with stiff, lapis lazuli leaves.
Ev was helping pack dirt over the earth lodge when Astrid and Will Forest stepped into the unreal with another load of letrico and chantments.
“Hey, Pop.” Astrid wrapped her arms around Ev, like a kid. Her skin was clammy.
“Hey, kid. What brings you here?”
“We’re initiating Will.”
“You found your kids, son?”
Will shook his head, giving Astrid a significant look behind her back.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
“It’s nothing,” Astrid said.
“Astrid has sea-glass poisoning,” Will said.
Ev’s breath caught. That was how Albert had died: Lee Glade shot him full of ground sea-glass. He’d lasted a week.
“I have a healing chantment, Ma,” Astrid said, waving a plastic bangle on her wrist. “It’ll be okay. Right, Will?”
Will nodded, looking more hopeful than certain.
Albert had died and he’d lost Patience to Teoquan. Now his daughter … Ev was going to lose everything.
“Pop,” Astrid said, eyes glittering. “Nothing’s changed. It all works out, remember? I don’t know how and when, but…”
“Happy after,” he said. His voice seemed far away.
“We’re going to the Pit to initiate Will. Want to come?”
No, he thought, but some impulse spoke for him: “Sure.”
They took a bone bridge down to the chamber filled with statues, and Ev led them to the vitagua statue of Albert.
“Ready?” Astrid asked Will.
“As I’ll ever be,” he said, and Astrid gave him a sharp look. “Yes. This is me, committing.”
Astrid handed him a scalpel. “My father knew more about initiating chanters than anyone—it was his particular gift.”
“You told me.”
“Remember how it worked?”
“He dropped vitagua into your eyes.”
She lay a hand on her father’s leg. “Look up, Will.”
Will raised his gaze to Albert’s carved face. Two motes of magic dropped to within a hair of his eyes … and bounced.
“What the—?”
“Your ring,” Astrid said.
He slid it off, and this time the blue specks dropped right into his eyes. He doubled over, groaning. Astrid produced a golden bowl and caught the rush of fluid from his eyes. “Saline,” she explained, and her voice was deeper, masculine—
Albert’s voice. Ev shivered.
“Not water, not seawater,” Astrid continued. The fluid in the bowl rose in a fog, coalescing around Will’s hair.
“Finally, blood,” Astrid said. Will nicked his hand with the scalpel, dripping blood into the ice of Albert’s feet. It twisted into the statue like blood pulsing through a vein.
“Will?”
He was panting. “Feels weird, that’s all.”
Clapping made them turn: two dozen Roused had turned up to watch, including Teoquan. “Good for you, whitey. Come to save us all … hoping we’ll be grateful?”
Ev coughed, “Astrid, Will Forest, this is Teoquan.”
“Hi,” Astrid said absently, staring up at Albert.
Forest straightened, stepping closer and putting himself in front of Astrid. “Something we can do for you, Teoquan?”
“What, no handshake, no pleased to meetcha?” Teoquan bared his teeth in something
that might, if one were nearsighted or obtuse, be mistaken for a smile.
“That isn’t your style, is it?”
“Nope. I’m more the in-your-face type.”
“Here’s my face. Why don’t you tell us what you want?”
Astrid’s attention seemed to snap back. “I have a satchel of chantments with me, Teoquan. I could—”
“What? Bind some pitiful trinket into my flesh to stop the vitagua from turning me into a raving animal?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Do I look like I’m suffering?”
“You don’t even look contaminated.” She examined him closely. “If you know something about the curse—”
That wolfish not-a-grin again. “If I did, Miss High and Mighty, why would I share it?”
“You didn’t come to say hello,” said Will, “so I’ll ask again. What do you want?”
He ignored Will, focusing on Astrid. “How much longer?”
“To melt—?”
“Everyone. All of us, all the spirit water. How long?”
“We’re moving faster every day. I can’t give you a date—”
“You can give me any date you want. You could pop the well like a champagne cork right now.”
“How many people would die?” Will objected.
“Blah blah blah. When are you going to initiate one of the People as a chanter?”
“The People—,” she said. “Oh. That’s a good idea. Will, what do you think? Whoever we pick would inherit it from you.”
“It can’t be any of the Roused, am I right?”
“They can’t have prior vitagua exposure.” She looked back to Teoquan. “Unless you know a way around that.”
“Believe me, sister, if I did, I’d be first in line.”
Will frowned. “Darlene Lelooska, the hydrologist from … Edmonton? She’s Cree, I think.”
Teo made a disgusted sound. “How about Lilla Skye?”
“No!” Patience wafted up beside them, alarm stamped on her features. “Lilla’s on a sketch in the ballroom.”
“Don’t fib, Patience. You dislike the girl, that’s all,” Teo said.
“Teo, she’s—”
“Headstrong? Radical? Find Lilla for me, Lethewood.”
“There’s no harm in looking,” Astrid said.
“That’s what you think,” Patience groused.
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