by Greg Keyes
And as all that slipped away toward darkness, Aster knew this wasn’t her dream—it was Veronica’s.
And Veronica was changing, becoming, like a moth splitting out of its chrysalis.
Then the vision left her, and strong bands tightened around Aster. A sort of ticklish cloud lifted her back toward the surface. She was separated from Lily, and a moment later her feet touched the muddy bottom as whatever-it-was dragged her toward shore.
As she found her own footing and they released her, she realized what had saved her from the river.
Cottonmouths. Copperheads. Water snakes. Eels.
It was too late to scream. She could only sit and stare as her companions were brought ashore in the same way. She didn’t see the monster anymore, but then its head broke the surface, far down the river, toward where the gunshots had come from. At the base of its head, she thought she saw a person clinging.
TWO
IF I WERE ALIVE
They had lost two horses and half the provisions—and, it seemed—Veronica.
“We should at least move back from the river,” Billy said. “They can’t cross, but they can still shoot us.”
“I’ll stay down here,” Errol said, feeling stubborn. “It’s not like a bullet will hurt me that much.”
“Don’t start feeling invincible,” Aster warned him. “If a bullet goes through your skull and smashes the homunculus, you’ll be back in your hospital bed.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” Errol replied. He wanted to say something sharper, to demand why she hadn’t told him that sooner, but her words were quiet, and a bit faltering. It sounded like she was genuinely concerned about him. Then she completed it.
“Sorry,” she said. “I should have told you that a long time ago.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “How did you do that trick with snakes? That was . . . I mean it worked, but—”
“That wasn’t me,” she said. “That was Veronica. And she took that whatever-it-was downstream toward the Sheriff.”
She sighed. “Errol—I don’t know that she’s coming back. Something changed in her. The magic was so strong I felt it. For a moment I felt like I was her.”
“What was that like?” he asked.
“Disturbing.”
“Can she be killed, too?”
“I’m not sure,” Aster said. “I doubt it, since she’s already dead, but she could be torn into pieces too small to stick back together. But that isn’t what I meant. When I . . . felt her . . . I think—she felt—she might not want to come back.”
“Yeah,” Errol said. “I can see that.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” a voice said from behind them. Errol turned to see Veronica emerging from the water. Her eyes seemed faintly luminescent, and he felt a thrill of the same desire he’d had when he first met her, mixed with not a little fear.
“We got a few of them,” she said. “But the Sheriff has some pretty good juju. Fire and brimstone and all. Anyway, they won’t be crossing here.”
“You saved us,” Errol said. “How did you do that?”
“Honey,” she said, “I have no idea. It doesn’t pay to think about these things too much. I felt like I could take Big Slinky on, and I did. I felt like—” Her brow puckered and she looked briefly confused. Then her eyes widened as if she had seen something wonderful.
“I felt like I had a reason to,” she said.
Daylight found them a few miles from the river, in a prairie brilliant with wild flowers. Billy still hadn’t had any sleep, but Aster was dozing in Errol’s arms. Her horse Lily was one of the survivors, but Veronica now rode her. Billy and Dusk still had their own mounts.
“That was pretty neat, the way you froze the water,” Errol opined to Dusk. She hadn’t spoken much, and he didn’t think it was just from being tired.
She laughed, bitterly. “It was nearly the end of us,” she said.
“You couldn’t have known the amphiuma king was hanging out right there,” he said.
“If I had waited to hear what Veronica had to say, I would have known,” she said. “My mother always said I was too certain of my abilities, too quick to act.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being confident,” Errol said.
“Well,” Dusk said, stroking the mane of her horse. “May I ask you a question, Errol?”
“You can ask,” he replied.
“How did you become what you are?”
He glanced down at Aster. Her eyes were darting about beneath her lids, and her lips were moving slightly, so he knew she was dreaming.
“Back home,” he said, “my body is hurt. It can’t wake up—I’m in what we call a coma. Aster took my soul and put it into this.”
“So that you might help her in her quest,” Dusk said.
“Yes,” Errol said. “But it also gives me a chance. Without the water of health, I—my real body—will probably never wake up.”
“So that is what you seek.”
Oh, man! Errol thought. He knew Aster had wanted to keep that a secret. This was only going to confirm to her that women made him stupid.
Of course he knew that, but he didn’t like to hear it from her.
“I had already guessed,” Dusk said. “Hattie mentioned the sacred water. She could only have meant the water of life, of health, or of death. Given that she wants to end a curse, the water of health seemed most likely.”
“Oh,” Errol said. “Right. Wait—there’s a water of death?”
“Naturally,” she said. She frowned slightly.
“You knew Aster before you fell into this false sleep,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but he nodded anyway.
“How were you injured?” she asked.
“It was an accident,” he said. She looked like she was going to press on that, so he took her earlier cue and changed the subject.
“You called my world the ‘Reign of the Departed’,” he said. “Why? What does that mean?”
A brief cloud of annoyance passed over her face, but she got the hint. She looked thoughtful for about a minute before saying anything.
“When people pass out of the Kingdoms, your world is where they end up,” she told him.
“You mean when they die?”
“Yes. No. I mean, not everyone who dies goes there. It has to do with what my people call elumiris. It’s the magic that shimmers in living things, that gives them their natures. Those born in the farthest, most ancient kingdoms have the most elumiris and shine the brightest. Here—in the kingdoms nearest the Pale—the light is dimmer. Imagine a man in the highest, most faraway kingdom. When he dies, his soul is born to another body, but often in the process, elumiris is lost. His soul grows dimmer, and he is thus born into a lesser kingdom. And the next time he dies, his shimmer might wane further. If the day comes that his soul has little or no elumiris, he is not reborn in the kingdoms at all, but into your world. He has departed.”
“Why would he lose this stuff?” he asked, dubiously. “This elumiris?”
“That’s a difficult question,” she replied. “Many answers have been given, and none is believed by all to be the correct one. But one can gain elumiris as well as lose it. Even beyond the Pale, in your world, some have spark enough to pass back through unaided, at least into the Marches. If the Sheriff doesn’t stop them.”
“So it’s sort of like reincarnation,” Errol mused. “But what if someone dies in my world? Someone without the shimmer?”
Dusk was silent for a moment.
“Some say that it is the end of them,” she said, quietly—almost apologetically. “That their souls cease to exist. That your world is the last chance, the final stop before oblivion.”
Dad, he thought. He remembered the terrifying woman in the forest, the one whose gaze he knew he could not meet. Was that how it ended? Was her face the last thing he would see? That his father had seen?
She noticed his silence.
“Some have other notions,” she said. “Only those who have died suc
h a death know the truth.”
“Or they don’t know anything at all,” Errol replied.
His family had never been particularly church-going, but in the depths of his heart he had always imagined that something, some other existence lay beyond death. If he believed what Dusk said, it did. For some people.
Just not his father, or him, or the other several billion people who had somehow lost their magic. That hardly seemed fair.
But then he already knew the world wasn’t fair.
On the second day after crossing the river they came across a herd of buffalo. They were larger than Aster had imagined, but Errol—who had seen them once in Oklahoma—assured her they weren’t of unusual size. Billy took them carefully around the beasts, also avoiding the huge cats that prowled the edges of the herd, waiting for a weak member to stray a little too far from the rest. She steadily became more impressed by his competence in such matters. He remained mostly quiet, and he usually had a far-off look in his eyes. Over the next few days she took to riding more and more with him, because he offered and because she felt like an intruder when Errol started talking to Dusk or Veronica, which he did frequently. Clearly the adventure they had had while she was being peeped on in an outhouse had drawn them tighter to one another, if not to her. Having them chat while Errol carried her like a baby was intolerable.
If she was completely honest, she liked the physical closeness of riding double with Billy. At first she had felt weird about it, but when he brought Tom to a run, she had no choice but to put her arms around his torso. He didn’t seem to mind, and he also didn’t seem to take it as an invitation to anything else.
Although now and then she thought it might be nice if he did. Of course, such thoughts also made her feel frivolous and a little guilty. She needed to stay focused on the task before her.
She asked him about Hattie’s comment suggesting she wasn’t his real mother, and he answered that she wasn’t, but that she was the only mother he had ever known. He’d been told he just wandered into town one day, but he didn’t remember that, or much of anything before Hattie adopted him.
They crossed another prairie, where sunflowers hummed strange, low harmonies. From a distance, they saw a war between cranes and tiny men with long, rigid tails. Once, Billy urged them all undercover just before a hawk the size of a private airplane flew over.
On the fifth day, on a trail through low scrub forest, they met a pair of riders on the trail. They had black hair, sun-darkened skin and high cheekbones. They wore turbans of brightly patterned cloth and long coats that looked sort of like the military jackets from the American Revolution—lots of buttons. Crescent-shaped silver gorgets adorned their throats, and their ears were jangly with rings and bangles. One held a long rifle casually in one hand. The other had a bow across his lap.
Dusk trotted Drake up alongside Billy.
Aster caught a slight motion from the corner of her eye, a flash of silver off to their left.
“Billy—” she whispered.
“Yes,” he replied. “I know.”
They drew up near the two in the trail. This time she wasn’t surprised that neither seemed much over sixteen.
Suddenly the one with the bow in his lap pulled a pistol from his jacket and pointed it at Billy’s forehead. Aster felt a jolt, and her vision went white at the edges.
“Can you still dodge a bullet, Billy Nomother?” the boy asked.
She felt Billy sigh. “I never could dodge a bullet, Chula,” he said. “You’re just a terrible shot.”
Chula leaned forward in his saddle, bring the muzzle closer to Billy. Aster began an Utterance, but before she could voice it, the other boy laughed and put his weapon away.
“It makes a better story that you can dodge bullets,” Chula said. He looked at the rest of them.
“You’ve got a funny bunch here.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “Ma sent them to see Aunt Jezebel.”
“And you to guide them,” Chula said. “How are things back there?”
“Can I tell you as we ride?” Billy asked.
“You got trouble following you?”
“Maybe. Could be days back, could be less.”
“All right, then,” Chula said. He turned to the fellow with the gun. “Snapper, you take over here. Scout and see if his worries are near. But come on back before sundown.”
“Okay, Chula.”
They rode another hour with Chula chattering on about relations and Billy answering in his usual laconic fashion, until they began passing through corn fields. A little later they reached a village. Some of the houses looked like log cabins, but more appeared to be made of mud or plaster, and had steep roofs of wooden shingles. Each house had a little garden, although Aster didn’t recognize the plants in them. Chickens wandered about free, and lots of dogs.
Chula gestured at one house that towered above the others.
“You can stay in the townhouse ‘til Sunday,” Chula said. Then he nodded at Aster. “Except her,” he said. “You know where she needs to go.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “I guess I didn’t. But okay.”
“Where I need to go?” Aster asked. “What are you talking about?”
The house Billy took her to was a hundred yards from any other building. It was next to a little stream and mostly hidden by trees from the rest of the village.
“Why here?” she asked. “Why not with the rest of you?”
“It’s a special house,” he told her. “Sort of holy.”
She noticed he had stopped about six yards from it and seemed unwilling to go any closer.
“Go on in,” he said. “Introduce yourself. It will be fine.” Puzzled, she walked toward the building. Like most of the cabins, it didn’t have a door as such, but rather an entrance that went in a few feet and then turned hard to the right before leading her into the single room within. Four girls from about thirteen to her age looked up with surprise as she entered. It was smoky from a little fire in a pit in the center of the dirt floor. The girls had been playing what looked like some sort of game using sticks and markers and lines scratched on the dirt.
“I’m, uh, I’m Aster,” she said. “They said I was supposed to come here. Chula said.”
“She said her name!” the youngest girl gasped.
“Hush,” the eldest said. “Be polite.” She gestured at Aster. “Come in, Miss.”
“I didn’t mean to give offense.”
“You didn’t,” the girl said. “It’s just—we don’t give names lightly.”
“Chula said his,” Aster pointed out.
“It’s his nickname,” one of the other girls said.
“I see.” Aster said. An uncomfortable silence followed.
“So,” the elder girl said. “You’ve come from far away, I take it.”
“Very far,” Aster agreed.
“On important business, I guess.”
Aster nodded. “Do you have nicknames?” she asked.
“Oh, sure,” the elder girl said. “They call me Sensible.” She then named the others in what appeared to be descending age order; Mockingbird, Yelps, and Wiggler.
“It’s my first time,” Wiggler confided.
“First time for what?” Aster asked.
“To have the Moon’s Portion and stay in his house.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Aster said.
Wiggler stared at her, and then began to giggle.
“She is from very far away,” Sensible said. “I’m sure they have another name for it.”
“It’s the time when you bleed,” Wiggler laughed.
Aster felt her face blaze red. How had Chula known?
She wasn’t sure if she was more angry or more humiliated. Or confused.
“Oh,” she said. “You have to stay apart from the rest?”
“Of course,” Sensible replied. “Otherwise, it would be terrible. The boys would get sick, they couldn’t hunt or fight—where are you from you don’t know this?”
“But that’s ridiculous!” Aster exploded. “It’s demeaning. It’s sexist. Menstruation is a natural thing.”
“Like snakebite,” Mockingbird said.
“Or a flood,” Yelps added.
“Or lightning,” Wiggler said.
They were laughing at her, she realized, albeit politely. As if this was something everyone knew.
“But, I mean—do the boys ever get shut up alone like this?”
“They don’t get the Moon’s Portion,” Wiggler said, gently. “Don’t you know that?”
“Besides, they go off alone all the time,” Sensible said. “To hunt and fight.”
“It’s not the same,” Aster insisted. “That’s doing something.”
“Listen,” Sensible said. “Most of every month we are always doing something. Breaking fields, hoeing them, tending them, shucking corn—”
“—pounding corn,” Mockingbird took up, “shelling beans, cutting cane, making baskets, cooking, sweeping.”
“Or carrying heavy pots of water. We’re always doing something,” Yelps said.
“But not here,” Wiggler said.
“No, indeed,” Sensible said. “We’re not allowed to work when we’re here.”
“Except to feed ourselves,” Mockingbird said.
“And take long soaks in the creek,” Wiggler put in.
“That’s not work, my dear,” Sensible told her.
“Well it’s my favorite,” Wiggler said.
“What do you do, then?” Aster asked.
“We eat, we play games, and we talk,” Mockingbird said. “It’s wonderful that you’re here. I’m sure you have the best stories.”
Oh, God. Aster thought. This is going to be awful.
At least she only had a day or two to go. But then it occurred to her; what if what the girls said was true? In the Kingdoms it might very well not be a superstition, but an actual fact that a menstruating women could do damage to a man.
What then, of Billy? Had she hurt him by riding with him these last few days?
It seemed ridiculous.
When Errol went out of the townhouse, he heard Billy vomiting again. He’d asked before if he could help, but it had only seemed to embarrass him, so rather than repeat the mistake, he went around the other way. Above, the night sky blazed, glorious to behold. Even in rural Okatibee County it was never like this; the light of Sowashee bled into the sky, and most houses, no matter how isolated, had lights outside. Here the only illumination was that falling from the heavens.