Mr. Jameson’s eyes were gentle, concerned. “I’m sorry, kid. It’s a hell of a thing to have to deal with: a game with unclear rules and unclear goals, and you leading everybody against it. But she chose you. You’re the best option for this, whether you realize it or not.”
The Game and the Dust Soldiers rose up in my mind, snuffing my excitement like a flame. I swallowed nervously, dry toast tasteless as a shingle on my tongue. But, I told myself, I was the one who had been chosen. It had to be for a reason.
When I looked back at Mr. Jameson, he was looking out the window, out over the walls, where a sliver of desert was showing. “Of course, after last night, we’ve got even more to deal with.”
I remembered the cry then, just before I fainted. I remembered the shadow on the wall.
“Were we robbed last night?” I asked cautiously, in case, like the rain, it had all been “my imagination.”
Mr. Jameson nodded slowly. “Unfortunately so.”
I felt sick to my stomach all over again. “What did they take?”
“A lot, sad to say. It’ll set us back about a month. Forty pounds of salt pork, twenty pounds of beef, four sacks of flour, six sacks of potatoes, six sacks of charcoal, five bottles of moonshine and two of schnapps. All from the Sacrifice building. But there’s still time before the Judgment, and Mother Morevna laid a curse on anybody who steals from the Sacrifice, so we’ll be finding their bodies somewhere around town pretty soon. Though it’s strange. I can’t think of a single person in Elysium who’d want to do something like that. Especially not now.”
“And this was… this was while I was…?”
“Yes,” he said. “While we were making sure you were all right.”
In my mind, I saw the shadow I’d glimpsed before the vision took me, the flash at the top of the wall, small, quick… familiar in some way. But sometimes I saw things before my episodes, shadows flitting in the corners of my eyes, so I said nothing. Were my visions magic? I thought suddenly. And if so, what did they mean?
“It’s not your fault,” Mr. Jameson said. “But it is what it is, and we’ve gotta look it straight in the eye and deal with it.” He picked his cup of cold coffee up off the floor and stood. “But that’s my responsibility. All you’re responsible for now is learning.”
He stopped and looked at me for a moment, an odd expression on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“I was just thinking of your mama, how proud she would be,” he said. “She always knew you were something special.”
And despite all the fear, all the nerves, all the uncertainty, I couldn’t help but smile.
In the desert, Asa Skander was alone. He had been barely a smudge at first, but now his lines had steadied and he had begun to cast a shadow. At first, the sensation of sensation had nearly overcome him, and he’d lain gasping on the dust until the sunlight dazzled his eyes into bright blindness. What a thing it was to go one’s whole life, if life it could be called, without feeling anything, smelling anything, tasting anything, and then suddenly to have all the senses roar into being. He was struck by the grit of the dust, by the weight and drape of his clothes, by the dry heat of the sun and wind. He held his hand up into the light and let the goldenness slide over his palms and between his fingers. He tested out smiling, jumping. He tasted the dry, gritty air and felt grains of sand in his mouth. He bit his lip until he felt what must be pain and tasted his own metallic red blood, warm and thin in his mouth.
I am alive! he thought, and he felt his new heart speed in his chest.
He couldn’t believe his luck. He had spent countless days throughout the eons looking down from the Between, watching humans. Most daemons watched during wars or plagues or disasters—some even had a hand in them—but Asa had loved watching their quiet moments more. No human life, Asa thought, could ever really be called quiet. He’d watched courtships and marriages and births; he’d seen sorrow and anger and death. He knew the names of many people, from tartan-skirted librarians in Lansing, Michigan, to tattooed warriors in Polynesia. He knew about burdensome taxes and the luxuries of wealth; he’d seen the jutting ribs of starvation and the heaping tables of excess. It all played out before him, an endless melodrama with an endlessly rotating cast, and he never ever tired of it. Now, with his own new, young, and capable body, he would get to be part of it. And though he privately wondered why he, a most unremarkable daemon, had been chosen—and by the Mother Herself!—Asa couldn’t wait to begin.
He wiped wetness from his brow, and thin mud came away on his forearm. Is this what it is to sweat? He smiled. On a bit of wood with a rope were the six bags of wheat, which had appeared along with the makeshift sleigh they were on. He knew the plan: use them to barter for his entry to Elysium. They were a bit heavy, though. Was this what it was to work? He squinted into the distance. Over the ripples of heat, he could just make out the tall dark shapes of walls and windmill arms. Elysium. Not too much farther.
He heard a papery sound and glanced to his left. From the ditch, three grasshoppers the size of terriers watched him, wondering, perhaps, whether or not to attack. He showed them his face—his real face, which was hidden behind this human disguise—and the grasshoppers sprang away in terror.
Hmph, he thought, and started moving. It was easy at first, but as his body grew heavier and more substantial, he began to sink into the dust. Even so, he walked on, passing automobiles, rusted, doorless, stripped of anything useful. Some had radios left in them, long dead, and these began to spark and sputter, crackling as he walked by, in reaction to the strong magic that clung to him. He stepped over half-buried fencerows, walls of tumbleweeds. He passed through the high-ribbed, tubelike skeleton of something like a giant snake, bleached by the sun. Only about three hours, he suspected.
But once he got there… then what? How was he supposed to do what he had been sent to do, exactly? Go to everyone in Elysium and show them the weird amber bug? That would take too much time. And what happened when he found the right person? He was sure that it indicated to them that they must change in some way. Humans, he had noticed, were oddly change-resistant, and if there was one thing they hated, it was a messenger. He’d seen how things like that had gone for a few people in the past, and it was almost uniformly Not Good. But She hadn’t given him instruction. She’d just given him the bug and told him to go to Elysium, using the bags of wheat as his key to entry.
Then he thought perhaps that there was some sort of clue in the appearance and items that had been provided for him. He stopped and looked around, looked at his hat, at the suitcase that he carried with all its stickers and tags. He opened it and found one change of clothes, a book of card tricks, a harmonica, and…
“Magic supplies?” he said aloud. He cocked his head to one side. He saw something blue sticking out of his shirtsleeve, and when he pulled it, out came a seemingly unending string of colorful handkerchiefs.
“I’m a magician?” he said aloud, feeling his face crack into what must have been a smile. Simultaneously, he felt years of study, years of tricks, illusions, sleight of hand rush into his mind and take up residence there, like a flock of birds lighting in a tree. Then, again, he said, “I’m a magician!”
He was delighted. He’d watched magicians for centuries, marveling at their tricks, the miracles they seemed to create. How much joy and wonder they gave the people who saw them. It felt appropriate to Asa somehow. Was this what was inside him? Was this what he would be if he were human? Asa wasn’t sure. So what could he do now? He thought. Then a new idea dawned on him: With this new human body, what couldn’t he do?
The sanctuary had made me feel small in the past, but now it just felt… empty. No pews, no paintings of Jesus or banners or wall hangings. Those had all been taken down after the walls went up. There weren’t any mandates about it or anything. Mother Morevna wasn’t that kind of leader. But after all that had happened, it just felt so pointless, so silly. And so sad. Now all that was left was the stained glass, the ba
re, wooden floor, and an enormous stack of water rations waiting to be sent to the northeast families. Images of saints looked down from the windows with expressions of ecstasy or agony.
In the colored light, I paced to and fro, taking deep breaths and trying to keep my hands from shaking. The Dust Soldiers kept rising in my mind, but gradually, they were overshadowed by something else, by a strange, fiery eagerness that had rested in my stomach ever since Mother Morevna called my name. I thought of all the amazing things I had seen Mother Morevna do, realizing for the first time how I had always longed to be able to feel even an ounce of the power, of the confidence that seemed to float around her like perfume.
There was a sound of heels clicking, and I turned just as she stepped in front of the altar, straight-backed and stern, her black dress stiff and immaculate. My teacher.
This woman, said a voice in the most daring part of my mind, this woman can teach me about what I can become. What I am meant to be.
When she spoke, there was a sizzle behind her voice, like gunpowder. “I am sorry you are being forced into this position, my dear. Especially after our… former difficulties.”
I squirmed and felt my face grow hot, amazed by how much meaning she could fit in two words.
“Oh, yes, I was quite surprised that you were the one as well,” she said, reading my expression. “But that is behind us, my dear. I bear you no ill will. You were a child, after all, and unsure of your own powers.”
Powers.
“Um… thank you, ma’am.”
“Jameson spoke to you, I take it,” she said. “About my… condition and his worries about it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear about your health. And I want you to know that I’m willing to learn anything you’ll teach me. Anything that will help Elysium.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said. “Unfortunately, it won’t be necessary.”
“Ma’am?” I asked quietly.
She smiled a wry, pained sort of smile.
“Do you know why I created Elysium, child? Why it is the way it is?” She came toward me, and I could feel the energy, the magic, crackling around her. “I wanted to create a society where things like prejudice and inequality are stamped out, where groups of posturing, truculent men don’t ruin everything. A society that is truly responsible for everyone. I have done so. I was there when the Dust Soldiers came the first time, and I intend to be there when they come again, to win this infernal Game and to connect Elysium to our proper world, once and for all. Unfortunately, events in the past have made me leery of sharing that responsibility with another.” She paused. “Jameson was right about a few things. I believe the visibility of my having a Successor is important in order to bolster the people’s faith in this difficult time, my health being as it is. That is all.”
My heart sank. All my feelings of importance were dissolving like sugar.
“I do appreciate your enthusiasm,” she was saying, “and you will be recognized as my Successor and enjoy all the privileges therein, but I simply cannot take that risk again.” She paused, reading my expression. “You are disappointed. I’d have thought anyone would want to avoid dealing with the Dust Soldiers herself.”
“I think I just… wanted to learn,” I said. “If the… If magic is in me, it would explain a lot. The visions… and a lot of other things that have no other explanation.”
“Well, certainly you’re a witch, my dear,” she said. “And, yes, your visions stem from your innate powers, whatever they may be. Does that make you feel any better?”
It should, I knew, but without knowing what power I had, without being trained to use it, what did it matter? Before I could stop myself, I heard myself say, “I think the idea of being trusted to make important decisions after all this time was… That was what I really wanted.”
She was looking at me so intently, so calculatingly.
“I see,” said Mother Morevna. “You meant to redeem yourself.”
I nodded sheepishly, my eyes on the floor.
She regarded me with those steely, unblinking eyes, and deep within them, I saw a glint of sympathy. Mother Morevna opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, a guard, Willard, the Jeffries’ oldest boy, opened the door.
“’Scuse me, Mother Morevna,” he said, his hat in his hand, his rifle on his shoulder.
“What is it, young man?” Mother Morevna said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am… someone’s knocking on the door. I think you’d better come talk to him.”
This was surprising, but it wasn’t shocking. It certainly wasn’t the first time it had happened. Though we rarely saw them, even from the tops of the walls, we knew that there were other people in the desert, other survivors living like feral animals outside the walls, paying the price after they chose to stay on what was left of their homesteads rather than join Elysium. But our doors were always, always closed to them.
“Tell whoever it is that we’ve too many mouths to feed as it is,” she said.
“I—I would have,” the guard said, taking a step back. “But he says he’s desperate. He’s brought supplies to barter for his entry. Seems worthwhile, to be honest.”
“Gifts?” she said. “From where? There are no fields, no places to grow crops.”
“Like I said, ma’am, you’d better come talk to him.”
Mother Morevna sighed. She hitched up her skirts and clicked away from me across the sanctuary. I stood where I was, awkward and confused in the multicolored light, my brain spinning with questions. Then, at the door, she turned to me and put her hands on her hips.
“Well?” she said. “Are you coming or will you just stand there idle?”
“Y-yes, ma’am!” I said, and ran to catch up with her.
CHAPTER 4
Mother Morevna strode to the great steel door, her skirts flicking up clouds of dust, and I trailed behind her, my handkerchief over my mouth. A crowd had gathered around the door, a semicircle of townspeople there to see the new curiosity out in the desert.
“Go home,” Mother Morevna said to the crowd, and slowly, they moved back, glancing over their shoulders as they went. “Gawkers,” said Mother Morevna under her breath. Then she turned to the guard. “Let me see him.”
The guard nodded, and Mother Morevna took a step back as he opened the rusty peep slot in the steel door. Through it, I could see a pale, sunburned face.
“Oh, hello!” said the man behind the door. “Are you the leader of this establishment?”
“I am,” said Mother Morevna. “Who are you and why have you come to Elysium?”
“Just a wayfaring stranger, ma’am, wandering through this world of woe. As the song goes, you know. Asa Skander’s the name, and as for where I’m from, I suppose I’m from everywhere and nowhere.”
He gave Mother Morevna a wink through the peep slot, but Mother Morevna was not amused.
“Where exactly are you from, and how did you come to be here?” she asked in a way that was more a warning than a question.
“I… uh… started up in Chicago, Illinois,” he said. “Part of a family of traveling magicians. When my pa and I got stranded out here and he subsequently died, I had to fend for myself. So now, at the ripe old age of nineteen, I’ve taken up the family business out here in the desert, pulling rabbits out of hats and coins out of ears and scarves out of sleeves, entertaining whoever I can. Of course, you can’t entertain everyone and now I’m… how shall we say… on the run? Fleeing from certain death?”
I grimaced. I’d heard stories of the people who had chosen to remain in the desert. They were supposed to be a nasty, lawless, bloodthirsty bunch, worse even than the creatures out there. A pang of pity went through me. But Mother Morevna seemed unaffected.
“I didn’t ask for your life story,” she said. “And as… entertaining… as you may be, I’m afraid we have enough mouths to feed as it is. Don’t you understand that the Game is ending soon?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Which i
s why I plan to pay my entry with this.” He stepped back and gestured. “Six bags of the finest, most golden wheat to ever exist. I’m sure it’ll add more value to your Sacrifice than twelve bags of the normal stuff.”
“Have you verified this?” Mother Morevna asked the guards.
“Yes, ma’am,” they said. “It’s fine stuff. Like back in the old days.”
Mother Morevna’s brows were still furrowed.
“And what else do you have to offer us?” she asked.
“Well,” said the boy on the other side of the door, “I can put on one hell of a magic show!”
Mother Morevna’s lip curled. “Typical,” I heard her mutter. “The first person to come offering help and it’s some… vagrant run away from Barnum and Bailey’s.” She glanced at the door, a sour expression on her face. Then, surprisingly, she turned to me. “You wanted to be trusted with decisions,” she said. “So I will hand this one off to you. What should be done about him?”
I paused. Never since the walls had gone up had we let anyone into Elysium. But this young man… there was something odd about him. Something that set my teeth on edge and sent an electric gooseflesh tingle through my skin. It felt almost the way deception did but not quite. Even through the door, I could tell that something was strange about him, different from anyone I’d ever met, and I couldn’t tell whether it was good or bad. But still… I couldn’t turn him away. Not when he had nowhere else to go. Not when I’d heard stories of the things that lived out there. Besides, I was curious.
“Well?” she said.
“Let him in,” I said.
Mother Morevna looked at me for a moment, then nodded. She raised her hand, and the guard at the top of the gate pulled the lever. The door creaked open with a great metal groan, and I saw him for the first time.
He was young—only a few years older than me—tall and bent-looking, all angles, like Harold Lloyd in that movie I’d seen over in Boise City before the walls went up. But this boy was scruffier somehow, wilder. He wore a dust-covered suit that once must have been brown, cut in an odd, old-fashioned way, and his equally dusty hat had a feather sticking out of the hatband. His suitcase was covered with labels, but all of them looked far older than he was. Waves of strangeness seemed to emanate from him like too much cologne, and there was something about the way that he moved… but for the life of me, I couldn’t place it.
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