“Thank you for your kindness, ma’am,” he said to Mother Morevna with a deep bow.
“For Sallie’s kindness, you mean.” She gestured to me.
The young man tipped his hat to me and said, “I’m much obliged, miss.” His eyes, now that I was closer to him, were oddly yellowish in the light.
“I’m… uh… sorry you had to wait so long,” I managed.
“It’s just fine, Miss…?”
“Sal,” I told him. “Sal Wilkerson.”
“Sal Wilkerson,” he repeated. “My savior. Um… you ladies wouldn’t happen to have a place where I could rest? I’m awful tired.” He smiled and for a second I thought his teeth looked oddly pointed, but I looked again and they were just normal, very white teeth in a normal, very pleasant-looking smile.
“Certainly,” Mother Morevna said. “Guards, would you kindly take our visitor to the jail? Give him a cell to spend the night in. Make him as comfortable as he can be, do you understand? I will be there soon to question him and make sure he’s on the up-and-up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said.
“Much obliged, ma’am! Thank you!” he said, tipping his hat again.
They led him away, and as he passed me, Asa Skander tossed me something that glinted silver in the light. I caught it: A quarter? Who had any use for a quarter these days? I pocketed it and watched them take him.
“Want me to go with them, ma’am?” asked Mr. Jameson, leaning on his rifle.
“No,” said Mother Morevna. “Let him sit for a while. You take Sallie back to the church. I’m afraid lessons for today will have to be rescheduled. Now that the door has been opened, I must resecure the wall and gate before I interrogate him.” She didn’t look at me as she said, “Thank you, Sallie. That will be all.”
I tried to read her face, to see if she was pleased with me. Then she turned away and strode over to the steel door to begin whatever spells she was going to cast.
Was this some sort of a test? I wondered, my stomach dropping little by little. And did I fail?
“Come on now, girl,” Mr. Jameson said, starting back toward the church. And as every eye in Elysium turned toward me, I had no choice but to follow.
The rest of the day dragged by agonizingly slowly. I rearranged things in my new room, putting away dusty flour-sack dresses and worn boots, moving furniture, opening the curtains and closing them and opening them again.
After lunch (chipped beef on toast—“shit on a shingle,” as Papa used to call it) was brought up to me by a dour, disapproving-looking woman named Mrs. Winthrop, I decided to take a walk, unable to stand the crampedness and the boredom anymore. I went out into the streets of Elysium as the sun was setting.
My eyes kept drifting over to the jail, where Asa Skander was being kept. Mindlessly, I reached into my pocket and fished out the quarter he’d tossed me and looked at it for the first time.
It was a simple enough quarter, worthless now, stained on the back with something that might have been blood. But then I flipped it over to the heads side and I saw something that made my heart leap to my mouth and stay there, speeding.
The date on the quarter was 1944. Nine years after our world ended.
This quarter had been made somewhere else—somewhere that still existed beyond the desert.
“Oh my God…” I breathed. I had to tell Mr. Jameson… or, better yet, Mother Morevna.
I ran toward the jail, slipping through the shadows, hoping to catch her. But when I reached the jail, two guards blocked my way.
“Mother Morevna’s already gone,” one of them said. “Says he’s good to go as soon as we get him some lodgings.”
“Oh.” I fumbled with the quarter, then, thinking quickly: “She just had a couple of minor questions for Mr. Skander. She sent me down to… er… try my hand at interrogation.”
The guards exchanged glances, wondering whether or not to believe me.
“Unless you doubt her word?” I added.
“Oh, no, of course not,” said the guards, deciding they better not risk it. The shorter guard pushed the door open and held it for me. “Keep it short, though,” he said. “We gotta be getting on home.” And the door shut behind me.
The jail was small and dusty, with slightly crooked, framed daguerreotypes on the walls. There was only one cell. Inside, on a cot, sat Asa Skander. He grinned brightly when I came in.
“Ah, Miss Wilkerson,” he said. “I didn’t expect you back this evening.” He gestured to a stool outside the cell, where Mother Morevna must have sat during the interrogation.
I sat down, my limbs too long for the short stool. Across from me, Asa Skander sat, one leg propped up on his other knee, as though his cell were a comfortable living room and I was a guest he’d invited over for tea. But the strangeness was still there, and the hairs on my arms had already begun to stand on end.
“So,” he said. “To what do I owe this visit, my lovely benefactor?”
Taking a deep breath, I opened my palm and let the quarter shine in the dim light, heads up.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“Oh, that old thing?” Asa said. “I just… picked it up on the journey. I’m like a magpie, you know, always picking up shiny things.”
I focused on him, tried as hard as I could, but I could feel no deception.
“But the world outside the desert,” I said. “It still exists, then? We’re not the only ones?”
“I assume so,” he said. “To me this world seems like… like a cake under a glass dome. Separate, protected. It would have to be so the Game could happen, wouldn’t it?” He blinked. “All conjecture, of course. I don’t know.”
I frowned. I hadn’t felt anything different from his usual strangeness. He was being truthful.
“Look,” I said. “If you are from outside the desert, Chicago or whatever since before the Game began, tell me. I’ll keep your secret as long as you’re not dangerous or anything. But I’ve got to know: What is happening? Is the Depression over? Has rain come to the Dust Bowl again?”
Asa Skander opened his mouth to speak; then he got a desperate look on his face and clutched his throat. He buckled forward, gagged, and white smoke billowed from his mouth, disappearing into the air.
Fear shot through me. I stood up, knocking over my stool, legs bent, ready to run.
Then Asa Skander coughed a few times, sat up, red-faced and shaking. He regained his composure as well as he could and smiled weakly.
“I… don’t think I can talk about that,” he said. “Something’s… stopping me. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you really here?” I asked when I caught my breath. “Who are you?”
Asa Skander looked at me with those strange yellow eyes.
“I am what I say,” he said. “Just a magician looking for shelter. That’s all. And Mother Morevna has already vetted me for entry. Please, just trust me. I’m not here to cause any trouble.”
I focused on him, on the aura that seemed to gradually lessen the longer I was in the room with him. As strange as he was, as strange as the quarter in my hand was, I realized that there was not a dangerous feeling coming from him. Magician or not, he wasn’t here to hurt us.
“I believe you,” I said. “For now. But I think you know more than you say you do. And I’m going to keep my eye on you.”
Asa Skander smiled.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” he said. “That’s what Mother Morevna said too.” He stood and extended his hand through the bars. “I hope we can be friends someday.”
I took his hand and shook it.
“I hope so too,” I said. Then I put the quarter back in my pocket and slipped out of the jail.
CHAPTER 5
3 MONTHS
AND
27 DAYS
REMAIN.
I was up at six the next morning, long before Mrs. Winthrop arrived with breakfast (honey and biscuits made with fine white flour), dressed and ready, the quarter from Asa in my
pocket. And when the clock in the hall struck eight, I ran downstairs, scooted past the empty baptistery tank, and opened the door to the narrow stairway that led up to Mother Morevna’s room in the attic of the church. My hands shook with nerves and black coffee. I took a deep breath and began climbing. Before I could even reach to knock on the door, Mother Morevna’s voice from inside said, “Come in.”
I opened the door, trying hard to seem like the climb hadn’t winded me. The room was wide, and the pitched ceiling rafters hung with dried herbs, some familiar like sage, and some I’d never seen before. A twin-size brass bed lay in the shadows, simple and tightly tucked. Beside it was a bookcase so tall that it required a step stool, and filled with thick leather-bound books, many of them with titles written in a strange, jagged-looking alphabet. Across the room was another small door with a sign labeled ROOF ACCESS.
From a high-backed chair, silhouetted in the multicolored light of the rose window behind her, Mother Morevna sat at a desk with her hands folded, contemplating a stack of papers. I gulped.
“Mother Morevna?” I asked, stopping at the door. “Can I show you something? It’ll only take a second.”
Mother Morevna sighed. “I suppose. What is it, girl?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the quarter. I handed it to her heads side up so she could see the date. “Mr. Skander gave this to me, and I just thought you should see it.” I waited for her reaction, waited for her to tell me that what I’d found was important. That she was wrong and my lessons would begin in earnest immediately.
“Hmmm,” she said instead. “Another of these, eh?”
My heart dropped.
“The guards keep finding them on desert patrols,” she said. “I believe them to be anomalies originating in the real world that exists beyond the desert.”
She handed it back to me, and it sat impotent on my palm, even more worthless than before. Maybe I’d been too quick to jump to conclusions about Asa Skander, I thought. Maybe he really was only what he said. I shook myself mentally.
“Then the real world is still there,” I said.
“Yes,” said Mother Morevna. “The small world of the desert exists separate from it, a bubble of space and time and magic, until the Game ends and we either rejoin the outside world or continue in this one.”
Rejoining the world… that would really be something. But even continuing in this one was better than the alternative. If the Game ended in our favor. I thought of the Dust Soldiers, of the sacrifice.
“Is there any way I can help?” I asked. “Any at all? After all, I am a… a…”
“A witch?” Mother Morevna said.
Witch. The word sent a thread of lightning up my spine. Images of blood sacrifices, of cauldrons at midnight, of flying broomsticks sprang unbidden into my mind. Images of women with power.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
She looked at me for a moment, considering me. Then she sighed and gestured for me to sit down. Clumsily, I plopped down on the stool. Mother Morevna flicked her wrist, and with a gust of wind, curtains fell over all the stained-glass windows, leaving only the thin light of a few oil lamps to brighten the room.
“All right,” she said. “The first thing you must understand is the power.”
I nodded vigorously as though to say, Yes, yes, tell me everything.
“The power of the earth flows through everything, everyone. We are all connected to these powers in some way or another, and these powers eventually lead us to our specialties. I, myself, have a skill for laying trapdoor spells that can be quite complicated, indeed. All the spells outside my specialty, my coven sisters tattooed on my hands so I would never lose them, as was their way.”
“Will I have to have tattoos?” I asked, looking at the many intricate lines and symbols that stretched across her wrinkled claws.
“No,” she said. “It is still far too early for that. Any education, even witchcraft, must have a strong foundation in order to stand the test of time. You can worry about specialties later.” She folded her hands. “For now, I suppose you can begin with runes. I have a workbook on Elder Futhark that you can begin tonight.”
“Elder… what?” I asked, my excitement deflating a little bit.
“Futhark. Viking runes. One of English’s roots is in Futhark, so when you get down to writing your own basic spells, that’s likely what you’ll use.”
She went to the bookcase and pulled two books off the middle shelf, one a thin paperback and the other a book about the size of a King James Bible and probably older than Mother Morevna herself.
“Here,” she said. “A runic workbook and A History of Witches. That should be enough. Now, that’s it for today, I’m afraid. I must be about my duties.”
What? Already? My heart sank. I hesitated, feeling the weight of my expectations drag my shoulders down.
“Have they been caught?” I asked. “The thieves, I mean.”
“Not yet,” Mother Morevna said, putting a pair of bifocal spectacles on the end of her nose. “Though we are looking into the matter, and we should be able to find them soon.” She looked down at her stack of papers. “Now, please, my dear. I have quite a lot of work to do if anything is going to get done in that regard. I’ll see you in a few days.”
I wanted to ask if there was anything I could learn that might help catch the thieves, might help me feel useful. But Mother Morevna was already back into her stack of paperwork and didn’t even look up.
“… Yes, ma’am.” I had barely said the words before the door closed itself behind me.
Four hours later, I was halfway through chapter two of A History of Witches. I’d read about water witches who divined with forked sticks in the Appalachian Mountains. I read about witches in Egypt and the Caribbean and Africa. I read about witches reading cards and smoke and tea leaves. I read about witches getting burned at the stake in Germany and England and hanged in Massachusetts, and somehow the author of A History of Witches had managed to write about all of these things in the driest, most boring way I could think of.
“Uggghhh,” I said, rubbing my temples. “That’s all I can do for today.”
I put a scrap of paper into the book to mark my place and closed it. I felt bleary-eyed and lazy, and even after all that reading, I still didn’t know how witchcraft had anything to do with me in particular.
I went to the bookcase to find a place wide enough for A History of Witches. There were seventy-three copies of the Cokesbury Baptist Hymnal, from back in the days when we had actually used them. I shoved the Cokesburys to the side and wedged A History of Witches in where I could.
But it wouldn’t fit! Something was back there, a loose board or something. I took a few Cokesburys from the shelf and peered into the dark, dusty shelves. Then I saw it.
At the back of the bookcase, shoved far behind the rest of the books, was a small, leather-bound book no bigger than those pocket Bibles I’d seen in Boise City. I reached behind the other hymnals and pulled it out.
Squinting against the dust, I held it up and blew the dust off the cover. There, in crisp gold letters, the title stood out: The Complete Booke of Witchcraft.
Must be one of Mother Morevna’s books, I thought. She must have forgotten it was in here.
But when I flipped through it, the chapters were not dull or didactic. They were things like “Dowsing for Beginners,” or “Quick Shortcuts to Spellcraft.” And the scribblings in the margins were not in the tight, dark handwriting Mother Morevna had left in A History of Witches. This wasn’t cursive at all. All capital letters, in pencil, writing notes about things like how to create lightning from a handful of dust and crushed seashells, or how to make light appear in your hand. And then, far toward the back, how to breathe fire.
New energy seemed to leap into my veins. This was something practical, something I could use. With this, I could prove that I was cut out for this. And extra study couldn’t hurt, could it? Surely not, if there was even the remotest possibility that I’d
be dealing with the Dust Soldiers in four months’ time.
So I flung the Futhark workbook to the floor, did a few quick stretches, and spread out on the bed with The Complete Booke of Witchcraft.
I flipped through the introduction and landed on the second page.
“‘Chapter One: Practical Spells for Every Witch,’” I read.
Though many spells center on specialty, there are a few basic spells that can be mastered by almost any witch. First, IMBUED OBJECTS. In order to direct and focus her power, a witch may choose an object and imbue it with her essence. This will act as a conduit for her magic, strengthening her power. Usually, pieces of jewelry are best for this, as metal and stone are conductors of magical power.
Like Mother Morevna’s pendulum, I thought. But I didn’t have any necklaces or brooches, or even earrings. A pebble, maybe? No. That didn’t seem special enough, unique enough.
But then I remembered. I went to my desk and opened the small wooden box that had been brought over from my shack. I opened it, riffled through, and after a moment I found what I was looking for. It was a normal penny at first, tails-side glance, two stalks of wheat surrounding the words ONE CENT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and, above that, E PLURIBUS UNUM. I’d found it on the floor of the hospital room Mama had lived her final days in. At first I’d thought it was good luck, but when I turned the penny over to see what year it had been minted, instead of a heads side, there was just another back. Another tails. I had been disappointed at first. “This penny’s broken,” I had said. But I remembered the smile on her cracked, dirty lips. “It’s got ‘E pluribus unum’ on it twice,” she’d said. “So that’s double good.” “What does that mean?” I had asked. “It means ‘From many, one.’”
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