Elysium Girls

by Elysium Girls (retail) (epub)

  Sirens.

  Fear scraped the bottom out of my stomach, made my breath come in spurts as the old panic rose inside me. A dust storm.

  “Go and seek shelter, Sallie.” She pulled a cloth dust mask from her pocket and put it on. “Go,” she said, her voice muffled. Then she turned on her heel and strode out of the room, her skirts billowing behind her.

  Every part of me was telling me to run, to hide, to seek shelter. No, I thought. I want to see how to do this. I tried to calm my breathing. With shaking hands, I put my dust mask on and followed her.

  Dust storms didn’t come as frequently as they used to, about once a month now, but my fear of them never lessened. Every time I heard the sirens, every time I heard the rumble of dust, it was as though I was nine again, out in that field, seeing Mama running toward me on one side and the dust on the other.

  Out the window, everyone was going into the dust storm preparations like automatons: goggles on, dust mask on, stockings up, neck covered, sleeves down. I saw guards climbing from their towers to take shelter, the cowboys bringing their cattle to the barn, men and women running inside, shutting their windows, stuffing rags under their doors. All of them glanced fearfully back toward the church, waiting for Mother Morevna to come out and perform her spell to keep us safe. Beyond the walls, an enormous horizontal line of dust advanced, dark and ominous. Dust Dome was a spell we all knew. It covered the whole city, keeping the dust from flowing in and smothering or infecting us. But it only went as far as the walls. My palms sweated, my mouth was dry.

  Just then, there was a sound from upstairs, in the room across from mine: a frantic, wordless shouting, a scratching at the walls, the sound of someone throwing themselves against the door.

  I almost screamed and ran for cover in my room, but I saw Mother Morevna turn the corner and I darted after her, trying not to listen as the person in the room pounded at the door.

  When I caught up to her, Mother Morevna was in the Dust Room. In a bin, there were four packages in plain brown paper, marked STORM. She reached and took one, unwrapping it deftly and tossing the twine in the corner. As she unwrapped each item, I tried to take note of it as well as I could from a distance.

  She took out three chicken eggshells and smashed them, then put them in her pocket. What followed was an envelope labeled seashell dust, a handful of tawny fur, and a tiny vial of what looked like blood.

  From the shadows, holding my hands over my ears, I watched her pour the small vial of rabbit blood onto her steady wrinkled hands. Then she turned and walked out into the vacant streets, her hands filled with bloody fur and eggshells and dust. I followed from a distance, the panic threatening to squeeze my heart to a pulp. The air was growing painful with static electricity, cold, taut, as it always did when a dust storm approached. I tried my best to stand up straight, but my legs shook, my knees seemed to bend against my will, and one thought drummed through my brain: run, run, run, run, run.

  With her eyes closed, Mother Morevna took the ingredients into her hands and raised them outward. She took her hands and clasped them together, crumbling the eggshells, smearing it all with the blood, rubbing it all together between her long, bony palms. The tattoos on her hands seemed alive.

  “PULVAREM FIRMAMENTUM!” Mother Morevna shouted, raising both fists and letting the wind whip the mixture out of her hands, leaving her bloody-palmed and defiant in front of the storm full of the glow of power.

  There was a great thrum of magic that went up from her. Up toward the sky. And just as the dust started to slip over the walls, it was sent upward, outward, away. It flowed over Elysium as though we were inside an overturned glass bowl, looking safely up at the sky.

  Dust Dome.

  My heart was beating so fast it almost hurt. We’re safe, I had to tell myself. It’s over. We’re safe.

  But it wasn’t over. Mother Morevna winced. Her eyes closed; she gritted her teeth, and she crumpled like a leaf, clutching her abdomen. There was a loud crack as her head hit the concrete porch.

  “No!” I shouted, running out too late to catch her. “No, no, no! Mother Morevna!”

  But she was unconscious.

  All the fear, all the panic rose inside me again. Oh, God, what do I do? What do I do?

  Then I heard a woman scream. The clear dome of magic over the city began to crack like an egg. The spell was breaking.

  I have to fix it! I thought. I have to!

  My hands were shaking as I stood up again. A long fissure was growing in the spell Mother Morevna had cast. I had to mend it somehow. I had to cast the spell again. Frantically, I gathered bits of fur and eggshells from the ground, dropping them, and trying to pick them up again. Please, I thought. Please, please, please. I closed my eyes and tried to ground myself in the feeling of the ingredients in my hands. The coyote fur was soft; the eggshells were sharp and small; the seashell dust seemed to thicken into a paste with the blood. I willed my panicked brain quiet and focused on the outcome, the spell I’d seen so many times before.…

  I raised my hands like she had done, tried to clear my mind, to make the magic happen.

  Come on, come on! But my penny was cold. Above me, the crack widened again. People began to scream and run back to their houses, securing their dust masks on. My heart raced; my hands were clumsy. I couldn’t breathe. I had to run for cover.

  “Sal!” said a voice. Asa Skander was there on the steps beside me.

  “Get back to your house!” I shouted over the wind. “Put your mask on! Shut your doors!”

  “What are you going to—” Asa started.

  But I didn’t have time to talk to him. I had a city to save. Desperately, I willed all my magic into my red-stained hands and screamed into the storm, “PULVAREM FIRMAMENTUM!”

  There was another, weaker pulse of magic. Please, please, please.

  Miraculously, the cracks in the spell began to heal themselves, to draw back together.

  But then they stopped. Tendrils of dust came howling down with the wind. The crack lengthened, a big dark lightning bolt in the fabric of the spell. The dust grew thicker, its roaring sounding like a hundred freight trains at once, plunging us into darkness as it blocked the sun. The people ran for cover. The spell was failing. I wasn’t strong enough. Soon the dust would cover all of us like it had Mama so long ago, and with it would come the Sickness. I tried to stand, tried to shoulder the weight of it, straining against the wind and the force even as my breath began to come in gasps and my legs began to shake. The roar of it was overwhelming. It rose in me and drowned out everything else, even the beating of my own panicked heart. My knees buckled, and I felt myself fold. I crumpled down onto the steps next to Mother Morevna, my hands over my head, my brain blank with fear, waiting for the dust to swallow me whole like the monster it so resembled.

  But there was someone standing over me: Asa Skander, facing the crack in the spell as the wind whipped his coat back.

  “What are you doing?” I croaked.

  “Helping,” he said. He put his hand up, closed his eyes, and I felt the sudden, unmistakable pulse of very strong magic. Magic without words or spell components.

  There were exclamations in the street. People were pointing upward. Above us, the cracks in the spell began to knit themselves back together. The two halves of the dome drifted toward each other like a continent re-forming, tectonic plates about to collide. Then they connected and melded together, seamless and whole as a clear glass bowl over us. Beyond it, the storm flowed silently over us, its angry darkness impotent beyond the border of Asa’s magic.

  “How—” I gasped. “How did you—”

  But a great cheer went up then. The people of Elysium poured from their houses, shouting their delight and relief. A man and woman began dancing, their dust masks at their chests again. And over everything, a new cry rose up among the gathering crowd: “Asa! Asa! Asa! Asa!”

  Asa was pleased with himself for helping, but Sal Wilkerson looked confused, almost angry. That didn’t mak
e sense. Who would be angry at receiving help?

  Mr. Jameson appeared soon with nurses from the infirmary, telling everyone to get back, get back, so he got back, into the crowd, where his back was slapped and his hand shaken and questions were asked of him.

  “You can do real magic too?”

  “Are you a witch too, boy?”

  “Thank God you’re here! ’Bout time we had us a man who could do magic!”

  There was a tingle in his mind, and he knew what Life would say to him.

  Show them! Show them the object! Finish the job!

  But it was in the drawer. Perhaps he could go back and get it? But then Asa felt a lengthening, a sharpness in his mouth. Oh no! he thought. My teeth! He knew without looking that his facade was slipping. He’d never used that much magic at once before. Soon his hands would lengthen into claws. His back would bend itself into its natural position. His skin would grow scaly and sharp. It would all be over. He opened his mouth to speak, to tell them he had to be off, that he wasn’t feeling well, but a plume of white smoke slipped out.

  The crowd gasped.

  I’ve got to get out of here! Asa thought. Clapping his hand over his mouth, he pushed through the crowd and ran behind a nearby chicken coop. Then he disappeared altogether, leaving the townspeople to gasp at the mystery of it all.

  He reappeared back in his house, his chest heaving and his teeth almost too big for his mouth. Too weak to stand, he crawled into the bloodstained bedroom, feeling his human form unraveling like a poorly knitted sweater.

  I shouldn’t have done that, he thought as his hands became claws and his scaly skin shredded his shirt before he could get it off. I shouldn’t have meddled.

  He would have considered this more, but he heard the footsteps of many pairs of shoes crunching in the street, then plunking across his porch. A crowd had assembled. There were knocks at the door.

  He didn’t answer. A few minutes later, a man said, “Probably real tired after all that. We need to leave him be.”

  Asa sat still as a stone until all of them left, one by one, trudging away into the darkening evening. He waited until it was dark, then looked outside. There were several sets of footprints in the dust on his porch, and five plates of food, wrapped carefully in rags and dishtowels, and only a little gritty.

  Thank you for saving us, said a note on a plate of biscuits. We appreciate all you did for us today, said a note that came with a roast chicken. “‘We’d love to get to know you better, friend,’” Asa read aloud from the final note, which had come with a pound cake on a scratched milk-glass platter.

  You still have time, said a crackling, mercury-scented voice in his mind. Enjoy yourself here. Make some friends! It’s not like you had any back in the Between.

  That was true. Asa had always been the odd daemon out. Never a kind word did anyone speak to him there. But here…

  It was a lot to think about. The more he put his mission off, the bigger the risk he took. Life could strip him of his essence, shred him like ribbons and leave him flapping like bloody rags in the firmament.

  But what was his existence without seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting? He was enamored with it, even just the small bits he had seen so far. Perhaps there was something to what the other daemons said, that there was a toxin in the air of the Earth that made you hungry, made you want more and more and ever more. That made you want to go rogue and take over a human’s body just to stay (they didn’t talk about those daemons much—that was what made one a demon, after all, rather than a daemon).

  It was a lot to think about. So Asa, too tired to give the matter the consideration it deserved, merely decided to ignore his thoughts for now. He unhinged his jaw like a snake, swallowed the pound cake in a single gulp, and lay down on the floor to sleep while his human body repaired itself.

  CHAPTER 8

  3 MONTHS

  AND

  18 DAYS

  REMAIN.

  I sat up with Mother Morevna as best I could, but after the spell, my bones felt like sand and my blood like water. A nurse came in then, walking carefully around the pentagram on the floor, probably for fear of turning into a salamander. Her name was Ada Speer, and she was one of the younger, nicer nurses.

  As I watched her check Mother Morevna’s pulse, her hands seemed so plump and healthy next to Mother Morevna’s. In her white nightgown, it was suddenly obvious how frail and thin Mother Morevna was. How mortal. And this mortality hit me like a hammer and left me reeling.

  “She’s going to be all right,” said Nurse Ada. “It’ll take some time, but she’ll be all right.”

  “She says she’s sick,” I said.

  “She is…” the nurse admitted. “But she’s a pretty tough old witch—” Nurse Ada’s eyes widened. “I—I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Will she make it to… will she make it to the ten-year mark?” I heard myself ask.

  “We’ll see,” said Nurse Ada. “If she rests and doesn’t push herself too hard, maybe. And now that we have that magician around—maybe things will be easier for her—and you, of course. Another witch couldn’t hurt, after all.”

  Asa Skander. Another witch. The witch who had stopped the storm when I couldn’t. There was certainly more to him than met the eye.…

  The air grew thick with silence. Then we heard a loud crash and a wail from the second floor: the room across from mine.

  “Poor Miss Ibarra,” she said. Then she turned to me. “It’s so good of Mother Morevna to take interest.”

  “What?” I asked. “Miss Ibarra?”

  “Mother Morevna didn’t tell you she was coming?” said Nurse Ada. “Perhaps not. But we’re glad she decided to take her. There was only so much that could be done at the hospital.”

  I wasn’t sure what to think. This was the patient who had visions, who threw bedpans at windows. Why would Mother Morevna possibly want her here?

  Nurse Ada soon gathered her things and left but just before she closed the church door behind her, she turned and handed me what looked like a small stack of postcards folded in half.

  “This was in Mother Morevna’s pocket when she fell,” said Nurse Ada. “Just some water rations, but they’re Dowsing Well ones, so I figured just in case.”

  I looked down at the folded rations, puzzled. What did Mother Morevna need rations for? We had all we needed at the church. I unfolded the papers. There were five of them in all. Good for a month. All of them seemed to have a black smudge at one corner, but it was probably a misprint. She was most likely going to take them to the office or something before the storm hit. I’d give it back to her later.

  For the next three days, the doors and windows of the Robertson house were closed and shuttered. Asa Skander was nowhere to be found. Not on his soapbox, not walking around, exploring Elysium. But he was never far from my thoughts. What he had done, how he had essentially had to jump in and save me, had humbled me more than I cared to admit. And something like anger was steadily growing inside me. Simple magician my eye! And what’s more, the townspeople had just… accepted him? Just like that. And how long had he had magic, anyway? Was he a witch too? Could men even be witches? There was something funny going on. And whatever the case, I wasn’t about to let him humiliate me again, not after I had worked so hard and endured so much. I had been chosen, after all, and despite my reputation, despite Mother Morevna, despite everyone, I was the Successor. And I was going to be ready for that role if it killed me.

  Then there was the matter of the thieves. So while Mother Morevna convalesced, I practiced my magic in case they attacked again. In case I needed to act. I practiced channeling energy, finding things that were lost, breathing fire. My brain hurt from constant practice with runes and sigils. My fingers hurt too and were often caked in the various dusts that I needed to cast certain spells. There was a greater fire spell that I learned that burned my fingers black when I miscast it.

  I was still wiping the soot from my hands when I we
nt downstairs and saw Lucy, pretty and well-dressed as always, but carefully makeupless, waiting outside Mr. Jameson’s office.

  “Been burning something?” she said. “You smell like smoke.”

  “Fire spell,” I said, wiping my hands again. “I can do all kinds of things now. I can make a whirlwind, a giant flame, and… Wait, why are you here?”

  She shifted in her seat.

  “I’m here to fill out a water ration request form,” she said. “My aunt Lucretia is coming down with Dust Sickness, we think. We need to change her water from the normal well to the Dowsing Well. We’re hoping it might still be early enough to fight it off.”

  “Oh no,” I said, thinking how frivolous my spellwork must have sounded. “I’m so sorry, Lucy. I haven’t seen Mr. Jameson, or else I’d go get him for you. Do you…” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Do you want me to break in for you? I will if you want me to.”

  “That was fine back then, but you’re the Successor now,” Lucy said. “What kind of friend would I be if I risked your reputation like that?” My heart jumped a little at the word “friend.” Is that what we were now?

  Lucy sighed. “I’m probably waiting around for nothing, anyway. I hear Jameson doesn’t even grant these requests to white people. But still. Sometimes I wish someone would just lose some extra ones close to the house. Then I could just pick ’em up and not feel like I was stealing.”

  But someone had lost some.

  “Wait a minute!” I said. “Stay right there!” I shot up and ran as quietly as I could upstairs, tiptoeing past the locked door to my own room, where the stack of water rations the nurse had given me was still sitting on my bedside table. I grabbed it and ran back down to Lucy.

  “Here,” I said, shoving the rations into her hands. “Take these.”