He spat again into his peach can. He couldn’t allow himself to think like that for too long. Reality now was endless cracked sand, skeleton cars half submerged in the dust, stripped of anything useful. Air-rippling heat, endless thirst. And the creatures… he shuddered.
The fire coyotes, with their earth-blackening flames, were the first to spring to mind, always. But there were so many more things out there, strange things, things that Jameson dreamed of so often that he tried not to sleep. The tar-like black blobs he’d seen, skittering across the sand on little pale fingers. The pale, three-foot-long worms that passed beneath the soil and built cone-shaped nests like ant lions, surfacing only to eat the scorpions or horned toads that fell into them. The shadows that rippled in between the heat waves and disappeared, waiting, into one’s own shadow, to leap up and pull a man down into the sand, down to death. There was no hope beyond the walls. This he knew better than anyone. And if there was no hope beyond the walls, what did that mean for everyone inside the walls? Was it only a matter of time? Were they fooling themselves thinking they could ever escape a place like this with their lives and souls intact? Jameson just didn’t know.
Six o’clock. Less than twenty-four hours until the duel.
Above him, the banners snapped in the night wind. It was gaudier than any Mourning Night he’d ever seen. And with the announcements blaring over the desert—“A reminder that on Wednesday evening, everyone is expected to be in attendance at the duel,” “A reminder that the duel will begin promptly at six,” “A reminder that the searchlight on the northwest side is broken, please do not fear on the night of the duel”—he was certain that all the hullaballoo had not escaped the thieves’ attention. Half of him hoped that the thieves would recognize it as the threat that it was and not dare to show their faces.
But just as that hope crystallized in his mind, the light came on. Miss Ibarra was awake. And if she was up and shouting, throwing herself against the walls, that could only mean one thing: The thieves had gotten their message. They were going to climb those walls, right in front of his rifle.
“There’s no stopping it now,” Mr. Jameson murmured, his voice heavy with disgust. Then, with a final glance up at the night sky, Mr. Jameson emptied his peach can and went back inside.
CHAPTER 12
2 MONTHS
AND
29 DAYS
REMAIN.
Outside, the pennants fluttered to and fro, faded but cheerful against the dull sky. It was so overcast that barely any sunset orange showed through. If I didn’t know any better, I might have thought that it meant rain. But I did know better, and as I stood at the window of the sanctuary, looking out, I went over the order of mine and Asa’s spells, my hands moving along with the words.
But something felt off. Was it that my dresses were tighter than usual from all the good food I’d been having? Or maybe because my hair was out of its usual braids and up into a bun to keep it from catching on fire? My penny lay against my breastbone, thrumming with magic or my nerves, or both. But this was it. There was no going back.
Nervously, I looked outside.
A poster on a nearby wall proclaimed: SAL WILKERSON VS. ASA SKANDER. 6:00 Wednesday evening.
Fifteen minutes from now.
The fight of the century! I thought, imagining the two of us with boxing gloves and him with ketchupy fake blood to squirt when I socked him in the jaw. But boxing was one thing. Magic was another. And the rest of it… the trap… only made everything more nerve-racking.
But Mother Morevna knew what she was doing. No, I thought, I knew what I was doing. And this time, neither of us would lose.
All around the walls, the white stones Mother Morevna had laid waited, smeared with their mixture of cats’ blood and herbs, ready for her to say the word that would activate the trapdoor spell. To contain rather than to sicken this time. From there, the guards hanging just out of sight would descend and capture the thieves. They’d go to jail and we’d hold them there until after the Dust Soldiers had come, at which time we’d figure out something to do with them. Even if we had to stop the duel to do it, we’d come out looking good in the end. Trustworthy. Like good protectors.
Outside in the cleared-off space, the workmen were spilling Morton salt to make the circle that Asa and I would “duel” in. Mother Morevna appeared then from the upper floor. The woman in the room across from me had been absolutely crazy this morning. She’d thrown things against the wall and shouted in gleeful Spanish. ¡Hoy! ¡Hoy! Once or twice I even heard her throwing herself against the door, trying to escape. Then Mother Morevna, darkly elegant in her best dress, had gone up a few minutes ago and the room went silent.
“She’s asleep and will be asleep until morning,” said Mother Morevna, coming to stand beside me at the window. She looked out at the banners and ribbons, her face wrinkled with disdain. She didn’t mention Miss Ibarra again.
“With any luck, we’ll be through with this spectacle in an hour or two; then we can go on with business as usual,” she said.
“Business as usual,” I murmured in agreement, straightening my back and drawing myself up to her height.
Outside, the people were trickling in from all sides of town, dressed as well as they could be. They stood in twos and threes, congregating animatedly, and even Mother Morevna couldn’t ignore the buzz of excitement in the air. I knew then that many of the people would have come whether the duel had been mandatory or not.
Mr. Jameson walked by with three guards. He talked to them beneath the shadow of a windmill; then they scattered, heading up into their towers to wait. It was almost six o’clock. The dancers had already arrived and were getting ready for the jarabe tapatío number that they hadn’t gotten the chance to do at Mourning Night. The choir could be heard in the distance, behind the chicken houses, warming up with the third verse of “Shall We Gather at the River?”
Asa appeared then, soundlessly, shuffling out from between two houses as though he had just materialized out of thin air. He was wearing a gray linen suit and striped bow tie. His glasses slipped to the end of his nose as he read the sheet of paper he was holding in front of him. He’d attempted to slick his hair down, but it was fighting its way up again, especially in the back, giving him the look of a rooster who had woken up and decided to become a rather paranoid-looking boy. He came to the back door of the church and knocked quietly, looking over his shoulder for would-be miracle seekers out to tackle him to the ground. Mother Morevna opened the door for him, and I could have sworn I saw him shudder once before entering the church.
“Good evening to you, Mr. Skander,” Mother Morevna said stiffly. “It is good to see you looking well.”
“Same to you, ma’am,” he said. Then he nodded to me. “Sal.”
“I trust that the two of you will not vary from the order that you have given me and Mr. Jameson, correct?” she said to both of us, her eyes flicking from Asa to me to Asa to me again.
“Yes, ma’am,” we said together.
“Good,” she said. “Perhaps we can get all of this cleared up once and for all.”
We looked at each other, both equally nervous. Mrs. Anders came to the door then and knocked.
“We need a wind spell, ma’am,” she told Mother Morevna. “The wind is low, and it keeps blowing the choir girls’ skirts up.”
“I’ll be out in a moment,” she said, sending Mrs. Anders away. She turned to us. “I’ll leave the two of you to it. Do not do anything that differs from the plan, do you understand?” Here she looked at Asa. “Tread carefully, Mr. Skander. Tread carefully.”
He gulped.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Mother Morevna gave us one last look and went out to see if the choir was ready.
“Jeez, she’s scary,” said Asa, breaking the silence that had fallen between us. “I’m so nervous. I keep going over the list over and over.”
“I barely slept last night,” I told him. “I just went over all the spells.”
“C
an’t be too well-practiced, eh?” Asa said. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I almost wish it would start just so I could get out of here. I feel hot under the collar.…” Then he squinted out the window. “What are those guards doing?”
The other guards—the real guards—were getting into their leather harnesses. One by one, they were raised to dangle beneath the lip of the wall, just out of sight, their guns in their hands. I saw one of them give Mr. Jameson a thumbs-up.
“Extra security,” I told Asa. “In case the thieves try anything.”
“It looks almost like you expect them to,” Asa said.
“You can’t be too prepared.”
I tried to sound nonchalant, but the fact is that the trap made me nervous. It had been my idea, but now, seeing the guards with their rifles in hand, I wondered if it had been the right thing to propose. If it was the right thing to do. They had only been coming in for medicine last time, after all.…
The door opened, and Mother Morevna came back inside.
“It will begin in just a moment,” she said. “Wait until I introduce the two of you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Last but not least,” she said, “here.”
At first, I wasn’t sure what she had given me. Then I nearly gasped.
It was one of the white stones for her trapdoor spells, like the one the thieves had triggered, and the ones she’d laid around the base of the wall to catch them today. If she was giving me one of these, did that mean that, finally, she trusted me as a witch? As her Successor?
“If something goes wrong today,” she said. “If the thieves manage to get past Jameson, the guards, and myself, and you find yourself needing to undo one of my trapdoor spells, all you must do is smear the stone with your own blood and command it: ‘Set it right.’ Or, more accurately, ‘Setzen Sie es richtig.’ I find that my spells respond best to my family’s original language.”
“Setzen Sie es richtig,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Now keep that in your pouches where no one can bother with it.”
The people were all here now, all gathered outside the church. Everyone in Elysium: Black, white, brown, young, old, fat and thin. They stood together in front of the church, all around the circle of salt, looking on eagerly. One man even had a bag of peanuts. From under the nearest guard tower, behind the audience, Mr. Jameson pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. The signal.
Mother Morevna opened the door and took the stage. The oil lamps around the circle lit themselves, and in the light that came dancing up at her, she looked mystical and ancient.
“Friends, it is so good to see you all here tonight,” she said, her voice magically amplified. “I have the privilege now to open tonight’s ceremonies and to introduce two of the finest young witches in Elysium.”
The crowd applauded like people used to at football games or basketball games back before the walls went up. Like we were the event of the season. Mother Morevna raised her hands to quiet them.
“It will be a riveting event, I’m sure,” she said, her eyes flickering up to the dark place on the northwestern wall, where the thieves would surely come. “But before we get to that, let’s hear from Elysium’s Mexican heritage dancing troupe, Las Mariposas!”
Seven little girls in yellow dresses took the stage, and their mothers pushed their way to the front of the crowd. The white-haired guitar teacher, Mr. Ramirez, strummed once, twice on the guitar, then launched into a fast, thumping song as the little girls flounced here and there, vibrant and smiling in their layers of fabric.
Suddenly, Asa leaned over and said, “You wouldn’t happen to know who this belongs to, would you?”
He opened his pocket and something small and golden winked out at me from the bottom. A cricket suspended in amber.
“I… er… found this a while back, and I think somebody may have dropped it,” he said. “It… uh… looks like it might be valuable.”
“To a little boy who collects marbles or something, maybe,” I said.
Outside, the girls smiled and spun in their frills.
“Sure…” said Asa. “I just, you know… want to make sure it gets back to its rightful owner is all.” His yellowish eyes had a strange gleam to them, a seriousness that I hadn’t seen before.
“That’s nice of you, I suppose,” I told him. “But we kind of have bigger fish to fry right now.”
“Yes, but… I really want to get this back to the person it belongs to,” Asa said. He seemed agitated somehow, nervous, as though the real matter on his mind was this trinket and the duel itself were an afterthought. “You’re sure you haven’t met anybody who’s misplaced something like this?”
Was this really what he was worrying about right before the duel that could change so much for us? “I don’t know if you know,” I said, “but I’m not exactly Miss Congeniality around here.”
He went quiet, looking even more nervous than ever. And nerves weren’t good for duels.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “If you want to find the owner of the thing, how about you show it right after I’m declared the winner? Everybody will be there. They’re bound to see it then.”
A change seemed to come over Asa then. His agitation melted like an ice cube, and he said, “That’s a really good idea, Sal! Really good!” He clapped his hands once in triumph and turned to me excitedly, “And then… it’ll all be over!”
“Yep…” I said, thinking once more how odd he was. “Then it’ll all be over, all right.”
Before I knew it, the little girls did a low curtsy and, after a few final chords from the old man with the guitar, bounced offstage and back to their mothers, who hugged them and straightened the flowers in their hair.
Mother Morevna stepped forward then to introduce the children’s choir and Mrs. Anders. As they took the stage, their skirts seemed almost pulled downward against the wind. I looked at Asa. He wiped his palms on the front of his pants and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.
“We’re gonna be fine,” I told him. “Just do it like we did all this week.”
“Then we can return the cricket,” Asa said.
“Jesus, what is it with you and this thing?” I hissed. “But sure. Then you’ll find the owner of the cricket and I’ll have everyone’s faith and we’ll… we’ll go on with our lives.”
The choir finished the last screechy notes of “On the Jericho Road,” and the crowd clapped politely. Then Mother Morevna walked to the middle of the salt circle.
“And now,” said Mother Morevna, “the moment we have all waited for. First, I will call forth a young man who needs no introduction: Asa Skander!”
“Go!” I whispered, and pushed him out the door.
The crowd applauded wildly when they saw Asa. There were even a few whistles here and there. He adjusted his glasses and looked sheepishly out at the audience, then took his place at the far left side of the circle.
“Second, my Successor, a gifted young witch with the will to take on any challenge, Sallie Wilkerson!” she boomed.
I took a deep breath and plunged through the door.
The crowd cheered but not nearly as loudly as they had for Asa. I felt my face grow hot. Across the circle Asa tipped his hat to me, looking even more like Harold Lloyd than usual.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mother Morevna was saying, “I would like to remind everyone that in a Witches’ Duel, the rules are quite similar to a wrestling match. One is only down if he or she stays down beyond the count—in this case to seven—so you may see these two young people fall and rise numerous times before we have a winner. But it is all perfectly safe, and by the end of what I hope is a spectacular event, we shall know, once and for all, who is the strongest young witch in Elysium, fitting to lead us as the game we’re in continues: the magician, or the Successor!”
And with that, she bowed out of the circle and took her place beside the church. There, she would watch the match, but more importantly, she w
ould watch the walls for the thieves’ arrival.
I squared off, facing Asa from the far right side of the circle.
And we began.
First, Asa sank into a dramatic stance, put his hands out, and from them he sent a beam of light toward me. The crowd whooped with delight.
I leapt to the left, and it missed me by a matter of inches, then fizzled into nothingness at the edge of the salt ring. My penny glowed. I reached into my far left pouch and pulled out a handful of black roller dust. I whispered the command and threw it into the air. Just as I had practiced it so many times, it thickened and lengthened into an opaque black wall surrounding me. The crowd shouted and hooted.
Asa sent a couple more weak light beams that ricocheted off the dust wall and fizzled out at the salt line. “Come on! Try something else!” someone yelled. Then, right on schedule, he raised the ground beneath me. It rumbled, split as the crowd gasped. Then one side of the split raised three feet in the air, and the other lowered, knocking me off my feet. My dust wall dissipated as my body fell through it. But just as we planned, I jumped back up just in time to catch the remainder of the dust wall and spin it into a whirlwind. It grew and grew between the two of us. Gasps went up in the crowd, and the people fell back. Then Asa pretended to be sucked into the swirling black vortex. Carefully, I tossed him to and fro inside the circle, my whirlwind shaking him like a dog shakes a toy. In the audience, Trixie Holland pouted in a way that meant I was more impressive than she wanted to admit. I smiled.
The guards suspended beneath the lip of the wall were moving. Sure enough, there were shadowy silhouettes on the wall, six of them, flitting across from the dark place where the spotlight had been deliberately disabled. Small, slight shadows like the one I had seen on Mourning Night. In their towers, the decoy guards were all sound asleep, bewitched with a sleeping spell just as Mr. Jameson had guessed, their guns hanging useless at their sides.
But beneath the walls, the real guards hadn’t been touched by the spell. They were alert, and their guns were trained on the shadows as they began to descend into Elysium one by one, a rope of small black ants slipping down the wall. Underneath the windmill, Mr. Jameson flapped his handkerchief twice.
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