Elysium Girls

by Elysium Girls (retail) (epub)

  “Wait,” I said, “I want to help.”

  Zo rolled her eyes. “Like I said—”

  “I didn’t do this, but I think I can undo it.” I looked directly into Zo’s eyes, challenging her. “I think I can heal her.”

  Zo was quiet, eyes narrowed, unsure.

  “Zo,” said the other girl near the doorway, pale and worried. “It doesn’t look like she’s got long.…”

  Zo looked at me very seriously, scanning my face to see if I was telling the truth, then nodded. “Come on, then,” she said. “But if you fail…”

  “I won’t,” I said. Across from me, Asa nodded. Then Zo led me up into the train car.

  It was dark inside, and the air was heavy with a feeling I knew well: worry and grief.

  Toward the back of the room, the girls were clustered: Olivia and Cassie and the little girl, Mowse, kneeling by a cot made out of what looked like old blankets. On the cot, a young woman, Kiowa or Comanche, maybe, was lying on her back with her eyes closed. Her long hair was spread over her chest and on her pillow in sweaty black strings. Olivia heard us enter and turned.

  “Zo, what the hell are you doing? Get her out! Now!”

  “She says she can heal Susanah. Says she knows how to break the curse.”

  “You do?” It was Mowse’s voice this time, small and hoarse and hopeful.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think I can heal her.”

  “Olivia, please,” said Mowse from the floor. “Please let her.”

  Every eye was on Olivia, but Olivia’s were on Susanah.

  “… All right,” she said. Then, to me, “Get over here and do it.”

  I went to the bedside and looked down at the girl on it. Susanah was older than me, in her early twenties, probably. She had plainly been strong once, but now she was sunken-cheeked and hollow-chested. Her lips were dry and flaky, and her eyes had begun to sink inward like a dead person’s. Mama looked like this before she died, I thought with the shallow pang of old grief. She wasn’t long for this world. Mother Morevna’s spell had drained her slowly, like a hole in a tire. They were lucky that it had been only her and not all of them.

  Feeling the other girls’ eyes on my back, I pulled out my stone and placed it on her chest. It barely moved when she breathed. Then I cleared my mind and focused my magic into my hands. The penny on my chest warmed to life. With my eyes closed, I raised my right hand to my mouth and bit into my thumb, hard, until I tasted blood. Set it right, Mother Morevna had said. Setzen Sie es richtig.

  “Setzen Sie es richtig,” I said, and as I smeared my own blood on the stone, I felt power throb through my veins and into it. The pulse rocked through the girl lying there, and she began to change like a field when the storm clouds roll away. Her dull skin grew bright and healthy. Her hair seemed to change too, become thicker and blacker almost, and her breathing was no longer a shallow wheeze, but deep and regular. I took the stone back; the magic had been done. The girls were around me, watching. I could feel all of them holding their breath. Then Susanah’s eyes fluttered open. She looked up at me in confusion.

  “Susanah!” cried a small voice.

  “Kahúu!” Susanah said, her face breaking into a wide smile. “My little mouse, come here!” Her voice was weak, but she reached down and pulled the little girl, Mowse, to her side.

  “I thought you were gonna die,” sobbed the little girl.

  “No! No, no, no, no, no,” said Susanah, “I’d never leave you. Never in a million years.”

  Then the two of them hugged, and the other girls huddled close around them. I let out a whooshing breath of relief. I had done it. Neither of them had to know a life without the other. And even if I had ruined Elysium, at least I had been able to do this. To return this. I stepped back from their circle of tears, an outsider again. Then I felt someone standing beside me.

  “She gave you one of those?” Olivia said, her eyes on the stone in my hand. Her voice had an odd, tight quality to it that I couldn’t place. “From what I remember, Morevna didn’t just give those away.”

  “You knew Mother Morevna?” I asked.

  “No, I didn’t,” said Olivia, her voice as flat as a stone itself. She watched the weeping, huddled mass around Susanah’s cot.

  “You know, Susanah’s been out here longer than any of us—even me,” said Olivia. She took a drag of her cigarette and blew out a line of smoke. “That’s how she found Mowse—she hid in a car throughout Black Sunday after she broke out of that… school… she was in up north. Mowse was inside under some blankets. Probably an Okie family on the way to California who abandoned her, thinking she’d be one less mouth to feed.” Olivia paused. “Mowse would’ve still had us, but… I can’t imagine what she would have done if Susanah…”

  “I know,” I said, watching Susanah and Mowse, feeling my chest grow tight. “I know what that’s like.”

  Olivia turned to me and really looked me in the eyes for the first time.

  “You’re the Girl Who Cried Rain,” she said. “I remember you now.”

  That name. It was always unexpectedly sharp, always cut just a little. But Olivia said it differently, with—no, not pity in her voice. Understanding. Because who could understand being alone against Elysium if not Olivia Rosales?

  “Sal,” I said. “Just Sal.”

  Olivia nodded.

  “We’re in your debt, Sal,” she said. “Anything you want, name it. You’re one of us now.”

  One of us. That phrase felt golden in my mind. To be one of something. I’d never had that, I realized. Not even as Mother Morevna’s Successor. That had been more isolating than anything. One of us. But there were two.

  “What about Asa?” I asked. “I can’t leave him out there by himself. He’s invited too, right?”

  “Why, of cour—” Olivia began, but before she could finish, Asa himself appeared in the doorway, looking paler than usual.

  “Actually, I think I’ll have to decline that offer,” Asa said, his eyes darting from me to Olivia, a strange kind of panic behind them. “As kind as it is, I think I need to go it alone for a bit. You stay here, Sal. I’ll be fine on my own.” He turned to Olivia. “I’m sorry again about the picture misunderstanding and I wish you the best, but I don’t think I should be here.…”

  It didn’t make sense. Asa seemed so shaky, so fearful. He didn’t even cross the doorway. He stood at the edge of it like a vampire waiting to be let in, his eyes falling again and again on Olivia.

  “But, Asa, where are you going to—”

  “This is stupid,” Olivia said. “It’s insane to be alone out there. You won’t get another offer like this.”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “But I’d rather be safe than sorry.” He tipped his hat, and without another word, Asa disappeared into the desert, leaving me. Again.

  Out in the desert, Asa’s brain pounded with panic. His human mask threatened to fall off in bits like pieces of a car in a junkyard. When he was with someone else, he could focus on other things, whistling, snapping, making plans. Playing at being human.

  But now he was alone. And better alone than there, with her.

  Olivia Rosales, the one who could disarm him, whose nature Death was using to further Her own ends. She was Death’s Wildcard, she had to be, though he doubted she knew it. A human chosen by Death wouldn’t know; she’d just inadvertently serve Death’s cause through her own nature, her own decisions. And that explained even more: As the opposing Card, he was drawn to her, drawn inexorably. That’s what he had felt as Judith and Zo led them to the train. That’s why the photograph had felt so significant. She was the Card. And if he’d had any doubts, fighting her had alleviated them. It had been an enormous risk to fight her hand to hand, but he’d had to be sure. And now he was. If he wanted to fix things, he needed to stay away from Olivia Rosales.

  But Sal. Of course she had to stay there. It was the right thing to do. The human thing to do. Sal’s security wasn’t his. There was no security for him, not now. And who knew
if Life would even allow him the chance to make things right again? Who knew if even now Life was sending Her Sentinels to hunt him, seize him, bring him back for punishment?

  Asa shook himself mentally.

  “I’m okay,” he said, smiling as wide as possible (far too wide). “I’ve got this.”

  He took deep breaths, looked up at the cold, unfamiliar stars.

  But his smile deflated, and he knew that he was very much not okay and that he definitely did not have this. What would he do out here? Where would he go? Asa wasn’t sure.

  Now that there was nothing to draw his attention away, Asa could feel the foundation of everything tipping. He could feel the crawl of minutes, maggots over the cooling corpse of this world. Their days were numbered. Death would surely win at this rate. And if She won…

  Asa shook his head. All the fantasies he’d had about being human, of living a human life seemed minuscule and foolish in comparison with the gargantuan mistake he’d made. Now he knew he’d give anything to have things go back to the way they were, before he was ever sent down to this dusty piece of hell.

  He let his eyes go daemon again, like they’d been trying to do for an hour now. He let his legs bend their natural way, his feet and hands and teeth and snout elongating. There was nothing human about him now. If there had ever been anything really human in the first place. How could he kid himself? He was just as bad a human as he was a daemon. Worse, maybe. And now was he even a daemon anymore? Asa wasn’t sure, and that made him feel twisted and bent and impossible. Wrong. Like he was a mistake. That’s how he’d always felt, he realized. Like a mistake. Why, oh why had the Mother chosen him? Why had Life agreed? Hadn’t They known that his curiosity and impulsivity, his wrongness would be his undoing?

  Asa had a sudden, awful thought. Had that been Their plan all along?

  “If You were trying to prove a point, that I’m the worst daemon that has ever lived, You’ve proven it!” he shouted at the sky. “I’ve learned my lesson!”

  Asa waited, but only the lonely wind blew around his ankles. He thought of Death and Her inevitable march. Perhaps Life was so disgusted by his failure that She was leaving him to be torn asunder by Her Sister. Or… his heart sank. Or perhaps sending him down here was just a way of getting rid of him, the annoying, human-obsessed mistake always on the fringes, always unsatisfied. Perhaps She had never meant for him to succeed in the first place.

  But I was her Card, Asa thought. Am I still?

  In the distance there was a howl, then nothing more. Once an active player, Asa had fallen off the playing board, and it seemed as though his absence wasn’t even felt. It was as though he was nothing. It was as though he was nothing at all.

  Asa sat down on the dunes and looked out over the great, alien expanse before him. The shadows seemed to bend and twist the more he looked at them, expanding into the shapes of Sentinels, coming to take him back, to rend him to pieces for his failure. He blinked, and the shadows were just shadows again. But they will come for me, Asa thought, the hair rising on the back of his neck. Maybe not now. Maybe not until the very last day, but they will come for me.

  Far away, a faint sound rose, audible only to his daemonic ears. Singing—mournful, tearful singing. Back at Elysium, a funeral was underway.

  It had taken Lucy Arbor’s aunt Lucretia four days to die. For four days, she had wheezed and hacked, spitting up mud and blood as the family looked on, helpless. Some of them had wiped her head with a cool rag. Some of them had ladled Dowsing Well water down her throat. Some had gotten down on their knees and prayed. But it didn’t matter, Lucy thought. Despite all of that, she had still died.

  The funeral had been a classic Elysian funeral: the family standing at the base of the wall, looking upward, as Aunt Lucretia’s frail, white-swaddled body was bricked into the top of the wall. They had wept and hugged, and sung the songs from the days before the walls and the Dust had covered everything. They had prayed once more to a god who didn’t exist, a tether to culture and the past, and they had left. From there, everyone had gone back to Lucy’s parents’ house, where a funeral dinner made of rations—more meager than ever in these days after the Sacrifice building burned—waited to comfort their stomachs even if their souls were still bruised with loss.

  But Lucy didn’t join them. Instead, in her best dress, with her hair in artful braids, she walked across town to the hospital, feeling lucky that the night was so dark and that no one was out on the streets but her—her and the never-ending march of workmen collecting rations and doing their best to build a new Sacrifice before the Dust Soldiers came. Squeezing people dry, Lucy thought, and for what? It’s too late. We’re just going to die anyway. We could at least go out with full bellies.

  Even with no one on the street, Lucy could feel the shadow of doom hanging over the town. It was present in the number of guards—doubled since the day Sal and Asa were exiled—stooping, exhausted in their towers. It was present in the announcements and flyers Mother Morevna sent out, telling everyone that now was not the time to panic; it was the time to use less and give to the Sacrifice. It was present in her own face, how her cheeks had begun to hollow.

  Lucy thought of Aunt Lucretia’s sunken stomach and fought back a lurch of grief. She was almost to the hospital, and she had to hold it together there, if nowhere else.

  When she got to the desk, Nurse Ada was waiting. Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes the older, white nurses still had a little pre-Elysium meanness lingering in the way they looked at her, the tone they used or didn’t use. Nurse Ada wasn’t like that. Nurse Ada liked girls, like Lucy did, though Lucy wasn’t sure how she could tell. She thought maybe that was one of the reasons they got along. Though most of it was probably that she was a good person—sometimes the only person Lucy could talk to while she was in the hospital.

  “Here you are,” said Nurse Ada, pulling a bundle from under the desk. “These are all her things, everything she had during her stay with us. And I am so sorry, Lucy. Your aunt was a kind, sweet lady, and a lot like you in many ways.” Nurse Ada smiled a sad sort of smile. “Always well-dressed.”

  “Thank you,” Lucy said. “And yes, ma’am… she was.”

  Aunt Lucretia’s things included a faded blue blanket, a rhinestone brooch, and a tin drinking cup, the one she had used to drink the Dowsing Well water Lucy had kept bringing her long after she knew it wasn’t working.

  Customarily, now would have been the time to choose what went onto the platform for the Mourning Night ceremony. (The brooch would have been a likely candidate.) But now there was no assurance of another Mourning Night ceremony. No assurance of life beyond the next couple of months, and Lucy simply pocketed the brooch and wrapped the cup in the blanket.

  But getting Aunt Lucretia’s things was only part of the reason she was there. Ever since Sal was exiled from Elysium, Lucy had been coming to the hospital and talking to Nurse Ada about Dust Sickness, finding out more about it, how it infected people, and, hopefully, how to keep people from being infected.

  “Ruth, could you man the desk?” Nurse Ada asked. “I need to speak with Lucy more in depth.”

  Reluctantly, Nurse Ruth, a bad-tempered elderly white woman, took the desk, and Nurse Ada took Lucy back to her office.

  “Do you have anything?” Lucy asked, pulling her handmade notepad from her pocket and her pencil from behind her ear.

  “Not so far,” Nurse Ada said. “Only that Dust Sickness seems to be spreading faster now. It’s so strange. Unless the little bit of dust that got in when Sal Wilkerson and Asa Skander cast Dust Dome is to blame?”

  “Maybe,” Lucy said, though somewhere inside she knew that was wrong. “But Aunt Lucretia…” Lucy paused, swallowed a lump growing in her throat. “She was inside with the windows shuttered when that dust storm hit. So why did she…?”

  “I don’t know,” Nurse Ada said. “None of us know how the dust is getting to people. None of us know how to cure it. All we know how to do is treat the sympt
oms.”

  It was strange. Dust Sickness seemed to swoop down and take some people, like Aunt Lucretia and Sal’s mother, and leave others hanging on, growing thinner and paler and less of themselves by the day. Personally, Lucy thought the hanging on was worse.

  Just then, the door swung open, and a white man rushed in carrying his wife. She hung limp in his arms, her breath coming in a high, thin wheeze. Lucy recognized him from the food ration counter: Mr. Walker, who always slipped an extra ration to families with kids.

  “Help!” Mr. Walker cried. “My wife! She’s collapsed! I think she has Dust Sickness!”

  Nurse Ada rang a bell under the desk, and three nurses rushed out and took them back to the operating room. Lucy heard someone asking about a tracheotomy and someone else asking about chest compressions; then a door slammed and it was quiet again.

  “That’s the fifth one today,” Nurse Ada murmured.

  CHAPTER 16

  2 MONTHS

  AND

  23 DAYS

  REMAIN.

  When I woke, the smell of food was in the air: bread, meat, coffee. My stomach growled painfully. It had only been five days since I’d had a proper meal, but it felt like an eternity.

  I thought of Asa out there in the desert, and a pang of guilt went through me. Was it something I did? Something I said that made him leave? Maybe Asa is okay, I thought. Maybe he’s out there biting the head off a rabbit or something, I thought, surprised by how easily that visual came to mind. He said he’d be all right, so I’m sure he will. Besides, it was his idea. I told myself this, but even so, I was worried about him. More than that, I was worried about what I was doing here. The penny had pointed in this direction, had buzzed when we arrived as though to say, Here we are! But what was it that I was looking for? What was I supposed to find?

  My stomach growled again, twisted itself in a knot. Whatever I was looking for, I needed to eat first. I dressed and made my way outside, letting the smell of food lead me onward.