Mowse listened placidly, wincing when Susanah hit another tangle.
“She was the first part of my family. Then I found Zo a few years later, and then Olivia, and then the others after her, and now there are eight of us together.” Susanah paused. “You weren’t what I was looking for. But you are what I needed.”
Olivia stood with her bottle of moonshine and looked at each of us. “All of us came from pain and dirt and shit and death,” she said. “But we are family now. And you have my word, hermanas—y hermano—I will do anything for you. A toast to us!”
“To us!” we said.
We toasted with our Coke bottles, the blue-green glass gleaming in the firelight, and took another swig of moonshine (cactus juice for Mowse). It felt like Communion felt, quiet, reverent somehow. Important. And in the firelight, through the pleasant haze of moonshine, I realized that they were what we had needed. I had asked my pendulum to help me find something that could help fix everything and it had led me here. But why? And earlier, what Olivia had said about Mother Morevna… what had she meant? Questions seemed to spread over my mind like spilled paint, coloring everything warm around me dark again. Finally, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. These questions needed answers.
“Olivia,” I said when she sat back down next to me. “Can I speak to you for a minute? Alone?” My voice sounded flat and somber, contrasting sharply to the jubilant, carefree mood.
Olivia smiled and said, “Sure, kid.” She gave Asa an apologetic look. He nodded in return. Then I followed Olivia out of the circle of warmth and firelight and into the dark, toward her.
“You did good today,” Olivia said as she shut the door behind us. “If you hadn’t thrown me that rock, I think he might have had me. I think you and Asa will be a great fit with us, especially after today. Here, make yourself at home.”
I looked around, expecting to see walls of weapons, maps, maybe bloodstained clothes littered here and there. Instead, Olivia’s room looked somehow sad and bare. There was one window, a low, twin-size bed with a plaid blanket on it and a feed-sack pillow. Just above the bed, the picture Asa had given her, of Olivia and her sister, Rosa, was tacked up. Something tingled in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t put my finger to it.
“So, what are you thinking about?” she said.
I took a deep breath. It was now or never.
“About what you said earlier,” I said. “I have a few questions about Mother Morevna, about Elysium… and what happened while you were there.”
I braced myself for her reaction, though I didn’t know what it would be. Anger? Sadness? Would she tell me to go away? Instead, she simply took a swig of her moonshine, held it in her mouth for a moment, and swallowed.
“Well?” she said. “What do you want to know?”
“How did you know Mother Morevna?” I asked. “Did she teach you about magic?”
Olivia sighed. “It was back in the beginning of Elysium,” she said. “When she was starting out trying to make Elysium equal—outlawing hate speech, getting rid of ‘whites only’ areas and stuff like that. One day, I was being harassed by some white boys. They were telling me I shouldn’t be allowed in Elysium because I wasn’t ‘a real American,’ that I should have left like other ‘Mexicans.’ I told them I was proud to be Mexican, but that I was born here and that I’m just as American as they are. We got into a fight, and I hurt one of them pretty bad. When I was brought before Mother Morevna, I expected her to punish me, but instead, she asked if there had been birds on my house when I was born. I said yes. Blackbirds.”
Blackbirds, I thought. My blackbird blessing. So it had meant something after all.
“Then she told me to touch her hand. I did, and I felt… magic… flowing into my mind. Then she said to say ‘light’ in Spanish, ‘luz,’ so I did and… I made light.” Olivia smiled at the recollection, a pained, quiet sort of smile. “I was a witch, she explained. With a talent for copying others’ magic. She said that I was different, that that’s why I didn’t fit in, why I was so angry. I told her she didn’t know the half of it. My mother was dying then, and we’d just moved to that house with that…”
Olivia paused, decided not to mention Mr. Robertson.
“She said for me to come to her when I was angry. She said she could teach me about being a witch, a brujita. That one day I could even be her Successor, someone she could pass her knowledge to. And so I went to see her once a week, and learned what I could, using her power. And every day, she gave me lessons so that one day, when she was dead, I could take over for her. Funny how things work out, huh?”
Every day, I thought, my heart sinking. I could barely get Mother Morevna to look at me back in Elysium, and she had worked—really worked—with Olivia once a week? I shook myself mentally before I could allow myself to feel even worse.
“She loaned me this book,” Olivia said. “This little book… I wish I’d brought it with me. I left it on the bookshelf in the room I used to practice in, in the very back, behind some hymnals.”
My heart gave a weird little twist in my chest. I remembered how I had found The Complete Booke of Witchcraft behind all the Cokesbury hymnals. That book, the book that I had taught myself from, was Olivia’s. The writing in the margins had been hers. The room itself, the one I had stayed up every night in, teaching myself magic when Mother Morevna couldn’t be bothered… that had been hers too, I realized now. All of it, my entire position as Successor was just a thin, sad follow-up to Olivia. I was just the placeholder put there by a reluctant leader—and then, only because Mr. Jameson had forced her. Of course, I thought. Of course that wasn’t real either.
“Here,” I said, pulling The Complete Booke of Witchcraft from my pocket. “I found this when I moved into the church.” I held it up so the gold lettering caught the dim light.
“¡El libro completo de brujería!” Olivia cried. She looked at the book the same way I’d seen my mother look at toys she’d had in her youth. “Can I see it?”
“Of course,” I said. “It’s yours, after all.” I handed it to her, my heart heavy and numb. She thumbed through it, her fingers touching her scribbles in the margins.
“Yes… this is the book,” she said, her voice the sad one now. “But it’s not mine anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
She closed the book and put it in my hands. “It can only be read by who’s meant to have it at the time. It appears as gibberish to anyone else who tries to read it. And my time has passed. It’s yours now. It chose you, so treat it well.”
I remembered how Judith had flipped through it, saying that it was printed in Russian or some other language. It had chosen me. A silly kind of relief flooded through me as I tried not to show how much better this made me feel.
“But Mother Morevna chose you,” I said. “She only chose me because Mr. Jameson pressured her into doing it.”
“Don’t take it personally,” said Olivia. “After what happened with me, I bet she never wanted to choose a Successor ever again.”
Images rose to my mind: Mother Morevna as a smiling, patient teacher, Olivia as a young pupil. Then, jarringly, Mr. Robertson, dead and bloody in front of the church.
“What happened?” I asked. “How did you end up out here? Really?”
Olivia’s expression changed. Something like regret passed over her face.
“I used to admire her, you know,” Olivia said. “A white lady who seemed to care about us. Who didn’t frown on our own ways, or make us speak English. A bruja too. We were all sisters after all, brujas, even if our arts were different. And we were in power now after the men failed us. I had faith in her. But she didn’t deserve it. She was the same as all the other white ladies, even if she wasn’t as obvious.”
“I don’t know,” I said, surprisingly defensive. “Mother Morevna always seemed like she was really proud of Elysium being better for women.”
“Better for which women?” Olivia said. “Where are the Latinas she’s listening to? The
Black girls? Even the other old white ladies? I mean, hell, we were both her Successors. Did she ever listen to you? Did she ever ask you how Elysium could be better?”
No, I realized. She hadn’t. I’d never heard Mother Morevna ask anyone for advice, not even Mr. Jameson.
“All she cares about is her own vision for Elysium,” Olivia said. “I mean, women can do more, sure, but y’all have a curfew, rationed meals, assigned housing. Y’all can’t even wear makeup behind those walls if you want to. That’s not being equal. That’s just being under a high heel instead of a work boot, and I like my throat free to breathe.”
She was right, I realized. Mother Morevna was so proud of her new, equal, woman-led society. But it had never ever felt free. Not even when I was her Successor.
“What did Mother Morevna do to you?” I asked quietly.
Olivia sighed, a pained, frustrated sound. “When I found out about what my step… what that bastard was doing to Rosa, touching her, somebody who couldn’t fight back… I asked for help. I asked for Morevna to punish him, to go over there and burn him to bits or sweep him away in the wind.” She sighed. “But I couldn’t prove it. Those were very serious accusations, she told me. And they came at a bad time, when the old white men were trying to resist her new rules. It would look like favoritism, she said, to toss Robertson out on the word of a girl—of a Latina—when we had no proof. We had to be careful so the men wouldn’t revolt. We had to maintain the balance of Elysium.”
Olivia’s dark brows furrowed. “But I couldn’t just wait around for proof. And I couldn’t do any magic myself, not without someone to borrow magic from. I had to take matters into my own hands.”
“What did you do?” I asked quietly, my stomach in knots.
“I talked to Sister Death Herself,” she said. “Not la Santa Muerte, not the Devil or the Grim Reaper. But the Death who set this Game in motion. I didn’t expect Her to answer, but She did. ‘Follow your own instincts,’ She told me. ‘Elysium doesn’t care about you, so to hell with the balance of Elysium. I will give you the power for this.’ Magic seemed to explode in me then. It was like something awakened in me, something dark and terrible. And powerful. It was Her power that let me give him the justice Mother Morevna could have given him but chose not to. Muerte para mi enemigo. Finally, Rosa had peace. No thanks to Mother Morevna. And then Mother Morevna turned on me. I had brought her shame. Imagine: her Successor, a murderer. Then… well… you know the rest.” Olivia paused, looked out the window. Her anger, her sadness was almost palpable. I could feel it on my skin like dust.
“You know, Rosa was the one person I loved more than myself,” she said, her voice heavy. “She always knew what I was thinking. She could always tell when I was coming home. Like we were connected by our minds or our hearts or something deeper than that. Magic, maybe. I loved her so much. And now that darkness, the darkness that I asked Death for, is always there. And I think it always will be.”
My heart ached for Olivia and her sister. But a crawl went up my spine at the thought of Olivia speaking to Death Herself. I thought about a story I’d read once, “The Devil and Tom Walker,” about a man who made a deal with the Devil. But this wasn’t the same, I thought. This wasn’t a selfish deal. And what Mr. Robertson had done to Rosalita, what Mother Morevna had allowed to happen to her, was unforgivable.… What would I have done in Olivia’s shoes? I wondered. I didn’t know.
“Now I have a question for you,” Olivia said. “What’s your specialty?”
I blanched. Olivia continued. “I mean, the spells you used today were powerful, but… they seem kind of… directionless.”
Directionless. That was the word. That’s how I’d always felt, even—maybe especially with Mother Morevna. It could be applied to every aspect of my life.
“I don’t know my specialty,” I heard myself say. “All my life I’ve wanted to be special… to be something important and help Elysium. I thought when I saw the rain that maybe that would be the way I would help. But then that went to shit. And when I thought I’d be learning magic from Mother Morevna, I thought maybe that was how I would help Elysium. But everything I learned I had to teach myself. I worked and I studied and I tried, all to help Elysium, to make my mark there, and now… now I’m out here… with nothing.”
Suddenly I realized that there were tears on my face. A lump was working its way up my throat. I turned away, embarrassed, but Olivia came forward and grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Hey,” Olivia said gently. “You’ve got a lot more than nothing. You’re worth way more than anybody back home ever thought, I promise.”
“But I’m not,” I said. “I have to fix things or the world will be destroyed. I came here looking for a way to fix everything, to save the world. But the Dust Soldiers are going to come back and judge Elysium and we’re all gonna—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Olivia said. “Breathe for a second. Think about it. The Dust Soldiers didn’t say anything about the desert beyond Elysium, did they?”
I stopped in my tracks. “What are you getting at?”
“I mean that the Dust Soldiers only threatened Elysium, right? So if they’re the only ones being wiped out, why worry? Elysium’s problems aren’t ours. Let them bring their end down on themselves. Hell, why do you think we’re happy out here instead of scrambling to try to get back behind those walls?”
I’d never thought of that possibility before. What if it was true? What if the end the Dust Soldiers promised was just the end of Elysium? It made sense. The people outside the walls couldn’t rightly be blamed for Elysium’s failures, could they? Maybe Olivia was right. But if she was, what about Mr. Jameson? What about Lucy? My heart gave a strange, painful dishrag twist in my chest.
“But there are people there that I love,” I said.
“Did the people you love keep you from being thrown out here? Did they stand up for you? Because if they didn’t, I say to hell with them too. Stay with us. With me and Susanah and Mowse and Judith and Cassie and Zo. It’s a good place to be. And I promise, I will help you find your specialty. Then, no matter what happens, at the end of ten years, we can walk out of the desert as the powerful brujas we were meant to be.” She sighed. “And if it’s really bothering you this much as we get closer to the ten-year mark, we’ll go and see what we can do.”
Her voice was sincere, her eyes on mine, and if there was a darkness in Olivia, I didn’t see any trace of it then. “You promise?” I asked.
“I promise,” she said. “Now let’s get back out there and make sure nobody’s fighting or blowing anything up.” And, feeling somehow lighter and heavier at the same time, I followed her.
When Olivia and I left her train car, Asa was plainly drunk, and everyone was gathered around, watching him pull his endless rainbow of scarves out of his sleeve.
“Looks like someone’s had enough,” Olivia laughed.
Movements loose with moonshine, Asa reached out and pulled a quarter from behind Mowse’s ear. He went to flip it, but it went over his head, where it turned into a june bug and flew away, much to Asa’s confusion. Everyone laughed and applauded, and as Judith took Asa’s moonshine away, Cassandra said, “Oh, it’s been forever since I’ve seen a magic show that wasn’t designed to hurt anyone!”
“Thhank you!” Asa said. “Thhhank you! I’ll be here till the end of the wwworld!”
Suddenly, there was an odd surge of energy. The girls gasped at him, faces pale and shocked.
“Your face,” I whispered to him, and Asa moved to fix it.
But as he raised his arm to adjust the human part of his face over the exposed daemon part, there was another surge of magic. The radio under Asa’s arm chittered out some static, then, even stranger… it began to play.
A male voice was singing “… got to ac-cen-tchu-ate the positive… e-liiim-in-ate-the negative… latch onnn to the affirmative…” then the static rose up again and the words were lost.
“Was that… music?” Zo asked, her usually g
uarded voice soft with wonder.
“Oh, er… sorry,” Asa said. “Sometimes my… hic… my magic makes electronic things do that.”
“Do it again!” Judith said.
We all huddled around Asa then, and he turned the knob until the music strengthened and returned.
“… don’t mess with Mr. In-betweeeeen…” the male voice crooned.
“That’s Bing Crosby!” Judith said, then, softly, “Ma was always listening to Bing Crosby.…”
Then female voices joined the male singer, and we all listened in rapt attention.
As the smooth voice, made dusty and crackly by the radio, crooned out the end of the song and the final note faded into silence again, tears welled in my eyes. All around me, the others were crying too, some sniffling like me, some openly weeping like Cassandra, and others, like Olivia, quietly wiping their tears away before anyone could notice.
Asa was looking at us, plainly confused, wondering, probably, what it was about this very upbeat song that had made us all cry. “Humans are so odd,” he muttered.
The radio buzzed into life once more, and we all leaned forward again.
“That was ‘Ac-cen-tchu-ate the Positive’ by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters,” said a male radio announcer. Patriotic music began to crackle in. “And now it’s the daily report with Skip Joiner, bringing you the news from our boys at war. Two days ago, Allied forces dropped bombs.…”
“War?” Cassandra breathed. “We’re at war? Again?”
“They’re at war,” Olivia said. “The ones outside the desert.”
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