“Truly, nothing changes,” Susanah said.
We sat there then, rapt and unmoving, listening to a report about a war we didn’t know in a world we were no longer a part of. The feeling that had hung over the gathering before—warmth, acceptance, reverence—had been replaced by a deeper, sadder feeling that left all our hearts and heads and bones heavier. Then the broadcaster began to wrap it up. “And we would like to emphasize once more: our boys need your support! Buy a war bond today!” Patriotic music blared again, then the static rose up and the radio went silent.
“I think that’s it, everybody,” Asa said.
From our places on the ground, we wiped our tears away, tried to compose ourselves as well as we could. But the music, the radio, had affected all of us. It was contact. Contact with a reality that we forgot we needed, that we forgot we were missing, here in this dusty, hopeless place.
Silence hung over us for a moment; then Susanah slowly stood, a new fire in her eyes, as though she had realized something important, something life-changing.
“Asa,” she said. “Give me your hand.”
“Er… all right?”
She took his hand and put it on the side of the horse she was working on.
“That thing you did… do it again,” she said.
“All right, I’ll try,” said Asa. He closed his eyes, concentrated. But nothing happened.
“I don’t know if I can,” he said. “I think I’m all out of… hic!”
There was another surge of power. At Susanah’s feet, the mechanical horse lay as still as it had been, but where they once had been dark, the lightbulb eyes had begun to glow, surging with Asa’s magic. We all stood around it, looking at, watching as the pieces between its metal ribs whirred and clicked with new life.
“Finally!” Susanah said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Lucy Arbor had neither the time nor the materials to pursue her makeup empire anymore. And even if she had, she wouldn’t have done so. Not now, when the very air in Elysium seemed to reek with wrongness. Instead, Lucy found herself caring less and less about appearances, going out to do her Dust Sickness research bare-faced, with her hair wrapped in a kerchief. (Out here looking like Sojourner Truth, she thought as she looked into the mirror one day.) But in times like these, appearances didn’t matter. What did matter was Dust Sickness and stopping it from infecting anyone else.
Every night, Lucy walked completely around Elysium, latching open windows shut, giving away homemade dust masks, helping clean porches and bedrooms and kitchens for people who couldn’t do it for themselves. Many people had taken to wearing Lucy’s sack-cloth dust masks all the time, dust storm or not. Even now, Lucy wore one as she walked the perimeter of Elysium, looking up at the tops of the walls for new height, new names, new graves, and marking the number and the initials. There had been several a day for the past month, sometimes five or six. It seemed like there were always funerals these days, always men up on the walls, building new graves. Never, in her whole life behind these walls, had Lucy seen Dust Sickness kill so many so quickly. There was something very, very wrong in Elysium.
Lucy looked down at her list. Forty-nine. Forty-nine people in one month—including a girl she had had a crush on only a year ago, Maggie McCormick. She’d been seventeen. That funeral Lucy had watched from a distance, placing a flower at the foot of the wall after everyone else had gone.
She turned and looked out into the city. But all she saw was Mother Morevna’s shadow behind the rose window—always alight these days, no matter the hour—pacing back and forth, back and forth like a spider on her web. Watching.
Suddenly, a cough rose in Lucy’s throat. She coughed and hacked into her handkerchief until the urge to cough subsided… but even when she stopped, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She gasped, trying to cough again. Quickly, she pulled a water ration out of her bag and drank from it until her throat was clear. With shaking hands, she wiped her mouth and drew back a thin line of mud.
Lucy closed her eyes and pushed her fear down as far as she could and steeled herself. She, better than anyone, knew what this was. And she knew that it wouldn’t get the best of her before she solved this for everyone, once and for all.
CHAPTER 19
1 WEEK
AND
2 DAYS
REMAIN.
“Again!” said Olivia. “Just one more for today.”
I took a deep breath and wiped the blood from my nose, then turned back to the objects laid out on the ground before me: a rusted gas can, a sun-bleached bone, a piece of glass, an old pocket watch that didn’t work anymore.
I eenie-meeny-miney-moed, then chose the wristwatch. I grasped it and focused. Nausea struck, darkness fell, and immediately, the memory flared into life.
A young man was following his family to a beat-up old car laden with furniture and luggage and threadbare blankets. There were three children in the backseat, and an older man and woman were urging him to get into the car with them. They were headed to California, to find a new life. He stopped and turned toward the horizon, expecting something.
“Come on, Dwayne, we ain’t got all day!” the father was saying.
“I gotta give him this watch,” said the young man. “He’s wanted it forever.”
The young man paused, looked out over the horizon, squinting even beneath the brim of his hat.
“I know he’s your best friend,” said the young man’s mother. “But we can’t wait any longer.”
The young man looked out over the horizon one more time. Andrew was not coming like he said he would. The young man, Dwayne, looked down at the watch. Then, with a pocketknife, he finished the last bit of the inscription “D.B. + A.D. Always,” and left the watch beside the porch. He gave one look back at it, aching with sadness and uncertainty. Then he climbed into the car with his family and they sputtered off out of sight.
I gasped and came back to reality, back to myself.
“What did you see?” asked Olivia.
“Looked like unrequited love,” I said, wiping the blood off my nose.
“Ah, the worst kind,” she said. “Any improvements?”
“It was as clear as day this time. And I came out when I wanted to.”
“Great job!” Olivia said. “You’re getting better. Let’s go get some water.”
I nodded and let her help me up. Over a month had gone by since the incident with the Laredo Boys, and Olivia and I had been practicing every day. Truth dowsing, she called it, which was a good enough name for now. Sometimes Cassandra joined, creating illusions of real things for me to test myself on. “Find the real one,” Olivia would say, pointing to two identical bottles or sacks of sand or corn-husk dolls. “Dowse for the truth.” And gradually, I improved. I even taught Mowse little bits of magic from the Booke, and soon she was out scorching tumbleweeds with her own fire spells.
In only a short time, Olivia and her girls had gone from feeling like strangers to… friends. It was a strange sensation to be part of a group, one I’d never had before. And after being alone for as long as I had, it felt like being warmed by a hot bath, cleaned, made new. I kept waiting for them to turn on me, to find out something terrible about me that I didn’t know myself and throw me back out into the desert. But as the weeks went by it became obvious that it wasn’t going to happen. They liked me. And, I discovered, I liked them too.
And I wasn’t the only one feeling fortunate. Asa was getting on particularly well in the group, despite being male and, well, a daemon. He worked on the horses with Susanah and Mowse, did heavy lifting with Judith, and did elaborate circus-style performances with Cassandra as though he was an old pro (“Pick a card, any card! Oop, not that one! That’s… an entire sewing machine and six cups of coffee! And now it’s going to… disappear!”). He halfheartedly kept his distance from Olivia when he could, but more than often, he couldn’t. Especially since she seemed to want to be near him whenever possible. They sat together in the evenings, talking
about this or that, her laughing at his stupid puns, him looking at her as though she were the only girl in the world. Her dark, wry sense of humor seemed to balance perfectly with his earnest gullibility, and they just didn’t seem to grow tired of each other. I never thought I’d say it, but as strange as they were individually, they were… cute together, if they’d ever actually get together.
Yes, Asa and I were doing well. But when we looked at each other and remembered our mission, all our comfort turned sour in our bellies. We had been led to this group, I knew that. Something about them had the potential to fix things. But try as we might, we couldn’t. The time was almost over. In only a little over a week, the Dust Soldiers would return to Elysium and find the mess that Asa and I had left. I tried my best to distract myself, to think of what Olivia had said, that Elysium could deal with its own problems. But the very air seemed to be thinning, and sometimes panic set my heart pounding even when I was sitting still.
And there were other, stranger indicators of the Game drawing to a close. Earthquakes had begun, subtle ones that rumbled underfoot. Rock formations began changing positions. Fire coyotes swarmed at night, howling and burning along the horizon. The sunsets began to grow more red than orange, as though preparing for the bloodbath to come. Asa, too, was having problems. He was beginning to have trouble holding himself together. More and more frequently, parts of him would go daemon and he’d have to slap himself back in place. The time was weighing on him, and though he never mentioned the golden cricket, he wore its loss like an albatross around his neck, dragging him down when he was caught unawares.
Asa and I didn’t talk about the Game. Maybe because we knew that we had failed, hadn’t found the thing that could save Elysium. Maybe because we were afraid of what the others would think of us. Maybe because we were ashamed. There was one exception, an anxious conversation that left me feeling unsteady.
“I don’t have long,” Asa said once when we were alone in the machine room, unable to sleep. “I can feel it growing on me every day. Like… like moss or something.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, I, personally, am living on borrowed time in this body. There’s no way the Goddesses have forgotten about me. It doesn’t make sense. So what lies in store for me? I’ll tell you. Either I’ll fall apart completely or die like a human or…” He shuddered.
“Or what?”
“Nothing,” he sighed heavily. “Forget I said anything.”
We never spoke of that conversation again, but after that, it seemed that his eyes were always flickering to the horizon as though he were waiting for something to happen. And whenever I asked my penny what to do, what could be done, it refused to give an answer of any kind other than “Wait.”
But, like Asa, I too felt time creeping ever onward toward the end. Toward Elysium’s judgment. And if I sat still, I could feel the panic eating at me like ants just beneath my skin.
“You still having that dream?” Olivia asked as we drank from our canteens on the steps of the third train car.
I nodded. “The same one. Just like two days ago. This makes three times.”
Olivia gave me a sympathetic look and took another drink from her canteen, looking for what to say, probably. She wasn’t sure what to think about the dream, and neither was I. But each time I had it, I woke, sweating and shaking, my penny burning on my chest.
In it, I was outside in the desert, facing the gates of Elysium. I caught the smell of smoke, of burning hair and flesh and wood. On the horizon was what looked at first like a sunset, but as I squinted at it, I saw that it was a wall of fire. A wall of fire, miles high, higher than any dust storm. It stretched across the entire horizon. Miles high and miles wide, sweeping toward Elysium, I knew what it was: the end. The end of Elysium Asa and I were supposed to be trying to prevent. I thought of Olivia’s promise to me, her promise that we could go and see what we could do. How much longer could we wait?
Just then, we heard a lot of shouting go up from the other side of the train.
Olivia and I exchanged glances; then she grabbed her pistols and I grabbed my spell components belt, and we followed the sound of the shouting. Out in the clearing, two of the mechanical horses were cantering in a circle, light and nimble as live horses, Asa on one, looking thin and drained, and Susanah and Mowse on the other. Everyone had come to watch them, these majestic metal monsters with their piston legs and lightbulb eyes and grinning mouths of metal and bone. Inert, they had been striking; alive, they were somehow both beautiful and unsettling.
“Finally!” Susanah was beaming. “Magic energy can be harnessed like electricity in the desert! We just needed Asa’s magic as a catalyst.”
“Anytime.” Asa grinned, his teeth flickering to fangs for a moment, then flickering back.
“Susanah, this is amazing!” Zo said. “Think how much faster we can be now! Think how—”
“I don’t care about all that,” said Judith. “I just want one of my own!”
“There’s enough for everybody if we double up!” said Mowse. “They’re waiting in the stable.”
Everyone looked at Olivia.
“I’m not sure about this. It could be dangerous,” Olivia said, her voice deadly serious. Then her face broke into a wide smile. “Ay, I’m just kidding. Let’s go, caballeras!”
We went to the stable and brought out two more horses. Judith and Zo climbed onto one, Olivia and Cassandra climbed onto another, and I joined Asa on his. Even under the homemade saddle, it felt hard and metallic.
It was so strange sitting on a horse that didn’t move and stamp and shake flies from its shoulders. Giggling and shouting, the girls rode their horses around the clearing, experimenting with speed and agility. Twice, Judith turned too fast and Zo almost fell off the back.
“Let’s play a game!” Mowse said. “A magic game! Can we, Susanah?”
“Oh, I love that idea!” Cassandra said, clasping her hands together.
“All right.” Susanah smiled. “What did you have in mind?”
“Hmmm.” Cassandra put a purple-varnished finger to her temple. “How about… this!”
She closed her eyes and mumbled something, then lifted her hands, fingers spread, and iridescent flying fish shot out of her fingertips and hung in the air. Suddenly, they darted out and flitted around us in a bright, shimmering school.
“Catch them!” Cassandra laughed, pointing to the illusory nets that were in our hands now, feeling as real and substantial as real nets.
“Let’s complicate things a bit,” said Asa. There was a thrum of power, and Asa clapped once, then several dark, jagged-looking eels appeared in the air alongside Cassandra’s flying fish, dipping and spinning among the illusions, looking somehow comical with their yellow saucer eyes and slack jaws. “Ten points for the fish! Minus five if you catch an eel too! How’s that, Cass?”
“Brilliant!” Cassandra said. “Once we get out of this desert, we should go on tour—”
“Last one out is a rotten egg!” Mowse crowed.
With a blur of movement, Susanah and Mowse galloped past us into the flat part of the desert, following the brilliant school of fish. Olivia and Cassandra were right on their tail, lunging this way and that in pursuit of the fish, their nets flashing in the sun. Judith and Zo sprang after them, whooping and hollering behind their bandannas as they left us in their dust cloud.
“Shall we?” said Asa, his teeth going daemon for just a moment then back again.
“If you’re up for it,” I said. “You look pretty green around the gills lately.”
“Eh, I’ve got enough pep left in me for one horseback ride,” he said, his eyes on the horizon. “Besides, I can make sure we don’t catch any eels—just don’t tell Cassandra!” He kicked the horse in its metal ribs and it leapt forward, following the fish.
The wind rose up as we rode, and when I put my dust mask on, I let all thoughts of the dream lose themselves in the thrill of that fast, regular run. We ran and jump
ed and careened, following those shining fish and dark eels for miles and miles. The mechanical horses were faster than any horses that had ever lived, and they could turn so quickly and sharply that several times we were almost thrown as we lunged to catch a fish or avoid an eel. When the wind burned our faces, even with our dust masks and bandannas, and some of our horses began to rattle in odd places, we decided to stop for a rest. We settled in a scrubby area beyond the ravine and sat in the horses’ shadows. The eels and fish disappeared in plumes of green and pink smoke, respectively. Susanah tinkered with our horses, tightening this and banging on that.
“Well, they held together pretty well,” said Susanah. “It’ll take me about thirty minutes, but I can have them up and running in time to take us home. Just gotta”—she grunted—“adjust this removable bit in the… spine!”
“Whatever, Suze. You’re just distracting yourself from your blistering loss.” Judith laughed. “Right, Zo?”
“Yep,” Zo said, setting her hat to a cocky angle and leaning against Judith. “Forty-two fish and only three eels. The reigning champions: Judith and Zo! Put that in y’all’s pipes and smoke it.”
“Cheaters!” Mowse said. “That last eel had three heads! It counts for three!”
“I hope you don’t mind if I take a nap,” Asa said, his arm flickering daemonic for a second. He looked even worse than before. “I’m feeling a little drained these days.”
“Sure, just be ready when…” Olivia started, but in the horses’ shadow, with his dust mask still fastened, Asa was already fast asleep. “… it’s time to go.”
“Aww no,” Susanah said, looking at her own horse. “It’s got a bum eye.”
“It’s winking,” said Mowse, tightening one of our horses’ hooves with a ratchet. As they fixed our horses, we all sat beneath them, fanning ourselves, watching the heat bend over the desert. When a small earthquake rumbled beneath us, we pretended not to notice.
“How far do you think we went?” I asked Olivia.
“Like… two miles, I’d say.” Olivia pulled her bandanna down and pointed into the distance. “See? You can almost see Elysium from here.”
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