Elysium Girls

by Elysium Girls (retail) (epub)

“Did you go into it?” Olivia demanded. “Did you look around?”

  “There was nothing to go into,” Judith said. “Just… nothing. Like the world is… I dunno… crumbling away at the edges, starting at the horizon and coming inward like a… like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse.”

  “And what’s more,” Zo was saying. “They found us. Samson and the Laredo Boys. I don’t know how, but they found us. They found the train.”

  “How can you be sure of that?” Olivia asked. “You didn’t see them, did you?”

  “I saw their tracks.”

  “Oh, tracks,” said Olivia. “Well, let’s all panic about tracks in the dust!”

  “But, boss, all of them had stopped at the edge of Cassandra’s barrier,” said Judith. “From the looks of their tracks they stood there for a while before leaving. They definitely know where the train is.”

  “But Cassandra cast a direction spell on it!” Susanah said. “Even though they’ve been here before, they shouldn’t have been able to find it again! Unless…” Susanah’s eyes went wide. “Mowse, did you ever find your doll? The one you had with you when we fought the Laredo Boys?”

  “No,” she said, her voice quiet with guilt. “It’s gone.”

  “Samson must have picked it up,” Cassandra said. “That’s the only way it would be visible, if he’s got something from one of us.”

  “Mowse, you have to be more careful about—”

  Another earthquake rumbled through the ground, shaking the canisters on the train’s dashboard.

  “Lecture her later,” Zo said. “You all heard Samson. It’s only a matter of time before they invade. And if they know where we are now, I’d bet on an ambush soon. I’d say tonight, if not sooner, if the world doesn’t disintegrate around us first.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” Olivia asked. “What do you want me to do about this?”

  “Olivia, we have to move,” said Zo. “Farther in, close to the center of the desert.”

  “Where?” Olivia said. “We’d be sitting ducks out there. All that’s there is dunes and rocks and—”

  “Elysium,” I said. Everyone turned to look at me. “We can go back to Elysium.”

  “Now’s not the time for jokes,” Olivia said.

  “I’m not joking,” I told her, drawing myself up to my full height. “You promised that, as we got closer to the end of the Game, we could go back if I still wanted to. I still want to. We need to go back. I need to do what I came here to do.”

  “What is it with you and Elysium?” Olivia said. “They rejected you! They threw you out!”

  “But I did this to them,” I said. “Elysium is my responsibility. I’m the Successor. And even if they reject me again, I won’t see it destroyed on my account, not when there are people there I care about.”

  “I’m not going to send everybody to their deaths in Elysium when they’re safe out here,” Olivia said. “We can go and get your friends out, maybe, but—”

  “No one is safe out here,” said Asa from the door. “Not if the desert is doing what you say it is.” He came into the room, looking paler, more serious than I’d ever seen him. “Everything depends on Elysium. On the Game. The desert is a—”

  He bent, coughing, smoke trickling from his mouth and nose. Then he gathered himself and pointed to Mowse and Cassandra’s checkerboard.

  “A playing board,” I said, realizing suddenly, my heart dropping. “It’s not just Elysium. This whole tiny world they’ve created is part of the Game.”

  Asa coughed again and nodded.

  “And when the Game is over…?” I breathed.

  Asa bent over the table. With one swoop, he knocked all the pieces off the board and let them clatter to the floor. There was no mistaking his meaning. Doom and dull panic fell around us. The room went quiet.

  “So everyone will die?” Zo said. She shook her head in disbelief, rubbed her temples. “I’m gonna need some more details on this, daemon boy. What all do you know?”

  “He can’t,” I said. “He’s prevented from giving too much away. He literally can’t.”

  “Here,” Asa said. He held out his hand to me, and I knew what he wanted me to do.

  A shiver of fear trickled through me. I remembered the last time I’d seen into Asa’s memory, how painful it had been, the brain-bending voice of the Goddess of Life in my head. But Zo was right. We needed more details, not just for them, but for me too. So I could finally understand. Gulping, I reached out and took Asa’s hand. Show me, I commanded.

  Darkness and nausea rose, and I was back in that boundless, thrumming darkness of the place between worlds. It filled my mind then, all the things he wanted to say. I felt my brain throbbing, threatening to bleed or explode. Then, just when I thought I could take no more, I wrenched myself out and back into reality.

  On the floor of the kitchen, I gasped like a diver breaking the surface of the water as I dropped Asa’s hand. My head throbbed again, and my face was wet with blood. The feeling of smoke was in my throat and nose and eyes. I wiped the blood away with my forearm as they all stared down at me, horrified.

  “Everything relies on Elysium’s test,” I said. “That’s all the Game is. A test to see if people can be good and responsible in the worst conditions. And because of me, we’re failing the test right now,” I said. “That means Death is winning. And if Death wins, the desert and everything in it will be destroyed.” I looked down at the fallen checkers and swallowed with my paper-dry throat. “It’s already starting.”

  “What happens if Life wins?” Cassandra asked. “What happens if we turn it all around somehow?”

  “The desert continues,” I said as Asa coughed a plume of smoke. “Elysium continues. This world continues forever.”

  “So even if Life wins, we’ll never rejoin the real world?” Judith asked.

  Beside me, Asa shook his head sadly.

  We looked at each other, all the plans we’d made for what we’d do once the Game was over deflating like day-old balloons. More of this world? Forever?

  “Those options are bullshit,” Olivia spat. “Ten years of pain and death and suffering… for what?” She shook her head. “If only there was another way to win. A way we could win and beat the Goddesses at Their own stupid Game.”

  We were all quiet then, all somber. All angry. And we were right to be. It seemed that every way we turned, death awaited us. Oblivion awaited us. We were nothing but playthings of Goddesses who cared nothing for our own lives, for Their own creation. My stomach churned. My head throbbed. But beside me, Asa’s eyes were on the checkers that he’d knocked to the ground.

  “What if…” Asa said quietly. “What if we… break the Game?”

  Every head raised. Every eye turned to Asa.

  “What do you mean?” Olivia asked.

  “Ten years,” Asa said, a delirious smile beginning on his thin face. “The terms of the Game were ten years. What if we—” But before he could finish, he bent double and retched violently, vomiting more white, sulfurous smoke.

  “Break the Game by prolonging it…” I breathed. My heart raced, my aching brain whirred, but this new thought rose like the sun in my mind. “It’s supposed to be just ten years long, but if it runs past the ten-year limit, both Goddesses will have to forfeit, and then… then we could win!”

  “And how do you suggest we do that?” Zo asked.

  My eyes fell on the scimitar Susanah had brought back from our battle with the Dust Soldier.

  “We fight,” I said. “Fight the Dust Soldiers! They’ll come at sunset of the last day to destroy Elysium. If we resist them, keep them from destroying Elysium, just until sunrise, then maybe… maybe we’ll have a chance. We fought them before—”

  “We fought one before!” said Judith, exchanging looks with Zo. “One!”

  “I think that we can do it,” Susanah said. “I’d have to have more horses, make modifications.…”

  The penny thrummed on my breastbone, warm, full of truth, and my heart
trilled in my chest. “See?” I said, holding the penny out. “This is it! This is what I was supposed to find out here. This is what can fix everything!”

  “No,” Olivia said. “I know I promised to take you back to Elysium, and I will. But I’m not going back there and fighting an army of those things for the people who kicked me out. Elysium is nothing to me. Everyone I loved there is dead.”

  I thought of the voice, that familiar, familiar voice I heard in my glimpse of Olivia’s truth. That voice that cried out whenever Olivia was coming to Elysium. I steeled myself.

  “Are you sure?” I said. The room went completely silent.

  Olivia’s face went ashen. Her mouth was a straight, tight line.

  “What do you mean?” Olivia said quietly.

  “Are you sure that Rosa is dead?” I pressed. “Because I’m not. Not after what I saw in your memory.”

  “Don’t you dare lie about my sister to get me to go back there.” Olivia came toward me, stood tall as though challenging me.

  “I’m not, Olivia,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “I don’t know that it is your sister I’m thinking of. But I can let you see what I saw. Decide what you want to do then, but let me show you.”

  Olivia regarded me for a moment. Then she extended her hand to me.

  “Show me,” she said.

  And never taking my eyes from hers, I did. I took her hand and sent everything I had into her, all my memories of the girl in the room. The closed door. The sounds of things being thrown. The breakfasts half-eaten. Her crying, her laughing, her murmuring to herself. Her crying out whenever Olivia was coming to Elysium. Me trying to talk to her through the closed door late at night. And when it was over, I pulled my hand out of Olivia’s and we sat back, gasping.

  “Is it her?” I asked.

  “… Yes,” Olivia said, her voice raw. “It’s Rosalita. Mi hermana. She’s alive. After all these years, she’s… she’s alive.” Olivia started to cry, though whether the tears were happy ones or sad ones, I couldn’t tell.

  “What do you want to do, Olivia?” I said. The other girls watched with wide eyes.

  The room was quiet. Every eye turned to Olivia and me. Olivia stood and wiped away her tears.

  “Well,” she said. “Pack your bags, kids. We’re headed to Elysium.”

  Our bags were few, of course. As we went out to the horses before the sun rose, loaded up with bindles and old suitcases, we looked like hoboes on our way to jump a new train. Judith and Susanah also rigged together a makeshift sleigh that could be pulled behind one of the horses. This would carry the remaining supplies from the train. It wasn’t as good as the stolen goods, but any leverage we could get would help us, we thought. Plus, if we left it, it would only go to fill the Laredo Boys’ stomachs if and when they actually came after us. So we loaded up the horses, hitched the sleigh of supplies to one of them, and said our goodbyes to the train.

  Then Judith and Zo doused all of it in what was left of the homemade moonshine. Olivia lit up a hand-rolled cigarette, took a long, sad, indulgent drag, then tossed it at the foot of the train.

  The flames started small, then grew higher, hotter, pushing us back to stand and watch everything that we had had blaze orange in the sunset. The crackling grew to a roar, and the metal buckled and groaned in the heat of the train’s funeral pyre.

  Asa and I stood back from the others as they stood there before it, silhouetted in the orange light. We were part of the group, yes, but the train wasn’t to us what it had been to them. I saw Zo put her arm around Judith as though steadying her. Mowse reached up for Susanah’s hand. Cassandra shifted from foot to foot. Only Olivia stood still as it blazed, holding her hat over her heart.

  “Come on,” Olivia said finally. “Let’s get going.” And we turned and began the march toward Elysium.

  We set out, winding through the crags and boulders and into the flat expanse of no-man’s-land, taking the straightest, most open route we could, lest anything try to attack us. Olivia rode in the lead, her eyes on the horizon as the horses cantered onward, never stopping, never tiring. And as we rode toward the horizon, we could see giant chunks of the land missing, only sky in the places they had been. It was stark and ugly and our brains seemed to reject it, but it was true: Pieces of the world had fallen away—and no matter how unsettling it was, more would follow.

  “Are you sure we have to do this?” said Mowse when we finally stopped to rest.

  “There will be other kids there,” said Susanah. “You want people to play with, right?”

  “I wanted to stay,” Mowse said.

  “Don’t pull that foolishness with me right now just because you’re scared,” Susanah said.

  Mowse was quiet for a moment, then said, “What if they shoot us?”

  “They’re not going to shoot us,” I said. “Not with the supplies we brought for them.”

  Mowse didn’t reply, but it seemed to be enough for her. She finished the rest of her lunch in silence. Susanah looked at me as though to say, I hope you’re right. I hoped I was too.

  Asa shuddered, but kept quiet.

  “Let’s get going,” Olivia said. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  “Wait a minute,” Asa said. “Do you hear that?”

  There was a rumbling in the distance, but no vibrations underfoot, no cracking earth beneath our feet. It was not another earthquake. It was the sound of chariots—makeshift chariots made from the skeletons of cars and drawn by strange, scaly, two-legged beasts with no eyes and mouths full of teeth. At the reins were men painted with black axle grease, holding spears and machetes and guns. Men screaming for our blood. And in the leading chariot was Samson, his broad body unmistakable even at this distance.

  “The Laredo Boys!” Zo said. “They must have tried to ambush us and found us gone!”

  “And now they want to pick a fight when we try to leave,” Olivia said. “Typical men.”

  “We’re just under a mile ahead,” said Susanah. “We can beat them to Elysium.”

  “And then what, fight them at Elysium’s door?” Olivia said. “Fight Samson while we duck under buckshot from the guards? No.” Olivia pulled her horse to a stop and turned to face the oncoming onslaught. “If we’re gonna fight a bunch of Dust Soldiers, we might as well practice on these idiots first.”

  We turned to face them, weapons out, my hands hovering close to my components belt. Beside me, I could feel Asa’s strange, daemonic power growing as he prepared something devastating.

  “Steady…” Olivia said. “Let’s let them get a little closer.…”

  The Laredo Boys charged onward toward us in a V with Samson at their head, leaving a massive cloud of dust in their wake. They were screaming out, voices nearly inhuman with bloodlust mixing with the shrieks of their beasts.

  “A little closer…” Olivia said, squinting into the dust. They were a little over a half mile away now.

  Zo cocked her pistol and raised it.

  But she would not get the chance to shoot. There was a rumbling as though the earth wanted to rend itself in two. Asa’s face and arm went daemon. We fell back. Then the desert went suddenly silent as their battle cry was cut short. Suddenly, the Laredo Boys and their chariots and the land they were standing on were just… gone. Clipped out of existence, leaving only a glaring, brain-bending nothingness where they had been. A hole in a disintegrating world, so close to us we could nearly touch it, if there had been anything to touch.

  We sat there on our mechanical horses, staring into it, hardly daring to believe what we had seen, what we were seeing, this nothing that had once been the land our enemies stood on. After all the terror they had caused, all the pain, they were just gone, as though they had never been.

  “Wh-what happened?” said Judith, squinting. “And what’s that?”

  “It isn’t an illusion.” Cassandra’s voice quavered. “I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s nothing,” Asa said darkly. “Like Zo saw earlier.”


  The nothingness seemed to yawn and expand in front of us. It wasn’t a hole or a tear or darkness. It wasn’t heaven or hell or even death. It was simply nothing, like I hadn’t known nothing could be. An indescribable void that seemed to pull at my very blood even as it terrified me.

  “This is what happens as the game board decays,” Asa said. “More and more of the desert will fall away until all that is left is the land just around Elysium. And then, depending on what happens, the land will either be restored, or Elysium too will become this.”

  I stared into that emptiness, that nothing, disturbed by its stillness, its unspoken, booming promise of erasure, of the one, true kind of end: becoming nothing. The blood in my veins turned to ice water, and I tore my eyes away from it.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Olivia said finally. And with shaky hands and shaky nerves, we turned our horses and rode until we could no longer feel the pull of the hungry void behind us.

  When we reached Elysium, the sun was setting. I had only seen it from the outside at night, or been retreating from it, and the sight of it sent a strange thrill through me. It looked huge and imposing, like the fortress it always had been. Unforgiving, even in the sunset light. It felt strange to be voluntarily going back to unwantedness. Without realizing it, Asa and I stopped our horse and looked up at it, hesitating.

  “Don’t worry, it only looks bigger in the daytime,” Olivia said.

  We approached, moving together, our eyes on the walls. Soon the guards saw us and began to assemble, their rifles trained on us. When we got about twenty yards from the gates, one of them shouted, “Stop where you are!”

  “We need to speak to Mother Morevna!” I shouted.

  “Y-you’re exiled!” The guard looked from me to Olivia. “Holy… Is that…?”

  “Olivia Rosales, in the flesh.” Olivia smiled wickedly. “Get Morevna. Jameson too, if you want. We’ve got something to offer Elysium. Something that could save your asses from certain destruction, and they need to hear it from us. Unless you want to get hacked up by a Dust Soldier next week.”