Elysium Girls

  So you mean to declare war on Me, eh? Death said. His mind spasmed painfully with Her laughter. Then war you will have. Farewell, little daemon. See you on the battlefield.

  And Death trickled out of his mind, leaving Asa gasping against the sink, a fire in his brain. But he was more sure than he had ever been before. If She wanted a war, then She was going to get one. And if She was offering him a way out, that could only mean one thing.

  They could win.

  CHAPTER 23

  6 DAYS

  REMAIN.

  I sat in my room all through dinner, feigning a stomachache. Why didn’t Lucy come see me? I kept asking myself. What did I do to upset her? Surely she didn’t blame me for the Sacrifice building burning down. What had happened while I was away? I lay down on the creaky old bed, looking up at the ceiling.

  “I told you!” Mowse’s voice said in the hallway. “The teacher let us out early!”

  “Because you used your mind control on her!” Susanah was saying. “I’ve told you about that stuff, Mowse! You can’t just do that to people. You’re in big trouble!”

  “Only if you can prove it!” Mowse said. There was a sound of running and a slam of the upstairs bathroom, then the click of the door locking.

  “Ugh,” Susanah was saying to herself. “This school’s a bad influence on her. So what if she learned all forty-eight states in a day?” She knocked on my door. “Sal? I brought you a plate of greens.”

  “Thanks, Susanah, I’ll get it later,” I said. She paused in front of the door as though she was going to say something; then I heard her footfalls disappear down the hall. I toyed with the penny on my chest. Then I sat upright. If Lucy wouldn’t come find me, I would go and find her.

  I went out onto the porch, looking out into Elysium for a moment, into the dusty streets and dusty roofs and dusty shacks. I took a deep breath and took my penny into my hand.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Lucy, of her bright dresses and kerchiefs, of her smile, and her voice, fierce and feminine still, even in the grit of Elysium. Slowly, the penny in my hand began to glow, and pulled straight outward, hesitantly, pointing into the rows of clapboard houses on the west side. I began following it, following its pulling, jerking movements through the winding footpaths between the houses, my heartbeat rising to match pace with my footfalls. Some people closed their windows as I walked by; others stared, but I kept moving. I walked by a porch where two grim old men were playing dominoes, passed three shuttered empty houses, and even as another earthquake nearly shook me to my knees, the penny never ceased its insistent, glowing pull.

  It led me around a sharp corner, and dragged me straight toward a clapboard house with a dusty vase of dried daisies in the window, the windows shuttered forever, a mount of dead flowers covered in dust at the doorstep. Lucy’s aunt’s house. The penny went still and dropped limp in my hands. I took a deep breath, trying to still the fear that rose in my chest. This is it, I thought. Just talk to her. Try to make it right, whatever it is. You’ve got to do this.

  “Sal…” said a voice.

  I turned to see her standing behind me. Gone was the brightly colored dress, the bright, coordinating kerchief. Gone was the subtle lipstick, light mascara. I hadn’t seen her like this in years, but she was still beautiful, and the sight of her sent a jolt of warm electricity through me. A feeling I didn’t understand. I wanted to run to her, to hug her and thank whatever gods there were that she was all right.

  But Lucy didn’t want to see me. I stood still.

  Silence built between us. And something like anger, like hurt, grew in me.

  “I looked for you, you know,” I said. “I had to dowse to find you. Why didn’t you come to see me when I came back? I thought you were dead.… I thought…” My voice cracked. “Are you mad at me? For burning down the Sacrifice? Is that it?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Then why—”

  “I’d rather not, Sal,” she said.

  “Lucy, no matter what happens, you’re my friend,” I said. “I’ve admired you for so long, you know? I went to the hospital. I know you’re becoming a nurse. And those dust masks that people wear now? The cloth ones? I know they were cut out of your old dresses. You’re such a kind, good person. I’d hate for our friendship to end for any reason—especially if I don’t know what I did to end it.”

  “You didn’t do anything, Sal,” she said, her voice weary. “Trust me. It’s not you.”

  “Then what…?”

  “The finer fabric is harder for the dust to get through,” Lucy said. “But even with the masks, people are still getting Sick.” She sighed and pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket, one covered with mud and blood. “I’m Sick, Sal.”

  It seemed then like all the sound went out of the world. The only thing left was that heavy, doom-ridden word. Sick. Sick. Sick.

  “How long…” I started. I let the terrible sentence end there, unfinished.

  “Not long,” Lucy said softly. “That’s why I didn’t come and see you sooner. I didn’t want you to see me like this.” She summed up her drab dress and rough kerchief as though they were supposed to be ugly, as though anything could be ugly on her. “I didn’t want to distract you when you have such an important job. Not when your mother…”

  “Lucy,” I said. “You are not a distraction. You’re one of the reasons I’m fighting in the first place. And I’m going to be with you every step of the Sickness… if you let me.”

  She came to me then and hugged me tightly, and just for a moment, I allowed myself to relax in her arms, to just be.

  “Sal,” she whispered when the hug broke, “something’s wrong. Something’s wrong in Elysium.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The outbreak came as soon as you two were exiled, and it’s only gotten worse,” she said. “It’s still getting worse, the closer we get to the day the Dust Soldiers come back. Sal, Trixie’s dead,” said Lucy. “So are her aunt and uncle. And so many other people.”

  My heart did a strange thing in my chest before dropping down into my stomach. I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t imagined what Trixie’s face would have looked like when she saw me come into Elysium on my mechanical horse, with Olivia and the others by my side. But now our petty squabbles were meaningless. Shame crept over me and hung on my shoulders like a cape. But Lucy wasn’t finished.

  “After Aunt Lucretia died, I started helping out at the hospital, trying to figure out where it was coming from, looking at patterns of who’s gotten it and who’s been safe. But it all seems so random. Even people who were inside on the day that that dust storm came and broke through the Dust Dome for a second… even some of them have gotten Sick, while other people who were right out in it are okay. It’s like names are being drawn out of a hat or something.” She paused, seemed to measure her words. “And I think they might be.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Her eyes darted, looking into shadows as though someone was watching her. “I think Mother Morevna’s doing it.”

  “What?” I breathed. This seemed so far-fetched, so insane. Mother Morevna was fierce, sure, but she loved her flawed creation more than life itself.

  “Think about it,” Lucy said. “Another outbreak, just when we need to conserve resources? Then there’s the list.”

  “List?”

  “The rations you gave me,” Lucy said. “There was a list with it. It looks like a list, anyway. A list of weird symbols.”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper. Even half-folded, I recognized it. It was that piece of paper of Mother Morevna’s, the one I couldn’t make sense of. I saw the familiar, alien symbols—sixty symbols at least—and, under the columns, what looked like a few sentences, also written in the odd symbol language Mother Morevna had never taught me.

  “I just sort of held on to it hoping somebody could tell me what it meant. It
feels… not right too, like it’s important. I thought it might explain something. But then I ran out of time.”

  I took the paper and looked it over, scanned my finger down the column of symbols. It did feel important, I realized. It practically thrummed with Mother Morevna’s magic, and another familiar feeling too… a dark one. One that I couldn’t quite place…

  “There’s something wrong here,” she said. “And Mother Morevna is responsible. I know it.”

  I wanted to deny it. But I knew exactly what she was talking about. I felt the panic and the fear and the sense of doom, but there was something else, something sinister lurking beneath the very ground of Elysium. Something that set my skin tingling and my head aching. Deception. I recognized it now. But who was the deceiver? And what was the lie?

  “Let’s take it to Jameson,” I said. “He’s the closest to Mother Morevna of anybody. Maybe he can tell us what it is.”

  “Will you come with me?” Lucy asked. “He’ll pay more attention to you.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Mr. Jameson was sitting on his front porch, just as he had so many nights before, his peach can in his hand, stark against the dark, supernatural sky. He looked sadder than ever, and more determined somehow. The set of his jaw reminded me more of a bulldog now than a hound dog, and he sat with his rifle next to him. The gravel crunched under our feet as we approached and he turned.

  “Sal Wilkerson and Lucy Arbor,” he said. “The two most likely to be out after curfew. What can I do for you? No problems, I hope.”

  Lucy and I exchanged glances. “We just have something we want explained. We were wondering if you could take a look at it.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said.

  Lucy pulled the list out of her pocket and unfolded it.

  “This is Mother Morevna’s,” she said. “I just want to know what it means. That’s all.”

  Mr. Jameson took the note and looked at it, squinting in the dim light that streamed from the window behind him. His brows furrowed.

  “What in the…?” he breathed.

  Suddenly, he heaved himself up and went inside, leaving the door wide open behind him. Inside there was a sound of rustling papers.

  “Mr. Jameson?” I said. Lucy and I followed him inside.

  “This just don’t make sense,” he was saying, shuffling through a stack of papers all in Cyrillic code. “It don’t make sense at all.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Usually, we use this as a code, but these symbols are initials,” he said.

  “Initials?” I asked. “Whose initials?”

  Mr. Jameson got a pencil from his desk and began translating beside the list. We watched as he went down the list, his pencil leaving a list of initials behind.

  “A.D.… J.M.… L.D.… A.S-R.…” Lucy read. “Wait…” She reached into her bag and pulled out a small notebook. She flipped several pages to a long list of names and skimmed it, her eyes flitting from the page to the Cyrillic list and back again. Her eyes widened. “These are initials of people who died of Dust Sickness. Starting a long time ago.”

  “What?” I said. “What do you mean?”

  “Look!” she said, pointing. “T.H. That’s Trixie Holland. And then, a column later, R.H. and D.H. Her aunt and uncle…” Lucy paused. When she turned back to me, her face was grim. She pointed to a set of initials close to the very top. M.W. My heart thudded.

  “Mama…” I breathed.

  Lucy looked back to the list, scanning it. Then she pointed again, to a set of initials on the very bottom.

  “L.A.” she said softly. “Lucy Arbor.” She turned to me and smiled a pained smile. “I was right. I was right all along.”

  It felt as though all the air went out of my lungs.

  “But this paper is so old it’s almost falling apart. And the date…!” Mr. Jameson pointed to three symbols up near the left-hand corner. “The date for this last section is the day after you were kicked out of Elysium, before fifty of these people even got Sick. There’s no way she could have known.…”

  “She caused it,” Lucy said. “She’s the one making people Sick. She’s the one who made me Sick. She’s killing us so she’ll have more resources to sacrifice. Just like I thought.” Lucy bent then and coughed into her handkerchief. She braced herself against me, and I held still to support her. Her rattling wheeze made my breath quicken, brought back images of the hospital, of Mama on her bed. “She’s doing this on purpose,” Lucy finished weakly, putting her muddy handkerchief back in her pocket.

  My mind reeled. All this time. All this time the woman I had lived with, learned from, idolized, had been the one who killed my mother. Had been the one who caused the death I’d blamed myself for since I was young. And now she was killing Lucy.

  “Mother Morevna wouldn’t do that,” Mr. Jameson said shakily, eyes on the backs of his hands. “She’s a hard woman, and not easy to understand, but I know her.” Then he shook himself and said, weakly, “She loves this town. She loves these people.”

  I stared at him, daring him to look away. “Do you really believe that, Mr. Jameson?” I demanded. “After she didn’t listen to Olivia about Mr. Robertson? About Rosa? About me?” I kept my eyes on his. “You know it deep down. You know that she did it. You know that she’s responsible for so much suffering in Elysium. Don’t you?” I breathed. “But you don’t want to say, because if she’s done this, that means that by not questioning her, you…”

  “That I’ve helped her,” Mr. Jameson’s voice broke. “Oh, Lord, I’ve helped her the whole way.”

  Mr. Jameson’s voice was as hollow and empty as a tomb.

  “But I still don’t know how,” said Lucy. “Surely we’d know if she cast a spell over all of us.”

  Mr. Jameson shook his head in disbelief, leaned closer to the fire to scrutinize the list again, looking for anything that would absolve the woman he’d been working with all this time. Anything that would absolve himself of his passivity.

  “Wait…” Lucy said. “What’s that on the back?”

  I squinted. On the back of the paper, more Cyrillic letters were slowly appearing in a paragraph at the bottom.

  Mr. Jameson flipped the paper over and read the paragraph on the bottom.

  “It’s code… but it’s… it’s talking about spells. Trapdoor spells laid a long time ago, at the beginning of Elysium.” He squinted. “It’s talking about a stone… put somewhere far away.”

  “The Master Stone,” I said. “She must have made one a long time ago and put it somewhere safe. That’s what she was talking about when she told me about taking precautions. There might be layers and layers of spells. Major ones that can’t be undone by any white stones. We’d need the Master Stone for that.” I shook myself mentally, focused on the task at hand. “But what about this one? What’s tripping the spell for Dust Sickness?”

  Mr. Jameson read on. Then his face went white as a sheet. “The Dowsing Well,” he said.

  “Sal,” Lucy said. “The water rations…”

  A jolt of horror went through me. Suddenly I remembered Trixie’s memory, the water rations under the table, how they’d all had a black smudge on them. I thought of all the Dowsing Well rations I’d given Lucy for her aunt. All of them had had the same black markings.

  “So that’s why only certain people were allowed to drink from the well in the first place,” I said. “She was controlling who gets it and who doesn’t.”

  Across from me, Mr. Jameson’s face was pale. The paper hung limp in his hands.

  Mr. Jameson put his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Lucy and I stood by in silence.

  We had never seen a man cry before. Not a man with experience and power, like Mr. Jameson. He was the one who handled things, who fixed things. And to see him like this made me feel a kind of helpless I’d never felt before.

  Then Lucy began to cough. She coughed and wheezed, clasping her handkerchief to her mouth. She swayed on her feet, a rattle soundin
g in her throat; when she finally caught her breath, her lips were flecked with blood and black mud. My heart sped painfully. Not Lucy… not now…

  At that moment, Olivia walked through the doorway, stopped and regarded the scene unfolding before her.

  “Sal,” she started. “What did I miss?”

  “I’m going to the church,” Mr. Jameson said, rising with a steely look in his eye. “I have business to discuss with Mother Morevna.” He turned to us and said, “You girls coming?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Lead the way.”

  Mr. Jameson burst through the sanctuary door, and we followed him.

  “Marike!” he said, boots thudding as he strode across the empty sanctuary to the bottom of the stairs that led to her room.

  “What is it, Jameson?” Mother Morevna said, coming down the stairs, stooped and frail, in her nightgown and shawl. “What’s all this ruckus?”

  “How could you, Marike?” Mr. Jameson said, his body tense as a coiled spring, his voice harder than I’d ever heard it. “After all we did to build this town and protect these people. How could you?”

  “What are you talking about, Jameson?”

  “We know, Mother Morevna,” I said, my voice hard and sharp as flint. “We know that you’ve been causing the Dust Sickness. We know that you killed my mother, and Lucy’s aunt, and everybody who’s ever died of Dust Sickness.”

  Mother Morevna blinked. A shadow seemed to pass over her face.

  “Everything I’ve done has been to save us,” she said. “Even now, I am trying to satisfy the Goddesses.”

  “This is sick, Marike,” Mr. Jameson said. “All the suffering, all the pain within these walls… you’ve caused it. And I’m done helping you.”

  There was a crackle of power around her, of anger. But she remained calm.

  “And what will you do, Lloyd?” she said, her voice soft as the hiss of a snake. “Expose me? Cast me out of Elysium when everything is unstable as it is? When I am the only thread holding the people together in this sea of uncertainty?”

  Mr. Jameson hesitated. It was true. The thought of it felt slimy and disgusting in my mind, but it was true. Casting Mother Morevna out right now, or exposing her role in the Dust Sickness epidemic would only throw the people into a panic. And we couldn’t afford that. Not when we needed to build their trust, rally them against fate itself.