Elysium Girls

  “No,” said Olivia, coming forward, her eyes on Mother Morevna’s. “You’re dying, right? Well, pretend to be ill. Stay here in your church and gather supplies for the Sacrifice or something. But give up your authority.” Olivia paused, stepped forward. “Give it to us. It’s about time this city had women who deserved to lead it.”

  Everyone was quiet. Never did I expect Olivia to show mercy, or to make such a demand.

  “Lift the spell,” I said, my voice shaking. “Lift the spell so the people with Dust Sickness can get better.” I glanced at Lucy.

  “I cannot do that,” Mother Morevna said calmly. “The Master Stone that I used to cast the spell is lost, placed out in the desert long ago and buried under an ocean of dust.”

  Mr. Jameson seemed to stiffen beside me. “That stone…” he said. “The one you had me take out into the desert and toss… that was…?”

  Mother Morevna nodded. “So you see, I simply must let the spell run its course. We only have six days left.”

  I thought of the desert, how new chunks of it turned to nothingness every day, taking anything buried in the dust with them, never to be seen or felt or exist again. Beside me, Lucy held in a cough. I took her hand and clasped it tightly in my own as though to say, I’m sorry, Lucy. I tried. And I felt her squeeze back. I know. But it isn’t over yet.

  The magic crackled around Mother Morevna, power, nearly visible. But we stood tall before her, telling her with our stances, our eyes, our magic, that we refused to back down. Then, slowly, her magic receded, pulled back.

  “I will agree to your terms,” Mother Morevna said, her eyes flickering from Mr. Jameson’s surprised eyes to mine, Lucy’s, and Olivia’s, then back to mine, where they stayed. “I have done what I can for this city, whether you realize it or not. Now I wash my hands of it. Leave me.” And Mother Morevna turned then and crept back up the stairs, shutting the door behind her.

  Olivia and I blinked in astonishment. We’d expected a fight—my hand was never far from my components belt. We didn’t think it would be that easy, that she would just withdraw.

  Anger welled inside me, dark and rolling as the mightiest dust storm. How ill is she? I thought, looking up at the closed door to her room. However ill she was, it wasn’t nearly cruel enough of a fate for someone who could set something like Dust Sickness loose on her people. I wanted her to hurt. I wanted her to suffer as my mother suffered, as Lucy suffered beside me right now.

  “What’s the first order, Sal?” Mr. Jameson said. A jolt went through me. That’s right. We were in charge now. The safety of all of Elysium was on our shoulders.

  “Um…” I started. Then Lucy squeezed my hand, and I stepped aside as she came to stand beside me.

  “Let’s shut down the Dowsing Well first,” Lucy said. “That way we can at least slow the spread of the Dust Sickness.”

  “Right,” Olivia said. “And we’ll get the horses finished as quickly as we can. I’m Olivia, by the way.”

  “Lucy Arbor,” she said.

  “So you’re Lucy!” Olivia said. “Sal’s told me a lot about—”

  “And we’ll set up another line of defense,” I said. “Magical defense. So if they break our lines, we can still have a chance of holding them off.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Mr. Jameson said. The ground rumbled beneath us and almost threw us off our feet. “And now we don’t have a moment to lose.”

  CHAPTER 24

  5 DAYS

  REMAIN.

  The following day, the sky had already begun to darken. It was a dry, unnatural sort of cloudy that rumbled like stones sliding together, just as the earth rumbled below us, making the cattle nervous and setting the chickens into flight.

  The Dowsing Well was closed, as per our orders, and people milled all around the other wells, carrying buckets and Coke bottles brimming with clear, un-cursed water.

  In the barn, we separated ourselves into witches and fighters. Downstairs, Susanah and the builders hammered and sawed, welded and soldered, and we could see each horse being finished and put in a line behind the barn. Almost fifty now. Half of the hundred we’d need.

  On the walls, Zo was with Mr. Jameson and the other sharpshooters, practicing with rifles we would try to enchant later. Their gunshots sounded rhythmically, bang bang bang bang, then stopped for them to load their guns full of whatever shrapnel they were using for bullets. Then again, almost loud enough to drown out the sounds of Judith teaching the guards to use javelins.

  “You gotta hold it like this, see?” she was saying. “No, no, no! What are you, a grandma?”

  And up in the loft, Cassandra, Olivia, and I pored over our books as, back at the house, Asa watched Rosa and gathered spell components for us.

  “This isn’t any good, and neither is this!” Olivia said, pushing another book to the side. “We need something they can’t break through if they get past our line!”

  “Here.” I handed her a napkin marked with my blood. “Try out whatever you want.”

  Without looking at me, Olivia took the napkin, mumbled something from under her folded arms, and sent a whirlwind scattering papers and dust all around the room.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon studying. But no matter what we did, no matter what we tried, the spell we needed seemed to elude us. We simply couldn’t find anything big enough, anything that covered the area we’d need. And what could stand up to a creature sent by the Goddesses to destroy us?

  “What about Dust Dome?” Cassandra said suddenly.

  “Uh, were you not there last time we cast that?” Olivia asked. “The Dust Soldier walked right through it.”

  “Well, I just thought that it covers the right area,” Cassandra said.

  “You have to be inside it to cast it,” Olivia said. “We’re looking for something we can cast behind us that can keep them from getting past us.”

  “But what about Asa?” Cassandra said.

  “Asa?” Olivia cocked her head. “He’s already set to power up the horses.”

  “Last time we did Dust Dome, he was unconscious,” Cassandra said. “But his magic is like theirs, right? Because he’s a… you know… a daemon, darling.”

  I thought of the spears Susanah was creating, the spears that snapped out of the sides of the mechanical horses, sharp and deadly, glowing with Asa’s otherworldly magic, the only defense against the Dust Soldiers. “It does make sense,” I said.

  “What if his magic is the key to keeping them out?” Cassandra said, her eyes alight in her exhausted face. “What if we just… did Dust Dome, but used Asa’s magic too?”

  We looked at each other. There was something to this idea, we thought. Certainly none of the old, established spells were much help.

  “I dunno,” Olivia said. “Dust Dome requires a lot of magic at once, and… at this point I don’t know if he can do it by himself and power the horses and have power left to fight. He’s falling apart as it is.”

  It was true. With every earthquake, every change, Asa seemed to flicker. His mouth and arms and eyes had begun to go daemon far more frequently than usual. Was his magic a finite resource? I wasn’t sure.

  There was a sparking in my mind, a sudden kindling into flame. I reached into my pouch and pulled out a black stone.

  “We need to write our own trapdoor spell,” I said. “One that uses all our magic. One that can be activated by anyone with the stone. I can use Dust Dome as a model, I think, but instead of the coyote blood, we could use Asa’s. Maybe that will keep us from having to take so much magic from him.”

  “Are you sure this will work?” Olivia said, her expression somewhere between impressed and wary.

  “It’s going to take some time, but I think… I think it could.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, considering this.

  “A trapdoor spell,” Olivia mused finally. “How appropriate.”

  I looked out the window to the rose window of the church, but it was dark. Mother Morevna was nowhere to be found.r />
  That evening, after we dragged ourselves back, our hands burned and bloody, our pockets full of stones, we were sore, brain-tired. We sat around the kitchen table, watching Judith and Mowse play Go Fish. Olivia was sitting in a chair, brushing Rosa’s long black hair as Asa read to her from The Red Badge of Courage. The earth rumbled beneath us, and we were silent for a moment. Then we shook ourselves and let it pass.

  “You did it again, Mowse!” Judith said. “Fantastic! You’re real good at Go Fish!”

  “Or she’s mind-reading,” said Susanah from her chair by the stove.

  “What’s the capital of North Dakota, if you’re so smart?” Mowse asked, her nose in the air.

  “Bismarck,” said Susanah. “Don’t forget, I went to school too.”

  “You okay, chica?” Olivia asked, coming to where I stood by the window, leaving Asa to finish braiding Rosa’s hair.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “Just… thinking. There’s just so much wrong and…” I sighed. “I… I can feel it all the time.”

  “Thinking about your friend, huh?” Olivia said. “The one from last night? With Dust Sickness?”

  I nodded. It was true. The news of Lucy’s Sickness had been weighing on me. Sometimes I felt like I’d fallen in a grain silo, like I’d just struggle in it, the unfairness of it, until it swallowed me whole and left my corpse suspended and irretrievable. It was evil, nefarious, but I refused to believe it was unstoppable, not now that I knew it was a curse. Surely there had to be some way to lift it without the Master Stone. But with so few days left… would it even matter?

  “I know,” Olivia said. “And I’m sorry. It’s a hell of a thing to get, especially somebody as good as her.”

  “How do you know how good she is?” I asked.

  “If you like her so much, she must be,” said Olivia. She turned to me. “But look at the hand we’ve been dealt. We’ve got more power now than we ever had and we’ve done what we can. We’ll solve it. The defense spell, the Dust Sickness. All of it. But right now we have to focus. We have to break the Game.”

  She was right, I knew. But how could I focus on one enormous thing when another loomed in my sight, darkening everything with its shadow? The earth rumbled underfoot then, as if in answer to Olivia, sending dust drifting down from the rafters. I could hear Asa saying, “Shhhh, shhhh, it’s going to be all right,” as he braided Rosa’s hair.

  “I just wish I could see it that way,” I said quietly.

  Olivia regarded me for a moment. “You know what I like to do when everything’s getting to me and it feels like I’m going to explode?”

  “Smoke thirty cigarettes.”

  “No, even better.” She turned to everyone else, cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey!” she shouted. “Who’s up for a boxing match?”

  “How about up there?” Judith asked, jerking her head upward, her arms full of the homemade boxing gloves we’d sewn from feed-sack fabric and pillow stuffing.

  We all looked. Up on top of the Blue Moon Diner was a wide, flat area perfect for setting up a makeshift boxing ring. My heart seemed to constrict. The man who owned it had died two weeks ago, according to Lucy. Another victim of the Dust Sickness spell.

  “There’s a ladder back here!” Mowse said, pulling at a stack of crates behind the building.

  As we climbed the ladder up to the roof, my heart twisted in pain as I thought of the pies the Blue Moon man had given me only a short time ago, how Lucy and I had eaten them on her porch back before everything had gotten so bad.

  Susanah and Asa moved the crates out of the way, and one by one, we climbed up onto the flat, dust expanse of the roof.

  “There’s just something liberating about looking out over it all, isn’t there?” Cassandra said, her bracelets and necklaces clattering as she opened her arms and spun in the dusty night air.

  We went to the edge of the roof and looked out, Olivia and Asa with Rosa between them. The whole of Elysium stretched out before us: the animal pens, the factories, the church with its steeple and stained glass. We looked out over the roofs, both flat and pointed, the jail with its barred, dark windows, the hospital, ever bustling no matter the time. And despite all of the doom and gloom, the death and hurt and magic that surrounded us like an ocean, the windows of the houses still glowed with warmth and light, and the smell of home cooking rose over the smell of dust and Sickness. And as we stood there, looking out, a woman calling her children in for the night looked up at me and smiled. The people of Elysium were doing what they had always done, even back when we were just farmers living through the Depression: surviving, despite everything. I couldn’t fail them.

  “All right!” Judith said, weighing down the blanket that would serve as our ring with bricks. “Let’s get this started!” She threw us each a pair of gloves. “Come on, Zo! First one to twenty hits wins!”

  “That’ll be way too fast,” Zo said, pulling on her gloves. “I’ll be done with you in five minutes.”

  “Put your money where your mouth is!” Judith said with a wink. “Let’s go, champ!”

  We gathered, sitting around the ring, drinking our Coke bottle water rations as Judith and Zo ducked and weaved and dodged, throwing punch after light, jabbing punch. Rosa clapped in delight and Olivia and Asa stood back, holding hands.

  “Twenty!” Olivia called, Rosa waving her hat like a flag. “That’s it! Judith is the winner!”

  “One point! Just one point!” Zo said. “Or I’d have had you, Goliath!”

  “Come back with a sling next time,” Judith countered, sticking her tongue out.

  “I’m going next!” said Mowse. “Get ready, Judith!”

  “You’re not even half my size, pipsqueak,” Judith said.

  “I’ll fix that,” said Susanah. “Come on, kid.”

  And we all laughed as Susanah hoisted Mowse up on her shoulders and squared off against Judith. Mowse swung like a kitten batting at a string, and as Judith made face after face, I allowed myself to just sit and enjoy the spectacle of it.

  “Oh nooo!” Judith shouted, throwing herself to the ground when Mowse landed a punch.

  “You’re faking!” Mowse shrieked, giggling. “You’re faking, Judith!”

  “No I’m not! You’re just too strong!”

  “I guess it’ll have to be me next,” Cassandra said, taking off her bracelets. “Do your worst, Mowse!”

  “I’ll never understand humans,” said Asa next to me as Olivia talked to Rosa. “How are we doing? How are the horses?”

  “They’re almost ready for power,” I said. “Once they finish building that last batch tomorrow.”

  “I’ll have enough magic for that,” Asa said. He paused. “But I might start looking a little… daemony.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We get it.”

  “I just hope Rosa gets it,” said Asa. “I’d hate to scare her.”

  He meant it, I could tell. But as I looked at him then, watching Rosa and Olivia, he’d never seemed more human.

  “Olivia and Sal!” said Judith. “You’re up!”

  “Just in time,” Olivia said. “Come on, Sal. I’ll go easy on you, I promise.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said, pulling my gloves on.

  “That’s what I like to hear!” Olivia said. “Come on! Give it all you got! Asa, watch Rosa for me!”

  “Of course!” said Asa. “¡Rosalita! ¡Ven conmigo!”

  And we dove into the ring, not caring who won, the lightness of adrenaline and fun and being young breaking the surface of our gloom, our troubles momentarily forgotten.

  Lucy Arbor left the hospital after midnight, her shoulders sagging, her heart sinking. Three more Dust Sickness deaths. Three more bodies to be added to the wall, despite the closing of the Dowsing Well.

  Above her, there was a sound, and darting into the shadows, Lucy watched as Mother Morevna opened the rose window, pushing it outward.

  That thing can open? Lucy thought, pressing herself against the wall of the
jail.

  Mother Morevna leaned out of her window, her tattooed hands full of something Lucy couldn’t see. Pebbles? Marbles? Mother Morevna looked up at the sky. The moon was full and round and reddish. She stared at it for a moment, then put the handful of whatever it was to her chest and closed her eyes. Her lips were moving as though she were praying, but Lucy couldn’t hear her words. The tattoos on her hands began to glow in the darkness like lines of flame, brighter and brighter until suddenly they stopped. Then Mother Morevna laid the small things in a row, one by one, on the windowsill and turned back inside. Down on the ground, Lucy just kept looking up at the window, trying to still the beating of her heart, trying to tell herself that the feeling growing in her chest wasn’t what she knew it was. Dread.

  CHAPTER 25

  3 DAYS

  REMAIN.

  Every day we saw the world around us change. We felt the ground pitch beneath us, roaring like the great stomach of a hungry titan whose bonds were ever loosening. The sky took on the permanent darkness of a thunderstorm, swirling angrily overhead, promising nothing but divine wrath.

  Our every moment was consumed by training. We came home from the barn, dusty and burned and exhausted, smelling of smoke and sulfur and magic. I rarely saw Lucy, as the hospital kept her busy day and night. But when I did, our conversations were grim, and her beautiful face was more sunken and ill than ever. Gradually, it became more and more real to us: We were really going to have to do this. We were really going to lead a war for our survival.

  Three days before Judgment Day, the horses were ready to be brought to life, and we headed to the barn, walking slowly as the ground writhed beneath us. We split off into our respective groups: fighters, sharpshooters, inventors, and witches. Up in the hayloft, Asa was waiting, and he gave us a somber nod as we returned to the row of rifles and shotguns and cases of homemade magical bullets sitting on the floor, glowing softly with enchantments. We passed through the barn and out the back, into the lot behind it. There, ten rows of metal horses were waiting, still and frightening, a silent mechanical army. The guards were there as well, standing quietly, their eyes on Susanah, awaiting instruction.