Elysium Girls

“Hell yeah we do,” said Judith, forcing lightness into her voice. “I’m gonna take out at least ten by my damn self. How about you, Zo?”

  “Probably more,” she said. “Having a gun and all. I set the goal for a hundred.”

  “See?” Cassandra said, gesturing with hands so picked clean of nail polish they looked almost unpainted. “The power of positive thinking.”

  “How many of them were there supposed to be again?” Mowse asked, even her voice sounding quiet and meek.

  “A hundred,” I said. “One hundred soldiers including the artillery. But we’ve got this. We do.”

  No one said anything.

  There was a knock at the door then. Cassandra answered it, and Asa stepped in with a coat over one shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot. His teeth were sharp, and his hair looked wilder than ever, but at the same time he looked sure of himself, calm. Like a man making his peace before being taken to the gallows. Olivia went to him and put her arms around him, and they stood there, holding each other for a long time before he turned to me. “Tonight’s the night,” he said. “Are you ready to make it right again?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, conscious of the weight of the black stone in my pocket. “How about you?”

  But before Asa could answer, there was another knock on the door.

  “My, we’re popular today,” said Cassandra. She opened the door.

  “Is Sal here?” said a voice, and my heart leapt. Lucy stood there, makeupless and kerchiefed, but somehow she was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. I wanted to run to her and hold her close, but something about her manner held me back. She seemed so fragile she might break in two.

  I knew she’d been spending more time at the hospital lately. The two days in which I hadn’t seen her seemed like weeks. But she had come to visit tonight, and when she saw me, she smiled, and that’s all that mattered. Across the room from me, Zo made a confused Who is this? expression, then winked and gave me a thumbs-up. I ignored her.

  “I just came to say good luck,” Lucy said, coming into the kitchen. “Y’all are the bravest girls I’ve ever met. And you too, Asa.”

  “Thank you kindly,” Asa said from his place by Olivia and Rosa. “Though with all your work at the hospital, I think you’re pretty brave yourself.”

  Lucy smiled a tired-looking smile. I pulled out a chair for her, and she sat.

  “Not long now, huh?” she said.

  “Nope,” I said, taking a seat beside her. “About three hours left.”

  “Wait a minute.” Judith squinted at her. “You’re the one Sal was talking about. The one who sells makeup.”

  “Not much these days,” Lucy said. “But I still got this.” She opened her sack and put it on the table. The girls gathered around to see inside.

  “This is mascara?” asked Cassandra, with a hand on her chest. “Oh, I never thought I’d see mascara again!” She held up an eye shadow palette. “Judith, this would look striking with your blue eyes.”

  Mowse reached for a tube of lipstick and Susanah gave her a look. “Not till you’re older.”

  “I might not get older,” Mowse said. Susanah nodded, and Mowse took a corncob-disguised tube of coral lipstick and smeared it over her lips.

  “None for you?” Lucy said when she noticed Zo sitting back, completely away from the makeup in her suspenders and boots. “You have great bone structure.”

  “It’s just not my style,” she said, smiling. “But thanks.”

  Zo looked at Lucy in a slow, appraising sort of way, and something strangely like envy rose in me, but I pushed it back down as well as I could.

  “Oh, come on, Zo,” said Judith, swiping fawn eye shadow over her lids. “You’d be pretty.”

  “Yep,” said Judith. “The prettiest sharpshooter I ever did see.”

  “Aww, don’t make me blush,” laughed Zo. The girls milled around the spilled contents of the bag, trying this, considering that. And for a moment, I saw them as they could have been back in the real world: just teenage girls living their lives as they were meant to.

  “You scared?” Lucy said quietly as she watched them. She extended her hand to me.

  “Not as scared as I thought I’d be,” I said. I took it.

  “I’m not scared at all,” said Mowse unconvincingly through her coral lips. “We’ve fought them before, you know.”

  “I heard,” said Lucy. Then her eyebrows furrowed. “That mark,” she said, pointing to Mowse’s hand. “You have one too?”

  Mowse nodded. “Half my class has them,” she said. “The teacher says it’s probably ringworm.”

  “I knew it,” muttered Judith, scratching at the spot on her hand. “Dammit, Mowse.”

  “Those marks are spreading fast—nearly as fast as the Dust Sickness,” said Lucy, concern rising in her voice. “Seems like a fourth of the town has them now.”

  “I think we have bigger problems to worry about than a ringworm outbreak,” Olivia said soberly, looking out at the sky. Beside her, Rosa twitched on the couch, the red mark on her hand vivid in the low light.

  “I know, I know,” said Lucy. “Still… this just… doesn’t feel right somehow.”

  Lucy bent suddenly with her handkerchief over her mouth, coughing a deep, muffled-sounding cough that sent ice down my spine and a knife through my heart. I reached over and held her to me, held my forehead against hers, feeling her ragged breathing steady itself, hearing the telltale rattling in her throat, hoping that somehow I could take some of it from her, wishing I had the magic to do just that.

  “I’m going to make this all right,” I whispered to her. “We’re going to win. I promise. Then the Dust Sickness and everything else will be over.”

  On the couch, Rosa whimpered in her sleep. At that moment, Judith and Mowse both clutched their hands in pain.

  “Ow!” said Mowse. “That spot hurts!”

  “Mine too,” said Judith, turning her hand over to look at it more closely.

  “How did it hurt?” Lucy asked. “Burning? Sharp? Dull?”

  “Burning,” Judith said. “Like a… a pulse. Kind of a… a thrum.”

  “Let me see,” Asa said. He took Judith’s hand and scrutinized it. “There’s magic in this. Dark magic.” He turned to me. “And I’ll give you one guess whose it is.”

  Olivia and I exchanged glances.

  “Mother Morevna’s,” growled Olivia.

  Lucy’s eyes widened in realization. “You know, I did see her doing what looked like a spell the other night… with stones, looked like. Looking out over the city.”

  A trapdoor spell.

  “I knew she wouldn’t give up her power that easily. She’s behind this,” Olivia spat.

  “But what is it?” I asked.

  Olivia rose from her place by the couch. “Whatever it is, it can’t be good. We’re going over to the church and shutting it down.”

  “We report to the walls in two hours!” said Susanah. “We can’t just—”

  “I don’t want the rest of you to do anything,” Olivia said. “You all go to the walls as planned and fight. We’ve come too far not to. But this… this is a matter that concerns the people of Elysium. And as an Elysian, this is my responsibility.”

  Asa reached into his ear and pulled out a green silk handkerchief. Then he bit his finger and let the blood soak into it, muddying the green silk.

  “Take this,” he said, handing the handkerchief to Olivia. “I’ll be most effective on the walls. But take my power with you. Just be careful. Please.”

  Asa’s face flickered daemon for a moment, one eye his usual odd yellow and the other black and terrifying above a still-human nose and mouth. Then he was himself again.

  “You know how important your decisions are now,” he said. “Don’t play into Death’s hands after all this. We still have to fight.”

  Olivia put her arms around him and kissed him deeply.

  “I’ll be back,” she said. “I’ll be back in time to fight the Dust Soldiers
, right beside you. Beside all of you. I promise. But Morevna has to pay for this.”

  “I’m going too,” I said, and Olivia turned to me. “I’ve got to get her to lift the spell. Besides, even if she’s dying, Mother Morevna might put up a fight. You’ll need my help.”

  Lucy came to me and held my hands in her own. She looked at me for a moment, as though she was unsure what to do. My heart sped. Then, quickly, she reached out and kissed me on the cheek. “You can do it,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.” Then she went to the door and disappeared into the night, leaving the place she had kissed me burning on my cheek. Without thinking, I reached up and touched my face. (“I knew it!” said Zo’s voice somewhere in the background. “Pay up, Judith!”)

  Then Olivia, looking amused despite herself, snapped her fingers and brought me back into the real world.

  “We only have two hours until nightfall,” Olivia said. “Come on. Let’s put an end to this once and for all.”

  CHAPTER 27

  2 HOURS

  REMAIN.

  The ground rumbled. The sky churned green and black, making the setting sun look queasy through it. Already, the guards were pulling the platform the new Sacrifice rested on, all of it, out the gates and into the desert. This way, the Dust Soldiers would have to judge our sacrifice outside the city walls, giving us time to fight back. The horses were already outside, a mass of spectral glowing eyes, skeletal metal frames, waiting to be spurred into battle. Olivia and I watched as the guards shoved the doors shut behind the Sacrifice. The place where it had been sat as bald and empty as an abandoned nest.

  “Come on!” Olivia said. We sprinted across the square to the church. All the windows were dark. Even the round, spying-eye window in Mother Morevna’s room. We looked at each other and nodded, prepared to pick the lock or bust the door down. But when we turned the knob, the church door opened without resistance.

  We crossed the sanctuary, nearly soundless on the wooden floor, then another earthquake sent us stumbling and brought dust floating down on us like snow. From above us, stained-glass Jesus paid us no mind, eternally sweating His blood in the Garden. But there was no sign of Mother Morevna.

  “The stairway!” I said, moving as quietly as possible.

  We went up the stairs, to the sliver of light beneath Mother Morevna’s door. We halted before it, for a moment, thinking of her fiery spells, the power that emanated from her at all times. Then Olivia took a deep breath and turned the knob.

  “¡Ah, mierda! It’s locked! And I don’t have anything to pick it with!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. This time I was prepared. I pulled a hairpin from my hair and inserted it into the keyhole. A wiggle here, a push there. Click.

  Then, with a final glance at each other, Olivia and I plunged through the doorway and felt the door close behind us.

  When the clock struck, Asa and the girls left for their places at the walls and hoped that Sal and Olivia would catch up to them. From his spot on the wall above the doors, Asa could see the whole desert, what was left of it, anyway. It looked strange out of two different eyes.

  The human eye perceived the dark, jagged, puzzle-like expanse of the desert, all shadows and spots of foxfire glowing here and there between the nothingness.

  His daemon eye saw what the desert really was, the magic that flowed through every stone and twig and grain of dust and disappeared at the places that had disappeared. With his daemon tongue, he could taste the mercury and petrichor in the air. And far out in the desert, he could feel the rumble of Their coming.

  They were very close now. And above it all, he could feel Her watching, the Mother, the one who had chosen him in the beginning. She would be the arbitrator. He tried not to think of having also failed Her, the highest power in the universe. That was all over now. All that mattered was drawing this battle out as long as he could, no matter the cost.

  Asa took a deep breath and looked out. The cavalry had begun to assemble now, rows of glowing-eyed metal horses, and men and girls and pimpled teenage boys astride them. Susanah and Mowse were on Susanah’s horse, standing in front of the others, painted with black Dust Soldier ash, ready to lead the cavalry into battle. Judith was on another nearby, her big hands lingering above the spear that glowed in her horse’s spine. Neither she nor Mowse had had another problem with the marks on their hands, but Asa could feel something sinister coming from the marks, feel it like a fever spreading, and he kept his eye on them, hoping that whatever it was, it could wait until the battle was over to rear its ugly head.

  All around them, along the tops of the walls, between the humps of drying graves, were sharpshooters, waiting with their enchanted rifles. Zo was among them, her expression calm and serious, her holsters glowing.

  Cassandra was on the wall to his right, on the other side of the great doors. She looked at him and nodded gravely, her airy-fairyness replaced by steely resolution. They each knew their roles: projectiles and offensive spells from him, illusions from her.

  But Sal. Olivia… Their absence felt like a hole in their defenses, a chink in their armor. Asa had a sudden thought. It didn’t take all of them to cast the final defensive spell that the girls had created. All it took was one person. And if that person had to be him, Asa was all right with that. That person, he thought with a smile. That’s how I think of myself now. I don’t even have to try anymore.

  Another earthquake sent the mechanical horses stumbling, but when it passed, they stood upright. The guards and militiamen shook in their saddles. There was a moment of calm as the first sign of light appeared on the horizon. Out in the desert a whip-poor-will called, its plaintive cry echoing through the darkness.

  Then, on the horizon, a dark cloud began to rise. Miles wide, miles high, black and billowing, sweeping toward Elysium with the speed of a thousand freight trains. But this time, everyone knew it for what it was: the army of Sentinels, sent to judge Elysium. Asa could feel the weight of them in the air. The cavalry stood their ground—how could anyone run from something that was as wide as the sky?—and as the black dust cloud neared, it slowed and came to a stop about thirty feet from the Sacrifice. The cloud began to condense, to shrink, until all of it somehow was contained in the enormous, terrifying forms of one hundred Sentinels, one hundred Dust Soldiers, waiting for instruction. Asa could feel the fear emanating from Elysium’s soldiers, but, true to Susanah’s instruction, they did not falter.

  A lone Dust Soldier broke from the others, moving toward the Sacrifice. It examined the pile of crops and sacks of liquor and dry goods, summing it up.

  Then it snapped its fingers.

  The entirety of the Sacrifice began to blacken and shrink before his eyes, like ashes without a fire, until all of it, everything, was swept away by the wind. Then a great voice that sounded like all the cosmos speaking as one shouted, DEATH HAS BEEN JUDGED THE WINNER.

  Asa swallowed the bile in his throat. Just as he thought. Now all She had to do was claim Her win. The Dust Soldiers unsheathed their scimitars. It was time. Time to break the Game.

  “Charge!” cried Susanah, holding her spear aloft. She and Mowse lurched forward, their horse leaping into battle. The cavalry surged after them, shouting out their war cry, their spears held like knights’ lances. On the wall, Zo gave the command. Fifty shotguns went off, aiming for the Dust Soldiers in the back. He heard Cassandra cry out a command, and the cavalry suddenly looked twice as massive, copies of each horse and rider exploding into life, launching themselves toward the Dust Soldiers. There was a resounding clash of swords and spears, of clanging metal and screams of the wounded and the roar of dust over it all.

  Asa’s palms sweated. He had seen wars and conflicts before. They were half of human history, it seemed. He had thought he was sure before, but being here in it, officially part of it, was something different entirely. To fight now meant fighting against all that he had ever been. To raise a hand against these Dust Soldiers now was to defy the order of the universe. It was choosing a p
unishment at the end of all of this, greater than any that had befallen any daemon in history, all so these humans could have the chance to live.

  But that was what Sal would do. It was what Olivia would do. And it was what all these rushing human soldiers were doing now: risking everything on the off chance that they could make a better life for their friends even if they, themselves, never lived to see it. And, Asa realized, it was what he wanted to do. His heart was human now, through and through. And humanity, true humanity, he realized, was sacrifice.

  Asa cracked his knuckles, stretched his hands, and sent an arc of infernal flame down at the rushing Dust Soldiers. He had never felt so sure.

  Lucy left the hospital and went house to house, bringing water rations to the people huddled under tables and praying beside beds. Every so often she stopped and collapsed against the side of a building, wheezing, spluttering blood, wondering each time she gasped for air if it would be her last breath. The ground seemed to roll beneath her feet, and beyond the wall, she could hear the screams of the soldiers and the infernal shrieking of the Dust Soldiers. Mud rose in Lucy’s chest. She fell against the side of the Robertson house, pounding her burning chest, trying to shake loose the mud before it choked her completely.

  She felt a firm hand clapping her on the back. It thudded against her again and again, until finally, the clod of mud came loose and she vomited it into a bloody pile on the ground and gasped and gasped the hot, dusty, life-giving air.

  “Thought you were a goner for a minute there, girl,” Mr. Jameson said, kneeling beside her with a bucket. She had seen him, going from house to house, taking the last of the rations to the Sick before heading up to the wall to fight.

  “Th… thank you,” Lucy managed, wiping the gritty blood from her mouth. More blood than mud now. It wouldn’t be long. The curse would have its way with her yet. She looked at Mr. Jameson, prepared to thank him, but his brows were furrowed in concern and his eyes were on the ground between them. Something golden and small sparkled in the dust near her bloody vomit pile.