by Sarah Jaune
“Everyone knew?” Eli blurted out, shocked by this.
“I think they did,” Ivy said as the truck went over a pothole, jarring them. “It was how they treated me, treated my mother. It was so cold. We were sent away from the city, but she kept dragging us back. I came to hate riding on the bus into the city.”
He didn’t know what to say to her. Eli felt horrible and stupid, with no way to offer any comfort.
“She was so out of it towards the end,” Ivy said, and it seemed like she was no longer speaking to him. “I could talk to her, and she’d stare right through me, like I wasn’t even there. I think she was drinking, too. My grandmother drank.”
“The crazy thing…” Eli said suddenly as he sat up straighter. “My parents are crazy. Your mom was crazy. We have multiple powers. There has to be a link.”
“I’ve thought about it,” Ivy agreed as they turned onto one of the major arteries into New Orleans. “It seems like something had to happen for them to start going crazy, and for us to get more powers. They had to do something, but why would my mom be part of that? She wasn’t an Overseer.”
He was equally lost as to how it all fit together. The most pressing problem was that Ivy shouldn’t have two powers. She only had one magical parent. “We’ll have to worry about this later.”
The truck slowed as they made their way into the city, this time towards what Eli knew was the wealthier side of New Orleans.
“It’s really unfair how they’re running the city,” Ivy grumbled. “Without any money flowing into the poor side of town, there is no way for anyone to make money and grow their business. It’s the bare minimum that shifts around.”
“Yeah, but,” Eli said as he pointed towards the nicer houses. “These people have no need for the poor to get any of their wealth. They don’t benefit from the wealth moving around the city. They live in separate worlds.”
“Only until those levies break,” Ivy muttered darkly as Thane turned up another street. “It should be dark soon. We’re going to need to find a place to hide the truck.”
“Thane said he was going towards the edge of the old cemetery. Apparently, no one will go in there after dark.”
Ivy snorted out a laugh. “Great, just great.”
“Dead people aren’t nearly as scary as live people,” Eli said as he glanced over to see the sun dipping below the buildings in the horizon. “Plus, these people have been dead for longer than anyone can remember.”
A small shiver passed over his body as the trucked bounced down a rutted lane and pulled into the back of the cemetery. It wasn’t like any graveyard Eli had ever seen before. This one had tombs that were all above ground, in stone boxes. Fences surrounded huge mausoleums that crumbled gently from age and weather.
The markers were surprisingly well kept, though. It was clear that the zone valued this landmark, even if no one knew any of the dead.
The truck pulled to a stop under a willow. Eli inhaled the sweet, pungent scent of the tree. The branches hung like hair around the truck, sweeping down around the vehicle until it was practically hidden from view.
“This is kind of perfect,” Eli said as he climbed from the truck and ducked under the branches and waited for the others to join him. “I didn’t see any police while we were driving in.”
“Agreed,” Thane confirmed as he quietly closed the truck’s door. “What I did see were more preparations. The streets are cleaner than they’ve been before.”
Ivy shouldered a backpack and nodded towards town. “Let’s go then. We may not have much time to wait on this.”
“I’m not waiting here,” Claire reminded them nervously as she took her brother’s hand. She glanced around at the graves around them. “Those fences are like the railings around the houses.”
She wasn’t wrong. Eli had seen the pointed, intricate patterns in the black, metal fences that lined many of the homes in the wealthier section. The only exceptions were the ones where the fences had once been copper and were now a light green from age and exposure to the elements. “Just stick close to us, right?” Eli asked Claire.
The little girl nodded and skipped to keep up with them as they made their way around towards the poor side of town. They saw a few people in the distance, but it was as though no one lived in the city anymore.
“Where is everyone?” Ivy whispered into the night air as crickets and cicadas chimed a chorus around them. The smell of water, the tang of moss, hung heavy around them, blurring out the smells of the dirty streets.
Something was very wrong. “Let’s get out of sight for a bit,” Eli said as he spotted a halfway burned out home. “There,” he pointed and ducked around under a blackened beam. He stepped over a fallen board and moved towards a huge, brick fireplace that seemed untouched. He sat down on the bricks and waited for his friends to join him.
“What are we doing?” Claire wanted to know.
“We’re going to hide until it’s really dark,” Ivy explained softly. “The last time we were here there were people in town.”
“Oh,” Claire glanced around at the gloomy interior of the building and huddled closer to Thane, who kept his large arm around her.
“This is one of the stranger zones,” Thane told them in a low rumble. “I’ve been to a lot of places, but I’ve never seen one that works like this. People bring money in when they come here. They have money to spend in certain places, but it all depends on if you’re sanctioned by the Overseer.”
“I think that’s common, actually,” Eli replied as an owl hooted somewhere in the distance. “It just depends on the Overseer’s motivation. If they want the zone to prosper, then everyone has a chance. If they don’t, then they keep the money in only a few hands. In my father’s case, everyone is starving except for the ultra-elite.”
“In San Antonio, everyone can make money,” Ivy reminded him. “I think the city has a friendlier feel to it.”
Eli nodded as he heard a noise from outside and held his finger up to his lips to silence his companions. Everyone waited as a slow shuffling became louder before moving off past their location.
He let out a slow, relieved breath, then jumped as a board to their right fell from the ceiling with a thunderous crash.
CHAPTER 20
HELP FROM BELOW
Eli jumped to his feet as the building around them shuddered slightly. He couldn’t see the board that had fallen, not in the dark, but he knew it had been close. “Let’s get out of—”
The words hadn’t completely left his mouth before the whole building shuddered. Eli stuck his hands out, thrusting the crumbling timbers away from them as another huge section of roof collapsed downward towards them. Charred boards flew through the air, hitting the opposite wall and several standing support beams before they crashed to the floor.
“Eli!” Ivy called out as she scrambled to her feet behind him.
“Get out!” he ordered them quickly. “I’ll hold it!”
He didn’t shift his attention away from the building, which he was magically keeping upright. The whole thing was going. In his panic and fear, Eli had thrown the boards away from them with such force that he knew he’d cracked the remaining walls. The whole thing began to crumble, like tumbling blocks in the hands of a toddler, freefalling to a point where Eli’s magic kicked in, holding it in place.
“We’re out!” Thane called into the building. “Do you have it?”
Eli had to focus his entire mind on the slow walk towards an exit as the burnt bits of wood shook in the air above him, spilling the night sky into the cracks.
“Two more steps back,” Ivy told him softly.
Her hand touched his back and she grabbed him, pulling him away as the structure toppled down in a clamorous scraping of wood and bricks. Black, billowing dust flew out at them, coating them in the miniscule flying particles from the disintegrated house.
Ivy released him and pointed towards the river. “That way!”
They ran for the river. Eli scooped Clair
e up and bolted with her, running faster than Thane or Ivy, as he hopped onto the embankment and saw what Ivy meant. A moment later he jumped down onto a ledge that was about a foot from the water level and set Claire down. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she replied quickly.
It was remarkable just how resilient this kid was that nothing surprised her.
Eli turned his face up and spotted Ivy. He held out a hand and she jumped down to him a moment before Thane joined them on the small outcropping of stone.
They heard the noises of police a moment later.
Eli sighed in relief and leaned back against the cold, wet concrete of the wall. He didn’t even care that he was pressed against moss and who knew what else. His heart was racing so fast that he was sure it wasn’t going to calm down for a week.
“I think that was my fault,” Thane told them apologetically after a minute of listening to the rushing of the police cars above them. He kept his voice down, though, so no one would hear. “I was tired and not thinking. Sometimes metal things will come towards me when I’m not focused. I have to be careful where I sleep. I think that the nails started to come lose because I was there. In a stable house, that wouldn’t happen.”
Eli shut his eyes and fought back a grin.
Ivy sighed and slid down the wall with her knees practically pressed to her chest. “It was an accident.” She reached down into the lake and stuck her fingers in the water.
Eli watched a ripple go out from where her fingers touched the choppy surface. “Did you see that?”
Ivy turned towards him with her head still on her knees. She smirked. “I’m just showing off. I figure while we’re down here, I’ll see if I can’t call the mermaids.”
“That might not be good with us here,” Eli pointed towards Thane, then back to himself.
Ivy shrugged and pointed upwards. “If they’ll help us, they might be able to get us off this ledge. If they won’t help us, then we’ll know now.”
“Did you see this crack?” Claire asked, clearly not listening to their conversation.
“Yeah, I sensed those,” Ivy sighed as she pushed herself to her feet and ran her hands along the crack. “There’s water in them. They are battered by storms and water is forced in. If it froze here, these would have already broken down.”
“How come?” Claire asked her. Eli admitted he wanted to know as well.
“When water freezes it expands,” Ivy explained as she spread her fingers out. “If that water is pushing against the rocks, it will crack them. Water has more power than the rocks and concrete here. This wall really needs to be repaired.”
Thane eyed it warily. “Yet we’re standing right here.”
“I could probably keep us safe,” Ivy said. If she was trying to be reassuring, she failed to convince anyone. “But the whole of the city would be flooded. It would be a nightmare.”
A splash, unlike the regular movement of the water, sounded behind them, and Eli turned to see a mermaid staring at them from the water.
She had gray scales and the only thing about her that appeared human was her arms and face. She didn’t have hair, and her teeth were more those of a shark. Her fingers were webbed, and she used that webbed cup to throw water up towards them.
Ivy waved her hand, deflecting the spray back into the lake.
The mermaid squeaked in surprise and backed hurriedly away, ducking beneath the water, clearly ready to swim away at a moment’s notice.
Ivy knelt next to the water and shooed the boys back. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she told the floating creature.
Eli didn’t know a whole lot about mermaids. What he did know was that there were very few mermen and the rumor was that the mermaids ran the species. In picture books mermaids often had flowing hair, but this one had none. Its head was just like that of a fish, except scaled.
Slowly, cautiously, the mermaid broke the surface again. “What you want?” it said in a high, reedy voice.
“I need help,” Ivy said slowly. She held out her hand and caused a thin stream of water to dance from the lake, wrapping like a ribbon around her arm before flowing back into the water. Her arm stayed dry. “I want to know about the Overseer.”
The mermaid hissed out a small spray of water and shook her head. “He no a nice man. No man is.”
“What has he done?” Ivy asked her.
She sniffed and started to sink again. “I no talk. He mean.”
“Wait!” Ivy pleaded with the mermaid. “I need to go to his house. His children are in danger.”
That gave the mermaid pause. “What you name?”
“Ivy,” she answered immediately. “What’s yours?”
“Keela,” the mermaid answered. “The kids is trying to go.”
Ivy straightened her shoulder in excitement and Eli had to force himself to stay back as more splashes around Keela signaled the arrival of more mermaids. They were all gray, although the shades of gray varied from light to a dark slate. All had human shaped eyes that were flat black that seemed to glow a bit in the weird, eerie light of the moon.
They spoke to Keela in clicks and squeaks that Eli couldn’t understand. There seemed a definite argument.
Keela pointed to Ivy. “Show.”
For a moment, Ivy appeared to not understand, then she nodded. “The magic, you mean?”
Keela nodded. “Do it,” she commanded.
Ivy used her finger, twirling it to create a vortex in the water, swirling like a wet tornado down into the depths. It wasn’t big, but enough to get her point across.
The mermaids backed away from her.
“Wait,” Keela instructed the others. “What is you wanting?” she asked Ivy.
“We want to help the Overseer’s children,” Ivy replied simply. “That’s it. We know he is cruel to them.”
She waited a moment. “What is you giving if we help?”
Ivy hesitated and glanced back towards Eli, clearly unsure of what to say. “What…” she paused a moment. “What do you want?”
The mermaid didn’t have any compunction about telling her. “We is wanting to get out.”
“I don’t understand,” Ivy said honestly. “Can’t you leave the lake?”
“No!” Keela retorted bitterly. “He is keeping us here.”
“There’s a net,” another mermaid piped in.
Ivy frowned and lowered her hand into the water, closing her eyes. They watched her, all of them, as she stayed silent for a long time. Finally, she withdrew her hands. “They have a metal grate of some kind that is spanned under the bridges that cross the lake. There are gaps, but only enough for smaller fish to travel in and out.”
“Our young can go,” Keela explained in a mournful sigh, “but we cannot. We is stuck on this side, to guard the lake.”
“That’s…” Eli was dumbfounded at what he was hearing. “That’s horrible.”
“We can fix that,” Thane said honestly as he turned to Eli. “You and I can take care of that easily.”
“Will you help us if we take down the grate?” Ivy asked the mermaid.
She nodded. “You is doing the net first.”
“Wait,” Eli shook his head. “How do we—”
“No!” Keela shouted angrily at Eli. “Man always hurts us first! We get what we is wanting first now or we no help you!”
“What about my word?” Ivy interjected into the conversation, trying to draw Keela’s attention back to her. “I promise they will help you. Our objective is to save the children from their father, but we are no fan of the Overseer. We want to help you, even if you do not help us.”
That gave her pause. The mermaid turned back to the others and began again in that language that Eli couldn’t understand.
“If you help us,” Keela said after a moment’s confirmation, “we help you.”
“We’ll do it,” Ivy told her. “We hope you’ll come through on your part of the bargain, but we will help you first.”
“Ivy…” Eli tried to
interrupt, but she shook her head.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Ivy insisted quietly.
Eli felt his conscience prick. He glanced towards Thane, who shrugged, clearly fine with whichever way they decided to go.
“We’ll go now,” Ivy told Keela, who still studied them skeptically. “We’ll open up a small hole so that you can pass back and forth. Wait,” she held up a hand to the mermaid. “I have a favor to ask of you. We are going to open the hole, but we need you to wait a bit to leave completely. If the Overseer notices you are all gone when we take the children, he’ll know and he’ll come after us. You will have a way out and you’ll be able to leave at any time you want.”
