Barrier

by Mary Victoria Johnson

  Come to me.

  “Would it help if I opened the window? Tressa used to say that—What are you doing?” Avery cried.

  “I need the Others,” I said. “I need to get Demitra, remember?”

  The room began to fill with a buzzing pressure, the light bulb swinging as though in a gentle breeze.

  “Don’t,” he said, urgently. “If you’re right and they took him, then this is what they’ll want: for you to retaliate.”

  “There’s no other option.”

  “Get Madon instead.”

  Surprised, my concentration broke, and the rushing stopped. “Why?”

  “You were going to anyway, weren’t you? He can’t hurt us here. He’s the only person who might know what they’re up to.”

  I hesitated. “You’re…you’re sure?”

  Avery nudged open the window, turned back to me, and shrugged. “What do we have to lose?” As ever, that loaded question.

  I closed my eyes, tried to ignore the throbbing within my skull, and concentrated on Madon’s name, over and over again.

  Call him. If you’re there, call Madon.

  How long would it take? It wasn’t as though the Others could let me know when they’d done their job—or if they’d done it at all—and even then, would Madon risk Ripping here? Would he even come to the Farthing flat? Would he assume it to be a trick?

  Just when the pressure began to be unbearable, a different sort of shift happened—static, cold, and a stab of nausea.

  When I opened my eyes, Madon stood in the doorway, even shabbier than he’d been last time.

  “You called?” He looked at Avery, then back at me.

  I’d been expecting Avery to speak first, and when he didn’t, it took me an oddly long time to think of what to say.

  “They’re gone,” I mumbled. “And so is Andrew.”

  “Clever girl.”

  He was mocking me. Why did it have to be you, out of all of them? Pathetic.

  I curled my fingers into fists, straightening and trying my hardest to pretend my brain wasn’t on fire. After all, I’d just called and used the Others flawlessly, and there was nothing pathetic about that; I was in control here.

  “You know things,” I said, clearer this time. “We need you to tell us where Demitra and Deio went, and we need you to help us find Andrew.”

  Madon stared at me, black eyes shining as if they were made of plastic. “And why would I do that?”

  “You helped Avery. You’re working against the Farthings, and we—”

  “No, no, no,” he snapped, overriding me. He stormed over to the bedroom, threw open the door, and surveyed the empty space with a sneer. “Cowards.” Then he pivoted back to Avery and me, neither of us having moved, and said, “I didn’t want you working with those twins, but it seems they’ve thrown you off all on their own. I helped Avery because I’ll need a favour futher on down the road. That’s as far as it goes. So long as you stay away from Demitra and Deio—away from Boundary—I couldn’t give a damn what you do now. The last thing I have time for is helping you rescue some insignificant farm boy.”

  “He’s not insignificant.”

  “He’s another average human. The world is too full of them anyway—that’s why they’re killing each other in Europe at the moment. One more, one less.” Madon began walking down the stairs to the shop. “What do I care?”

  Avery continued to say nothing, frowning at the floor as though searching for a lost button. I jerked my head pointedly. He blinked, then hurried after me down the stairs.

  “Why come? Why come if you won’t help us anyway?” I called.

  Madon just kept walking.

  The chip shop was dark, the windows having been boarded up when the shop closed down. Only a sliver of light worked its way down from the flat upstairs, illuminating the peeling whitewash walls and mouldy countertops of the front desk. By now, the smell didn’t bother me.

  “Why do you care if Boundary falls or not?”

  Madon reached for the door handle.

  Lock it. Lock the door.

  “Evelyn?” Surprised flitted across his face as he rattled the handle. “You’ve become better.”

  “Answer my question.”

  As the pressure began to build again, I heard a pop as the bulb upstairs shattered, and the entire building was plunged into darkness.

  “I can still Rip away,” Madon said.

  He was lying. I’d brought too many Others for Ripping to be safe.

  I could feel them all swarming the building, invisible, lost—I knew I was the only thing stopping them from blowing the windows out again. The second I gave up control…

  Madon must’ve realized this.

  “You want to know why I need Boundary?” he asked, his voice managing to be both lilting and harsh at the same time. “You needn’t look farther than this room. I am facing two children who used to be too scared to breathe my name, and now, when I look into your faces, I see anything but fear. In this world, I’m no better than the fools hiding behind submarines and machine guns. But in Boundary…” He paused. “There, I’m still a god.”

  My back grew rigid.

  “That’s it? That’s why you won’t help us?”

  Avery, from somewhere behind me, snorted. “A devil, maybe. God probably isn’t the right word.”

  My mind remained somewhere else. Three. If Madon cooperated, we’d be able to go to Boundary this minute and save everyone. By tomorrow morning, I could be holding Fred’s hand as we searched for Andrew together, but because Madon wouldn’t let go of the fantasy he’d created…

  Something inside me snapped. Maybe it was still the shock of seeing Avery, maybe it was the headache, maybe it was the pressure of trying to control the Others, or maybe it was a combination of all of them, but at that moment, all my fears and anxieties were enveloped by a burning red rage.

  I stretched my hand towards Madon.

  He screamed as his body was thrown against the wall with such force that dust exploded from the ceiling. As the anger and pressure increased, the scream was choked off, replaced by a gargling wheeze.

  “I can’t torture you. Not like you tortured us,” I managed to spit, struggling to keep him pinned down. “But believe me, I can still make it hurt.”

  “Avery…” Madon gasped. “Make her…stop.”

  Avery shook his head slowly, leaning against the opposite wall with a sideways smile.

  Don’t let up. Hold him there.

  “You will tell us where Demitra and Deio are,” I hissed. “You will tell us what you know about Andrew’s whereabouts. If you truly know nothing, then you will help us anyway, or I swear on Beatrix’s memory, I will let the Others kill you. I am fed up with dancing around a line in the sand. Understood?”

  I barely understood myself. I knew I’d have to let up eventually, and I knew that my threat was empty, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t keep waiting for other people to make moves—I had to start making my own. Perhaps if I’d done so sooner, Andrew wouldn’t be missing.

  “You…have no idea…”

  Harder.

  The words slipped into a rattle.

  “Careful,” Avery murmured.

  I withdrew the pressure, slightly.

  “I felt…they Ripped to the farm. Last night. That’s…all I know.”

  Let him go.

  Madon collapsed onto the floor, gasping.

  “The Pearson farm?” I demanded.

  “Yes.” He sounded angry; at himself or me, I couldn’t tell. “Whether that boy is with them, I can’t say.”

  Of course he was. Why would they go to the farm if it had nothing to do with Andrew?

  “Take us there.”

  Madon put a hand on the wall and stumbled to his feet, laughing a hollow laugh. “You’ve made it far too unstable to Rip, my dear.”

  “I’ll make them go away, but you’ve got to take us to the farm.”

  Another laugh. “And you trust me to do so? Have you not been list
ening? I cannot bring you right to the Farthings. And he—” Madon glanced at Avery—“would especially do well to keep his presence a secret from them.”

  “I just…I just need to make sure they’re safe,” I said, thinking of Julia and Kitty and Harriet with a biting guilt. “I don’t want anything to do with the twins.”

  “Besides,” Avery added, “we’re going anyway. At least this way you’ll be able to keep an eye on us.”

  Madon had been trying the door again, but at Avery’s words, he straightened and frowned at us, thinking. I’d never known anyone to flip between being so unreadable and so violent in temperament as him. He’d been wrong about us not fearing him anymore; even now, my nerves were braced for an explosion of rage, or a punishment for being disrespectful.

  “Fine,” Madon snapped, much to my amazement. “But you’ve got to clear all these things out of here, or the building will come down on top of us. You realize that as soon as I Rip, they’ll know exactly where we are?”

  “That’s why you’re coming, isn’t it?” Avery retorted.

  “Regrettably.”

  They both looked at me pointedly.

  Hoping that I wasn’t making a terrible mistake, I closed my eyes and willed the Others to leave.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was far more difficult getting the Others to leave than to come. Still, bit by bit, the pressure dwindled until I couldn’t feel it anymore. I’d half-expected Madon to vanish the second he had the opportunity, but he must’ve taken Avery’s threat seriously.

  With precision even Demitra couldn’t mirror, Madon opened a Rip in the middle of the shop as though dragging a knife through space itself. I didn’t have time to reconsider before the world shifted and the smell of stale grease shifted into that of manure.

  The farm.

  Disoriented, it took me a minute to get my bearings. We were halfway down the driveway, surrounded by bare hedges and the wide expanses of frost-covered fields, the roofs of the house and barns visible if I stood on my toes. The air here felt colder than it had in town, making me even more aware of how threadbare my clothes were.

  “Quaint,” Avery said, his breath turning misty as he exhaled. “What’s the plan?”

  “Like I said, they’ll know we’re here.” Madon fixed his coat and began walking down the driveway. “The family believes me to be a surveyor, so it isn’t my presence that will cause a stir, is it?”

  I gave Avery an ‘I’ll-explain-later’ look. “We’ve got to find—well, anyone who isn’t a Farthing, and find out if they’ve seen Andrew. Simple.”

  Of course, it wasn’t simple at all. My departure hadn’t been a smooth one, and if I showed up unannounced claiming that I’d lost Andrew, Madon would be the least of my problems.

  I couldn’t believe only a few days had passed since we’d left. I had the strangest sense of coming home, a flush of familiarity sparked by the twisting timber beams of the house and the frozen mud of the farmyard where I’d spent so much time doing chores. It wasn’t quite as strong as the ache I associated with Boundary, but it was still there. The farm was the closest I’d come to belonging in this world.

  “We should try the animal barns,” I said. “That’s where most of them will be at this time.”

  And by them, I meant the children. Harriet, Anna and James were a far safer bet than Julia.

  Avery shrugged and nodded. Madon didn’t respond, scanning for the twins.

  “Oh!”

  “What?” Avery started. “What is it?”

  “The chickens,” I said sadly, gesturing to the empty coop. “They’re gone.”

  “And?”

  “It’s a shame. They were quite sweet little things.”

  Avery rolled his eyes. “I’ve been meaning to congratulate you on your newfound toughness, but now—”

  “What, I can’t be tough and empathize with chickens?”

  Madon hissed at us to be quiet, cutting off Avery’s response, and we walked the rest of the way in silence. Inside, though, I couldn’t help but smile; there had been something genuine behind Avery’s joke, and the idea of him thinking of me as ‘tough’, no matter how lightly, was flattering. After all, wasn’t I the first of our group to actually outdo Madon face-to-face?

  My smile faltered when, listening at the doors of the nearest barn, I heard Julia scolding someone, her footsteps growing louder and louder. We’d barely jumped out of the way when the door was thrown open and she emerged, as frazzled as ever, with a red-faced Anna at her heel.

  “I can’t do the work of a dozen people, Mum!” Anna shouted. “You’re being unreasonable.”

  “Am I?” Julia spun around. If she’d bothered to look beyond her daughter, she’d have seen Madon, Avery, and I flattened in the shadows of the barn. “Is it too much to expect chores to be done properly, now?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “We can’t afford to waste anything. Anything. I know there aren’t many of us, but we’ve got to…” Julia broke off. Her voice sounded strained, as though she’d been crying.

  “Should we talk to her?” Avery muttered.

  I shook my head, wishing myself to be invisible.

  “I’ll clean it up,” I heard Anna say. “I-I’m sorry, Mum.”

  Julia waved her hand, turning away so I couldn’t see her face. “I’ll find the bucket.”

  We waited until they’d disappeared into the house to move again. I exhaled through my teeth.

  “One day,” said Avery, “you’ll have to tell me this whole story in greater detail. Is it just me, or are you their villain?”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “I do wonder about you sometimes. Fred gets close, nearly dies in a fire. Andrew gets close, and poof. The chickens get close, and—”

  “Avery.”

  “Evelyn?”

  I jumped, nearly cracking my neck due to turning so fast. For a blinding second I thought Julia had heard us talking and come back, until my eyes locked with Kitty’s, except, it didn’t look like Kitty. Her eyes, which I remembered to be wide and twinkling, stared at me listlessly, rimmed in dark, bruise-like bags. Her shoulders were slumped and her crooked smile was gone altogether.

  “Kitty?” I stepped forwards, swallowing. “I—”

  “Are you real?” she interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Are you real? See, I been muddled lately, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you was just some of Harriet’s ghouls.” Her fingers flickered to her faded red headscarf, pulling at a loose thread. “So is it really you?”

  “Of course. Kitty, what on earth happened?”

  Her expression didn’t change at my admission, her fingers continuing to pull the thread. I think she said something, but it was too muffled to hear.

  “Why don’t we go somewhere a bit…quieter?” I asked, hearing Julia and Anna’s voices coming towards us. “Then you can tell me everything.”

  We ended up moving to a space behind the woodpile, hidden from view and far enough away from the main farmyard that nobody would be able to hear us. Madon stood to the side, still watching for the twins, but Avery, Kitty, and I kept close to the woodshed itself. A bitter wind was blowing across the fields, and the shed offered the slightest bit of shelter.

  “Sidi Barrani,” Kitty said tonelessly.

  “I don’t understand?”

  “They won. They were outnumbered and outgunned, and they still won. It was an amazin’ victory.” Her lower lip trembled. “They lost fewer than seven ’undred men, which ain’t bad. The Dutch lost three-an’-a-half thousand durin’ their invasion, and the French lost somethin’ like four-hundred-thousand. So, y’know, all things considered…”

  My stomach dropped. “Your brother?”

  Kitty nodded. Then her mask cracked and she began to cry, great gulping sobs. “I knew he was in North Africa, but…the battle wasn’t supposed to be heavy with casualties…an’ the last thing I told him was what I wanted for Christmas. Last thing he ’eard from me weren’t
that I loved ’im, but that I-I missed chocolate. An’…I do miss chocolate, but…oh, stars, Evelyn, I miss ’im more, an’ he don’t know that…” Her words trailed off into sobs and she buried her face in her hands, entire body shaking.

  I reached out and patted her shoulder, trying not to cry myself. “I’m so sorry, Kitty.”

  “Y’know what the worst part it?” She raised her head, eyes red, swollen and glistening. “Life goes on like he never existed. It didn’t matter none, not to anyone else. Wouldn’t have made no difference if he’d been in Egypt or…or Iceland, they’d ’ave won anyway. One more death, one less, would have changed nothin’.”

  Another gust of wind burst inwards from the fields, and I saw a slip of paper tumble from her blouse pocket. It was crumpled to the point of disintegration, but the words marked upon it were still legible:

  Deeply regret to inform you that S/SGT B Rogers died of wounds sustained in Sidi Barrani on December 11th 1940. Profound sympathies offered.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Avery said.

  She blinked.

  “I’m sure he made friends. I’m sure there are hundreds of people who will remember him, and always will,” Avery continued, with more sincerity than I’d ever heard from him. “Was he funny?”

  “Yeah.” Kitty sniffed, wiping her eyes on the back of her wrist. “How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess. But anyway, I reckon fifty years from now, when all those soldiers are home with their grandkids, they’ll keep telling stories about your brother and how he made them smile in one of the worst places in the world. I doubt they think he made no difference to them.”

  I saw Madon turn his head towards us with something like surprise. Kitty and I stared with equal disbelief, until Kitty launched herself forwards and threw her arms around Avery’s neck. He stumbled backwards.

  “You really reckon?” she mumbled into his shoulder.

  “Sure.” Avery mimicked the awkward pat on the back I’d given her. “You don’t have to drop the biggest bomb to be a hero, after all.”

  “Hero.” Kitty sniffed again and nodded. Realizing she’d dropped the telegram, she bent and picked it up, running her thumb along the creases. I kept watching Avery, expecting him to give me a wink or roll his eyes, but he kept himself perfectly serious. Oddly enough, he wasn’t acting. “Who are you?”