by Alex Wells
Well, right and proper and necessary was more important than her own long-nursed wounds. She’d been wrong to avoid Mag even when she was allowed to go back to Rouse. But she’d been so ashamed, and so afraid that Mag might look at her the way everyone else on base had for the last three years: like she was the biggest fuckup in the world. As if that could have hurt any worse than where she was now, sitting in the burning sand and trying to swallow guilt and fear with a dry mouth.
And to think, she’d been convinced that she was done fucking up after the last big mistake. But it just kept going and going, like the winds that never stopped pushing the dunes across the hardpan.
Eventually, Hob dozed fitfully in the heat, jerking awake every time the wind made even the softest sound. Her stomach grumbled, and she grudgingly ate half the emergency rations she’d brought, chewing on jerky softened with the smallest possible sips of water until she thought her teeth and jaw would crack.
Sunset painted the hardpan salmon pink and orange with reflected light. She sighed and looked up at the sky. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere till you come and talk to me. I’ll wait all night if I have to, all day tomorrow too.”
In a just world, that would have gotten her some sort of instant response. Instead, she watched the sunset colors on the sky, and napped again as the stars began to come out.
The cold woke her, and a soft noise, a whisper of sand moving against sand. She sat up, pulled on her coat, and slid a knife into one hand from the sheath at her wrist. The Bone Collector walked up from one of the abandoned cellars, digging his staff into the sand.
Chapter Four
Then
* * *
One day before they were set to leave for the landing field at Newcastle, Mag was alone in the house, taking care of last-minute laundry so that she could pack all of her clothes clean. Every little bit would help, wherever her fare ended up taking her. Papa was at the mine, already working the promised extra hours; Mama was up at the works too. She didn’t have the lungs or the back for mining, but she earned extra money carrying water to the miners and tending to their little hurts.
Someone knocked on the front door.
Mag dropped the little bag of clothespins on the floor, the dry rattle echoing the shudder of fear up her spine. She barely dared to breathe. When the knock came again, she jerked like she’d been slapped.
Every instinct told her not to answer the door, to pretend to not be home. But it was a rare thing for it to be someone bad. Mostly it’d be a person looking for her parents, or a neighbor asking to borrow flour or a few eggs.
A third knock: it had to be something important. Mag untangled her hands from her apron – how had the fabric gotten so twisted up in her fingers? – and went to answer the door.
The man on the doorstep was no neighbor, nor any of the miners. He wore a suit of company blue, his dark hair neat and slicked back. He might even have been handsome, sharp nose and all, if just the sight of his face didn’t fill her with such dread. His dark eyes glittered and he smiled, showing all his teeth. “Ah, I knew you were home, Maggy-girl.”
Her face felt stiff and wooden. “Mr Franklin, good afternoon.”
“Go ahead, invite me inside. Saw your mama, she said she made some lemonade fresh this morning, I should try some.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean to be rude.” She stepped aside, hiding her hands in her apron.
Mr Franklin was one of the company representatives that rode with the trains; he wasn’t in town often, but he was always stopping by to say hello to her parents. He’d known them for years, friendly-like; he’d helped Papa get his promotion to crew leader. Mag hated him, feared him, more than she could bear.
He took himself to the kitchen; she followed behind. He pulled out a chair at the table as she turned to get a glass from the cupboard, but he didn’t sit. Instead, he moved up behind her and leaned, pressed his body up against hers. She knocked the glass over in the cabinet; it took down the rest like dominoes, though none broke.
“Your mama also told me her little chickadee was flyin’ the nest tomorrow,” he breathed into her hair.
She closed her eyes tightly, as if not seeing would make the world less real, shut it all out of her head. “Yessir, going off to have an adventure.” Her voice wobbled as she spoke.
“Sound sad enough to cry, you do. I’ll put a smile on your face, Maggy-girl. I can’t let you go off without saying a proper goodbye.” His aftershave half choked her.
She had an inkling where that hiss of words might go, and her thoughts melted into a panicked scramble. Her first instinct was to scream, but she already knew that was the wrong one. Because someone might rush in, and fling themselves at Mr Franklin, and all too easily Mag could imagine that faceless rescuer getting thrown off a train. Because you didn’t tell a company man no, not if you valued your job. She’d learned that just by watching and listening around town, ignored and overlooked because she was quiet and young.
One of the glasses rolled against her hand. She grabbed it and pretended to faint, then slammed it into the cabinet. The glass shattered into razor-sharp shards with a loud crack, and cut deep into the meaty part of her hand. There was nothing feigned about the cry of pain that tore out of her, but it wasn’t a scream for help.
Mr Franklin jerked away from her like a shot, so fast that she had to grab the edge of the counter to keep herself from falling. “What are you up to, Maggy-girl?” he said. There was a look in his eyes – anger, confusion, and… fear? Had he imagined that glass cracking across his head for a moment?
“I’m sorry!” she gasped, leaning against the counter. She wasn’t sorry at all, but she managed to sound it, with all that real pain screeching from her hand and up her arm. “I’m sorry, my hand slipped and… Oh. Oh God.” That really was a lot of blood, she thought numbly, running off her palm and pattering down onto the counter top.
“Well, put it under the tap.” He grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her over to the sink.
She yelped again, unabashedly. Mr Franklin kept calling her girl, talking to her like she was a child. And it made her sick, but fine, she could act like a child too. Being a child was safer than being a grown woman. Loudly, she began to cry. It felt strangely good, a way to let out some of that fear choking her that – she hoped – wouldn’t make him mad. And more important, it was a way to make some noise. “Oh, it hurts! It hurts!”
“Quiet! Hush. It’s just a scratch,” Mr Franklin snapped. He turned on the water, which at its coldest still came out of the tap lukewarm. It seemed to multiply all that blood even more, washing it red down the sink.
Someone pounded on the kitchen door, then jangled the handle and let themselves in. “Everything all right– Mag? Mag what’s wrong?” It was Lonny Hastert, their next-door neighbor – she normally worked the night shift. Mag felt a brief pang of guilt that she’d managed to be loud enough to wake the woman up. She obviously needed all the sleep she could get. Dark circles surrounded her narrow brown eyes, creases lined the red-brown skin of her face, pores darkened in with rock dust that could never fully be washed away. A brief glance at Mr Franklin’s face, pale and gone a bit bug-eyed with barely suppressed rage, dried any guilt right up.
“She’s fine,” Mr Franklin said tightly. “Just broke a glass. Clumsiness.”
Mag gave Lonny a wide-eyed look; the woman’s expression was so blurred through her own tears that she couldn’t read it. “My hand slipped. I was going to give Mr Franklin some lemonade, and my hand slipped.” She gulped. “There’s so much blood, Lonny!”
“Let me see.” The miner moved in close and – “Excuse me, if you please, Mr Franklin, you wouldn’t want to get blood on your fine suit” – shouldered the man out of the way, then took possession of Mag’s wrist. Lonny pulled Mag’s hand out from under the water and looked at the fresh flow of blood. “You got most of the glass out, so thank you, sir. But these’re gonna need stitches for sure. I’d best take Mag to the doctor and let her mama know.”
“I don’t think that’s–” Mr Franklin began.
Mag, still staring in fascination at the blood welling from her hand, deliberately burped. No one wanted to be around a person who was vomiting, particularly not someone as fussy as Mr Franklin. “I don’t feel good.”
“Head down, Mag. Head down,” Lonny said, almost cheerfully. “Mr Franklin, the trashcan, if you please?”
Crouched down, Mag couldn’t see the man any more, but she leaned against Lonny and stared into the brown potato peels that filled the trash bin, trying not to breathe in the stink. She might really throw up then.
“Give me that towel there, thank you.” Lonny wrapped a dishtowel tightly around her hand. Mag whimpered again for good effect, though she couldn’t help noticing how fast red spots started soaking through the fabric.
“I think I’d better go,” Mr Franklin said.
“I’m sorry, Mr Franklin,” Mag mumbled. “About the lemonade.”
“Thank you, sir,” Lonny said firmly. “I’m sure Phil will let you know how it all works out. Think you can stand now, Mag? I ain’t carryin’ you to the doctor.”
“Think so,” Mag said. She let Lonny hoist her up and direct her to the door. She heard Mr Franklin’s footsteps follow them out, but he turned right when they turned left at the doorstep. The crunch of his fancy shoes faded away quickly.
“You all right for true?” Lonny asked. “I never known you to have a faint bone in your body.”
Mag cast a covert glance behind them, waiting until Mr Franklin’s dark blue back rounded the corner before she straightened up all the way. “I’m all right,” she said. “Do I really need stitches?”
Lonny shrugged. “Maybe. Least some glue to get you to stop bleeding, but you got that in the house, don’t ya?”
“Yeah,” Mag said. She gripped Lonny’s arm a little bit harder with her uninjured hand. “Thanks for comin’ to help me.”
“Anything I should know?” Lonny asked.
Mag shook her head. Because what could Lonny do? Punch Mr Franklin, and get in trouble herself? “No, ma’am.”
Lonny gripped her shoulder tight and didn’t ask anything else. Mag was glad for that, even as she hated it. She wished Lonny would push, would make the horrible fear and the disturbing what if that almost happened spill out so she could be rid of it. But it was another secret now, one she didn’t want and certainly wouldn’t treasure.
And it made her think of Hob, who was supposed to be her best friend, but who hadn’t so much as spoken to her in three years. The Hob of three years ago would have done something. Hob lived outside the reach of the blacklist, like some old-fashioned hero that could bring justice where it could never be found. She carried knives, she knew how to shoot a gun – hell, the first time she’d met the preacher’s boy she’d dropped him to the ground in one smooth move and pinned his arm tight because he’d been spying on them. Mag had tried to teach her how to sew, had told her every secret she knew because the thing Mag had always been best at was listening and that was all she could offer.
But after three years, Hob might as well be a goddamn fairy tale. And tomorrow, Mag would be on her own for true. There’d be no Mama, no Papa, no Lonny, just like there’d been no Hob for years.
* * *
Papa went with Mag to Newcastle the next day, sitting beside her on the train and helping keep an eye on her small trunk. It was baking day, and Mama had gotten several orders for pies, so she couldn’t come with them. She was in tears about it that morning, but if their grand plan was to work, she needed to earn all the money that she could to help. So she’d kissed Mag goodbye, leaving a salty little mark on her cheek, and watched them from the train platform until she was out of sight.
It wasn’t the most comfortable ride, just one car attached to the ore train right behind the engines, with hard plastic benches that magnified every rattle instead of seats. Mag curled up next to Papa and rested her head on his shoulder, doing her best to doze. Her hand rested curled in her lap, the cuts sewn and glued tight by the doctor the day before throbbing in time with her heartbeat and every little jolt of the train. She kept her eyes shut tight when she heard the voice of Mr Franklin. He stopped to talk with Papa, and even touched her hair, but she kept her face smooth and mimicked sleep.
She pretended to wake up after Mr Franklin had been gone for a good twenty minutes, and smiled when Papa told her that she’d missed their good “friend.” It hurt to smile, but it had to be all right, she told herself. She’d be free of him in a few hours, and good riddance.
Papa handed her a kolache from the basket Mama had prepared for them. She ate it slowly, savoring the taste of homemade bread and sugared fruit. This she would miss, though, if all went well, only for a few years. As she ate, she looked out the window, watching red dunes rolling by, interrupted by pink and white flats of hardpan, and one mountain of black rock that the train went through by a tunnel. New workers that came off the rift ships always used words like lonely, isolated, when they saw the world stretch out around them like that. But Mag had been born here, just like Mama and Papa, children of the First Great Wave of immigrant workers. She had a hard time imagining how else a world could be. Claustrophobic, maybe. She’d find out.
On the other side of the tunnel, far too long for her to hold her breath through, the land changed. It was still all sand and dust, but there were spiky plants nailing the dunes down, and then stunted trees with dry, twisted branches. More green than she’d seen in her whole life.
Then the plants gave way to another long stretch of hardpan, shining so white in the sun that it nearly blinded her. She knew what that was, the great red-veined salt flat that was the foundation of Newcastle, the City. That was how everyone said it, city-with-a-capital-C, because it was the only proper city on the planet, impossibly big and shining. They said the salt that was Newcastle’s foundation was four hundred meters thick and hard as synthcrete, the bones of an ancient ocean that had long since dried up. Where the water had gone no one seemed to know, since there weren’t enough little lakes and rivers to make up for it, and no other oceans.
Mag craned her head to try to catch her first glimpse of Newcastle. All she got was the impression of light, mirrored glass shining so bright and fierce that it was impossible to make out the shapes, the glare spreading for kilometers in a ribbon, with spires striking up at the sky. She sat quickly back, rubbing at her eyes with her hand, and tried to comprehend the magnitude of it. She had never seen a place so huge, so bright. She couldn’t imagine so much glass, and mirrored too – how did it stay so bright, against the sand and dust storms? She felt like she’d already jumped to a completely different world without ever being on a ship.
The train diverted around the maze of skyscrapers, toward an area surrounded by a high fence which only had a few small buildings tucked away in one corner. Still, those buildings were fancier than anything Mag had ever seen, spotless glass windows and stone facing. It looked of a piece with the other buildings she could see, sleek and foreign, rather than the more organic look of flimsy prefab housing that had been built out in different ways by the families living within. Most of the flat area was filled with a tower of shining metal with strange fins and antennas projecting from it, larger than she could really comprehend. “Papa, what is that?” she whispered, awed.
“That’s your ticket off planet,” he answered. “The rift ship. Big one like that is for hauling cargo, but it takes passengers too.”
“You seen something like this before?”
“A time or two. Came down here with my papa to greet newcomers a time or two when he was crew master.” Papa frowned. “Was a different time then.”
“It’s so big. How does it fly?” They didn’t even have small ships like the military flew on other planets according to her history and civics lessons. The atmosphere on Tanegawa’s World was too uncertain. She couldn’t imagine something so enormous and ungainly launching itself up into the sky.
“I don’t
know, but it does, you can trust in that. Every scrap of ore we sweat to the surface gets loaded on one of those and taken away.”
The train pulled to a halt. The little box speaker in the car crackled into life, a sickeningly familiar voice announcing, “All passengers for the landing field to disembark, please. Good luck, Maggy-girl.”
The few other passengers smiled at that, and a couple even clapped. Mag did her best to pretend that her face, suddenly gone dead and pale, and the shakes in her hands were because she was upset to be leaving home.
Papa stood, carrying her trunk to the door. “This is goodbye for now, Mags,” he said, kissing her on the forehead, on the cheek, on the top of her head, and then pulling her in tight for a hug. “I’ve got to ride this train all the way to the station now, catch the next back. You be good, and you be careful, and you write to us every week, OK?” The pit boss had refused to give him more than a single day off, Mag knew; he couldn’t even stay to see her off.
