Storm of Locusts

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  We hit the door of the Tank without pause, pushing through just as I hear someone behind us shout my name. I whip my head around and lock eyes with Elena Urioste. She’s across the yard, the collapsed tent behind her. Her dark eyes bore into me, an almost physical thing. I feel a hand around my throat and pull up short. It feels so real I stumble forward, gasping, but there’s nothing there. I lunge for my throwing knife, twisting to sight Elena, and the pressure of fingers on my neck disappear. She’s gone.

  “Maggie!” Ben tugs at my sleeve. “Let’s go!” I spare one last glance for the matron of the Urioste Familia before I follow Ben inside.

  The Tank is the same as it was before. Mercifully empty. I guess when the punishment for stealing is getting fed to the dogs, people become lax about guarding their stuff.

  Aaron and Ben sprint for the plane. I run to open the far doors of the hangar, and Rissa detours to the fenced cage where she left her weapons.

  That’s when I hear Aaron shout. He’s standing at the plane, the door on the pilot’s side flung open. His stumbles back, his hands raised.

  I draw my shotgun, ready to confront whatever terror is inside that plane.

  “Stop!” Ben runs toward me with her hands raised, putting herself between me and the plane, warning me off. “It’s not what you think!”

  I’m not sure what I think. I just know there’s something in that plane that’s not supposed to be there.

  “Aaron?” I ask. Aaron turns to me, his face pale, his expression thunderstruck.

  “What is it?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”

  “There’s a cat in my airplane!”

  All that killing adrenaline firing, K’aahanáanii pooling in my stomach, I shoulder Ben out of the way and step forward to look inside to the open cockpit. Sure enough, there’s a black cat sitting in the pilot’s seat. Back leg in the air, shamelessly grooming herself.

  “Mósí,” I say. It’s not even a question.

  The cat looks up at me and blinks.

  “Where have you been?” I demand. Not that I expect her to answer. Not that I’m sure she even can in this animal form. “And get out of the way!”

  She lowers her leg, flicks her tail once, and then hops to the back seat, her whole demeanor radiating offense. Aaron slides into the vacated pilot’s seat and asks, “So, uh, you know that cat?”

  “She’s with us,” I admit. “Marginally.”

  He nods. Doesn’t ask any more questions as he turns knobs and flips switches and does a handful of other things I don’t understand to make the plane come to life. Ben and I pile into the six-seater. Rissa’s in last, taking the seat next to Aaron.

  “Cover,” Aaron says tersely. I nudge Ben down below the window and she doesn’t argue. Move into position, shotgun aimed back toward the auction tent, as we clear the Tank. Darkness and chaos still reign, and now it looks like the bonfires outside have set fire to the canvas tent. Shapes run back and forth in the shadows, throwing sand on the fires.

  I hear Rissa laugh, and I look up in time to see her fling open her door, lean away from the plane, one hand braced against the overhead wing, and fling something back toward the tents. Five, four, three, two, and the grenade goes off with a massive boom. Shrapnel flies, and some of the shadowy forms fall, but it’s fairly anticlimactic.

  “Is that it?” Rissa demands, looking accusingly at Aaron.

  He’s focused on getting the plane in the air, steadily increasing our speed. “Hang tight. I’ll show you what they can do.”

  Rissa slides back into her seat, shutting the door, just as our wheels leave the ground. Ben makes a strangled-dog sound, and I have to agree. My stomach does a flip-flop as I realize I’ve never actually been in a plane and maybe hadn’t thought this through. Traveling the lightning with a trickster, sure. Flying, maybe not.

  But it’s too late to protest now. Aaron lets out a shout as we gain air. But all I can see is the black sky around us, a small scattering of lights below where the fires still burn, and then nothing as we pass through thick cloud cover.

  “How do you know which way to go?” Ben says anxiously.

  Aaron taps the panel of instruments in front of him. “I don’t need to see. These see for me.”

  He climbs for a while before banking the plane, circling back around high above Knifetown. He digs under the seat and hands Rissa something in a black canister. “Try this one,” he tells her. She slides a window open and drops the explosive. Six seconds later, with an air-shaking boom, the Tank goes up in flames.

  “Now we’re talking!” she says, laughing wildly, the fire below throwing light across her face. Aaron laughs, too, whooping loudly. Ben joins in, and they’re all screaming and joking as we turn west into the night sky.

  The only one besides me that’s not celebrating is Mósí, who has curled up on the back seat and is asleep. Sleep sounds like I great idea, so I move back to the empty seat next to her, pull the cowl I’m still wearing down over my eyes. Despite the knowledge that I am high in the air with nothing between me and a very long fall to the hard earth except a relatively thin layer of metal, the exhaustion takes me, and I fall asleep too.

  Chapter 27

  I wake to the murmur of voices. Crack an eye open and look around. Mósí is still next to me, but she’s shifted to her human form, pedal pushers and flowered head scarf back in place. She’s curled up in her seat, knees to her chest and cheek resting against the window, sleeping. Ben is splayed out across the two seats in front of me, snoring softly. The conversation is coming from the cockpit, Aaron and Rissa whispering quietly to each other.

  “It was just me and him for the first years after the Big Water,” Aaron says, voice low and quiet, barely audible over the sound of the engine. “As soon as I understood what it meant, the news reports and the TVs going out, I went straight to him because I knew he’d know what to do. But he didn’t. He was just as lost as me. We stayed in Joseph City for a while, but when the plague hit, we ran to Knifetown, to Bishop, same as the rest of them.” A mocking laugh. “Gideon had always been my protector, from the time we were kids together in foster care. More of a father figure than a big brother, I guess. I owed him better.”

  “You did what you had to do to survive,” Rissa says.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I wanted to be top dog, prove myself. Maybe I could have found a way to challenge Bishop instead of . . .” His voice is briefly lost in the roar of the plane. Rissa asks him something. I don’t hear her question, but Aaron says, “No. Gideon was a thinker. He was never going to best me in a fight. He didn’t have that instinct, you know? He was always trying to save people.”

  Gideon? The same name Caleb called the White Locust. Could be a complete coincidence. Gideon isn’t a common name in Dinétah, but Aaron said they had come from Joseph City. Maybe it was more common in the Mormon community, which meant that maybe the White Locust had Mormon roots. And then there was Aaron’s reaction to me asking about the White Locust. Surely that wasn’t a coincidence.

  “Is he dead?” Rissa asks. “Your brother?”

  “I dumped what was left of him in a grove of juniper just outside of the Wall. It’s as close to Dinétah as we could get without papers, without someone to sponsor us. Gideon was a quarter Diné, or at least that’s what his foster mom told him. I’m more like one-eighth, so they were never going to let me in. We thought about forging CIBs. People do, you know. But it wasn’t that. We wanted to go home as prodigal sons, not as fakes. But how could we if didn’t even know who we were, what our clans were? Foster care took all that away.”

  Their conversation seems to die off in the darkness of the night. I’m about to sit up, feign a yawn, and join them up front to ask about Gideon, when Rissa says, “I miss my brother too.”

  I can only see the two of them in silhouette from the light of the control panel, but Aaron reaches a hand out and rests it on Rissa’s knee. She covers his hand with hers, shifts so she’s leaning closer to him.

  “I knew wha
t he was doing was dangerous,” she says. “I should have told my mom. She would have stopped him. He would have listened to her. But I didn’t. I’ll always regret that. I’ll always wish I had said something. To Mom, to Clive. If I had, maybe Cletus would be alive right now.”

  “Or maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. Maybe he would have done it anyway.”

  She blows out a breath, nods without making a sound.

  “We all carry sins, Rissa.” The tone of his voice is heavy with the surety of his wrongdoing. “Some carry a heavier burden than others, but none of us are clean.”

  “You know, I grew up in the church, but I’m not sure I believe in all that sin stuff.”

  “I have to believe,” he says, his voice intensifying, “because if I don’t, then there’s no chance of forgiveness. It’s the only hope I have.”

  “There’s something wrong with the plane,” Mósí says in my ear, so close that I jump.

  “Don’t sneak up on people!” I whisper-shout at her, but she just blinks at me, unconcerned. “What do you mean ‘wrong’?”

  “The mechanism that keeps this vehicle aloft is failing. Imminently.”

  “What?”

  She flicks her head in annoyance. “Can you not hear me? Please go tell that bilagáana man flying the plane that we need to land.”

  “He’s actually—”

  She exhales, exasperated. Steps around me, slithering up the middle aisle until she’s at Aaron’s shoulder. “Your airplane is failing,” she says.

  Aaron startles, veering the plane in a sharp left. We all scream, Ben tumbling from her seat into a pile on the floor.

  “Who the hell are you?!” Aaron shouts. I’d forgotten he hadn’t seen Mósí in her human form.

  “It’s okay,” Rissa rushes to reassure him. “She’s with us. Remember that cat? It’s a long story, but that’s her.” She looks back over her shoulder at me, as if asking for help. Then at Mósí. “She is a friend to the gods of Dinétah. She can . . . shape-shift.”

  Aaron’s righted the plan, and now he turns to stare at Mósí. “A god?” he asks, voice awed.

  “Better than a god. I am a Cat,” Mósí says. “But now, human child, you need to listen to me. See those lights below us? We need to land there.”

  Aaron checks something on his controls, looks at a map I hadn’t noticed before. It’s our map. The one we traded with Mósí for. “There’s nothing there,” he says. “No cities or towns.”

  “There is indeed something there,” Mósí counters.

  “The old casino,” Rissa says, leaning over to look at the map. “Twin Arrows.”

  I step up through the aisle, pausing to help Ben get back in her seat and then taking the empty one next to her. “What do you know about the casino?” I ask Aaron.

  Aaron shrugs. “I’ve heard stories here and there, mostly about scavengers who tried to raid the place and never made it back. They say it’s haunted.”

  “Haunted?” Ben squeaks.

  “A good reason to avoid it,” Rissa says.

  “And we don’t have time,” I say. “We’re already—”

  “We will not have a choice,” Mósí says firmly.

  “Bishop will come for us,” Aaron warns. “He won’t forget what we’ve done. He’ll track us down. Make an example. We’ve got to keep moving.”

  “This Bishop person doesn’t matter. We are landing. I am just informing you of events that shall come to pass.” And with that she walks back to her seat, pulls the seat belt across her lap, and fastens herself in.

  The engine sputters and, with a short burst of smoke from the propeller, all the electrical goes out.

  Chapter 28

  Aaron reassures us he can land the plan without the electrical. But he’s equally sure he won’t be able to take off again. So whatever made the plane fail—and I have my suspicions—Twin Arrows has our total attention.

  The casino stands alone on a wide flat plain, the dark shape of mountains low in the east, and to the north, the looming shadow of the Wall. Twin Arrows is actually three buildings connected. At the center is a cylinder-shaped building, maybe three stories high. Two massive bright blue neon arrows jut skyward from the top of the cylinder, a literal interpretation of the casino’s namesake. Below the twin arrows is a breezeway held up by five imposing pillars of stone. The breezeway fans out over a driveway, marking the entrance to the casino. To the left of the entrance is a three-story square building that looks like a conference center, and directly behind that an undulating wall of white and red concrete disguising a parking structure. On the other side of the entrance is a five-story hotel. Stretched out on both sides of the casino are asphalt-paved parking lots. Enough parking for a thousand cars, maybe more. The lots make a perfect landing strip. They’re even lit, neon pinks and purples marking the long driveway like a welcoming acid trip.

  “Looks fun,” Ben says, staring out the window, and I can’t tell if she’s kidding or not.

  “What exactly are you wearing?” I’d been meaning to ask her, but we were all a little busy running for our lives.

  She runs a hand over the white ankle-length dress, fluffing the layers of taffeta that billow out at her shoulders and hips like frilly layers on a cake. “Do you like it? I kind of like it.” She shrugs. “I never thought of myself as much of a girly-girl, but I think it’s pretty.”

  “It’s a wedding dress.”

  “Not that I ever want to get married,” she says hastily. “Dudes? Kind of gross. But dressing up to get married is kind of fun.”

  “They let you marry women these days too,” Rissa quips from up front.

  “They were going to sell you off to the highest bidder,” I say, frowning.

  Ben, who had perked up a bit at Rissa’s comment, deflates. Of course she knows that, and now I just reminded her of it. I have no idea what she went through in our few horrible hours at Knifetown, but if it was anything like Rissa’s and mine, it couldn’t have been good. I feel like an ass. “But it’s pretty,” I say, trying to make up for it a little. “I mean, if you like that kind of thing.”

  She grins. “I bet you could hide a lot of knives in this fluffy stuff.”

  “Or bomb-making material.”

  She flushes, looking proud. “It wasn’t that hard. A bottle, a little sugar, bleach. One of the Thirsty Boys taught me once as a joke, but I remembered. And did you see how much stuff they had back there?”

  “Everything for sale,” I murmur.

  We both jolt forward in our seats as the airplane’s wheels hit the ground. The craft bounces a bit and then rolls smoothly toward the breezeway and the looming double arrows above the entrance.

  “We’re going to have to find another way out of here,” I say to no one in particular.

  “He will help us,” Mósí says behind my shoulder. She’s shifted again when I wasn’t looking, this time into a young Navajo girl around Ben’s age. She has her hair back is a tsiiyééł, same as Ben before her Knifetown transformation into a child bride, and she’s wearing a traditional red-and-black rug dress, belted at the waist. Traditional moccasins, an earthy red with white wraps, come to her knees. She’s sitting demurely, hands folded in her lap, waiting for the plane to stop.

  “Who is ‘he’?” I ask, pretty sure that my suspicions about who sabotaged the plane are about to be confirmed. “And what’s with the outfit?”

  “He is ancient but new. Long ago exiled from Dinétah for his crimes but returned with the beginning of the new age. Why? I do not know. And I am dressed this way so that he will recognize a daughter of the Diyin Dine’é when one appears before him.”

  “That was just a lot of words. You didn’t actually tell me anything.”

  The plane has come to a stop in front of the casino. Mósí gives me a demure smile that still manages to show her delicate cat fangs.

  “Come inside, then, Battle Child, and find out for yourself.”

  She moves quickly to the front of the plane, opening the door
and leaping gracefully to the ground. The others pile out behind her, grateful to be on land again. Aaron stretches, hands over his head and mouth wide in a yawn. Ben and Rissa look around, curious. And the last bit of the night fades into the whiteness of dawn.

  So I follow.

  * * *

  Or not. Because the casino literally won’t let me in.

  “I don’t understand,” Ben says.

  “What did you do, Maggie?” Rissa asks.

  We are all standing at the main entrance, only I’m on the outside of the bank of glass doors leading into the Twin Arrows and everyone else is on the inside. Aaron’s patiently holding the door open, but I can’t seem to cross the threshold.

  “Try again,” Rissa says.

  “I’ve already tried twice. It’s like an invisible wall. I just—” I put my hand up to my face, miming running into a solid surface.

  “He doesn’t want you here,” Mósí says, stating the obvious.

  “What? I don’t even know who he is.” I lean closer to the door. Cup my hands around my mouth and shout into the room. “I don’t even know who you are!”

  From what I can see, the lobby’s more than nice. A round room, two stories high, the walls made of interlocking bricks in varying shades of tan stone. A tile floor inlaid with an elaborate arrow pattern, and above it, a massive chandelier—four hoops in directional colors encased in a cascade of crystals and light.

  And all of it as pristine as the day the casino opened. The lights still work, the floor is still swept clean. I can hear the whirls and beeps of the slot machines coming through the doors on the other side of the lobby that lead to the casino.

  Whoever Mósí’s mysterious friend is, he keeps a clean house. Now if he’d only let me in.

  “He,” Mósí says, “is Nohoilpi. He is an old god, a god of games and gambling.”

  “A god?” Aaron says incredulously. For a moment he forgets he’s holding the door open and it swings toward me, but he catches it right before it closes in my face. Sorry, he mouths.