Stranger

by Sherwood Smith

  But a barrel cactus grew a few paces beyond. He could get water from that, if it wasn’t another mirage. Ross hauled himself upright, dragging his pack by the straps. The cactus didn’t fade. He let go of the pack and reached for his boot knife. When he straightened up, black spots swam across his vision. He staggered, the knife slipping from his hand, and leaned against a nearby tree. He was so tired, but at least the pain had gone. He could sleep here, like he used to sleep leaning against his burro . . .

  “Get away from that tree.”

  He opened his eyes and saw a woman. Long black hair, brown hand reaching out . . . Mom?

  His mother was dead. He knew that. He tried to move, but his skin seemed stuck to the tree. His palms and hip and cheek stung as if he’d embraced a wasp’s nest.

  “Now. It’s sucking your blood.”

  She was right. Leechlike mouth holes had opened in the bark and fastened to his skin. He yanked himself painfully away. With a popping sound, the vampire tree let him go.

  He collapsed onto the hard earth. Hands gripped his shoulder and hip and rolled him over. He could feel the cool imprint of her palms. You couldn’t ever touch a mirage. Ross squinted dizzily up at the woman, whose hair covered half of her face. A steel badge glinted on her leather vest.

  “Who are you?” He could barely hear his own voice.

  “Elizabeth Crow. Sheriff of Las Anclas. What happened to you?”

  Had he lost the bounty hunter? Or was the man still on his trail? He could be aiming his rifle at Ross right now. Or at the woman who was trying to help him.

  Ross couldn’t let her die for his sake, after she’d saved him from the vampire tree.

  “I’m being chased.” He forced the words past his raw throat. “Run and get help. Armed help.”

  Sheriff Crow laid her hand on the pistol at her belt. “I’m armed.”

  Ross whispered, with the last of his strength, “So was I.”

  Her voice was cool, low, calm. “It was good of you to warn me.”

  With enormous effort, he kept his eyes open and watched her drop his knife inside his pack. As she reached for him, her hair swung back, revealing her entire face. On one side, he saw a warm brown eye and smooth brown skin, the strong-boned face of a striking woman in her thirties. On the other side, her eye was lashless and yellow, the pupil slitted like a snake’s, and her skin seemed to have melted into her skull.

  He sighed in relief. She was Changed. She might have some power she could use to protect herself, and him, too.

  She lifted Ross with no more effort than she’d used to pick up his pack, then shifted him over her shoulders. Her steps gathered speed until she was running faster than a deer. He peered past the swinging curtain of her dark hair at the scrub oak flashing by.

  The last thing he heard was her sharp order: “Lockdown!”

  2

  Mia

  MIA LEE WAS ON TOP OF THE WORLD. AT LEAST, SHE was on top of her world. Crouching on the sentry walk on the wall that surrounded Las Anclas, she stroked the 1,344-pound portcullis of the main gate. She’d loved working on it as an apprentice, but now that she was the town mechanic—the youngest in the town’s history—touching it felt different. It was hers now.

  That beautiful work of engineering was a major piece of their defenses. Mia knew she was supposed to feel solemn about the responsibility, but secretly she was thrilled.

  At her appointment ceremony, her old master, Josiah Rodriguez, had shaken her hand and said that now he could retire with a clean conscience, and everyone had applauded. But the best part had been when he’d taken her aside and said, “Every generation tinkers with the main gate, since it’s every town’s weak point and the first thing to get attacked. You’re the new generation, Mia. Tinker away.”

  She adjusted her glasses and tried to examine the gate as if she had never seen it before. “Preconceptions are the death of creativity,” Mr. Rodriguez always said.

  The manual winch they used as a backup to close the gate if the generator failed took the strongest people to crank it—people who would be needed elsewhere if the town was attacked. If she put in a differential chain block, even someone her size could operate it. But she’d need to find the space. She couldn’t move the housing over the gate, with its drop holes to dump boiling or corrosive liquids onto attackers. And she couldn’t put chains and counterweights into the space needed for the defenders. But maybe—

  A sharp pain shot through her hand. Mia yelped and yanked it away. A pink eater-rose was straining upward, bumping up against the wall where she’d absentmindedly let her hand drift down.

  Mia shook her hand, watching the rose dart to catch the drops of blood. Then she opened her lunch box and tossed down the leftover chicken bones and her dad’s revolting chicken-liver mousse. The flowers ravenously crunched up the scraps. It was too bad Las Anclas couldn’t plant eater-roses along every inch of the city walls, instead of just around the gates. But they didn’t have enough water and meat to support 320,612 square feet of carnivorous plants.

  Mia tried to return to her meditative state, but before she could, three sentries her age came wandering along.

  They were too noisy to ignore. Meredith Lowenstein strutted as if to prove to the world that she might be short, but it had better not mess with her. Henry Callahan clattered a stick along the wall’s shields, his blond hair flopping around his sun-reddened face. Brisa Preciado moved gracefully, almost skipping, making her chubby body look light as a soap bubble—but the rhythmic beat of her footsteps was distracting. Mia couldn’t ever stop herself from noticing patterns.

  “I hope he’s young,” Meredith said.

  “I hope he’s a she,” Brisa retorted, laughing. The ribbons in her four pigtails fluttered in the hot breeze.

  Mia had no idea what they were talking about. Then she remembered Mr. Riley telling Sheriff Crow that he’d seen a stranger in trouble, out in the desert beyond the cornfields.

  Meredith polished her glasses on her shirt, then put them back on and peered over the wall. The others did too, but Mia didn’t bother. Mr. Riley was Changed; no one else could see that far without field glasses.

  “I hope whoever it is stays long enough for us to have a welcome dance,” said Meredith wistfully. “It’s been ages since the Year of the Pig festival.”

  “I thought you wanted a fight,” Henry said.

  “I’d love a fight.” Meredith pushed her sleeves up her muscular forearms. “You can’t train every day and not wonder what it would be like to do it for real. But a dance would be fun too.”

  Brisa’s black pigtails swung and her crossbow jiggled against her back as she tapped out a heel-toe rhythm. “I’d rather have a dance. I’ve been dying to show off my routine with the backflips and the—”

  “Bor-ing,” Henry sang out, his freckled face shiny with sweat and aloe salve. “Anyway, that guy’s probably a bandit. Bet the sheriff kills him.”

  Mia calculated the odds against a fight at about a hundred to one. They’d had alerts for “stranger in trouble” five times that she remembered, four for travelers who’d run out of water or into dangerous wildlife, and one for Yuki Nakamura. But no attack had ever followed. Mia opened her mouth to say so, but Brisa spoke first.

  “Want an excuse to miss the dance?” She picked up a pebble, clenched it in her fist, and made to drop it down Henry’s shirt. When he yelped, she giggled and flicked the pebble over the wall. It exploded in midair with a tiny pop and burst of flame.

  Mia wished she had the power to make rocks explode.

  Henry and Brisa began mock sparring, Henry protesting. “All I’m saying is, you don’t have to dress up for a battle.”

  “I love wearing my fancy clothes.” Meredith took a swing at him. He pretended to cower in terror, which made them all laugh.

  Mia felt as left out and invisible as she had at school. But she
reminded herself that although she was a year younger than Henry, she had graduated and was officially an adult, with a full job, important responsibilities, and voting rights, while the other three were still apprentices. Would an adult be bothered that she’d been ignored by teenagers? No, an adult would be paying attention to her adult job.

  She concentrated on the gate again. If she put a tripod—

  “Horseplay on duty?” Ms. Lowenstein, the chief archer, stepped into view.

  The sentries leaped into stiff “alert” positions.

  Ms. Lowenstein eyed them. “You are sentries on watch. If someone had tried to climb these walls, they would have cut your throats by now.”

  Henry muttered, “No, the eater-roses would have cut their throats.”

  Brisa examined her fingernails, which she’d stained pink with crushed flower petals. Meredith twitched guiltily, then straightened up to face her mother’s yellow cat-eyes. For once Mia was glad to be ignored.

  The chief archer let an awful silence build. “Nothing else to add? You’re all getting an extra watch tonight. Want to make it two?”

  The three sentries fled back to their stations.

  New sentries came running up the steps. Defense Chief Preston strode behind them, big and scowling. He was followed by his daughter, Felicité Wolfe, in a hat with a lace veil and a matching dress in white and blue. She reminded Mia of a summer cloud floating behind a thunderstorm. Her hair was dyed the rich yellow of ripe wheat. Her golden rat, Wu Zetian, trotted at her heels, as elegant as the ancient empress who was her namesake.

  Felicité’s hair now matched her rat’s fur. Only Felicité!

  Every sentry snapped alert at the sight of Mr. Preston. Mia could hear the soft cheeping of the sparrows that had descended to peck up crumbs. She got to her feet; she didn’t want him to catch her squatting like a duck.

  Only Ms. Lowenstein seemed unruffled. “No sign of the sheriff as yet.”

  “Thank you.” Mr. Preston turned to the sentry captain, who picked up his slate and read out the reports for the watch.

  “Shall I write them down, Daddy?” Felicité asked.

  “Stand by.” Mr. Preston smiled at her.

  Mia couldn’t imagine calling the defense chief “Daddy.” It was like calling a giant tarantula “Baby.” And nobody said “Mommy” or “Daddy” past the age of ten.

  But Felicité went her own way. Who else would wear a veil on the sentry walk? Mia’d heard her say that as council scribe, it would be disrespectful for her to show up in work clothes, and sometimes council meetings were held on short notice. Mia estimated the price of that blue-dyed lace at forty of her own work hours.

  She would hate to always have to look respectable. She patted the pockets and loops she’d added to her overalls so she wouldn’t have to rummage around in a toolkit whenever she needed something.

  While Felicité read the slate, Mr. Preston gazed out with a pair of field glasses. “He came from the Centinela Pass. That leads straight to Voske’s—” he began, then snatched up the bullhorn and shouted into it, “Stand by to close the gates!”

  It was a rare chance to observe an emergency gate closing. Mia swept up her tools and scrambled back. Brisa and Henry jumped.

  “Mia!” Brisa said. “I didn’t see you.”

  Mia gave her a wave. On the wall, the other sentry teams readied their weapons. Below, four strong people dashed to the gate winches, in case the electricity failed.

  She almost never got to see Sheriff Crow run full-out, and estimated her speed at about fifty miles per hour. Dust feathered out behind her as she sped across the sun-baked path between the irrigated crops.

  Meredith gasped. “Look at the guy! I think he’s our age!”

  Brisa shaded her eyes. “Ew. He’s all bloody.”

  Las Anclas already had plenty of teenage boys, so Mia didn’t see why she should get excited over one more. But if he was injured, maybe her dad could use her help. During Lockdown, her position was at the surgery, anyway.

  She yanked off her smeary glasses again and tried to clean them on her filthy overalls, but it was hopeless. She crammed the glasses back on and squinted at the body slung over Sheriff Crow’s shoulders, and caught a glimpse of a boy’s dark face and curling hair as the sheriff shot through the gates, yelling, “Lockdown!”

  Mr. Preston shouted through the bullhorn, “Lockdown!” Then he clicked open his pocket watch. “One thirty-one, Lockdown. Get the rest, darling.”

  “First sighting at one twelve . . .” Felicité recited the records as she wrote them in her notebook. She’d already memorized everything on the watch captain’s slate.

  Mia envied Felicité’s perfect memory. It would be so handy! She could remember numbers, but other things—especially things she shouldn’t forget, like whether she’d left her lights on—fell out of her mind as if it were a sack with a hole in it.

  “Lockdown!” echoed from team leader to team leader, all along the walls.

  The bell in the tower began to ring out the Lockdown pattern in a steady toll. Some little kid was getting the thrill of a lifetime. Nine years ago Meredith had been on bell duty during a Lockdown that actually went to Battle Stations, when a gang of outlaws led by a fire-throwing woman had burned down half the northern plantation.

  Mia had never gotten to ring the bell for a Lockdown, though there had been one when she was at school and another when she was asleep. She was briefly jealous of the bell-ringer, then reminded herself that her own job was fun every day rather than only during emergencies.

  The sentries scrambled into defense positions as the field workers bolted for the gate. The person on wall-feeding duty, no doubt someone assigned drunk-and-disorderly community service, hastily waddled inside. It was impossible to recognize anyone through the top-to-toe protective gear. Too bad the padding did nothing to block the reek of giblets and gobbets of rancid meat.

  Mia grinned as Alfonso Medina veered away from the gate and ran alongside the wall until he was past the area covered by eater-roses. He leaped at the wall, the gecko pads on his fingers and bare toes splayed out, and rapidly scuttled upward. She loved watching him climb. It looked like so much fun.

  Then she caught Mr. Preston’s lip curling in revulsion. Everyone knew what the defense chief thought about Changed people, but it never failed to annoy Mia when she actually saw it. It was so hypocritical. No one in town refused to be treated by her father. They’d let him save their lives, then justify it by saying that he “wasn’t like other Changed people,” or that “at least he wasn’t a monster,” like Sheriff Crow or Alfonso.

  Mia glanced at Felicité, but she was giving Alfonso the same bland, polite gaze that her mother, the mayor, used. Perhaps the entire Wolfe-Preston household despised Changed people, but at least Mayor Wolfe treated everyone the same.

  The last of the field workers passed through the gates. There was no sign of pursuit, which was no surprise. Most Lockdowns turned out to be false alarms.

  “Close the gate!” Ms. Lowenstein shouted.

  The portcullis screeched a metallic protest as it lowered, followed by the boom of the gates. It seemed slow. Mia made a mental note to test and clock it later.

  Everyone assigned to secondary support began arriving on the ammo platforms. She was in the way.

  Mr. Preston said, “Felicité, report to the town hall command post. I’ll be there shortly.”

  Felicité tucked her notebook, quill pen, and ink bottle into her embroidered carryall. “Shall I have Wu Zetian send any messages?”

  “No, keep her with you for now.” Her father took out a clean, pressed handkerchief and polished his glasses, then hurried down the steps and vanished beyond the armory.

  Felicité followed him. Tall Tommy Horst adjusted his crossbow so he could lean over and whisper to her.

  “Not now, Tommy.” She spoke with mock rep
roach, softened with a smile. Several boys nudged him and snickered, while others petted Wu Zetian as she passed by.

  Felicité’s rat is more popular than I am, Mia thought glumly.

  Meredith poked Brisa. “Did you see the guy? Definitely our age!”

  “Who cares how old some dead bandit is?” Henry laughed.

  “He’s not dead,” said Meredith. “Sheriff Crow wouldn’t bring back a corpse.”

  Brisa added, “She wouldn’t bring back a bandit, either.”

  All three peered around guiltily, but Ms. Lowenstein was talking to the watch captain. Mia headed down the steps.

  “Mia!” She jumped. Meredith was leaning down, her red curls glittering in the sun. “Brisa and I want all the details on the stranger.”

  The ribbons in Brisa’s pigtails lifted in a gust of hot wind. “You want all the details, Meredith. Now, if it was a girl . . .”

  “Come on, Brisa, you know you’re curious. We haven’t had a stranger in town since those traders in April.”

  “Becky can tell you about him,” Mia called up.

  Meredith made a dismissive gesture. “Becky isn’t into boys.”

  “And she’s very focused,” Brisa added. “She won’t notice anything but gross medical stuff.”

  “All right,” Mia said. “I’ll take a look at him for you.”

  Meredith gave her a playful salute, then hastened back to her post.

  So Mia wasn’t invisible all the time. They saw her when they wanted something fixed, or some news. But she didn’t mind, especially if it was people like Meredith and Brisa. Neither was a close friend, like Jennie Riley, but they were . . . friendish.

  As she hurried past the armory, she thought about how excited Meredith was about the prospect of a new boy in town. Shouldn’t she be excited too? She tried imagining a girl instead, but that didn’t make any difference.