Stranger

by Sherwood Smith

  Ross sat on the floor with a book. The book? No. Felicité recognized the reader she’d studied when she was five. He rubbed his eyes, then leaned back against the bed and stared at the ceiling.

  She sank down, sighing.

  The moon had emerged when the light in the cottage went out. Felicité rotated her shoulders, wondering if Ross was going to sleep. Wouldn’t she have heard him move the engine off the bed?

  The door creaked—he was leaving!

  After a count of twenty, she skirted the junk in the yard until she could see the town square, which was empty except for him. To her surprise, he entered the town hall.

  She darted in after him, shrouded by darkness. The lamp was gone from its usual place on the side table. When her eyes adjusted, she made out a black square in the gloom: the basement door. Open. She ran into the basement. Empty. There was only one way out: the tunnel.

  The tunnel she had only learned about this year, when she’d been appointed council scribe. The only people who knew about it were the council, the scribe, the teacher . . .

  And the mechanic. Mia had broken one of the most important laws of Las Anclas.

  Felicité had to get her father. At once. But then they might never know what Ross was planning.

  She slipped into the tunnel and felt her way to the mill. She thought of calling the sentries, but what if Ross heard, and bolted? She had to be the one to find out what he was up to. Yes, she was breaking the rules too—but it was for the good of the town. When she looked at it that way, it was secretly thrilling.

  Once she got to the trail along the ridge, Ross was easily visible, starlight gleaming off his white shirt. Then a flash of scarlet startled her. She’d forgotten about that gruesome crystal tree below the ridge.

  He walked straight toward it without even slowing down. Was he sleepwalking? It was already too late to warn him. She held her breath, bracing for the horrifying clash of chimes and pop of breaking glass that would signal his death.

  She rubbed her eyes. Ross was standing beside a singing tree, and nothing had happened.

  He had to be Changed, but not like the bounty hunter had said. His Change kept him safe from those killer trees. But that didn’t explain what he was doing. He stood beside it with his arms clutched tight across his chest. Then he lifted a hand, and laid it against the crimson trunk.

  Chimes began to tinkle softly. In an eerie echo, more joined in from the hills, and from far beyond the mill. She had never heard anything like it before. It was almost as if the trees were talking to each other.

  Ross let out a cry of pain. Felicité jumped. But every tree had gone silent, and none of the pods that contained the deadly shards had shattered.

  He staggered a few steps away, then crumpled to the ground.

  At first she thought he was dead; then she heard the sounds he was making. He was crying. Ross lay there sobbing in the dust, like Jack had sobbed after Sheriff Crow had lost their baby.

  Felicité took an uncertain step toward him. Then she thought, What would I say?

  She backed away, then tore down the road. She didn’t breathe easy until she emerged into the town square.

  As she ran home, her panic eased, leaving her hungry, thirsty, and tired. Ross’s Change seemed more a danger to himself than anyone in Las Anclas. But it was illegal of Mia to have shown him the tunnel, and illegal for him to use it this way.

  She arrived home still wondering what to report. Maybe it would be clearer in the morning. Felicité slipped into the kitchen to get a drink. At the first crank of the pump, a light flared, and in came her father, carrying a lamp.

  “I waited up for you.” He gave her a glass of water, standing silently by until she had finished. “Were you out investigating?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “I like your dedication. Just what I expected. So what did you find?”

  She hesitated, then began at the beginning.

  But the more she talked, the guiltier she felt over what she was about to do to Ross. Not that she cared about him personally, but when she remembered him sobbing in the road, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. But how could she fail to tell her father that the town defenses were vulnerable?

  Felicité opened her mouth. Then she imagined what would happen after she spoke. They couldn’t just exile Ross: he could come back through the tunnel with enemies. They would have to kill him. Her father would not hesitate if he thought it was necessary to protect the town. She imagined Ross lying dead in the dust, as he’d lain in the road, but with his white shirt soaked crimson.

  Felicité closed her mouth. She couldn’t bring herself to cause his death. She’d solved the mystery: she knew he was Changed, and she knew what his power was, but he clearly had no intention of using it to harm Las Anclas. All he seemed to be doing was harming himself. She could file this away with the other secrets she kept in her mental lockbox, with the mayor’s seal stamped in gold across its fine wood.

  “I watched him for hours,” Felicité concluded. “He didn’t do anything but flirt with Mia and study. I never saw the book.”

  Her father patted her cheek. “Sometimes learning that nothing is going on is as important as discovering information that seems more exciting. Good work, darling. Now, go get some well-earned rest.”

  30

  Mia

  MIA DIDN’T NEED A LIGHT TO KNOW THAT ROSS WAS gone and her cottage was empty.

  She dropped her tool bag, then picked it up in case it contained something she’d need. Then she put it down again. What she really needed was a weapon that might work against the tree. At first her mind went blank, and then she knew what to do. It was exactly like her old master, Mr. Rodriguez, always said: “Desperation equals inspiration.” She picked up a jug of oil, a bow and arrows, and a heavy jacket, and fled.

  She was inside the town hall before she remembered that a lantern would have been helpful. She felt her way into the basement and through the tunnel. When she found the lamp waiting at the mill, she knew Ross was still out there. It was a relief—but scary, too. Something was obviously wrong: sunrise was only a few hours away.

  Mia held the jug tightly against her stomach and ran her fastest, the bow slapping against her back. She was out of breath when she spotted a body lying a few paces from the tree.

  “Ross?” she called as loud as she dared.

  There was no response.

  “Ross, wake up.”

  He didn’t move.

  She didn’t see any blood, but if the tree had attacked him, it would surely attack her, too. She set down the jug and the bow, pulled on the jacket that wouldn’t even stop a knife, let alone a crystal shard, and forced herself to take a step down the slope.

  Tears stung her eyes as she slid the rest of the way. There was no warning chime from the tree, which gleamed bright as arterial blood in the starlight.

  Ross lay on his stomach, curled into himself. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing. She reached out, but stopped herself. When she was a child, she’d gone to pet her oldest cat and found it cold and stiff under the fur. She’d run away without telling her dad, as if so long as nobody else knew, it might turn out to be a mistake.

  As long as she didn’t touch Ross, he might still be alive. Once she touched him, whatever she found would be real and irrevocable. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to lay her hand on his shoulder.

  Crystal leaves rang out a warning. She shielded her face with her hands.

  “Mia?” Ross mumbled.

  A sob of relief nearly choked her. “Ross. You’re alive.”

  He rolled over and stared up at the sky. “I’m so . . .”

  “Sick? Hurt? Tired?”

  “. . . dizzy.”

  “Let’s get you out of here.”

  She dragged him back up the slope. He wasn’t bearing any of his own weight, and she
had to set him down in the cornfield. He lay as still as he had when she’d found him. She checked him over thoroughly, as her dad had taught her. He didn’t seem to have any injuries, but there were signs of shock: clammy skin, shallow breathing, rapid pulse. She took off her jacket and wrestled him into it. A hand-me-down from her father, the jacket was baggy on Mia but tight across Ross’s shoulders.

  She put a hand on his chest to reassure herself that he was still breathing, then ran out to retrieve her bow and jug. When she got back, he was struggling to sit up, panting as if he’d run for miles.

  Mia pushed down gently on his shoulder. “Take it easy. We’ve still got a few hours before dawn.”

  He lay back down with a long exhalation of relief.

  “What happened? It wasn’t this bad last time.”

  “It started out like last time,” he said slowly. “I could see like the tree sees, in patterns of heat. I could see animals. A person—probably the bounty hunter.”

  “Do you think he saw you?” Mia asked.

  Ross continued as if he hadn’t heard her, as if he were trapped in a dream. “I tried to make a deal with the tree. Built a wall in my mind, so I could shut it out when I need to. Put a door in the wall, so I could let it back in. I tried going deeper. I could hear every tree. From here to the nearest ruins. They all remember how they grew. From the deaths of animals and people.” He drew a shaky breath. “No, I didn’t hear the trees. I felt them. I felt all those deaths.”

  He was shivering as if it were winter. He looked more pale and ill than when she’d first seen him, unconscious on her dad’s operating table.

  Mia said fiercely, “I’ll destroy that thing.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Oh, yes I can. I figured it out. It’s growing in a hollow in that gully. Liquids flow down. If I pour oil down the slope, it’ll pool around the trunk. Then I light an arrow and shoot it into the pool, and that thing burns.”

  “No.” Ross grabbed her wrist. “You can’t! If you kill it, I think you’ll kill me. That tree is part of me, don’t you get it?”

  Mia took refuge in the comforting process of logic. “Okay, Ross. You said you could hear the trees—sorry, feel the trees all the way up to the edge of the ruins. But no farther than that, right?”

  He nodded.

  “So that’s the farthest edge of your range. Everything has some kind of range. You go far enough, you can’t hear voices, and you can’t see light. Changed people who can feel emotions or sense things can only do it up to a certain distance. So if you go far enough away, you won’t feel that tree anymore.”

  Her throat hurt too much to go on. She’d always known that Ross might leave, but this was the first time she understood that he might not even have a choice.

  “I’d have to stay away,” Ross said slowly.

  His life is more important than my feelings, she told herself. “I’ll get you a gun. That’ll even things up with the bounty hunter. Your hand is better now, right?”

  Ross reached out and put his left hand on hers. “Yeah.” Then, with a grunt of effort, he sat up, bracing his right hand on the ground. His hair hung down around his face. “I feel sick. But better. I think I can walk.”

  He didn’t look like he could. “Let me help you. I’m putting your arm around my shoulders, okay?”

  He nodded. Mia hooked the oil jug to her belt, slung the bow and quiver on her back, pulled Ross’s arm over her shoulders, and put hers around his waist. He didn’t flinch, but that didn’t make Mia happy. It meant he felt so terrible, things that would normally bother him barely even registered.

  He leaned heavily on her as they walked, making her glad she spent so much time lifting engines. She was strong enough to prospect, and like Jennie said, prospectors were basically specialized engineers. Maybe she could go with him when he left, to explore the desert and blast their way into amazing ruins. But she hadn’t walked two more steps before reality intruded. Ross would probably run away from her if she suggested it. And she couldn’t imagine leaving Las Anclas without its engineer, let alone leaving her dad and Jennie and her relatives and the cats.

  They were halfway down the road when Ross said, “I’m not leaving.”

  Mia was too scared to hope. “But nothing’s been fixed. You can’t live if you can’t sleep.”

  “I’ll figure it out.” They walked a few more steps, then he added, “I might have gotten through to it this time. I’m not sure. I’ll have to see.”

  She stopped, and braced herself. “Ross. You have to promise me you won’t ever, ever go back there alone. I don’t know what I can do, but maybe I can do something. I was worrying the whole time I was fixing the winch. It probably took much longer because I was distracted.” She shut herself up by biting down on her lower lip. “Promise.”

  “Okay.” He lifted his head to look into her eyes. His nose was two inches from hers. The starlight bleached his face of color, but she could see the strain. “I promise.”

  They trudged up the road, matching their steps, hips bumping, his fingers gripping her shoulder, hers tight around his waist.

  When they passed the gardens in the town square, instead of heading for her cottage, she steered him toward the surgery.

  Ross dug in his feet. “I don’t want to go to my room.”

  “We’re not going to your room. We’re going to the infirmary.”

  “What will we say? You can’t tell about the tunnel.”

  “We don’t need to say anything. Dad’s a doctor. He’ll take one look at you and put you to bed.”

  31

  Jennie

  JENNIE WAS GLAD TO SEE DEE SKIPPING ALONG, spilling grain out of the bucket as she went to feed the chickens. She might not be happy about her dust devil power, but the coming dance had certainly cheered her up.

  “. . . and Z thought Yuki should dress like a prince.” Dee tilted her head. “What does a prince wear? In that book with pictures, they wear metal armor. Did he wear metal armor on his ship? How could he dance in metal?”

  “I’m sure he won’t wear metal anything,” Jennie said.

  “Oh! Hey! Is Ross out of the infirmary yet? It would be so sad if he had to miss his own dance. And never see my dress.”

  Jennie smiled. “I haven’t seen him yet, but Mia said Dr. Lee would let him out this morning. And I know he was looking forward to the dance.”

  “Do you think he’ll dance with me?” Dee gave an extra skip.

  “If you ask him nicely, he might. Actually, try asking him nicely and giving him a slice of Pa’s buttermilk pie.”

  Dee hefted the feed bucket and started to step into the chicken coop. Without quite knowing why she was doing it, Jennie grabbed her by the shoulder and jerked her back. Grain flew everywhere.

  “Hey!” her sister protested. “What did you do that for?”

  Jennie held out her arm to stop Dee from trying again. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “There’s something wrong. Let me take a look first.”

  Her sister sighed impatiently. “You haven’t fed the chickens for weeks, that’s all. They’re just bigger—the ones that are left, anyway. C’mon, we have to get our decorations set up!”

  “That’s next,” Jennie reminded her. “We promised Ma—”

  “I know, I know. Animals come first.” Dee fiddled impatiently with the grain pail as Jennie studied the coop. One thing was obvious: the chickens seemed spooked. They were all on perches or up in their nests, not pecking around in the dust like usual. Maybe a predator had just left. But the wicker door was still latched.

  She unhooked it and peered in, looking for drops of blood or paw prints. The dirt was absolutely untouched, without even a chicken track to disturb it.

  Dee shifted the pail again, muttering, “Jennie, can you move?”

  There was something familiar about that perfectly even layer of
dust. Where had she not seen prints where there should have been—?

  “Dee, get back. Now!”

  Jennie grabbed the rake leaning against the coop and prodded at the nearest lump of hay. A wad of white fur fell out.

  It was an animal’s pelt, but there was no blood on the inside, only a smooth membrane. It was more like a snake’s shed skin than the remains of a kill. She used the rake to spread it out on the ground, trying to get a sense of its original shape.

  Dee shrieked. “It’s Princess Cloud! Something ate her!”

  Jennie examined the pelt. “What kind of animal was Princess Cloud?”

  “I don’t know,” Dee sniffled. “She was little and cute.”

  “Where did you find her?”

  “On patrol.”

  “But you haven’t been—” She stared at her sister. “You know you don’t bring wild animals inside the gates.”

  “But Yuki and Meredith knew.”

  The pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. The last time Dee patrolled had been the snake attack. So one more rule had been forgotten that day, and by Yuki and Meredith, of all people.

  Jennie picked up the rake in both hands. “Get behind me.”

  She struck down at the too-smooth dust. The entire floor of the coop crumbled away, and the smell of rotting meat wafted up. Chickens rocketed into the air, sending feathers in all directions, and one settled at the bottom of the gaping hole. A fang gleamed white, and the chicken was dragged squawking into the dust.

  “A pit mouth!” Dee howled. “A pit mouth ate Princess Cloud!”

  Jennie turned on her sister. “The pit mouth is Princess Cloud!” Dee ran screaming, the grain swirling in tiny whirlwinds behind her. Jennie ran after her, into the kitchen. “José! I need you to guard the chicken coop. Make sure no one gets near. There’s a pit mouth in it.”

  José choked on the plum he was eating. “In the chicken coop? Seriously?”