by Ginn Hale
The gnarled apple trees that Grover and Lawrence had climbed as children had grown taller than the wrought-iron front gate. Their white blossoms littered the brick drive like confetti. As he rode up the drive, Grover caught the long notes of a fiddle emanating from the house. Then the rest of a string band swung into a lively dance tune. The music sounded nearly as raucous as a flock of pterosaurs singing into the cool twilight. When he drew nearer, the low rumble of conversation drifted to him from behind the impressive white walls.
Silhouettes fluttered and danced across the white curtains of the big bay windows. Couples circled and promenaded while music and muffled laughter drifted on the evening wind.
To Grover, the flickering figures looked ghostly, like phantoms of the years past when he had so often peered between the kitchen doors, spying on all the high-society folk of Fort Arvada as they strutted in uniforms and gowns.
Before Lawrence had grown old enough to join his father’s guests, he, too, had crept down the backstairs and crouched beside Grover. They’d sat and laughed at how clumsy the guests became after they guzzled too much of Ma’s special punch. Lawrence always leaned into him like he couldn’t keep warm without Grover’s arm around him.
Though all too soon Lawrence had numbered among those cavorting in the ballroom. More than once, Grover had been called upon to carry out the silver trays laden with punch-filled crystal glasses—by then he’d been much more able to manage the weight then either his ma or the housekeeper.
He scowled at the grand porch, remembering the anger he’d felt, having to bite his tongue and drop his gaze like a beaten dog in front of Lawrence. Equal parts shame and frustration churned in him as he recalled how he’d alarmed his ailing ma by acting up—one night he’d even sassed Lawrence in front of a dozen white guests. Lawrence had been startled but then conceded the point to Grover. But Grover’s ma had been furious. She’d tanned his backside like she’d caught him thieving.
That had been the first time Grover had run off to sulk in the woods. Back then he hadn’t understood that his ma had witnessed and endured brutal reprisals for “uppity” behavior. She had borne horrific scars across her back and thighs, which Grover had never seen until after her death, when he’d washed her body. Before then, he’d simply felt aggrieved that she encouraged him to be proud and honest like his freeborn father but also expected that he’d keep his mouth shut and his head down.
For a time he’d tried to please her, particularly after she’d fallen so ill. He acted meek as a mouse those last three months. But after she passed on, he couldn’t bring himself to go on simpering and scraping. He’d left the Wilder home and taken up his pa’s trade of trapping.
Now he wasn’t anyone’s servant, and he’d never been anyone’s slave. He walked straight into a place through the front doors or he didn’t go in at all.
But the Wilder House wasn’t a saloon, dry-goods store, music hall or boarding house—in those places Grover was a man, as good as any other, and he’d flatten any man who tried to say he was otherwise. But never in his life had Grover walked in through the front doors of the Wilder House. Studying the broad steps now, Grover felt like he’d shrunk back down into the scrawny scared six-year-old he’d been when he’d first arrived here.
He didn’t want to go back to that past, and at the same time the ghost of his ma seemed to curl around him, whispering warning of where his pride would lead him.
You give them any cause, they will kill you just like they did your pa. They won’t feel any more guilt for murdering you than they’d feel over throwing a flea in the fire.
The sound of a wagon rolling up the street behind him drew his attention, and Grover peered back into the twilight to see George and Cora Cody riding towards the house. No doubt they’d been invited—even through the gloom Grover could see that they were both dressed for a dance.
The last thing Grover wanted was to slink past them like he’d been thrown out on his ass. They’d both of them make too much of it and probably insist that he come along with them. They’d been among the few white citizens who’d stood up against Sheriff Lee and Reverend Dodd during the riots that followed the first floods. Still, Grover hated to be looked at all sad and sympathetic, like he was a runt puppy. They meant well, he knew that, but Grover didn’t particularly enjoy others intervening on his behalf when he could damn well stand on his own if he felt like it.
So instead of turning around he nudged Betty towards the back of the house, past the tidy stables and the outbuildings, to the deep shadows of the garden. Grover glanced at the beds of peas, carrots, seedling cabbages, tomatoes and sweet peppers. He wondered if the new cook still tended the strawberry patch his ma had planted. But he didn’t venture along the rows of vegetable beds. Instead he swung down from Betty and led her up the low hill where iris blossoms and daffodil flowers dotted the shadows beneath six apple trees.
Betty snapped several fat bugs from the air while Grover closed the distance to the largest apple tree.
Back when he’d only been twelve, he’d thought himself real clever, secretly carving his and Lawrence’s initials on the underside of one of the lower branches. Of course the tree had been pruned a couple years later and his precious little spell had gone up in the wood stove. Just as well, cause if his ma had known he was trying to ensnare another boy in a love spell she would have beaten him like a dusty rug.
A figure suddenly loomed out from the shadows of the tree, and Grover had to stop himself from going for his gun out of reflex. He was the one trespassing here, after all. Faint gold light angled across Lawrence Wilder’s sharp features and caught an unruly lock of his hair, making it look almost red. He held Grover’s gaze only an instant before his left hand came up in the striking position for a killing spell. Blue light hissed up between Lawrence’s long fingers.
“Hey now! No harm done.” Grover stepped back fast and caught Betty’s saddle. He didn’t know that he could make it clear of the spell at such close range, but at least he could shove Betty aside.
Lawrence’s expression turned to confusion.
“Is that thing yours?” He didn’t drop his hand but nodded in Betty’s direction.
“Betty? Sure. She carries me all around. She’s quicker than any horse and don’t need shoeing.” As he spoke Grover realized why Lawrence had appeared so shocked. Though now his expression melted into something more like amusement.
“You domesticated an avemosaur?” The hint of an English accent lent Lawrence a disconcertingly foreign tone. He dropped his left hand to his side and peered at Betty, who paid him little mind as she pecked a plump spider from the trunk of an apple tree.
“Found her still in her egg and she took to me.” Grover hadn’t heard the term avemosaur before, but since the telegraph lines had flooded out, news reached them real slow across the Inland Sea. The bigwigs and college deans back east had probably christened the old creatures with fancy new monikers. Grover named the dinosaurs he encountered, but they weren’t proper titles made up from Latin and Greek. George Cody delighted in explaining the meanings of various scientific names to him, but they didn’t exactly roll off Grover’s tongue.
If he’d been thinking at all straight, Grover would have asked what avemosaur meant and made himself sound a lick smarter than he’d been before Lawrence had left.
Instead Grover stood there staring, like he’d never seen another man in his life. He’d thought so often of Lawrence and held him in in his memory so dearly that it felt somehow strange to see him in the flesh and realize how much he’d gotten wrong—or maybe it was just how much Lawrence had grown up and changed. The years seemed to have carved all the softness from Lawrence’s body and demeanor.
Deep angry lines etched his brow, and a series of sharp white scars cut across his right cheek. He held himself straight, and though his clothes looked slightly past their best, the neat, polished quality of them still stood out. Grover
counted five medals pinned to his uniform.
By comparison, Grover knew he presented a dusty, rough figure. Normally he didn’t think much of looking a bit shabby; with the cotton plantations gone and sea monsters sinking so many of the ships that attempted to cross the Inland Sea, even the wealthiest folks in Fort Arvada sported patches and made do with older cloth. At least hunting gave him easy access to the gold-patterned dinosaur hide that made up his chaps and Betty’s saddle, as well as the black plumes that decorated his coat.
Still, he felt very aware of the fact that his shirtsleeves weren’t quite long enough for his arms anymore and the buttons running down his shirtfront didn’t match. A ragged tear marred the brim of his hat.
If he’d known he’d see Lawrence face to face today, he would have paid Mr. Chen to cut and slick back his wavy hair. But he’d shaved this morning and worn his clean shirt.
Lawrence appeared lost for anything to say as well. He glanced towards the house, and Grover expected him to announce that he needed to go back inside. He didn’t want Lawrence to leave him, but at the same time he knew it would be better, probably for both of them. So he decided to make it easier for Lawrence.
“Well, I should probably move on.” Grover managed to get the words out. “Betty will be wantin’ her feed soon—”
“No, Grove, don’t—” Lawrence caught his hand. “I just… Father has been talking a blue streak about how you know the rift lands better than anyone. He says you’ve hunted monstrirex and ichthyosaurs… I’d love to hear all about it. Don’t go.”
Lawrence flashed him that charming smile and met his gaze like they’d only been apart for a couple days. But it had been years—years Grover had mourned—and all this time Lawrence hadn’t bothered to send even a postcard much less come back home.
His fingers felt warm against Grover’s cool skin, and Grover imagined that if he leaned in close and took in a deep breath that rich scent of ponderosa and smoke would roll over him again. Only they weren’t boys playing around. They were grown men who hardly knew each other anymore.
“I don’t reckon I have half the stories to tell that you do.” Grover drew his hand back with the pretense of scratching his own shoulder. “Eight years gone halfway across the world and mistaken for dead. Bet you could make a fortune selling that story to one of them fancy periodicals.”
Lawrence’s smile compressed to a flat line.
“That’s a bet you’d lose, Grove.” Again, he glanced over his shoulder to the house, his expression deeply troubled, almost angry. Golden candlelight glowed from the windows, throwing soft pools of light across the grounds. Moths flitted around the light, and Betty watched them with predatory excitement.
Grover caught the leather lead attached to her saddle before she could race to one of the windows and likely scare the blazes out of someone. Lawrence eyed Betty, then his expression softened a little.
“Will she let anyone but you touch her?” Lawrence asked.
Grover nodded. Bottom fact was that Betty took to folk too well. She didn’t know what sons-of-bitches some could be or how bad they’d like hurting her. But Lawrence had always been tenderhearted about animals and so, changed as he might be, Grover couldn’t imagine him doing Betty any harm.
“Go on, hold out your hand to her,” Grover instructed him.
Lawrence extended his left hand like he might have to a horse. Betty cocked her head, giving him her owl-look, then she dropped her head down and stroked the side of her big beak and cheek against Lawrence’s fingers. Lawrence smiled as Betty worked her beak back over his hand like a cat wrapping itself around a fellow’s leg. He laughed when Betty nudged up beside him and started her little song and dance of scratching the dirt and crooning as she settled herself down on the ground.
The entire time Lawrence’s right hand remained shoved deep in his coat pocket, his arm stiff at his side. Wasn’t no question of whether he’d been hurt during the Arrow War, only of how badly.
Bad enough to be pronounced dead, Grover thought. Was it any wonder he didn’t want to tell all?
Lawrence knelt beside Betty gently stroking the long feathers of her folded arms, then he dropped his hand and simply studied her as she settled and coiled her tail around her body so the long plumes covered the tip of her beak. For a few moments he continued to gaze at Betty with the same thoughtful expression Grover remembered him wearing when he was out in the woods sketching leaves and birds in his diaries. He looked up at Grover.
“In all this time fighting, I’ve never seen one of these old creatures so…” Lawrence didn’t finish but just offered Grover a brief smile and turned his gaze back down to Betty. He ran his hand over her back like she was blown glass.
The reel floating from the house faded to be replaced by a more plaintive melody. One of the ladies sang something about her boy coming home across green fields. Grover leaned back against the apple tree and searched between the breaks in crooked branches for the stars overhead. Dark protective spells nearly blacked them all out from here in the city. He’d only been back under the dome a month but already he missed the sight of clear, bright stars. Though Grover thought he could just make out the constellation of the big bear where Lawrence’s airship had burned through earlier.
“You back to stay?” Grover asked. “Or just blowing through with the Office of Theurgy and Magicum?”
Lawrence looked up at him.
“I don’t know,” Lawrence said. “It’s not all up to me.”
“No? The blathering Tucker brothers giving you orders now or is it Lady Honora Sour-Cherry?”
Lawrence snorted but his grin didn’t last. He rose to his feet.
“Honora’s not bad. She used to be a joy but…” Lawrence seemed like he was searching for the right words but only shook his head. “Beijing took a lot out of all of us.”
“Sure,” Grover said. Wasn’t much else he could say. For him, Beijing was just a yellow star printed on a map in George Cody’s seventh volume of Parley’s Cyclopaedia of Universal History. He’d read all he could of the long, convoluted history that accompanied the map—knowing that Lawrence was there—but the author went out of his way to twist his sentences around and evade any clear conclusions.
What Grove had managed to work out was that the Chinese rulers despised the opium trade England had imposed upon them. It had reduced thousands of their citizens to impoverished addicts and also funded English, French and American acquisition of Chinese estates rich in alchemic stone. Since the emperor was embroiled in a civil war against Taiping rebels, foreign opium dealers felt secure that he couldn’t afford to waste his resources fighting their nations as well. But in 1856 the seizure of an English ship loaded with contraband opium and alchemic stone set off a series of battles. The emperor declared war and withdrew to a gilded city populated entirely by eunuch-mages and tiny, ferocious courtesans.
Even now it wasn’t clear who, if anyone, had won the war. If rumors were true, a quarter of China was underwater, though far more of England and France lay submerged beneath a sea of ichthyosaurs and ammonites. The United States had lost the south and been split in two.
“So all that about justice that Lady Astor was saying?” Grover asked.
“Honora wants compensations to be made to those who’ve lost extensive property,” Lawrence replied. “Mostly she’s thinking about her relatives in England and France being offered citizenship and sanctuary here in the US.”
“Cora and George have got a couple rooms free in their boarding house,” Grover responded, and that won him a grin from Lawrence. “It’s a nice place if you don’t mind all the books.”
“I had wondered where you were living now.”
“I still have the cabin outside the fortifications. Come fall when the weather turns, most of the old creatures—dinosaurs—migrate back through the rift and they’re easy to pick off.”
“You reall
y do hunt them?” Lawrence stared at Grover. “On your own?”
“Betty comes along.” Grover shrugged. “Anyhow it ain’t as if I go after giants like bigtooths or thunderbirds or longnecks. I only once made the mistake of pulling a sea monster out of the water. What about you? You said something about fighting them.”
“We’re closing the rifts.” Lawrence said it quietly like a secret.
“We had heard rumors that the rift in England sealed back up,” Grover said, nodding.
“We managed to collapse it, as well as the one in China. No more water’s getting out from either of them. Not that we’ll see many great changes for years.” Lawrence frowned, but Grover wasn’t sure if it was work itself or talking about it that displeased him. “But it’s not as if I’m on my own. I have support.”
“Lady Astor and the Tucker brothers?” Grover asked.
“Honora, yes. She’s incredibly experienced and particularly good with subtle spells.” Lawrence’s expression turned briefly fond, but then he scowled like he’d tasted something foul between his back teeth. “Tucker on the other hand, he—they’re the worst kind of theurgic professors.”
Lawrence had never been too keen on holier-than-thou types, and most theurgic professors were supposed to be real Bible-thumpers. All their spells came from the good book—at least if they were practicing legally in the US—and the ground-up alchemic stone that powered their charms and curses were said to be God’s gift to the righteous. So if a theurgic professor’s spell worked or failed, well, that was down to the Lord’s will.
For mages like Lawrence, the spells and the power just came out of them alone. They didn’t need magic dust or holy books to work wonders or knock a man dead.
