by L. J. Hatton
I’d been so careful for so long, and kept my abilities crushed beneath layers of makeup and bandages and self-control, but my focus had shattered. The only home I’d ever known was in flames, I couldn’t see my sisters, and the last link I had to my father had gone down with Xerxes. Birdie couldn’t swim, and I wasn’t sure Klok’s mass allowed him to do anything other than sink. Even if Jermay or Winnie were able to help them, where could they go without the balloon? All the power I’d tried to contain inside me leaked out through the cracks. I couldn’t control it.
I swear I tried.
I imagined pouring water on the raging fire in my soul and tying my hands so they couldn’t move. I pictured myself small, and reined myself in so hard that I thought my bones would break from the compression, but nothing worked. The sky was falling . . . and then it got worse.
The moon glowed brighter, bigger, as though it were drawing nearer. Beneath me, the river started to move. Ripples, then swells, then waves.
“Nim, run!” I cried, knowing only my sister could have done such a thing.
The water rained up, into a vertical wall. I looked down on the sister who was so often my nemesis and saw her standing on one side, while a blue-tinged hound stood on the other, with the static wave between them. Two women who didn’t look like they could lift a barbell, and they were holding up a river like it was nothing.
Finally, Nim shoved her hand forward, creating a cascading arc of watery dolphins. They drenched the hound and washed her away. Nim fell to her knees, exhausted, and let the wave crash on top of her.
I still couldn’t free myself from whatever held me aloft.
More burning rocks streaked through the sky, smashing everything they touched, and leaving only craters behind.
“Stop,” I begged, but they kept coming. This was what had happened the night I was born, and now I was in danger of killing my sisters the same way I’d murdered my brother. “Stop it!”
For an answer, one of the stones slammed into my shoulder, spinning me downward into free fall. Another hit the back of my head. I lost count of those battering my arms and legs.
I was so tired.
I saw the train explode, but never heard it. And as the dark water broke my fall, drawing me deeper into oblivion, my last thought was that we’d lost.
I’d lost.
I’d lost everything.
CHAPTER 7
People were talking. They sounded far away, as though I were still under water, but I was flat on my back, with rocks for a pillow. Nearby, popping flames from a campfire vied with the dusk sky above. I’d lost hours, and felt every one of them as a separate point of pain that made it hard to move.
“Evie?” I croaked, not realizing how ravaged my throat was until I tried to speak. “Nim?”
I reached a hand toward the fire, but it wasn’t their shadows I saw. It wasn’t Vesper or Anise . . . brave, stoic, stupid Anise, who went to the bonfire knowing something was coming, but refusing to abandon the others.
“Who’s there?” I asked, louder.
“She’s coming around,” said the voice I now knew as Winnie’s. “Penn? Can you hear me?”
“Penelope,” I rasped. Anise had said to leave Penn behind. “Help me up.”
Wherever I was, it wasn’t near the train. Winnie and Klok appeared first as a small blur and a large one. I blinked and caught sight of Jermay. He raised his little finger, and bent it.
Everything’s okay, without the words.
As far up as he’d been when the ladder fell, his body could have broken on the water’s surface, but he was fine, and Birdie was, too. She knelt beside me with a cup of water.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Downriver,” Winnie said. “It’s not even a proper town, just an unincorporated area the locals call Inshore.”
The riverbank was on my left, close enough to hear and smell. Other scents and sounds came from the bridge we were hiding beneath. From the rattle, no one official had bothered to keep the place up in a long while.
Klok dropped onto his haunches and flashed me a message.
“Thought you drowned.”
“Not me,” I said. “I’m buoyant as a bilge rat.”
He gave me a stiff pat on the shoulder and an eerie not-quite-human grin.
“Makes me glad,” he said, then added, “Making supper,” in what would have been the same breath, if he’d actually spoken.
It was best not to try to figure out Klok’s thought processes. As near as I could tell, he could have several running simultaneously. Sometimes they came out in tragically awkward collisions, and the result was that not drowning was as important as supper.
“Are we all that’s left?” I asked.
“The others tried to turn around for us,” Winnie said. “But the fail-safes took over. They’re at the Hollow, I’d imagine.”
I nodded, as though knowing that my father’s precautions had protected the others made things better, but it didn’t.
“Did you see what happened to my sisters?”
“We didn’t surface for over three miles, then drifted another five or six,” Jermay said. “Winnie and Birdie shared the breather, and Klok breathed for me and you. Hopefully the warden thinks we drowned.”
“So you don’t know if they were taken?”
I jumped up too fast, and found myself back on the ground. Dark spots crept into my eyes.
“The balloon went above the clouds,” Birdie said. “No one followed.”
“Why would they? He wasn’t after carnies!” Evie’s unnoticeable had said as much. “They don’t send hounds to collect acrobats and magicians!”
“Penn, calm down,” Jermay said, kneeling in the grimy rocks beside me.
His hands on mine felt weighted, and hot. I pulled loose, trying to gain my feet, but my legs had turned to useless lumps of jelly.
“You were down for a long time,” he said. “And you went pretty deep before Klok found you.”
My next attempt to walk went no better than the first; it didn’t help that Jermay was there to catch me again. He should have let me hit the ground, but instead, he sat with me so I wouldn’t tip over, and picked up the cup of water.
“Drink it,” he ordered. His eyes turned stormy. Their unnatural hue darkened, so he hardly looked like the boy I knew. I was already losing myself. I didn’t want him to change, too. “You haven’t had water in hours; you need it. Klok got us some decent fish, and Birdie rummaged up some clothes that won’t get us pegged as a carnie crew on sight. Don’t ask where she got them. You’re better off not knowing.”
She must have stolen them. Poor kid, she swore to Bruno that she’d never steal again, now that she had a family to take care of her.
“Get yourself together, then we’ll figure out what comes next,” Jermay said.
But the only life I’d ever known was over. There was no next.
I sat at the river’s edge, the water splashing the toes of my boots. A twisted version of my dream blinked back with teary eyes. There I was, reflected in the dark water, with my hair sticking out in all directions. I dragged my foot through a pile of pebbles and watched the rings destroy the image with a silt plume.
No matter how hard I strained my eyes toward the sky, there was no smoke over the moon. Only the river told me the direction of the train’s remains.
When I couldn’t stand the stars anymore, I let my eyes fall back to the stilled water. The dress Birdie had stolen for me was cotton, with stripes that had probably been white when it was new. I was fairly certain the pink parts had started off as a shade of red, but had been beaten dull by use and washing. The hem was frayed, and there were patches in the skirt. Two of the buttons were broken. It had probably been someone’s favorite, and Birdie must have raided a laundry line to get it, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I had
wished to put on when I dreamed of wearing dresses. I’d always thought being my true self would mean freedom, but this was another disguise.
Sitting alone gave me time to wonder about my sisters and their fate, and to decide on the questions I wanted to ask Winnie about why she’d pretended to be mute when she wasn’t. I knew she’d had a run-in with the authorities before my father found her, and Evie told me that whatever the Commission had done to Winnie was why Winnie couldn’t talk, but did my sister know not talking was a choice?
I was still sitting there when I heard footsteps along the shore.
“I brought you some supper,” Jermay said. “It’s a little burnt, but at least it’s food.”
He held out a charred, skewered fish. The river had washed away most of the scent of exploding powder that normally clung to his skin after his act, and the stranger’s clothes got rid of the rest.
“If you were any sort of real magician, you’d turn this into something appetizing,” I said. Klok had cooked the fish with the heads still on, and mine was staring at me.
“If I were a real magician, we’d be at the Hollow before you could take a bite.” He sat just close enough that our knees touched, skirt to blue jeans.
My legs were thin and ash pale everywhere they weren’t bruised by the meteorites that had knocked me from the sky. I could feel the same soreness under my sleeves.
“You look . . .” Jermay began, but faltered. He glanced from my face to the dress that Birdie had stolen for me, lingering on the hand that was playing with the belt cinched around my waist. “Like Penelope.”
I’d felt cold all night, but now my face was flaming hot and my stomach was burning.
“You can tell me I look stupid. I won’t stab you with my fish-kabob.”
I shook it at him and the head lolled sideways.
“You look the way I pictured,” he said.
He’d thought of how I would look as a girl?
“I’m half-drowned, covered in sand, and wearing a torn, stolen dress.”
“Pretty Penelope at the shore,” he insisted stubbornly.
So this was life without The Show. Burnt fish that was raw on the inside, and nerves that were raw inside me.
“Tell me this doesn’t feel weird,” I said.
“It’s definitely different. If I look up too fast, I wonder where Penn went.”
Why shouldn’t he miss Penn? At least Penn was useful.
I chewed through my piece of fish without tasting it, only swallowing. If I kept my mouth full, there wouldn’t be room for my feet in there.
“Please say something,” Jermay begged. “Don’t tell me I lost my best friend just because she lost her trousers.”
What good were words?
Should I mention the frailty of his father? Or the trucks with blacked-out windows and no plates that rumbled over the bridge? Should I mention the most likely outcome for us?
“I don’t know what to say,” I told him.
I barely knew who I was, or which of the dozen voices I’d used for The Show actually belonged to me. I looked like Penelope, but still felt like the boy who didn’t exist.
“I watched you fall,” Jermay said after a long silence. “I tried to find you, but the water was too dark. I . . . I thought you were dead. If Klok hadn’t kept going under . . .”
He was looking at me again, in a way he wouldn’t have dared while I lived my life as Penn.
“I didn’t like thinking that,” he said.
“I-I didn’t like seeing you fall, either.”
I couldn’t picture a time without Jermay in it. Without his voice to tell me a joke or aggravate me. When I thought about the brother whose life I had usurped, Jermay was the only one who could cheer me up, though he never knew why I was sad. That’s how I knew how worried he was now—normally, he’d be juggling seashells or using my fish for a hand puppet to get me to laugh.
“I don’t care what you look like, Penn. I just want you around to be seen. So don’t almost die on me anymore, and I won’t almost die on you. Deal?” He stuck his hand out.
It’s rare to know you’re at the moment you’ve dreamed of your entire life, but I was there. Penelope was there, and I felt as if I could do anything, including the one thing I’d never been allowed.
“Deal,” I said. “But it only counts if it’s sealed with a kiss.” I yanked him forward, and this time, Jermay was the one spluttering.
Sitting down, we were nearly the same height—nearly perfect. I made myself keep my eyes open so I’d never convince myself this was a dream. Close, which was all we’d ever been allowed, became closer and closer until it turned into a single space we shared. And finally—
Balance.
We stayed like that until we had to breathe.
“Next time, we should try that when I’m not eating something awful,” I said.
Jermay grinned, stretching his lips tight across his teeth in the way he only did if he was embarrassed. Most of my life, he’d always looked the same, but out here in the green shirt and jeans that Birdie had given him, the magical quality that usually simmered beneath his skin broke surface, making him less real and more fantasy. My face grew hotter the longer he stared at me. To distract him, I changed the subject.
“Did you manage to save anything we can use?” I asked, afraid his next words would be calling me an idiot.
“You could say that. I have a surprise for you.”
He put two fingers in his mouth, blowing through them with a sharp, shrill whistle. Something shook itself free of the sand. It trotted in our direction, picking up the fire’s shine on its small metal body.
“Xerxes!”
“You were too out of it for me to show you sooner. He landed near me in the water. The crazy thing was trying to swim, hummers and all.”
Jermay set his hands on the ground, allowing the shrunken golem to climb into his palms. “Klok got his basic systems running, but he’s stuck small.”
Shrinking had done nothing to dull the ferocity of his gaze or the menacing click of his claws against the rocks. I hugged him, relieved to feel the vibration from his mechanical heart beneath feathers so soft I barely believed they were metal. He blinked at me, and I could almost hear him call my name.
“It’s me,” I said, ruffling his head.
Xerxes stretched out his forepaws and went right back to sleep, curled up on my lap.
Later, when the others were sleeping and clouds had covered most of the moon, I was still lying awake, watching Xerxes breathe. A trilling vibration tingled my skin from Bijou’s spot on my arm. He’d coiled around me like the serpentine bracelet of an ancient Egyptian queen, and I’d managed to convince myself that if he and Xerxes were still alive, then maybe the rest of my father was out there, waiting to be found.
How did I know we were the only refugees?
Vesper had the skies, and Nim could have hidden underwater just as we did. Anise and Evie were far from helpless. There was a chance they were still free and on their way home to the Hollow.
But there was a better one that they’d been caught and collared.
My whole life, someone had given me directions, told me where to stand, what to say, and how to act. Without that, I was a spinning compass with no idea how to find north.
“Tell me what to do,” I said to the sky.
The words left my mouth, and a meteor streaked across the night, matching the path we’d taken via the river. Coincidence, surely . . .
“Should I go back for them?” I tried again.
The stars twinkled. Another two meteors shot across the sky, their tails marking the crash with a crude X before they sputtered out.
That settled it. As I gathered up Xerxes and Winnie’s pack, I composed my good-bye.
Jermay would be the hardest to face, and Klok the most difficult to convince, bu
t my reasoning was sound—my sisters needed me, and Birdie was too young to be left on her own. She was a child who wanted her mother and father; they had to get her home.
“What’s wrong?” Winnie sat up quickly when I jostled her shoulder, as though she’d been hovering near consciousness for fear of what would happen in her sleep.
“Can the rebreather handle another marathon?” I asked.
“Magnus knows his stuff,” she said through a gaping yawn. “But the roads are faster.”
“Not for me. I’m going back to the train.”
“There is no train, Penn.” I hadn’t heard Jermay stir. Maybe he hadn’t been sleeping, either. “And your sisters wouldn’t want you doubling back. I won’t let you throw their effort in a ditch.” He jerked Winnie’s pack out of my hands and passed it to her.
“What makes you think I’m asking permission?” I lost the fragile control I had on myself. Birdie and Klok startled from sleep. “I’m the reason the warden boarded the train—that unnoticeable came for me. I’m the reason you fell. I’m—”
The river began to churn at its nearest point, with pebbles bouncing below the surface until they gained enough momentum to break free and soar into the air. My blood turned scalding in my veins.
“Penn, stop.” Winnie was beside me as I held my head to end the pounding. Her voice drowned in the whoosh filling my ears.
Something pulled me up, and I felt my body grow lighter in the last moments before it tried to leave the ground. The effect ended sharply with a bucket of cold water dumped over my head, shocking me out of my daze.
“Look at yourself,” Jermay ordered. I breathed in, and the sting of inhaled water made my eyes tear. “They saw you, Penn, and no one could miss that.” He pointed to the stars that were blinking in time with my pulse. “If we go back, we’ll never make it out.”
