by Chuck Wendig
She’s choking. Reaching up at the folds of her neck, trying desperately to—to what? The hobo boy stares, sees a long thin wire wrapped around Cashew’s neck, and he follows that wire to the roof—
Cleft Lip looks up, too, and yells, “What the—? Beryl, you little bitch!”
It’s her.
The hobo girl sneers from above, wire held in gloved hands.
The girl—Beryl—lets the wire go. Cashew gasps, then falls.
Then the hobo girl jumps. Both feet collide with Cleft Lip’s body—his head smacks back into the crumbling wall and he howls in pain. He scampers away, trying to stand, but she brings a knee against the side of his head.
“Told you to skip town, Eddie,” the girl—Beryl?—says. “And Cashew, you human lump of melted candle wax. You ought to go, too.”
Cashew writhes on the ground, clawing at her bleeding neck. She chokes out the words: “Old . . . Scratch . . . take you . . .”
Beryl gives her a middle finger. “Far as you’re concerned, Old Scratch is my daddy, my boyfriend, and my guardian Saintangel. Now suck piss.”
Then she turns and walks to the end of the alley.
She looks over her shoulder before she turns the corner.
“You coming, Rigo?”
And then she’s gone.
Rigo thinks: How in King Hell did she know my name?
Of course he follows after.
And of course he gives Cleft Lip a kick—with his fake foot, because why not?—right to the crotch before hobbling out of the alley.
Rigo enters the streets of Curtains. It’s a town bigger than Boxelder by two, maybe three times the size, and since the Saranyu fell, it’s been collecting misfits and castoffs with a far greater frequency. Any walk down the streets of Boxelder, you’d see a dozen people, and that was it. Here, particularly around the mouth of the Mercado warehouse, they gather in crowds. Some have rough dogs or feral tabbies on chains that bark and hiss as Rigo passes.
The girl, Beryl, doesn’t stop there. She keeps going. Not running, but keeping enough of a pep in her step that Rigo has to limp along double-time, sending jolts of pain up into his hips.
Ahead, she turns the corner, ducks into an old theater. Not a holo-theater, like the one they found in Martha’s Bend, but a proper one—used for plays and the like. THE WHEELHORSE, it says out front on a sign tilted so far it looks like the letters could just spill out like sand.
Rigo looks around to make sure Cleft Lip and Cashew aren’t following along and then ducks through the front door.
The smell climbs up his nose and stays there: rot, ruin, mold, pollen. Pollen. His head starts to feel pressure behind the eyes. The sensation of a pair of fingers pinching his nose closed. He tries not to sneeze but can’t help it—
Sneezing sends a little hurricane of dust up. It blows across shafts of light—columns of sun shining from holes in the roof far above.
Beryl is nowhere to be seen.
“Hello?” he calls out.
Ello, ello.
Echo, echo.
Birds stir in the eaves.
He winds his way through the center aisle—dark seats on each side, long fallen to disuse and disrepair, half collapsed, fabric torn. There’s a slight decline here, and Rigo grunts as he navigates even this slight shift—
“Hey, Rigo.”
Beryl. Up on the stage. By a red curtain so dark it might as well be black.
“Why did you help me?” he asks.
But she ducks behind the curtain. Curtains in Curtains, he thinks. He’s about to haul himself up on the stage—no easy task given that he can’t see a set of dang steps around here—when he pauses. Last time he was alone in a creepy, half-abandoned building, he ended up finding a fake baby and getting a jaw trap around his leg. An act that lost him his leg once infection set in.
This could be another trap. Maybe all of it is. Maybe Cleft Lip and Cashew are just waiting for him behind that curtain, ready to snatch up his limb and beat him half to death with it. Or all the way to death.
Behind the curtain, he hears Beryl whistling. He recognizes the song, but at first he can’t put a name to it. . . .
“The Ballad of Calla and Kade.” A love song.
A love song that doesn’t end very well, but sounds nice just the same.
Oh, hell with it.
Rigo reaches out and drags himself up onto the stage, bracing himself with the fake leg and throwing the good one up over the edge. It takes him longer than he likes and he feels like Wanda’s mutt, Hazelnut, rolling around on her back and showing her belly like a big ol’ doofus.
But somehow, he manages. He stands up, takes a deep breath—
And walks behind the curtain.
For a moment, it’s all fabric and dust. And again he starts to sneeze, but this time he tamps it down, chokes it back. The curtain seems to go on forever, endless folds that have no end, and a weird thought strikes him: I wonder if this is what having sex for the first time is like, lots of pawing and not sure where everything begins or ends, and now he’s blushing thinking about how he’s never done it and probably never will do it, but if he did manage to find someone gracious enough to be his first it sure could be Beryl, but boy howdy, does he think about sex too much these days, he should really quit—
He steps out from behind the curtain, starts to fall as the fabric catches on the heel of his fake foot—
A hand catches him, helps him up.
It’s not Beryl.
Rigo gasps.
“Pop,” he says.
“It’s nice to see you, Rodrigo,” Pop says.
Then Cael’s father hugs him.
“THE BALLAD OF CAEL AND WANDA”
HEARTLANDERS TELL all kinds of stories about the cycle of day and night. One says that the Lord and Lady take the sun in every night to cook their food and warm their baths. Another says that night is a punishment for Old Scratch—or, in a variant tale, a punishment for the oldest gods of the earth—blinding him so that he cannot find his way into the minds of men and women and children while they sleep. (This is why some speak the common refrain, Nothing good happens after sundown.) The most popular story, and the one Cael has heard the most often, says simply that the sun represents the story of Jeezum Crow, for the sun dies every night and is reborn every morning.
He knows all that’s a bindle full of horse apples. Pop told him the truth: The Heartland revolves around the sun, along with other worlds, and that revolution means sometimes they face the sun, sometimes they don’t. No gods and goddesses, no disagreeable mythologies competing with one another, just a simple arrangement of objects out there, objects given over to what Pop called “scientific principle, the laws of a world and a universe in perpetual action.”
He misses Pop.
Right now, he feels like he’s not facing the sun or even the moon, but rather a wide-open darkness. A dangerous pit of shadow that will consume him. The Blight-vine around his arm twitches as if—well, as if what, he doesn’t know. Maybe the vine fears the darkness, too. Maybe night really is the playground of Old Scratch, and maybe this thing he’s got inside him marks him as one of the legions of King Hell: a lord of darkness, not a scion of light.
What the hell is happening to the world?
Things are supposed to get better. But they’ve always just gotten worse. Like a hill of dirt and scree, where everything slides down, down, down.
He sits there on Esther’s porch, looking out over the eventide corn, sun spilling its guts across the horizon, bleeding out as darkness creeps in at the edges.
A bag sits next to him, full of supplies for the journey.
He senses her before he hears her. Seconds before the floorboards of the porch squeak, he can already feel Wanda standing behind him. A sense that goes beyond sight, sound, smell. It’s that firefly glow again. Like a cloud of them forming a human shape, twinkling like the stars in the sky.
Her hands find his shoulders. He gets chills as she runs them up under the collar o
f his shirt. It’s not just her fingertips. Tendrils tickle.
“I hear you’re coming with,” he says, repressing the urge to lean into Wanda. The smell of honeysuckle reaches his nose.
“Mother Esther says you’ll need help. And that your Obligated might as well be the one to help you.”
Mother Esther. He lets that go again, though he knows he’ll have to address it sooner than later. He pulls away from her hands and stands up. “For someone so resistant to the Empyrean way of doing things, she’s awfully cozy with the idea of us being Obligated.”
“Maybe she sees there’s something between us. Something real.”
He doesn’t know how to respond to that. The vine around his arm tightens like a cob-snake choking the life out of a shuck rat. His blood feels hot as a rush of it rises to his cheeks, chest, wrists. Wanda’s perfume fills the air.
Instead, he says, “She coming down?” To say good-bye to the lambs she’s leading to slaughter? The thought strikes him as paranoid, but it is what it is.
“She said we should go.”
“So it is, then.” He hikes the ratty bag over his shoulder. It’s heavy with goods for the journey. Wanda takes her bag, too, and links her arm with his.
They walk out toward the corn.
He expects a quiet exit, thinks they’ll just walk through the garden and then step into the stalks, and that’ll be that, but things are never that simple.
Soon as they step under the mossy trellis and into the garden, he sees that the Blightborn have gathered there, lining their path. Dozens of them, staring on with the madness of hope in their eyes, arms clasped before them.
“The hell is this?” Cael whispers to Wanda.
“They’re saying good-bye. Wishing us well.”
“Why?”
“Because everything hangs on us.”
He doesn’t want that burden. It’s an uncomfortable fit, like a pair of hand-me-downs too tight, too rough against the skin. And now all these people watching them go, it’s strange—he doesn’t matter in his own mind, and yet to them, he sure seems to. Cael offers up an awkward wave that turns into him gesturing for them to back up and go home.
“Thanks, thank you,” he says, “but you can all go about your business. We’ll be fine, I uhh, we appreciate it—”
But none of them move. They all keep staring and smiling. A young girl with one arm like a tree branch uses the tip of a curling leaf to wipe away a tear rolling down her cheek. Next to her, an older woman with twisting fiddlehead eyes pulls the girl close to give her comfort.
And then, at the end, the Maize Witch steps out. She’s in full Blight—a demonstration for those who have gathered. Flowers blooming at the ends of her fingers. Drupe-fruits hanging from the undersides of her arms, dropping to the earth with wet plops. Vines trailing. Waves of scent rolling off her: rose, then fresh peaches, then burning birch.
She says nothing. She merely leans in and gives both Cael and Wanda a kiss on the forehead. Again he senses her, lit up like a cornfield aflame—so much life (or is it so many lives?). Her kiss tugs on him, like she’s trying one last time to assert control over him. He almost gives in to it, because it feels good. And because it feels easy. All too simple to let someone else make decisions for you, to yank the leash and lead you around like a dog.
Still, Cael’s got a stubborn fire burning in the well of his belly, and he can’t give in even if he wants to. He bolsters his will and pushes her back—not physically, but with a wave of scent all his own. A corpse-flower stink.
Esther seems to notice it. Her brow wrinkles, but her lips twist into a smirk.
“Go with my blessing,” she whispers. “Save the Heartland.”
Wanda pauses, eyes squeezed shut like she’s basking in it.
Cael pulls her along out of the garden. “C’mon,” he says.
The corn twists, broken by invisible hands. A path forms ahead of them.
Wanda gasps.
“What?” he asks. “You’ve seen her do it.”
“I didn’t know you could do it.”
“Can’t you?”
Her gaze stays with him for a second, almost like she’s seeking his permission, or at least trying to read what he’s thinking. Then carefully, her stare flicks toward the corn and she reaches out a hand—fingers trembling, thumb tracing circles in the air.
“I can feel it. There’s still life here.”
She twists her hand suddenly to the left. Then to the right.
Nothing happens. The corn doesn’t even shudder.
Her hand drops, and she pouts. “Aw, shucks.”
They wait a few moments, then Cael nods and keeps walking, Wanda right alongside him.
“Saranyu’s about a week’s trip,” she says.
“Wouldn’t be if we could just go right to it. But we gotta take the long way.”
“Mother says—”
Mother says. Ugh.
“—that the Empyrean have been running patrols at the end of the dead corn in that direction. But we go west a ways, we can take cover and maybe find some supplies at that dead town out there.”
A ghost town. Heartland’s full of them, but now Cael wonders if even more will be drawn on the map—fresh, ragged X’s scratched over once-healthy towns. If the Empyrean really are clamping down because of the Saranyu—like they did with Martha’s Bend—then that’s the likely outcome.
“Fine,” he says. He doesn’t like it, but he’ll trust it. Last thing he wants to do is run afoul of some skybastard patrol and cut this job off at the knees.
He thinks about—but dang sure doesn’t wanna talk about—Lane. Lane, still with the Sleeping Dogs. Now ruling the city that’s grown up out of the Saranyu’s wreckage? Jeezum Crow. Things sure have changed. But Lane must be having a field day.
As they walk, Wanda feels his eyes on her. He tries to sneak these looks, casting his gaze at her like a hunter trying not to spook his prey. But she feels him looking. When he does, they connect in an invisible way—unseen threads winding together.
After hours of walking he finally asks: “Why’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Become . . . this.” He holds up his Blighted arm, commands the vine to unspool and form shapes in the air, like a twister dancing across the earth. “Did she do this to you? The witch, I mean.”
“I chose it. And she’s not a witch.” And she made me special. Not like the other Blightborn. Maybe not even like Cael.
“Uh-huh. Well. A witch is what everyone calls her.”
“Because they don’t know her.”
“You don’t know her, either. She’s Empyrean. Or was, once.”
Wanda smiles, then presses a fist to her chest. “Not in here. She has the Heartland in her heart now. Mother Esther has all our best interests—”
“All right, whoa, no. Let’s hash this out. She’s not your mama, Wanda.”
“I know she’s not.” She pouts. “She’s mother to us all.”
He stops. Points a finger. “That’s cuckoo talk. Crazy as a starveling rat. She’s not your mama, she’s probably not even your friend. She’s got an agenda like everyone else out here in the corn. Maybe, right now, that agenda lines up with what we wanna see happen. And I’m not saying she’s evil, only that she’s got her interests put ahead of our interests. Lord and Lady, she compared all of us to game pieces on a godsdamn Checks board. She’s thinking about ten moves ahead, and I gotta be honest, I’m still trying to figure out all the moves that already happened.”
“You’ll see,” Wanda says. “She cares about you.” She hesitates, kicking her feet around the broken stalks. Before, she might’ve kept this all buttoned up, but she’s feeling bold, brazen, ready to jump. The words come tumbling out: “I care about you. You wanna know why I did it? Why I . . . wanted to be like this? Yeah, okay, it was scary. Damn scary! At the time I didn’t think of it as being special or getting some kind of gift like it was Crow’s Day or something. I thought of it as being cursed. I still
thought of it as the Blight, but I wanted to be close to you, Cael. I wanted us to share something. I wanted you to see how much I loved you and would give up for you—and this isn’t just because we’re Obligated. I’ve always loved you. You were strong and cocksure, never wantin’ to just roll over and let everyone get their kicks in. When I got your name on Obligation Day, I about fell out of my shoes. I was happy then, and I’m happy now, and I hope one day you’ll see that I can make you happy, too.”
While she’s speaking, Wanda can feel him there—a small firefly glow growing brighter and brighter, all these individual embers swirling together until he’s ablaze with it. It washes over her, and she returns the light, returns the heat. And as her excitement grows, her voice gets louder, her words come quicker, and the corn around them quakes and crackles.
Cael crosses the open space between them, stalks snapping underfoot. Wanda catches a burst of scent there in the invisible distance—a mingling of heady, floral odors. The smell of trampled grass, of lush leaves torn in half. Her heart pounds. Cael reaches for her. His hands on her cheeks—she’s cold, he’s warm.
He leans forward.
Their lights merge—the scents overwhelm.
The kiss is long and deep.
His vine coils around her middle. She grabs one of his hands, and their fingers sprout coils and curls of green—all of it braiding together so that she’s starting to lose where she ends and where he begins.
Dry, dead earth splits with the sound of rocks breaking.
Roots reach up, pull them down together. They never break the kiss.
Thought is lost to sensation.
It devours him as they devour each other.
They do this once. Then they do it again, the next night. And the night after that. Days of traveling through the corn. Nights of merging together.
Each time, the act leaves an imprint—
Plumes of fragrance. Meshed fingers, tangled vines. Wet kisses and trailed saliva. Sticky, tacky sap. Dead earth churned fresh, tilled back to life by the movement of the boy and the girl above it and roots crawling through the earth like worms below them. Tongues tasting nectar. The softness of skin together, and the whisper-rasp of green against green. Vines twining, unspooling, twisting, teasing. Pinning wrists. Small grunts. The snap of branches. And then release—like trees losing leaves in a hard wind, shuddering and howling.
