The Harvest
Page 33
Rigo groans behind them and gets up off the barrel he’s sitting on. He scratches his big beard, then tucks a bit of his long hair behind his ears. “I still think we just should’ve told them we knew their plan. That would’ve stopped them.”
“Uh-uh.” Gwennie shakes her head. “Cael’s right on this one.”
“A rare moment,” Cael says.
“A rare moment, indeed, McAvoy.” She smirks. On her shoulder, Cicero the catbird shuffles on his feet, trilling and warbling. “What I mean, Rigo, is that those kids are gonna do what they’re gonna do either way. Remember us at that age? Going off half-cocked at everything.”
Cael chuckled. “Merelda was the worst.”
“Pssh. You just think she was the worst. We were always charging into dead towns or corn processing facilities. Sticking our noses where they had no business being stuck. Blight rats and hobo traps and . . . well. Point is, they’ll find a way to jump whatever fence we build. Might as well let them do it.”
“Fine, fine,” Rigo says, nodding reluctantly. “You know, Ernie’s not going to be good out there. This isn’t . . . his thing.”
“I’ll make sure he’s all right,” Gwennie says. “Maybe this’ll put a little hair on his knuckles. It did for you.”
“Hair on my knuckles and a leg chopped off.” Rigo laughs, shrugs. But Cael can see all the old ghosts flitting about behind his eyes. Memories. Good ones, sure. But all the bad ones, too.
“We’d go, but—” Cael hobbles over to the middle of the room. “Rigo’s got six other kids to worry about, and I turned into my father.”
“How is Pop?” she asks.
“He’s good. Tired, you know.”
“And your mama?”
“Well, she’s doing all right,” he says, sucking air through his teeth. “Making improvements every day.” After the Empyrean came down to the Heartland and became a part of it, things changed. Education opened up again. Technology, too. And part of that meant medicine. New procedures, new techniques. They got her on some kind of gene therapy; took a few years, but all the tumors went away. Still, though, she had to relearn what it was to be . . . human. To walk around and to talk. She remembered things—but she processed most of it like it was a dream (or, sometimes, a nightmare). “Pop helps her around. They have each other now, and Merelda when she’s not off on some half-assed adventure, and they have Amaranth, too.”
“All the more reason to keep her safe.”
“Yep. How’s Scooter and Squirrel?”
“Still married.”
He laughs. “Marriage. Them. Who’da thunk it?”
She reaches across, holds his hands. “Could’ve been us, once.”
A few moments of quiet stretch into an awkward silence. Rigo grumbles and mumbles: “I think that’s my cue. Gwennie, it has been a pleasure, and I appreciate what you’re doing.” He grunts as he lifts up on his one good foot and plants a scratchy-beard kiss on her cheek. “Thank you, my dear.”
He heads out the front.
“You hear about Boyland?” Cael asks Gwennie.
“Mayor now, so I hear.”
“Lieutenant mayor or something of Mader-Atcha City.”
She laughs. “Long way from Boxelder.”
“Jeezum Crow, you ain’t wrong about that.” Cael pauses. “He saved the Heartland in a way. Both of you did.” The Ilmatar had been taken over by the ants—enough where if that damn thing landed, it would’ve been a plague on all of them. Boyland and Gwennie went to the control room of that flotilla and put themselves at great risk to save the day. It was Gwennie’s idea—fly the flotilla high enough so that the cold kills the ants.
It worked, miracle of miracles. They were able to fly it high enough to kill the colony, keep the city from falling apart, and then land it—if very, very roughly—down in the corn. The Ilmatar is still out there now. Like Pegasus City was meant to be—it’s out there now, home to some of the old Empyrean remnants and Heartlanders, too.
“Forget the old days.” Gwennie squeezes his hands. “How’re you holding up?”
“Ah. Eh. Fine.”
“C’mon. Spit it out.”
“It’s good, it’s good, everything’s good.” He can see her lean in, her smile growing bigger—it’s the look she used to get when she was gonna tickle little Amaranth. “Fine, fine, it’s hard. Pop’s old. I feel old—gods, my leg sometimes feels like it’s burning up. But it’s more than that. It’s something . . . bigger. Deeper.” At that, his Blight-vine twitches around his arm.
She arches an eyebrow.
“Can’t you feel it?” he asks. “Everything’s changing. Life goes on. World gets older. Things are good. Amaranth is good. But she . . . you know, she doesn’t know her mother. That’s what this is all about. Used to be Wanda would come around, but she’s . . .” He sighs. “The Blight took a harder hold of her than it did most others. She’s just like Esther was. Lot of power, and I think it messes with her head. I’ve heard she’s doing good things in the Glades, though. Helping people farm the banks of the river. Irrigate and all that. But . . .”
Gwennie raises an eyebrow. “But?”
“But you know, she’s still out there . . . killing the old Empyrean. Hunting them down like they’re war criminals. And maybe they are, I dunno. But that’s gonna be hard for Amaranth to deal with. Wanda isn’t really human anymore. I think I still am, but her—she’s too far gone.” The two of them were together for a while—long enough to have the baby and raise it a few years—and for a time Wanda did a good job at masquerading. Pretending to be something she wasn’t. But it was a force like wind, or gravity, or age—she was what she was, and one night she just left. Cael loved her, but he was scared of her, too. And Wanda’s absence struck Amaranth hard—it was a hole that grew year after year. “How’ll that be for Amaranth? She’s expecting . . . I don’t know what. For her mother to be there. Not some monster.”
“Everything’s gonna be hard for her to deal with, Cael. Maybe easier for her than it was for us. That’s something, at least.”
“That is something, I guess.”
He wonders if they had a part in that, in changing the world, making it better. Sometimes his ego lets him believe it. Other times, he’s not so sure.
Gwennie leans in, gives him a hug, a kiss on the cheek. She smells like soap still. Clean, fresh. But there’s a little grit there, too. An earthiness. Under her fingernails. Behind her ears. In the leather of her coat.
“I miss you,” she says.
“I miss you, too. But you ain’t ever gonna settle down, and as for me”—he spreads out his arms—“that’s all I can do these days. Settle down deeper.”
“Maybe one day I can convince you to come on another adventure.”
“I doubt that.”
She winks. “At least you didn’t say no. That’s a change.”
“I guess it is. I guess it is.” He nods. “All right, she’s got a bit of a lead on you now. Thanks for keeping her safe, Gwen.”
“Anything for you, Captain.”
And then she’s gone.
And he misses her like he misses his youth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © Michelle Wendig
CHUCK WENDIG is the author of The Heartland Trilogy and the Atlanta Burns series for young adults, as well as numerous novels for adults, including the upcoming Star Wars: Aftermath. He is also a game designer and screenwriter. He cowrote the short film Pandemic, the feature film HiM, and the Emmy-nominated digital narrative Collapsus. Chuck lives in “Pennsyltucky” with his family.
He blogs at www.terribleminds.com.
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