He lets out a caw of laughter. “Syd, you’re overthinking this. Just relax.”
Agnes pokes her head out of the door. “Hello, dears,” she says. “Everything okay?”
“Yes, sorry for the noise,” I say.
“It’s not so much the noise,” she says. “It’s that there’s a visitor at the door downstairs.”
I listen to the steady knock coming from the boarded-up lobby door. “Expecting someone?” Doc asks.
“I haven’t expected anyone today. And yet, here you all are.” I shoulder around him and down the stairs. I pause midstair. “Keep your mitts off my coffee while I’m gone.”
At the bottom of the stairs, I unlock the dead bolt and throw the door open.
“Welcome to the City Library,” I say, stepping into the blinding sunlight. “Do you have a moment to learn about our Lord and Savior, Strunk N. White?”
“Cressyda Turner?” the visitor asks.
“Who’s ask . . .” My eyes adjust and I find myself addressing a horse’s chest. I stumble backwards, the ornate door handle jamming into the small of my back. I bite back the screed of profanity in my mouth.
“I have a message for Cressyda Turner.” As I look up, the clouds cover the sun for a moment, but the rider is just a dark form. “Is that you?”
I nod. The rider dismounts, takes off his hat, and hands me a large cream envelope with my name typed on the front.
“Do you want me to wait?” he asks.
“For what?”
“A reply. Maybe you’ll want to send something in return,” he says, looking at his hat. “I’m heading back to New Charity tonight.”
A sour mix of dread and panic rises in my throat. Once people realized that New Charitans were immune from the plague—not the acquired resistance of Survivors, but instead completely unaffected by the virus’s rampage—it became a distasteful identity to admit to. After New Charity built the reservoir that dried up our river downstream, revealing New Charitan heritage became downright dangerous—no matter that the Sanctuary there claimed they were protecting us from the plague in the water.
Whatever is in the envelope is from what remains of my family. People I haven’t claimed as mine since my mother died.
I wonder how much this courier knows about me. He has to know by my name that I belong to the Turner Ranch of the famed Turner equine bloodlines. Though if he does, he doesn’t have the guts to say anything.
I think about asking him to tell my dad that I hope he and his darling manure-spewing hay compactors are happy together, but I decide against it.
He hesitates, as if waiting for something. I pat my pockets. “Sorry, am I supposed to . . . I don’t have, like, a tip or anything.” I’ve never received a couriered message before. We used to tip the pizza delivery people, but this is different.
“Not necessary. But I’d appreciate some water for me and my mount, if it’s not too much trouble.”
It takes me a while to parse why this guy seems so out of place, besides the cowboy hat. He’s polite and quiet. Well fed and smooth skinned, sun browned, not thin and pale and scarred from scavenging.
“This way,” I say, holding the door open and tamping down my burgeoning hostility. “There’s a water jug on the back counter.” I return my attention to the envelope and follow him into the lobby, promptly running into his back; he’s staring at the ornate glass chandelier above the entryway.
“Bet that’s real pretty all lit up,” he says.
“Get the assholes at the Sanctuary to open the reservoir’s floodgate, and we’ll turn the power on and show you.”
The courier stares at me. I guess it’s not his fault. But it’s not not his fault either. New Charity’s reservoir holds hostage the lifeblood of our hydroelectric power. And in all this time, not a single resident has been willing to admit their wrongdoing. We’ve sent diplomats to negotiate; crusaders have camped outside New Charity’s gates for years. It’s made no difference.
After the messenger has his drink, I point him toward a clean tank so he can fill a bucket of water for the horse, and I step back outside to look at her. She doesn’t have my dad’s brand on her, but she’s undoubtedly New Charity stock. She’s a good-sized mare, about sixteen hands, though she’s favoring her left front. “It’s okay, girl,” I say, running my thumb and forefinger down the tendon on the back of her leg. The horse lifts her hoof for me, revealing a big chunk of loose asphalt wedged in her frog. I use my keys to gently nudge it out.
I hear footsteps, but I don’t want to drop the horse’s foot too suddenly onto the concrete. “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” the messenger says, though his eyes stay on the bucket and don’t stray to me. “I was about to do the same thing myself. Roads around here aren’t quite like they used to be, I’d imagine.”
This guy isn’t willfully stupid, just the regular kind. “Yup,” I say. “Well, thanks for the message. Guess I’ll see you around.”
Or not, I add silently. I haul the lobby door open, and stomp my way up the stairs, shutting myself into my apartment. I put the envelope on the counter and stare at it. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
There is a quiet cough. I turn to see the child, dog, and Agnes, all neatly arranged upon the furniture of my living room, with Doc hovering at the window.
I close my eyes tight. Shit.
Doc is still affably pacing at the windowsill, watching the messenger mount up. “How did you know that rock was in the hoof? You never said you knew anything about horses.”
“I grew up on a ranch. I know about horses,” I say. “Happy?”
“Well, you know, Moxon’s got a stable started down in the industrial district if you . . .”
“Yeah, Doc. That’s what ballerinas do best: shovel manure.”
He looks at me earnestly. “Come on, Syd. I just meant that—”
“I know what you meant. But I’m not interested. I left all of that stuff behind when my mom and I left New Charity.”
“So what’s in the envelope?”
“Pretty sure it’s some more of that stuff I left behind.”
He sighs, exasperated. “So much pessimism in such a tiny package, Syd. You don’t know; it could be something great.”
Though it’s been a while since the mail was regular, for a large enough quantity of any valuable thing, messages can be sent to anyone at all. Whatever is in the envelope on the counter, someone has paid dearly to deliver the information inside. It is unlikely to be good news.
I see Doc and Agnes off and settle Mina into bed with Buster for a nap before returning my attention to the letter. Though the envelope remains sealed, I have managed to successfully open a bottle of last spring’s dandelion wine.
Something bad is in this letter. I don’t want to open it because I don’t want to feel anything about my life back then, back there. I keep it sealed away for a good reason—a Pandora’s box of emotions I don’t have the time or energy to sort through.
I take a fortifying slug of wine, and grab my pocketknife. Here goes nothing.
Dearest Syddie, the letter reads, the nickname signaling the missive is from my Uncle Pious. I am sorry to have been unable to deliver this news in person. I trust the Spirit has kept you in safety and peace over these past few years.
“Yup,” I mutter to myself, “all peaceful and safe here.”
Your father has passed away. I regret to say the Bishop is unable to delay funeral services, but we can have another, private memorial, if you’d like, when you arrive.
I lower myself onto the stool in my kitchen, numbness spreading through my limbs. I take a sip of dandelion wine, and another and another, but it does nothing to change the feeling that I’m both floating and sinking at the same time.
When you arrive, the letter says, and I’m not sure which disbelief is greater: that my dad is gone or that Pi expects me to come back.
I know I should go back. This is what people do. Good people, at least. What my dad should have done after my mom died.
Uncle Pious, my dad’s brother, called back and tried to mediate, even gave me the hard sell about returning to New Charity. I told him where he could shove his shit kickers, and not terribly long after that, the phones stopped working, and New Charity closed its gates to everyone but residents.
Pi sent a note, soon after: Don’t worry, Syddie. You’re protected. But it didn’t make sense until later, when word got round that those of us who’d been born in New Charity hadn’t really beaten the virus. Not one of us had ever contracted it in the first place.
I live with that guilt every day. Why my mother? Why Danny? Why the butcher and all my friends and colleagues at the Company? Why Mina’s family? Why not me?
I skim the rest of Uncle Pi’s letter over and over—
Syd, your father left the ranch in your name. After discussions with the Governor and the Bishop, they’ve agreed to waive the residency restriction so that you can return and reclaim whatever property of your father’s you might have use or want of. You could, of course, stay for an extended period—or permanently if you wish.
I know you two were not close after your departure, but he did love you in his way, a difficult one as it sometimes was. I think your coming back will assist you with a sense of closure you’ve perhaps always needed.
—before crumpling it into a ball and throwing it into the sink.
In these first few hours, my dad’s death is a lot of things. Hard is one of them. But mostly confusing. I’ve spent a lot of time hating him for not coming with us to the City. For not coming to be with me—even temporarily—after my mother died. I hate him, not for believing I’d be okay, but for not finding out for himself. He was the one protector I’d needed. That was his one goddamned paternal job. And now I won’t even have the chance to show him I’ve made it by myself, despite him. He’ll never admit he was wrong, or that I’ve done well. He’ll never tell me he’s sorry.
A wet nose on my arm shocks me from my self-pity. Buster studies me with his head cocked, wagging his long tail.
Mina limps in on her crutch. Her small, serious face is scrunched into concern. “Did you lose somebody?” she asks.
Buster leans into my leg. “Kind of,” I say. It’s getting dark and I need to light the candles and I need to go take care of dinner for Agnes and I need to do a thousand other things but I can’t seem to move.
“It will be okay,” Mina says. She works her way up onto the stool next to me, and, as if reading my mind, reaches for the lighter—one of hundreds Danny picked up on a night of gas-station capers—to light the candle in front of us.
“You know, when I was your age living in New Charity, my best friends’ mother could light candles with a snap of her finger.”
“Did your friends have magic, too?”
Despite myself, I smile. Not many people outside the walls of New Charity, save a child, would believe their magic was much more than folklore. “A different kind, but, yes.”
“Are they still your best friends?”
“No,” I say. “That was a long time ago.” Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I remember Danny asking a similar question all those years ago. Is the position still open?
I stare out the kitchen window. East. Where the messenger’s trail of dust still blooms under a darkening horizon. Why anyone would want to live over those godforsaken mountains, within a wall of seclusion, I’ll never know.
I want no part of New Charity—not even the part that saved me. But that doesn’t stop my iron heart from straining, inevitably, toward the magnet of the prairie.
CHAPTER TWO
Cas
On the day the quiet war came to New Charity, my brother and I were out checking fences.
I was high up in Windy’s saddle, looking out over the ridge, wondering if anyone on the west side of the wall beyond was looking my direction and if they, too, were marveling at the big and beautiful world the Spirit had given us.
This had once been sparse land, but our people had always inhabited this place, made do on the same dusty soil, aided by the four elemental magics. Mama’s and the Governor’s families had lived and died in New Charity before us. They built the wall around the town and renovated the Sanctuary in order to thank the Spirit of the land, the one that sanctified our crops and blew the breath into the prized New Charitan horses we raised, and took care of our town and the towns that spread across the prairie from coast to coast.
Five years ago, when the plague spread outside the wall and the sick sought shelter, New Charity was forced to close the gates for our own protection. And after, the Bishop called on the Spirit and it gave us the Blessing.
The people of New Charity offered up their magic to the Spirit, and the Bishop channeled that power to form a reservoir, one that purified the water and stopped the poisoned river from flowing to the City downstream. And afterwards, our own streams filled and middling crops grew tall as the Spirit blessed the land, too. The Spirit blessed the horses we rode and the stock we raised. Folks could graze their cattle on land that was once scrub. Future generations would no longer carry the old magics, but we were safe. And alive.
It was impossible to deny we were special to the Spirit. All we had to do was look out on the once-brown hills, now emerald with prairie grasses. The Governor, my father, said he wished his own father could see it.
That afternoon, I tried to take a picture in my head of all the wide, wild world. And that was when a vision started to come, bleeding inwards on the edge of my mind.
I’d barely had time to register the vision when Windy let out an alarmed whinny, bucked hard, and suddenly I was up close and personal with those grasses I’d been studying. I somersaulted from my saddle and landed facedown on the ground. Len, who’d more likely than not spooked Windy on purpose, clutched his stomach, shaking with laughter. “You should see your face!”
He cantered his stallion in a circle around us as I wiped away the tears on my cheeks—more from wind and hay fever than pain—and my fists came away muddy. “I don’t see what’s so funny about it.” I dusted my knees and elbows, picking a few small rocks from my palm. “My face’s the same as yours.”
Mama always said Len and I were mirror images, though I’d argue that at least for the first decade or so my twin always managed to acquire an extra layer of dirt. Regardless, we looked the same before, during, and after a vision. Probably before, during, and after being dumped by our horses, too.
My great-grandma—the Governor’s grandma—was the last prophetess in the Sanctuary, until Len and I came into our powers early. The famed two-for-one Acolytes of the Willis family. Also the only New Charitans not asked to sacrifice our gifts. Our responsibility was bigger. We searched the future with our Foresight for things to come—the bad and the good. We counseled the parishioners, tempering dashed hopes and offering glimpses of better tomorrows. We were beacons for their boats of dreams drifting in the sea of the unknown. We were capable and earnest in good news, sympathetic and kind when tidings were bad.
Which I guess was a good thing since I was a disaster at just about everything besides shoveling manure. I couldn’t have disappointed Mama more if I’d come out with three arms and a set of antlers.
I led Windy around in a tight circle a few times to calm her down, then mounted back up. Len began to hiccup.
“Serves you right.” I nudged Windy into a trot. “Last one to the barn mucks stalls!”
“No contest. Your mare’s eaten so many hay bales she’s practically the shape of one.”
“Are you calling my horse fat?”
“Hey, if the horseshoe fits.” He kicked his horse into a gallop.
Even though we shouldn’t have, Len and I let the horses run home, giddy on speed as the ridge
flattened into prairie. When their fetlocks collided with the warm sagebrush, it was what I imagined heaven smelled like—juniper and the warming soil of early summer.
It was the last time things were simple. After dinner we began inadvertently choosing sides in a battle our Foresight had not warned us of.
The quiet war came almost silently. But all the same, it came.
Our brother Troy was holding the gate to the pasture open for us as we slowed to a walk. “Surprise, surprise, another tie,” he said.
Len tipped his hat and let me through first, setting a heel in Windy’s side to see if he could make her throw me again.
“Jerk,” I muttered. But I stayed on.
“I’m suppposed to tell you to hurry and put the horses up, and get yourselves dressed. Mama says we’ve got guests for dinner.” Troy tapped the fence with his palm and turned toward the house.
“Great,” Len said flatly. “Company.”
“Maybe it’s Sheriff Jayne, and we can watch that vein pop out on Mama’s forehead. That hat, those pants—how plain, how vulgar,” I said, imitating Mama’s voice. I gathered my reins, but Len was already headed toward the barn, a black cloud descending between him and whatever plans he’d slated for the night.
After locating a jar of whiskey hidden between bales of hay, Len set to currying both horses, and I came behind with a brush, thankful it wasn’t hot enough for fly spray, Windy’s favorite time to kick anything within a ten-foot radius.
I looked out the half-height stall door leading to the pasture and squinted into the late afternoon sun to the west. Down the hill, past the little cluster of shops and the big Sanctuary building, a collection of folks and horses—even the medical clinic truck—milled about in front of the Turner Ranch house.
“Hey, Len,” I said, “that look right to you?”
Len set his jar of whiskey on top of the stall divider. “Wonder what’s going on?”
Cal Turner had been raising horses on his ranch alone since his wife and daughter had moved to the City so Syd could train professionally as a dancer. The plan had been for Cal to hand off the ranch to some hired men part-time so he could join them. But he never left. I can’t say I don’t understand his reticence—mountains of concrete over the velveteen hills of New Charity? Never in a million years.
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