Flicker and Mist

by Mary G. Thompson

  The tents sat next to the cliffs above the roiling water. Grains of sand blew up and were suspended in the air. Back in New Heart City, there was a light in a window of the Deputy’s apartment, my window, and Porti was in the room. She lay on my bed, holding a book but not reading it, listening to a radio with a frown on her face. I could hear sounds from the radio, but I couldn’t understand the words.

  Our vision flashed back to the forest, and I saw the ground coming up to meet us. We fell as one.

  I was on the ground, and my head lay in Nolan’s solid hand. He lifted my head, his features normal and visible, the sky dark, the wind cold.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  I tried to speak but couldn’t.

  “Take it easy.”

  “That . . .”

  “I’ve never misted with anyone,” he said. “I had no idea that would happen.” The corners of his mouth turned down. His eyes crinkled; his brow compressed. “Tell me you aren’t going to pass out.”

  “No.” I pushed myself up. “No, I’m fine.” My vision blurred and then cleared. I was exhausted, but that was all. Nolan helped me sit against a tree.

  “I didn’t mean for you to see that,” he said.

  “What, the bit about you watching my hair as if it were a photobox film?” I tried to laugh, but barely a sound came out.

  “Yes, that. You can’t blame me for thinking about it. There aren’t a lot of Leftie girls our age.”

  “No, I guess not.” I wanted to sleep. But at the same time, I wanted to go back into that place where we were together, where everything was lighter and beautiful and seemed so clear. Nolan was right; it wasn’t bad.

  “If you break up with Caster Ripkin—​you know, if he doesn’t come to his senses and see—”

  “Stop,” I whispered.

  “My father doesn’t torture people,” he said.

  “Stop.”

  “I could throw you farther than he could.”

  I laughed.

  He said nothing.

  We sat there.

  “It didn’t feel bad,” I said. “It felt right. Misting. Being with you. Everything.” When I saw it from the outside, it had looked wrong, but from the inside, it had felt natural. It felt as right as riding, as if I were born to do it.

  “But?”

  “But I have to go back. Porti’s waiting for me. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Caster. But I’m not giving up on my life yet.”

  “Being with me—​us, I mean—​wouldn’t be giving up,” he said.

  “Yes, it would. You’re on the run, and you can’t go back. But they don’t know about me. If my parents get out and go to the Eye like my father thinks they can, I can go with them, or I can stay, because I’m not illegal, not as far as they know.”

  “You said it didn’t feel bad,” he said. “Do you want to give it up—​flickering, misting, everything about being you?”

  “I don’t know.” There was so much about being me that had nothing to do with flickering. Everything in my life before the Games.

  “Let’s go back, then,” he said. “I’ll be in the stables if you change your mind.” He boosted me onto Hoof in silence, and he wrapped his arms around me, and we flickered. I leaned back against him and felt his arms around me and tried not to think about any part of what I’d seen. I tried to let myself feel the ride and his arms and the heat of his breath over my shoulder, tried to pretend that this ride could go on forever and there would be no challenges ahead, no choices I couldn’t make.

  Twenty-Two

  AS I CLIMBED UP THE SHEET, MY HANDS AND LEGS felt odd in their solidity. I was as I had always been, but now I felt confined in my own skin. If I were to mist, I could float in through the window effortlessly. In the mist, I hadn’t felt the cold of the wind or the pounding of my headache, as I did now. In the mist, I would not now feel the breath in my lungs or the chafing of the sheet against my fingers. Yet the misting had left me exhausted.

  Caster’s face loomed behind the window curtain as he pulled me up. What would he think of me if he knew that now I could do something even stranger than flickering? If he was cold before, now he would turn away completely. I fell into the room, flickering in as I landed at Caster’s feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, holding out a hand to me. “It isn’t often that I drag ladies in through the window—​unfortunately.” His voice was strained and his smile forced. The joke fell flat.

  I took his hand and let him lift me. His hand was much smoother than Nolan’s, and it wasn’t cold. Caster had been inside, safe and warm all this time. He put a hand on my waist to steady me, then pulled it away. I had just flickered in front of him again. I wasn’t human.

  Porti stood behind him, rocking from one foot to the other. She twisted her closed mouth as she would do when she had something to say but was prevented by etiquette from speaking. I had seen that look often at official dinners and in the schoolroom.

  “How was the ride?” Caster asked, not quite looking at me. “You look windblown enough.”

  “It was nice to be with Hoof,” I said. But Hoof wasn’t the only one I had been with. Now that I was standing in front of Caster, it was impossible to deny that something had happened between Nolan and me that went beyond friendship. I hadn’t set out to do it, but I had, and it was something I had needed, something that had helped me understand myself as I never could have before. I recalled the feeling of Nolan’s arms mixing with mine, of our bodies swirling into the same space. I thought of his arms around me, how I had been glad of them.

  “Porti and I have been talking,” Caster said, taking a step back from me.

  “He has an idea,” Porti put in. She was nearly jumping with excitement.

  “A very good idea,” Caster said, smiling at her. Why could he not turn that smile to me?

  “An excellent, extremely good idea,” said Porti.

  “Tell me then, before it bursts from your bosom.” I tried to be funny, but my exhaustion was crushing me. I wished for nothing more than to collapse in my bed, to be able to think or, better, to be relieved of thought. I wished for Caster to leave, so I wouldn’t have to see the way he didn’t quite look at me.

  “It might get your parents out of jail,” said Porti.

  “What?” I sat down on the bed, tried to focus. I wanted more than anything to get my parents out of jail, but my head was pounding.

  “Well, who has this invisible man been targeting?” Caster asked.

  “Him,” Porti said. “He’s after Caster.”

  “Right?” said Caster. “I suppose it’s about my father. At times I wish he were a farmer.”

  “So the way to catch this man—” said Porti.

  “And clear your parents of all involvement—” said Caster.

  “Wait,” I said. “No.”

  “Yes!” said Porti. “It’s the perfect plan!”

  “I haven’t heard a plan yet,” I said. “All I’ve heard is that you want to use yourself as bait. Am I right, Caster?”

  “Of course you are, Miss Hailfast,” said Caster.

  “You can’t do that for me,” I said. “Or my parents, or for anyone. It’s not worth it.”

  “It’s not for you,” said Caster. “If I catch him, then he won’t kill me. I like that.”

  “So tell your father your idea,” I said. “He can set up the Guard to support you.”

  “Ah, but here’s where you and your Ability come in,” said Caster. “Something we can’t share with him.”

  “My . . .”

  “Because you can see him,” Porti put in.

  “True, but he can also see me,” I said.

  “Yes, but you’ll hide. You’ll have the advantage,” said Porti. “You’ll warn Caster.”

  “And then what?” I asked. “The man might have another dagger. He’ll be a Leftie, and that means he’ll be stronger than we are.”

  “Well, my father has the first dagger,” Caster said. “The only problem is g
etting it from him. By the Waters, he follows the law himself. He’ll have it locked up out of reach.”

  “There’s a good reason for the law,” I said. “People died. A lot of people.” I thought of my mother’s weapon, hidden away in her drawer. I could tell them about it, but then, if someone were hurt, it would be my fault. I would not only be caught and imprisoned; I would deserve the Waters’ Judgment.

  “Do you think we should let Caster sit and wait to be attacked again?” asked Porti. “And should he be defenseless? Surely it’s not a sin to fight a knife with a knife.”

  I looked away from her. She had a right to feel this way, but I didn’t like the idea. I didn’t want to see another dagger. A renegade Flickerkin had brought one to the city and had changed nothing about right and wrong.

  “We must cuff him with prezine,” I said. “That will keep him from flickering.”

  “But that doesn’t solve the problem of strength,” said Porti.

  “I suppose I can get a kitchen knife from the cook,” said Caster. “I’m strong enough to make use of it.”

  “No,” I said. “If he has a blade designed to kill . . .”

  I couldn’t let Caster walk into danger with only a dull kitchen knife. If it was between Caster and this murderer, I chose Caster. May the Waters forgive me, I thought.

  “Swear to keep another secret,” I said. “By the Waters, both of you.”

  “We swear,” said Porti.

  “By all the bath water in the city,” said Caster.

  “My mother has a dagger,” I said. “I can get it—​and prezine cuffs too.”

  They stared at me. For a second, I thought they were going to condemn my mother and me, perhaps run from the room, but then both broke into wide grins.

  “Then our plan will work,” said Caster.

  We spoke of it long into the night. By the time I finally fell into bed, my headache had destroyed my thoughts, a perverse blessing that allowed me to sleep rather than stew.

  In the morning, I woke after sleeping nearly fifteen hours to find Porti sitting in the room’s only chair with the radio to her ear. When she saw me awake, she turned up the sound.

  “What you said yesterday, about holding poor Mr. Staliamos, it touched me,” said Sky. “Can you tell the citizens what you’re doing to deal with what happened? Perhaps it would help them deal with their own loss.”

  “I pray for him,” said Caster. “I like to go to the fountain and pray to the Waters. Especially when night has fallen and there are few citizens about.” There was a fountain in the very center of the city, a place where citizens could worship the Waters without having to go outside the walls. It was not real ocean water, which was considered too holy to move, but fresh water from the Lower Scar River, the source of the city’s water for drinking and bathing.

  “I feel as if I have a direct line to the Waters when I’m there,” Caster went on. “Don’t we all?”

  “That’s wonderful,” said Sky. “Really wonderful. I suppose you go with your father?”

  “Oh, my father is busy,” said Caster. “He’s done what he can to speed Orphos’s journey and to keep us all safe.”

  Porti turned the radio off.

  I sat up groggily. “So the plan is in motion.”

  “The beginning of it,” she said.

  The next part was for the three of us to slip our guards, to convince each man that we were being watched by the others. Putting our confusing statements and conflicting plans in place took the better part of the afternoon. When it grew dark, we headed first to my apartment, which no one had entered since the day of the Games.

  The drawer with the dagger wasn’t locked; it didn’t need to be. The dagger didn’t sit in the drawer in full view, but was hidden in its case under a false bottom. I pressed the secret lever and slid the false floor back, and there was the box, exactly as I remembered. I unlocked it with my mother’s key—​she had not taken it with her—​and the dagger gleamed at me. Its handle was white wood. As I pulled it from its sheath, I felt the smoothness of it, the strangeness of this wood that was as pale as my mother, as different from the trees here at the bottom of the world as were the people. Or perhaps, wood was wood. I rolled the dagger between my hands.

  Its blade was probably five inches long. In the days of the war, or the “uprising,” daggers like this were used only by Flickerkin, because they were easy to hide in clothing. Plats had had swords then, swords that sliced pale people like my mother to bits.

  If I was caught with this, the Deputy and the Council would have no choice but to give me the dip. Even Caster risked severe punishment, though I doubted the Deputy would dip his own son. Caster was supposed to slip the dagger back to me so that I could hide it with my Ability. Perhaps I’m only strange and abhorrent when I’m not useful, I thought bitterly, sliding the dagger into the pocket of my riding jacket. I retrieved the cuffs from my father’s closet and carried them in their box, careful not to touch them and risk flickering in.

  I tried not to look at anything as I made my way back through the sitting room, past the empty couches and the silent radio and the dining table covered in dust. There was a photobox picture of my mother and my father and me on the far wall of the kitchen. I didn’t look at it. I slipped out the door and closed it behind me.

  At the end of the hall, Caster and Porti were waiting. He spoke into her ear as I approached, and he must have said something funny, because she put her head down and laughed. They looked perfect together, both tall and thin, angled and beautiful. No one would think that someone like Caster Ripkin would choose me over a girl like her, and now she was single. Perhaps I should let her have him and slip away into the forest, with the Leftie boy where I belonged.

  I slid up to Caster. “Here,” I whispered, passing the dagger and the box with the cuffs to him.

  He slid them under his jacket. “Brilliant, Myra.” He squeezed my waist quickly. The touch was as easy as if he could see me. No, I wasn’t going to slip away into the forest. Not when he might be getting used to seeing me like this—​or not seeing me. Even if it was only because I was useful, it was a change, a small beginning. As we headed for the fountain, I slipped my hand into his.

  He froze for a second, then squeezed my hand but let it go again. I couldn’t fault him; our plan was for me to zip ahead, to slip around the edges of the square and survey the scene, and then to hide myself while he prayed openly and foolishly alone. But I didn’t zip ahead as quickly as I was supposed to. Instead, I waited to hear what Caster and Porti would say.

  For a short while, they said nothing.

  “Not that you aren’t welcome,” said Caster, “but why did you stay last night? Is Member Solis still angry with you?”

  “Don’t tell Myra,” she said.

  “This can’t be good,” he said.

  “No, it isn’t. Member Solis says I’ve disgraced her. She hasn’t yet barred me from the apartment, but she’s made it clear that she expects me to leave. Her sponsorship was for a proven winner, she said.”

  “But you did win!”

  “And before, she claimed she would support me if I made the top three. It isn’t about whether I won or not. It’s about the hate I refuse to carry.”

  “Well, you can stay with us if you like. My father doesn’t have time to care.”

  “I can’t stay forever,” she said. “I’ll have to go back to the Head sometime.”

  I thought Caster would make a joke to try to cheer Porti up, or begin planning a scheme to sponsor her at University. But instead, he put his hands in his pockets and continued walking, hunched over a little.

  “Tell me something, Porti,” he said finally.

  “Yes?”

  “If you’d known the truth about Myra—​the whole truth—​would you still have done it, walked off the field?”

  “Yes,” she said. She didn’t tell him why she understood my situation so well. They walked on for a minute. “If you had known, would you have kissed her?” />
  “I don’t know,” he said.

  My heart ripped into pieces. Pinpricks rushed through me, and I was a hair’s breadth from flickering back in again. I should never have eavesdropped, but I couldn’t stop.

  “She’s the same person,” Porti said. “It wasn’t her visibility you liked, was it?”

  “What’s a person without a face?” he said. “I can’t see her eyes or her smile or . . .”

  “Or what?” Porti asked, giving half a smile. But Caster didn’t return it.

  “It isn’t about her feminine assets,” Caster said. “It was never about that. It was about a person I thought I knew, who was honest and had a simple way about her and yet was brilliant and athletic and competitive and had a life pulse. And now she’s something else, something I can’t even see most of the time.”

  Not most of the time, I thought. Only sometimes. I’m this way now because you asked me to be.

  “But you’ll give her a chance to prove that she’s the same, won’t you?” Porti asked. “Life is short and the Waters spiteful. They take what you have before you know you have it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Caster said.

  “Don’t be sorry, but don’t let love pass you by. Don’t be angry when you should be happy or judge when you could understand.”

  “You’re very wise, aren’t you, Miss Vale?” Caster said.

  “Now I am,” Porti said.

  They were approaching the fountain, and I couldn’t stay to hear more. I slipped ahead, muffling my footsteps as best I could. There were a couple of people in the square, ordinary citizens sitting on a bench, speaking in soft voices, defying the curfew. As I walked around the square, I saw no Flickerkin. The assassin wasn’t here yet. So I stationed myself in the agreed-upon spot, behind the hedge that surrounded the square, in a place where the bushes grew large and I could push my way in among them, making myself less visible even to Flickerkin eyes.

  They came into the square. Porti planted herself on an empty bench and bowed her head, pretending to be insensible to the world. Caster walked forward and stood in front of the fountain.