by Greg Keyes
He thought that again and again, and tried not to think of anything else.
Finally he came to the remains of a camp fire, still smoldering slightly. After searching a fair area of scuffed up dirt and horse droppings, he found the trail they had come into camp on.
And no sign of Veronica.
He paced around the camp, feeling helpless. Had she escaped, somehow? Summoned a bunch of snakes or lizards or whatever? Or was she further back? What would they have done to her? Had they eaten her, for God’s sake? Because they surely weren’t completely human anymore.
“Damn it!” he muttered out loud. “Veronica!”
He called a few more times, but his only answer was silence.
He finally decided she must be further south, and was just starting that way when something whirred through the air and settled on his nose. He slapped at it reflexively, but it flew off and he ended up hitting his own face.
It came back, circling him. A dragonfly.
Which was weird. A dragonfly in the desert? That had to mean water was nearby, but he sure didn’t see any sign of it.
The dragonfly flew a couple of yards and lit on a bush. Then it flew back to him, circled once, and flitted back to the same bush.
Errol walked toward it. The insect flew once more, another few yards, and lit again. Experimentally, he followed it. Each time, it flew in the same direction.
“Okay,” Errol said. “I get it.”
He trotted after it, and it stopped landing. It led him up a sandy ridge, and on the top a found a pile of stones and dirt that looked very much like a grave. The dragonfly lit on the mound—and on a smaller mound of dead dragonflies.
“Oh, shit,” Errol said. He dropped to his knees and started digging. His big hands made decent progress; digging wasn’t the problem; it was what he was afraid he might find.
He got the hole down four feet, and still nothing, except that he realized they had used a natural crack in the sandstone and filled it up; as he dug, it got narrower, and it was already too narrow to lay a body out flat in. What if they chopped her up first?
At five feet he was having trouble getting into the hole to excavate. The crack was only about two feet wide now, and maybe five feet long.
Almost at the limits of what he could reach, his palm grazed over something that wasn’t dirt or stone; after a moment he realized it was buckskin. He dug on, more gently, and soon realized he was looking at the bottoms of her moccasin-clad feet.
“Oh, God,” he said. In seconds he had both feet sticking out of the soil. He pulled at them; they didn’t move. He continued digging as far as he could, which wasn’t much farther, not quite to her knees.
So they hadn’t cut her up. They had dropped her head-down into a stone straightjacket.
His shoulders wouldn’t fit any farther down the hole, so he did the only thing he could; he took hold of her ankles, braced his knees, and pulled.
She came up a little. He changed his position and tugged again, and then he was able to get his feet under him and give it all he had, hoping that he wouldn’t hurt her and that there was still something left to hurt.
As soon as her head cleared the dirt she started screaming, a terrifying sound like nothing he had ever heard from her—or anyone—ever before. Her eyes were open, and full of madness. There was little there he recognized, and she showed no signs of knowing who he was. He gathered her in his arms, but she fought, scratching and biting like a sack of wildcats. It hurt, but the damage was only superficial, and so he hung on, until after a time she quieted, and her shrieks became sobs.
“L—let me go,” she finally stammered, and he opened his arms. She stumbled back a few feet, staring at him.
“Errol,” she said.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Errol—they buried me, Errol.”
“I know,” he said.
She looked wildly around and when she saw the hole, pointed to it.
“Buried me,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Where are they?” she asked. “Are they here?”
“They’re about half a day further north,” he said. “I passed them on the way.”
She brushed at the dirt clinging in her hair.
“You came after me,” she said.
“I wish I had come sooner,” he said. “I should have followed you right away.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That would have been nice. But you came after me. Do you still think I tried to kill Dusk?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it?”
He took a step closer.
“You know,” he said, “at first I didn’t believe any of this was happening. And when I did, I just wanted to get through it, be done with it, get back to my normal life. But then I started thinking. It was my normal life that landed me in this mess. What do I go back to? Did you see anybody in that hospital room? Flowers? A get-well-soon card? Even my mom hardly comes by. I don’t like my friends, but I want them to like me. Aster’s right, I’m like a puppy. I pretend drinking myself sick is fun and I pretend talking about how freaking drunk and sick we got the other day is interesting conversation. I can act happy, but I never am. Mostly I’m angry. My normal life is what killed me, or almost did. If I get it back, it’ll kill me again. But with you guys—with you—and in this creepy Pinocchio body—I feel more myself. I feel more like the me I thought I was going to be when I was a kid. The Errol who believed he would become an astronomer and find a new galaxy, or maybe a paleontologist digging up pelycosaurs.”
“That’s nice, Errol,” she said. “Good for you.”
“Veronica, I couldn’t have said any of that to anybody back in Sowashee. Back there, I wanted to belong and never did. Here—I belong. And by here, I mean with you. With all of you, as dumb as that may seem. And I don’t want it to fall apart. And it feels like it is. Without you, it falls apart. I—uh—I fall apart.”
She stared at him for a long time, and finally smiled a little.
“I didn’t try to kill Dusk, Errol,” she said. “I’m jealous of her, sure. She’s strong and smart and beautiful and—alive. But I didn’t have anything to do with the snake. I can’t do much up here, where it’s so dry. Dragonflies were the best I could manage.”
“You knew I would come after you,” he said.
“It was the only hope I had, Errol. But you did. You did.”
He reached for her, but she leaned away.
“I’ve just been buried, Errol,” she said. “Face-first in a hole. You said a lot of nice stuff, but I have things on my mind. If you know what I mean. And I’m filthy. So don’t go grabbing at me.”
“Okay.”
She sighed and brushed a little more at her matted hair.
“I need a bath,” she said. “So what now?”
“Aster turned into a bird and found some sort of boat we can use to cross the sea.”
“Wow. A lot can happen while you’re buried.”
“She said she would wait as long as she could. I’d like to try to catch up. But at this point—whatever you want.”
“Well, there is one bright spot, anyway,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I remember who killed me.”
NINE
LIKE A GIRL WITH NO HEARTBEAT
Aster didn’t want company but Billy—who usually never pushed himself where he wasn’t wanted—seemed determined to ride beside her, even when she reined back or trotted ahead. Dusk, on the other hand, seemed to get the message and was way up front.
Partly, she was bothered by what Billy might be thinking, after she had kissed him and after the whole nude scene. She was afraid he was going to say something and she wasn’t sure what it was going to be or how she would respond. So she was surprised and relieved when he finally did speak, because neither topic seemed to be involved.
“You keep reining back,” he said.
“I just don’t feel like talking
, Billy. Not today.”
“I know,” he said. “But you keep slowing us down.”
“Did I miss something?” she said. “The part where I put you in charge? Because I don’t remember that.”
“You act like someone who is going the wrong direction,” he said.
That hit her in the belly, and for a minute or two she couldn’t say anything at all.
“If we had gone with him, he might have had a chance,” she finally said.
“Or we might have all died,” Billy said. “I understand. Your quest.”
“Yeah,” she said. “My quest.” She looked over at Billy.
She remembered her father, laughing, stroking her hair as they lunged through high seas on a silver ship. She remembered him holding her so tight, and crying, and not knowing why, but knowing he loved her. And she remembered losing him, a little at a time, until he hadn’t been able to recognize her face.
She sobbed and kicked her horse into motion.
They had only been traveling half an hour or so when Errol spotted the riders. They were off to the east, and though he couldn’t make out much about them, he knew who they were.
“They found my trail,” he said.
“They haven’t seen us,” she said. “They’re still going south.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Aster said the ship was west, so we’re maybe half a mile from my old trail. But when they get to camp—”
“They’ll see I’m not buried and come after us,” she said. “I get it.”
“We’ll still have a head start, but they have horses. Can you run?”
“Like a girl with no heartbeat,” she said.
So they ran as the sun drifted west and quietly set the horizon ablaze. They ran as the familiar stars appeared, more quickly than Errol was used to in the high, thin air.
On a talus slope, he slipped down to one knee, and it took a moment for him to get back up.
“You’re getting tired, Errol,” Veronica said. “How can that be?”
He started forward again, trying to find a good pace.
“I don’t know,” he said. “My body is changing, somehow.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that,” she said. “You’re getting softer. Some of your wires look more like veins now. Sometimes I think I hear you breathe. Maybe you’re going through some sort of puppet puberty.”
They jogged on a few more paces.
“Do you think it was that spell the Snatchwitch put on you?” Veronica asked. “Or something Hattie did when she took it off?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I did feel a little different after that. But the really noticeable stuff started when . . .” he trailed off, embarrassed.
But she got it. “Oh,” she said. “Really? You think my kiss broke the spell?”
“Not so much the kiss,” he said. “Remember how you asked me to imagine I had my body back? I think it might be tied up with that.”
“Yes, maybe that,” she said. “Or maybe true love’s kiss.” She laughed.
“I wonder,” she said, a few moments later. “If your puppet body comes alive—what happens to the other one, the one in a coma?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “Maybe Aster knows.”
But the thought worried him.
Near morning, the howling began. Errol was staggering by then, hardly able to keep his feet under him.
“How much further?” Veronica asked.
“I don’t know,” Errol said, “but I’m tired of running. I think there are only four of them.”
“Four dog-boys with guns,” she said. “We don’t have any weapons.”
“Look,” he said. “That last bluff we came up. Most of it is too steep to climb, especially with horses—there’s just that one slope, at least as far as I could see. I can hold them off.”
“With what?”
“Rocks.”
She blinked. “Oh. Rocks against guns. This should be fun.”
“I’ll be the one having the fun,” he said. “You’ll be off trying to find Aster and the rest.”
“The Devil I will, Errol Greyson,” she said. “I can throw a rock as well as you.”
“You can still run,” he pointed out. “I can’t. You’re our best hope.”
“You’re only even guessing about where Aster went,” she said. “She told you a day west, whatever that means. We’re probably ten miles off. If they’re even still waiting, if they haven’t sailed that ship off into the sunset.”
“Veronica . . .”
“Oh, hush,” she said. She brushed his forehead and then kissed him lightly on the lips.
“It was a good try, Errol,” she said. “A really decent rescue attempt.”
“We’re not done yet,” he said.
He and Veronica made piles of stones, separating them by size. He tossed a few, to get his range, and was pleasantly surprised by how far he could throw. Maybe they had a shot of this after all.
He also found a withered, dead tree with a nice heavy root mass, and lay that by as well.
Then there wasn’t much to do but watch them come.
When they were close enough, he hefted a rock and hurled it at the lead rider.
It missed him, but nearly hit the next guy. He took aim and let fly with another. That one went true, slamming the creature that had once been a boy with a sickening, fatal-sounding thud. He dropped from his saddle.
The other three took that as their cue to dismount. One took a shot at him, but the bullet glanced from the stone he and Veronica were using for cover. Errol kept throwing, feeling an odd calm settle over him. More shots rang out, but he ignored them. One of the dog-boys dodged violently to avoid a rock thrown by Veronica, moving directly into Errol’s next throw. He went down with a yelp.
The other two dropped to all fours and came bounding up the slope. Errol threw frantically, and hit one of them on the head, but he kept coming, moving much, much faster than Errol had anticipated. He didn’t throw his last rock, but used it to belt the creature in the chin.
That worked okay; he pitched back down the slope, but the other was leaping toward him, and he was still off-balance from the punch. He tried to get back around in time, but the dog-boy seized him with unreal strength and yanked him down the bluff. They tumbled, the both of them, head over heels.
He started up with the muzzle of a pistol in his face and for a moment felt paralyzed, his mind unable to register what was about to happen.
Then something flew down from above and sort of wrapped itself around the boy’s head—Veronica, who had hurled herself from the rock, a fall of over twenty feet. The pistol went off, but Errol didn’t feel anything.
He scrambled up. Veronica was clawing at the boy’s face. His pistol lay on the ground. Errol reached for it, but a loud report and shattering pain in his gut stopped him. Gasping on the promise of a scream, he saw the other three boys coming for them.
The boy on the ground threw Veronica clear. She came right back at him, but two more shots rang out and she fell over, darting Errol an agonized gaze. He heaved himself back to his feet, but a thunderbolt seemed to strike him in the knee. White light burned away his sight, and when it came back he saw Veronica was coming unsteadily back upright.
“Bitch doesn’t know when to stop,” one of the boys said.
“I’ll shoot out her Goddamn eyes. Maybe that’ll slow her up.” He lifted his gun.
Errol realized his hand was on one of the stones he’d thrown earlier. He closed his fingers on it and hurled it with everything he had in him. It hit the boy in the side of the jaw. Errol saw shards of teeth fly from his mouth.
Then he heard a gunshot. He winced involuntarily, but didn’t feel any new pain. Only two of the boys were standing now, and the others weren’t looking at him, but past him, where Billy was calmly taking another shot as Dusk charged down the slope wielding her gleaming sword. One of the boys set a bead on her, but a wind suddenly started; dust swept up around the feet of the dog boys and in the next instant a small tor
nado formed, lifting them bodily from the ground and hurling them like the hand of a giant, one to each direction of the compass.
The last of Errol’s strength left him. His face dropped into the dirt. He could still hear the sounds of the battle. It seemed to him it didn’t last much longer.
In the end, two of Jobe’s boys wouldn’t get up again, thanks to the edge of Dusk’s sword. The other two made it to their horses and rode off.
Errol and Veronica were a mess. Veronica had been shot several times. It wasn’t clear to Aster exactly what that meant, except for the damage to her leg, which prevented her from walking. Other than that, though, she seemed okay, if that was even a word that could be applied to her.
Errol’s injuries were worse and stranger. He’d taken a shotgun blast to the gut and a bullet to his knee. The damage to his torso shouldn’t have mattered—it was mostly a box to hang the limbs and head on. Or had been. But now that the breastplate was compromised Aster could see something inside she hadn’t put in him; a mass of gelatinous fiber. In places it had congealed, or tied itself in knots, almost as if it was trying to form organs. Where the bullets had torn it, a viscous yellow fluid oozed.
Other changes Aster knew she should have noticed earlier. Some of the wires that moved his limbs had actually somehow been enveloped by the outer layer of his “skin”, becoming more like actual tendons.
“Does it hurt?” she asked him.
“Jesus, yes,” he muttered.
“Try some of Shecky’s ointment,” Veronica suggested.
“I don’t know what’s happening here,” Aster said. “It might do more harm than good.”
“Just try a little,” Veronica insisted.
Reluctantly, Aster applied the salve. It hissed and fizzed a bit. Errol made an odd sound.
“Does that hurt more?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “It feels better.”
She treated all of the wounds. “You’re turn, Veronica,” she said.
“It won’t work on me,” the girl said. “I don’t like the smell of it.”
She was probably right, Aster reflected.
“Can you ride?” she asked.
“Yes,” Veronica said. She seemed uncharacteristically subdued, which Aster supposed was entirely reasonable.
