XII. The kiss

The weather failed to cooperate. January in Iowa—what had they expected? Bone-numbing day followed bone-numbing day. Food, fuel, water, electricity, the complex enterprise of keeping a city of seventy thousand souls running—the joy of victory had quickly been subsumed by more mundane concerns. For the time being the insurgency had assumed control, though Eustace, by his own admission, had no particular knack for the job. He felt overwhelmed by the volume of detail, and the hastily assembled provisional government, composed of appointed delegates from each of the lodges, did little to lighten his load; it was bloated and disorganized, half the room always squabbling with the other half, leaving Eustace to throw up his hands and make all the decisions anyway. A degree of docility among the population remained, but this wouldn’t last. There had been looting in the market before Eustace was able to secure it, and every day there were more stories of reprisals; many of the cols had tried to slip anonymously into the populace, but their faces were known. Without a justice system to try the ones who surrendered, or those who had been captured by the insurgency in advance of the mob, it was hard to know what to do with them. The detention center was bursting at the seams. Eustace had raised the possibility of retrofitting the Project—it was certainly secure enough and had the additional advantage of isolation—but this would take time and did nothing to address the problem of what to do with the prisoners when the population began to move south.

And everybody was freezing. Well, so be it, Peter thought. What was a little cold?

He had formed a close friendship with Eustace. Some of this was their shared bond as officers of the Expeditionary, but not all; they had discovered, as the days passed, that they possessed compatible temperaments. They decided that Peter should lead the advance team that would travel south to prepare Kerrville for the influx of refugees. Initially he’d objected; it didn’t seem right to be among the first to leave. But he was the logical choice, and in the end, Alicia sealed the case. Caleb is waiting for you, she reminded him. Go see to your boy.

The exodus itself would have to wait till spring. Assuming Kerrville could send enough vehicles and personnel, Eustace planned to move five thousand people at a time, the composition of each group determined by a lottery. The trip would be arduous—all but the very old and very young would have to walk—but with luck the Homeland would be empty within two years.

“Not everybody will want to go, you know,” Eustace said.

The two of them were seated in Eustace’s office, in the back room of the apothecary, warming themselves with cups of herbal tea. Most of the buildings in the market had been taken over by the provisional government to serve various functions. The latest project to occupy them was the tallying of a census. With all the redeyes’ records having been destroyed in the Dome, they had no idea who was who, or even how many people there were. Seventy thousand was the generally accepted number, but there was no way to know precisely unless they counted.

“Why wouldn’t they?”

Eustace shrugged. The left side of his head was still bandaged, giving his face a lopsided appearance, though balanced by his clouded eye. Sara had removed the last of Peter’s stitches the prior day; his chest and arms now bore a road map of long, pinkish scars. In private moments, Peter couldn’t stop touching them, amazed not only by the fact that he’d inflicted these wounds upon himself but also that, in the heat of the moment, he’d barely felt a thing.

“This is what they know. They’ve lived their entire lives here. But that’s not the whole reason. It’s good to right a wrong. I don’t know how many will feel that way once we start moving people south, but some will.”

“How will they manage?”

“I suppose how people always manage. Elections, the rough business of building a life.” He sipped his tea. “It’ll be messy. It might not work at all. But at least it will be theirs.”

Nina came in from the cold, stamping waffles of snow from her boots. “Jesus, it’s freezing out there,” she said.

Eustace offered her his cup. “Here, warm yourself up.”

She took it in her hands and sipped, then bent to kiss him quickly on the mouth. “Thank you, husband. You really need to shave.”

Eustace laughed. “With a face like mine? Who cares?”

That the two of them were a couple was, as Peter had learned, the worst-kept secret of the insurgency. One of the first things Eustace had done was issue an executive order permitting flatlanders to marry. In many instances this was a technicality; people had been paired up for years or even decades. But marriage had never possessed official sanction. The list of couples waiting to be married now ran to the hundreds, and Eustace had two justices of the peace operating night and day out of a storefront down the block. He and Nina had been among the first, as had Hollis and Sara.

“Good news,” Nina said. “I just came from the hospital.”

“And?”

“Two more babies were born this morning, both healthy. Mothers doing fine.”

“Well, how about that.” Eustace grinned at Peter. “See what I’m telling you? Even on the darkest night, my friend, life will have its way.”

Peter made his way down the hill, hunched against the wind. As a member of the executive staff he was permitted the use of a vehicle, but he preferred to walk. At the hospital he headed for Michael’s room. Power had been only partially restored, but the hospital had been one of the first buildings relit. He found Michael awake and sitting up. His right leg, encased in plaster from ankle to hip, was suspended from a sling at a forty-five-degree angle above the bed. It had been touch and go for a while, and Sara had thought he might lose the leg; but Michael was a fighter, and now, three weeks later, he was officially on the mend.

Lore was sitting by the bed, manipulating a pair of knitting needles. Eustace had put her to work as a foreman at the biodiesel plant, but any free moment found her back at the hospital, at Michael’s bedside.

“What are you making?” Peter asked her.

“Hell if I can say. It was supposed to be a sweater, but it’s coming out more like socks.”

“You should really stick to what you know,” Michael advised.

“Just you wait till you’re out of that cast, my friend. I’ll show you what I know. It’s nothing you’ll forget.” She looked at Peter, slyly smiling to make sure he got the joke. “Oh, I’m sorry, Peter. Got a little carried away. I guess I forgot you were there.”

He laughed. “It’s okay.”

She gave one of her needles a wave. “I just want to mention, in case our boy here takes a turn for the worse, I’ve always thought you had a very nice look to you. Plus, you’re a war hero. I’d be interested in anything you had to say, Lieutenant.”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

“Of that I have no doubt.” She dropped the yarn to her lap. “As it happens, my shift begins in thirty minutes, so I’ll leave you two to talk about me.” She rose, bagged her knitting, patted Michael on the arm, then thought better of it and kissed him on the top of his head. “Need anything before I go?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, Michael. You’re far from fine. You scared the living hell out of me is what you did.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Keep saying it, bub. One day I’ll believe you.” She kissed him again. “Gentlemen.”

When Lore was gone, Peter took her seat. “Sorry about that,” Michael said.

“I don’t know why you keep apologizing for her, Michael. You’re the luckiest guy on planet Earth, as far as I’m concerned.” He tipped his head toward the bed. “So how’s the leg really?”

“It hurts like hell. Nice of you to finally visit.”

“Sorry about that. Eustace is keeping me busy.”

“So how many have you found?”

Peter understood that Michael was asking about the other First Colonists. “The number we’re hearing is fifty-six. We’re still trying to track everyone down. So far we’ve found Jimmy’s daughters, Alice and Avery. Constance Chou, Russ Curtis, Penny Darrell. The Littles are going to take some time to sort out. Everybody’s spread all over the place.”

“Good news, I guess.” Michael stopped, leaving the rest unstated. So many others, gone.

“Hollis told me what you did,” Peter said.

Michael shrugged. He looked a little embarrassed, but proud, too. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

“You ever want a job in the Exped, you let me know. Assuming they’ll have me back. The next time we talk, I might be in the stockade.”

“Peter, be serious. They’ll probably make you a general for this. That or ask you to run for president.”

“Then you don’t know the Army like I do.” And yet, for just a moment, he thought: what if? “We’ll be leaving in a few days, you know.”

“So I figured. Don’t forget to bundle up. Say hello to Kerrville for me.”

“We’ll get you in the next trip, I promise.”

“I don’t know, hombre, the service here is pretty good. The place kind of agrees with me. Who’s going with you?”

“Sara and Hollis and Kate, but that’s obvious. Greer’s staying to help with the evacuation. Eustace is putting a team together.”

“What about Lish?”

“I’d ask her if I could find her. I’ve barely seen her at all. She’s been riding out on this horse of hers. She calls him Soldier. What she’s doing I have no idea.”

“I’m sorry you missed her. She came by this morning.”

“Lish was here?”

“Said she wanted to say hello.” Michael looked at him. “Why? Is that so strange?”

Peter frowned. “I guess not. How did she seem?”

“How do you think? Like Lish.”

“So there wasn’t anything different about her.”

“Not that I noticed. She wasn’t here very long. She said she was going to help Sara with the donations.”

As interim director of public health, Sara had discovered that the building that served as the hospital was, as she’d long suspected, a hospital in name only. There was almost no medical equipment, and no blood at all. With so many people injured in the siege, and babies being born and all the rest, she’d had a freezer brought over from the food-processing facility and had instituted a program of blood donation.

“Lish as a nurse,” Peter said, and shook his head at the irony. “I’d like to see that.”

What became of the redeyes themselves was never fully understood. Those that hadn’t been killed in the stadium had essentially ceased to exist. The only conclusion to be drawn, supported by Sara’s story about Lila, was that the destruction of the Dome, and the death of the man known as the Source, had caused a chain reaction similar to the one they’d seen in Babcock’s descendants on the mountain in Colorado. Those who’d witnessed it described it as a rapid aging, as if a hundred years of borrowed life were surrendered in just a few seconds—flesh shriveling, hair falling out in clumps, faces withering to the skull. The corpses they’d found, still dressed in their suits and ties, were nothing but piles of brown bones. They looked like they’d been dead for decades.

As the day of departure approached, Sara found herself working virtually around the clock. As word had spread in the flatland that actual medical care could now be had, more and more people had come in. The complaints varied from the common cold to malnutrition to the broad bodily failures of old age. A few seemed simply curious about what seeing a doctor would be like. Sara treated the ones she could, comforted those she could not. In the end, the two felt not so very different.

She left the hospital only to sleep, and sometimes eat, or else Hollis would bring meals to her, always with Kate in tow. They had been quartered in an apartment in the complex at the edge of downtown—a curious place, with wide, tinted windows that created a permanent evening light within. It felt a little eerie, knowing that the former occupants had been redeyes, but it was comfortable, with large beds made with soft linens and hot water and a working gas stove, on which Hollis concocted soups and stews of ingredients she didn’t want to know about but which were nonetheless delicious. They would eat together in the candlelit dark and then fall into bed, making love with quiet tenderness so as not to wake their daughter.

Tonight Sara decided to take a break; she was dead on her feet, and starving besides, and missed her family keenly. Her family: after all that had happened, how remarkable these two words were. They seemed the most miraculous in the history of human speech. When she had seen Hollis charging through the entrance of the Dome, her heart had instantly known what her eyes could not believe. Of course he had come for her; Hollis had moved heaven and earth, and here he was. How could it have been otherwise?

She made her way up the hill, past the toppled wreckage of the Dome—its charred timbers had smoldered for days—and through the old downtown. To move freely, without fear, still seemed a little unreal to her. Sara thought about stopping into the apothecary, to say hello to Eustace and whoever else was around, but her feet refused this impulse, which quickly passed. With anticipation lightening her step, she ascended the six flights to the apartment.

“Mummy!”

Hollis and Kate were sitting together on the floor, playing beans and cups. Before Sara could uncoil the scarf from her neck, the girl leapt to her feet and flew into her arms, a soft collision; Sara hoisted Kate to her waist to look her in the eye. She had never told Kate to address her by this name, not wanting to confuse her more than necessary, but this had turned out not to matter; the girl had simply done it. Having never had a father before, Kate had taken a little more time to adapt to Hollis’s role in her life, but then one day, about a week after the liberation, she had started to call him Daddy.

“Well, there you are,” Sara said happily. “How was your day? Did you do fun things with Daddy?”

The little girl reached toward Sara’s face, wrapped her nose with her fist, and made a show of snatching it from Sara’s face, popping it into her mouth, and pushing her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “I haf yur nose,” she said thickly.

“Now, give that back.”

Kate, beaming wildly, blond hair bouncing around her face, waggled her head with playful defiance. “Nuh-uh. It’s mine.”

Thus, the tickling, and laughter from all sides, and the theft of more bodily parts, and the eventual return of Sara’s nose to her face. By the time the struggle was over, Hollis had joined in. Cupping the back of Kate’s head, he kissed Sara quickly, his beard—warm, familiar, full of his scent—pressing like wool against her cheeks.

“Hungry?”

She smiled. “I could eat.”

Hollis dished her out a bowl; he and Kate had already had their dinner. He sat with her at the little table while she dug in. The meat, he confessed, could have been just about anything, but the carrots and potatoes were passable. Sara hardly cared; never had food tasted so good as it had the last few weeks. They talked about her patients, about Peter and Michael and the others, about Kerrville and what awaited there, about the trip south, now just a few days off. Hollis had initially suggested that they wait until spring, when the travel would be less arduous, but Sara would have none of it. Too much has happened here, she’d told him. I don’t know where home is, but let’s let it be Texas.

They washed the dishes, set them in the rack, and readied Kate for bed. Even as Sara drew the nightshirt over the little girl’s head, she was already half-asleep. They tucked her in and retreated to the living room.

“Do you really have to go back to the hospital?” Hollis asked.

Sara took her coat from the hook and wriggled her arms into the sleeves. “It’ll just be a few hours. Don’t wait up.” Though that was exactly what he’d do; Sara would have done the same. “Come here.”

She kissed him, lingering there. “I mean it. Go to bed.”

But as she put her hand on the knob, he stopped her.

“How did you know, Sara?”

She almost, but not quite, understood what he was asking. “How did I know what?”

“That it was her. That it was Kate.”

It was odd; Sara had never thought to ask herself this question. Nina had confirmed Kate’s identity in their clandestine meeting in the back room of the apothecary, but she needn’t have; there had never been a trace of doubt in Sara’s mind. It was more than the child’s physical resemblance that told her so; the knowledge had come from someplace deeper. Sara had looked at Kate and instantly understood that of all the children in the world, this one was hers.

“Call it a mother’s instincts. It was like… like knowing myself.” She shrugged. “I can’t explain it any better than that.”

“Still, we were lucky.”

Sara had never told him about the foil packet; nor would she ever. “I’m not sure if you can even call something like this luck,” she said. “All I know is we’re here.”

It was after midnight by the time she was finishing her rounds. Yawning into her fist, her mind already halfway home, Sara stepped into the last examining room, where a young woman was sitting on the table.

“Jenny?”

“Hi, Dani.”

Sara had to laugh—not only at the name, which seemed like something from a distant dream, but the girl’s presence itself. It wasn’t until she’d seen her that Sara had realized that she’d assumed Jenny was dead.

“What happened to you?”

She shrugged sheepishly. “I’m sorry I left. After what happened in the feedlot, I just panicked. One of the kitchen workers hid me in a flour barrel and got me out on one of the delivery trucks.”

Sara smiled to reassure her. “Well, I’m glad to see you. What seems to be the trouble?”

The girl hesitated. “I think I may be pregnant.”

Sara examined her. If she was, it was too early to tell. But being pregnant got you a spot in the first evacuation. She filled out the form and handed it to her.

“Take this to the census office and tell them I sent you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

The girl stared at the slip of paper in her hand. “Kerrville. I can’t believe it. I barely remember it.”

Sara had been filling out a duplicate evacuation order on her clipboard. Her pen paused in midair. “What did you say?”

“That I can’t believe it?”

“No, the other thing. About remembering.”

The girl shrugged. “I was born there. At least I think I was. I was pretty small when they took me.”

“Jenny, why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I did. I told the census taker.”

Flyers, how had they missed this?

“Well, I’m glad you told me. Somebody may be looking for you. What’s your last name?”

“I’m not really sure,” Jenny said, “but I think that it was Apgar.”

The day of departure arrived with a hard, bright dawn. The advance team gathered at the stadium: thirty men and women, six trucks, and two refuelers. Eustace and Nina had come to see them off, as well as Lore and Greer.

A small crowd had gathered, family and friends of those who would be departing. Sara and the others had already said goodbye to Michael the night before, at the hospital. Go on, he said, his face red, get out of here. How is a guy supposed to get his rest? But the card Kate had made for him proved his undoing. I Love Youe Unkle Michel, Get Whell. Aw, flyers, he said, get over here, and gripped the little girl tightly to his chest, tears rolling from his eyes.

The last supplies were loaded into the trucks; everybody climbed aboard. Peter would ride in the lead pickup, with Hollis; Kate and Sara were riding in one of the large transports at the rear. As Peter fired the ignition, Greer stepped to his window. In Peter’s absence, the major had agreed to serve in his stead as Eustace’s second-in-command and was now in charge of the evacuation.

“I don’t know where she is, Peter. I’m sorry.”

Had he been so obvious? Once again, Lish had left him standing at the altar. “I’m just worried about her. Something’s not right.”

“She went through a lot in that cell. I don’t think she’s told us even half of it. She’ll bounce back—she always does.”

There was nothing more to say on the subject. Nor on the other, which in the days since the uprising had hung over them with its unspoken weight of grief. The logical explanation was that Amy had been killed in the explosion, vaporized with the other virals, and yet part of him could not accept this. She felt like a ghost limb, an invisible part of him.

The two men shook hands. “Be careful okay?” Greer said. “You too, Hollis. It’s a different world out there, but you never know.”

Peter nodded. “All eyes, Major.”

Greer allowed himself a rare smile. “I confess I like the sound of that. Who knows? Maybe they’ll take me back, after all.”

The moment of parting was at hand. Peter ground the truck into gear; with a throb of heavy engines, the line of vehicles drew clear of the gate. In the rearview mirror, Peter watched as the buildings of the Homeland receded from view, fading into the winter whiteness.

“I’m sure she’s somewhere, Peter,” Hollis said.

Peter wondered whom he meant.

From her hiding place in the culvert, Alicia watched the convoy drive away. For many days she had lived this moment in advance, attempting to prepare herself. How would it feel? Even now she couldn’t say. Final, that was all. It felt final. The line of trucks cut a broad arc around the fences of the city and turned south. For a long time Alicia watched it, the image growing smaller, the sound of the engines dimming. She was still watching when it disappeared.

There was one thing left to do.

She’d taken the blood from the hospital, secreting the sloshing plastic pouch beneath her tunic when Sara’s back was turned. It had taken all her resolve not to clamp her jaws into it and bathe her face and mouth and tongue in its earthy richness. But when she’d thought of Peter, and Amy, and Michael, and all the others, she had found the strength to wait.

She had buried the pouch in the snow, marking the spot with a stone. Now she dug it free: a block of red ice, dense in her hand. Soldier was watching her from the edge of the culvert. Alicia would have told him to go, but of course he wouldn’t; they belonged to each other till the end. She built a fire of crackling scrub, melted snow in a pot, waited till the bubbles rose, and dipped the bag into the steaming water—as if, she thought, she were steeping tea. Gradually the contents softened to a slush. When the blood had thawed completely, Alicia removed the bag and lay in the snow, cradling its warmth against her chest. Within its plastic casing lay a destiny deferred. Since the day the viral had bitten her on the mountain, five years ago, the knowledge of her fate had lain inside her; now she would meet it. She would meet it, and die.

The morning sun was climbing into a cloudless winter sky. The sun. Alicia squinted her eyes against its brightness. The sun, she thought. My enemy, my friend, my last deliverance. It would sweep her away. It would scatter her ashes to the wind. Be quick now, Alicia said to the sun, but not too quick. I want to feel it coming out of me.

She raised the bag to her lips, pulled the tab, and drank.

* * *

By dusk the convoy had traveled sixty miles. The town was named Grinnell. They took shelter in an abandoned store at the edge of town that apparently had once sold shoes; boxes and boxes of them lined the racks. So, a place worth returning to, someday. They ate their rations, bedded down, and slept.

Or tried to. It wasn’t the cold—Peter was accustomed to that. He was simply too keyed up. The events in the stadium had been too enormous to process all at once; nearly a month later, he still found himself caught up in their emotions, his mind flashing restlessly with the images.

Peter pulled on his parka and boots and stepped outside. They’d posted a single guard, who was sitting in a metal folding chair they’d brought out from the store; Peter accepted the man’s rifle and sent him to bed. The moon was shining, the air like ice in his lungs. He stood in silence, drinking in the night’s stark clarity. For days after the uprising, Peter had tried to will himself into some emotion that would correspond to the magnitude of events—happiness or triumph or even just relief—but all he felt was lonely. He remembered Greer’s parting words: It’s a different world out there. It was, Peter knew that; yet it did not seem so. If anything, the world felt even more like itself. Here were the frozen fields, like a vast, becalmed sea; here was the immeasurable, starlit sky; here was the moon with its jaundiced, heavy-lidded gaze, like the answer to a question nobody had posed. Everything was just as it had been, and would go on being, long after all of them were gone, their names and memories and all they were ground like their bones into the dust of time and blown away.

A noise behind him: Sara stepped through the door, toting Kate on her hip. The girl’s eyes were open and looking about. Sara moved beside Peter, her boots crunching on the snow.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

She made a face of exasperation. “Believe me, I could. It’s my fault, I let her nap too long in the truck.”

“Hi, Peter,” the little girl said.

“Hi, sweetheart. Shouldn’t you be in bed? We’ve got another long day tomorrow, you know.”

She pressed her lips together. “Mm-mm.”

“See?” Sara said.

“Want me to take her for a while? I can, you know.”

“What, out here, you mean?”

Peter shrugged. “A little fresh air should fix her right up. And I could use the company.” When Sara didn’t answer, Peter said, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye. What do you say, Kate?”

“You’re sure about this?” Sara pressed.

“Sure I’m sure. What else am I going to do? The minute she gets sleepy, I’ll bring her inside.” He propped his rifle against the building and held out his arms. “Come on now, hand her over. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Sara acquiesced, shifting Kate from her waist to Peter’s. The little girl wrapped her legs around him, gripping the lapel of his parka to balance her weight.

Sara stood back a bit to regard the two of them. “I’ve got to say, this isn’t a version of you I’ve seen before.”

He felt himself smile. “Five years. A lot can change.”

“Well, it suits you.” A sudden yawn seized her. “Seriously, if she gets to be a bother …”

“She won’t. Now, will you go? Get some sleep.”

Sara left them alone. Peter lowered himself into the chair, shifted Kate to his lap, and turned her body toward the winter sky. “So what do you want to talk about?”

“I dunno.”

“Not tired at all?”

“Nope.”

“How about we count some stars?”

“That’s boring.” She shifted, making herself comfortable, then commanded: “Tell me a story.”

“A story. What kind?”

“A once-upon-a-time story.”

He wasn’t sure how, having never done this before. Yet as he considered the girl’s request, a rush of memories flowed through him: his days as a Little in the Sanctuary, sitting in circle with the other children, their legs folded under them; Teacher, her pale, moonlike face and the stories she told, of talking animals in waistcoats and skirts and kings in their castles and ships crossing the sea in search of treasure; the drowsy sensation of the words passing through him, carrying him away into distant worlds and times, as if he were leaving his own body. They were recollections of another life; they were so distant as to feel historical; yet sitting in the winter cold with Sara’s daughter on his lap, they did not seem apart from him. He felt a mantle pass and, with it, a twinge of regret: he’d never told Caleb a story.

“So.” He cleared his throat, stalling to assemble his thoughts. But the truth was, he had nothing; every story from his childhood had suddenly fled his mind. He’d simply have to wing it. “Let’s see—”

“It needs a girl in it,” Kate said, helpfully.

“So it does. I was just getting to that. So, once upon a time there was a little girl—”

“What did she look like?”

“Hmm. Well, she was very pretty. A lot like you, actually.”

“Was she a princess?”

“Are you going to let me tell this or not? But now that you mention it, she was. The most beautiful princess who ever lived. But the thing is, she didn’t know she was a princess. That’s the interesting part.”

Kate frowned bossily. “Why didn’t she know?”

Something clicked then; he felt the contours of a story emerging in his mind.

“That is a very excellent question. What happened was this. When she was very young, not much more than a baby, her parents, the king and queen, took her on a picnic in the royal forest. It was a sunny day, and the little girl, whose name was Princess …”

“Elizabeth.”

“Princess Elizabeth, saw a butterfly. An amazing butterfly. Her parents weren’t paying attention, and she followed the butterfly into the woods, trying to catch it. But the thing is, it wasn’t a butterfly. It was… a fairy queen.”

“Really?”

“It’s true. Now, the thing about fairies is, they don’t trust people. They pretty much keep to themselves, and that’s the way they like it. But the fairy queen was different. She’d always wanted a daughter. Fairies don’t have children of their own. It made her very sad not to have a little girl to take care of, and when she saw Princess Elizabeth, she was so moved by her beauty that she couldn’t help herself. She led the child away, deeper and deeper into the woods. Soon the little girl was lost and began to cry. The fairy queen landed on her nose, and brushed her tears away with her delicate wings, and said, ‘Don’t be sad. I’ll take care of you. You will be my little girl now.’ And she took her to the big hollow tree where she lived with all her fairy subjects, and gave her food to eat and a table to sit at and a little bed to sleep in, and before too long Princess Elizabeth had no memory of any other life, except her life among the fairies of the forest.”

Kate was nodding along. “What happened then?”

“Well, nothing. Not right away. For a while they were very happy together, the fairy queen especially. How wonderful it felt for her to have a little girl of her own. But as Elizabeth grew, she began to feel that something wasn’t right. Do you know what that was?”

“She wasn’t a fairy?”

“Exactly. Good for you, for figuring that out. She wasn’t a fairy, she was a little girl, and not so little anymore. Why am I so different? she wondered. And the taller she grew, the harder this was for the fairy queen to conceal. Why do my feet stick out from my bed, Elizabeth would ask her, and the fairy queen would say, Because beds are always small, that’s just how they are. Why is my table so tiny, Elizabeth asked, and the fairy queen said, I’m sorry, it’s not the table’s fault, you’ll just have to stop growing. Which, of course, she couldn’t do. She grew and grew, and soon she barely fit inside the tree anymore. All the other fairies complained. They were afraid she’d eat all their food and there’d be nothing left. They were afraid she’d accidentally squash them. Something had to be done, but the fairy queen refused. With me so far?”

Kate nodded, enthralled.

“Now, the king and queen, Elizabeth’s parents, had never stopped looking for her. They’d combed every inch of the forest, and all the lands of the kingdom besides. But the tree was very well hidden. Then one day they heard a rumor about a little girl living in the forest with the fairies. Could that be our daughter? they wondered. And they did the only thing they could think of. They ordered the royal woodsmen to cut down all the trees until they found the one with Elizabeth inside it.”

“ All of them?”

Peter nodded. “Every last one. Which was not a good idea. The woods were home not only to the fairies but to all kinds of animals and birds. But Elizabeth’s parents were so desperate, they would have done anything to get their daughter back. So the woodsmen got to work, chopping down the forest, while the king and queen rode out on their horses, calling her name. ‘Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Where are you?’ And you know what happened?”

“She heard them?”

“Yes, she did. Only the name Elizabeth didn’t mean anything to her anymore. She had a fairy name now, and had forgotten everything about her life. But the fairy queen knew what she was hearing, and she felt pretty awful about it. How could I have done this terrible thing? she thought. How could I have taken Elizabeth away? But still she couldn’t make herself fly out of the tree to tell Elizabeth’s parents where she was. She loved the girl too much, you see, to let her go. ‘Be very still,’ she said to Elizabeth. ‘Don’t make a sound.’ The woodsmen were coming closer and closer. Trees were falling everywhere. All the fairies were afraid. ‘Give her back,’ they said to the fairy queen, ‘please, give her back before they destroy the entire forest.’ ”

“Wow,” Kate gasped.

“I know. It’s a pretty scary story. Should I stop?”

“Uncle Peter, please. ”

He laughed. “All right, all right. So, the woodsmen came to the tree with Elizabeth and the fairies inside. It was an especially magnificent tree, tall and wide, with a big canopy of leaves. A fairy tree. But as one woodsman reared back with his axe, the king had a change of heart. The tree, you see, was just too beautiful to cut down. I’m sure the creatures of the forest care about this tree as much as I care about my daughter, he said. It wouldn’t be right to take it away from them, all because I’ve lost something I love. Everybody, put your axes down and go home and let me and my wife mourn for our daughter, who we will never see again. It was very sad. Everybody was in tears. Elizabeth’s parents, the woodsmen, even the fairy queen, who had heard every word. Because she knew that Elizabeth could never be her real daughter, no matter how hard she wished it. So she took her by the hand and led her out of the tree and said, ‘Your Majesties, please forgive me. It was I who took your daughter. I wanted a little girl of my own so much that I couldn’t help myself. But I know now that she belongs with you. I’m so very, very sorry.’ And you know what the king and queen said?”

“Off with your head?”

Peter stifled a laugh. “Just the opposite. Despite everything that had happened, they were so happy to have their daughter back, and so moved by the fairy queen’s remorse, that they decided to reward her. They issued a royal proclamation that the fairies should be left to live in peace, and that all children of the realm should have one special fairy friend. Which is why, to this day, only children can see them.”

Kate was silent a moment. “So that’s the end?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” He felt faintly embarrassed. “I haven’t really done this before. How’d I do?”

The girl considered this, then said, with a crisp nod, “I liked it. It was a good story. Tell me another.”

“I’m not sure I’ve got another one in me. Aren’t you tired yet?”

“ Please, Uncle Peter.”

The night was clear, the stars shining down. Everything was still, not a trace of movement or sound. Peter thought of Caleb, realizing with a power that startled him how much he missed the boy, how he longed to hold him in his arms. Alicia was right, and Tifty too. But most of all, Amy. He loves you, you know. The truth filled him like a breath of winter air. Peter would go home and learn to be a father.

“So, okay …”

He talked and talked. He told her every story he knew. By the time he was done, Kate was yawning; her body had gone slack in his arms. He unzipped his coat and swiveled her on his lap, pulling the flaps around her.

“Are you cold, sweetheart?”

Her voice was soft, half gone. “Nuh-uh.”

She nestled against him. Just another minute, Peter thought, and closed his eyes. Just another minute, and I’ll take her inside. He felt Kate’s warm breath on his neck; her chest moved gently against his own, rising and falling, like long waves on a beach. But a minute passed, and then another and another, and by that time Peter wasn’t going anywhere, because he was fast asleep.

In the lavatory of the apothecary shop, Lucius Greer was shaving.

The day, and most of the night besides, had disappeared under an avalanche of duties. A meeting of the Council of Lodges, during which Eustace had attempted first to reexplain and then once more justify the lottery procedure for evacuation; the tallying of census data, which had revealed numerous duplicate forms, some made in error, others with deliberate intent by individuals trying to increase their odds of being chosen; a brawl outside the detention center when a group of three cols, half-starved after weeks of hiding in an unused warehouse, had attempted to turn themselves in, only to be intercepted by the small crowd that kept vigil outside the building; nine weddings over which he’d been asked to officiate when one of the JPs had taken ill (all Lucius had to do was read four sentences off a card, yet it surprised him, how weighty it felt to say them aloud); the first official gathering of the evacuation support teams, and the partitioning of their responsibilities in preparation for the first departure; and on and on. A day of one thing and then another and another; Lucius couldn’t remember what or even if he’d eaten, he’d barely sat down all day, and yet here he was, past midnight, gazing at his grizzled, hirsute face in the mirror, holding a blade in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.

He began with the scissors. Snip by snip the wild torrent of his hair and beard fell away, their white leavings gathering on the floor by his feet like drifts of feathered snow. When this was done he warmed a pot of water, soaked a rag and wrung it out, and lay it over his face to soften the bristles that remained. He smeared his cheeks with soap, harsh and chemical-smelling, then went to work with the blade: first his cheeks, then the long arc of his neck, and finally his head, working backward from brow to crown to the base of his skull in short, measured strokes. The first time he had shaved himself in this manner, the night before he’d taken the oath of the Expeditionary, he had cut himself in about twenty places. It was commonly said that you didn’t need to look at the uniform to know a fresh recruit; all you had to do was look at his head. But with time and practice, Greer, like all of his fellows, had gotten the knack, and it pleased him to discover that he hadn’t lost his touch. He could have done it blindfolded in the dark if he had to, yet there was satisfaction to be had in observing a ritual that after so many years still possessed the power of a baptism. Scrape by scrape his visage was laid bare, and when the task was complete, Greer stepped back to examine his face in the mirror, running his hand over the cool pinkness of his rediscovered flesh and nodding with approval at the image he beheld.

He wiped himself down, cleaned and dried his blade, and put his supplies away. Many days had passed since he had properly slept, and still he was not the least bit tired. He drew on his parka and boots, let himself out the back, and made his way down the alley. It was nearly one A.M., not a soul about, yet from all around Greer sensed a kind of molecular restlessness, a subaural hum of life. He moved past the ruined Dome, down the hill, through the flatland to the stadium. By the time he arrived, the moon was down. He chose not to enter the structure, rather to stand in the absolute quiet and take it in whole, this blot of darkness against the starry sky. He wondered: Would history remember this place? Would the people of the future, whoever they were, give it a name, one worthy of the events that had transpired here, to record it for posterity? A hopeful thought, a bit premature, but one worth having. And Lucius Greer took a silent vow. Should such a future come to pass, should the final battle for earth’s dominion be taken in victory, he would be the one to put pen to paper, to give the story words.

He did not know when this battle would be. Amy had not told him that. Only that it would come.

He understood, then, what force had led him here. He was looking for a sign. What form this sign would take, he could not say. It might come now, it might come later, it might not come at all. Such was the burden of his faith. He opened his mind and waited. An interval of time moved by. The night, the stars, the living world; all passed through him, like a blessing.

Then:

Lucius. My friend. Hello.

And on this night of miraculous things, Peter, sitting outside the shoe store, awoke to the feeling that he was, in fact, not awake at all—that one dream had simply opened into the next, like a door behind a door. A dream in which he was sitting with Sara’s daughter in his arms at the edge of the snowy fields, all else being the same—the inky sky, the winter cold, the lateness of the hour—except for the fact that they were not alone.

But it was not a dream.

She crouched before him, in the manner of her kind. Her transformation was complete; even her raven mane was gone. Yet as their eyes met and held, the image wavered in his mind; it was not a viral he saw. It was a girl, and then a woman, and then both of these at once. She was Amy, the Girl from Nowhere; she was Amy of Souls, Last of the Twelve; she was only herself. Extending a hand toward him, Amy held her palm upright; Peter replied in kind. A force of pure longing surged in his heart as their fingers touched. It was a kind of kiss.

How long they stayed that way, Peter didn’t know. Between them, in the warm cocoon of his coat, Kate slept soundly, oblivious. Time had released its moorings; Peter and Amy drifted together in the current. Soon the child would awaken, or Sara would come, or Hollis, and Amy would be gone. She would lift away in a streak of starry light. Peter would return the sleeping child to her bed, and lie down himself, even attempt to sleep; and in the morning, in the gray winter dawn, they would stretch their bones and load up their gear and continue on their long road south. The moment would pass, like all things, into memory.

But not just yet.

EPILOGUE

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14