Everwild (4 page)

With the furnace blazing on the memory of coal, the steam engine headed south into a vast unknowable wild.

On a warm June afternoon, two finders came to a small-town diner that had burned down many years before. The living world had paved over the spot, and turned it into a parking lot for the bank next door, but in Everlost, the diner remained, its chrome siding shining in the afternoon sun. It was the only building in town that had crossed, and so had become a home to about a dozen Afterlights.

The finders, a boy and a girl, arrived riding a horse. This was unheard of. Well, not entirely unheard of. There were stories about one finder in particular who traveled on the only horse ever known to have crossed into Everlost—and it was said she did travel with a companion, although he never played into the stories much.

As the kids stepped out of the diner, they kept their distance, wanting to, but also afraid to believe that this could be the finder of legend. The cluster of Afterlights were young—and the oldest girl from the diner (who, not surprisingly called herself “Dinah”) was their leader. She was ten when she had died, and the thing she remembered about
herself more than anything else was that she had long, luxurious hair—so now it trailed behind her like a smooth amber bridal train.

It had been a while since finders had come to town, and their arrival always began with hope, and ended with disappointment. Finders were endlessly searching out objects that crossed into Everlost, bartering and trading the items they found for things of greater value. But nothing much crossed here. The finders usually left with a sneer and didn't come back.

“Sorry,” Dinah said to the two, as they got off their horse. “We don't have much to trade. Just this.” And she held out a shoelace.

The boy laughed. “The lace crossed, but not the shoe that went with it?”

Dinah shrugged. She expected this reaction. “It's what we've got. If you want it, then give us something in return. If not, then leave.” She looked over at the girl, daring to ask what the younger kids in her care were too afraid to ask. “You have a name?”

The girl smiled. “If you want my name, it'll cost you a shoelace.”

Dinah pulled the shoelace back, shoving it in her pocket. “A name's not even worth that much here. It's probably made up anyway, like everyone else's.”

The girl finder grinned again. “I think I have something to trade for the lace.” Then she reached into a saddlebag and pulled out a shimmering ornament that said
Baby's first Christmas.

All the younger kids oohed and ahhed, but Dinah kept
her stony expression. “That's worth more than a shoelace. And finders don't just give things away.”

“Consider it a gift of good will,” the girl said, “from Allie the Outcast.”

This was the moment Allie loved most. The gasps, and the expressions on their faces. Some would believe she was who she claimed to be, others would have their doubts, but by the time she left, they would all believe—because it was true, and she liked to believe that truth did make itself clear in the end.

The young Afterlights, who had been so standoffish just a moment ago, now crowded around her, bombarding her with questions.

“You're Allie the Outcast?”

“Is it true you can skinjack?”

“Is it true you spit in the face of the Sky Witch?”

“Is it true you charmed the McGill like a snake?”

She glanced at Mikey, who was not at all amused.

“I admit nothing,” Allie said with a smirk, which just made them believe it all the more.

Dinah, however was only partially convinced. “All right, if you are who you say you are, then let's see you skinjack.” The kids all voiced their nervous approval of the suggestion. “Go on—there's plenty of
fleshies
around.” Allie looked around them, and sure enough the moving blurs of the living swept by them on the street, so easy to tune out when one wasn't looking.

“I'm not a circus act,” Allie said sternly. “I don't perform on command.”

Dinah backed off, then turned her eyes to the other half of the team. “So if she's Allie the Outcast, who are you?”

“My name's Mikey.”

Dinah laughed. “Not much of a name for a finder.”

“Fine,” he said, clenching his fists by his side. “Then I'm the McGill.”

But that just made all the other kids laugh too, and Mikey, who had a low threshold when it came to being mocked, stormed away.

Allie still held the ornament out to Dinah, but she didn't accept it. A small boy that had been hiding in Dinah's long trailing hair peered out.

“Please, Dinah … can't we keep it?” But Dinah shushed him.

“Do other finders come this way?” Allie asked.

Dinah paused purposefully before answering, perhaps to make it clear that she was in control of the conversation. “Sometimes.”

“Well, I'll give you this ornament,” Allie said, “if you promise to save all your really good finds for me.”

“We promise, Allie,” all the little kids said. “We promise.” Dinah nodded, reluctantly giving in to the wishes of the others, and took the ornament from Allie.

“You also have to promise one more thing.”

Dinah's face hardened. Allie could tell by that look on her face that although she appeared to be no older than ten, she was an old, old soul. “What do I have to promise?”

“That if Mary the Sky Witch ever darkens the sky with her great balloon, you'll hide, and you won't let her take you away.”

The kids all looked to Dinah for guidance. “Then who will protect us from the Chocolate Ogre?” Dinah asked. “Who will protect us from the McGill?”

“It looks like you've done a pretty good job yourself,” Allie told her. “And besides, there's no reason to fear the McGill or the Chocolate Ogre. Mary's the one you need to worry about.”

They all nodded but seemed unconvinced—after all
she
was the Outcast. No matter how starstruck they might be, Allie's advice was suspect.

Dinah gave the ornament to one of the other children. “Hang it on the coatrack,” she told him. “It's the closest thing we have to a Christmas tree.” Then she turned back to Allie. “We'll keep our promise; we'll save the best finds for you.”

It was a satisfactory business deal. She had won the loyalty of many groups of Afterlights. No—not groups—
vapors,
she thought, with a bitter little shake of the head. In one of Mary's annoying little etiquette books, she had insisted that a gathering of Afterlights was properly referred to as “a vapor.” A flock of birds, a gaggle of geese, and a vapor of Afterlights. It irritated Allie no end that Mary so effectively determined the language they all used. Allie wouldn't have been surprised if Mary herself had coined the name “Everlost.”

Allie found Mikey a street away, stomping on a huge lawn, watching the ripples it created in the living world. He seemed embarrassed to be caught doing something so childlike. Allie tried to hide her smile, because she knew it would embarrass him even more.

“Are we done here?” Mikey asked.

“Yes. Where to next?” Allie made room for him on the horse—letting him ride in front of her, holding the reins. In so many other ways he had taken a backseat to her, the least she could do was allow him the dignity of deciding where their travels would take them.

“I have an idea where we should go,” Mikey said. “It's not too far from here.”

Allie had learned that being a finder was mostly about luck, and keen skills of observation. Some finders were hearse-chasers. That is to say, they lingered around the dying, hoping they might drop something in Everlost while crossing to the other side. But the best finds were always made quite by accident, and the best trades were made by being shrewd but honest. Even now the horse's makeshift saddlebag was full of crossed items—a crystal doorknob, an empty picture frame, a well-worn teddy bear. In Everlost all these things were treasures.

But locating and trading crossed objects was only part of a finder's job. Their real mystique came from their stories— because while most Afterlights stayed put, finders traveled. They saw more, heard more than others, and spread the tales wherever they went. This is exactly the reason why Allie had decided to become one. When Allie first arrived in Everlost, she had heard tales of monsters and miracles, terror and salvation—but now she had some measure of control over the tales being told. She could spread the word that Mary was the real monster of Everlost and try to set people straight about Nick.

A chocolate ogre? Hah! Nick didn't have an ogreish bone in his body, so to speak. The problem was, Mary was
far better at spreading her misinformation. It was much easier for other Afterlights to believe that beauty and virtue went hand in hand.

However, tales of Allie the Outcast were being spread far and wide too. Not all of them were true, of course, but she was developing quite a reputation as Everlost's loose cannon. That got her a certain amount of respect. She could grow used to that.

In fact, she already had.

Cape May: population 4034 in winter, and at least ten times that in the summer. It's the farthest south you can go in New Jersey. Everything after that is water.

Allie stood in front of the town's quaint
WELCOME
sign, frozen by the sight of it.

“You're sinking,” said Mikey, who was still on the horse. Shiloh the horse, having grown accustomed to the strange texture of the living world, kept pulling its hooves out of the ground with a sucking sound, as if it were slowly prancing in place. Allie on the other hand, was already in the ground to her knees.

She reached up, and Mikey helped her out of the ground. “That's it, isn't it?” Mikey asked. “Cape May? I remember you said you lived in Cape May.”

“Yes.” With all their wanderings, Allie had lost her sense of direction. She had no idea they were this close to her home.

“It's what you wanted, isn't it? To go home?”

“Yes … from the very beginning.”

Mikey hopped off the horse and stood beside her. “Back
on my ship, I used to watch you look out to shore. You had such a longing to go home. You don't know how close I came to taking you there, even then.”

Allie smirked. “And you called yourself a monster.”

Mikey was suitably insulted. “I was an excellent monster! The one true monster of Everlost!”

“‘Hear your name and tremble.' “

Mikey looked away. “No one trembles anymore.”

Allie was mad at herself for mocking him. He didn't deserve that. She touched his face gently. To look at him now, you'd never guess that the fair skinned, blue-eyed boy was once the terrifying McGill, but every once in a while Allie could still see a bit of the beast in him. It was there in the shortness of his temper, and the clumsiness of his hands, as if they were still claws. It was there in the way he approached the world—as if it still owed him something. Yes, the monster still lingered there inside him, but his face was that of a boy, attractive by any standards, if somewhat doleful.

“I like you much better this way.”

“Why should I care?” But he smiled, because he
did
care and they both knew it.

“You must teach me to be human again,”
he had told her, when he first lost his monstrous form. Since then, she had done everything in her power to do so. It was in small moments like these that she caught glimpses of his successful steps back from being a monster. How long ago had that been? As is the way in Everlost, the days had blended until there was no telling. Weeks? Months? Years? Certainly not years!

“So,” he asked, “does bringing you home make me more human?”

“Yes, it does.”

Even his selflessness was wrapped in self-interest. It would have bothered her, but she knew that he would have done this for her anyway, even if it had no benefit for him. It made him different from his sister, for while Mary pretended to serve others, deep down she was serving no one but herself.

“Just remember—I can't help you if you sink,” Mikey said. “You know how it is when you go home—you'll be sinking too fast for me to ever catch you.”

“I know.” She was well aware of the dangers of going home—not just because of Mary's
Everlost-for-idiots
warnings, but because of Mikey's firsthand account.

Home, he had told her, had a certain gravity to an Afterlight. The ground becomes more and more like quicksand the closer to home one gets. Mikey had told Allie how he and his sister had gone home more than a hundred years ago, shortly after they died. The moment he saw how life had gone on without them, Mikey sunk into the ground in a matter of seconds. Mary had been lucky—somehow she had avoided his fate. She never had to endure that long, slow journey down to the center of the earth.

Mikey, however, had discovered a skill—perhaps the rarest of all Everlost skills. His will was so great that he could force change upon himself—his hands turned to claws, tugging at the earth around him. His memory of flesh was replaced by a full body scar, thick as leather and as pocked as the surface of the moon. He made himself a monster, and
as a monster he could rise, fighting the relentless pull of gravity year after year, until the day he broke surface.

But that was all over now. He was Mikey again, and he was slowly growing used to his old self, just as Allie was growing accustomed to Everlost.

Yet through all of their travels, in the back of her mind, Allie knew she had business left undone. Going home had been so important to her when she had first arrived here. But somewhere along the line, it became something best saved for tomorrow, and then the tomorrow after that—but unlike other Afterlights, she did not forget her life on Earth. She did not forget her family, she did not forget her name.