Blightborn (6 page)

An old man with skinny arms and matchstick legs but a fat, pig’s belly straining against the buttons on his gossamer shirt reaches in and grabs Gwennie’s hand—she tries to pull it away, but he locks the fingers of his left hand around her wrist and turns her hand palm up with his right.

“Such calluses!” he says. He touches the tips of her fingers with his own, light, moth-wing touches that show her how soft his hands are—and how hard hers are in contrast. “These hands speak of work. I practically smell the dust, the blood, the grinding donkeywork. How delightful.”

Gwennie finally wrenches her hand away from his.

All he does is laugh. “Such spirit! Sharp as a biting wind, this one.”

His eyes then drift over her. As if his lust is suddenly awakened by the rebellion of Gwennie pulling her wrist free.

“Yes, yes,” Annalise says, drawing Gwennie away. She hears the man calling after her, but Annalise mutters: “That was Harl Purgin, a second cousin of Ashland’s—a necessary if unpleasant stop. Onward!”

Thus begins the parade of people and questions:

A woman with a dainty pillbox hat and a sharp-angled pink suit studded with dangling black pearls asks: “Have you ever met a real hobo?”

A dark and dapper gent with a feathered fedora and the ends of his mustache twisted into ornate spirals: “How bad was it down there in the dust and the pollen? I bet being up here in the sky is a dream far greater than any you could’ve imagined, isn’t that right?”

A round, plump woman with eyes that call to mind the winking asterisk under a cat’s tail: “Have you ever”—and here she cannot contain her excitement, the fingers of her lacy gloves tickling the air—“killed someone? For food? For love?”

To all the questions, Gwennie stammers and stumbles, feeling pinned beneath an avalanche: “Ahhh, uhhh, well.” She buries real answers in all her fumbling before Annalise whisks her to the next group.

Another woman, this one not much older than Gwennie, saunters up, a sway in her matronly hips. She’s wearing an ivory dress that Gwennie first thinks is embroidered with flowers, but soon she realizes the flowers are moving, shifting, blooming, and dying right there on the fabric—a strange illusion she finds both beautiful and creepy.

The woman asks, “Do you have a boy down below? A young stallion champing at the bit to see you again? Or two young bucks? Or
three
?” The woman giggles and winks. Gwennie says, “I . . . had a boy but then I was Obligated to another.”

The woman gasps and clutches Gwennie’s hands in her own as the flowers along the dress sleeves bloom in simultaneity and die back to shriveled nubs. Gwennie wonders suddenly if they’re tied to the woman’s mood—would such a thing even be possible?

“Awwww,” the woman says. “Obligation! Unrequited love! Torn between two lovers. A heart in twain. The simple stuff of Heartland poetry.”

Roses bloom along the women’s heaving, fabric-clad bosom.

Then the woman kisses her on the cheek and is gone again in the crowd.

“Ah!” Annalise says. “Drinks.”

Gwennie whirls to meet another body—

This one entirely mechanical.

A tin man in a pinstriped vest and a bowler cap rolls up on a base of treaded, threaded wheels. An extensor arm makes a clumsy, mechanical flourish, and a steel jaw below the auto-mate’s black Bakelite mustache wobbles as it speaks: “
Would you two like a concoction?
”

Annalise looks to Gwennie. “Guest’s choice first.”

“I . . .” Gwennie wants a drink. But what? What can she even order? She thinks back to the bottles Boyland’s father, the mayor, had. “I’ll take a Jack Kenny whiskey?”

The auto-mate reaches into his own chest and withdraws a highball glass. The claw-hand at the end of the mechanic’s other
arm pops open on a hinge, and from it sprays amber liquid. Two perfectly spherical ice marbles rattle into the glass afterward. Gwennie takes the glass gingerly.

“No-no-no.” Annalise clucks and tuts, taking the glass back
out
of her hand and handing it off to a passing guest. “You’re not the whiskey type.”

“I’m not?”

Annalise turns to the auto-mate.

“I will have a Pegasus Neck. The young girl here will have a Tuxedo Tassel.” The auto-mate gets to making each drink in turn: sprays of bubbly tonic, pink liquid, red liquid, gold liquid. The mechanical even goes so far as to hum as it—he?—makes the concoctions. Annalise once more turns her gaze to Gwennie. “How are you enjoying the party?”

“It’s . . .” Something catches Gwennie’s eye. Over Annalise’s shoulder. A shock of dark hair, a set of familiar features. She feels Annalise’s gaze burning a pair of holes through her, so she lets the word trickle out of her mouth: “. . . fine.”

Annalise looks behind her, following Gwennie’s gaze.

She turns back around to study Gwennie’s face. “Do you see something, dear?”

“No, I—”

There.
There
. The crowd parts as a woman in an odd outfit of corn husks and leaves (headdress and all) steps away with a tall man in some kind of rubber suit held together with countless loops and buttons. A face emerges. Staring right at Gwennie.

Merelda McAvoy gives a tiny nod. Barely perceptible.

Cael’s sister. Is here.
On this flotilla
.

Gwennie’s mouth slackens. She feels it go but can’t seem to snap it shut.

Merelda merges with the crowd once more.

The auto-mate hands out both drinks.

Annalise reaches for hers. And while she’s distracted, Gwennie darts past her and hurries into the crowd after Merelda.

THREE BLIND MICE

THE HOBO, EBEN
, walks ahead of them, humming—or rather, mumbling—some song, some hymn. The sun is scalped, the top of it chopped off and left to lie atop the corn, the whole thing slowly sinking beneath the horizon as eventide creeps forth.

The three boys lag about twenty feet behind on the tracks.

“I don’t know if I like this,” Cael says, his voice low.

“You aren’t the judge and jury, you know,” Lane whispers.

“What?”

“You judge people, Cael. Just because this fella’s a hobo doesn’t mean anything except that
something
he did pissed in the Empyrean’s faces and they kicked him into the corn because of it.”

“It’s not
just
that he’s a hobo. He, he . . . he seems strange.”

Lane chuffs a mirthless laugh. “Strange that he rescued our friend, you mean, after the little dum-dum fell into the slurry?”

“Hey!” Rigo protests. “I’m right here.”

Lane offers a shrug.

“No, I mean—” Cael tries again but then gives up before he gets anywhere. He’s got no reason to worry . . . probably. “It’s fine. You’re right. I’m just being an asshole.”

“What else is new?” Lane says, and Cael’s about to start in again until he sees Lane’s mouth twist into a mischievous smile, and instead, he dead-arms his lanky friend with a couple of piston punches. “Ow! Dang.”

“Where’d you get Wheatley from anyway?” Cael asks.

“Heard the name before, knew it had to be a town around here somewhere—always heard it was about a week off from us by boat. I figure the hobo won’t think twice about it.”

“I think we can ask Eben for help,” Rigo says.

“Help with what?”

“Finding the Provisional Depot.”

“We already know where that is,” Cael says. “Follow the tracks in the direction we’re going, and we’ll be there.”

“But maybe there’s a better way. Or maybe he’s seen it and can tell us more about it. How many guards and what kind of fence and all that.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Cael chews on the inside of his cheek. He doesn’t want to give up too much, but help is help, and the hobo
did
save Rigo.

Just then the corn shudders somewhere off to their right. They all startle—three gasps in unison. Cael reaches instinctively for the slingshot in his back pocket despite having a rifle in his hand.

“Just a shuck rat, most likely,” the vagrant calls from ahead. He’s stopped and is standing there in the tracks, staring at them. Tapping his thumb against the loop-pole. “They make a lot of noise for such little creatures, don’t you think?”

They laugh it off. Awkwardly.

“We thought it might’ve been a Rover,” Rigo says, letting out a relieved breath.

“Rovers tend to travel in packs,” the vagrant says. “And they’re silent as a soft breeze, the Rovers. Creep up on you while you’re sleeping. Three of them at a time. The lead dog, he’ll come up around your head or your neck while the other two come at your sides. Then, like
that
”—he claps his hands loud—“they take you. The two monsters at your side bite deep, tearing holes in you so your guts spill out. The lead dog, well, all you’ll get to feel is his long, lean jaws crushing your skull like a boot grinding a cigarette into the plasto-sheen.” He sniffs. “Any of you want a smoke?”

Lane clears his throat, offers a hand and a waggle of fingers. “I’ll take one if you got it, mister.”

Eben pulls out a crooked little hand-rolled cigarette, hands it to Lane—then pulls a shiny silver pop-top lighter. He flicks it open, and on it Cael sees the sigil of the Pegasus: the Empyrean.

A hissing blue flame whispers from the lighter, and Eben waves it under the ditchweed cigarette. Lane draws in a breath and lets out two thin jets of smoke from his nose.

“That’s an Empyrean lighter,” Cael says.

The hobo turns and looks it up and down. “I suppose it is.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Must’ve fallen from the sky. C’mon, little mice, the road’s up ahead. Almost dark now, almost dark.”

The road is a crumbling, crooked thing beneath a pitted and pocked sheet of plasto-sheen. It comes off the tracks and cuts through the corn. By the time they get to it and begin heading down the strip of broken asphalt, night already has its claws in the Heartland, dragging it into the dark.

They pass a moldy, tilting wooden sign. The town name is rotted out, long gone from sight. A ghost town, then. Not like Martha’s Bend—not preserved and kept in a bubble. But rather abandoned. And left to fester like a carcass in the corn.

Ahead, the town sits, hollow, gutted, a series of half-collapsed shadows. Buildings with blown-out windows. Corners roughly rounded as if by the swipe of some mighty hammer.

“Welcome home,” Eben says.

In the street is a shape, a cylinder almost as tall as Rigo. The vagabond walks to it, picking up a piece of blowing trash as he does. He flicks the lighter open with a
tink
, conjuring the little blue flame. He tips it to the trash, and it ignites, a flare-up of ghostly fire.

Eben tosses the burning trash into the object.

It’s a barrel—a rusty drum that suddenly burns with fingers of fire, orange light through corroded holes. Heat pushes off it, aggressive, blistering; Cael has to take a step back. Rigo blinks. Lane basks.

Somewhere, not far away, the sound of a child crying rises up—a sad, hitching cry, plaintive at first but then more insistent,
more intense. It echoes over the empty street, and the boys give one another looks.

Cael can barely suppress a shudder.

The hobo harrumphs. “Sounds like Little Arthur’s awake.”

“Arthur,” Cael says. He thinks of Pop then. How could he not? “That’s a . . . good name.”

Rigo jumps in. “That’s Cael’s pop’s name. Arthur.”

The hobo rubs the back of his hand against his stubble—
scritch scratch scritch
. “Is it now? Huh. I gotta go feed him. Got a bottle of dog’s milk in my bag.” He turns, starts to head off.

“You need help?” Lane asks.

“No. You stay. Warm yourselves.”

“The . . . Rovers . . . ,” Rigo says.

“They won’t come near the fire.”

And then Eben stalks off toward one of the nearby buildings. Head slung low, shoulders slumped.

Soon he merges with the darkness and is gone.

“Lord and Lady,” Rigo says. “He’s got a little baby out here.”

“That’s messed up,” Lane says.

“That’s life in the Heartland,” Cael says. “Little Baby Arthur. Huh. I wonder what Pop’s up to.” Worry and fear chew at him. He hopes like anything that Pop is okay. Keeping Mom safe. Keeping himself safe, too.

“I’m sure he’s okay,” Rigo says.

Lane says, “It’s well-established by this point that your father is a bona fide secret badass, McAvoy. He’ll hold his own.”

“But he’s with my mom. She . . . she won’t travel well. All the stuff that happened that day is going to be on his head, not mine. Grey Franklin. Pally Varrin. The damn proctor’s eye.”

“Don’t forget the mayor,” Lane says. “Your daddy shot him dead.”

Cael rubs his eyes. He feels tired all of a sudden. Not just the tired that comes when the sun and the moon switch places but the kind of tired that he feels in his bones—like the rot and ruin all around him. And his skin itches, too—a hard itch, hot from the heat, dry from traveling through dust and pollen. His cheeks puff out as he exhales. “Is what it is, I guess. I just hope Pop and Mom—”

The child’s crying stops suddenly.

Rigo nods. “Somebody’s enjoying the bottle.”

“I think I want to enjoy the bottle, if you know what I mean,” Lane says. A scuff of shoe on cracked asphalt announces Eben’s return, and Lane calls over to him: “Hey, hobo, you got a bottle of anything around here?”