Chris shrugged. “Maybe you’re due.”
“It’s because of Jameson and the baby, of course, but it’s also because of Rosa. We came here about two years ago, stumbling into town with nothing. She took us in like she does everyone.” A wistfulness touched her bright smile. “I know she has a lot riding on me coming through this birth in good shape. All of Valle could do with some good news.”
“Good news?”
“Well, a baby means new beginnings, right?”
Cringing, Chris wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into. The weight of a whole town’s hope seemed to ride on this sunny blonde, her unborn baby, and him. All he’d wanted to do was trade and move on. This felt . . . entangling. Personal. Parts of him that had been on the move for years were none too happy about the prospect. After two divorces and more time spent avoiding human company than seeking it out, he had no success with long-term commitments.
“Like I said,” he murmured, “I can’t make a promise other than to do my best. I need you to rest, but also keep a regular routine of exercise. Walk as much as you can to keep your muscles fit. You’ll need them.”
And frankly, that was all he could do. An ob-gyn from years past would have checked her urine, her blood pressure, her dilation. He had neither the equipment nor the expertise for any of that.
Some doctor.
But this eager woman didn’t need the burden of his doubts.
“I’ll do that, Chris. Do you mind if I call you Chris?”
He smiled, overcome. She had a personality like champagne bubbles. “Not at all.”
“And if you need anything, just let me know. Jameson is a really good hunter. He kills all the lizards I call.”
Chris blinked. “Excuse me?”
She rubbed her stomach again. “Isn’t it weird? All the inexplicable things. One morning I woke up and found a lizard sitting next to me on a rock. Jameson and I hadn’t eaten in days. He bagged it. We were desperate and ate it. After that . . . I could just think of a lizard and one would come running.”
“You’re serious.”
“Sure. I try not to anymore because we don’t need the meat and I don’t want to abuse the gift.” She shrugged as Chris tried to reconcile the weirdness of this sunny woman and her frank talk about calling lizards. And eating them.
But that was the Change. Chris could either accept the irrationality of it or go mad. He’d chosen the former a long time ago.
SEVEN
That afternoon Rosa worked in the garden. As with all chores, the townsfolk traded off the responsibility. That meant the men had their turns as well, but today Mica, Abigail, and Ingrid labored beside her, pulling weeds and harvesting produce. The needs of the community meant they didn’t have much opportunity to store food, instead eating fruits and vegetables as soon as they came ripe.
“What do you think of the new guy?” Mica asked, leaning on her hoe. She wasn’t pretty, but she had a bright, friendly personality. That made her good company by any definition.
Rosa didn’t answer, figuring the woman must be talking to Ingrid. But the rest of them stopped working and gazed at her, brows raised. For a moment Rosa pictured Chris Welsh. Her stomach muscles tightened. As a rule she didn’t rate men’s attractiveness, not even playfully, but if she did? He’d win.
“It’s too soon to say, but we could use some medical help, that’s for sure.”
Abigail nodded. “Especially with Tilly being near her time.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Mica went back to work, but her eyes glinted with mischief. “He’s pretty damn fine, even with that beard and a year’s worth of trail dust. Don’t you think?”
Somehow Rosa kept her expression noncommittal to avoid being teased. “He’s okay. More important, he looks strong enough to fight.”
“Is that all you ever think about?” Thankfully Mica let the subject rest and turned her attention to Ingrid. “So what’s the deal with you and Ex?”
The tall blonde shrugged. She’d hacked her hair down to a fingertip’s length from her skull. The resultant wild spikes suited her. She had a strong face rather than a beautiful one, and her arms were ropy with muscle. “I like him fine.”
“But you’re not looking at him to get you in the family way,” Abigail guessed.
Ingrid laughed. “God, no. And I can’t, even if I wanted to.”
The other women expressed sympathy, but Rosa remained silent. Her experience whispered that being barren might not be a bad thing. At least if the worst occurred, it was impossible to be stuck with your rapist’s child. Of course it also meant Ingrid would never hold a baby given to her in love, but maybe it was a safe trade.
Rosa let the familiar gossip wash over her: who was sleeping with whom, who wanted to, and who had been eating more than his share at dinner. Abigail excused herself to prepare enough buckwheat flour for the evening meal, and Mica went with her to help. Since the grinding was done by hand—a slow and time-consuming process—it was impossible to make more than necessary for one recipe, given that the bread supplied the whole community. Rosa sometimes worried that Abigail was too old to work so hard, but she knew how to bake and claimed to appreciate being useful. At least Mica showed some willingness to apprentice to her, so there would still be bread even after Abigail was gone.
Ingrid and Rosa finished in the garden and went to clean their shovels and tools. Though Ex could repair them and make more, they’d learned to be careful with their possessions. Sometimes a sturdy tool made the difference between life and death.
“Something eating you?” Rosa asked, sliding a rag up and down the metal.
Ingrid glanced at her in surprise, her mind returning from wherever it had gone. “Nothing I can put my finger on, but that new leader, Peltz, is bothering me.”
“In what way?”
“I feel like his strikes are more feints than a fully committed assault.”
“Like he’s testing our weaknesses?”
“Exactly.”
From Ingrid, Rosa took such words seriously. The tall, lean blonde had a martial bearing and knew krav maga, one of the most efficient, dangerous hand-to-hand fighting styles. Once, after having a bit to drink, Ingrid had confessed that her style had been practiced by the military of various provisional governments—particularly after the East Coast Fuel Wars that followed the Change. Rather than probe for salacious details, Rosa had merely asked for additional training to supplement the dirty street fighting she’d learned growing up. So if Ingrid felt that greater battles loomed on the horizon, Rosa would do well to listen to her warning.
She stacked their gardening implements in the storage shed. “Your recommendation?”
Ingrid shrugged. “We’ve already got patrols out, trying to locate their camp. But so far we’ve only found the remnants. Cold ashes. Garbage. For now, they’re staying one step ahead of us.”
“I’d love to know how,” Rosa muttered. “It’s not like they’re so well organized.”
“They weren’t before.”
“You think Peltz is that smart?”
Dios
, she hoped not.
“Hard to say, but he’s doing something right with the constant relocating. They’re always within striking distance, though, and that makes me nervous.”
“Agreed.”
She walked with Ingrid toward the
taberna
, mulling the problem. “Can you think of a way we could lay a trap?”
“Like how? Tie a naked woman to a rock?”
Rosa laughed despite herself. “
Cabrona
. Not what I had in mind.”
“Then no, not off the top of my head. I’ll keep thinking and let you know if I come up with anything.”
“Gracias.”
As Ingrid was about to go into the
taberna
, Rosa touched her arm. “
Oye
, I wanted to say something.”
“Can you tell me over a drink?”
“Claro.”
Inside was dim and cool. Between meals, only a few townsfolk lingered.
Qué bueno.
This wasn’t for anyone else’s ears, as Falco would shit kittens if he got wind of it. Rosa picked a table as Ingrid retrieved a couple of mugs of
tiswin
. No ice, but even lukewarm beer tasted good after working in the hot morning sun.
“What’s up, Rosa?”
Ingrid was the closest thing she had to a female friend. Though Rosa cared for the other girls, they had a softness she couldn’t understand. Ingrid was forged of familiar steel. This woman would fight tooth and nail until her last breath. Pale blue eyes shone with strength and courage.
“Falco’s been putting the pressure on lately. With the raider attacks getting worse and supplies running low . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know what the future holds. If anything
did
happen to me, I want you to step up. Don’t let him run Valle unchallenged.”
“You’re asking me to be your successor? Are you having premonitions or something?” It wasn’t a sarcastic question. Since the Change, Rosa had seen proof of weird powers cropping up. Tilly and Bee were the most prominent examples in town, while others claimed glimpses of the future. Learning of stronger magic wouldn’t surprise Rosa.
“I’m just trying to be prepared,” she said.
“I understand. And I promise I won’t let him go unchecked.”
“Gracias.”
Rosa tossed back her beer and rose. “I’m off to check with Bee on the status of the hives.”
“She’s still not talking, huh?”
“Not really. I don’t know if she can’t or if she just refuses to.”
“As long as she keeps us in honey, I guess we can’t complain.”
Rosa had long suspected that there was something supernatural about Bee’s ability to control her pets—and that she could send a horde of angry, stinging insects after anyone who pissed her off. That was part of why she didn’t insist on the woman taking a larger social role.
But once a week Rosa visited and brought supplies to exchange. Though Bee formally lived in the town limits, she was also the closest thing Valle had to an eccentric hermit. Most of the bravos whispered that the magic flowing through her veins had driven her mad.
She swung by the general store and with Wicker’s help put together a basket. The old man had mentioned Chris’s visit to the store that morning, making her all the more curious about what he had to trade. But that could wait until tomorrow. The walk toward the far edge of town gave her time to think about Ingrid’s concerns regarding the dust pirates. Rosa shared them, but other than constant patrols, she didn’t know how to find the bastards.
Peltz’s raids were starting to interfere with her ability to profit from the shipments that passed through Valle. That had to stop. Rosa’s men only preyed on those who refused to pay the toll for safe passage through her territory—territory Peltz often violated, not to mention attacks on the town itself. His disrespect made her livid.
Before she knew it, she stood outside Bee’s adobe house. The drone of insects was thick out here, buzzing all around until it became a throb in Rosa’s ears. That was, to be frank, a little unnerving.
Still she called, “I’m here with your trade goods.”
It took a while for the old woman to show herself. She presented an eccentric picture in her long coat, heavy glasses, and wild gray hair, knotted in an unlikely fashion atop her head. Rosa wasn’t sure just how old the woman was, anywhere from forty-five to sixty. And, as ever, bees crawled on her hands and arms, alit on her thin cheeks, and swarmed around her head. Rosa visited because nobody else wanted to, but also because each refusal to yield to her private urge to run away screaming made her a little stronger.
“Here you go,” she said, offering the basket.
The other woman peered over Rosa’s shoulder with blurry eyes, as if she saw something behind her. Rosa fought the urge to whirl and stare. She
had
during her first few visits, before figuring out that Bee didn’t live in the world she knew. At least, not exactly. Not wholly.
Bee claimed the supplies with long, dirty fingers and shuffled into her home. Where she kept the hives. The idea of them swarming around her food and drink, nesting in her hair, made Rosa a little light-headed.
Calm down. We need the honey.
At last the exchange was made—silently, like it always was. Rosa accepted the basket full of honey jars and stepped back so Bee could close the door. But she didn’t. Instead she hovered a moment, her gaze still fixed on the horizon. Rosa couldn’t resist the second urge to turn. When she did, she saw just what she’d expected. Nothing.
This time, though, Bee pointed. A hundred yellow-and-black-striped insects coated her thin arm. Then she spoke for the first time in all the years Rosa had known her, with a voice like rusty nails ground beneath a heavy file. “The shadow falls. Valle burns. Everything changes. The world is born again in fire.”
A chill rolled through Rosa. “What does that mean?”
But, try as she might, she couldn’t pry anything more out of Bee. Amid a swarm like a dark cloud, it took the full extent of Rosa’s self-control not to panic and slap at them. With the slow motions of a sleepwalker, the old woman returned to her home. All that remained of her eerie words was the buzzing of the bees.