Huntress

Maggie stared, stricken. But the deal was done. Ellen offered a jar of pear preserves, a chunk of dried beef, a loaf of bread, and cheese. Maggie accepted without argument, and the men— after a brief hesitation—helped drag her bicycle over the barrier of fallen logs. Neither one looked her in the eye. Maggie did not want to be around them, either. She did not trust herself—not her memories, nothing. She wondered what else she had made herself forget.

Ellen did not invite Maggie into town. She left her to fetch the goods, riding away on a lean fast bicycle. Maggie waited uncomfortably with the two men, who sat with equal discomfort a short distance away, on top of the barrier. The crow perched in a tree above them, but she did not think they noticed.

“So, you’re psychic,” said the Asian man finally, looking sideways at her from his survey of the empty quiet road.

“No,” Maggie replied.

The redheaded man muttered, “Your town was hit, right? People taken? Not a good psychic if you didn’t see that.”

“I’m not psychic,” she said, wondering if she would have to use the sledgehammer, after all; or make a run for it. But neither man moved, or looked at her, and after a short time the Asian fellow slowly, haltingly, shared a tale of men and motorcycles. Dubois, it seemed, had lost four women and two young men. Some had families. Nothing had slowed the kidnappers; not rocks, not baseball bats, not knives. They had not played bait and snatch, but simply roared in on thunder and taken what was in front of them.

Maggie frowned. “Did you try to follow your people? To see where they were taken?”

“We tried,” said the redheaded man hesitantly, a flush staining his cheeks. “They were too fast. We had others to think about, in case there was a second attack.”

You gave your people up for dead, she thought, but hardly blamed them. Death had become common. It was survival that mattered. Maggie knew she was nuts to look for Trace. She knew, too, that she was cold-hearted for hardly thinking of anyone else who had been kidnapped—forgetting them, even. But she could not help everyone; couldn’t even help herself.

Silence, after that. The men did not even ask about Olo, which under other circumstances would have been odd. News from other places was rare. They watched the road and Maggie, and Maggie watched her feet and the crow. She was almost sick with tension by the time Ellen returned with the food.

Maggie turned down offers of a free bed, though her body ached for something soft to rest on and a hot meal. But the shark teeth were cold against her skin, and above her head the crow fluttered his wings. She packed up her toys and loaded her bicycle with food. She waved good-bye to the men, who acknowledged her only with a nod, and pushed her bicycle a short distance down the road, while Ellen walked by her side.

“Are any old city forests nearby?” asked Maggie, knowing full well the answer, but wanting to gauge the woman’s reaction.

The response was as Maggie expected. Even after twenty years, Ellen flinched, distaste and fear flickering in her eyes.

She was old enough to remember the bad times, and Maggie was suddenly glad she had been too little, too well protected in the distant countryside, to do more than learn from afar that her parents had died.

“Several days east of here, along the old freeway, if you’re on foot,” replied Ellen, a warning tone in her voice. “But I wouldn’t really know.”

Maggie nodded, and swung her leg over the bicycle. Ellen grabbed her arm. “Those men had another message. It was also meant for you.”

Maggie’s gut twisted painfully. “I’m surprised you’re letting me walk out of here, as much as I was mentioned.”

“I’ll get flak for it. But you’ll be gone, and folks trust me.”

Maggie shook her head. “What was it?”

Ellen hesitated, grim. “Don’t give up. That’s what he told us to pass on to you. Don’t give up if you want to find your teeth.”

A bad taste rose inside Maggie’s throat, and she swallowed the urge to spit on the road. Son of a bitch, her granddaddy would have said, and Maggie found herself mouthing the same words. Son of a bitch.

Ellen had not yet released her arm, and her fingers tightened. “You, girl. Do you know what you’re doing?”

“What I have to,” she said coldly.

“And can you still see the future?”

Of course not, Maggie almost replied, but in that moment her vision blurred, and images raced through her mind; a torrent of shadows shrouding petals, feathers, and chrome. She blinked once and saw Ellen sprawled facedown in snow. A brace of frozen rabbits hung from her belt. Her skin was blue. She was not moving.

The vision broke. Maggie blinked again, rubbing her burning eyes. When she looked at Ellen, the woman was too bright, the entire world shining, and she had to squint just to see.

“Girl,” said Ellen.

Maggie looked down at her hands, searching for words. “If it snows … don’t go out alone. Don’t check your lines. Stay home. Stay home if it snows, Ellen, even if you’re hungry.”

Ellen’s hand fell away. Maggie forced herself to look at the woman, and found her gaze hard and flinty. But Ellen tightened her mouth and nodded once, like she understood.

Maggie said good-bye and pedaled away.

FIVE

Near evening it began to rain, winds kicking up with wild strength. The crow had led Maggie to an abandoned farmhouse, sagging on its foundation some distance off the road.

“You’re sure no one’s in there?” she asked the bird, wiping rain from her face, hesitant to venture inside. Most of the window glass was gone, and an oak tree was growing through the porch.

Trust me, the crow replied, perched on the edge of her bicycle’s basket. We’re beyond humans now.

Maggie was still cautious, though. She kept one hand on the sledgehammer. Inside was dark, and a cursory examination revealed little that was useful. Most everything except the floorboards had been taken away, and she supposed that eventually those would go, too. Maggie would not have waited this long to harvest them. There was linoleum in the kitchen that would be worth a good trade, and the insulation behind the walls could be used in another home. The Formica countertops were still in place, but the cabinet doors had been taken. An old clock hung on the wall, tilted at an angle.

The crow sat with Maggie during dinner as she curled up on her blanket, eating with her fingers and tossing him bits of bread and pear. She was in the dining room, just outside the kitchen. The wallpaper was peeling. Her tool belt lay beside her head, but she had pulled the sledgehammer free. She did not read the message on the handle, though it was impossible not to notice. The words, so large and black, seemed to crawl like spider legs in the corner of her vision. When she lay down, resting her head in her arms, she turned away from the tool and faced the crow. He remained at the edge of her blanket, and stroked her hair with his beak.

“Why are you different?” she asked him softly, as the rain began drumming harder against the roof, and the winds howled. Shark teeth had spilled out from beneath the collar of her shirt, and the floor was cold beneath her blanket. When her fingertips brushed against the dark, scratched wood, she heard children laughing, and smelled sweet cake, freshly baked and warm.

I am me, replied the crow gently. Just as you are you. We were born this way.

“My parents were normal,” Maggie said. “I think.”

The crow flipped his wings. There would be no shame in it if they were not.

“And the men with their motorcycles?” Maggie peered into his dark glittering eyes. “What about them?”

He ducked his head, busying himself with an invisible crumb. She touched his wing and pushed gently. He hardly budged. Sturdy little bird. Maggie thought about the man in the creek—lean, brown, effortlessly wild—and stopped stroking the crow’s sleek back.

She imagined that he sighed, gently. They are not men. They are something older. Their kind existed before the humans died, existed while humans were in their infancy, but in secret. Always, in secret.

Maggie thought of Irdu’s cold kiss, and shivered. “What do they do with those people they take?”

They hurt them, said the crow.

She closed her eyes. “One was wearing Trace’s necklace. You think she’s dead?”

I think she is strong. I think there is time.

“He was also wearing feathers.”

The crow made a small throaty sound. She opened her eyes and found him staring at her, so intensely and with such sharp intelligence that she gave up thinking of him as a bird. Never again. He was only pretending, she thought. Wearing a mask.

Maggie mumbled, “Why are you really helping me?”

Lightning flickered outside, and thunder rumbled. The crow flinched, and hunched so deeply, his head almost disappeared within his ruffled feathers.

Someone was stolen from me, he whispered. Very long ago.

Maggie did not know what to say. Her hand inched close, but she did not touch him. She just waited, and closed her eyes. The crow, after a moment, pressed the side of his sleek, warm head against her fingers.

She was not certain who was comforting whom.

Silence was heavy. Maggie tried to relax, but her thoughts stumbled over Ellen, and then Trace. She thought of her granddaddy, too. Big strong man, always pale, with large freckled hands and silver hair that sometimes in the sunlight revealed glimpses of red. Carver Greene. Maggie had some of his red in her hair, passed down through her daddy—who had been a football star before the Big Death. “Professional ball-thrower” sounded kind of odd to her.

She tried to remember interacting with her mother, but that, as usual, was impossible. Maggie had pictures, but nothing else. She had been small, though very elegant and keenly dressed in suits and heels, which no one in their right mind would wear now, at least not in the Enclaves.

Her family. She had never questioned those bonds, and still did not. But she was different from other people—just a bit—and she wondered where that came from. Granddaddy had been eccentric, she thought, but not … odd. Not strange—as in telling the future, or hearing voices.

Maggie knew nothing about her parents, though. Or what they had known about her.

There’s more you’re not telling yourself, came the unbidden thought. More you can do. More you can become.

Maggie hoped not. She wanted nothing of it. Just her quiet normal life—fixing things, making toys for children. Playing with the relics of the past, and turning them into something new.

She was still thinking about that as she drifted off to sleep and began to dream, gently, at first. She stood in her workshop, staring out the barn door into the meadow where the morning light trickled, sledgehammer in hand, and the foundry fires burning. But the gate bells jangled, and dread filled her heart. Maggie, in her dream, turned—and found herself plunged into darkness.

Irdu floated like a single claw, surrounded by men, and she tumbled through shadows hiding pale faces, and bottomless mouths that swallowed her whole. She could not fight their hunger—not even to run and hide—and in her dream she squeezed shut her eyes. As if not looking at them would save her.

But it did not. Instead of seeing the men, Maggie saw herself—and her face was a mirror of their hunger, pale and haunted, and merciless. She scratched at her cheeks, and her nails were claws; and when she screamed, her voice merely groaned, an aching sound like the shifting grind of mountain stone.