Lily extracted the Pillar from its rucksack.
It still looked extraordinary—no longer cloudy but clear, with its luminescent central liquid and the mysterious white writing on its glasslike exterior.
“Do you recognize the writing?” Wizard asked her.
Lily peered at the Pillar closely…and her eyes widened.
She spun to face Wizard.
“It’s a variety of the Word of Thoth,” she said. “A very advanced variety, but it’s Thoth for sure.” She scanned the white writing closely.
After a minute she said, “It seems to be a mix of instructions, diagrams, and symbols grouped into formulas.”
“Knowledge…” Alby said.
“Exactly,” Wizard said. “The reward for successfully placing the First Pillar in the First Vertex. The other rewards are heat, sight, life, death, and power. Those formulae you see on this charged Pillar are some kind of secret knowledge being handed down to us from the builders of the Machine.”
Lily grabbed another sheet of paper, started copying down the writing on the Pillar. Then, joined by Alby, she began translating it.
Zoe came beside Wizard and nodded at the two children: “They’re holding up well.”
“Yes. It’s important to keep their spirits up, because this is going to get scary.”
“Scarier than the Rwandan genocide stories you’ve been telling them?”
Wizard went red. “Oh. Yes. Mmmm.”
“Doesn’t matter. Listen, I got something else that’s bothering me,” Zoe said.
“What?”
“You.”
“Me? What about me?” Wizard asked, confused.
Zoe was looking at him in a strange almost amused way. Then in answer she held up a toiletry bag, and extracted from it some scissors and a razor.
“Oh, no, Zoe…” Wizard protested weakly. “No…”
Ten minutes later, Wizard again sat with the children, only now he was beardless and his usually long shock of white hair had been shaved bald.
He looked completely different; thinner, more gangly.
“You look like a shorn sheep,” Lily giggled.
“I liked my beard,” he said sadly.
Lily tittered again.
“All right, Lily,” Zoe said, holding up the scissors. “Take a seat in the barber’s chair. Your turn.”
“My turn?” Lily’s face went white.
Five minutes later, she sat beside Wizard, head also bowed, with her own hair cut dramatically short, the pink tips long gone.
Now Wizard chuckled.
Alby did, too. “Lily, you look like a boy…”
“Shut up, Alby,” Lily grumbled.
“Sorry I had to do that, little one,” Zoe said, reaching around to grab her own hair. “Wanna cut mine for me?”
Lily did so, sadly snipping off the pink end tips from Zoe’s shoulder-length blond hair—undoing the work they had performed together in happier times. When she was done, Zoe looked like a short-haired punk rocker.
“Come on, it’s time we all got some sleep,” Zoe said. “Wizard, you have the first watch. I’ll take the late shift.”
With that they each found a space on the floor, and with Wizard standing guard at the back door, curled up to sleep inside the isolated Rwandan church, a place that stank of death.
LILY WOKE with a startled gasp to find a hand smothering her mouth.
It was Zoe.
“Stay still, we’re in trouble.”
With frightened eyes, Lily peered around her. They were still in the abandoned church. Near her, Alby was crouched on the floor, not daring to make a sound. Wizard was nowhere in sight. Through a dirty cracked window, Lily saw the dim blue glow of predawn—
A figure crossed the window.
A black man wearing camouflage fatigues, a helmet, and carrying a machete.
“They arrived a few minutes ago,” Zoe whispered.
