There was Bull Morgan, sprawled on his face in the shadowy rail yard. A thin, dark trickle of blood ran down his temple. My stomach clenched, and Jack, who had leaned close to look, cussed softly.
Some vigilantes came around the corner of a boxcar and saw Morgan lying there. They rushed forward and rolled him over. They listened to his chest; they slapped his face and shouted. One of them ran away, probably to get help.
Morgan didn’t move.
Slowly, though, the light around the vigilantes and the railroad bull began to brighten. The men didn’t react. They just kept shouting and slapping Morgan. The light was almost as bright as day now, and it coalesced into a ring of candle flames, each as tall as a human being and as white as snow. The candle flames changed, flickering and becoming… people.
They were beautiful beyond words, beautiful beyond understanding. So beautiful, I wanted to tear out my heart and hand it over, because after seeing them, I surely wouldn’t have any more use for it.
They spread wings of pure light over Morgan’s body. He groaned, long and low.
“Then live, Samuel Morgan,” said one of the shining, beautiful people. “Live, thou good and faithful servant.”
“Thy labors are not yet finished,” said another.
“Rise up, Samuel Morgan,” commanded another.
“Rise up. Rise up,” they said together, their voices blending in a sonorous chord, like the deepest note on a church organ. I knew that voice-part of it, anyhow. I’d heard it on the wind and in the dark. I’d heard it somewhere else too, but I had too much going on in my head to remember where.
The men couldn’t see the light or hear the voices. But Bull Morgan could, and his eyes opened wide.
“My God,” he whispered. “My God.”
“Rise and walk!” the Shining Ones commanded.
And Morgan did rise. Not like a normal man trying to stand, but as if someone had shoved a board under him and was now levering him upward. The vigilantes fell back, cursing and swearing. Morgan ignored them. He took two steps forward and went down on both knees before the Shining Ones. In that white light, I could see his upturned face was ashen and his lips were ringed with blue. His eyes were the worst, though. His eyes were turned up, and they didn’t blink. It didn’t matter if his body was moving. His eyes were dead.
“The girl, Bull Morgan,” said the Shining Ones. “The mixed-blood girl. You know her kind are an abomination.”
“Yes, I do know it,” whispered Morgan reverently.
“You will bring her to us. Nothing shall deter you. We grant you clear sight and unfailing strength. No rest, no food will you need for your righteous quest. You will find the abomination, and you will bring her to us so that we may clear away the stain of her from this earth.”
A terrible peace stole over Morgan’s face, as if everything he held most dear had just been proven true. “It will be as you say.”
“Go then with all our blessing.”
Their brilliance faded, blending back into the stark white of the yard floodlights. Morgan climbed to his feet and turned slowly around to face the vigilantes clustered behind him.
“What’re you mooks standing around here for?” His voice was soft and rough, like he couldn’t get enough breath to raise it to a shout. Maybe he couldn’t. “We got work to do.”
The mirror went dark.
“It’s not true,” said Jack. “Nothing they show is true.”
“It is true.” The compact slipped from my numb fingers and clattered to the floor. I just let it go. I couldn’t explain how I knew it was the truth we’d seen, but I did. It was a feeling deeper than any in the bone. “That was them, wasn’t it?” I asked Shimmy. “The ones like Trixie. Those were the Seelie.”
“Got to be,” said Shimmy, keeping her eyes on the road.
“What do they want with me?”
“They think if you’re dead and your mama’s out of the way, your papa’ll come round and marry their girl, and then they’ll get to take over our share of the territory.”
While I tried to find some kind of sense past this new roadblock in my head, Jack, as usual, got right down to the practical.
“Where’re you taking her?” I noticed that he said “her,” not “us.”
“The city gates,” said Shimmy. “I just hope we can get there fast enough.”
“Where are these gates?” asked Jack.
“At the moment, Kansas City.”
Kansas City. That was east of Slow Run. A long way east. Shimmy was taking me and Jack in the exact opposite of the direction we needed to go to rescue my parents.
Panic squeezed my stomach, and all at once I couldn’t catch my breath. We were going the wrong way. I couldn’t let her do this. I was already too far away from Mama, and I’d been gone too long. But what was I going to do? I had no way to make Shimmy stop the car, and even if she did and Jack and I could get away from her, what would we do then? It was the middle of the night and the middle of nowhere. We’d show up on the dunes as plain as paint, and Bull Morgan would find us and take us to his new bosses, dead or alive.
Tears swam in front of my eyes, and I fought to swallow them down. Jack saw, and he covered my hand with his. But because of what had happened in the theater and what we’d seen in the little magic mirror, the two of us sat in the big backseat of that Packard and let Shimmy drive us the wrong way into the dark.
17
Something nudged my leg. I swatted it away, but it came right back. Nudge, nudge.
With the fight and the fear all done, and Shimmy not showing signs of taking us off anywhere more terrible than the dust fields east of Constantinople, I’d fallen into a doze and was looking for a way deeper into sleep. But that little nudge kept on, and reluctantly, I opened my eyes.
The sun was up, and we were still driving. The fields passing by had been ridged and plowed in an effort to stop the blow dirt, in case maybe this year a crop could be saved. Jack leaned against the other door and stared out the window on his side, but his hand was nudging his battered black notebook at me. It was open, and the page read:
She watching us?
I glanced at Shimmy. She had both hands on the wheel and hummed random bits of tune as she took us down that highway straight toward the orange sunrise. It wasn’t just a song; she was working some kind of wish with it. I couldn’t tell what kind, but I could feel how that constant wishing took up most of her attention.
My stomach squirmed, trying to get comfortable around this new way of knowing. But the feeling was too lumpy to allow that, and my stomach finally gave it up as a bad job.
Jack’s pencil stub lay in the fold of his notebook. I picked it up and, moving as carefully as I could, wrote
on the page and pushed the book back to him. He flicked his eyes briefly down to read.
We went back and forth like that for the next few miles, both pretending to stare out the side windows, letting Shimmy drive us farther away from where we wanted to be, and all the while writing our notes.
What do we do now?
Was it true? In the mirror?
