The girl refused to move until he was out of sight.
“Fanatic,” she breathed, slipping the knife back into the pocket of her jumper. “Never seen one that close before. We’ll take a different way home.”
They helped her collect her spilled plums, blowing dirt off them and rubbing them against their clothes, before she led them from the alley. As she moved quickly back across the street into the harsh sun, Susan regarded her with new respect.
“Do you always carry that knife?” she asked.
“Have to,” the girl said, patting her pocket.
This time, she didn’t need to elaborate.
Liyla’s house looked like it had been on the losing end of a beating. An unstable fence of wooden planks leaned crazily round it, gaps like missing teeth strung closed with chicken wire. The house’s outer walls had once been whitewashed, but they’d yellowed in the sun and were bruised now with patches of red-brown clay that wept in the heat. Off-center windows peered blackly out at the children from its smeary face. Still, a jaunty red sash hung over the front door, which Liyla proudly pointed out as “the sign of the Genius.”
“You wait here,” she said, directing them to the chicken yard around back. “I’ll go talk to Ma.”
A small pen housed the chickens on one side of the yard, just paces from an outhouse of weathered boards with a sloping roof that had buckled with age. Near the back fence, the ground had been dug up and the hole trimmed with rocks. Susan looked into it and saw a fire pit, a nest of ash and coals like small gray eggs. In the muggy air, the aroma of burnt wood coming from the pit proved the only relief from the unfortunate mixture of chickens and outhouse. Worst of all was the chopping block, a stained old stump that sat in the center of the dusty yard in full view of the chickens. Several sawhorses, some upright and some on their sides, littered the rest of the yard.
Max wrinkled his nose and inspected the chickens, which slept fitfully, bunched together in the shade.
“Have you noticed,” he said, “that the animals look okay? How come they’re not different, like the people?”
Susan jumped the fire pit, squinted into the sparse grass to make sure she wouldn’t be sitting in chicken leavings, then slid down to sit with her back against the fence post.
“I’m too tired for science questions now,” she said. “And hot.” She pulled her sticky collar away from her neck and blew into it, trying to make a breeze.
Max squatted beside the chickens. “We’ve got to figure it out, though.”
The splintered fence jabbed at her back, and Susan jerked away from it in annoyance.
“What are you going to figure out? The whole world?”
“Maybe.”
Kate and Jean had pulled their Barbies from their waistbands, and now Jean stood by the fence, running her doll along the boards. Bump. Bump. Bump.
“You said we’d wake up at home,” she said dejectedly. “You said somebody would help us.”
Susan rolled her eyes. “We’re working on it,” she sighed. “Will you give us a second?”
“It’s been all day,” Jean reminded her.
Kate, meanwhile, sat smoothing her Barbie’s hair. She kept her eyes locked on the doll, as if ignoring the ugly yard would make it go away.
“Do you think she’ll be able to help us?” she asked. “Liyla’s mother, I mean.”
“If she’s anything like Liyla, I doubt it,” Nell said gloomily. She had taken one corner of her blanket and thrown it over her head to keep the sun off. “I don’t know why we’re trusting her at all, not after that man called us wares.”
“Yeah, what did he mean by that?” Kate wanted to know.
Max shrugged. “Nothing, probably. Anybody who talks as much as Liyla can’t be too crafty. Don’t worry.”
At the moment, don’t worry sounded to Susan like the most frightening words in the English language. Worry seemed the only sensible course of action in a place like this. But all she said was “I hope you’re right.”
She noticed that her arms were sunburned and poked at them with a finger.
“Anyway,” she said, “I don’t see that we have much choice. Somebody around here’s got to know something. Liyla’s mother’s as good a place to start as any.”
She heaved herself off the scratchy fence, got up, and surveyed the area. The next nearest house stood far enough from Liyla’s that a shout wouldn’t rouse the neighbors. An old-fashioned well, complete with chain and bucket, marked the boundary between the houses, and a lean cow grazed on weeds just past it.
“Hey, Jean,” she said. Her little sister still ran her Barbie mercilessly across the fence. “Look at that old cow.”
Something flickered in the corner of her eye. Susan turned and saw a hooded figure, swathed in green, standing beside the well.
She grabbed Jean.
“Into the house! Quick!”
In half a second, they were scrambling for the back door, yanking it open, and barreling through. Nell slammed it behind them.
Susan blinked, blinded after the glare of the yard. When her eyes adjusted, she saw Liyla and her mother, on their feet on either side of a rough table, gaping at her.
“What’s wrong?” Liyla asked.
“Fanatic outside,” Susan breathed. “Near the well.”
Liyla’s mother jumped from her chair and ran to the back door. Susan looked over the woman’s shoulder as she opened it an inch and peered outside. The hooded figure had gone.
“They’re fast,” the woman said. “Faster than anything. Soldiers hunt them all over the city and never have caught one.”
She closed the door, bolted it, and turned back to the children. If she’d been surprised at the sight of them, she didn’t show any of that now.
The woman wore her hair pulled into a knot so tight on the top of her head that it dragged her forehead up. She wore a jumper much like Liyla’s, except hers was covered with an apron that might once have been white, maybe when Susan’s grandmother was a little girl. But what
