Except that’s not exactly what happened. She wasn’t moving. And the crowd didn’t suck her anywhere. She simply vanished.
Wait, the butcher thinks. What am I saying? Who vanished? I haven’t seen anyone all day. He shakes his head. He has no memory of the junk man’s daughter. He stares at the coins in his hand, confusion clouding his face.
And even more confusing, the wound on his shoulder has begun to itch. He is crazed with itching. He throws off the bandages, and realizes that his wound is gone, and his skin is whole. Nothing shows where the injury was. His skin is firm and smooth as a baby’s.
And even stranger: On the spot where the wound once was: a coin. A big, gold coin.
Yellow, the butcher thinks. Yellow, yellow, yellow.
The junk man’s daughter watches his face. She hasn’t moved. The butcher simply doesn’t see her. She shrugs and continues on her way.
She stops at the cheese maker’s and the breadsmith’s and the beekeeper’s, buying enough to keep her father fed and whole. The marketplace is crowded today—it’s harvest time, and everyone’s yields are impressively high this year. The beekeeper’s stall is crowded with jars and she sells honeycombs by the barrel. The pigs are fatter, the milk has twice the cream, and the potatoes are as big as boulders.
It will all go away, unfortunately. The rest of the nation is in a food shortage. This province has been the only one oddly blessed with abundance, which means that soon it will all be gathered, crated, and shipped off.
There is a frenzy of buying, people getting what they can afford before—
“Sparrow!”
The girl looks up and sees Marla, the egg woman—all broad shoulders and wide hips and hardened biceps—tossing her neighbors out of the way as she hurries across the square.
Marla has loved the Sparrow for as long as she can remember. And the Sparrow loves her back.
“Marla,” the girl says with the beginnings of a smile—one that fades the moment she sees the look on Marla’s face.
“Run, child!” the egg woman says. “Soldiers. The soldiers are back.”
She throws out her arms, blocking the girl from view. As though all that was needed to keep the girl from harm was the formidable presence of her own body.
“But my father—”
“I’ll see to him. The Constable is distracting the soldiers. He won’t let anything happen to you. None of us will. Run. Now.”
And the egg woman turns and walks toward the soldiers, strong as a tank. She has a basket of homemade cheeses hooked in the crook of her arm. She has a basket of astonishingly fine eggs from her battalions of Most Remarkable Hens. Indeed, there are no hens quite like them, thanks to her little Sparrow.
She’ll use them if she has to.
And the Sparrow hesitates. She looks to the greengrocer and the cobbler. She looks to the berry man and the candle maker. No one sees her. The soldiers stand on the far side of the square, their electronic eyes focused on the eggs in the basket.
“Whips up like none other,” the egg woman says loudly. “Thick as cream.” They also cure acne, heal burns, mend shoes, seal cracks, and make meringues that will melt in the mouth. (They can also, in a pinch, secure a lover for the night. Very powerful, these eggs. Not magic, though. Surely not.)
The Sparrow calls for her father. She calls for the Constable. She calls for the egg woman. No one comes. She wobbles. She flickers. And she flies away.
Later, people will say that they saw a flash of a patched apron catch a breeze and fly above the heads of the crowd.
“No,” someone will counter. “It wasn’t an apron. It was feathers.”
“Not feathers,” someone else will say. “Wings. Patchwork wings.”
“Hogwash,” a third will swear. “It was a flock of sparrows. Sparrows and sparrows and sparrows. And then they were gone.”
4. Then.
The Sparrow couldn’t remember being born.
She could remember, however, parts of her life within the watery womb of her mother. She could remember the sound of her mother’s worry. She could remember the soothe of her father’s voice, and then the bite of her father’s rage. And the silence he left behind. She remembered the Boro comet, though she could not see it. She remembered it like a flash in the dark, and the surge of . . . something . . . coming up from under her like a wave.
And then she was something else. Even then, she knew. She knew her hands, she knew her mouth, she knew her toes, and she knew her magic. She knew these things without the power of names.
She heard the fear in her mother’s voice at the mention of Boro comet. But it wasn’t the comet that made her like this.
It wasn’t the flash that changed her, it was the wave. The wave from underneath. The Boro comet doesn’t make. It draws. She knows it in her bones.
5. Now.
Every Vox in the nation sputters to life at once.
“CITIZENS!” it screeches. “YOUR COOPERATION HAS BEEN NOTED. YOUR MINISTER ASKED AND YOUR MINISTER HAS RECEIVED. LONG LIVE THE MINISTER. THOUSANDS OF PATRIOTS FLOODED OUR MESSAGE LINES AND OUR VIDEO CENTERS AND OUR OFFICES. SO MANY BEAUTIFUL ACCUSATIONS. SO MANY JUSTIFIABLE CONCERNS. YOU WILL BE REWARDED—MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN ALL. YOU WILL BE REWARDED.”
A crackle.
A breath.
A beat.
“AND FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW AND DO NOT TELL.”
Another breath. And another. The Vox is silent. Until—
“Oh citizens,” the Vox whispers. “Oh, my precious citizens. I cannot, cannot say.”
6. Then.
The Minister had never counted on the wind. He built his tower higher and higher—a wobbly, twisty, unlikely looking structure, uncurling like seaweed toward the shimmering limit of the sky. Dark stones, blackened windows. Impossible without magic, without his little magicians.
He loved them.
He couldn’t bear to think of them.
He shoved them out of his mind.
And look. His tower. A marvel! It was higher than any structure in the history of the world. The Minister
