And now a baby. When he first came across it, it was shocking, of course (though not, it should be noted, as shocking as all that, times being what they are). But there was no denying the fact that the poor thing was as dead as can be. A days-old corpse, to be clear about it, its eyes pecked out by ravens, its body gray and foul and leaking.
And then, without warning, the child curled its lips. It stuck out its putrified tongue and crinkled its cheeks. It began to whimper. Then cry. It blinked and blinked, raking its eyelids across the fleshy sockets until two bright eyes suddenly appeared, as shiny as new pennies. Its cheeks plumped and pinked, their skin suddenly glowing with good health and vitality. The child breathed. Blew bubbles. A rosebud mouth sought a nipple, and four tiny limbs kicked and flailed with hunger and cold and rage.
It was warm, ruddy, and alive.
Impossible.
The junk man fell to his knees, clutched his heart. His first thought was to dash the child’s head against the rock. Surely it was possessed. Or it was a demon. Or it was an apparition dreamed up by some wronged customer to cause him to lose his mind before losing his life. Clearly it would devour his flesh, suck his brain, and go carousing through the countryside finding innocents to maul.
He approached the child cautiously. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand and sank into a crouch, resting his bottom on the heels of his boots. He settled his face into a suspicious stare. The baby, hardly noticing him, began to wail.
It sounded like a baby.
It smelled like a baby.
The baby was naked. A girl. She hiccupped in her loneliness and grief. The magic mark curled out like a snail’s shell from her navel. It gave off a pale glow. The baby girl brought her fist to her mouth and sucked it desperately.
And oh! She was terribly alone. The junk man cupped his hand over the top of her fragile skull, and felt the gentle pulse of her fontanels, like the wing of a bird.
And the junk man felt something stir within him. The heart that he did not know he possessed eased into an unused groove and clicked neatly into place, like a coin into a slot. His eyes sprang wide. He shuddered and gasped. He was alive in a way he never knew before. He pressed his index finger to her palm, and felt the pincer grip of those tiny digits. The tendrils growing around his heart, holding it in place, pulled in tight. And everything was plain.
He cleared his throat and looked levelly at the child. He had never spoken to a baby before and was unsure how to begin.
“Good god, girl,” he said. “It’s not every day that you meet a body what can outwit a pack of soldiers. Good for you.” He shook the child’s hand solemnly and looked behind him to see if he was observed.
There was no one on the rubbish heap—save for a mostly drunk junk man and a recently dead baby. He found an old bedsheet and tore it into strips, binding the baby to his body. The child calmed. She abandoned her fist, opting to suck on his filthy shirt instead. Buttoning his coat over the baby, the junk man took a deep breath and pushed his cart down the road.
The child squawked twice. He began to walk with a bit of a sway, rocking her with the swish of his body. “Hush now, little sparrow,” he said. “I’ll get you fed soon enough. That or you’ll feed the buzzards again. We’ll see.”
He headed to the far side of town and down the path into a thicket of wood toward the egg woman’s house. She would know what to do. She usually did.
17. Now.
The egg woman and the junk man arrive at the Constable’s office just before midnight. He is pushing his wobbly cart, emptied of its usual cargo.
He grumbles. She pays him no mind. He grumbles louder.
“Had it all arranged just so,” he says. “Just how I liked it.”
“Stuff it, old man,” the egg woman says without turning around. “This is all your fault.” She looks up and sighs. She is being unfair, and she knows it. Someone else is at fault. She glances up and gives the lurid billboards atop each building a hard look. The bright web linking the eyes of the Ministers is starting to fade a bit, but she can feel it all the same. An electric hum in the air. Pricks in the skin. Something bubbling underground. Like as not, everyone in town can feel it too. It’s only a matter of time before things start happening.
Not that they hadn’t been happening already.
The Constable’s office is dark; she knocks anyway. The old man’s face appears in the window, lit by a candle. He grunts, fusses with the chain, and ushers them inside.
“Marla,” he says to the egg woman with a respectful bow. “Sonny,” he says to the junk man with his usual derision. The Constable calls all men younger than himself “sonny,” but he reserves a special bit of extra scorn for the junk man, on principle.
“Who brought the bug?” the junk man slurs, squinching his face at the luminescent butterfly still resting on the girl’s chest as he sways back and forth like a boat in a ceaseless gale. He shakes himself to clear the drink. It doesn’t work. He feels light-headed and buoyant, as though his feet are only barely touching the earth.
(Which, incidentally, they aren’t.)
“Please don’t speak unless you can find a way to make yourself less of an idiot, Simon,” Marla says. She turns to the Constable. “Has it started?” She doesn’t know why she asks this. It has clearly started.
“She’s done this to
