They are so old, these dogs. And they love her so much, they feel that they will die without her. (Which, the junk man’s daughter knows in her heart, is likely true. I will miss you, she thinks.)
She reaches the fork in the trail, where one branch goes to town and the other branch wanders up to the top of a rocky knoll. There are seven standing stones at the top of the knoll—remnants, she’s heard, of another time, another people, another way of thinking. Gone now. No one knows where or why or when. History is banned, after all. There is only now. There is only the Minister. That is all they ever need know.
The girl smiles. The Minister. He has haunted her dreams for as long as she can remember. His damp eyes. His receding hair. The delicate lobes on his ears, fragile and soft between her finger and her thumb. She has not touched the Minister. She has not laid eyes on him. But she knows him, even so. She knows him from the inside out.
She summits the knoll and climbs the tallest of the standing stones and sits, cross-legged, at the top. She cups her hands around her eyes. The Minister’s fortress is too far away to see—miles and miles and miles away. And yet she can see it all the same. Its happenstance form. Its blackened windows. Its terrible height. Its dark stones, each one groaning with the souls of magic children. She can see the Minister too, sitting cross-legged atop his own standing stone, perched on the roof of his impossibly tall tower. Every quarter century, the tower gets taller. Every quarter century, it is imbued with more magic. Every quarter century, it brings him closer to the thing he desires most of all.
The Boro comet.
Its strangeness.
Its miracles.
Its curses.
She plucks another hair from her head and weaves it into a pentagram. She curls her fingers into its center and pulls, stretching it larger and larger and larger. And as she pulls, the fibers of the pentagram thicken and strengthen. They are rope. They are wire. They are rod-iron. It is a trinket, then a mirror, then a window. She holds it in front of her as though she is hanging a picture on the wall. She jiggles until it feels secure, and lets her hands drift down to her sides. The pentagram floats in front of her, its center shimmering like the moon on a quiet lake.
And she sees him. The Minister. And he sees her. The junk man’s daughter. She smiles. He is terrified. She waves. He does not wave back. His mouth opens and closes, but nothing comes out. He looks exactly as she imagined him, though his skin is more dull than his billboards lead a person to expect. Age, perhaps. Or stasis. Or an overindulgence of magic.
Not that she knows anything about magic. She doesn’t. How could she?
She stands. Slides her arms out of her sleeves. Peels her dress from her shoulders, her chest, her belly. She is before him, in the window of the pentagram, naked to the hips, the strange mark on her stomach curling from her navel, glowing so bright to make him squint. There are tears in his eyes.
“You!” the Minister says.
“Me,” she says. Her eyes glitter. Her teeth flash.
“You’re dead!”
“Am I?”
“I need you.”
“I know.”
“I’ve always needed you.”
“I know.”
She loves him. So much. She can’t help it. He is broken. And the world broke with him. She rears back and kicks the pentagram—a quick, sure force. It goes flying away. She can hear him screaming for her to come back, screaming for the guards, screaming for his mother. Screaming, screaming, screaming. And then the pentagram hits the ground, unravels, and his voice is gone.
The dogs wait at the bottom of the standing stone. The butterfly has rested on the head of a Labrador. It is not amused, but it does not fuss at the butterfly.
The girl jumps, and lands lightly on her toes. The dogs whine.
“I know,” she says. “It’s not too much longer.”
And they head toward town.
22. Then.
The chickens were just the beginning.
Marla had to build eight new coops to house them all. Fortunately, one of the Midges turned out to be male (Marla was unsurprised by this—it stood to reason, knowing Midge). And what a male he was! Her entire chicken population—from the bitter leafs to the argonites to the peppershells to the reds—started to wriggle and swoon in his presence. They preened and clucked and presented their bottoms with a saucy swish. The rooster-Midge only had to turn his head and an entire coop would be sent into a tizzy. Their laying quadrupled overnight. And what eggs! They had shimmer and heft. They caused a shiver up the spine at just the touch of them.
Marla came home from her first day in the marketplace selling those eggs with a smile on her face. She bought real beef and shared it with the dogs. She bought a coat for the girl (she told people it was for a country family she knew on hard times). She even bought a new hat for the junk man.
It wasn’t until she waved good-bye to the girl and her papa in their handmade cart that she started to worry.
Because those eggs.
They did things, those eggs.
Cured illness.
Eased pain.
Repaired marriages.
Within two weeks six young wives of her acquaintance grew green about the gills. Dark circles around the eyes. A glow on the cheeks. They had been trying to get pregnant for several years, and suddenly
