“Or the men at the Soldiers’ Home.”
“I think it was the undertaker.”
“No! The butcher. Pretty sure.”
“Or the washerwomen.”
“Or the miller.”
“Or the miller’s shiftless sons.”
“The children told me,” says another. “It is always the children who know.”
“By the way, has anyone seen my son? He left before we woke.”
Everyone’s children left before dawn. School project, their notes said. Odd. But no matter. There are more important things to be dealt with. Not getting arrested, for starters.
The town murmurs and frets. They practice their excuses and alibis until they know them by heart. They imagine what they will say to the constables, or the soldiers, or the inquisitors. They pick at their teeth and rub at their beards and shoot worried glances at the road.
An unlicensed magician, people whisper. Here. Of all places. They shake their heads, carefully layering incredulity into their voices. Well. My stars.
Marla, the egg woman, listens to the conversation for as long as she can tolerate. She lives, she knows, in a village of idiots situated at the edge of a nation of morons. There are worse things, of course.
Though, in truth, not many.
She clutches her basket as though it is a raft in a stormy sea.
No one knows for sure, of course, what a magician looks like—unlicensed or not. Who had met a magician, after all? One that wasn’t a baby, that is. The only thing for sure is that magic belongs to the government, which is to say that it is given, freely and forever, to the Beloved Minister, and him alone. The unlicensed practice of magic? Well. There are punishments for that sort of thing.
Harsh punishments.
No one knows what those are, and indeed the idea that anyone could even attempt at magic is a bit of a head-scratcher. It’s not like there are any books on the subject. Or stories. Magic is a banned subject, after all.
Clearly, the town decides, they are all blameless. One by one they excuse themselves. One by one they hurry home. They whistle as they lock up their apple-producing bowls and their bottomless liquor bottles and their baby-soothing blankets.
Marla the egg woman sits on the stone edge of the fountain. She presses her basket to her ample bosom, and waits.
By noon, the junk man arrives. He sits next to her. He hesitates, swallows nervously, then lets his bony arm drape across Marla’s shoulders. She doesn’t shrug him away. Their eyes are red. Their noses are red. Their cheeks are the color of ash.
At mid-afternoon, the Constable sits down as well. He feels he should offer them something. He has nothing to give.
“Where is our child?” the egg woman asks.
“What has she done?” the junk man sighs.
They do not move from that spot. By late afternoon, the first landship arrives. And another. And another. They encircle the town, like a noose.
26. Now.
They spend the night together, the Sparrow and Jonah, going from house to house, holding tightly to one another’s hands as they run through the town. Rapping on windows. Crying through the locks.
“Come,” they say. “Come with us.”
And they do come. As young as five, and as old as twenty. They rub the sleep from their eyes, and throw homemade woolens over their nightclothes. They tramp silently into the dewy starlight.
“Okay,” they say. “We’ll come. We’ll follow you anywhere.”
They can see the Sparrow. They can’t remember not seeing her. And they love her. And she loves them. So much.
The butterfly clings to the Sparrow’s back, making her look as though she has luminescent wings—which is helpful for spotting her in the dark. The dogs lope along the sides of the growing crowd, herding the stragglers back to the group.
“This way,” the Sparrow calls. “To the rubbish heap. It’s where things start.”
None of the children have ever been to the rubbish heap—indeed, they’ve been warned away from it. Rumors insist that it is haunted by ghosts. And if not ghosts, the junk man, who is just as bad. The way he talks to himself. The way he has conversations with people who are not there.
“Trust me,” the Sparrow says. And they do.
Jonah refuses to let go of her hand, even though his hand has begun to ooze. His blisters now have blisters. He won’t be able to use that hand for a month. But it’s worth it. He will hang on to the girl with the butterfly wings until he cannot.
The Sparrow is barely there. She can feel each cell, each molecule, each electron cloud—the bonds between every speck begin to shiver and moan. She is a thing in flux. Not particle, not wave. Something else.
“The Boro comet,” she tells the children, “does not cause the magic. I was born under the comet’s influence, but it is not the comet that made me what I am. The comet draws. It doesn’t make. There is an ocean underground—an ocean that swirls and swells. There is a tsunami under our feet, and we are going to let it loose. Let it cover the world.”
“But the Minister—”
“If we are all blessed, then we are all empowered. If we are all enhanced, then we are all protected. And if the magic is diluted, then there will be nothing for the Minister to mine.”
“How will it happen?”
“It is already happening. You feel it, don’t you?”
And they do. The buzz in their anklebones. The crackle in the air. The slightly wobbly feeling, as though the ground under their feet was about to give way.
“Hold hands,” the Sparrow says. “The first wave is about to hit.”
27. Now.
Soldiers flank the landships and move in procession into the town, marching by twos along the West Road, their faces hidden behind the perpetual grins of their metal masks, the required iron rings welded around their throats.
Once a soldier, always a soldier, whisper the townspeople as they pass. Poor things.
The soldiers’ boots are polished to a high gleam. Each smart stride leaves the smile of their heels pressed into the ooze of the road. Their knees snap; their wool-clad
