The junk man hails them as they march by.
“Welcome misters,” he says with a toothless grin. The egg woman elbows him in the ribs. Her hair stands on end. Her eyelashes have begun to singe. There is something coming. It is underground. It is in the air. It is all around them.
28. Now.
The children head into town at a run. They are sun and water and wave. Kinetic energy. They are comet and star and nebula. The vacuum of space. The multilayered folds of time. They are all these things at once.
Frogs appear in their pockets. Birds appear overhead. The children have cats’ ears or lizards’ tails or wings. They are giants, then elves, then nothing at all. Another wave hits. They change again.
The butterfly clings to the Sparrow’s back, lifting her above the crowd. Jonah runs below her, keeping the girl in view. His hand is burned. It will scar. He does not care.
The Sparrow sees the landships surrounding the town. She sees the soldiers crowding the streets. She laughs.
“That’s not a landship,” she says. The children below her agree.
“It’s a bunny,” one of the smaller children says. And indeed, the landship is a bunny. It was always a bunny. It has a bow around its neck. “And that one is a cow,” another child says, pointing at the next landship.
“And that one is an ice-cream cart.”
“And that one is my mom.”
As landship after landship transforms, their occupants go tumbling out onto the ground. Soldiers. They are flabbergasted.
The Sparrow blows a kiss at a soldier. His mask transforms into a butterfly and flutters away. His eyes flood with tears. He falls to his knees.
“An angel,” he cries, as another soldier is freed.
“A god,” cries the next.
The soldiers stumble and scatter. They blink their flesh eyes again and again, seeing as a baby sees.
The children don’t stop. They weave through the astonished soldiers and speed past the abandoned landships. They run faster.
“The fountain!” the Sparrow calls. “Run to the fountain!”
The Minister is waiting for them. His personal landship has parked in the center of the square, which is deserted, except for a bone-thin man and a boulder-thick woman and a man in a constable’s uniform, sitting side by side by side on the fountain wall.
The Minister looks down. The three stare blankly back.
Imbeciles, he thinks. They must be imbeciles.
He can feel the magic in the air. He can taste it on his tongue. He thinks of his tower—his beautiful tower. He thinks of the Boro comet, due to come in a decade. What’s a decade to a man so enhanced? It’s like waiting for afternoon tea! He imagines grasping the comet in his hands. He imagines devouring its magic, crunching it between his molars. He imagines becoming sated, at last.
He thinks of his mother’s face. That scar curving down her cheek. He thinks of her polished boots, marching away. Magic can bring her back. He is sure of it. If only he can catch that comet. Just as she told him to, all those years ago.
He hears the sound of small feet. He hears the voices of children. He feels their breathing and their energy and their joy.
Red flowers, he thinks. Red, red, red, red.
The Minister presses his hands to his mouth. He falls to his knees.
He wishes he had earplugs to silence his own screams.
29. Now.
The Sparrow sees the Minister on the deck of a landship. Weeping like a child. He shivers and shakes. The Minister rests his head on his knees. He calls for his mother.
“Oh,” she says, her voice echoing strangely off every surface of the town. She is a chorus, a flock of sparrows, flying away. “You poor, poor man.”
The Minister looks up. He is so afraid. Still he stands. Still he tries to look the part.
“My wayward magician,” he calls out. His voice squeaks. He is both enraged and embarrassed. “At last.”
The Sparrow floats above him. The butterfly flutters nearby—she doesn’t need it anymore. The children crowd into the square. They are a chattering mass, surrounding the landship and the fountain. They climb trees and balance on signs and climb on top of carts.
The Sparrow glances down at the junk man and the egg woman, still sitting on the edge of the fountain.
“My baby!” the junk man says.
“My baby,” the egg woman whispers.
And it’s true. She is their child. The both of them. The Constable is her grandfather. Of course he is. How sorry she will be to leave them. Already, she is not solid. She is a storm cloud. An electric shock. She will strike, and then she will dissipate.
“I have come to give you a present,” the Sparrow says.
“I am here to receive it,” the Minister seethes. His voice is syrup. It is oil. It leaves a slick on the skin that does not wash off.
There is another wave coming. The largest yet. The Sparrow is unstable. She could blow at any minute. She turns to her mother and her father and her grandfather.
“I love you,” she says. “I love you, I love you, I love you. Don’t forget me.”
The wave surges under the junk heap (strange new animals made of old boots and broken glass and springs scatter into the forest), under the munitions factory (each bullet becomes a blossom, each firearm a shovel, each chemical a love note to the brokenhearted), under the school (the chalk grows arms and legs, the switch sprouts wings, each desk becomes a hammock, and flowers spring from the floor). The Sparrow lands before the Minister. She holds out her hand. He lays his own upon it, palm to palm. It burns. He winces.
“Are you sick?”
“Yes,” she says. “But not for long.”
The wave arrives. It surges under the fountain and pours out the top. It submerges the town, the farms, the forests and the road. The neighboring provinces. The capital. The magic pours and pours
