Hugo nodded as if he respected my choice. “Fair enough. Try the house at the corner of 4th and D. Cassandra lives there. From what I hear, she’s running a black market of sorts. But be careful. She is an unsavory woman. We once considered making her the otalith of our lodge, but wisely chose to seek another.”
“There’s an otalith here?”
“That is what I said. Brought here against—”
Charlie! Zelda burst into my mind again. I could feel the excitement and urgency in her voice. I was wrong. Em’s alive!
Chapter 23
SNOW CRUNCHED UNDER MY feet, and my nostrils and lungs burned with icy air as I gingerly ran over the bridge, careful not to slip and fall. The Eel River flowed high and swift beneath me. I cackled like a madman. I was full of joy, delirious with relief. Em was alive.
A ten-foot fence with razor wire at the top surrounded the monastery, which had been converted from an old sawmill. Two women I assumed were Zaditorians guarded the gate. Half of the once paved lumberyard was now a labyrinth of raised beds growing trees and shrubs. Snow-covered benches were scattered here and there along the path, like an offseason botanical garden. The other half of the yard was filled with a series of small, igloo-like glass structures connected by clear tubes, the purpose of which I couldn’t even guess. The driveway was lined by abstract sculptures made from old forklift parts. At the end was a long, purple building with three stories of windows on the front face and a tower and peaked roof over the entrance. A line of people filed from four parked buses into the open front doors while three Zaditorians or Friends stood by, supervising.
Something moved in my periphery, and I turned to see Zelda bounding over the snow down a path toward me like a deer. When she saw the Zaditorians at the gate, she stopped fifteen yards from me and lay down.
Where is she? I said.
In the monastery with the rest of the mummers, Zelda said. I told you not to come here. All you’re doing is calling attention to yourself. Let me scout the place out first.
Is she okay?
She’s cold and scared, the poor girl, but otherwise healthy, I think.
How do you know it’s her and not Blanche?
Because she’s a lunch lady.
A lunch lady? I stared into Zelda’s inscrutable fox eyes, trying to glean something.
Yeah. She’s got a hairnet, apron, the whole thing. Don’t you remember? She predicted this.
Em had told me once that we became lunch ladies when we died, but I’d dismissed the theory as the imaginative rambling of a child. I should have listened. Arashanikas with Ghost Heart vesseled in Mummers to escape the nightmarish whorls playing relentlessly in their minds. If the lunch lady at Em’s school was a Mummer, maybe Em had vesseled in her before. Maybe when Blanche had infected her, Em had escaped and ran to the most familiar place, her lunch lady. All of this seemed possible and gave me new hope, which I desperately tried to temper with skepticism.
How do you know it’s Em and not just some lady in a hairnet? I said.
Her walk for one, Zelda said. She bounces on the balls of her feet just like Em. And she has an eraser burn on the back of each hand. Also, my nose tells me. Also, I heard one of the other mummers call her Em.
The hope I’d been trying to hold back overwhelmed me. She really was alive. I felt a queasy mixture of sadness and glee hearing of that familiar self-inflicted wound of hers. My legs wobbled. I dropped to one knee in the snow, and a few tears sprang loose. I’d learned how not to cry when I was a kid, and now I remembered why. It was a habit that quickly got out of hand. I needed to control my emotions better if I was going to prevent the apocalypse, if I was going to save what was left of my family. I clenched my jaw, swallowed my tears, and stood up.
She’s cold, she’s scared, and she’s probably hungry, I said. If I put together a care package, can you get it to her?
I can do anything, Zelda said. But I told you, I need to scout the place out first.
Okay, meet me at the house when you’re done.
There’s flour on the coffee table, Zelda said, overly nonchalant and obviously proud of herself.
Did you get it from the house on the corner of 4th and D?
How did you know that?
I chuckled, then briefly recounted my meetings with Meadow and Hugo. Did you see a typewriter there?
I wasn’t looking for one. Zelda sounded dejected. This changes everything. We need a plan, a good one. Don’t do anything until we’ve talked. She stood, shook the snow from her fur, and bounded off toward the monastery.
Inflated with a kind of giddy delirium, I floated back to the house and lightly flitted about the kitchen from counter to cupboard to drawer, my thoughts happy, scattered, and fluttering. Biscuits. Em loved biscuits and gravy. That was one of her favorites. What else? French fries. What else? Could May be alive too, using a mummer as a sanctuary? I didn’t even know if she was shaka or shanika, but maybe maybe maybe . . . .
Em was hungry. I knew that. And cold. And scared. She had spent the night in a strange body, alone, not knowing what had happened to her mom. Alone. Or was she? Did she have autonomy? Was the mummer present? No wonder she already had eraser burns on her hands. She was grasping for control, grasping for something familiar. And now she was being rounded up and contained like cattle.
I started on the biscuits. I could think while I worked, organize my thoughts. Or should I have started the french fries first? Potatoes always took
