Billy: Messenger of Powers (66 page)

Vester grinned. “Fulgora said you would say that.”

“Really?” asked Billy, more than a little surprised. He knew he had gained some measure of respect in the Red Lady’s eyes, but it was still a bit of a shock to hear that she had apparently been talking about him with Vester. “She did?”

“Well, no, actually what she really said was, ‘Billy Jones is a warrior spirit, and my fires will turn to ice before he allows us to take him away before the confrontation,’” answered Vester.

“Well, she’s right,” Billy said.

Vester smiled. But the smile was a bit subdued. “Okay, Billy. But remember what I’ve said. This isn’t going to be a fun thing. And if you ever change your mind, just say the word.” He clapped a big, callused hand on Billy’s shoulder.

Billy hesitated. He bit his lip for a second, as though chewing on it would magically help him know the best way to say what he wanted to.

“What is it?” asked Vester.

“Well,” said Billy, “I’m not going anywhere until this is over. I mean, I’ll stick around and help in any way I can. But if things
are
so bad…why doesn’t everyone just leave? Why don’t the Dawnwalkers all just leave and hide?” He smiled what was meant to be a reassuringly unserious smile, which he knew probably looked more like the smile of a dog which has just found out that the bone it’s been chewing on and enjoying actually used to be a favorite cousin’s leg. “You know,” he continued. “He who fights and runs away….”

Vester thought long and hard about how to answer Billy. “Usually that would be good advice.”

“But?” prompted Billy.

“But we have nowhere else to go,” admitted the fireman. “There’s a whole world out there, but this is the only place we’re organized at all. For better or for worse, the Dawnwalkers have spent the last twenty years assuming that the Truce was in force, the Treaty of the Powers unbroken. So we have no system, no reserve forces, no preparations for protection at all.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” said Billy. “Why can’t we all go somewhere else and hide and
get
some preparations?”

“Because the Darksiders are
already
organized,” said Vester. “So if we leave here, it’s going to be an army of fifty thousand, against nothing but hundreds of small pockets of resistance. It won’t be a battle, it’ll be a thousand tiny slaughters, and there’s only one way that can end.”

Billy’s expression fell. Vester tried to smile in a reassuring way, and Billy suddenly knew exactly what
his
“reassuring” smile had looked like just a minute ago.

Forget the dog’s cousin’s bone, thought Billy. Vester looks like a dog who just found out his dinner kibbles were actually made of his immediate family.

“But that’s not going to happen. No slaughters here,” Vester said a little too brightly. Then he grew almost pensive, and in a voice that made Billy feel like he was almost speaking against his will, he added, “Besides, we might have a surprise or two up our sleeves.”

“What do you mean?” asked Billy.

“Something Fulgora’s been cooking up,” answered Vester. “It’s part of what she was doing while all of us were stuck on Dark Isle.”

“What is it?” asked Billy, intrigued.

Vester shook his head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. Fulgora made me swear secrecy.”

“Come on, Vester.”

“Nope,” the fireman shook his head. He clearly wanted to tell Billy, but just as clearly was somewhat proud that he had been taken into the Red Lady’s confidence enough to be trusted with private information.

“Come on,” said Vester, changing the subject. “What say you and I go and watch rock giants building some walls?”

And so they did. Billy traveled over much of Powers Island in the coming days, usually at Vester’s or Mrs. Russet’s side as one or the other of them traveled somewhere to check on preparations. Rock giants were indeed building huge battlements on one side of the island, great walls that looked like they grew out of the living rocks of the mountain range close to them. Billy thought the enormous rock Fizzles were amazing to watch, the huge craggy forms plucking up rocks the size of houses as though they were light as cotton candy, then plunking them down on the ground in enormous piles. Vester told him, however, that these would be a last line of defense in the event that the Darksiders somehow broke through the Accounting Room defenses and overran the island. The Dawnwalkers would fall back slowly, trying to resist over every foot of land on the island, and then would finally take refuge in the mountainous battlements, and lose themselves long enough to flee, to Transport to somewhere else…where they would then be most likely hunted for the rest of their very short lives.

After Vester shared this with Billy, the huge walls didn’t seem quite so neat anymore.

But day and night, hour by hour, Billy never saw any let up. The Red Powers on the island placed burning pyres every couple hundred feet, which Billy understood from watching Fulgora’s Challenge in Powers Stadium would be the equivalent of ammo dumps: they would allow the Red Powers on the island easy access to the flames they would need to cast their attack spells. Brown Powers were everywhere, carving roads out of the bedrock of the island with their bare hands, preparing for supply routes and roads that might be needed in the event of a slow fallback. The Grays patrolled the skies, flying about like man-sized insects, and cultivated rain clouds that could be brought to bear against attackers, slowing them down and giving time for counter-attacks to be launched. And the Green Powers cultivated enormous gardens that grew from seed to vine to flower to fruit in seconds, laying up vast quantities of foodstuffs that would be needed in the event of long term fighting or if there should be any kind of a siege.

Billy was fascinated by all of it. The rock giants building their walls, fire Fizzles of various sizes patrolling the island like walking bombs, gusts of wind being used to move huge bales of supplies from place to place. But as interesting as it was, there was also a disquieting sense of desperation to it, and Billy slowly began to understand something:

It wasn’t just Vester.
None
of the Dawnwalkers expected to win.

Even with the bottleneck giving them a clear tactical advantage, even with the extra time they gained because of the way the minutes passed on Powers Island, even with the knowledge that they were fighting for a good cause, Billy could sense an undercurrent of hopelessness. Everyone was going through the motions, but Billy sensed they were doing it mostly because people don’t willingly walk to their deaths, even when those deaths are all but certain.

So this is what they felt like at the Alamo, thought Billy on more than one occasion.

But he didn’t mention it aloud, though the feeling weighed heavily on him. Vester seemed to know Billy’s thoughts, and occasionally would say something clearly meant to cheer Billy up. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” the fireman was continually saying. But Billy knew that whenever a grown-up said that, it meant that they were really worried about the opposite being true.

Only Fulgora seemed to both grasp and fully accept the likelihood of their fates. Once, Billy overheard a short Red Power break down in front of her, crying about the fact that it was hopeless and they were all doomed. Fulgora slapped the man sharply. “We’re doomed from the day we’re born. We begin dying the moment we start our lives,” she said bitingly. “Whether it be here, or in our beds in a hundred years, the place and the time matter nothing. All that
does
matter is how we face Doom when he comes for us, whether we choose to look him in the eye and spit at him, or crawl in the sand like worms. He will take us either way, but one way we at least have our dignity.”

“But, I don’t want to die,” said the babbling Power.

“Nor do I,” said Fulgora. “But we can’t always have everything we want, can we?”

Strangely, though her words were the most pessimistic of any of Billy’s friends, he was more comforted by her honesty than by the too-chipper tone Ivy always got in her voice when he came near, or by Tempus’s insistence on listing his favorite restaurants and then telling Billy he was going to take him to one of them on each of Billy’s birthdays for the rest of his life.

Fulgora knows it’s hopeless, Billy thought. And she doesn’t care. Because it’s not the winning that matters, it’s the fight.

This thought was oddly calming. He didn’t have any powers to his name. He didn’t know what Message he was supposed to provide, if any. He couldn’t do much of anything to help his friends get ready for battle.

But he would fight, just the same. And when it happened, the fight would be all that mattered. The result would be almost an afterthought.

So Billy toured the island with his friends, occasionally helping in a non-Power-like way, digging with his bare hands or laboriously carrying buckets of Green-grown fruits from place to place. It made him feel good to contribute, even in this small manner, and his friends seemed to appreciate it, too. Occasionally in the days that passed he thought of his parents. He wished he could see them again. If he did, he would thank them once more for his birthday watch, and then thank them once more for every other gift they had ever given him. He would let them know that he loved them. Especially his father, whom he was coming to appreciate more and more in the days on the island. Not all fights are physical battles, he realized. Some people fight to put food on their families’ tables, and to make a better tomorrow. So his father was a warrior just as much as any of the people around Billy now, and just as much deserving of his respect. Because even though his father was not his friend, he had always provided for and protected his family to the best of his ability.

So I will tell him, Billy said to himself. When I get back, I’ll tell him I understand, and thank him for being who he is, and teaching me to be the good man I will one day become.

But the words sounded hollow in his mind, just as Tempus’s birthday plans for the next hundred years had sounded.

The fight, Billy thought again. Win or lose is not important. Not right now, anyway. What’s important is picking our battles, picking the right battle, and standing for it to the end.

And so Billy passed his days, knowing himself to be a lone unDetermined boy on an island of Powers, until one day several weeks after they had come back to the island. He was sitting on the ground near the Diamond Dais, listening to Mrs. Russet and Fulgora argue over the fine points of warfare. Mrs. Russet kept pulling the Book of the Earth out of the ground and reading obscure historical passages about So-and-So’s army, or the Battle of This-or-That. Fulgora, for her part, kept screaming about how Mrs. Russet’s methods were historically accurate but no longer the cutting edge of warfare. And Vester and Ivy kept trying to get between the two strong-willed Councilors and keep the peace, and repeatedly being threatened with combustion or having the ground swallow them for their troubles.

He heard all of it, but Billy had to admit to himself wasn’t really giving the argument much attention. Rather, he was staring at the crystal shard in the middle of the Diamond Dais. It was twilight, and the last pale rays of sunlight on the island lightly kissed the shard, shattering into thousands of tiny rainbows before disappearing as the sun dipped below the ocean and night claimed the island. Billy watched the lights disappear from the shard, watched it grow dark as the rest of the sky, and felt himself almost dozing, as though hypnotized by the light display he had seen, and lulled into sleep by the approaching darkness.

Then Billy heard a noise. It was muffled but powerful, like a nuclear explosion a thousand miles underwater. The noise repeated itself, and this time the entire tower pulsed. It didn’t quake on its moorings, nothing like the day that the zombies had attacked, but Billy jerked into complete wakefulness as he felt the tremor roll through the tall edifice.

“What was that?” asked Ivy.

Everyone on the tower top grew silent and still as a statue. They all listened, waiting for the noise to repeat, but it didn’t.