The Harvest (23 page)

“You’ll wait here?”

“I’ll wait here.” Killian leans in, kisses Lane’s temple.

Lane has a moment where it feels like—well, when he was a kid, he jumped off Burt and Bessie Greene’s barn roof. Beneath him was a heap of corn-leaf hay, just a pile of dried dead Hiram’s, and just before he jumped off that roof, he felt the same thing that he’s feeling now. Fear cutting through him like a cold knife. His stomach trying to crawl up between his ears.

He didn’t break anything, but the dried corn-leaf cut him something fierce. His walk back home with the rest of the crew saw him covered in a slick brown sheen of his own blood.

Thing was, that day, he jumped off the roof for a reason.

He told Cael and Rigo that it was because he wanted to see if he could do it. Ballsy, bold, doing it on a dare that nobody actually dared.

But the reality is, he wanted to jump.

He wanted to hurt himself.

Not because he wanted to die.

Not because he invited the pain.

But because he hoped, secretly, that if he hurt himself just badly enough, his mother would come and find him. She would leave the Babysitter life and come to him. And tend to him. And make it all better.

That never happened, of course. It was Pop who tended to his cuts.

“I’m ready,” he says, and he opens the door.

She looks small as a bird, sitting there on the cot.

His mother, Mitzi Moreau.

Time hasn’t been kind to her. It’s held her fast, carved lines into her face, pushed her eyes back into their sockets, painted shadows where there were none before. She’s not skeletal, not exactly, but she looks withered, winnowed, pared down to a smaller, more concentrated version of who she once was.

Mitzi sees her son enter, and she stands. The sound that comes out of her is halfway between a laugh and a sob. Her face softens; the lines warp and melt. She hurries over to him with small, squirrel steps, calling his name through that ongoing laugh-sob, but he throws up his hands and takes a step back to match her steps forward—

“Wait,” he says, firm, cautioning.

“Laney,” she says, her hands physically pleading. “It’s me. It’s your mama, sweetheart.”

“You don’t get to say that,” he says, each word cold and half dead. “You want to call me anything, you call me Mayor Moreau. You want to call yourself something, maybe you should try
traitor to the Heartland
.”

Her face is like a sky of falling stars. Everything sinks and sags. She takes a few ginger steps backward and sits down on the cot, looking numb.

“Oh” is all she says.

He didn’t want the conversation to go this way—at least, not so swiftly—but it feels like he’s already stepping off the edge of that barn roof again, so he lets himself fall into it.

“You betrayed the Heartland.”
You betrayed me
. “You turned against your own people and worked for the skybastards of the Seventh Heaven against them. You can’t do that and not be held accountable.”

“Lane, we all worked for the Empyrean. Every one of us.”

“I didn’t. And I don’t.”

“I did it because I needed the ace notes.
We
needed the ace notes. Once your father died—”

“Don’t you mention him. This isn’t about him!” He scowls. “And it damn sure wasn’t about the ace notes. How many ace notes found their way back to me, to the farmhouse, huh?
Huh?
”

“I should’ve sent more—”

“You should’ve sent
some
. Any! Anything at all! You went and took a cushy Babysitter job halfway across the godsdamn Heartland and the only thing it did is put ace notes in
your
pocket. It didn’t benefit me! It didn’t do anything for me except leave me alone in a rotting, ruined house on the edge of nowhere—if I didn’t have friends I would’ve
died
. Died because my father was too stupid to live and my mother was too greedy to stay!”

“I wasn’t greedy!” she protests, again standing up. “I wasn’t. You have to believe me, Laney, I . . . I left because I didn’t know how to raise you.”

A gulf of silence between them, like two townsfolk standing in the wreckage of their home after a tornado has come and gone.

“What . . . what the hell does that mean?”

She says, “Some women, Lane, they have a calling to be mothers. They understand their children. I never had that. Your father understood you. He was half a boy himself. But you were always a strange creature to me, some little needy thing who wanted me for reasons I just didn’t get. I left ’cause I figured I was going to screw you up.”

“No,” Lane says, stabbing an accusing finger in the air, punctuating each word. “You left because you figured I was gonna screw
you
up.”

She looks down at her feet. “Maybe you’re right.”

“You’re a traitor to the Heartland.”

“I was a traitor to you, you mean.”

“Whatever. Anybody else, I’d sentence you to death. But I figure you worked for
them
for so long, maybe you can work for
us
now that we’ve got you back. I’m putting you to work building this city for us.”

“That seems fair.”

“You don’t get to tell me what’s fair and what’s not.”

She takes a step toward him, but the look on his face must stop her.

“Just remember,” she says, “at the end of the day, we’re family.”

“I have a family,” he says. “And you’re not it.”

DIGGING IN THE DIRT

MOTHER’S
EYES
are flat matte, lifeless, and without spark, each a dirty spyglass looking nowhere, seeing nothing. She still gets up, moves around, speaks to Gwennie, but her words are dull and mumbled. Her shoulders hunch forward. She looks like she’s trying to push herself inward—farther and farther, perhaps, until she is able to simply disappear.

“Everything’s okay?” Gwennie asks. “With Scooter and Squirrel?”

“They’re fine. We’re fine.” The woman fritters about the half-collapsed apartment, scooping up little piles of dust as if that’ll fix it.

“Well, where are they?”

“They’re out . . . playing.” The way she says this last word tells Gwennie she doesn’t really
know
where they are.

Gwennie goes to the window—a window with the glass pane broken out of it—and looks down. The sound of the two children playing reaches her ears: it’s almost musical. Down below in a small lot lined with pulverized rubble, the two children come running. Scooter with a doll made of corn husk, Squirrel with . . . what looks to be a spear made out of a broomstick, some tape, and a shard of gleaming glass as its tip.

Squirrel is not very good at playing.

“Squirrel has a spear, Mom.”

“Oh. Okay.” Barely a reaction.

It’s like something has been bombed out of her. The ground blasted.

“It’s your job to keep them safe—” Gwennie starts to say.

Mother snaps. “I couldn’t keep Richard safe. Neither could you. Neither could any of us. We’re not safe, Gwendolyn. None of us are
safe
.”

And then she composes herself as if that never happened—her body again shifts inward and she continues pushing dust into her open palm.

Gwennie almost wants to cry, though a part of her thinks:
At least she got mad. At least she’s still in there, somewhere.

Sigh.

She points to the basket over by the side. It’s full of food: she sees the green mop-tops of carrots, the bulge of tomatoes, a long, lean twist of bread. “Well. You have food. I’m going.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

She moves to give her mother a hug, but it’s entirely one-sided. The best she gets is that the woman leans into it a little. Another small sigh escapes her.

And with that, Gwennie’s back out the door.

Outside, she listens to the sounds of distant working as she faces the back end of the building. It opens up to the giant wall that surrounds the city, a mottled tortoiseshell wall that sometimes feels like protection, but just as often feels like a prison.

Somewhere around the side she hears the two kids laughing—which is good, because it means Squirrel hasn’t stabbed anybody today—and she goes to follow after it. But around the corner, she doesn’t find the kids.

She finds Wanda Mecklin.

Wanda. Standing there, arms folded over, nervously chewing her lower lip. “There you are,” she says.

“Here I am,” Gwennie answers.

And then neither one of them says anything.

Gwennie watches Wanda. The signs of Blight upon her are small—but she can’t help but look at them. The girl’s tongue hides behind her teeth, but even with evening coming Gwennie can see the sheen of the green leaf that tips it. Her fingernails are like little rolled-up leaves. The smell coming off her is floral—strongly so, almost aggressive.

“I need to find the kids—” Gwennie starts to say.

“Cael left.”

“Left? What?”

“He snuck out.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Wanda sighs as if she’s dealing with a stupid child. “He left with that other one, the Empyrean man, and they snuck off.”

“Empyrean? You mean Balastair.”

Wanda shrugs, looking irritated. “We weren’t introduced.”

“That means they’re going to look for the . . . well, whatever it is that the Maize Witch sent Cael here to get.”

A defensive sneer. “Sent Cael
and
me to get.”

“Right. Of course. Sorry.”

“It also means he went off without the both of us.”

That echoes Gwennie’s thoughts perfectly.

It stings her. He could’ve at least
told
her! Dangit.

Wanda starts to say, “Cael and I—”

Gwennie snaps: “I don’t care, Wanda. Don’t. Care. You and Cael have a thing, and I’m not going to mess with it.”
Godsdamn do I want to mess with it
. “I don’t wanna talk about Cael. Girls can get together without talking about boys, you know. We’re more than trophy cases to hold them up.”

Hard to read how Wanda takes that. Her face goes through some calisthenics—a scrutinizing frown to an eye-rolling
whatever
to, finally, a softer countenance that might just indicate acquiescence.

“Okay,” Wanda says.

“Okay.”

“So, whaddya want to talk about?”

“I dunno, Wanda.” She’s exasperated, but realizes that she’s the one who made the offer, so . . . “You miss Boxelder?”

“Not really.”

“I miss it. Sorta. I miss some of the people.”

“I miss my family.” Wanda suddenly hugs her arms to her chest and rubs her hands over her elbows. “I don’t know if they’d like who I am now.”

“My mother doesn’t like me, I don’t think.”

“Imagine what she’d think if you were Blighted.”

“I thought you liked being . . . that.”

Wanda pauses, seems to think on it. “I do. I feel strong. It’s a gift, not a curse, but I also know that most folks don’t think of it that way. Even here, where it seems like everybody’s an outcast now, they still look at me like I got two heads on my neck or a lizard tail whipping around.”

“Sorry.”

“I asked for it. I wanted this. I still do want it. It’s their problem, not mine. I went through my life thinking that everyone else was better than I was and that I was always trailing behind, trying to be like them. But now I know that I’m just me and they’re gonna have to deal with that.”

Gwennie thinks but doesn’t say:
And yet you became something else in the process
. Or maybe this is who Wanda was all along. Maybe the Blight is bringing something out of her that was always there, just buried.

Maybe it’s doing that for Cael, too.

She shudders.

PALACE HILL

EVERY
FLOTILLA
HAS
a Palace Hill,
Balastair said.

And he was right. Even this one—even after its fall.

Cael and the Empyrean man creep through the streets of Pegasus City as the moon crests high in the sky, signaling midnight.

Balastair described Palace Hill as a thing of beauty—but everything he described is in wreckage. There are the cobblestone streets: piled up in heaps and mounds, the stones cracked. Cael sees elegant marble and rare wood, much of it blasted to rocks and splinters. Scattered glass, bent chrome pocked with rust, trellises leaning on trellises.