The Harvest (45 page)
That is a promise she’s gonna have to break. She feels bad about it now, dragging them along like this, but it is what it is. She needs them and figures it’s better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.
A few drops of rain patter against the tin barn roof, like little stones thrown. Ginger says: “Your pop’s gone, right? He won’t know we left right away? I’m presuming we have some lead time.”
“He’s off at Mader-Atcha City, selling a couple goats.”
Ginger grins. “Then shall we?”
“I’m ready,” Ernie says.
“Me, too,” Amaranth says, puffing out her chest and her chin, trying to make it look like she isn’t scared, too. “Let’s go find my mama.”
From the knothole in the barn door, Cael peers out.
He watches his daughter and her two friends hoist their packs. Amaranth picks up the rifle—his rifle, or, more properly, Pop-Pop’s rifle—and then they wander out down the long driveway to the plasto-sheen road.
He sighs. “They’re headed into the River Glades through Bleakmarsh.”
“And you want me to go after them.”
He hasn’t seen Gwennie in a handful of months, but she hasn’t changed much. A little ropier. Leaner and meaner. Her hair is longer, too, bound up into tails on each side of her head in the Moon Coast way—can’t see it under her rumpled leathers, but her one arm is inked from wrist to shoulder. All the various sigils and signs of the places she’s been, the people she’s seen.
“No,” Cael says. “I just . . . want you to follow along. Make sure they’re okay. Things ain’t easy out there.”
It was fifteen years or so ago, when the walls came down, when the world opened up. The Empyrean had to park their flotillas after the day the Blight Queen died. Together, and only together, he and Wanda reached out and killed all the corn in the amount of time it takes to snap your fingers, the reign of Hiram’s Golden Prolific brought to a jarring halt—and that was a rough transition all its own, turning the floating cities into terrestrial ones (modeled in fact after what Lane had accomplished with Pegasus City) and helping merge all the worlds: the Heartlanders, the Empyrean, the Blighted, the hobos. At first, chaos reigned. Things still aren’t quite right. Fights rise up—folks get hurt, killed. But a relative peace has been ongoing in this part of the world. It’s not the same everywhere else. Pockets of the old Empyrean civilization still exist. Not flotillas, but in mountaintop fortresses, jungle camps, undersea bases.
And turns out that not everyone in the world gets along with everyone
else
in the world, too. The fisher-folk of the Braided Glades, for instance, got something they call a “blood debt” against the River Glade nomads, and that means Amaranth and the other two kids are heading right toward bad mojo.
Rigo groans behind them and gets up off the barrel he’s sitting on. He scratches his big beard, then tucks a bit of his long hair behind his ears. “I still think we just should’ve told them we knew their plan. That would’ve stopped them.”
“Uh-uh.” Gwennie shakes her head. “Cael’s right on this one.”
“A rare moment,” Cael says.
“A rare moment, indeed, McAvoy.” She smirks. On her shoulder, Cicero the catbird shuffles on his feet, trilling and warbling. “What I mean, Rigo, is that those kids are gonna do what they’re gonna do either way. Remember us at that age? Going off half-cocked at everything.”
Cael chuckled. “Merelda was the worst.”
“Pssh. You just
think
she was the worst. We were always charging into dead towns or corn processing facilities. Sticking our noses where they had no business being stuck. Blight rats and hobo traps and . . . well. Point is, they’ll find a way to jump whatever fence we build. Might as well let them do it.”
“Fine, fine,” Rigo says, nodding reluctantly. “You know, Ernie’s not going to be good out there. This isn’t . . . his thing.”
“I’ll make sure he’s all right,” Gwennie says. “Maybe this’ll put a little hair on his knuckles. It did for you.”
“Hair on my knuckles and a leg chopped off.” Rigo laughs, shrugs. But Cael can see all the old ghosts flitting about behind his eyes. Memories. Good ones, sure. But all the bad ones, too.
“We’d go, but—” Cael hobbles over to the middle of the room. “Rigo’s got six other kids to worry about, and I turned into my father.”
“How is Pop?” she asks.
“He’s good. Tired, you know.”
“And your mama?”
“Well, she’s doing all right,” he says, sucking air through his teeth. “Making improvements every day.” After the Empyrean came down to the Heartland and became a part of it, things changed. Education opened up again. Technology, too. And part of that meant medicine. New procedures, new techniques. They got her on some kind of gene therapy; took a few years, but all the tumors went away. Still, though, she had to relearn what it was to be . . . human. To walk around and to talk. She remembered things—but she processed most of it like it was a dream (or, sometimes, a nightmare). “Pop helps her around. They have each other now, and Merelda when she’s not off on some half-assed adventure, and they have Amaranth, too.”
“All the more reason to keep her safe.”
“Yep. How’s Scooter and Squirrel?”
“Still married.”
He laughs. “Marriage. Them. Who’da thunk it?”
She reaches across, holds his hands. “Could’ve been us, once.”
A few moments of quiet stretch into an awkward silence. Rigo grumbles and mumbles: “I think that’s my cue. Gwennie, it has been a pleasure, and I appreciate what you’re doing.” He grunts as he lifts up on his one good foot and plants a scratchy-beard kiss on her cheek. “Thank you, my dear.”
He heads out the front.
“You hear about Boyland?” Cael asks Gwennie.
“Mayor now, so I hear.”
“Lieutenant mayor or something of Mader-Atcha City.”
She laughs. “Long way from Boxelder.”
“Jeezum Crow, you ain’t wrong about that.” Cael pauses. “He saved the Heartland in a way. Both of you did.” The Ilmatar had been taken over by the ants—enough where if that damn thing landed, it would’ve been a plague on all of them. Boyland and Gwennie went to the control room of that flotilla and put themselves at great risk to save the day. It was Gwennie’s idea—fly the flotilla high enough so that the cold kills the ants.
It worked, miracle of miracles. They were able to fly it high enough to kill the colony, keep the city from falling apart, and then land it—if very, very roughly—down in the corn. The Ilmatar is still out there now. Like Pegasus City was meant to be—it’s out there now, home to some of the old Empyrean remnants and Heartlanders, too.
“Forget the old days.” Gwennie squeezes his hands. “How’re you holding up?”
“Ah. Eh. Fine.”
“C’mon. Spit it out.”
“It’s good, it’s good, everything’s good.” He can see her lean in, her smile growing bigger—it’s the look she used to get when she was gonna tickle little Amaranth. “Fine, fine, it’s hard. Pop’s old. I feel old—gods, my leg sometimes feels like it’s burning up. But it’s more than that. It’s something . . . bigger. Deeper.” At that, his Blight-vine twitches around his arm.
She arches an eyebrow.
“Can’t you feel it?” he asks. “Everything’s changing. Life goes on. World gets older. Things are good. Amaranth is good. But she . . . you know, she doesn’t know her mother. That’s what this is all about. Used to be Wanda would come around, but she’s . . .” He sighs. “The Blight took a harder hold of her than it did most others. She’s just like Esther was. Lot of power, and I think it messes with her head. I’ve heard she’s doing good things in the Glades, though. Helping people farm the banks of the river. Irrigate and all that. But . . .”
Gwennie raises an eyebrow. “But?”
“But you know, she’s still out there . . . killing the old Empyrean. Hunting them down like they’re war criminals. And maybe they are, I dunno. But that’s gonna be hard for Amaranth to deal with. Wanda isn’t really human anymore. I think I still am, but her—she’s too far gone.” The two of them were together for a while—long enough to have the baby and raise it a few years—and for a time Wanda did a good job at masquerading. Pretending to be something she wasn’t. But it was a force like wind, or gravity, or age—she was what she was, and one night she just left. Cael loved her, but he was scared of her, too. And Wanda’s absence struck Amaranth hard—it was a hole that grew year after year. “How’ll that be for Amaranth? She’s expecting . . . I don’t know what. For her
mother
to be there. Not some
monster
.”
“Everything’s gonna be hard for her to deal with, Cael. Maybe easier for her than it was for us. That’s something, at least.”
“That is something, I guess.”
He wonders if they had a part in that, in changing the world, making it better. Sometimes his ego lets him believe it. Other times, he’s not so sure.
Gwennie leans in, gives him a hug, a kiss on the cheek. She smells like soap still. Clean, fresh. But there’s a little grit there, too. An earthiness. Under her fingernails. Behind her ears. In the leather of her coat.
“I miss you,” she says.
“I miss you, too. But you ain’t ever gonna settle down, and as for me”—he spreads out his arms—“that’s all I can do these days. Settle down deeper.”
“Maybe one day I can convince you to come on another adventure.”
“I doubt that.”
She winks. “At least you didn’t say no. That’s a change.”
“I guess it is. I guess it is.” He nods. “All right, she’s got a bit of a lead on you now. Thanks for keeping her safe, Gwen.”
“Anything for you, Captain.”
And then she’s gone.
And he misses her like he misses his youth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © Michelle Wendig
CHUCK
WENDIG
is the author of The Heartland Trilogy and the Atlanta Burns series for young adults, as well as numerous novels for adults, including the upcoming
Star Wars: Aftermath
. He is also a game designer and screenwriter. He cowrote the short film
Pandemic
, the feature film
HiM
, and the Emmy-nominated digital narrative
Collapsus
. Chuck lives in “Pennsyltucky” with his family.
He blogs at
www.terribleminds.com
.
Table of Contents
5 “THE BALLAD OF CAEL AND WANDA”
17 FOUR CONVERSATIONS AND A FISTFIGHT
18 NIGHT OF THE GOLDEN JOINING
28 REAPING WITH THE SWEEP OF THE SCYTHE
33 ONE HELLUVA FUCKING FUNERAL