After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (32 page)

Roz did not know herself what else there was to her, but she wanted to know.

The First Minister, standing on the dais, observed her approvingly. Roz wore the golden
gown, wore her hair long and loose, looked like a queen. Looked the part.

When you look perfect
, Miri had said.
When you stay perfectly within the rules. When the Court proclaims you to the whole
city as perfect, that’s your opening.

Everyone was watching her. The whole city was watching her, and she looked perfect.

“Welcome to this day, the beginning of our city’s thirty-second Trials,” she said,
and heard cheers. “I was consulting with our First Minister yesterday”—she nodded
to the First Minister, who appeared mildly pleased by this courteous going off script—“and
she reminded me that women have to volunteer to enter the Trials.”

The Court had their Trials and their rules, and Roz was playing by the rules. They
had their figurehead queen, and now it was her right to speak.

The maze, the monster, and the mystery of the Trials. They weren’t the test. This
was.

Roz put her hands to the large buttons on her gown. It was a stiff, high-necked thing,
more a robe than a gown, and the buttons slipped under her fingers.

The crowd went still and silent as she undid it. The gold gown fell with a sound like
coins tossed in a scale.

Beneath the robe, Roz was wearing dark, simple clothes that she could move freely
in. The clothes she trained in.

“I volunteer to enter the Trials,” she said.

“What are you doing?” the First Minister exclaimed, her careful politician’s face
going slack.

Who is it going to be?
the First Minister had asked her.

Not a knight or a city boy. If the rules said she was a prize to be won, so be it.
She would obey the rules to the letter.

All the screens in the city reflected her face, and it was determined. The whole city
heard their perfect queen speak, and her word was law.

“I am going to fight,” said Queen Rosamond, who knew as no man did what she was fighting
for. “I am going to win myself.”

Oh, Black Betty, bam-ba-lam,

Oh, Black Betty, bam-ba-lam.

“T
HE EASTHOUND BAYS AT NIGHT,” JOLLY SAID
.

Millie shivered. Bad luck to mention the easthound, and her twin bloody-well knew
it. God, she shouldn’t even be
thinking
“bloody.” Millie put her hands to her mouth to stopper the words in so she wouldn’t
say them out loud.

“Easthound?” said Max. He pulled the worn black coat closer around his body. The coat
had been getting tighter these past few months. Everyone could see it. “What is that
east-hound shit?”

Not
what
; he knew damned well what it was. He was asking Jolly what she was doing bringing
the easthound into their game. Millie wanted to yell at Jolly too.

Jolly barely glanced at Max. She knelt in front of the fire, staring into it, retwisting
her dreads and separating them at the scalp, where they were threatening to grow together.
“It’s my first line,” she said. “You can play or not, no skin off my teeth.”

They didn’t talk about skin coming off, either. But Jolly broke the rules whenever
she damned well pleased. Loup-de-lou was
her
game, after all. She’d invented it. Jolly was so thin. Millie had saved some of the
chocolate bar she’d found, to share with Jolly, but she knew that Jolly wouldn’t take
it. If you ate too much, you grew too quickly. Millie’d already eaten most of the
chocolate, though. Couldn’t help it. She was so hungry all the time!

Max didn’t answer Jolly. He took the bottle of vodka that Sai was holding and chugged
down about a third of it. Nobody complained. That was his payment for finding the
bottle in the first place. But could booze make you grow too? Or did it keep you shrinky?
Millie couldn’t remember which. She fretfully watched Max’s Adam’s apple bob as he
drank.

“The game?” Citron chirped up, reminding them. A twin of the flames of their fire
danced in his green eyes. “We gonna play?”

Right. The game. Jolly bobbed her head yes. Sai, too. Millie said, “I’m in.” Max sighed
and shrugged his yes.

Max took up where Jolly had left off. “At night, the easthound howls,” he growled,
“but only when there’s no moon.” He pointed at Citron.

A little clumsy, Millie thought, but a good qualifying statement.

Quickly, Citron picked it up with, “No moon is so bright as the easthound’s eyes when
it spies a plump rat on a garbage heap.” He pointed at Millie.

Garbage heap? What kind of end bit was that to loup with? Didn’t give her much with
which to begin the new loup. Trust Citron to throw her a tough one. And that “eyes,
spies” thing, too. A rhyme in the middle instead of at the end. Clever bastard. Thinking
furiously, Millie louped, “Garbage heaps high in the…cities of noonless night.”

Jolly said, “You’re cheating. It was ‘garbage
heap
,’ not ‘garbage heap
s
.’” She gnawed a strip from the edge of her thumbnail, blew the crescented clipping
from her lips into the fire.

“Chuh.” Millie made a dismissive motion with her good hand. “You just don’t want to
have to continue on with ‘noonless night.’” Smirking, she pointed at her twin.

Jolly started in on the nail of her index finger. “And you’re just not very good at
this game, are you, Millie?”

“Twins, stop it,” Max told them.

“I didn’t start it,” Jolly countered, through chewed nail bits. Millie hated to see
her bite her nails, and Jolly knew it.

Jolly stood and flounced closer to the fire. Over her back she spat the phrase, “Noonless
night, a rat’s bright fright, and blood in the bite all delight
the easthound
.” The final two words were the two with which they’d begun. Game over. Jolly spat
out a triumphant “Loup!” First round to Jolly.

Sai slapped the palm of her hand down on the ground between the players. “Aw, jeez,
Jolly! You didn’t have to end it so soon just ’cause you’re mad at your sister! I
was working on a great loup.”

“Jolly’s only showing off!” Millie said. Truth was, Jolly was right. Millie really
wasn’t much good at loup-de-lou. It was a game, a distraction to take their minds
off hunger, off being cold and scared, off watching everybody else and yourself every
waking second for signs of sprouting. But Millie didn’t want to be distracted. Taking
your mind off things could kill you. She was only going along with the game to show
the others that she wasn’t getting cranky; getting loupy.

She rubbed the end of her handless wrist. Damp was making it achy. She reached for
the bottle of vodka, where Max had stood it upright in the crook of his crossed legs.
“Nuh-uh-uh,” he chided, pulling it out of her reach and passing it to Citron, who
took two pulls at the bottle and coughed.

Max said to Millie, “You don’t get any treats until you start a new game.”

Jolly turned back from the fire, her grinning teeth the only thing that shone in her
black silhouette.

“Wasn’t me who spoiled that last one,” Millie grumbled. But she leaned back on the
packed earth, her good forearm and the one with the missing hand both lying flush
against the soil. She considered how to begin. The ground was a little warmer tonight
than it had been last night. Spring was coming. Soon there’d be wild, pungent leeks
to pull up and eat from the riverbank. She’d been craving their taste all through
this frozen winter. She’d been yearning for the sight and taste of green, growing
things. Only, she wouldn’t eat too many of them. You couldn’t ever eat your fill of
anything, or that might bring out the Hound. Soon it’d be warm enough to sleep outside
again. (She thought of rats and garbage heaps, and slammed her mind’s door shut on
the picture.) Millie liked sleeping with the air on her skin, even though it was dangerous
out of doors. It felt more dangerous indoors, what with everybody growing up.

And then she knew how to start the loup. She said, “The river swells in May’s spring
tide.”

Jolly strode back from the fire and took the vodka from Max. “That’s a really good
one.” She offered the bottle to her twin.

Millie found herself smiling as she took it. Jolly was quick to speak her mind, whether
scorn or praise. Millie could never stay mad at her for long. Millie drank through
her smile, feeling the vodka burn its trail down. With her stump, she pointed at Jolly
and waited to hear how Jolly would loup-de-lou with the words “spring tide.”

“The spring’s May tide is deep and wide,” louped Jolly. She was breaking the rules
again; three words, not two, and she’d added a “the” at the top, and changed the order
around! People shouldn’t change stuff, it was bad! Millie was about to protest when
a quavery howl crazed the crisp night, then disappeared like a sob into silence.

“Shit!” hissed Sai. She leapt up and began kicking dirt onto the fire to douse it.
The others stood too.

“Race you to the house!” yelled a gleeful Jolly, already halfway there at a run.

Barking with forced laughter, the others followed her. Millie, who was almost as quick
as Jolly, reached the disintegrating cement steps of the house a split second before
Jolly pushed in through the door, yelling, “I win!” as loudly as she could. The others
tumbled in behind Millie, shoving and giggling.

Sai hissed, “Sshh!” Loud noises weren’t a good idea.

With a chuckle in her voice, Jolly replied, “Oh, chill, we’re fine. Remember how Churchy
used to say that loud noises chased away ghosts?”

Everyone went silent. They were probably all thinking the same thing; that maybe Churchy
was a ghost now. Millie whispered, “We have to keep quiet or the easthound will hear
us.”

“There’s no such thing as an easthound,” said Max. His voice was deeper than it had
been last week. No use pretending. He was growing up. Millie put a bit more distance
between him and her. Max really was getting too old. If he didn’t do the right thing
soon, and leave on his own, they’d have to kick him out. Hopefully before something
ugly happened.

Citron closed the door behind them. It was dark in the house. Millie tried to listen
beyond the door to the outside. That had been no wolf howling, and they all knew it.
She tried to rub away the pain in her wrist. “Do we have any aspirin?”

Sai replied, “I’m sorry. I took the last two yesterday.”

Citron sat with a thump on the floor and started to sob. “I hate this,” he said slurrily.
“I’m cold and I’m scared and there’s no bread left, and it smells of mildew in here—”

“You’re just drunk,” Millie told him.

“—and Millie’s cranky all the time,” Citron continued, with a glare at Millie, “and
Sai farts in her sleep, and Max’s boots don’t fit him anymore. He’s
growing up
.”

“Shut up!” said Max. He grabbed Citron by the shoulders, dragged him to his feet,
and started to shake him. “Shut up!” His voice broke on the “up” and ended in a little
squeak. It should have been funny, but now he had Citron against the wall and was
choking him. Jolly and Sai yanked at Max’s hands. They told him over and over to stop,
but he wouldn’t. The creepiest thing was, Citron wasn’t making any sound. He couldn’t.
He couldn’t get any air. He scrabbled at Max’s hands, trying to pull them off his
neck.

Millie knew she had to do something quickly. She slammed the bottle of vodka across
Max’s back, like christening a ship. She’d seen it on TV, when TVs still worked. When
you could plug one in and have juice flow through the wires to make funny cartoon
creatures move behind the screen, and your mom wouldn’t sprout in front of your eyes
and eat your dad and bite your hand off.

Millie’d thought the bottle would shatter. But maybe the glass was too thick, because
though it whacked Max’s back with a solid thump, it didn’t break. Max dropped to the
floor like he’d been shot. Jolly put her hands to her mouth. Startled at what she
herself had done, Millie dropped the bottle. It exploded when it hit the floor, right
near Max’s head. Vodka fountained up and out, and then Max was whimpering and rolling
around in the booze and broken glass. There were dark smears under him.

“Ow! Jesus! Ow!” He peered up to see who had hit him. Millie moved closer to Jolly.

“Max.” Citron’s voice was hoarse. He reached a hand out to Max. “Get out of the glass,
dude. Can you stand up?”

Millie couldn’t believe it. “Citron, he just tried to kill you!”

“I shouldn’t have talked about growing up. Jolly, can you find the candles? It’s dark
in here. Come on, Max.” Citron pulled Max to his feet.

Max came up mad. He shook broken glass off his leather jacket and stood towering over
Millie. Was his chest thicker than it had been? Was that
hair
shadowing his chin? Millie whimpered and cowered away. Jolly put herself between
Millie and Max. “Don’t be a big fucking bully,” she said to Max. “Picking on the one-hand
girl. Don’t be a
dog
.”

It was like a light came back on in Max’s eyes. He looked at Jolly, then at Millie.
“You hurt me, Millie. I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said to Millie. “Even if…”

“If…that
thing
was happening to you”—Jolly interrupted him—“you wouldn’t care who you were hurting.
Besides, you were choking Citron, so don’t give us that innocent look and go on about
not hurting people.”

Max’s eyes welled up. They glistened in the candlelight. “I’ll go,” he said drunkenly.
His voice sounded high, like the boy he was ceasing to be. “Soon. I’ll go away. I
promise.”

“When?” Millie asked softly. They all heard her, though. Citron looked at her with
big wet doe eyes.

Max swallowed. “Tomorrow. No. A week.”

“Three days,” Jolly told him. “Two more sleeps.”

Max made a small sound in his throat. He wiped his hand over his face. “Three days,”
he agreed. Jolly nodded firmly.

After that, no one wanted to play loup-de-lou anymore. They didn’t bother with candles.
They all went to their own places, against the walls so they could keep an eye on
one another. Millie and Jolly had the best place, near the window. That way, if anything
bad happened, Jolly could boost Millie out the window. There used to be a low bookcase
under that window. They’d burned the wood months ago, for cooking. The books that
had been on it were piled up to one side, and Jolly’d scavenged a pile of old clothes
for a bed. Jolly rummaged around under the clothes. She pulled out the gold necklace
that their mom had given her for passing French.

Jolly only wore it to sleep. She fumbled with the clasp, dropped the necklace, swore
under her breath. She found the necklace again and put it on successfully this time.
She kissed Millie on the forehead. “Sleep tight, Mills.”

Millie said, “My wrist hurts too much. Come with me tomorrow to see if the kids two
streets over have any painkillers?”

“Sure, honey.” Warrens kept their distance from each other, for fear of becoming targets
if someone in someone else’s warren sprouted. “But try to get some sleep, okay?” Jolly
lay down and was asleep almost immediately, her breathing quick and shallow.