Blue Magic (46 page)

“They want money?”

“They will, once the crisis is over. But you should ask them for a lifetime pass.”

“Why, because you find me cute?”

“You are cute, but also because you broke the curse.”

“Befoulment,” Juanita corrected.

“That makes you a hero. So, where are you going first?”

“Home, where else?”

“Where else?” Astrid nodded. “I’m serious, you know. The Roused owe you—and they aren’t the only ones.”

“My brother’s still caught in dreams.”

“That gate’s opening now.”

“How’s that work? Dreams are just another place?”

There was a pause, the look she’d come to associate with Astrid looking up information elsewhere. “The science guys are debating that one.”

“Maybe it’s a spiritual question.”

Astrid frowned, not getting it.

“Not a scientific matter,” Juanita prompted.

“Oh.” Astrid shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”

“If you don’t mind my saying…,” Juanita said.

“Say anything you want.”

“Ignoring the sacred wasn’t necessarily the smartest choice you made. Treating magic like technology … it’s not right. It’s not …
whole.
”

“You want to be my spiritual adviser?”

“I’m not qualified. Besides, would you even want one?”

“Why not?” Astrid said. “Go check on your family. Think things over, and let me know if you reach any conclusions.”

She was right, Juanita thought. She’d see Mamá and make it right with the judge, if she could.

Oh, and there’s a little matter of figuring out what to do with the rest of my life.

It seemed wrong that after so much had happened, she still had to tussle with that one.

Her hand brushed Gilead’s book. Spiritual questions.

The Kiev airport had been reorganized around one airplane hangar whose big doors had become a massive gateway. The gate wasn’t made of thorns anymore, but a mixture of woods and stone, adorned with carvings and pictographs, symbols from a hundred cultures. Two queues—one of vehicles, one of people on foot—were inching toward the gate through improvised checkpoints. The guards were checking for weapons and scanning passports, but they weren’t looking for hassles and were only too happy to send any foreigners home.

As soon as someone recognized Juanita as the American girl from the famous trial, they waved her through.

“I suppose all this will get normalized soon.”

“Visas and immunizations and travel restrictions,” Astrid agreed. “Business as usual.”

“So the old world’s not completely dead.”

“No deader than me.”

“I’m not sure that’s funny,” Juanita told her.

“When you decide, let me know.”

People who’d made it through security tended to pause at the threshold of the gate, daunted by the cold air and blue glow. Juanita stepped through without hesitation.

She found herself at the bottom of a steep gorge walled by blue stone. Trucks and cars were rumbling downhill, lining up to pass through another checkpoint—this one staffed by Native Americans wielding magical items—at the exit. The line of pedestrians wound alongside the road.

Will Forest was waiting for her. “Going back to Reno?”

She nodded. “Find your kids?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good, I’m glad.”

“Anytime you want to talk, call Astrid’s name.”

“I just want news of my family, Forest.”

“That part of Nevada had some sandstorms, nothing too serious. Casualties in Reno were light.” He walked her past the checkpoint, to the glow. “Think about where you want to be.”

“No place like home, huh?” she said, stepping out into her mother’s backyard.

She bolted up to the kitchen door, almost tripping over a profusion of children’s toys. For a second, she thought the door might be locked, but no—it had always been sticky. She shoved it open. “Mamá?”

No answer.

Heart in her mouth, she poked through the house. It was obvious Lucinda was living here with the children again, obvious too that the family had not been gone long—there was a half-gnawed cracker with a smear of yellow fruit on it aging on the counter. The smell of stale banana filled the air.

They were okay. She could wait.

She checked the card drawer. If any of her brothers had died while she was out of touch, the telegram from the army and the sympathy cards would be there.

Mamá’s church earrings were gone.

She picked up the phone, got a dial tone, and tried Lucinda’s cell. It went to voice mail. Which meant nothing, with so many towers down.

She dropped her bag, and went to rinse her face. The water was off, and a basin by the sink filled with tepid water was the best she could do. She washed up carefully: it felt important to look her best.

Once she was satisfied with her appearance, she set out down the empty streets. None of the houses seemed badly damaged. She saw a collapsed deck here, a fallen tree there, lots of broken windows.

Her feet brought her to her old church. As she climbed the steps, she heard singing, a full house from the sounds of it. She opened the doors, thinking to slip in unnoticed, lay eyes on her family, and get out without a fuss.

Instead she collided with a young mother who’d retreated to the foyer to soothe her baby. The kid screeched; heads turned.

Juanita flushed. Her eye fell on a banner behind the pulpit:
SERVICE FOR THE
MISSING.

Great. She might as well have interrupted her own funeral.

Mamá cried out, running up the aisle, suffocating Juanita in her arms.

“Sorry, Mamá,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“I wasn’t worried, baby. You’re not on the list.”

“No?”

“I knew you were alive,” Mamá said, and there, in the rising heat, amid the crush of family, Juanita felt something powerful rising within her, a commingling of joy and strength.

“Come on,” she said to her mother. “Let’s find a seat.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

WITHIN A MONTH OF
Boomsday—Astrid had never been able to sell anyone on “Small Bang”—Indigo Crater and the forest around it had, unofficially at least, become an independent territory governed by the Roused.

The rush of vitagua into the real had brought debris with it—hundreds of tons of the gritty dirt that had lain under the glaciers. It had blown from the Chimney, carving the crater, and coalesced at its edge into a crag with sharp slopes and a jagged peak. Observers likened it to a snapped femur; people were calling it Blue Bone.

If anything remained of Indigo Springs, it was entombed beneath the mountain.

The Roused had been quick to exploit their monopoly on gate travel, making deals with individual airport authorities worldwide. Participating countries got gates: in return, the Roused agreed to follow international law as they moved people from place to place. Passports were stamped, visas checked, fees and duties paid.

Business as usual.

Arthur Roche and two aides came through the Blue Bone Welcome Center on a Wednesday morning. It was a shock, seeing him again: Astrid still thought of Roche as a petty tyrant who’d jailed her. But as he and Will shook hands, they exchanged a long look—of understanding, miles traveled together, old fights resolved … and she found the animosity slipping away.

He’d been through a lot, she realized, and he had less say in it than most of them.

“Welcome,” she made herself say, and found she meant it.

He gave her the usual curt nod. “Am I the last one here?”

Will shook his head. “We’re waiting on the Fyrefolk.”

They escorted the government delegation to a sun-dappled meadow dotted with seats—stumps, rocks, a few proper chairs. Letrico boulders lay in the grass, and sunshine trickled down through a screen of leaves. Astrid settled on a mossy stump.

“This is your conference room?” Roche murmured to Will.

Will’s hands moved, and the general laughed.

“I didn’t know you knew sign language,” Astrid said.

Will shrugged.

“He learned when I lost my hearing,” Roche said.

The meadow was already occupied by representatives from other stakeholders: Patience’s firebrand niece, Lilla Skye, was there speaking for non-Roused aboriginal interests, Jupiter for the Indigo Springs volunteers, many of whom were wanted for terrorism and war crimes. A trio of Roused—a warrior, an elder, and a Two-Spirited shaman, waited in the shade of an elm tree. The United Nations had sent an observer, which made everything seem shockingly important and official. There was also a camera crew.

As Roche took possession of a granite slab that might work, more or less, as a desk, Will beamed. “Told you we’d get them all here.”

“Except they’re not.” As Lilla Skye approached Roche, Astrid sent a ringer to find Juanita Corazón.

Juanita was home in Reno, arguing with her mother in rapid-fire Spanish. The sound carried through the open window.

“I gotta learn more languages…,” Astrid muttered, straining her mouse muscles to push the doorbell.

A diminutive niece opened the door. “Grandma wants Tía to wear a skirt,” she confided as Juanita rushed to the door, buttoning a pair of dress slacks. Her face fell when she recognized Astrid.

“Expecting someone else?”

“I guess not,” she said. “Everyone waiting on me?”

“Pretty much. Your judge friend didn’t show?”

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Juanita said. “Expecting him to forgive me, let alone join the witch-burners, was probably a bit much.”

“You’re not witch-burners.” Back at the talking meadow, Astrid’s ringer raised its voice. “Fyrefolk delegation’s on its way.”

A chilly murmur. Getting the Fyremen a seat at the table had been a hard sell, even though Juanita had taken over the group, promising to focus their attention on spiritual issues.

Astrid let her gaze roam to the dancers and drummers awaiting the official opening of the talks. Negotiations would go on for years, Will had warned. She couldn’t expect substantial progress today.

Elsewhere, in the unreal, a small hand tugged at hers.

Astrid had never finished high school, and to be heading up a class now felt … weird.

It helped that her classroom wasn’t in a real school. There were no blackboards or desks; she’d chosen a space near a standing pool of vitagua, erecting a gaily colored silk tent bordered by gardens. Jacks’s statue of her father stood half a mile away, down a path lined with Dad’s favorite flowers.

Astrid’s students ranged in age from eight to fifteen, and they came from across the globe. They carried books from more worldly classes—Will had recruited a math and science teacher, an English teacher, even a seasoned principal to run the school. The kids bubbled with energy.

Ellie and Carson Forest were among her students. Will’s daughter bounced with barely repressed excitement. Carson, as always, was more guarded. Walls up, so much like his dad.

All of them had the vitagua-flecked eyes of the initiated.

“Let’s start with a letrico circle,” Astrid said.

They formed up around a windmill, reciting the cantation. Power formed in tufts, and they each crystallized a hunk.

“Good.” She handed a chantment to Ellie. “Apple-spinning.”

“Praise the Goddess,” Ellie mouthed, raising the chantment and making fruit out of thin air. Apples for teacher.

Next, Astrid led the group to a shelf of random objects one of the Canadian kids had christened the Tickle Trunk, inviting each child to pick something with sparkle.

One after another, the students made chantments. They were minor items, imbued with random powers—only Ellie Forest seemed close to developing any control over what she made.

There was no rush; they had time.

In time, the students would return home to make chantments, improving the lives of their families and neighbors.

“Astrid.” That was Katarina, speaking to a ringer in the new magic science center at MIT. “There’s a quantum physicist in Sri Lanka I want on-site. Homeland Security’s blocking his visa.”

“Ask Pike to take it on.”

“
Nyet,
I need him. Disguise or smuggle the guy.”

“We can’t do whatever we want anymore,” Astrid said. Every hour, it seemed, imposed more rules on them. Laws on letrico use, agreements about chantment dispersal. Several U.S. states had already made vamping a capital offense. Humanity was fitting magic into a legislative framework, defining what magicians could do. Coming to terms.

She argued with Katarina, watched the Roused dancers opening up the peace conference, taught her class, and roamed the world. In Cleveland, Boomsday had caused tornadoes, but the electricity was back up, and most of the roads were fixed. Water was running. Life was getting, more or less, back to normal.

Olive was honeymooning in Cairo with Thunder. It was a working vacation—they were establishing a letrico mill.

In the talking meadow, Roche and Will were murmuring, feeling each other out on deals.

Roche: “We’re asking you stop giving private citizens extraordinary powers. Firefighting, road building—that belongs to the government. Healing chantments go to licensed doctors, that kind of thing. Superheroes are fine for comic books, but you can’t just go around sowing chaos—”

“We might agree to that,” Will murmured.

“Astrid has to publicly accept our position that her U.S. citizenship expired when her body died. She’s no longer American. And you renounce your citizenship too.”

“Why?” she asked, startling them both.

“You two killed thousands on Boomsday. You can’t be Americans anymore.”

It hurt, strangely: the sense of rejection bit deep.

A rustle among the spectators drew their attention. George Skagway was weaving his sports chair through the crowd. He braked to a stop between Clancy and Juanita, nodding to them both. Juanita was staring at the dancers, her jaw clenched. Fighting tears, Astrid wondered, or a smile?

An hour later, in her classroom, she sent the kids off to gym class. She still felt a bit like an impostor as they filed out, chorusing good-byes.