Earth & Sky (The Earth & Sky Trilogy) (17 page)

“So, marshlands?” the taller guy says to Babyface as they reach the sidewalk.

Babyface nods, a grin I don’t like at all creeping across his face. “Yeah.”

They hop in the front of the car. I bite back a protest as the doors slam shut. The engine guns. Then the Miata roars away from the sidewalk, away from us.

21.

D
o you know those guys?” Win asks.

“No,” I say, tearing my gaze from the spot where the car turned out of view. “You said we can follow them?”

“We can beat them to wherever they’re going. What’s the marshlands?”

“It’s a sort of nature reserve along the coastline, just east of the city,” I say. There isn’t much going on out there at this time of year. Which maybe is the point. “It’s pretty big . . . but there’s only one road that runs along it. We could watch for them there and see where they turn off.”

“All right,” Win says. “Just remember, if we have to stay in the spot we’ve jumped to, to avoid being seen, the Enforcers could show up almost on top of us. Then we’ll
have
to leave, no matter what else is going on.”

“I know.”

He pulls the time cloth around us. The characters flash by on the data display. After a moment, he nods, and his hand twitches toward me as if to rest on my back, the way he’s steadied me before. I scoot out of reach automatically. He jerks back, his mouth tightening.

Part of me wants to say it’s fine, to take his hand and let the tension still hovering between us release. He did bring me here; he’s doing this because I asked. But he hasn’t apologized, for
anything
: for the experimental kiss, for the patronizing comments, for dragging me around like a puppy on a leash. For all I know, he really is only agreeing to this because he’s worried about keeping his Jeanant communication tool in working order.

I hug Jeanant’s cloak around me instead. “Let’s go.”

Win presses the panel. The cloth sways—my gut lurches—and deposits us across the street from the park.

Win frowns. I close my eyes as he swipes at the panel some more. The cloth hums faintly and the air inside shivers. “Come on,” Win murmurs, poking something on the opposite wall. “Wake up!”

When he smacks the panel again, the floor lifts and the world spins. I open my eyes to a four-lane highway that stretches out ahead of us. We’ve landed on the gravel shoulder.

To our right, clumps of reeds and bulrushes hiss as the breeze tickles over them between the hunched trees. The snow has picked up, tiny flakes pirouetting down and dissolving on the moist ground. In the distance, I can make out the gray shimmer of open water, the same shade as the clouded sky.

As I expected, no one’s out here today. Too cold and dreary.

“If they drive past us, can we just Travel after them?” I ask. “How closely can we follow?”

“The navigation system is coordinate-based,” Win says. “But I can estimate from where we are now and give a distance and a direction. As long as the cloth behaves, I should be able to keep them in sight.”

I ease my weight from one foot to the other, trying to be patient. Trying not to worry that they’ll never make it here in the first place. Finally, a glint of red appears on the road coming out of the city. I wince as the Miata whips past us, just a couple feet away. It zips on down the road, passing the blue sign of the nature center where I’ve been on school trips.

“Here we go,” Win says.

We jump—again and again—always behind the car but close enough to keep it in view. I’ve just caught my balance for the fifth time when the Miata pulls over, off the shoulder onto a sheltered strip of grass between two clusters of pine trees.

I rest my hands on the wall. From where we’re standing, I can identify Noam’s jacket as he steps out of the car with the other three guys. Babyface and his tall friend motion Noam and Darryl toward the marsh beyond the trees. I can’t hear a single thing they’re saying.

“Can we get closer?”

“Let’s see . . .” Win’s fingers dart over the panel. We shudder to a halt on a patch of earth matted with fallen reeds, some twenty feet from where the two older boys are now facing my brother and Darryl.

“All right,” Babyface says. “Where is it?”

Noam opens his knapsack. “I’ve got six hundred and fifty.”

“And I’ve got another eighty,” Darryl says, pulling a thin wad from his pocket.

The tall guy guffaws. Babyface folds his arms over his chest and jerks his chin toward Darryl. “That’s hardly a third of what that weed you stole cost us, limpdick.”

Oh God. So that’s what this is about. It’s just like Noam to be here trying to help his friend out of some massive screwup—a massive screwup it sounds like he told Darryl was a stupid idea at the time.

“Even worse than we thought!” the tall guy crows. “Time to teach them a lesson.”

“This is just to start,” Darryl says in a rush. “I told you, I need more time to get the rest.”

“Yeah, like you’ve gotten so much already? You’re hiding behind your friend here like the pussy you are.” Babyface turns with an awkward sort of swagger, groping for something behind him under his jacket. His inflection changes, as if he’s rehearsed the next lines. “You need to learn some respect. Maybe this’ll help you see how serious we are.”

He pulls out a pistol. Darryl flinches, and Noam takes a step back, dropping the knapsack and holding his hands in the air. I stop breathing.

“Get down on your knees!” Babyface says, waving the gun while the tall guy jitters with excitement.

“Look,” Noam says, his face pale, “you don’t have to—”

“I’m going to do what I want,” Babyface says. “I’m the boss here.” He fumbles with the pistol with unpracticed hands, but I hear a click I can only assume is the safety coming off. “Go on! Down!”

There’s no way I can see this scenario ending well. My hand leaps toward the flaps, but Win blocks me. “Just watching,” he says, his voice strained.

“We can’t let this happen!” I protest. “We have to stop them.”

“I swear, I’m going to get the rest for you soon,” Darryl is sniveling.

He reaches pleadingly toward Babyface, who smacks his hand away with the gun. Noam’s shoulders tense. “Not good enough,” Babyface says. “Tomorrow. You’ve got junk at home you can sell, yeah? TV, computer. You wanted to keep that stuff, you shouldn’t have messed with mine.”

“We can’t just appear in front of them out of nowhere,” Win says. “And we can’t change what’s going to happen without shifting who knows how many other things—”

Darryl snuffles and wipes at his nose. “I don’t know where— Maybe this weekend? You have to—”

“I don’t care!” I say, trying to shove past Win, at the same moment Babyface raises the hand with the gun.

“I don’t
have
to do anything for you,” he says, and smacks Darryl across the face with the side of the pistol. “You should have thought of that before you decided to try to pull one over on me, asswipe.”

As he starts to swing his hand again, Noam lunges forward.

“Stop it!” he says. “He said he’ll do it, he just—”

A cry slips from my throat, but it doesn’t make any difference. Babyface tries to shove Noam off, but Noam catches his arm, yanking it down. And the sharp crack of a gunshot echoes across the marsh.

“No!”

As Noam slumps, I squirm away from Win to scrabble at the flaps of the cloth. “No, no, no, no, no.” The word breaks from my throat, over and over. My fingers slide along smooth fabric that hardens at my touch. The cloth has turned seamless, impenetrable.

“Let me out!” I say, spinning around. Win grips me by the arms.

“You can’t,” he says. “You just can’t, Skylar.”

“I don’t
care
. Whatever you did—let me out!”

I batter him with my fists, and he releases me. But the time cloth doesn’t. I throw myself at the translucent wall, a shock of pain spiking through my shoulder, but it doesn’t even tremble.

I have to get out of here. I have to go to him.

But I can’t.

All I can do is watch as Darryl cringes away from Noam’s motionless form. As Babyface drops the gun, eyes bulging and jaw gone slack, and his tall friend jabbers something about how pissed his dad is going to be. As Noam just lies there, his head lolled to the side, his eyes unblinking. Babyface tests a toe against Noam’s ribs, and jerks his foot back as red streaks over the blue of Noam’s jacket.

“Is he really . . . ?” the tall friend says.

“Looks like,” Babyface says shakily.

“Oh hell,” Darryl moans. “Oh hell. He’s—call the hospital! The police! We have to—”

“Shut up!” Babyface snaps. “You idiot. Doctors aren’t going to help him. He’s dead. And you bring the police in and—and we’ll both say you’re the one who had the gun.”

“We can’t just
leave
him,” Darryl says, and clamps his mouth shut when Babyface glares at him.

“No one has to know,” the tall friend says. “Right? We just . . . don’t tell anyone. We can put him in the water.”

Babyface rubs the side of his face. “All right. All right. Not like we can do anything else for him. Right?” He directs the last at Darryl, before bending to pick up the dropped gun.

Darryl stares at it, blanching. “Yeah,” he gasps. “Yeah, sure, whatever you say.”

I bang my fist against the cloth and yell, but whatever Win has done makes the fabric swallow up our sounds too. Through a blur of tears, I see Babyface and his friend heave Noam up by his wrists and ankles and carry him to deeper water. Bile rises in my throat, and I have to look away. So I only hear them stomp back across the squishy ground, heft a couple rocks from near one of the trees, and carry them to set them on Noam’s body with a faint splash. And then another, and another. When I look again, they’re staring at the spot where Noam’s disappeared into the marsh.

Babyface shudders. Then he turns to Darryl. “You open your mouth about this to anyone, and you’ll wish you were the one down there.”

Darryl nods, his eyes red-rimmed. The tall friend grabs Noam’s knapsack. Darryl stumbles after them. On the other side of the trees, the car doors creak. The red Miata lurches onto the road and roars away. And only then Win touches the panel and frees me.

The flaps peel open. I tumble out, falling calf deep into the frigid marsh water. My stomach rolls. I double over, puking what was left of the trail mix into a patch of weeds. I gag and sputter, and propel myself forward, thrashing through the bulrushes to the spot where Noam fell.

Nothing’s left of him but a splatter of blood already leaching into the wet soil. I crawl out next to it, but I’m no longer sure exactly where the boys sank him. Shivers rack my body, and the tears start again. I cover my face, my hands gritty with dirt against my skin. The sobs wrench through my chest as if they’re pulling my guts right out of me.

All this time . . . All this time I felt hurt and betrayed and even
angry
at him. And he was only trying to help a friend. A friend who wasn’t really a friend at all, dragging Noam into this. Why couldn’t they have shot
Darryl
? Why did Noam have to care so much?

After a while, my sobs ease off, but there’s still a painful hitch in my lungs with every breath. Win is standing off to the side, his Traveler pants soaked to the knees. The breeze licks over us with a fresh gust of snow. I pull my legs to my chest.

“Now you know,” Win says quietly. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have stopped it from happening no matter how much you were paying attention.”

I have the urge to argue, but he’s right. I can’t imagine anything five-year-old me could have said to stop Noam from heading out the door this afternoon on his mission to protect his friend. But there are still so many ways it could have gone differently. If Noam had just given Darryl the money and left before the other guys showed up. If they’d refused to get in the car. If the guy—the
kid
—with the gun hadn’t wanted so badly to show how tough he could be. If Noam hadn’t tried to shield Darryl from the beating. If the gun had been pointing just a few inches to the side.

So many chances for Noam to have lived.

“We have to go back,” I say, rocking to keep warm. “Earlier today . . . or yesterday . . . I have to convince him not to go meet Darryl.”

“You can’t,” Win says.

Of course he’d say that. “Why not?” I demand. With more strength than I thought I had left, I push myself onto my feet so I can look him in the eyes. “As long as I show up sometime when the younger me isn’t around, there won’t be any doxing. I’ll think of something to say that’ll work. I know one human life doesn’t seem important to
you
, but I can’t just let him die. Not like that.”

“It is important to me,” Win says. “But that doesn’t change—” He stops and shakes his head. “You’re upset— You must be freezing— Let’s just—”

I’m gearing up to declare I’m not leaving this place until he’s agreed to let me do what I need to do, when my gaze slips past him and snags on the air near the shoulder of the road behind him. The air that is wavering with the translucent outline of a huge metallic cone, several times as large as Win’s time-cloth tent and yet somehow almost familiar . . .

“What?” Win says at the look on my face, at the same moment as the outline shimmers away. He couldn’t have seen it anyway, I realize; it’s my sensitivity again. But he seems to figure out what my reaction must mean. He bites out a curse, yanking open the time cloth.

Which is a good thing, because the cone’s not gone. As Win throws the cloth over us, an opening parts in the seemingly empty air where it stood. Four figures charge out. A blaster glints in a raised hand. Before I can manage more than a squeak of alarm, Win’s fingers flick, and we’re hurtling away from Noam’s final resting place.

We make three jerky leaps before landing in an unfamiliar city, but I’m reeling so much I hardly notice. “What— What was that?” I manage to say.

“You saw the carrier?” Win asks, his hand hovering over the panel.

“I saw something. Big . . . like an upside-down cone.” I gesture, and Win nods.

“When the Enforcers need to work in groups and bring equipment, they use the carriers to Travel,” he says. “Less maneuverable than the cloths, but more room.” He frowns at the glowing characters. Then he closes his eyes, pressing his palm against his forehead as if he’s got a headache.

The motion brings me back to the scene we just witnessed. The baby-faced guy hitting Darryl across the head with the gun. And everything after. The horror swells back up. One clear thought pierces the haze in my mind.