The Book of M (36 page)

IT STARTED RAINING AGAIN, AND IT RAINED FOR FOUR DAYS
straight, until Ory thought they were all going to go insane from the constant wet. Then it stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The ground dried up so fiercely the mud started to crack. Heat wafted off the roads in sweltering, rippling waves, burning every inch of skin that wasn't covered. Ory kept waiting to see something on the horizon he thought was real and turned out to be a mirage, but nothing that ever materialized out of that shimmering mirror was a hallucination. Just a memory, badly mangled.

There was no time to think in the day, but at night, there was plenty of time. It was so hot he couldn't sleep—he would lay shirtless on the grass, sweat beading over his upper lip, listening to everyone else snore. It reminded him of Elk Cliffs. It reminded him of Max.

He wished he could tell her about that last day in D.C. About the Red King—who he really was, and that Ory had freed him. He wished he could tell her that Imanuel had also died. He thought she'd want to know, wherever she was. If she remembered Paul and Imanuel at all anymore.

Even in the heat, Ahmadi and Malik still went out to scout each morning, with double the water and long sleeves and hoods to shade from the sun. On the worst day, before they came back, the army had stopped for the evening an hour early, the men and horses too tired to continue. Ory was in the third carriage, making sure the corners of the tarp were still tightly folded around the books. Holmes began to whinny before the soldiers could see them, and then Ahmadi and Malik appeared on the horizon, shoulders hunched and clothes crisped with streaks of salt.

“Still all clear ahead?” Ory asked.

“So far,” Malik said once they'd dismounted. “The whole country is empty. Just fields. Miles and miles of fields.”

“And a funny sign,” Ahmadi added between gulps of water from her canteen.

“A funny sign?” Ory asked.

“Someone had defaced it. Maybe the world's last graffiti,” she said.

“‘Fuck shadows,'” he guessed.

Ahmadi laughed. “No, it was just a number. Just a blank sheet of metal with a number on it.”

“What number?”

“I didn't look that closely,” she said as she wiped her brow with the back of her arm. “It didn't mean anything. Twenty, or fifty, maybe.”

The next day it finally rained again, washing out the oppressive heat like the dirt from clothes strung through a river.

THE CLOSER THEY GOT, THE HARDER IT WAS TO SLEEP. ORY
spent the hours after dinner in one carriage or another, double-checking Imanuel's inventory. It seemed important—that they be able to present an accurate account to whoever or whatever might be in New Orleans. He worked so late that Ahmadi and Malik had started coming to find him in the carriages once it reached midnight, to tell him to stop and sleep at least a few hours before they had to be up again.

“You need assistants,” Vienna said once as she studied Ory from behind her father's shoulder. The soldiers who had wandered conspicuously close to catch a peek at his progress all wandered twice as quickly away.

“I'll manage.” Ory smiled. “I'll count, you scout.”

“Good deal,” Vienna said. She saluted. “Go to bed, before your head falls off.”

HIS HEAD STAYED ON, BARELY. THE SOLDIERS HAD STARTED
whispering about the dark circles under his eyes, and he didn't help
his case when he fell off the carriage the next day while trying to climb up the ladder. “Mondays, eh,” Ory said as he dusted the ass of his pants off. They chuckled, but the concerned looks returned.

“General, you need a break,” Original Smith finally said. “Not that I'm giving you orders.”

“I know.” Ory nodded. “Don't worry. I'll have a break once we get to New Orleans. We'll all have one.”

“Amen to that,” Original Smith said.

Ory made it safely onto the carriage that time, and settled in for the long ride.

That night he was in the middle of cataloging a biography stack when the knock came on the wooden door of the carriage, as usual. He opened it to see Ahmadi standing there, for once without her bow. She looked odd without it. Friendlier.

“Midnight already?” he asked.

“Eleven-thirty.” Her voice was not soft, however. There was an extra layer of guardedness to her tone, as if to make up for the lack of her weapon. Of all the people in the army, she was the most frustrating. She had loved Paul and Imanuel, too. He wanted to grow close to her because of that—the way he'd become with Malik, Vienna, the Smiths—but it seemed like the more he got to know Ahmadi, the less he felt like he actually did.

Ory realized she was looking at the small stack of books beside his feet. “What's that?” she asked.

He looked down. It was a pile for Max. Every night that he spent in a carriage organizing the books, he couldn't help it—he set aside a few that he thought she would like the most. Just for a few hours, while he worked. Then he'd put them back in with the rest, scattering them so they were as unfindable as she. But for that short time he kept them for her, he felt like Max was there again. “Nothing,” he said.

Ahmadi shrugged. “Well, good. Because it's lights-out.”

“Okay. Almost done for the night.”

“Ory.” She sighed, a warning note in her voice.

He set the clipboard down and rubbed his eyes. “You know, why does everyone else around here get to go by their last name like a badass, and I have to go by my first name?”

“That's how you were introduced to us,” she replied, and shrugged. “Imanuel and Paul went by their first names. Using last names was just a Malik thing for the troops—a holdover from his time as a cop before the Forgetting. He started calling the soldiers by their last names during training, and it caught on.”

“Am I not one of the troops?” Ory insisted.

“You're the General.”

“A general might be the head of the troops, but still a part of it,” he argued.

“Vienna goes by her first name,” Ahmadi said.

“Well, that's because then we'd have two Maliks. And she's just a teenager.”

Ahmadi threw up her hands in surrender. “You want to be Zhang, Ory?” she asked. But he saw that the eye roll she threw him was joking, not annoyed. “Fine, you can be Zhang. Hand over the flashlight,
Zhang
. Don't make me fight you for it.”

He knew she was serious about him stopping working, but she also had been smiling as she said it. The silly argument had put them both in a rare good mood—there was a hint of nervous teasing in her voice he hadn't heard before. Ory realized he was smiling, too.

Zhang.
He considered it again as he picked up the flashlight, weighing his options. He tried not to look at the small stack of books. Ahmadi waited just outside the carriage, grin still lingering. Her dark eyes studied him intently.

Zhang.
Yes, he liked it. He liked it very much. His hand tingled slightly as it began to withdraw, to tuck itself and the light playfully behind his back so she'd have to come closer if she wanted to take it.
He wasn't sure why the name had mattered so much. Was it more about gaining something to be one of them—or leaving something else behind?

Abruptly, he handed her the flashlight and stepped back into the new darkness of the carriage. “Good night,” he said as he closed the door, to stop himself from thinking any further. He didn't want to think about anything at all anymore.

HELLO?

Hello?

This voice is mine. Did I make this for myself?

I sound different inside this small thing. So certain. Like I knew something I don't know now. I think I knew so many things. Now I don't know anything at all.

We are driving now. There are four of us. Me; a woman with very short hair, as if it was shaved off recently and then began to grow again; a man with a . . . an animal on his shoulder; and a woman with pale, wavy hair. There are things that make me think once there were more of us. Women's clothes that are too small for us, one backpack more than passengers. A huge dark mark of dried blood on the floor when none of us have wounds. Or maybe it's paint.

I think we are friends. They seem to think so, too. But were they not friends with you, Ory? Is that why you're not here? I can't find any sign of you. The backpack is not yours. There's a breast cloth inside—a cloth to hold the breasts close, for a woman. I can't remember the name. I don't want to look at the blood anymore. I don't think
it's yours, but I don't want to ask any of them, because I don't want to know.

I feel . . . I'm not sure. It hurts, deep inside. When I stand, my head pounds and I grow dizzy, and my hands shake sometimes. Each day is worse. The others seem to have it, too. Sometimes the pain is so bad I just lay on the ground inside our big car, holding my middle, waiting for it to pass. I know there was something I used to do to stop this, but I don't know what.

Partway through the afternoon, the man with an animal living on his arm suddenly sat up and looked nervously at the woman with short hair, who was driving. “Where are we going?” he asked. The creature snarled and circled his biceps, dodging freckles.

The woman with short hair cocked her head, and then her eyes went wide, too. She pressed her foot down, and we all slid forward as the big car ground to a halt. “I don't know,” she said.

“Should we keep going?” the golden-haired woman also in the backseat asked.

The man with an animal arm peered through the slats out the window. “Let's get out and look around,” he said.

Outside, the air was sweet and warm. It smelled like honey and dust. I closed my eyes, but turned my face up so it could soak into my skin.

“We're on a road,” the man observed.

“But heading for what?” the pale-haired woman asked.

“This,” the driver said.

We all turned and saw her facing not the road, but the side of the big car instead.

“Oh,” we all murmured at once. It was gigantic. The sun, the road, the big car, and its long, stretching shadow.

“This is you,” I said, and pointed at a painted woman with a smooth head.

“And you,” the man replied to me, and pointed at another woman with brown skin and a huge mass of tightly wound curls springing
off her head in all directions. On another man, we could clearly see the black outline of an animal on his arm. The woman with pale hair was painted next to him. They looked at each other hesitantly. In the painting, they were holding hands.

There were others, too. But we didn't know who they were. I looked for you too, Ory, but I didn't see you there. Where are you?

“It's a message to stay on this big road until we find that,” the driver finally pronounced. She pointed at a cluster of black and colored shapes at the end of the painting. “We have to go there.”

“The Place,” the blond woman said. She glanced at the animal-armed man, but neither of them moved closer to each other.

“Let's drive,” the driver said.

Soft, floating water has started falling from the sky. Not as one great body, but in millions of tiny fragments. It acts like rain, but I know it's not—I remember that much. It glitters silver as it drops, so everything in front of us is shimmering. We're all crouched in the driver's cabin, peering out the front window to watch it.

“That's ______,” the animal on the man's arm said, but I've already forgotten what the creature called it.

The driver figured out how to lower the window so that a slice of the outside sky reached into our moving home. We all stuck our hands out, mesmerized. Ory, you wouldn't believe—it was cold! So cold to the touch it burned when the little shards landed on our fingertips. It wasn't water at all. It was something else. The driver pulled her hand in at once, hissing in surprise, but I left mine out there. I cupped my palm to try to collect as many as possible. I endured it as long as I could—my hand was white fire! But then when I pulled it in, there were only a few little silver crystals there. The rest had vanished somehow, and my fingers were misted with a light, wet sheen.

“What's it called again?” I asked the creature on the man's arm again. It repeated the name, but it was gone from me once more as soon as I heard it.

The road has been bumpy for miles now. I don't know why. I almost dropped this small plastic thing as I examined it. Beside me, a woman with very short hair is grimacing as she looks through the front window, and keeps pushing her feet against the floor.

“Wait,” someone behind us said. I turned around. There was a person in the backseat—a man. He stood up and gripped the back of my chair. “Wait, where am I? Where are we going?”

“We—” the driver started to answer, but then she shook her head.

They both turned to me, but I shrugged also, feeling a tingle of fear start to rise in my chest. “I don't know either.”

We slowed our house down until it stopped. The door was jammed, but the man pushed it open with the face of the beast living on his shoulder, and the three of us stepped out into the grass. So much green everywhere. It seemed like we had come from nowhere, and were going nowhere either.

“Do you think we did this?” the man asked. I turned away from the emerald forever to see him studying our moving house—the entire wall of it was one massive, breathtaking painting.

“We must have,” the woman driving us said. “We must have made it to remind us.”

The man brushed at his arm absently, as if the wind was tickling the skin. His fingers came away lightly tangled in a long strand of golden, silky hair.

“I keep finding them on my clothes,” he shrugged, having no explanation. “I don't know why.”

I climbed up the stairs after him, followed by the driving woman, who took another long look at the painting, to make sure it matched the road we were on.

“Do you think we've done this before?” I asked her over the breeze.

“Done what?”

“Forgotten where we were going, and then saw the painting and decided to follow it.”

“I'm not sure. But yes, I think so,” she said.

“How many times do you think it's happened?”

She licked her lips slowly as she stared off into the distance. “Maybe ten.” She closed her eyes. “Maybe a thousand.”

Before I ducked inside, I glanced back one more time, to make sure I hadn't missed it. But no—none of the people in the picture looked like you.