Wasteland King (26 page)

T
he child hunched against a concrete wall, shivering. This wasn't like other fights, kids throwing stones and yelling, not like the nightmare of the trailer or apartment or even the tract house, crouching while adults screamed and things crashed against the wall. It still echoed all around her, everything topsy-turvy, the malice settling in her bones and making her ache, ache, ache. Her broken arm, and the time that man sprained her ankle, and other hurts, all come back to say hello.

Where were the other kids? Where was Tomtom? He was nice, and he took her seriously. His dirty face lived in her heart all the time, a soft sweet stinging, and she had run for the storehouse without stopping, Rom behind her and her head ringing with the importance of the mission.

Then, the redheaded lady, and the things made of mist, and the scratching of the blackberry vines and poor Rom's screams…

Brat cowered in the frost-covered bushes all that night, even after sanity came back and the noises and shaking faded away. Near dawn, cold and bladder-full, she crept out of her little hidey-hole and into a listing, icy trailer to pee. Her cup was back at the squat, and she didn't want to trust any of the trash around here near her privates. Boys had it so
easy
, and she had decided, way back when she was plain old Eleanor Gunderson, that she wanted to be like them, thinking maybe the easy would rub off.

It never did.

Her chest felt funny. The frost wasn't bothering her as much. It was like she had a little heater starting up inside her, and it smelled like the redheaded woman's breath. Brat crept outside again, taking shelter next to the trailer's listing, rotted porch. She could see anything sneaking around from here, and maybe plan out how to get back to the squat.

Morning strengthened, and Brat moved every once in a while, flitting from cover to cover like a tiny soldier, her red bandanna bobbing.

Around noon she found Tomtom's body. He lay on his back, his arms spread wide and his lips turned blue, and something had pecked at his eyes. He stared at the sky with the ragged red holes, and Brat stood, hugging herself. She nudged him once or twice with her foot, ready for him to hop upright and say
Did I scareya, Brat?
and laugh in his whistling way. He was the leader, the bravest and the best, and the craziness had killed him.

That's what it was. Seeing things with wings and hooves and human faces and flittering tiny people and
giants
, actual
giants
, was crazy.

She lost track of time, standing there and swaying, and only roused when she heard something that didn't belong in the Sevens.

Click-click-click. Taptap. Click-click click.
Tapping little footsteps, in the quiet.

That was when Brat realized she couldn't hear the traffic, even though the Sevens were right up against the freeway. Instead, there was only the wind, and that persistent movement at the edge of her vision, like the world wasn't going to stay still. Like it was just waiting for her to blink so it could change into something else, maybe a deep dark forest like she used to have nightmares about, pale hands reaching through spikethorn branches and curving to catch at her…

The clicking drew nearer, nearer, and finally she appeared.

The redheaded woman.

Brat might have turned to run, but her legs had frozen, and the woman wasn't wearing black anymore. Instead, she wore a silken blue dress, its hem fluttering, and beside her a dog as big as a small horse pranced. He wasn't like the mongrels other street kids had or the pampered Shit-Zoos one of her foster families had brushed and babytalked. He was redgold, the color of her hair, and he looked straight at Brat like he knew her, with bright-blue eyes more direct than a dog's should ever be.

The tapping footsteps slowed. The redheaded woman was so beautiful it hurt to look at her. At her throat, a locket gleamed, and set in it was a single bloody gem like an eye.

Someone gave her that,
Brat thought.
Someone she maybe doesn't like very much.

The woman finally stopped, a reasonable distance away. She looked at Tomtom's body, and Brat was suddenly sure she was going to sneer, like the ladies in high heels sometimes did when they passed Tomtom playing his guitar on the street. It was a swift expression, like he was a stain or a bad smell, and each time she saw it Brat's eyes would narrow, and the hate would fill her like big red clouds.

The lady didn't sneer, though. She just studied him, and looked sad.

She was so
beautiful
, from her tumblecurl crop of redgold hair to her creamy shoulders, to the folds of the blue silken dress, all the way down pale dancer-muscled legs to her black high heels. Maybe she'd known Tomtom, to look at him that way. Brat felt herself bulge like a punctured beachball. She hunched her shoulders.

The woman's gaze passed over her, and Brat tried not to straighten self-consciously. Tried not to feel the dirt on her skin—because if boys thought you were pretty they would do things to you, and even if you were ugly they sometimes would, but less often. Besides, Tomtom said the body would clean itself, modern detergents just got in the way and polluted the planet.

The dog sat down, its tongue lolling, and its teeth were huge, too. Curiously, though, it didn't seem like she had to be afraid of it. It was just so
big
.

She and the woman watched each other. Little spatters of light bloomed around the redhead, and if Brat squinted she could see the crazy fluttering in the lights.

It looked like little people with wings. Some wore whispers of frayed, cobwebby clothing, others were smooth and hairless-naked, unembarrassed.

“His name was Tomtom.” Brat blushed, hotly, and the words spilled out, taking her by surprise. “The others are dead.” She knew it was true as soon as she said it.

She was the last of the Wild Boys, and she wasn't even a
boy
.

The woman thought this over. Then she spoke.

“I'm sorry.”

Her voice was golden. Soft, and low, and honey-sweet, it spread soothing all the way down Brat's aching little body. A dusting of golden freckles on the woman's nose glowed. She was too perfect to be real, except…

Brat frowned. The woman
was
real.

Realer than real, even.

Did that mean the craziness was real too?

Amazingly, the woman folded down. She crouched, her blue skirt pooling around her, and studied Brat from below, her wide dark-blue eyes moving in unhurried arcs. The spatters of light brightened, and the heat in Brat's chest intensified. The persistent coughing from cold and cigarettes, the deep gnawing never-fully-satisfied hunger, the pain from one of her baby teeth rotting in her head, had all vanished.

Brat actually felt
good
.

“You saw the battle.” The woman tilted her chin. “Right?”

Brat nodded, digging her left toe into the concrete as if she was five and Called to the Carpet. That was what the Shit-Zoo woman had called it.
You're gonna be Called to the Carpet, you little brat.

“And you see the pixies.” The woman indicated the flying blue glimmers. “We're from Summer, little one. The more-than-real.”

Hearing her own thoughts given voice was terrifying and comforting at once. Brat's hands loosened at her sides.

The honey-voice continued, soft and sure. “You're… different. You've always seen things other people don't. Known things they don't.” It wasn't a question. “I can take you with me, little one, or I can show you how to go somewhere else. Somewhere just as dangerous as
this
place, but… beautiful too.”

“Why didn't you stay there?” It sounded angry, but Brat was honestly just curious.

The woman didn't get angry in return, though. “I… I had to leave.” The sadness came back, flooding her face, and for a moment she looked tired. But still lovely. “That's all.”

Brat looked down at Tomtom's empty shell. The police would come. There would be questions. The older homeless would flood into the Sevens, and Brat couldn't hold them back by herself.

She was, after all, only twelve, and dimly realized she was bargaining for something much bigger than her age would permit her to compass. Others like the woman might come, but they might not be… kind.

Compassion, like hatred, can be sensed. A twelve-year-old's bullshit detector sifted through everything else, and found the secret Robin Ragged kept even from herself.

Brat felt for her red bandanna. It was Tomtom's, actually, and she crouched next to his head, his raw oozing eyesockets staring past her. When she draped the red cloth over his face, she felt better. Lighter.

When she looked up, the woman had stood. Brat searched for something to say, and she finally crept crabwise toward her, almost-cringing. The dog studied Brat intently, his bright warm tongue lolling. Pinker than pink, a color too vibrant for the pale savage nightmare Brat been born into.

The woman offered her soft white hand. The little lights around her began to dart toward Brat too, chiming softly. They were saying something the child
almost
understood, but comprehension slipped away, and she reached up with her own dirty paw.

“I'll go with you,” she whispered, and the redheaded woman tugged gently on her hand.

“Stand up, little one. Do you have a name? You can choose one, if you like.”

“What's yours?”

“Robin. Robin Ragged.”

“I'm Ell,” Brat mouthed, as if she could make it true by saying it. “Ell Wild.”

“Ell Wild,” Robin repeated, and nodded. “I am very pleased to meet you, indeed.”

As simply as that, she was no longer Brat, just like when she met Tomtom she was no longer Samantha but Brat, and when she fled the last foster home she was no longer Eleanor but Samantha.

Maybe this name would stick. “Ch-charmed,” Ell stuttered, like she'd heard men do in movies.

For some reason, that made Robin smile, a soft pained curve of her lips. “I can teach you that, too.” She looked up, glancing at the sun. Another spring storm was moving in, black clouds in the north gathering. The rain would wash the Sevens clean, and maybe it was the only shower Tomtom would have liked. “Come, little one. We've far to go before dark.”

“Will it rain on us?” Ell clung to her warm hand, and was ready to trot to keep up with an adult's long paces. But Robin shortened her stride, and on her other side the dog paced, glancing curiously at Ell every few steps. In a friendly way, like he could tell she liked dogs, and was ready to like her in return.

“Sooner or later, it always does,” Robin Ragged replied.

L
ater, the Sevens sprawled exhausted and bleached, steaming damply. The sodden red rag over a boy's corpse was the only blot of color in the graying landscape, the clouds turned to an oppressive stormlid. Lightning stabbed and thunder crackled, the battlefield warming and finding it was again, only, mortal ground.

A shadow slipped along the roads, stepping over rotting bones and sponge-soft swellings, avoiding puddles of half-spent curses and the sharp stabbing fishbones of naiads and selkies. The mortals would see only branches and trash, shiny but worthless pebbles and melting gray cobwebs. To them, his almost-indirect route would seem an aimless amble through a junkyard, instead of a careful quartering of the cursed wasteland where False Summer—for so the Seelie sidhe now named her, eager to ingratiate themselves with their new lord, even though he was
Half
—fell. Ballads were being composed, and his own name featured in a few of them.

Alastair Crenn could not care less.

He found what he sought deep in the heart of the tangle, where a mortal corpse lay on its back, its face covered. The shape of the wet cloth describing the features made him shudder slightly, but he bent, keen dark eyes finding tiny traces. She'd stood here for quite some time, then…

He lifted his head, sniffing. With his hair tied back, it was much easier.

A thin thread of spiced fruit on the rainwashed breeze. Thunder muttered again, but the hunter closed his eyes, inhaling.

Only a few hours old. There was Pepperbuckle's trace, too, a long fine curling redgold hair.

Crenn found the trail, and set off at a lope.