“Today.”
“TODAY?”
“I’m super fast.”
He stepped off the stairs and surveyed the yard. It was hard to tell if he was analyzing if Blue could accomplish it in an afternoon or contemplating if he would miss the ruin once it was gone.
“YOU CAN PUT THE THINGS IN THE BACK OF THAT TRUCK OVER THERE.”
Blue followed his gaze to a rusted brown truck that she’d mistaken for yet more junk.
“Great,” she said, and meant it. It would save her time if she didn’t have to slowly drive the car to the dump four times. “So, it’s a deal?”
“IF YOU GET IT DONE TODAY.”
She gave him a thumbs-up. “Okay, then. I’m going to get to work. Time’s wasting.”
Jesse sort of seemed to look at Noah, but then his eyes slid off and back to Blue. He opened his mouth, and for a moment, she thought he had seen Noah and was going to say something about him, but in the end, he just said, “I’M PUTTING WATER ON THE PORCH FOR YOU. MIND THE DOGS DON’T DRINK IT.”
There were no dogs in evidence, but it was possible they were hiding behind one of the discarded sofas in the yard. In any case, she was touched by the gesture.
“Thanks,” she said. “That’s kind of you.”
This gratitude apparently gave Jesse the confidence he needed to say what he’d been thinking before. Scratching his chest, he squinted at her in her shredded T-shirt and bleached jeans and combat boots.
“YOU’RE A TINY THING. YOU SURE YOU CAN DO THIS?”
“It’s forced perspective. It’s because you ate your greens. I’m larger than I look to you. Do you have a chain saw?”
He blinked. “YOU’RE CUTTING DOWN TREES?”
“No. Sofas.”
While he went looking for a chain saw within his house, Blue pulled on her gloves and got to work. She did the easy bits first, picking up bits of scrap metal the size of puppies and cracked plastic buckets with weeds growing through them. Then she dragged timbers with nails jutting from them and broken sinks with rainwater film in their basins. When Jesse Dittley appeared with a chain saw, she produced oversized rose-tinted sunglasses from the car to serve as eye protection and began to hack the larger things in the yard into more manageable pieces.
“MIND SNAKES,” Jesse Dittley warned from the porch as she paused to catch her breath. Blue didn’t understand what he meant until he gestured toward the weeds around the porch with an ominous shake of his hand.
“I get along with snakes,” Blue said. Most animals weren’t dangerous if you knew how to give them safety margins. She dragged the back of her hand over her sweaty forehead and accepted the glass of water he gave her. “You don’t have to babysit me, you know. I can manage this.”
“YOU’RE A QUEER LITTLE THING,” Jesse Dittley decided. “LIKE ONE OF THEM ANTS.”
She tipped her head back to look at him. “How do you reckon?”
“THEM ANTS THAT WAS ON THE TELEVISION. IN SOUTH AMERICA OR AFRICA OR INDIA. CARRY TEN TIMES THEIR OWN WEIGHT.”
Blue was flattered, but she said sternly, “All ants can carry ten times their own weight, can’t they? Normal ants?”
“THESE DID BETTER THAN NORMAL ANTS. WISH I COULD REMEMBER HOW THEY DID BETTER. SO I COULD TELL YOU.”
“Are you trying to say I’m a better sort of ant?”
Jesse Dittley blustered. “DRINK YOUR WATER.”
He retreated indoors. With a grin, Blue got back to work. Noah mucked about in the trunk of the car; she’d put a few bags of mulch and some bedding plants in there, and some more in the backseat. He pulled a bag of mulch out halfway, tore it, and exploded wood chips across the driveway.
“Whoopsie.”
“Noah,” Blue said.
“I know.” He began to painstakingly pick up each sliver of mulch as she continued tidying the junk.
It was hard work, but satisfying, a little like vacuuming. It was nice to be able to see the effect right away. Blue was good at sweating and ignoring singeing muscles.
As the sun lowered, the yard darkened, and the sparse trees seemed closer. She couldn’t help but feel watched in their presence. Most of this, she knew, was because of Cabeswater. She would never forget the sound of a tree speaking, or that day when she’d discovered that intelligent, alien creatures completely surrounded her. These trees were probably just ordinary trees.
Only she wasn’t sure anymore if there was such a thing as an ordinary tree. Perhaps in Cabeswater they were able to be heard because of the ley line. Perhaps out here, trees were robbed of their voices.
But I am a battery, she thought. She considered how she’d pulled the plug on Noah before. She wondered if it was possible to do it the other way.
“Sounds tiring,” Noah commented.
He wasn’t wrong. Blue had been exhausted after the church watch in May, when dozens of spirits had drawn from her. Maybe a middle ground, then.
So were these trees speaking, or was that just the wind?
Blue paused in her patting of mulch and rocked back on her heels. She lifted her chin to look at the trees that enclosed the Dittley property. Oaks, thorns, some redbuds, some dogwoods.
“Are you speaking?” she whispered.
There was precisely no more or no less than what she’d felt and heard before: a rustle in the leaves, a movement in her feet. As if the grass itself was shifting. It was hard to tell precisely where it was coming from.
She thought she heard, faint and thin …
tua tir e elintes tir e elintes
… but maybe it was just the wind, high and impending between slivers of branches.
She tried to hear it again, to no avail.
They were going to lose light soon, and Blue wasn’t thrilled about the idea of driving slowly back in the dark. At least they were finally doing the truly pleasant part — the planting of the flowers, making it look done. Noah had enough strength to help with this, and he knelt beside her in a friendly way, pawing holes in the dirt for the root balls.
At one point, though, she glanced over in the failing light and caught him placing an entire plant into the hole and knocking dirt over all of it, blossoms included.
“Noah!” she exclaimed.
He looked at her, and there was something quite blank about his face. His right hand swept another clump of dirt over petals. It was an automatic gesture, like his hand was disconnected from the rest of him.
“Not that,” Blue said, not sure what she was saying, only that she was trying to sound kind and not horrified. “Noah, pay attention to what you’re doing.”
His eyes were infinity black, and fixed on her face in a way that rose hair on her neck. His hand moved again, crushing more dirt over the flowers.
Then he was closer, but she had not seen him move. His black eyes were locked on hers, his head twisted in a very unboylike way. There was something altogether Noah-less about him.
The trees shivered overhead.
The sun was nearly gone; the most visible thing was the dead white of his skin. The crushed hole in his face where he had first been hit.
“Blue,” he said.
She was so relieved.
But then he added, “Lily.”
“Noah —”
“Lily. Blue.”
She stood up, very slowly. But she was no farther from him. Somehow he had stood at the same moment as her, perfectly mirroring, eyes locked on her still. Her skin was freezing.