Queens and Veneza stare at her. This is a general problem of city-people, Bronca knows—because she, too, was born and raised in a city, and had to learn the lesson late in life. Chris took her hunting once, over her vehement objections. And though Bronca would not fire the gun that took down the deer, Chris and the other Indigenous woman they’d been hunting with had made Bronca help with the butchery. It was important, they’d told her, to know where her food came from, and to understand that not just one, but many deaths had enabled her survival. Therefore it was crucial that she use every part of the animal, as much as she could, and take no more than she needed. To kill under those circumstances, or to survive, was respectful. To kill for any other reason was monstrous.
Manhattan gets this, Bronca notes. So does Brooklyn, who’s probably seen some shit in her day. And, Bronca suspects, so does the avatar of New York City, in his peaceful enchanted sleep. It seems like a New York sort of thing to understand.
After a moment, Manhattan takes a deep breath and turns back to them. “So what’s our next step?” he asks. “Since you seem to understand best how this works.”
“Now, we find Staten Island.”
“Problem,” Brooklyn says. She holds up her phone for some reason. “I’ve had my people on this—the ones who aren’t trying to figure out who stole my damn house—and there hasn’t been a single bit of weirdness on social media that we can zero in on.”
It’s Bronca’s turn to be confused. “Weirdness to zero in on…?”
They explain their process to her, and Bronca finally gives up being angry with them for not finding her until now. The whole thing is entirely too loosey-goosey for her tastes. But the gist of it is that their method’s not working with respect to Staten Island—which is about what Bronca expected. Staten Island gonna Staten Island.
They go around for a while before Brooklyn finally sighs and rubs her eyes. “Look, there’s enough of us now to just go there, rent some Zipcars, and drive around until our city-dar or whatever it is kicks in. It’s the only thing I can think of to do—”
“I don’t know how to drive,” says Queens. “Sorry.”
Veneza leans over to her. “I couldn’t drive ’til last year. Solidarity, babe.”
“—aaand maybe we should concentrate on trying to find the primary avatar anyhow,” Brooklyn concludes. “It sounds like he’s the more important target anyway. At least we’re all, uh, awake, and able to defend ourselves if those white things, or the Woman in White, finds us. Staten Island must be able to do it, too, since the island’s not a crater right now.”
“It’s harder, fighting alone,” Queens says, looking troubled. “Scarier, because you don’t really know what’s going on.”
“We’ll find her as soon as we can,” Manhattan says. “But if there’s a way to find the primary…” He looks at Bronca, leaving this sentence a question.
“Maybe,” Bronca says. “Like I said, it might not work without all five of us. But we can try it now, if you want.”
“I want,” Manhattan says. The other two aren’t as decisive about it, but they at least look interested.
“Uh, should I go?” Veneza asks, frowning at Bronca. “Shit gets weirder when you guys are doing, uh, weird stuff.”
“It should be safe, but up to you,” Bronca says. To the others, she adds, “Now, do whatever you normally do to step into that other place. Meditate, pray, sing, whatever.”
“Math,” says Queens. She looks sheepish. “I, uh, never got anything less than 100 percent in math, back in high school. Stupid kids made fun of me for it. Called me ‘Math Queen,’ like I would think that’s an insult. I’m a bloody math goddess—” She flushes, apparently realizing that she has digressed. “Anyway, when I, um, engage with that other part of me, I do math in my head.”
“Whatever floats your boat, kiddo,” Bronca says.
Brooklyn nods, thoughtful, then falls silent. After a moment, she starts murmuring softly to herself, or maybe subvocalizing, and bobbing her head to some inner rhythm as she concentrates.
Only Manhattan looks troubled. “I’ve never controlled it,” he says. “It just comes to me, whenever I’m, uh, feeling New Yorkish.”
“And when you think about him,” Brooklyn says, pausing in her freestyling or whatever she’s doing.
He blinks, then sobers. “Uh. Yeah.”
Bronca shakes her head slowly. “Well, you did say you’re, I guess, his bodyguard. If he’s your thing, then that’s what you’ve got to go with.”
“Yeah, okay.” He sighs and rubs at the back of his head. More quietly: “I don’t know what this means.”
Bronca shrugs, then offers her usual solution for awkward interpersonal interactions. “It means you ask him out for coffee, once he’s awake. And then you hope for the best, same as regular people.”
He blinks, then chuckles a little, relaxing as if Bronca calling a spade a spade has finally made him feel better about the whole thing. Probably gets laid a lot with that face, but no idea how to do an actual relationship. Also figures that the personification of Manhattan is two-spirit, too. She snorts a little at the thought. Maybe Stonewall was worth something after all. Anyway.
“Let’s get to it,” she says.
She isn’t in quite the right headspace for a spiritual journey, not here in this cold place lit too brightly by fluorescents and smelling a little too much of chemicals and cleaning solvents. Still, they’re standing in the Bronx right now, with her people’s songs still reverberating through the ground. No need for a journey at all, really. Her city is right here.
Bronca feels the change before she opens her eyes, because all of a sudden she has become vast. She stretches, upward because her sprawl is checked on all sides, and downward into the tunnels and caverns that are her root. When she opens her eyes, the world is strange and the sky is twilit and she beholds herself: bright and dark, a spirit-form of blurred lines and stained concrete and built-over brickyards. She is the Bronx.
And around her, suddenly, joined and overlapping in a way that somehow does not create paradox or cause pain, are her kin. Bright Manhattan, tall and shining, but with the deepest of shadows between his daggerlike skyscrapers. Jittery, jagged Queens, pan-amorous in her welcome to all, genius in her creative hustle and determination to put down roots. Brooklyn is old, family-solid, a deep-rooted thing of brown stone and marble halls and crumbling tenements, last stop for the true-born of New York before they are forced into the wilderness of, horror of horrors, Long Island.
And together, they turn and behold their lost sister at last: Staten Island. She is dim compared to their light, suburban where they are dense, thinly populated in comparison to their teeming millions. There are actually farms somewhere amid her substance. And yet. She bristles with tiny throwing daggers in the shape of ferries, and defensive fortifications built in semi-attached two-family blocks. They can feel the strength and attitude of her, blazing more brightly than any sodium lamp. She is so different, so reluctant… but whether she wants to be or not, and whether the rest of them are willing to admit it or not, she is clearly, truly, New York.