“That was Sol’s brew she was drinking last night. She’ll survive.” Molly stepped across the threshold and settled herself cross-legged on the floor. “Probably.” She produced two jars of plums and a half loaf of dense bread. “Eat. And we’ll talk.”
“About what?”
Molly removed her stovepipe hat and considered me gravely. “This is not an easy world to survive in, January. I don’t know how much your father told you”—far too little, as usual—“but it’s dry, harsh land. We can’t say for sure what happened to the original inhabitants, but my grandfather had a theory that this was the original Dawn Land our stories talk about, and that our ancestors communed closely with these people. Perhaps, then, they suffered the same sicknesses and evils that came to us. Except they didn’t make it.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, really. But it means that everyone here must do their fair share to keep us from going the same way. We need to determine what your fair share might be.”
I felt a queasy pang of doubt—what could I contribute to these tough, practical people? Accounting? Latin lessons?—but Samuel was nodding comfortably. “What work is there to help with?”
“Oh, all kinds. We haul water from a spring to the north, we farm what we can, we hunt prairie rats and deer… We make everything we need. Almost.” Molly’s eyes on us were sharp, watchful, as if testing our cleverness.
I didn’t feel clever. “So… what do you do? If it isn’t enough?”
But it was Samuel who answered. He held the jarred plums up to the light and ran his thumb over the embossed glass. BALL MASON JAR CO., it read. “They steal.” He did not sound particularly perturbed by this.
The folds around Molly’s eyes deepened with grim humor. “We scavenge, boy. We find, we borrow, we buy. And sometimes we steal. We figure your world stole enough from each of us, it won’t hurt it to give us some back.”
I tried and failed to picture the Arcadians strolling casually into the small towns of Maine without being immediately noticed, apprehended, and possibly imprisoned. “But how—?”
“Very carefully,” Molly answered dryly. “And if it does not go as planned, we have these.” She reached two fingers beneath her beaded collar and extracted a shimmering golden feather. “You saw the eagles as you walked in, yes? Each of them sheds just a single feather in their lifetimes. The children search the plains for them every morning and every evening, and when they find one we call a citywide meeting to decide who carries it. They’re our most precious possessions.” She brushed the edge of the feather, delicately. “If I were frightened or cornered, and if I were to blow my breath against this feather, you would no longer see me sitting before you. It tricks the eye in some way we don’t understand and frankly don’t care to—all we know is that, to the casual observer, you become almost invisible.” She smiled. “A thief’s dream. No one has ever followed us back to the lighthouse.”
Jane, who had struggled up to one elbow and was listening now with puffy-eyed effort, made a grunt of enlightenment. “But then how did Julian find you?” she asked. Her voice sounded as if her throat had been lined with sand in the night.
“Well, there are still rumors. Stories about mischievous spirits that haunt the coast, stealing pies from windowsills and milk from cows. Julian knew how to follow a story. We are fortunate that there are few men like him. Well”—Molly heaved herself back to her feet, dusting her tailcoat—“we can hardly send the three of you out scavenging if you’re wanted criminals.”
“We’re not—” Samuel began.
Molly flapped an annoyed hand at him. “Are there powerful people after you? People with money and influence and patience?” We exchanged uneasy looks. “Then you’ll be criminals soon, if you aren’t already, and we sure as hell don’t have feathers to spare on you. We’ll have to find other work for you.”
This threat proved to be both earnest and immediate; the three of us spent the next week laboring alongside the Arcadians.
I—as the member of our party with the fewest practical skills—was sent to work with the children. The children were unnecessarily amused by this. They taught me how to skin prairie rats and haul water with almost offensive enthusiasm, and delighted in the discovery that I was slower and clumsier than the average Arcadian nine-year-old.
“Don’t worry,” advised a gray-eyed, dark-skinned girl on my second morning. She wore a grimy lace frock and a pair of men’s work boots. “It took me years to get really good at balancing the water buckets.” Demonstrating both maturity and nobility, I resisted the urge to knock the bucket off her head.
Even Bad was more useful than me; once his leg had healed enough to remove the splint, he was recruited to join Jane and the hunters. They trotted out onto the plains before dawn each morning, armed with a truly random assortment of weapons and traps, and returned with limp rows of furred bodies slung over their shoulders. Jane was unsmiling, but she moved with a predatory ease I’d never seen in the narrow halls of Locke House. I wondered if this was how she’d looked as she’d prowled through the forests of her lost world, hunting with the leopard-women; I wondered if her Door was closed forever. Or if I could open it, if I were brave enough to try.
Samuel seemed to be working everywhere with everyone simultaneously. I saw him repairing a thatched rooftop; bent over a steaming copper cauldron in the kitchens; stuffing mattresses with fresh-dried grasses; tilling the gardens and sending clouds of yellow dust into the air. He was always smiling, always laughing, his eyes glowing as if he were on some grand adventure. It occurred to me that perhaps he’d been right: he wouldn’t have made a very good grocer.
“Could you be happy here? Truly?” I asked him on the fourth or fifth evening. It was the slow-moving, after-dinner time of the day when everyone lounged, full-bellied, and Bad crunched contentedly on the small bones of prairie rats.
Samuel shrugged. “Perhaps. It would depend.”
“On what?”
He didn’t answer immediately but looked at me in a steady-eyed, serious way that made my ribs tighten. “Could you be happy here?” I shrugged back, eyes sliding away. After a short silence I moved to sit with Yaa Murray, the gray-eyed girl, and cajoled her into braiding my hair. I fell quiet beneath the hypnotic twist and tug of her fingers.
Could I truly be happy never knowing my father’s fate? Never seeing the seas of the Written or the archives of the City of Nin? Leaving the Society to their obscure machinations, their malevolent Door-closing?
But then—what else could I do, really? I was a misfit and a runaway, like everyone else here. I was young and soft and untried. Girls like me do not fling themselves against the crushing weight of fate; they don’t hunt villains or have adventures; they hunker down and survive and find happiness where they can.
The sound of running steps thudded down the street and Yaa’s fingers froze in my hair. The comfortable babble of the Arcadians ceased.
A boy came hurtling into the square, chest heaving and eyes wild. Molly Neptune stood up. “Something wrong, Aaron?” Her voice was a mild rumble, but her shoulders were squared with tension.