Fever (12 page)

Jared says, “Is that them?”

Footsteps in the grass crashing toward me in a run. I wince, but Jared’s dark, heavy form runs past me, leaps deftly over Maddie and Lilac in one bound, and goes on. But not before dropping something. I hear it hit the ground with a thud, and Lilac grabs it and stuffs it into her bag.

He’s leading them away from us. I barely have time to process this before Lilac is crawling toward me and pushing Gabriel and me in another direction. I can just see her mouth forming the word “Go.”

So we go, as quickly and quietly as we can, Gabriel and me tripping over each other as we move in a way that is both stooping and running. The wind is so violent that it disturbs the high grass as much as we do.

Lilac is following us, Maddie wrapped around her back.

Vaughn and Madame and Jared are calling for me, only me, my name everywhere like rain. Vaughn is trying other tactics too, telling me that Cecily’s baby is sick, maybe even dying. And Linden hasn’t come out of his room and he’s wasting away.

“It’s not true,” I whisper as I run. “It’s not true, it’s not true.”

Lilac says, “Shh.”

The power goes out again, with a loud groan. Madame starts cursing at Jared, who says, “The wind must have knocked out one of the generators.”

There is no carnival music, no lights, no giggling girls, and without those things the nightmare of this place doubles and changes shape.

Then there’s a crashing, swishing sound as my body hits something. I reach out to touch it, and my fingers move across the wire loops. A fence. Gabriel is feeling it too, maybe trying to determine if it can be climbed.

“It’s electrified,” Lilac whispers, gasping for her breath. “Normally you can hear it humming. But the power’s out now.”

“How long do we have?” Gabriel says.

“Not long,” Lilac says. “Her Royal Stinking Highness will realize something’s up if Jared doesn’t fix it quickly.”

I’m already climbing, looking back to see if Gabriel needs any help. But he’s having no difficulty keeping up, and in fact he reaches the top of the fence before me.

Lilac is following, slowed down by the task of keeping Maddie secured to her back.

The fence isn’t very high. Gabriel helps pull me to the other side. And then we both help Lilac, who is struggling because Maddie’s broken arm is keeping her from holding on.

“Wait; it’ll be faster this way,” Gabriel says, and he grabs Maddie, who whimpers and cries out. Lilac tries to shush her, but the whimpers turn to sobs in a way that I just know is going to turn into a scream. I follow Gabriel, jumping when I’m a few feet from the ground. Maddie is cradled in his arms, and I can smell the salt of her tears even if it’s too dark to see them.

Lilac is just climbing over the fence when her daughter starts to scream.

T
HE SCREAM
is the siren that sets the carnival into a panic again. I hear shouts on the wind, saying, “That way!” and “There!”

I clamp my hand over Maddie’s mouth. She’s biting me, squealing against my skin, but I don’t care. I’m so furious I don’t even feel her teeth boring into my hand, and don’t care how much I’m upsetting her.

I grab her from Gabriel, and I’m still muffling her screams as we run as far as we can before the lights come back on. The fence buzzes with electricity. We crouch in the tall grass, which is endless. Gloriously, wonderfully endless. I can see Lilac, a small outline in the distance, shuddering from the shock of the fence. And just when I think I am about to watch her die, she throws herself away from it, hitting the ground on our side with a thud I can hear over the wind. Even Maddie goes silent, watching.

Lilac moves, just barely, trying to pull herself up. Her last act of strength is to throw the bag that had been slung over her shoulder. It nips at Gabriel’s ankle, and he grabs it without pause.

Lanterns are hurrying toward her like fireflies. Jared is shouting her name, but not with cruelty—with worry. She props herself up on one elbow and looks right at me. Right past the grass and across the distance, into my eyes.

Then she turns to Jared, who is standing on the other side of the fence, asking if she’s broken anything.

“They got away,” I hear her say.

Madame arrives at the fence, stopping just in front of its deadly humming, and cackles. “Stupid girl,” she says.

Vaughn is there next, looking tall and calm, an aged version of his elegant son. But, unlike with Madame, I do not think Vaughn was ever kind.

For the moment they are all preoccupied with how to get Lilac back inside the fence. Lilac does not look back.

Maddie has gone silent, but I keep her mouth covered just in case she starts bawling again. Who could blame her if she did? My other hand goes to her forehead, and I try to smooth back her hair, to comfort her in some small way, but all I can register is how feverish she is, and how cold this January air is. She’ll decline very quickly if we don’t get her somewhere warm.

Gabriel seems to have the same idea, because he’s moved closer, sandwiching Maddie, who is shivering, between his body and mine.

“Just hang on,” I whisper.

It feels like everything is taking an eternity to unfold. Jared cutting off the power again and then scaling the fence to retrieve Lilac and return her to Madame, who is laughing like a croaking frog. They’re all talking, not loud enough to be heard.

Eventually Lilac and Jared and Madame and Vaughn retreat into the carnival, and the lights and music return. From this far away it almost seems like an inviting place.

Gabriel says, “She’s going to die—we all are—if we don’t find someplace warm.”

I can barely feel this cold. My mind is still not as sharp as I’d like it to be, this strange drug still coursing through my body. In a soft, chattering voice I tell Maddie that I am going to uncover her mouth and I need her to be brave and keep quiet. I promise her that she can scream all she wants later.

She understands. That, or she’s too weak to protest. Either way she doesn’t make a sound as I let go of her. Gabriel eases her into his arms, and we begin our escape through the tall grass, not knowing where it will end.

As we get away, I once again fight back the feeling that it came too easily.

The sign reads:
YOUR FORTUNE FOR A DOLLAR OR TRADE
.

Nearly every word is grossly misspelled.

The night ended gradually, with the sky becoming gray, then shifting with shades of brown and pink, the stars rearranging themselves. My body moved, detached from my mind, as the world took shape in the daylight. I imagined the stars were the pearls and diamonds in Deirdre’s sweater, desperate for the feel of its familiar knitted warmth against my skin. But I’ll never get it back now; I’m stuck with this horrific yellow sari that trips me as I walk. Gabriel helped me tear off the sash so we could wrap it around Maddie as a makeshift blanket over her coat. It has helped somewhat.

There wasn’t much in the bag Lilac threw to us before she was caught. There were boots and coats that Jared had dropped for us when diverting Madame. The coat is too big for Maddie, but I wrapped it around her like a blanket, and her teeth stopped chattering. There was also an old children’s book. Soggy strawberries bleeding through a folded cloth. Stale bread. A rusty flask of water. A syringe and a glass vial of the ominous beige-clear liquid I know to be angel’s blood. The water helped a little, but Gabriel and I were too sick to eat, and Maddie stubbornly refused food as well.

Now snow flits along the ground like enchanted dust. The field ended hours ago, turning into empty warehouses and skeletal buildings that had been picked of their insulation and contents. I said that there must be some civilization nearby, because it looked as though everything here had been stolen. Gabriel mumbled that they couldn’t be
too
civilized. Maddie slept, her breath jagged.

But eventually I turned out to be right, because now we’re standing before a small building that has smoke billowing from its chimney. To call it a building is actually kind. It’s barely taller than Gabriel, and made from pieces of scrap metal and boards. There’s only one wall—the one with the chimney, which is a story higher than the roof—that is made of brick. The only remaining wall of a house. There are no windows, not even the outline of them.

Gabriel shifts Maddie to his other arm. All night he’s carried her without a complaint, but he has to be tired. The morning light shows dark bags under his eyes, and his irises are not their usual bright blue. We had to stop several times because one or the other of us doubled over, sick from the angel’s blood and fatigue. He looks like he’s about to drop, and I doubt I look any better.

I’m the one to approach the door, which is a real door, with hinges that have somehow been welded to a piece of metal. I’m about to knock, when Gabriel whispers harshly, “Are you crazy? What if they want to murder us?”

“That would be unfortunate,” I say, sounding more exasperated than I mean to.

He touches my arm like he means for me to step back, but I don’t. I spin around to face him. “We have no other options. We’re exhausted, and sick, and I don’t see any luxury hotels around here. Do you?”

Maddie, her cheek against Gabriel’s shoulder, opens her eyes. Her pupils are small, and her normally distant stare is eerie in an entirely new way. For the first time I can see streaks on her face left by old tears. Was she crying all night in her sleep?

As scared as Gabriel and I are, it must be ten times worse for her.

“We don’t have another option,” I say. Gabriel opens his mouth to say something, but I turn away and knock before he gets a word out.

I’ve just realized what it is about Maddie that always leaves me feeling so unsettled. She reminds me too much of the children born in the lab. The small, malformed ones that clung to life for hours or days, or even weeks, but ultimately died. Her languid eyes just now confirmed it. I always ran past the rooms of those sad, hopeless lives, eyes averted, humming frantically in my head until the moment passed.

After I knock, the door rattles and then opens a few inches, with a horrible scraping sound. The metallic warmth of the building makes my nostrils flare. Gabriel has wrapped his arm around mine, and I can feel the rough burlap of his shirt.

The woman standing on the other side of the door is small and hunched. She’s wearing glasses so grimy I can barely see her eyes through the lenses. Her mouth is open, her face nonchalant, as though the three of us are a delivery she was expecting and is now inspecting for damages. She looks me over—the torn fabric where my sash was, my muddy hemline, rumpled hair—and says, “You look like a broken empress.”

“I’ve been called worse,” I say.

She smiles, but it’s a distracted smile. Now she’s looking at Maddie, who is latched to Gabriel’s hip like a baby koala.

“Your child?” the woman says. Then, “No, not yours.”

It would not take a fortune-teller to arrive at this conclusion. Maddie has her mother’s dark skin, though it is not
as
dark, and her smooth black hair.

“She has a broken arm,” I say, as though that will explain her presence.

“Come in, come in,” the woman says. But not before eyeing Madame’s jewelry around my neck. As we follow her inside—me first, and Gabriel right behind me, still holding on—I cover my left fist with my right hand, hiding my wedding ring.

Inside, the small house is impossibly hot, the metal walls reflecting the light from the fire like we’re in an oven. And there are things everywhere. Things that make no sense being near one another—a rusty lantern dripping strings of blue beads, a pink plastic Statue of Liberty, a jade dragon, a taxidermy deer head over the fireplace, a dresser that’s plastered with stickers and missing its top drawer.

I am guessing that when she sells fortunes, the payment is more trade than dollars.

The dirt floor is covered by mismatched tiles—linoleum and stone and patches of carpet. There’s a sleeping bag in the corner and a coffee table surrounded by couch cushions.

The warmth brings Maddie back to life. Her cheeks are flushed, her pupils expanded, her lower lip curled back in that brave defiance she showed Madame.

I look right at her, Maddie’s unusual eyes against mine. I want to think our erratic features allow us some sort of telepathy.
Don’t do anything crazy right now,
my gaze is saying. I don’t know if she understands.

The woman, who introduces herself only as Annabelle and doesn’t ask for our names, invites us to sit on the cushions. She offers us blankets, even though the fire is more than enough, and inspects the makeshift splint the blond girl at Madame’s carnival made for Maddie’s arm. It’s just twigs and gauze, but it has held up pretty well, all things considered.

Maddie is so small that when she lies on the cushion, her feet hardly dangle over the edge of it. Her eyes are darting to all the things in the room, and the firelight lapping the walls and ceiling. I don’t think she ever stops observing. Her mind is a bird that’s trapped inside her skull, flapping and thrashing, never breaking free.

I take a strawberry from Lilac’s bag and offer it to her. I have to dangle it over her face before she notices it, and then she raises her lip in a snarl, like it’s toxic. “You need to eat something,” I say. I feel absurd talking to her. She stares at me in a way that makes me remember the throbbing pain in my hand from where she bit me so hard that it’s bruising. But she accepts the strawberry.