The shacks were framed in the town wall. Soldiers stalked the wall’s length, glowering down at the villagers as they moved through the streets gathering up metal scythes, hoes, and long wooden forks before heading out toward the main gate. The soldiers were in gray wool with pieces of dirty armor over their chests, arms, and legs. The villagers wore plain wool in grays and browns that looked barely thick enough to keep the cold out. Their shoulders were broad, but their stomachs were flat, sunken even. Glenn saw hollow eyes and jutting cheekbones and she wondered if any of them got enough to eat.
Whenever she or Kevin passed by, they immediately lowered
their eyes and hurried away. Conversations broke off the instant they approached but people followed Glenn’s and Kevin’s movements out of the corner of their eyes. Are they afraid of us? Glenn wondered. The thought was so absurd she almost laughed.
“So,” Kevin said when she caught up to him again, keeping his voice admirably low. For him, anyway. “Wanna tell me about our pointy-eared friend?”
“You saw him?”
“He’s kind of hard to miss, Morgan,” Kevin said. “And by the way, cat demon guy? Ideally he’s something I would have liked to have been introduced to a bit more gradually. Anyway, we chatted a bit before you woke up this morning.”
“You chatted? About what?”
“The usual. The weather. Stock prices.” Glenn cut him a look and he grinned. “He asked if I was okay. When I regained the power of speech, I said I was. He said he had to go take care of something and then he’d be back. Oh! He also said we shouldn’t leave the house under any circumstance.” He turned to Glenn and shrugged. “Oops. Hey, look, chickens!”
Kevin veered toward a small area fenced in with a circle of closely set sticks. A trio of kids stood at the edge, giggling and throwing corn to a flock of chickens. They shrieked and ran when the birds approached, flaring their wings and squawking.
Kevin hung his arms over the fence and watched the kids running around in the bright early sunlight. The show was short-lived, though.
An old woman emerged from a shack, and as soon as she saw Glenn and Kevin, she looked up toward the guardhouse soldiers and then rushed the kids inside. Her door fell shut with a bang. Nailed to the center of it was one of the black and silver feathers.
“Nice,” Kevin said and turned to Glenn. “So, what’s going on here, Morgan? I know I act all cool and devil-may-care and stuff, but I’m more than a little freaked.”
Another group of villagers emerged from a shack and were
coming their way. Glenn pushed away from the fence and set off down a different road, with Kevin trailing behind.
“The … person who saved us is Aamon Marta.”
“Why’d he help us?”
The explanation — who Aamon really was, who he said he was
— sat there, poised, but Glenn couldn’t give it voice. Kevin would think she was insane.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He was just …”
“What? Out to get groceries? Walking the dog?” Glenn ignored him and he shifted tack, tapping the edge of the bracelet. “So, they’re all after this thing, huh? What’s it do, anyway?”
Glenn pulled the bracelet underneath her sleeve. She guessed he had some right to know what he had been shot for, so she told him as best she could about her father’s theory.
“Huh. A reality bubble,” Kevin said with his usual nonchalance.
“Good name for a band. Reality Bubble. So I guess your dad really is some kind of genius, huh?”
Glenn paused, the sadness tugging at her again.
“What did he make it for?”
In the thousand things she’d had to deal with since the previous night, this was the one thing that had been crowded out. Maybe the one thing she wanted crowded out. Dad said he made it to rescue Mom. To bring her back. Glenn had thought it was a deranged knightin-shining-armor fantasy, but now that it seemed like so much else was true, could that be real too? Aamon had said outsiders weren’t welcome in the Magisterium. Could her mother have crossed over for some reason and been imprisoned by someone like this Garen Tom, or the Magistra Aamon kept referring to? And if she was … what was Glenn supposed to do about that?
“Hello? Earth to Morgan?”
“What?” Glenn said quickly, snapping herself out of it and
continuing down the road without a destination in mind. “Nothing. It was a project. Theoretical. That’s all.”
Kevin eyed her carefully, but after a moment’s consideration, he let it go. He took off again, pausing to kick at a pebble and sending it careening into an open building that had racks of herbs drying outside of it.
“You know,” he said. “I think you need to give me some credit here.”
“For what?”
“Well, for starters, for my being so magnanimous when I was right about everything. The Rift wasn’t some big boom that made this place into a wasteland. It made medieval villages and people with tails.
I won’t even mention how you called me an idiot the other day.”
“I never — ”
“You suggested. You intimated.”
“Look, just because — ”
“You’re not about to say that all of this proves nothing.”
“Well …”
“Oh. Come. On!”
Glenn hunted for the right words. The desire to not hand such an easy victory to Kevin and his Rifter friends was overwhelming.
“Obviously, there’s more to the Rift than we’ve been told.”
“Really? You think?”
“But we’ve only been here a day. Less than a day! I’m not ready to start believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.”
“How about a giant talking cat man? Who, by the way, looks an awful lot like — ”
“Enough!”
“Ha! It’s true, isn’t it?” Kevin stabbed one finger at her nose. He was practically dancing beside her. “I knew it! Aamon is totally Hopkins! That is so awesome! It’s that white patch on his neck. It completely gives it away.” A sudden look of horror came into Kevin’s eyes. “Oh no, your mom and dad never …”
He made a little snip-snip gesture with two fingers.
“No,” Glenn said. “Dad wanted to take him to the vet, but Mom would never let him.” And now I guess that makes sense….
“Well, that’s one lucky cat. He may have nine lives but only two
— Hey, look!”
Kevin pointed down the road to where Aamon had appeared from behind a set of buildings. He moved toward the far end of the village to a thick stand of trees enclosed by the outer wall. Aamon stopped at the edge of the woods, then turned around to scan the empty plaza. Glenn shoved Kevin behind a nearby building. After a pause, she peeked around the corner. Once Aamon had ensured he was alone, he slipped into the woods and disappeared. Glenn looked back at Kevin.
“We so have to find out what he’s up to,” he said.
Most of the villagers had gone through the gates by now, so the square behind them was quiet. Glenn peered into the woods ahead but couldn’t make anything out.
“Okay, but we have to be careful. A qui-”
But Kevin was already hobbling past her, his hand grasping at his injured side.
“Kevin!”
Glenn cursed Kevin in her head but had to admit she was also curious to see what Aamon was up to. They crossed the plaza, circling around to the far side of the stand of trees.
The woods were deeper and thicker than Glenn would have
guessed, enough so that it looked to be a grim sort of twilight within it.
There was no sign of Aamon. Glenn’s heart began to thrum in her chest.
Stupid, she told herself. It was broad daylight. Nothing was going to happen. And she had no reason to be afraid of Aamon. Right?
Glenn stepped away from the edge of the plaza and into the forest.