“Not that. I wish I would’ve realized that she could’ve just Traveled back to town and saved us the walk.”
It took many long hops to reach home.
The old homestead was smaller than she remembered. She hadn’t realized it would seem so tiny. Maybe she’d just gotten used to being in cities with buildings that absolutely towered overhead, or maybe she’d spent too much time living in homes that made this place look like the shack it was… Or maybe she’d just gotten taller over the last four years.
The fences had been made out of scrap lumber and weaved-together branches. They’d been too poor to buy good wire even before the dust had come. The pigs had gotten loose all the time, but they had never wandered too far. Then they had all died when the air turned to poison and everyone had taken to wearing masks to protect their faces. The outhouse had collapsed into a heap of splinters.
The ground was a lifeless grey color and the entire yard had been smoothed perfectly flat by the constant wind. There were two metal poles in front of the old shack. Ma’s clothesline had run between those. Faye remembered running and playing between the hanging clothes. Whenever she’d forget herself in the moment and accidentally Traveled, she’d receive a beating. Traveling had been so much fun, though, that it had still been worth it. Now, one of the clothes poles had fallen down. The other stuck out of the ground at an angle, like something had crashed into it.
The house itself was also at a slight angle. She’d like to say the wind had done that, but more than likely, Pa had been a little drunk when he’d built the place. The front door was missing. Probably taken by a neighbor to use for firewood. The doorway was a black, gaping hole. She couldn’t do it. Faye told herself she was being silly. She’d fought the Chairman, why was this so difficult?
It took her nearly half an hour of standing in the yard before she screwed up enough courage to walk inside.
Beams of sunlight came through the tiny windows and a few holes in the wall and roof. There was no glass in the windows, but then again, there never had been. In the winter they’d just hung old canvas over the narrow slits to hold in the heat. During the dust storms, they’d tried that, but nothing could keep out the choking silt. The floor was dirt. Faye remembered using her fingers and drawing pretty designs in that dirt. It used to make her mad when the others would walk on them, but since there was only the one room to share, it was to be expected.
It was empty except for spiderwebs and trash. Their cobbled together furniture was missing. She hadn’t known why she’d expected otherwise.
There was lots of broken glass left over from Pa’s bottles. She kicked those out of the way and made some space. Not worried about getting her sturdy dress dirty, Faye sat cross-legged in the middle of the room. She closed her eyes and sat still and quiet for a long time.
The memories came flooding back. When her eyes turned grey and her Power showed up, people had become scared of her and what she could do. Her pa had hated her for it. Her ma was always wringing her hands and crying. Life had already been mean and hard, and her becoming different had just made it worse for everyone. Any bad luck that happened, and there had been plenty, had been blamed on her.
She remembered listening in on one of her parents’ whispered conversations late one night when they’d thought that everyone else had been asleep. They’d talked about maybe drowning her in the well. Ma said that nobody would ever have to know. Pa had said no, because murdering her would be a sin, besides, she’d probably just Travel out of the water, and tattle on them to the sheriff. Ma had said that the sheriff would never believe a devil child. Pa had put his foot down and told her to go to sleep.
Not everyone had been like that, though. Some folks in town had been friendly. Nice as could be, and even interested in what she could do, except Ma always shooed her away from those people with their crazy notions. There had only been one other person with magic in Ada. He could make things freeze, until he got run over by a tractor and killed. Then she’d been the only cursed oddball around.
Good thing I’m not odd anymore. She had quit being odd the day that Pa had sold her for ten dollars to her new family.
Opening her eyes, Faye came to a very profound realization: This was an empty house. It didn’t mean anything to her. The scared little Okie girl didn’t exist anymore. She had important things to do, like solve a big crime and then save the world from a horrible monster from outer space. There was no time for moping.
Faye usually kept a packet of matches in her pocket. Unlike many of her associates, she didn’t smoke, but you never knew when you might need to set something on fire. She pushed up all the garbage into one corner, found a piece of old newspaper, and struck the match. The trash pile quickly caught as she walked back into the sunshine.
The wood was so dry that it went right up. She marveled at how fast the place was consumed. It was like all that stored-up anger and sadness burned extra hot. Faye leaned on the fence and watched her old house burn to the ground.
OCI Headquarters
Crow was studying a gigantic map of the country when the office phone rang. He let one of the men answer it. He was too busy puzzling over the logistical issues related to the overall mission of the OCI, and didn’t want to interrupt his train of thought. Using the 1930 census data, there were approximately one hundred and twenty-five million Americans. The estimate was that about one in a hundred of those had some small measure of magical affinity, which put that at a staggering one and a quarter million people. Luckily, he didn’t need to worry about them yet. They would come later, after the country was used to the idea of controlling magic. The boss was clever like that.
His current issue was the one in a thousand that was an actual Active, with access to magic capable of causing serious problems. One-hundred-and-twenty-five thousand people would need to register, and many of them wouldn’t want to. Those holdouts would be his problem.
The law had not even been read in Congress yet, but the boss knew that it was going to pass. It was too early to begin implementing the plan, but it was common knowledge that some specific Actives would cause trouble. They were Crow’s red flags, and there were a lot of red flags on that map. Too many of those flags had question marks drawn on them. The goal was to neutralize as many of those as possible to ensure a smooth transition. Then there were the gold flags. Those were the special cases. There were very few gold flags on his map, but-the ones that the boss had big plans for.
The agent that had answered the phone called out to him. “Mr. Crow, we’ve got a trip wire in Ada, Oklahoma.”
There were a few men under his command capable of drawing spells. He’d had them out tagging specific locations with magical wards. He didn’t like having question marks on any of his flags. They’d warded homes, schools, friends, family, that sort of thing, and if a powerful enough Active got close, it would set off the alarm. It had been an expensive long shot, but a few of the trip wires had paid off so far. Crow checked the map. Gold flag. Question mark. “The Traveler?”
“Confirmed.”
“Excellent.” For her, he’d had trip wires placed at a burned dairy farm in California, the remains of the Stuyvesant mansion in Mar Pacifica, and what they believed was the shack she’d grown up in. This one was very important to the boss, probably in the top five most important Actives out there. She needed to be taken alive.
OCI was still a small agency. That would change soon enough, but for now his resources were rather limited. He had no men in Oklahoma City. He was hesitant to involve the locals: first, they could be untrustworthy and it was too early to risk developing a backlash against the OCI’s authority; and second, from what his intelligence said about the Traveler, she would slaughter anyone that took her on without a nullifier. The team in Dallas had one of the precious Dymaxions, but he didn’t want to risk letting her escape by the time they could get there.