The mechanic told her that her friends had gone over to the local boardinghouse to get supper. He gave her directions, and said to tell them that they would be able to leave tonight if they wanted, but that they were probably better off sleeping here and leaving in the morning. The winds tended to get worse at night and that was a fool’s time to try to drive across the wastes.
Faye decided to walk to the boardinghouse. It wasn’t far. Ada had changed a lot, but not for the better. It was a ghost town, only some of the ghosts hadn’t realized it yet. Most folks had given up and moved on, but the stubborn or desperate were still here, scraping out a living in a place that had been ruined by magic. There weren’t very many businesses left either. The seed store had burned down, but it wasn’t like anybody would miss it in a place where nothing could grow. The wind had eaten the paint off of the buildings, giving everything a worn-out and faded look. Only a few people were out and about, and there were only a handful of beat-up cars on the dusty street.
Some children were playing baseball in the road. They were all barefoot, the ball was a rock, and the bat was a stick. The pitcher was probably the oldest, maybe twelve, and judging from his broken front teeth he’d stopped a few flying rocks with his mouth. He quit smiling when he saw her. The game stopped and the players watched her as she walked by. She was an outsider, and therefore interesting and suspicious.
A woman was coming down her porch, wiping her hands on an apron. She shouted into the road. “Hey, you kids best get on home. Gonna be a real howler tonight.” The kids scattered like she was somebody they were used to taking orders from. Then she saw Faye and smiled. “Well, howdy, missy.”
“Ma’am,” Faye dipped her straw hat in greeting. Faye realized that this woman was familiar. She was the schoolteacher, not that Faye had been allowed to go to school, but she had been jealous of the kids that had. The schoolteacher lady had always struck Faye as kind when she’d seen her around town. Faye was thankful for Whisper’s big dark glasses, because surely the teacher wouldn’t recognize her. “Evening.”
“Good evening to you, stranger.” The teacher cocked her head to the side. Like everybody that still lived in Ada, she looked dried out and sunburned. The wind was blowing her ponytail around. “We don’t get many new folks in Ada.”
“Our car broke down,” Faye said, keeping her head down.
“Breaking down is the way of things around these parts.” The teacher was curious, like Faye reasoned all good teachers probably were. “You look familiar. Have you been around before?”
Faye quickly shook her head no and started walking.
“Now hold on.” Ingrained manners forced Faye to stop. “You got a place to stay, honey? Because I think it’s gonna be a hard one. You don’t want to get caught outside on a storm night. It’s liable to peel your skin off.”
“We’re at the boardinghouse, ma’am.”
“Oh, that’s nice.” The teacher was trying to get a better look at her face. “That’s a nice place. You staying long?”
“Passin’ through.” Faye realized that the lady was trying to remember where she’d seen her before. In fact, she was trying to get a look at her eyes… Faye reminded herself that she needed to think like a proper fugitive. It was time to get out of here. “I best be going. Evening, ma’am.”
“‘Bye then.” The teacher nervously put her hands together. Faye had made it nearly to the corner when the woman shouted after her. “You know not everybody here blames the wizards!”
Faye froze. She knew. “What was that?”
“I’m just saying… The wastes. The drought. Some of us know they were trying to help when they broke Mother Nature. The wizards were just doing what they were told. Not all magic people are bad.”
“I hear most of them are regular folks,” Faye answered.
“It wouldn’t be right to be angry at somebody that didn’t do nothing wrong to begin with. Not right at all.” Suddenly embarrassed at saying so much, the lady turned and walked quickly up her porch. “Have a safe journey, child.”
Faye waved goodbye.
A block later, she found the address that the mechanic had given her. There was a sign in front of the old two-story home, but the wind had eaten all the words off. A nice old lady with blue hair answered the door. The way she squinted so hard told Faye that she was mostly blind, and by the way she shouted all her words and kept saying “Eh?” she was hard of hearing too, but she eventually ushered Faye inside. The other knights were eating supper in the plain dining room downstairs. There was a pot of stew in the middle of the table. The smell made Faye’s stomach rumble embarrassingly loud.
“Look who decided to grace us with her presence,” Ian said. “What’ve you been up to?”
“Burning something,” Whisper suggested. Of course, Whisper was a Torch. Her strange fire magic had probably told her what Faye had doing. Whisper wrinkled her nose. “You smell like smoke.” Or maybe not.
Faye was embarrassed. “I had some things to do. See, I grew up near here…” She crossed her arms nervously. Being recognized by a local made her feel stupid. “And, well…”
“It don’t matter.” George got up and pulled out a chair for her. “I’ve been doing this for twenty years now and I’ve yet to meet a knight that didn’t have some things they didn’t feel like sharing.”
“Thank you.” Faye sat down. The old lady brought her a bowl and spoon, shouted a few questions about if the stew was good or not, said “Eh?” and cupped her hand over her ear when Ian tried to answer that everything was fine, and then shuffled back into the kitchen. “She seems nice.”
“Anytime a proprietor is willing to serve me without making a scene,” George said, “I’ll take it.”
“She’s blind as a bat and deaf as a stone. She probably thinks you’re white as snow. When everybody’s equally blurry, you don’t discriminate,” Ian said. “On the bright side, that means we can talk business.”
“The car is almost done. We can leave tonight if we want,” Faye reported as she scooped herself some stew. “The winds get worse at night, and if it’s bad you can’t hardly see until you drive into a ditch.”
“I say we leave in the morning then,” George said. “Did he say what was wrong with it?”
“Some doohickey melted,” Faye said between shoveling stew into her mouth. It was mostly potatoes and carrots, flavorless, like they’d been buried for quite a few seasons and then boiled until they were chewable. “What about Lance and them?”
Ian seemed cranky as usual. “Last we heard, they’re hunkering down for a bit, so they won’t miss us for another day. They made a real mess with the Iron Guard. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll be asked to do something useful instead.”
Faye was tired of his negative attitude. “You’re not going to be happy until I Travel your tongue someplace without the rest of your head, are you? What is your problem?”
George tried to intercede. “Now, you two-”
“My problem?” Ian raised his voice slightly. “I think this is a wild goose chase. We don’t know that this creature of yours is even real. Knights have stooped to consulting with Iron Guards! No good can come of that. Meanwhile, our organization is being slandered and our members arrested-”
“And what do you propose we should be doing about that?” George asked with the utmost calm.
“Find out who framed us!”
“Others are working on that. We’re-”