Benja bent down and picked up a photograph. Illya looked over his shoulder at it. Faded people sat beside a rectangle of blue water. Behind them was a house that looked like the one they were standing in and completely unlike it at the same time. The gray, collapsed walls bore hardly any resemblance to the walls in the picture—blue, edged with smart, white trim—but the overall shape of it was the same.
Just like the pictures in Illya’s book, the scene was strangely perfect. The water was enclosed by straight white edges. Around it, unnaturally even, short grass grew. The people looked happy, holding up glass cups with bright decorations coming out of the tops. It was as if the Calamity had never happened and they were all still here, living their lives in this house.
It made him sad for them, although they were people he had never met.
“Let’s keep looking,” he said. Benja nodded and wordlessly, gently laid the picture back in its spot in the leaves.
Feeling somber, Illya walked down the hallway and went into another room.
He was startled to see a face looking back at him beyond the door. It was in a frame, like the little picture, and fractured by spider-web lines of cracked glass.
A boy was looking at him out of the glass, someone he didn’t recognize with thick brown hair and very dark eyes. Around him was the same room that Illya was standing in. Confused, he looked around and the boy in the picture did too.
The boy was him.
A mirror. He had never seen one before, only heard of them in stories; like looking into a pond but so clear it was as if you faced yourself. It was incredible, hard to imagine that something like it could exist, yet here it was, right in front of him.
Illya stared at his face. It looked younger than he thought it should.
Benja appeared behind him in the mirror. As he had always suspected, the comparison between Benja and himself was not very flattering. Beside his cousin, he thought that he looked like a stick.
“Whoa.” Benja stared at the mirror openmouthed. He stuck out his lower lip experimentally then, chuckling, began to contort his face into a series of poses, each one more hilarious than the last. Illya tried out a few himself. Looking at his own face was like seeing a stranger, and he felt disconnected from it.
There were more rooms in the house with rusted metal bed frames and broken furniture. It looked like there had been scavengers here, because most of the rooms were empty. Nothing was as fascinating as the mirror. Illya almost wanted to strap it to the bicycle and take it back but knew that even if they could have, it would have caused a riot back in the village.
Benja pedaled. To pass the time as they rode, Illya told one of the stories his family often told when they lay down before sleeping.
“There was once a man as tall as the hills who had for his only friend a big blue ox that he called Babe,” he said.
“How ’bout this one,” Benja interrupted him, breathing heavy as he pedaled up a short hill. “There was once a man who read a book and knew when it was going to rain before it did.”
Illya froze, his voice caught in his throat. All day, he had been expecting Benja to say something, but it still caught him off guard.
“It’s not the same thing, it’s nothing like a story, it’s just…” he stammered finally.
“It’s just like magic,” Benja said.
“Benj, there’s nothing magic about it. I’m the least magical person you’ll ever meet.”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t read that book,” Benja said.
“Anyone could, anyone could have learned the rain signs too,” Illya said.
“I don’t know.”
“The Olders just knew a lot about things. Things that could help us,” he said.
Benja laughed. “Maybe.”
Illya grunted.
“Go on with your story then,” Benja said after a few minutes of silence.
“His name was Paul. He had a seven-foot stride and could cut down a tree with a single swing of his ax,” Illya said, picturing it in his mind. After seeing the mirror, everything, even legends, seemed possible.
As they reached the gates, they heard a strange buzzing sound, like a swarm of bees. As they got closer, it got louder. The sound of hornets was more like it, Illya thought, recognizing angry voices and shouting.
A thudding sound started, repeating itself over and over. Illya went through the gate, Benja close behind, pushing the bicycle.
The air was thick with smoke, but it was not coming from the central fires, as he had imagined. Five huts were ablaze, their bones visible, black shells haloed in red. A crowd had gathered around the stone house. They held torches high into the air, and in the center, four men had a fallen tree trunk and were using it to batter against the door.
“I’m going to hide the bike,” Benja said in a low voice.
Illya nodded. “I have to find my ma and Molly.”
The crowd yelled and shoved each other. Someone threw a stone and broke through the rotten boards covering one of the upstairs windows. The front door started to splinter under the relentless pounding of the battering ram.
“We’re coming out. Back away, I warn you,” Elias yelled from behind the door.
The men with the ram retreated down the steps, and the battered door inched open. A moment later, Elias came out, holding his hands up above his head. Impiri followed behind him with Sabelle.
“There’s no food in there, you can look for yourselves,” Elias said. The people did not answer immediately, and Impiri took advantage of their brief hush to yell.
“I warned you all. The curses have fallen on us, and now madness has infected all of you.” She took a deep breath then pressed on. “The rotten must be pared away, or we will all be destroyed.” Her eyes settled on Illya as he passed, trying to skirt around the crowd. He could feel her hate driving into him like a spike and was suddenly very aware of the book in his pack and the seeds in his pocket, where he had kept them since the day he had found them.
Jimmer, leading a small knot of men, pushed past the crowd to stand beside Impiri.
“Maybe there’s food, and maybe there’s not. But she has the right of it,” he said. “You all know what we have to do.”
Marieke was standing nearby. Jimmer hesitated for the briefest moment before grabbing her by the arm, pushing her to walk in front of him.
“Pare away the rotten,” he said, relishing the words then hurrying on. “It’s harsh, but it’s reality, and we have to face it. Any that won’t survive have to be sent off, find their own way. Any who’s cursed can go too. We can’t afford the food they take out of all our mouths.”
A strangled cry tore out of Charlie Polestad’s mouth. He leaped on Jimmer and started punching him in the face. The men who had been with Jimmer spread out and started to grab littles and old folks, dragging them toward the gates with expressions of grim determination. Illya looked around desperately for Molly but didn’t see her.
“Wait!” he yelled, his voice drowning in the noise of the crowd.
His heart would not stop hammering. He pushed his way past people, heading for the stairs of the stone house.
This was insane. They were going to chuck him out for madness, for curses, right now. He blinked. The picture from the house, of the people beside the blue water, came into his mind. Olders: with their magic, with their mirror and their sprawling city. Olders who had always had enough to eat.
He couldn’t stand back and do nothing, he couldn’t wait for them to find Molly and throw her out, not when he knew something that could save everyone. He pressed his lips together.