They’ve always said wizards would decide the fate of this war. I find it funny, because they’re almost all gone.
We’re almost all gone.
A third member of the platoon finds her way out into the morning air, sniffing at the faint aroma of coffee. Bellara is sixteen, still chubby-faced despite our inadequate food supplies, and barely five feet tall. Her hands and cheeks are dirty like everyone else’s, but her clothes are brightly colored and mostly clean. It’s a point of pride with her kind, and we let her have it.
Bellara is a Smiling Tom. Her illusions keep us hidden in these canyons no matter how many scout bikes and flyovers the enemy sends. She hides the smoke of our campfires, the smell of our gas, and even Benny and the runway.
“Coffee?” she asks hopefully, and downs two cups before Aleta cuts her off. We can hear her stomach rumble and Aleta points to the tin of triple-baked biscuits open beside the fire.
“Breakfast.”
Bellara checks the biscuits, looks between us and then toward the caves. “How many tins do we have left?” she asks.
“Two,” Aleta responds.
Her face is at war with itself. She’s desperately hungry—we all are—and since she’s keeping us hidden she knows no one will question her for taking a double ration.
Her cheeks twitch, and she takes half a biscuit. “Any sign of Benny and Rodrigo?”
Rodrigo is Benny’s pilot. He went to Bava two days ago for supplies and hasn’t come back. Maybe he was shot down. Maybe he couldn’t find a smooth place to land and had to ditch. Maybe he ran out of fuel. “Nothing,” I respond.
Bellara’s eyes are a mask, zombie-like. Rodrigo is her brother. She silently heads to the mouth of the canyon to check on her illusions. Aleta and I share a glance, but we remain silent.
One by one, the rest of the platoon joins us. There is muted conversation. Commander Giado is the last to emerge from his sleeping roll, limping along, dragging one gangrenous foot behind him. Giado is a good officer, even wounded and tired. Two weeks ago the town where his wife and child live was all but wiped off the map by an enemy Wormer. He has not smiled since, and I think only his dedication to duty keeps him going.
Harado, our medic, tells us a joke he claims that he dreamt. It’s instantly forgettable, but genuinely funny, and gets a few chuckles. Commander Giado snorts, as if exasperated, but I can see the corner of his mouth twitch. The tin of biscuits is passed around.
I leave Giado and Aleta to talk about a possible raid and follow Bellara out of the canyon, walking slowly, hands in my pockets. The canyon floor is littered with motorcycle parts and empty supply canisters, most of them stolen from the enemy. Selvie has skipped breakfast and gone straight under one of the bikes, trying to repair an exhaust manifold, and I kick her gently as I walk by. She swears at me and asks for a #3 wrench. I find it for her and then continue on after Bellara.
They say that the Bavares is the largest plateau in the world. It is a featureless, inhospitable place covered in scrub brush and devoid of animal life but for the llamas and ground squirrels. The plains are occasionally broken by jutting towers of rock, a spine of mountains that stretch for a thousand miles in either direction. I wonder sometimes why the enemy bothers trying to conquer us, when we live in such a shitty place.
Our platoon shelters in one of the countless canyons that snake through the mountains. We are a few miles from an inactive volcano that makes the air smell like sulfur, and our canyon lets out directly onto the plain where a tiny smuggler’s runway provides a safe landing spot for Rodrigo and Benny. It is a risky hiding place, easily discovered by anyone with the air superiority of our enemy—or it would be, without Bellara’s illusions.
I exit the canyon to find Bellara sitting in a small cave on the side of the mountain, perched above a forty-foot length of scree. She has taken to sitting there every morning for the last few weeks. It is not a good lookout spot—it faces southeast, without a vantage of either the enemy air base across the plain, or our own tiny runway.
I decide to find out why she likes that spot so much and pick my way carefully around the scree slope. The cave is just a few feet tall and half as deep, and I have to crawl on my hands and knees to position myself beside her. She looks at me sidelong, then sighs, and it occurs to me that perhaps she wants to be alone.
Too late, I’m already here. Bellara tolerates my presence, turning her attention to the scree slope below her. I sit in silence for several minutes, trying to follow her gaze, and am about to ask what she’s looking for when a ground squirrel pops its head out of the rocks below us.
It is soon joined by another. They chase each other through the stones, sure-footed, unworried by the occasional shift of the scree. They chatter at each other, one catching the other by the toe, the other nipping at the nose, running and playing. I realize that, despite a cold morning wind blowing across the plain, this cave shelters us both from the wind. It catches the morning sun, warming the rock, and in short time I almost want to take off my old canvas jacket. It is the warmest I’ve been in weeks.
“Don’t tell the others,” Bellara says.
“Eh?” I ask.
Bellara nods at the squirrels playing in the scree. “Aleta will want to make them into a stew. She’ll set traps, and I’d rather she not.”
“They’d be good eating,” I suggest cautiously, trying not to let on that the same thought had been going through my mind.
“But they don’t deserve to be eaten.”
“Does anything?” I ask, laughing.
“Maybe not,” Bellara says seriously. “But they’re happy. They don’t know there’s a war on. They don’t give a shit about the bombers. I like that. So please don’t tell Aleta.”
It’s the “please” that gets me. Bellara may be just sixteen, but she’s been fighting since she was old enough to hold an illusion. She knows her place in the world. Giado is deferential to her. Bombs do not scare her. I don’t even scare her, and it took the others several months before they would get close to me. Some of them still keep their distance.
“Okay,” I say. “I promise.”
Bellara squeezes my hand. “Thank you.”
“It’s very warm up here,” I comment.
“I know. I like that, too.”
We listen to the distant bombers for the next half hour. I can hear both our stomachs rumbling, and wonder if it’s worth venturing out on the plains to hunt llamas tomorrow. Giado will object, because he’s been very cautious since we got word of his hometown. But we could use the meat.
“They say,” Bellara broke the silence, “that before the war we were used for entertainment.”
“We?” I ask, though I know what she means.
“Wizards. We’d put on shows for hundreds of thousands of people. Fire-Spitters shooting flames toward the moon. Changers dancing in the flickering light. They say Smiling Toms were given leave to create anything they could imagine.”
I snort. It seems like such a childish thought. These days Smiling Toms are forbidden from using their strength for anything but the war: stratagems, camouflage, misdirection.
“It’s important,” I say, repeating a bit of propaganda I heard once, “that we dismiss the childish fancies of our yesteryear, and fight for a better tomorrow.” I scowl even as I speak, the words sounding callous. One glance at Bellara’s face shows that she disagrees.
“What is more important?” she demands in a gentle voice. “Killing the enemy? Or creating wonder for children?”
“Winning the war,” I say automatically, as if the answer is obvious.