31

THE SOLDIERS LED her through long tunnels and up and down stairways. For most of the trip the air smelled like the earth: dark and wet and muddy. She imagined the layers and layers of things above her, the heaviness of the soil and the streets and the building on top of them all, and she felt a sour sense of panic stir in her stomach. She had to get out. She had to be in the fresh air.

Those who led her along were not silent. Her presence, that of a young woman, did not affect them. After a little while it was as if she did not exist.

“War’s here,” the man behind her said, and there was excitement in his voice. “They say Father Amos will make the announcement soon, and we’ll win back the city.”

“So they say,” the man in front of her said. She could tell by the sound of his voice that he didn’t turn around when he spoke to the man behind him. He kept walking forward.

“What do you mean, ‘so they say’? It’s going to happen, man! This whole city will be ours!”

“This whole city?” the man muttered. “They talk like that’s a jewel worth grabbing. Have you been out there? Have you seen the place? It’s a shambles, and we’ll either be turned into slaves to rebuild it, or . . . or something else.”

“Not so loud,” his partner hissed. “Someone hears you, you’ll be on the outside. Worse yet, thrown in the water.”

Silence fell for a few moments as the men continued. The only sound was their feet scuffing over concrete.

“What do you mean by something else?” the first man asked after a spell of silence. He was the one excited for war.

At first the man in front of Abra didn’t say anything. He cleared his throat, and when he spoke it was in a quieter voice, a resigned voice.

“Some say—no one you know, mind you—but some say that Beatrice has been talking about larger goals.”

Abra nearly tripped at the name of Beatrice.

“C’mon, girl, watch your step,” the man behind her said. “What’s Beatrice saying?”

“Beatrice . . . ” The man paused. “You didn’t hear this from me, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Rumor is, Beatrice wants to defeat the Frenzies and take this whole show over the water.”

“Over the water?” the man said, his voice incredulous.

“Over the water. Over There. Take over.”

The men walked in silence again. Abra could tell the man behind her was thinking through this new information.

“I don’t know,” he said hesitantly. “Amos seems pretty intent on cleaning this place up. Second heaven and all that.”

The man in front laughed. “She’s leading him along, one thing to the next. If you think that man makes any decisions Beatrice doesn’t approve of long before the idea comes into his head, then you’re dumber than you look.”

“Hey!”

“She runs this place.” The man in front stopped, and Abra nearly ran into him. She heard him pull a ring of keys out. “She won’t stop until . . . ”

His voice faded away. The door opened. The man behind Abra nudged her through.

The smell changed so suddenly it was like someone had flipped a switch. Everything around her went from the odor of a musty tomb to that of springtime air and butterflies. Her growing sense of panic eased, and she felt relaxed. It was the same feeling she’d had . . .

She was overcome with a realization. She stopped walking, only to be pushed forward again.

It was the same feeling she’d had while standing under the Tree of Life at the end of the Road to Nowhere, back in Deen, four long years before.

The Tree was there somewhere. It was close. She would never forget that smell, not if she lived to be a hundred years old. She would never forget the pleasant visions it brought to mind, the gentle rocking of the soul, the sweet memories it managed to revive.

If she didn’t focus, she could easily get lost in them, those memories of being a child and going on a picnic, or riding the Ferris wheel on a summer night, or running hard through a cool autumn evening, the alfalfa rustling around her knees, the fireflies lighting like a galaxy around her. Adventures with Sam and long walks into the shadowy trees that lined the mountains.

The Tree of Life! What a beautiful thing it would be, she thought, to sit under that Tree and smell its leaves, to eat its fruit, to remember everything that was good about the world, to have no worries or cares, to sleep soundly and wake more refreshed than you’ve ever felt before. What a beautiful thing.

But not here, not now, she reminded herself. Not here, where things are so imperfect. Not here, where death is a gift that rescues us from pain and disease and the crippling effects of age and accidents. Not here.

They led her up and up and up, stairway after stairway, until her legs were numb and her breathing hard. Finally, when she didn’t think she could go up any more stairs, they veered off to the side, through a door, down a hallway.

“This is it, girl,” the man in front of her said. He took off her blindfold and untied her hands.

“What are you doing?” the other man asked.

“How old are you, girl?”

“Sixteen,” she said.

The man who untied her looked at the other man. “She’s a kid. Relax. You’re a kid, right?” he asked in a playful voice.

She nodded.

“You’re harmless, right?” He laughed.

She nodded again.

“See?” he said, closing her inside the room and locking the door. Abra listened to their footsteps recede down the hallway.

“You’re not even going to search her?” the man who had been walking behind her asked.

“Seriously? She’s a kid.”

Abra walked to a dark corner of the room and sat down. She thought of her mother, and she thought of the Tree of Life. She wondered what these people would do with it. If they ate from the Tree, would they try to go back to the other side of the grave and rule the world as immortals?

The wall behind her was brick, and the bricks were unevenly laid so that some stuck out a little farther than the others. She traced a path with her finger along the mortar, and she imagined it was her walking through the city streets, trying to find her way home.

That was a long, dark time for Abra, sitting in the shadows, communing with the darkness. She never came out of the back corner when the guards opened the door. She hid her face in the crook of her arm, the sword still tucked inside the waistband of her pants.

She was particularly deep in her thoughts when she heard the door open, and she put her face in her arm because she didn’t want them to make eye contact and stay and maybe find out about the sword. She noticed again how her skin smelled like the earth, like dust. It had been so long since she’d had a bath.

Abra had a strange feeling, a sense of falling, because she realized the door had never closed. She looked up quickly and her heart started beating rapidly. She had to work very hard to control her breathing. A small person stood in the doorway.

It was Beatrice.

“I thought it was you,” Beatrice said in the sweetest voice, and Abra had to remind herself that this was not a friend. This was something else entirely. “I knew it! They didn’t even describe you to me—you believe me, don’t you? I had a sense, I guess. I knew it.”

Abra took a deep breath and put her face back in her arm.

“Oh, don’t be sad,” Beatrice said, still in a kind voice. “Abra. Abra! It’s me. It’s B.”

“I know who you are,” Abra whispered. “You tried to kill me. Remember?”

“Then you should be very afraid,” Beatrice said in a surprised tone. “If you know what I am, you should fall to your knees and worship me so that I don’t destroy you in a moment.”

Abra’s fists clenched, and she wanted to pull the sword out and fight Beatrice right there in the cell, but there was something inside of her that knew it wasn’t time. Not yet.

Abra looked up. “I hope that when I stabbed you by the pools it didn’t hurt too much,” she said in an even tone. Beatrice winced and involuntarily flexed her forearm.

So that’s where I got her, Abra thought.

“We are so close, Abra. So close. You need to know that once everyone eats from the Tree and I unite all the people here, the first thing we will do is march back to the other side of the grave. I will take you with me so that you can witness it all. We will take over the earth! We’ll let people roam freely between there and here, and everyone will eat from the Tree. And you, the holder of the key, the one who locks and unlocks the door, will no longer be of use to us.”

Abra still said nothing, and her silence seemed to agitate Beatrice. B’s eyes widened, and her voice grew louder with each sentence.

“We know what you did to Jinn! We all know!”

Abra felt strength grow inside of her. Beatrice took a step back, and Abra remembered, for the first time in a while, that she had been the one to bring Jinn down. She had no reason to be afraid.

“You should be careful,” Abra said.

Their eyes locked, and there was the first battle, before anything took place on the streets, before the armies marched, before the leaders met. The first battle was there in that dark room.

“You will rot here in this building,” Beatrice murmured. “You will rot, and you will be the last person in this city, and no one will ever come looking for you, not even when time ends.”

She spun around and slammed the door behind her.

Moments later the door burst open again, and two guards flung another figure into the room. Abra stared at the young man who was now on his hands and knees. The guards closed the door, and the sound of it echoed through the building.

“Leo,” Abra asked, “is that you?”

It took a long time for them to catch up on what they had each been through. They both seemed older, like two people in middle age reflecting on a long-ago childhood. First Abra went, because Leo was still catching his breath, and his head still hurt. She told him of the pools and the man by the water and her experiences with Beatrice. Leo spoke after that, rubbing his head gingerly, talking about the Frenzies and his sister.

His sister.

They were there in the darkness for a time they could not measure. They tried to figure out how long they had been separated, but even those days were difficult to define, impossible to count. It went on and on like this, until one day the building began to vibrate with an immeasurable number of people—they could hear them, sense them. The crowd settled, the building throbbed, and Amos’s voice echoed out over a loudspeaker. There were no speakers on floor 27, but they could still hear him, his voice coming from some faraway place.

They heard his plans.

They realized the building was the Tree.

And it seemed like there was nothing they could do.