THEY EASED UP ON the dark house and put their shoes back on. They stood there, unmoving, probing all the rooms. They did this not out of fear but from what was becoming habit. Since their visits to Dustland they’d become wary of houses, or doors that could close them in. Justice and her brothers distrusted all enclosures. However, they uncovered nothing sinister in their sweet old home. Their mom was revealed stretched out on the couch in the parlor in a dark blue nightgown and robe. Mrs. Douglass had folded her hands along the side of her face. Sound asleep, she looked relaxed, except for a slight frown caught in the curve of one eyebrow.
Mother. My pretty mommy, thought Justice.
She felt a pang of love to see her mother so.
If I could change things, I would change it all, Justice thought.
Mr. Douglass was also asleep. He had nodded off in his easy chair next to the couch. There was no evidence that he had been reading. The floor lamp at the side of the chair was not on. There were no newspapers fallen at his feet. He’d simply been sitting there for half the night. Perhaps thinking. Wondering if and when his children—what could he call them now?—would ever return.
Justice’s folks knew that when the three of them unexpectedly disappeared, they had gone to the future. No matter how incredible the idea seemed, they knew the truth of it. But this was the first time the three of them had been gone all day and night. Clearly, her folks had worried themselves sick.
With power of mind, Justice unlocked the front door and opened it. They walked easily within the house they loved.
The instant they crossed the threshold of the parlor, Mr. Douglass was wide awake and turning on the light behind him. He stared at his children, snagged his vision on Justice’s altering features and quickly looked down. The three of them stood attentive, calm, not saying anything until Levi crossed the room and shook his mother by the shoulder.
“Mom. Mom,” he said, “we’re home.”
Mrs. Douglass was a long moment coming awake. They watched as layers of sleep lifted from her. But all at once she recognized Levi. And shoved him away in revulsion. She caught herself, leaped up to make amends. She stepped on her gown, tripped and would have fallen if Mr. Douglass hadn’t been there in time to catch her.
She had seen Justice at the moment she stepped wrong. And it took Mr. Douglass and both his sons holding on to her to calm her.
Slowly, Justice came forward, keeping her face hidden behind her father’s back. She reached around, gently touched her mother’s hair.
“Sorry,” Justice mumbled. She couldn’t think to say more, so full was she with love, with regret. She stepped back away from them.
More than once she had thought about using the power they had to ease some of the pain of their parents’ having children like themselves. She knew well that, for her folks, her gift of extrasensory was a terrifying affliction. The fact that all of their children were afflicted with the same defect was almost beyond bearing. Often as not, Justice and her brothers responded to their folks like normal young people on the verge of growing up. They admired their parents greatly and had no will to use the power on them.
Now Justice did what she knew she must do—bring the terror into the open in the hope that with familiarity it would seem less horrible. She let be what she could not help becoming. The Watcher came into her eyes.
Using no voice or gesture, she presented the power to their minds. Respectfully the Watcher revealed to them all that they had seen and done in Dustland, and what had happened in the Crossover. It made clear the presence of the Malevolence, the thing that had searched them out, here in the present.
It will come again, the Watcher informed. Mal has found its way and it will sweep. It will come. Mal comes to strike fear so that first unit will not return to Dustland. The first unit will return. The end of Dustland is only the beginning for first unit. I am the Watcher. I know.
The Watcher faded. Justice appeared both shapeless and all angles at once. In the artificial light, her eyes were too small, eyesockets too large. Her folks turned away every other moment, as if the Watcher’s light still glowed, hurting them. She knew it was the alteration that caused them to turn. They would imagine it greater than it was. And she thought of something that might make things easier for them.
“I’d change anyway when I was older,” she told them, sounding normal and young. “I mean, five years from now I wouldn’t look the same as I do today. I’d be taller and better developed. My face, my features would change on their own.” Of course, what she was saying was true.
“L-l-let her h-hair gr-gr-ow out,” Thomas told them, “annnd you-you w-on’t even n-n-notice how h-herrr nnneck has th-th-inned.” Pull it down around her cheeks, he thought, maybe get her some tinted glasses … some dark sunglasses.
He knew well that he could cloud the minds of outsiders so they saw Justice as normal. It was his parents he would protect from seeing her alter before their eyes.
They stayed in the room, all of them standing, for some time. Carefully, quietly, the children persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Douglass that, even with their power, much about them remained the same. Indeed, Thomas was still the wild and moody, thoughtless one.
My drums! Thomas thought suddenly. Man, I forgot all about them! Full of excitement, he remembered his drums were there in his room. Thomas was a master at the tympani and a fine drummer, too.
Levi remained the sensitive one. “I feel better today than I’ve felt for a long time,” he told them.
“Have you felt ill, then?” his father asked.
“No,” Levi lied, “I just feel very, very good now.
He was the one who liked most listening to symphony through the earphones of his hi-fi. He was most kind to Justice. But he would no longer write his poetry and stories in secret, he had decided. He would let Justice read them, if she liked.
The greatest change had come to Justice. The physical alteration, although subtle, was undeniable. And she appeared unaccountably taller, as tall as Thomas and Levi. She could not quite return to the carefree, energetic young person she had been only a month or two ago. Those seeing her were gripped by the intelligence in her eyes even when the Watcher wasn’t present. And yet there were moments when she acted just like a kid; walked and talked like a kid. These came when for hours she forgot about the future, when she was caught up again in the long, hot days of late summer in the town.
They cajoled their folks into accepting their condition. It was Mr. Douglass who managed best to put it aside. It was simple faith he had in them, in what he knew them to have been before their power; and he held on to that. He and his wife were powerless to assist them in whatever they must do to untangle themselves from their present dilemma.
Mr. Douglass let go of his anguish in the gesture of his hand smoothing back his hair. He had dark circles under his eyes. His wife was sobbing again into her hands. She did that often. He did, too. The tears would come to either one of them at any time with the suddenness of a dam breaking. He accepted the tears as a way of relieving the steady tension of their days. And he would have been comforted to know that the children also cried.
“You all must be starved,” he said to them.
Pieces of their family life seemed to fall into place.
“We’re about starved to death,” Levi said, and felt a ravaging hunger atop, his exhaustion. He stumbled over to sit in the easy chair his dad had just vacated.
Mrs. Douglass let her hands fall from her face. They could see that her eyes were dry. No more tears would come.
“We’ll get the bacon started,” Mr. Douglass said. He took his wife gently by the arm.
“Oh, boy!” Levi said. “Want some help?”
“No!” Mrs. Douglass said, too quickly, the first word she’d spoken. It was so like Lee to offer help faster than Justice or Tom-Tom. “I’ll make the eggs,” she managed, her voice hoarse and whispery.
“I’ll make pancakes!” Lee announced.
“No! No!”
What more was there to say? Mr. Douglass hurried her from the room. In a moment she was back. “You’ll have to be patient with me,” she said softly. She looked each one of them straight in the eyes, turned and left the room.
The three of them visibly relaxed once she was gone. No need to talk. Thomas opened the corridor between his and Levi’s minds.
Let’s go to our room, he traced to Lee.
I feel I could sleep for a year, Lee traced back.
You mind if I drum?
It’ll be like music to my ears, Lee traced. Make all the rhythms you want to.
Thanks.
Justice, Thomas traced, we’re going in.
But don’t go to sleep, she traced back. Breakfast will be ready in a half-hour or so.
I was going to sleep, Levi traced. How could I forget that quick? I really must be tired.
You can sleep, Thomas traced. I’ll wake you.
I’m going, too, Justice said, getting up. Thomas, give me a knock when it’s time, will you?
She went to her room as the boys went to theirs, closing the door behind her. Seeing her dear room caused a sob to escape her. It was usually a mess from her hurry to be everywhere at once. But now it was neat as a pin. She grinned. Her mom had bought her a pile of new paperback books and had left them neatly by her pillow. Justice hugged the books to her. Oh, it would be great reading every one of them. Well, not in the daytime when there was so much to see and do. But at night; at night, reading them one after another, she thought.
If I want to stay up half the night, I will, too. And use the Watcher to read by.
That gave her the giggles. But she sobered quickly.
No. No, never play with the power. Use Levi’s flashlight to read by.
She fell asleep on top of the books. She slept until Levi poked his head in. Thomas hadn’t been decent enough to wake her after all.
“We’re at the table,” Levi told her. “Better hurry. Don’t even wash up.”
“But I have to,” she said. She rushed off to the bathroom, where she splashed handfuls of soapy water on her face and neck. Drying herself, she stared into the mirror at the Justice she had become. She looked carefully. It was so difficult for her to see the surface of things. But soon a view of her own changing was visible to her and not at all shocking. For she was aware of her changing within as well. She felt no imbalance, no alienness. That would mean that her mind was completely atuned to the alteration. And there were times now when she felt that her skin and muscle, her bone and marrow, encased her in a tube. She didn’t at all like the feeling. Less and less did she like the weight of herself.
Never bothered me once, she thought, until the time I was within the mind of the Bambnua. She was so heavy. And I was so light.
She hurried out, through the parlor and down the hall to the kitchen, where all of them were seated. She plopped down between her mom and dad, the two boys across from them. She ignored Thomas, since he hadn’t waked her. She noted that they were eating in the kitchen rather than the dining room, the place they ate on special occasions. That was a good sign.
“Isn’t it funny to be having breakfast in the middle of the night?” she asked.
“Funnier than two fleas drowning in a buttercup,” her dad said amiably. “Now dig in. Don’t stand on ceremony, for you know how ceremony can’t stand to be stood on.”
“Ho!” giggled Justice, and served herself a pile of bacon and some scrambled eggs.
“Trying to make your plate disappear,” her dad said.
“Ummmm,” was about the only sound she could make with her mouth full. She quickly gobbled the eggs so she could fit pancakes with butter and syrup dripping all over them where the eggs had been.
“Oh, brother,” she finally was able to say, “I’m gonna faint at the sight!”
No one fainted, but it was not possible that three kids, even when two of them were teenagers, could eat so much so fast.
“Oh, my stomach,” Levi moaned, but he wouldn’t stop eating. None of them did, until every scrap of toast, of eggs and bacon and pancakes was gone.
Mr. Douglass looked stunned by their appetites. Mrs. Douglass was delighted at seeing her kids were as normal and as hungry as other kids. She made them more pancakes. They ate them while their folks drank coffee and picked at the toast Mrs. Douglass had just made.
You could sure see they hadn’t been on a long journey for a day and a night, Justice noted.
“We drank a whole quart of orange juice,” Justice said.
Justice and her brothers began talking about the journey. They speculated about it until one of them noticed that it was morning, that the sun was up to heat the day to sweltering again. Oh, fantastic July! With just your normal everyday 1980s dust in the air, along with birds and clouds and ninety degrees!
Again they talked of the future, easing it into the conversation without a second thought. They talked again of t’beings and Slakers and Thomas’ grand illusions. But no one told how Tom-Tom had run away just to spite Justice. They kept the struggle between Justice and Thomas to themselves. Maybe, with the coming, of Malevolence, that had changed.
Mr. and Mrs. Douglass suspected something about Thomas. As he talked on and on, the more they realized how unkind he could be and how stealthy and improper was his train of thought.
He told them he could get them anything they needed to live, that neither of them need ever work again. “G-get wh-what I w-w-want f-f-for f-f-free,” he stuttered.
“Thomas,” Justice said. But nothing could stop him once he’d got going on his masterful illusions.
Until Mr. and Mrs. Douglass drew into themselves, away from their children. Mr. Douglass encircled his wife in his arms protectively. She cringed tightly against him.
Just when everything was going so well, Justice thought.
Her folks wouldn’t look at them. They had pulled into themselves, where they might still find some safety.
Finally Thomas noticed and left off.
You’re a first-class idiot, Justice traced to him.
Look, I was only trying to get them good and relaxed. But they act like we’re some freaks!
You never understand anything, Justice traced.
Well, you sure know it all!
“We’d better get some sleep,” she said, breaking the silence at the table.
Mr. Douglass loosened his hold on his wife. She straightened in her chair, but did not look up. Justice knew not to offer to do the dishes, and she traced a warning to Levi not to offer his help. They’d best retreat now. She hoped that she and her brothers would always be able to come back home. And for the first time she seriously wondered whether they’d always be welcome.
The three of them slept a deep and soundless sleep. Justice slept longest. It was well past noon when she awoke to the tinny, chim/chi-chim, chim/chi-chim of Thomas’ standing cymbals.
Oh, my goodness! she thought. It felt like years since she had heard her brother’s steady rhythms. She appreciated his cymbals much more than she did his set of drums. Cymbals had a tantalizing sound. Somehow the sound mixed yellow with the sunlight now streaming into her room. She stretched, yawned at the day so bright and hot outside her window.
“Great,” she said. She got up. And without disturbing anyone, she padded down the hall to the bathroom, took a shower and got dressed in her usual attire of jeans and tank top.
Maybe will have to change to shorts, she thought. Let’s see how it is.
Justice wandered the property aimlessly, thoroughly preoccupied with the heady sights, sounds and smells of life in the present. In the backyard the garden was growing fine. She picked a big, fat, early-ripened tomato—the only one, too—right off the vine. Ate it, with its juice escaping down her hand. It was so good.
On the west side of the field they owned, she found the ageless hedgerow that she loved walking through.
“Right where I left it!” she said to herself, kidding. It was her favorite place of all, with the line of century-old trees marching down to the end of the property to the right of Dorian Jefferson’s house. Great old branches reached out across the row a few feet above the ground, seeking sunlight. She sat on one of the horizontal branches, making it swing. Not long ago she and Thomas and Levi, with all the other neighborhood kids, had hung containers of garter snakes from the branches. That was when Thomas had invented his Great Snake Race; and, to everyone’s eternal surprise, Justice had won it.
And here’s the place I first discovered I had something different about me, and that my brothers did, too, she thought.
After a while the cymbals inside the house ceased and the drums began their mighty noise.
Brother, he sure loves booming away, Justice thought of Thomas.
Later Thomas and Levi could be seen wandering around, too. She kept out of their way by hiding in the row. They knew she was there and let her have it to herself.
Thomas telepathed to her a mean thought just to get her goat: Cut down them trees for firewood.
Osage orange trees won’t burn, Justice ’pathed to him, you dumb, stupid dummy! With anger she hadn’t known she was feeling.
Aw, I was only kidding you. Don’t get upset.
Justice let it go, mildly surprised at his near-apology. While in the row, she started reading one of the books her mom had got her. The book was about dragons and princely knights. It made her laugh; it didn’t take her breath away as it would have if she hadn’t gone away and come back. .
By evening Thomas and Levi had wrestled a four-wheeled dolly with Thomas’ kettledrums on it out of the house, down the backyard and into the field. They and the neighborhood boys met in the field practically every night.
All of them boys, Justice thought. Who cares?
But she couldn’t help going to see what Thomas was up to, and to see all the boys again, Dorian included. It felt like she hadn’t seen the kids in years, and she knew it felt the same for her brothers. Earlier in the day all three of them had resisted running off to find everyone. The kids would have simply forgotten about them from the moment at dawn when they’d left for the future. Mrs. Jefferson would’ve seen to that—not hypnotizing the kids, but suggesting to an area of their memories that Thomas, Justice, Levi and Dorian did not exist. The deep and rolling tone of the kettles was the key that would unlock their memories again.
An hour after suppertime the neighborhood seemed deserted. The hedgerow, twisted by hard weather, spread early-evening shade across the Douglass field. Levi, Thomas and Justice stood in separate pools of dappled light.
Thomas, clutching four felt-tip mallets, two in each hand, struck them on the calfskin drumheads of the kettles. There commenced a low, trembling sound. It began to build into a bass roar that rolled down the field and on through the hedges of backyards to hit the rear window screens of houses. So much sound was almost visible, bouncing away and sailing over front lawns to slide smoothly into Dayton Street.
As if on cue, Dorian Jefferson slammed out of the back door of his house, sprinted across his backyard, took his back hedge in one perfect low-hurdle stretch-step and bounded into the field on both feet. Standing.
“Sweet!” hollered Thomas, still drumming. “Perfect hurdle, man!”
Dorian grinned from ear to ear. A compliment from Thomas! He’d been waiting practically the whole day for some sign of life from the Douglass house. He knew better than to make a move over there until the three kids were ready and until Mr. and Mrs. Douglass had settled down some.
Running, Dorian zigged and zagged his way up the field. He confronted the three with his dirty-faced, ragged self, still grinning. They all slapped palms. Thomas put his sticks down long enough to do so. No one thought about being the unit. In the field they were simply friends. Thomas started up again; the field boomed and crashed, shaking startled birds out of the trees.
Other boys appeared, as though by signal. Thomas greeted them with rushing swells and rolls of beats as they came off the street and through backyards. There was a kid named Slick Peru, and Danny Grier, who was Thomas’ drum teacher’s son, and Talley Williams, and a lot of other boys.
Thomas drummed well and acted as if he might be going to drum forever. Justice knew he hadn’t called forth the kids just for a drum concert. He loved an audience, though, and he loved inventing games. He’d been drumming when first he invented the Great Snake Race. Also, when drumming, Thomas talked smoothly, and maybe talking smoothly made describing his inventions easier. Justice realized suddenly that in the future Thomas had not stuttered at all. That was because only their minds had been there, she decided; and in his mind Thomas never stuttered.
His drums were humming just loud enough for him to talk above the sound.
“This here’s a new game,” he began, “of which I”—Pom-pa-Pom—“the Master Drummer”—Pom-Pom, Pom-Pom—“am sole inventor and owner.” Pom, Pom pah-pah Pom.
“It is called”—Pom!—“the game”—POM-POM POM—“of Dustland!”
Justice did not move a muscle.
“Or Humans versus Slakers!” Pom pah-pah Pom Pom.
“What are Slakers?” Talley wanted to know.
“Why, buddy,” began Thomas, his drums fairly singing, “Slakers are winged females with bald pink heads!”
The boys laughed loudly. “Fool!” they said.
“Slakers bomb you from the air with furry eggs.” Pom-ah, Pom-ah.
Boys fell out on the ground.
“But how do you play it?” asked Slick, recovering. “What’s it called—Dustland?”
“Yea, how do you win it?” somebody else asked.
“Think of Dungeons and Dragons,” Thomas said, which was a real game that you could buy and which several of them owned. His drums rolled. “Each kid has assets and liabilities, whether human or Slaker. For instance, I, a human, can cloud boys’ minds and make you see whatever I want you to see. I’m called the Illusionist.”
Justice found herself grinning. Levi suppressed a laugh.
“What I can’t do”—Pom-ma-Pom—”is knock a Slaker out of the sky. But I can cause one to land with my illusion of a crystal lake. Slakers go crazy over fresh water.”
“Sounds like fun,” said Slick. “But if I want to be a Slaker, how do I learn to fly?”
“How do you become a girl, you mean!” Boys laughed and snickered, much to Justice’s disgust.
“Dummy!” Thomas said. Clearly, he had not thought the game through. He would have to start over and change the females to male flyers, which was the way it should be, he thought. He was tired of drumming. He would not risk stuttering by talking. A long look passed between him and Levi, which told Justice that they were tracing. Obviously, Levi was being told what to say through telepathy. The next moment he was making the females wingless.
“It’s a game you can do in your living room or on the phone or anywhere. Also, we need some pencils and paper,” Levi said. “I’ll get some. Each of you decide what you will be, human or Slaker, and what your goods and bads are. You get more points for bads.” He avoided looking at Justice.
She was furious. You know the flyers are women, you know it! she traced to Thomas.
Butt out, he traced back. This is a game for guys!
Levi was leaving the field for pencil and paper when it happened, just like before with not an inkling. Except for that split instant of clairvoyance when Justice knew—but there was no time. It had come.
It swept below the grass, coming up the field. Only Thomas, Levi, Justice and Dorian knew it was there. It moved with such swiftness they had not a moment to join. How could they join in front of the boys? But they would have if there had been time, and worried about it later.
Malevolence had swept between the three of them and Dorian. It would not permit the first unit. It made them aware that it had a t’being pinned to its will. It could drop the t’being on the grass if it wanted to. It pretended that it would, but it didn’t.
After that, it came each day with dreadful power. Mal came to make sure they were still there and not in the future.
Mrs. Douglass felt herself slipping back into a way of life that she wouldn’t have dreamed would be hers ever again. The children had been home over a month now. After that first night, not once had they shown a trace of awesome forces. Thomas never again spoke of getting what he wanted through his illusions. There was no unheard-of glowing in Justice’s eyes. If anything, the children were supernormal, going about their daily, lazy summer lives with casual determination. She could almost believe that whatever it was they had, never was. In fact, she decided it was gone and told her husband so.
“They act like anybody else,” she told him. “Is it possible we could have imagined it all?”
“June, have you forgotten what happened?” Speaking about the time when the children had revealed their power.
That Mrs. Jefferson creeping into her house.
How could I have been such a fool to leave Justice alone, at the beck and call of that woman? Mrs. Douglass wondered.
Yes, she had been in summer school, and one day she’d come home and it had all begun.
No. Maybe all of it was mass hysteria. They say it happens, she thought. A group of factory workers on an assembly line suddenly see a strange mist and it makes them weak and sick. She’d read about that just recently. Absolutely unexplainable. No escaping gases or anything like that had been detected. And it was mass hysteria attributed to boring, monotonous work. But none in her house worked an assembly line.
Now she and her husband were tidying the kitchen after dinner. She’d finished icing a sheet cake for the kids for when they came back from Thomas’ drumming in the field.
“They get along so well,” she was saying, turning the cake, admiring it. She knew the children would come in again and again for extra pieces. “Levi has got a sense of humor just like you, have you noticed?”
“June, please. Don’t get your hopes up. It’s better you consider them forever strangers. It’s easier … Less pain …”
“Oh, for God’s sakes!” Furious at him. “My kids are fine, as normal as can be.”
“You’d better listen to me,” he said. “There’s only heartache in wishing it’d go away. It won’t! It’s real. Nothing will ever be the same. It’s here and now! Our kids, our own flesh and blood, are the race to come. They’re here … first unit!” His voice shaking.
June Douglass spoke in whispered fury: “I don’t want to hear about power or Watchers or anything dreadful ever again!”
She stalked out and slammed the door to the bedroom.
She slumbered for what seemed a long time. Through it she was never awake, but she was not quite asleep either. She could still hear Thomas’ drums in the field and boys laughing. Once Justice yelling. They were playing some game or other. She heard somebody yell, “Gotta fly! Gotta fly!” and she was sure a ballgame was going on. Then a long time of nothing, when sound ceased and the evening darkened to night. When she opened her eyes, it was ten-thirty, she saw by the clock on her dresser.
“Well, for …” I must have been tired! she thought. She hadn’t felt it at all. But she did recall she had been on her feet since early morning, and by evening still busy baking for the—
For a moment Mrs. Douglass couldn’t move. Her limbs felt heavy and fragile and she didn’t want to move them. If she could just stay in bed, maybe she could hold her world together. But slowly she got up off the bed. Blindly she found the door and hurried down the dark hall. Would not look at open bedroom doors, empty rooms, as she passed them. She would not.
She was out of the house and in the backyard. From the light spilling into the yard from rear windows, she saw Mr. Douglass carefully dollying Thomas’ kettledrums through the gate from the field.
He’d covered the drums with a dropcloth to keep moisture off them. He’d stood in the field an hour, listening, hoping, feeling the night slip over him.
He did not look at his wife as he went by her; he struggled with the dolly up onto the porch and into the house. He took the drums into Thomas’ and Levi’s room. He had his boy’s purple hat under his arm. Mrs. Douglass had seen it. She followed him in; when he had finished, he found her seated on the edge of the couch.
He sat himself next to her, taking her hand.
At last she spoke. “Well,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. She was controlling herself. That was good, he thought.
“When did it happen?” she asked him.
“I was on the screened porch, reading the paper,” he said. “The light was going, it got dark; I couldn’t see so well and turned on the lamp. Somehow the lamp made me realize how quiet everything was. Even with the riot of birdcalls, there was a kind of stillness. You know how the mockingbirds will sound out before they sleep.”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“I went on around the house and on out through the backyard to see what was up. And it was over.”
“Did you go down to their house?”
“Yes,” he said. “His mother was there. But Dorian had gone.”
“Yes,” she said. “To complete the unit.”
“Yes.”
They sat there, holding on.
After a time he said, “You have to keep on going, that’s all.”
“I know,” she said.
“They always do come back,” he said.
“Do you know where they go to prepare …”
“Yes,” he said, “but it does no good to know. She wouldn’t let us pass.”
“I do hate that woman, I can’t help myself.” Her voice trembled.
“I know,” he said. “But there’s no need. It comes from them, not Mrs. Jefferson. Actually, it comes from us. We brought them into this world.”
“Yes, and why don’t we have it?”
“Because. It’s their time, not ours.”
“You mean our human race is done?”
“Just our part of it,” he said. “Not all at once. But they are the new order.”
She shook her head in denial, yet knew it was true.
After a time she spoke again, her voice trembling now. “Know what the day after tomorrow is?” she asked.
“What?” he said.
“Justice’s birthday.”
“No! Yes, it sure is!”
“The nineteenth,” she said. “She’ll be twelve.”
“Still a baby,” he said. “Twelve.”
“Or twelve thousand and ninety-four. Or twelve million!”
“June, don’t.”
“I ordered a pretty store-bought cake, too, better than I could make it look, just for her. I invited all of the boys and girls, too.”
“You mean you already told them?”
“Yep. It was going to be the biggest and best surprise party she ever saw.”
He thought a moment. “Well, you can still do it,” he said. “They’ll be back. They never stay that long.”
“I’m so afraid.”
“Don’t, June. They’ll be back, I swear they will. They have always come back.”
She stared at him, peered into his eyes as if to discover lies, worries, tricks. It was the worst, most forlorn look he had ever seen. He kept his eyes steady. Thought gentle, easy thoughts, no fear anywhere.
“You promise me they’ll come back?” she said. “Promise me my boys? Promise me? Promise me Justice!”
His voice was steady. Power or no, he knew his kids. He smiled. “I promise you,” he said.