7

When the Governor got the fire on her clothes put out, Mallory tried to sit up and see if Alex was okay, but her body refused to acknowledge her wishes, choosing instead to succumb to the exhaustion of the night. The Governor did not stand by her side long. He went back to resume the fight against the fire; a fight Mallory could tell that they were destined to lose. Without the Dikaió, there was no way to direct the hydrant sprites effectively to put out that fire, and the city just wasn’t equipped to fight a fire without the sprites. She lay there in the wet grass staring up into the heavens. The storm had passed, and the clouds had dissipated far enough that she saw naked sky. She blinked at the brilliance of the Milky Way, which she was seeing for the first time without the lens of the city’s light obscuring it from view. There were points of brilliance where single stars stood out, but the beautiful part was the purples and blues that swirled together in subtle harmony. It was beyond anything she had ever imagined.

While she admired the galaxy spread out above her, the adrenaline that had been driving her all night passed out of her system. Unlike the gentle calmness that nature was experiencing after the chaos of the storm, Mallory was suddenly aware of the injuries of the night. Her forehead and exposed skin were searing with burns. Her arm felt like it was broken, either from being hit by the explosion at the door or the rush of water in the basement. Her eyes were so dry that it hurt to blink, and her throat felt like she had swallowed gravel and a lot of it was still stuck there. Every breath was agony, and when she coughed, all her various aches and pains sent desperate electric signals into her brain, begging her not to move. Yet she could not stop coughing.

A motion to her right momentarily distracted her from her pain. Two men laid a figure in the grass next to her. It was Alex. Mallory saw that her arm was very burned, black and red streaks with spots of white swirled around her forearm, a horrible mimicry of the galaxy above them. Alex’s eyes were rolling in her head, and she was moaning softly, writhing in the grass. The two men stood above her, shaking their heads.

Mallory recognized one of the men as the City Services Manager. He said, “We can’t contact the hospital, and even if we could, there’s no way to get there without the medic sprites. It’s too far to carry her on foot.”

The other man, one of the Dikaió elect, replied, “We have to do something. She’s horribly hurt. The other one too,” he nodded toward Mallory. “What kind of leaders are we if we don’t take care of our people?”

“We’re the kind that take care of our city—all of it—and our first duty is to preserve the government and order, and even more importantly the Dikaió. We need to get the fire out and see if we can reignite the light. Everyone in the city is at risk until those issues are resolved. When we’re finished, we’ll form relay teams and carry these two to the hospital.”

“I’m not sure the Administrator’s granddaughter will make it until then.”

“She’s going to have to. Now c’mon, let’s get this fire out.”

The two men ran back to help the efforts at City Hall. Mallory forced herself up onto her good arm. “Alex!” She called, but it came out as little more than a hoarse whisper, and Alex just moaned. There had to be something she could do. She forced herself up onto her hands and knees, biting her lip in thought and to keep herself from screaming from the pain. As she became more determined to get Alex to the hospital—even if she had to carry her the whole way there—the adrenaline began to pump again. Yes, she would carry her friend the whole way, with a broken arm, through the dark night, across the city, whatever it took. She stood to her feet and stumbled to Alex’s side.

It was hard to decide where to grab hold of her to pick her up. The arm that had been trapped under the burning rubble was definitely not an option, as that would be the most painful, but even where Alex had had some protection from the fire with her wet clothes, there were burns where the fire had clawed through the water, then the fabric, and then her friend’s flesh. Her face was remarkably unscathed by the flames but looked even paler than usual. Mallory could imagine what her own face felt like considering the painful heat she still felt on her forehead. Mallory picked what seemed to be the best places to leverage her friend off the ground and then up onto her back like a child playing piggyback with their father. She bent down and grabbed hold and started to pull. Alex moaned but did not offer resistance. It made little difference though, her friend was too heavy, and Mallory was too exhausted to pull off the rescue. She stumbled backward and bit her lip in consternation.

“Let me help.” A raspy but familiar voice offered from a short distance away. It was Caleb, and he was pushing Mallory’s grocery cart. “When I saw you carried out, I figured you’d need a ride to the hospital . . .” He gasped when he saw how extensive Alex’s burns were. “I should take her first, though.”

Mallory wanted to hug him, but instead she stuck to the business of the moment. The cart was still too unstable to sit upright without someone holding the poles, so Mallory reached out and took them from Caleb. Mallory tried to speak again and found her voice improving to a gurgling growl instead of just a whisper. “I’ll hold the cart, and you lift her in. Be careful of her arm though.” Caleb looked at Alex’s arm and grimaced, but he squared his shoulders and gently picked up the injured girl. He lowered her carefully into the cart, her legs hanging out over the edge, and her arms folded in across her chest. As Caleb let go, Alex’s weight pressed down hard on the cart, up its handles, and yanked on Mallory’s injured arm. She hollered but forced her hands to clamp down harder on the poles, managing to keep the cart from tipping over.

“Are you, okay?” Caleb asked.

“I think my arm’s broken, but I’ll survive,” she replied with a grimace. Caleb walked around behind Mallory and took the handles. She ducked out from under them just like she had done after the market. Mallory did not feel the same playful awkwardness brushing against Caleb this time. Too much had changed, and yet it was only that morning that the three of them had climbed the hill to the Matriarch’s house with Mallory’s Dikaió-free groceries. If one day could change so much, what would a week or a month from now look like if they could not restore the Dikaió?

Caleb pushed the cart forward with ease and moved in the direction of the hospital. “You stay here, Mal. I’ll be back for you.”

“No, I’m coming with you, Caleb. I can walk, and it’s too far for a round trip. Besides, Alex might need help on the way.” Almost as if on cue, Alex shifted in the cart and her injured arm spilled out, banging against the wooden panels. Alex screamed loudly but could not seem to pull her arm back up. Mallory rushed forward and gently placed Alex’s arm back onto her chest. Alex calmed somewhat when her arm was moved, but her groans were louder than they were at first, and she was growing more fitful as the cart bumped and careened along the mud-strewn streets of the Governor’s District. Beads of sweat were standing out on her forehead and face.

Then Alex began to murmur almost inaudibly. “The book. Mal, I dropped the book! It’s in the fire!” Her eyes sprung open, and she started trying to climb out of the cart.

“Alex! Please!” Caleb yelled, struggling to keep the cart upright. He had to stop walking to counterbalance all the motion rocking about in its bed.

Alex paused and looked around her, eyes wild. “Where am I? What are you doing to me? I’ve got to go back for the book!” She threw a leg up to swing out of the cart.

Without thinking, Mallory reached out and grabbed Alex’s burned arm to restrain her. Alex shrieked and fell back into the cart breathing hard. Mallory let go of her arm and jumped back. “Alex, I’m sorry!”

Alex did not respond. She just sat there in the cart looking at her arm in confusion and pain. Slowly, she reached out and touched the red and black streaks blanketing her forearm. Pain and shock spread over her face. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped back into the cart shivering. Caleb looked at Mallory, “What should we do?”

“Get her to the hospital, Caleb. What else can we do?” Caleb did not respond, he just put one foot in front of the other, and the trio set off again. They came to the same hill on Silver Street they had climbed that morning and began to descend into the market district of the city. Caleb leaned back, straining against the weight of the cart as gravity threatened to pull Alex loose from his grip. “Back and forth, remember?” Mallory made a zigzagging motion with her good hand. Caleb followed her direction, angled the cart one way, and then another, working his way slowly but safely down the hill.

 

The market booths were all put away for the night. Dikaió cloths and crates stacked up neatly along the street. The steel and glass skyscrapers lined the road; their windows streaked with droplets still slowly dripping from the overhanging crops of the Dikaió Cultures on the tops of the buildings. There were bits of fruits, vegetables, and piles of leaves lying here and there along the gutters of the street, cast down from the heavenly fields by the fury of the storm.

It was still at least two miles to the hospital, but at least it was a straight line up Main Street to get there. The gentle slope that had made Mallory’s grocery trip so quick was taking its toll on Caleb. He never complained though; he just gritted his teeth and kept pressing forward. At least the street was relatively clean. Ignoring the leaves and produce, the only mud was that which had stuck to their shoes from the Governor’s District, so their feet at least had traction here. Still, Mallory could see that he was struggling pushing Alex along. Alex’s murmuring had given way to a rhythmic but raspy breathing. She was asleep. Mallory walked slowly, nursing her arm, which was sending stabbing jabs up her shoulder with every step, and she wished she could help her friends more than walk limply along behind them. Caleb grunted occasionally when the mud on his shoes made his foot slip, or a rock or pothole made the cart bump. But overall, it was a quiet walk.

Caleb broke the silence with the question she knew he’d been wanting to ask since she caught his eye in the sitting room of the Matriarch’s house: “Why did you do it, Mal? I told you both not to. Why did you do it?”

“You were there. You heard what I told the Council.”

“Because you’re going to have a sister? You’re not going to be Matriarch?” Caleb glanced over his shoulder, “And how would you be Matriarch without the Dikaió for a christening?”

“We’ll fix it!” She answered, trying to hide the desperation in her voice.

Caleb’s shoulders slumped as he looked forward again and asked quietly, “Where’s the book, Mal?”

Mallory did not answer.

“Mallory, is what Alex said true? Was the book in City Hall? Is it gone?”

“Her jacket was on fire. That’s where she had it . . . I took it off when I was trying to get her out of the fire.”

Caleb did not answer.

“The Council will be able to figure it out, Caleb. They have to.”

“They never figured out how to help you, Mal. Why do you think they’ll do any better fixing this?”

“I don’t know. But if they don’t, then I will.”

“You did a great job of fixing things, Mal. A great job!”

“Well, at least we tried. Like you just said, that’s more than anyone else has ever done!”

She was always trying. Everyone around her had the luxury of not needing to try, but Mallory knew what it meant to struggle with hard problems—she tried to help at home, to be a good friend and not a nuisance, to study and become useful, to help others, and she even tried to rescue Alex when the city leaders walked away. Without her trying, Alex would have no stretcher tonight. But then without her trying, Alex wouldn’t need a stretcher tonight. Tears formed in her eyes and her face felt hot. She almost knelt down on the street under the weight of guilt she felt for her friend; she seemed to always cause harm when she was only trying to help. And right now, her friend needed even more help, and here she was trudging along uselessly behind Caleb. She wished she could start this whole day over.

They walked on for a long time before either spoke again, and then Caleb said, “It wouldn’t have been so bad having your sister be Matriarch, you know.”

Mallory felt her blood boil; her guilt flipped to self-defense. “She’s not even born—how do you know that? She could have been the worst Matriarch ever. She could have destroyed the city! How do you know anything about what kind of Matriarch she would be?”

Caleb chuckled. “I meant for you . . . for us, Mal. It wouldn’t have been so bad . . . we could have been happy.” He looked straight ahead at the street, and she wished she knew what he really thought of her now, walking in the darkness with their injured friend laying in front of them. He was talking about what could have been—and now that it was impossible, she realized it was the first time she had heard it out loud.

Mallory’s boiling blood shot straight into her cheeks. Guilt and embarrassment mixed together, and her face was nearly as hot as the inner inferno of City Hall. They had always flirted, but neither had ever made their feelings known. As the only children in the Triad, they could not have married; what good would it have been to talk about whether either loved the other?

But now that he had made his intentions known, there was not any point in avoiding the topic anymore. Mallory’s inner turmoil grew. After a long pause, she spoke haltingly without looking at him, “Do you think I didn’t think of that, Caleb? But what good would I have been to you as a Chorus? With no magic, we’d have had to hire people to keep the house, prepare city events, ceremonies . . . your mother does more than anyone gives her credit for. How could I have done any of those things?”

 

“We would have made it work. We could still make it work, Mal.” He looked back at her, gripping the cart and setting his jaw with determination. “You don’t have to be the Matriarch. You’ve got a way out.”

“What if I don’t want a way out?” She didn’t know why she said it—perhaps guilt or the trauma of the night—or the feeling that every time she touched something it broke. She didn’t want to break Caleb.

Caleb inhaled deeply as if ready to question her answer—perhaps to demand something more of her—but instead he hung his head and continued wearily pushing the cart.

Mallory stared at him defiantly now, willing him to answer. She desperately wanted to know what he was thinking. Maybe he knew something she didn’t know or had some idea to make it all work. Or was he angry? Sad? Confused?

She began to be afraid that he might think she had rejected him. The Matriarchy was not hers for certain, and she did not want to close this door with Caleb. The thought stunned her in its selfishness. Had she been toying with Caleb’s emotions, keeping him hooked like a live fish on a stringer until she found out if her dreams would be fulfilled? What kind of monster was she? But she was not just stringing him along; she truly did want to be with him. Her heart ached at the thought of not being together. That had to be more than selfishness, right? She reached out and touched his arm.

“Caleb, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? You should be Matriarch. It’s your right. I’ve no right to ask anything of you—certainly not to give up your right to rule.”

 

“Yes, but . . . that’s not the point. That’s not why I said what I said. I do want to be with you. . .” She felt overwhelmed saying it out loud now. “It’s just that . . . that if my grandmother had made me Syntec, we wouldn’t even be thinking about this. I’d be Matriarch and that would be that. But she didn’t. She made me a Chorus, and she did it because of the prophecy.”

Caleb sighed deeply.

“What was that for?” Mallory demanded.

“My father says that your grandmother made up the prophecy to cover over her mistake of making you a Dikaió Chorus instead of a Syntec.”

His words hit her like a hard fall sucking the wind out of her lungs. “You don’t believe that do you?”

“I don’t know what to believe, Mal. He’s my father. He’s the Governor. I think he’d know what happened.”

“But my grandmother christened me after the dream . . . because of the dream.”

Caleb’s eyes narrowed as he considered that idea, and then shook his head. “In the end, what does it matter? What happened is in the past. That’s what I always tell him when we talk about it anyway.”

“But it does matter, Caleb!” Mallory pointed around them at the darkened city. “All of this is why I was born; why I am a Chorus. My grandmother saw it. Somehow, I’m supposed to save the city.”

Caleb looked back at her, eyes wide. “Mallory, all this happened because your grandmother made you a Chorus. If she’d just made you a Syntec, the light would be up. City Hall wouldn’t be burning.” He nodded his head toward the cart, “Alex wouldn’t be hurt. You wouldn’t be hurt. Things would still be okay.”

“And we could never be together.”

Caleb got quiet again, but after a time said, “Yes. And maybe it would have been better without that possibility. Now, we are all living in your grandmother’s nightmare.”

“That’s why I asked? I can’t tell if it’s better to live for a prophecy about tomorrow or to live in the present with you.” That was the answer Mallory was struggling to find in her tightrope between the Matriarchy and Caleb and both options seemed to be full of risk; being Matriarch would solve so many problems, but it would take away the one thing she really wanted as a Chorus that she could never have as a Matriarch.

Ever the pragmatist, Caleb laughed dryly: “Well, that’s neither here nor there I suppose. You are a Chorus, and maybe we all are now, so maybe we could still be happy?” He winked at her, and she smiled for the first time since their morning grocery trip.

Mallory’s tension loosened. “You might have to work harder than you ever have. Being a Chorus isn’t easy.”

“I’m the definition of hard work. Look at me! I’ve hauled this cart across the city, haven’t I? Look at all this sweat.” He moved his arms up to show the sweat stains under his armpits. His movement jostled Alex, and she began to shiver and moan. “Oops!” Caleb evened out his arms and his gait, lulling Alex back to sleep.

Mallory smiled and touched his shoulder tenderly. “Well, if this is our future, we’ll have to add legs to this cart like I wanted to this morning, so you can set it down and rest occasionally.”

 

Caleb smiled his lop-sided grin and looked over at her out of the corners of his eyes. “You think I’m going to be pushing a cart forever? Who’s going to govern the city?”

Mallory smiled back and attempted to push some of her curly brown hair behind her ear, only to have it spring back into place. “I’m sure they’ll find someone less suited for manual labor. No sense wasting a hard worker like you,” she teased.

“I’ll show you. After this is over, I’m done working hard. Next time you see me, I’ll be lounging on a dusty couch reading dangerous books.”

Mallory laughed, “And maybe one day your belly will rival the leader of the Smith Guild.”

“Rival?!” Caleb roared with mock indignation. “My belly will have no rival. They’ll have to widen the doors of City Hall just for me . . .” Caleb’s face darkened at the mention of City Hall, and they both went quiet again, walking for a time in silence; the fire still too fresh to joke about.

Mallory looked up the street and saw the glow of Dikaió lights in the distance. She looked back and saw that the city was still dark. But there were definitely lights on ahead. As they drew closer, Mallory realized that the light was coming from the hospital. “How do they have power?” She wondered out loud. As much as she hated going to the hospital with her various and inventive injuries, she had to admit that the lights looked welcoming.

“The hospital and the other city management buildings all have their own generators,” Caleb said. Mallory was always shocked at the things she was unaware of in the city. The management of the city was something that the Governor and the guild leaders tended to, not necessarily something the Matriarch or the Administrator had to worry about, so she and Alex were often ignorant to things Caleb spent hours learning in detail, along with all the words to control every aspect of the city. Days like today, where Caleb got to come out and relax with his friends were rare. Mallory knew that those days were only allowed to strengthen the bond of the family Triad; it would be hard to lead the city if the three of them were strangers when they began their terms of leadership. Still, Caleb never complained of the burden, and he never talked about it. He was always just happy to be free with his friends for awhile. And here he was again spending time with his friends, though the circumstances were not great.

Caleb and Mallory grew silent as they drew near to the hospital. It was five stories tall and full of glass windows—almost half of them with lights on in them. The exterior was white-washed stucco, and a large red cross was painted on a white sign hanging over the door. Spotlights among the shrubs in the landscaping shone up from the ground, illuminating the sign, and it was the most wonderful thing Mallory had seen all day. It looked normal.

Caleb seemed to perk up at the hospital’s light as well and picked up his pace with the cart considerably so that Mallory had trouble keeping up with him. When they finally reached the entrance, they stood outside the Dikaió double glass doors waiting for them to slide open.

Nothing happened.

Mallory walked forward and held her good hand up to her forehead to shade her eyes from the lights around them, pressing against the glass to cut the glare and get a better look. The burn on her head exploded in pain, and Mallory drew her head back slightly from her hand, hovering centimeters from physical contact. After closing her eyes and taking a deep breath to calm the pain, she opened her eyes again and could see a reception desk inside. There was a nurse standing behind it, yelling at somebody. Mallory banged on the glass of the door.

The nurse turned and looked at the door, and her eyes got wide. She ran up to the door, pointed to her left, and yelled, “Go to the East side. The door seems to be working there.” Then she took off running in the direction she had just pointed toward.

Mallory looked at Caleb, and he lowered his head and pivoted the cart toward the East. The trio made their way slowly to the East side of the hospital and found a service door standing open. The nurse was standing there, a silhouetted angel standing in a bright white rectangle leading into a hallway of white tile, white walls, and bright white fluorescent lights. She looked at each of them with concern, and then looked down into the cart at Alex. Her concern turned to alarm. “Oh my! I don’t think that cart is going to fit through the door.” There was a folded wheelchair resting against the wall next to her, and she grabbed it and expertly popped it open. “Can you lift her into the chair?”

Caleb nodded and picked Alex up again, minding her burned spots as best he could. While she was mid-transfer, Alex woke up and began to yell, “Mal, the book! We have to get the book!” Caleb startled and nearly dropped her into the chair, but he managed to lower her gently. “The book! Where is the book?”

“Alex,” Mallory called.

Alex looked through her at first, and then her eyes came into focus. “Mallory, did you get the book?”

“No, Alex. The book is gone. I’m sorry.”

Alex looked stricken and then slumped in defeat. The nurse maneuvered the wheelchair around and rushed off down the hall, leaving Caleb and Mallory standing outside the doorway without a word. The two looked at each other, and then followed the nurse trying to keep up. She quickly turned a corner, and when Caleb and Mallory reached the turn, they found it branched off in three different directions, and there was no way to tell which way the nurse had gone.

“This place is a labyrinth,” Caleb lamented.

“Should we split up?” Mallory asked.

“I don’t know.” Caleb said with frustration. He stood for a moment looking down the halls and thinking, rubbing his reddened hands tenderly; his fingers were already forming blisters from the weight and friction of the cart.

Decisively, Caleb turned back to Mallory: “Someone is taking care of Alex now. There’s probably not much we can do but get in the way. Let’s see if we can get someone to help with your arm and your burns.”

Mallory’s adrenaline had all but forgotten about her injuries again, but once Caleb pointed them out, they all started to hurt at once. She nodded and they headed down the hallway that led to the West, hoping to find the nurses’ station or whoever the nurse had been yelling at. The hospital was very quiet, which made their footsteps all the louder.

The hallway changed very little as they walked; attempts to break up its monotony could be found in various pieces of artwork and unlabeled doors, but the effect of these just created a disjointed sameness that made Mallory feel claustrophobic. The hallway finally exited into the lobby, and Mallory felt instant relief to be in an open space.

The lobby was a large room with a wall of windows to the left, and two double doors, the main entrance to the hospital. These were the doors that usually opened automatically but would not open for Mallory and Caleb when they first arrived. There were several blue couches and some tall, planted trees tastefully set around to make the place seem inviting.

Voices were coming from their right. Two people were yelling commands, and then there was a crash and a roar of rage. The voices seemed to be coming from a door behind the reception desk.

Mallory and Caleb took off running toward the sounds of distress. They sprinted around the desk and opened the door: Inside, a stocky nurse with brown hair was standing on a round table that was barely supporting her, swinging a metal tray wildly at a medic sprite that was going about its nightly routine of loading medications into paper cups. Every time it would get a round of doses loaded, the nurse on the table would knock them out of its grasp with her metal tray. Another nurse was on the ground wrestling with a second medic sprite, and he was losing the fight, as it dragged itself slowly toward the medication dispenser. Mallory felt hope begin to fade—the Dikaió was gone here, too. There would be no magic cures tonight.