TWENTY-SEVEN

The radio was stubbornly quiet all night. Rachel left at daybreak. It wasn’t long before she was farther into the forest than she’d ever been before. Going north meant following the river, leaving private property and entering the state park, now overgrown and wild. Rachel took a deep breath, fear tugging at her heart. New Babylon soldiers had flown away in the helicopter, but that meant no help if another mutant moose attacked. Saki may be a pet, but what if other animals hit a ley line and combined? Her knees went weak. “You have to keep going,” she said aloud. Rachel put one foot in front of the other. She had to find The Weatherman; they were running out of time. At least due north wasn’t like the forest to the northwest; the dark forest where Scott had shown them the skeletons.

The strange choking vines and the ugly orange DPF grew in spots, but there were also large trees that had kept their green leaves, still fighting for summer, for life. No time to dig the fungi up, but Rachel kicked the orange and brown heads off of any that were close, making a face at the resulting muck covering her boots.

After close to two hours of hiking, Rachel heard a new sound: water splashing. She didn’t know of any waterfall in the state park. Curious, she followed the sound around a bend in the river and saw a gristmill. The building was three stories high: the first floor was made of stacked river rock, the other two of faded wooden planks. A red roof matched the color of the huge overshot wheel attached to the right of the building. The wheel was two stories high, water from the top sluicing down a chute over the paddles making them dip into the water below and keep turning. Rachel stared at the process, marveling. It still worked.

There could be flour inside, or even bags of grain stored from before the firestorm. Maybe this wasn’t The Weatherman, but it had to be where Scott got the flour he brought them. Could the four ovals on his map be a flower for flour?

She inched forward and stared through the dusty pane of glass in one of the bottom windows. Inside she saw a long wooden shaft reaching from the floor up through a hole in the ceiling, a large wooden gearwheel, apparently attached to the overshot wheel through the wall of river rock, and a smaller gearwheel near the ceiling. No evidence of anyone inside. Rachel imagined how happy Adam and Tamaki would be if she brought back food. This could mean surviving the winter, at least from hunger.

Cawing from a nearby tree made Rachel look up. An unkindness of ravens perched in the branches of a nearby evergreen, watching her. Rachel pushed down on the metal handle. One raven hopped forward on its branch and made a loud caw sound three times. Was it warning her about something? Maybe to stay away from its food source. She wrestled the heavy wooden door open. It was dark inside, although light filtered through the dirty windows. Cobwebs clustered in the corner and the boards creaked under her feet. It smelled musty and unused.

“Hello?” she called, not expecting an answer.

To the right a set of narrow wooden stairs led up to a trapdoor. She crawled through the trapdoor onto the next floor. On the near wall a large window looked out on the chute while the overshot wheel turned below. In the middle of the room, a circular contraption sat by itself. Creeping closer, Rachel saw two huge flat stones. On top sat a hopper, a square funnel underneath a chute in the ceiling. Grain had fallen from the chute, down the hopper, into the middle of the millstones. What looked like cornmeal seeped out underneath the bottom millstone into a rectangular collection box on the floor. This place must have been working until the firestorm came. Maybe the rangers used it to teach park visitors? Rachel fell to her knees and dipped her hand into the powder, bringing the yellow grit to her mouth and tasting it, rolling the rough texture on her tongue. She laughed out loud with joy. Cornmeal for cornbread. Corn muffins. Cornmeal-battered everything.

Her imagination went wild. Maybe Tamaki and she could get this mill running again. After all, the waterwheel still worked. She looked around for a bag to carry the cornmeal, but didn’t see anything except the last set of stairs. There could be bags of corn stored above, or at least empty bags to carry cornmeal back to Hiraeth.

This staircase, like the first, was narrow. Emerging into the third story, Rachel blinked, taking a second while her eyes adjusted to the dimness. Unlike the other floors, the window to the outside was small and seemed even dirtier.

This floor was filled with equipment unrelated to millwork. In the farthest part of the room, wires hung from the ceiling. Hoses and gears dominated the middle space. Close to the stairs sat a large wooden box, uncovered and filled to the top with corn kernels. A few steps toward the back wall of the gristmill Rachel saw what she’d been looking for: bags of grain piled on top of each other. Rachel pulled on one of the sacks, trying to get a feel for how heavy it was, concentrating so hard that it was a moment before she noticed a new sound, a whisper of movement. She jumped back from the pile, heart thumping. Of course there would be rats. I hate rats. They could have gnawed their way into the bags; there could be a nest of them underneath. She hadn’t seen any droppings, but she also hadn’t been looking, so excited to have found food.

“Rats? No. I do not have rats.” The voice was masculine, older, heavy with breath.

Ice ran through Rachel. I didn’t say anything out loud.

“But I do, apparently, have a thief.” The voice was louder, approaching from the darkness.

“I’m sorry.” Rachel swallowed, unsure of what else she could say. “I saw this mill and I was curious.”

“You came in to steal my food, you mean.” The voice was testy. Querulous and scratchy as an old-fashioned record, it sounded familiar. “Not a very well-prepared thief, though.” An arm came out of the darkness into the dim light, its fingers pointing at her.

“I didn’t know I was stealing. I thought the mill was abandoned.” She remembered New Babylon’s form of justice. Was this an outpost of some type? Rachel’s heart beat so hard she thought she was going to throw up.

The scratch of a match. The man in the shadows held up a small lantern. A thick white beard and black sunglasses couldn’t fully conceal the baggy skin of an old man. He leaned forward as if hunchbacked, bald head shiny in the reflected lantern light. The white dress shirt and old-fashioned vest with thick lapels and a bolo necktie made Rachel think of a storekeeper in a spaghetti Western. The man set down the lantern to cough into the crook of his elbow. The smell of ozone wafted toward Rachel. Abruptly her head ached and she had to press her palms to her forehead. The smell triggered submerged memories, images flashing too quickly to be examined.

“You,” said Rachel, dropping her palms as the images ceased. “I know you. You were the one who stopped me in the fog. Where are the others?”

A loud jangling came from one of the instruments and the man turned to the side, pulling down from the ceiling what looked like a submarine’s periscope, a hand on each side as he turned the lens from direction to direction, muttering to himself about the wind sweeping down from the other side of the mountains.

“There’s no one else here. Just me. That’s enough.”

“You’re The Weatherman.”

He pushed the periscope away and glared at her through the sunglasses. “Whatever gave me away?” His arms gestured into the darkness. “I’m surrounded by a lab of meteorology equipment and the girl thinks she’s a detective.”

“I don’t think that. Normally Scott comes here, but he was killed and now I need to talk to you, to find out if it’s safe—” Rachel’s chest heaved with emotion from talking about Scott.

“Course the boy’s dead. Told him not to mess with those fools from New Babylon, but wouldn’t listen to me. Oh no, thought he was tough shit.”

Guilt that she couldn’t save Scott, that she hadn’t shouted a warning before he came into the clearing, converged on Rachel. Her vision blackened as if she was going to faint. She fought the panic by biting the inside of her cheek, using the pain as distraction, counting, picturing a line of numbers. A trick she’d learned at the hospital, listening to the doctors state what Adam would have to go through. Rachel had learned how to wrestle down panic and stay in the moment.

“Stop that now; I don’t like it. You’re sorry you tried to steal from me. Okay. You’re a dummy who doesn’t know how to barter. I’ll let you off, but you owe me.”

Sudden clacking sounds filled the room. The Weatherman scooted past Rachel and began twisting knobs and pulling levers until it was quiet again.

“Hate noise.” The Weatherman grabbed a pencil, licked the tip, and began to scribble in a notebook. “What! Why are you still here? You want to thank me for being merciful?” His back was elongated, disproportionate to his two legs, so that he scuttled rather than walked.

“I want to know if a hailstorm like the one from the other day is approaching. That storm brought down a tree on my roof.”

“That was my storm. Speaking of which, would you like to explain why you let the New Babylon people into your house? I made a storm so they’d leave, and you gave them shelter!” The sunglasses couldn’t hide his look of derision.

“I didn’t know.” The blame felt like a punch in the gut. Rachel’s mind churned through what-ifs. What if she hadn’t given them shelter? What if she hadn’t offered to make breakfast? “There was a moose and then they helped me—”

“They shouldn’t have been here when Scott returned!” The Weatherman yelled. He pulled at his beard until it poofed out. In a quieter voice, “It shouldn’t have happened.”

Rachel wrapped her arms around herself, miserable with guilt.

“I didn’t know you would invite them inside. You didn’t know Scott would steal their supplies. Scott didn’t know New Babylon soldiers were at your house. It’s not your fault the ranger is dead. That’s the problem with free will.” The Weatherman’s voice was gruff, but Rachel heard emotion. He’d cared about Scott, but hid it behind crankiness. “You humans are a bunch of buzzing bees swirling about in clouds of your own chaos.”

Anger sparked into a tiny flame. It felt better than self-blame. “Could you stop calling me names?”

“I’ll call you whatever I want. I’m your elder. By thousands of years. Humans,” he chided, “you think you’re so special. It’s all happened before, but this time, this time it won’t happen again.” He began cackling, slapping his legs as if he’d told the funniest joke.

Uncertain, Rachel shuffled her feet. “The firestorm happened before? Like an asteroid?”

“An asteroid?” He grimaced at her, baring stained teeth. “You moron. The Misbegotten have returned.”

“Who,” Rachel had to clear her throat, “are The Misbegotten?”

“How?” he moaned. “How have humans managed not to die off like lemmings?” He rubbed a hand over his bald head. “All hell has, literally, broken loose from its chains and you want to hear a story. The Nephilim are at war again, Anunnaki versus Igigi, and humans are once more jumping in and making it all worse.”

“No.” Rachel shook her head, but her resistance was crumbling, too many clues gathering together and leading to this moment. She knew the word “Nephilim” from her art history classes. According to ancient texts, Nephilim were a mythic breed created by the coupling of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of Adam” that resulted in heroes, monsters, and gods and goddesses bearing supernatural powers yoked with human emotion and pettiness.

“Yes,” said The Weatherman, answering her unspoken thought. “That’s a pretty good description.”

Rachel’s mind continued to spin. The creatures in the firestorm falling to earth, the mysterious summer snowstorm when the painted people were here, trees and plants from a different ecosystem thriving here in the mountains. Even the ravens outside weren’t ordinary birds. Rachel understood that they hadn’t been warning her, they’d been warning The Weatherman about her. The smoke from the two-headed moose somehow awakening the cancer cells within Adam. This was the moment when she was asked to accept that the world would never go back.

“Energy patterns are occupied elsewhere for the moment so I don’t have to defend my territory. Forecast is clear for the next three days. Garden or take your son wherever you want. Now go away, I’m busy.”

Rachel held up her hand. “Wait! Are the roads clear to the hospital?”

“Why?”

“My son’s arm is burned, but—”

“What kind of careless mother burns her son?” He snorted.

“Not me, the moose.”

“The two-headed moose burned your son?”

“No. Yes.” Rachel tried to explain. “Adam’s arm went through the moose’s smoke and now there’s a painful burn, a black mark in the middle of a bruise.”

His chin tilted down to his chest. “Black like car oil?”

“Yes, how did you know?” Rachel stepped forward. “It’s cancer, isn’t it?”

“No hospital can help you. You’ve got to go to the Bathhouse. Ask The Lady of the Bath for help. She’s the only one who might be able to heal him.”

“What bathhouse? Why?”

“I told you, it’s all energy now. This isn’t Newton’s world, girl. That little construction’s been swept away. We’re back to raw materials, the stuff of original creation activated by the firestorm. Earth is ripe for all kinds of alchemy.” The Weatherman dropped his snarkiness. “That moose was bad energy, unbalanced etemmu. It activated the poison dormant in your son. He’s dying.”

Rachel felt time stop as her greatest fear was said out loud.

The Weatherman coughed. “Anything else you want to know? Not like I’m getting any work done with you bothering me.”

“Well,” she said, “how do you know all this?”

“You know why you’re stupid? You don’t ask the right questions.” He stared her down.

“I’m one of the original and most powerful Misbegotten.” He put a hand on his hip and smoothed out his white beard. Preening. Then, he jerked his hands into the air. From out the window a crack of lightning split the clear sky followed by a roll of thunder.

Rachel jumped in surprise. No sign of a storm.

The old man stuck out his chest and grinned like a naughty child. Behind him, the roof of the mill that had surely been made of wooden planks was now a dome of blue-black night sky. White lights blinked in constellations that Rachel felt she almost knew.

He doesn’t forecast, he’s actually controlling the weather. “I believe you,” Rachel said, feeling a swell of hope. “You can heal Adam.”

“Oh no, I don’t do that. You want him healed, you’ll have to cross territory lines to get to someone who cares.”

“I don’t care about territory lines. I only care about my son.”

He threw his hands into the air. “You better care. We’re fallible, selfish creatures. Our last war created the schism between Anunnaki and Igigi.”

He’d said those words before, but they still made no sense to Rachel. She guessed, “Those are the teams of Misbegotten?”

“Teams?” He frowned. “That’s … not quite it. In Babylonian, Anunnaki means “gods of earth” and Igigi means “gods of heaven,” but it’s more philosophical differences than domain rights.”

“So, you’re Babylonian?”

“I am not.” His bushy browns moved up and down in obvious agitation. “I’m Sumerian. Many cultures rose and fell in Mesopotamia.”

“Fine.” She tried again. “Which side is the good side?”

“Just like any other war.” He snorted. “Each side thinks it is.”

Rachel nodded. That, she understood.

The Weatherman jutted his neck forward and shook a finger at her. “Right now each of The Misbegotten is scrambling to set up a city-state, raise followers, shore up alliances, and create a square on a chessboard. And then they’ll battle like it’s a game, using humans for their armies.”

“They’ll battle? You’re not involved?”

“Nope, no how.”

Another memory fragment swirled up. “You’re Switzerland.”

“That’s right. Minding my own business. The others should too, but they won’t.”

The others. “I think I met one of you before. In the hospital. She told us we could come to her territory because I offered a drink of water.”

The Weatherman raised his puffy eyebrows until they almost reached above his bald head. “Rookie move. Who did that?”

“I don’t know. She had these green eyes and reminded me of a deer, but a human deer, if that makes sense.”

“Pfffft. Aia. Shamash’s widow. Most of us feel bad that Shamash was killed, he tried to be fair and impartial, but no one will feel bad enough to let her control a territory. She’s weak and inexperienced. I give her three months before New Babylon takes over her territory.” He shrugged, “Here’s a freebie to get you out of my house. The answer to the question you should have asked: LaPorte. That’s where you’ll find The Bathhouse.”

LaPorte. The door. A little town north of the Susquehanna River. She and her husband had taken a dinner cruise starting from a neighboring town, Havre de Grace, a lifetime ago.

The Weatherman was still talking, “Fill up a sack of cornmeal on your way out. You already owe me for trying to steal it, so might as well take it with you.”

Rachel grabbed a sack and began filling it before he changed his mind.

Cawing came from a tall tree outside the window and then another raven cawed from its perch on a rafter over the bags of grain.

“Which one is Jude?” she asked, remembering how Scott had spoken to one. That bird must be The Weatherman’s spy.

“They’re all named Jude.” The Weatherman waved his arms in the air. “Now, go!”

Outside the gristmill Rachel adjusted the sack and checked Scott’s map. She didn’t need directions—she only had to follow the river back to Hiraeth, but she felt lost after the conversation with The Weatherman. Ancient gods and goddesses who could wield energy like magicians walked the earth again. These Misbegotten were going to war with each other and humans would be nothing more than fodder.

“If The Weatherman is so powerful,” she said to the map, to Scott, “then why didn’t he attack the New Babylon soldiers with lightning and save your life?” A wave of sadness for her friend rushed through her bones.

The Weatherman had created that catastrophic storm while the New Babylon soldiers were in his territory, but he hadn’t been able to save Scott. He knew that they were here, but he couldn’t get them out. The old man was feisty, but he couldn’t take on Consularis Sharma or Captain Lewis. They, or the Misbegotten they worked for, must be stronger than The Weatherman.

Shoving the map into her pack, Rachel followed the river, her mind a riot. Most importantly: if The Weatherman spoke true, she and Adam would have to cross a supernatural chessboard for a chance to save her son’s life.