Текст книги "Everfound"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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CHAPTER 4

Green Goddess

Milos had not forgotten what Allie had told him, and although he hated the thought that she knew something he didn’t, he had to find out what she had seen from her perch at the front of the train. About a mile back, she had said. Figure it out for yourself. Once the newly harvested souls were safely in the sleeping car, Milos decided to set off alone to do exactly that.

He left Jill in charge of Jix, which she resented. “I don’t trust him,” Jill said. “No normal person skinjacks animals.”

“Would you rather Moose and Squirrel watch him?” suggested Milos. She just grunted in disgust. They both knew Moose and Squirrel had attention spans too short to effectively guard anyone. “Perhaps you could charm him into telling you more about where he comes from,” Milos said, with a grin. “After all, you’re a bit like a cat yourself.”

She raised her hand like a claw. “In that case, why don’t I just scratch that grin right off your face?” Still, Milos smiled. He had once been in love with Jill, as he had once been in love with Allie—but both times the love was bleached away by betrayal, leaving him with a wounded, if not broken, heart.

But then there was Mary.

All else in his life, and afterlife, had been mere preparation for her. She was his salvation—and in a very real way, he was hers as well.

Milos left the train in the afternoon, and followed the track, every couple of minutes looking around, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary, but nothing caught his eye. Looking back at the train proved to be a surreal sight: the locomotive, standing against the little white church right in the middle of its path. The way its steeple poked up at the sky made it appear as if the church was giving the train the middle finger.

Milos found nothing a mile back. Just a dead track, and the living world on either side of it. Whatever it was Allie saw, it was not revealing itself to Milos. He returned to the train, his afterglow faintly red with slow-boiling frustration.

When he arrived, all seemed the way it always did. Kids playing games, shuffling their feet to keep from sinking into the living world.

Speedo came running to him when he saw that Milos had returned. “What was there?” Speedo asked. “What did you see?”

“Nothing,” Milos told him. “I saw nothing at all.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I will figure something out!” Milos shouted at him. “Don’t ask me again!” When he looked around, he saw that his outburst had gotten the attention of some of the kids playing around them. When Mary’s kids saw him, they used to look away, too shy and respectful to make eye contact. But now when they looked at him, they stared coolly, and their gazes were an accusation. What are you doing for us? those gazes said. What good are you at all? Now it was Milos who looked away when they stared.

He considered going up to the front car, and bargaining with Allie to tell him what she saw, or perhaps threatening her—but he would not give her the satisfaction of knowing she had the upper hand. Instead, he turned, and strode toward the caboose.

“Wait, where are you going?” whined Speedo.

And Milos said, “I need to talk to Mary.”

When Mary’s army had acquired the train from the Chocolate Ogre, it did not have a caboose. It had been a simple steam engine with nine passenger cars, each from a different time period. The caboose was added at Milos’s insistence before they left Little Rock, Arkansas. He was adamant that they travel no further west until a final car—a special car—was found. No one argued. It was, in fact, the only order he gave that met with no resistance from anyone.

They finally found the caboose sitting on a slight stretch of dead track, hidden by a living-world apartment complex. Once found, attaching it to the train had been relatively easy. So was decorating it—because Christmas ornaments were both beloved and fragile, and so were naturally abundant in Everlost. The strings of brightly colored lights even stayed lit in Everlost without needing to be plugged in.

The caboose was decorated by Mary’s loving children, and the entrance was locked to everyone but Milos, the only one who knew the lock’s combination.

Now, as he spun the lock, and turned it to the combination, he took in a deep breath, for even though he no longer needed to breathe, the mere act of doing so helped him steel himself for the moment. Then, once he was sure he was ready, he stepped inside.

It was late afternoon now. Light poured into the windows of the caboose and onto an object that lay in the center. It was the only thing in the caboose.

The object was a coffin.

It wasn’t made of wood as one might expect, or even of stone, as had been done in ancient days. This coffin was made entirely of glass—bits and pieces of it, meticulously glued together with bubble gum and anything else sticky enough to do the job. There were pieces of crystal taken from chandeliers that had crossed into Everlost. There were bottles, and window panes and sunglass lenses, artfully arranged, and little stained-glass window hangings that added color. The casket was strange and piecemeal, yet perfect in its own way.

Within the glass coffin lay a figure in a shimmering green satin gown, ever silent, ever still. A girl once lost to this world, but now ever found.

“Hello, Mary . . .”

Milos knelt beside the coffin, gently moving his hand across the rough edges of joined glass. Tears filled his eyes, but not tears of sorrow. Far from it. It was joy that filled him when he looked at her. This is where Mary belonged—in Everlost—a world she was determined to tame, and dominate. The Chocolate Ogre had found a way to make her live again, sending her back into the world of the living, turning her spirit into flesh. Her untimely life was a shock to everyone, most of all to Milos—yet even in that dark time, Mary had orchestrated her own return to Everlost.

Bring me home, my love.

Those were the last words Mary said to him, before he took her life. She looked into his eyes, and steadied his hand as he thrust the blade through her heart. It was that singular act, as horrible as it was, that bound them together forever.

My love, she had called him—and in that moment Milos knew he had finally replaced Nick, that hideous chocolate-challenged spirit, in her heart.

In the living world Mary’s heart had lain mortally wounded, leaking its last ounce of life in an alley—but as her body died, a portal opened before her spirit, and Milos was there to catch her. Just as he’d promised, he was there to grab her and hold her tight in his embrace, denying the gravity of the light and preventing her from being sucked down the tunnel to some mysterious afterlife.

Perhaps the light wanted her. Perhaps God had already set a table for her in eternity . . . but Milos wanted her more. With every ounce of his will, he held her back until the light retreated, the tunnel vanished, and Mary’s spirit collapsed into his arms.

“I love you, Mary,” he had said to her, but she didn’t answer, and the moment after the light disappeared, her arms, which had held him so tightly, went limp and she fell into the deepest of sleeps, as they both knew she would. Nine months of dreamless slumber—for just as one is born to the world of the living, one must be born into Everlost. Not even the great Mary Hightower could escape that simple law of nature.

Even so, Mary had now accomplished something no one else ever had. . . . Never before had the same person lived and died twice. It changed everything.

Bring me home, my love.

And Milos did. On the day Mary re-died, he had carried her in his arms all the way back to the train. He walked with her through the crowd of Mary’s children so that they could all see. She had left in mystery—for Milos had never told the others what had befallen her—and now she was back. Not just back, but transformed. They were all too awed to do anything but whisper and reach out to touch her, feeling the smooth fabric of her green satin gown. When she was forced back into the living world, her tight Victorian velvet dress had quickly been ruined by a mere week of living on the street. She had shed it, replacing it with this gown of emerald satin. Now she looked less like a governess, and more like a goddess—a fallen goddess, waiting for her moment to rise.

That moment would come, but Milos feared it wouldn’t come soon enough.

Things had not gone well in the two months since he had brought Mary home. Just ten miles out of Little Rock, Arkansas, the ghost tracks had come to an end, and they had to backtrack, finding another set of rails that could carry them, and then another, then another—a constant series of false starts and dead ends. It was like navigating a maze, and finding alternate routes would take days. Even when they had forward momentum, they always moved at a snail’s pace, for fear that the tracks would unexpectedly end.

And then the desertions began.

Those who were loyal to Mary were loyal to the end—but others who feared the prospect of a dying/rising goddess, or simply distrusted Milos, were quick to run off. At last count they were losing a half dozen kids a day. Mary’s kids numbered close to a thousand when they started. He had no idea how many there were now. He was afraid to take a census.

“You’ll be lucky if you have any left at all by the time Mary wakes up,” Jill was quick to tell him. Milos did not want to face the prospect of explaining to Mary why he could not hold on to her children, and “protect them from themselves,” as she would put it.

This is why Milos allowed the reaping expeditions. If there were a good number of sleeping souls, it might make up for all the ones they had lost. And sleeping souls can’t run away.

“Everyone wants to know where we’re going,” Speedo had told him. “Did Mary tell you where she was leading us before you . . . uh . . . ‘made her cross’?”

“Of course she told me!”

“Well, it might make us all feel a little bit better if you told us.”

“That,” said Milos, “is between Mary and me.”

With all the starts and stops, backtracking and zigzagging, their journey was taking months. During that time, Mary’s kids all fell into new routines . . . yet even in their routines there was a sense of impatience—as if they were all reluctantly passing the time until something happened—until Milos actually DID something that brought them closer to their unknown destination. More and more he felt like a leader in name only.

Now, as he knelt alone in the caboose, he looked through the glass to Mary’s closed eyelids, trying to remember what her eyes looked like. Soft and inviting, while at the same time keen and calculating. It was an intoxicating combination.

“I have tried, Mary,” he said, in barely more than a whisper. “I have tried to lead your children and to bring even more into Everlost, just as you had asked . . . but there is only so much that I can do.” He found that he had forced his hands together, clasping his knuckles in something resembling prayer. “We face so many obstacles. And now this church . . .” He looked to the date she would awaken, written on the largest pane of glass. It was still more than six months away.

“I’m not sure I can do this without you, Mary,” he pleaded. “Please, please wake up soon. . . .”

For an instant, he thought he saw a twitch of her cheek. But it was just a trick of the light sifting through the crystalline coffin.

Late that afternoon, Milos gathered all of Mary’s children in a clearing just beside the train, then he climbed up on top of the caboose, and told them his plan. “We will build a bypass around the church,” Milos told them. “But to do it, we’ll need to find loose railroad tracks that have crossed into Everlost.”

Speedo jumped at the opportunity to lead the expedition. “Leave it to me,” he said. “I used to be a finder—I can find anything!” And since it was well known that he was, indeed, Mary’s favorite finder, he was chosen to lead an expedition of twenty-five souls to scour the Oklahoma City trainyards.

The crowd seemed to approve of the idea, but then a lone voice—it could have been anyone—called out from the crowd, “And then what? Where are we even going?”

The question brought absolute silence to the crowd. All eyes were on Milos, and Milos looked out at them, watching them watching him. They bobbed up and down in that odd way an Afterlight crowd did when trying to keep from sinking in living ground.

Milos cleared his throat, although there was nothing there to block his voice, and spoke as commandingly as he could.

“Mary wanted this to be a surprise, but maybe she won’t mind if I tell you.” Then he pointed off to the setting sun. “There is a deadspot in the West,” Milos told them. “A deadspot larger than any you’ve ever seen. It is a beautiful place filled with everything you could ever want or need. A place where you can all be happy forever. This is where Mary wants us to go.”

And the crowd applauded—some actually even cheered. There was one problem, though:

Milos was lying.

Mary’s plan was to head west, and conquer . . . but “west” was a direction, not a destination, and while these children could blindly trust Mary to lead them, they weren’t so blind when it came to Milos. He was afraid to consider what they might do to him if they knew Milos had no idea where they were going, or what to do when they got there.

CHAPTER 5

Allie in Distress

There were many things of which Allie was unaware. How could she know what went on behind her when her only view was the world in front of her? She knew that Mary Hightower had been pushed out of Everlost, and into the living world, because Allie had been there, and had helped turn her back into flesh and blood. . . . Yet Allie did not know that Mary’s second life was already over, and that she was just a few months away from awakening in Everlost again.

Allie knew that Nick, the “Chocolate Ogre,” had finally been overcome by his chocolate cancer, and had dissolved into nothing—but she did not know that Mikey McGill, still deeply in love with her, had gathered the shapeless melted mass that had once been Nick, and had given him shape once more.

Allie had no way of knowing that Charlie and Johnnie-O—Nick’s staunchest allies—were now hopelessly adrift in the Hindenburg, and that the massive airship was at the mercy of the Everlost sky.

And Allie didn’t know about reaping.

She knew it was possible, but even if she had known what Mary’s skinjackers were doing, what could she have done to stop them? To be imprisoned, unable to do anything was, for Allie, the worst punishment yet devised. She had been Allie the Outcast, an Afterlight to be reckoned with. Now she was a joke, and it burned her more than the heat of the earth’s core ever could. She immediately flashed to that stupid old silent-movie image of the damsel in distress tied to the railroad tracks, helplessly wailing. If she ever got off this train, she vowed never to be so helpless again. She’d rather sink to the center of the earth than suffer the indignity of needing rescue.

There was a way out of this—there had to be. In theory, she could skinjack her way off the train by touching a living person passing by, slip into that person’s body, and just walk away. However, the train never brought her in contact with the living. Even when they traveled through populated areas, the living never crossed directly into her path, and it wasn’t like she could shout to them and call them over.

Still, she would find a way out of this, and once she escaped the train, she would leave Everlost. She would not go down the tunnel and into the light—that was for those who were truly dead. But skinjackers had other alternatives. . . .

She had learned the secret of skinjackers—the thing that no skinjacker ever spoke of, but every skinjacker eventually discovered. Skinjackers are not dead, but are in deep, deep comas . . . not quite dead, but not quite alive, either.

But if her body was still alive . . . maybe—just maybe—she could skinjack herself.

There was one problem, however. If she did it, it meant leaving Mikey behind. The thought of it challenged her resolve. Could she say good-bye to him, after the years they’d spent together? She loved him. It was not a simple love—it was as deeply complicated as true love should be, full of strength and vulnerability, joy and frustration. A powerful connection between them, more tangible than eternity. Could she sacrifice that for a chance at living? She wondered where Mikey was now, and what he would say. Would he talk her out of leaving, or encourage her to go? With Mikey there was no telling. He was a spirit who could be both selfish and gallant at the same time. It was part of what made her love him.

Of course none of her musings mattered as long as she was tied to the grille of a train.

On the day that Speedo left on his expedition to find railroad tracks, Milos and his skinjackers went off as well, for their own dark purposes. Allie assumed it was their usual “skinjacking for fun and profit.”

Then, just a few minutes after they had gone, Allie was visited by the strangest spirit. A boy that seemed part cat. Clearly this was not one of Mary’s children.

“I thought you were bound by a spell,” he said as he approached, “but now I can see it’s nothing but rope that has crossed into Everlost.”

Allie had seen all sorts of body modifications in Everlost—some intentional, some not—but few were as exquisite as this boy’s. “Who are you?” Allie asked. She waited for an answer, but he gave her none.

“They fear you,” he said. “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t treat you this way.” She knew it was true, but it didn’t change her sense of powerlessness.

“Are there many of you?” Allie asked. “Are you going to attack the train?” If there was a whole army of cat-kids, then this could be a good thing. If they saw Milos and the others as enemies, then they could see Allie as a friend, and might free her.

“I am here as a guest of the Eastern Witch,” the cat-boy said, which, again, did not answer her question.

“There is no Eastern Witch,” Allie told him, taking a little bit of pride in the fact. “She won’t be back, no matter what her children think.”

The cat-kid raised an eyebrow. “Then who is it who sleeps in the last car?”

At first she thought she had misheard him. Then she thought he was making some sort of joke. Then she realized he didn’t have a sense of humor. He was dead serious. But if Mary was in the last car, she wasn’t just sleeping, she was hibernating. She was in transition between life, and—

“No!” Allie didn’t want to believe it. “No! Milos didn’t! He couldn’t have . . . he wouldn’t dare!” But she knew he would dare. Milos was audacious to an extreme—he would have no compunction about killing Mary, then pulling her out of the tunnel. It explained so many things. It explained why they were still pushing westward, following Mary’s directive, as if she’d be coming back.

Allie had thought that the one consolation of being on the front of a moving train was knowing that they were moving away from Mary. . . . Little had she known that Mary was with them all along.

This was the worst of all possible news—because Allie had seen into Mary’s mind, and knew the monster she was. Allie knew what Mary planned to do.

“You have to help me,” Allie said to the cat-kid. “Mary can never be allowed to wake up.”

“And why is that?”

“Because she plans to end the living world. She means to kill everyone and everything.”

CHAPTER 6

Cat on a Cold Tin Roof

Jix found Allie’s accusation against Mary worthy of further investigation. He wasn’t sure he believed that the Eastern Witch would dare to do such a thing as end the living world, or if she even could. Regardless, with so many months until Mary Hightower woke up, there were more immediate things to tend to.

Jix found that he had freedom to move through the train as long as Jill was with him. She was assigned to escort him wherever he went.

“I’m not an escort,” Jill grumbled to Milos when he gave her the assignment. “I’ve got better things to do.”

“I don’t see you doing anything,” Jix pointed out.

“Nobody asked you,” Jill said in a threatening growl—a tone that suited her.

Milos had grinned. “I am beginning to like this guy.” Which is exactly why Jix had said it.

Jix made note of everything. He learned how many kids were in the regular train cars—about fifty in each—which made it cramped but not unlivable.

More than once he witnessed kids deserting the train—usually in groups of four or five. Safety in numbers.

“Let them go,” Jill had told him. “If we catch them now, they’ll only run away tomorrow.”

Once a day, Jix would go to the sleeping car, and visit the girl he had killed, making sure she was kept comfortable, and whispering his apology into her ear. In the living world, his younger sister would be much older than him now. He preferred to think of this girl as his sister, perpetually twelve, just as he was perpetually fifteen.

He would join in the various games the children played when the train stopped—everything from jump rope to hopscotch to tag. He got to know many of the kids, and although they were put off at first by his odd appearance, they always warmed to him.

Only the caboose was off-limits to Jix, which just piqued his desire to get in. He wanted to see the face of the sleeping witch. So great was her legend that gazing on her would be like gazing on the face of a queen. He couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe each time he looked at the brightly decorated tomb—for a tomb is exactly what it was. In Everlost, however, a tomb was only a temporary thing.

After a few days, Jill seemed less and less attentive of Jix’s comings and goings. On Thanksgiving night, the skinjackers went off to feast on turkey in the bodies of fleshies, and Mary’s children, who had lost all track of living-world celebrations, settled into their evening routines. Jix decided this was the perfect moment to pay a visit to the Eastern Witch. He used his catlike stealth to climb up to the roof of the caboose, cold and rough beneath his bare feet. Then he pried open the small skylight, and quietly slipped inside.

The glass coffin in the center of the caboose was impressive, and the girl inside was at peace—as if she knew Everlost was still under her control even during her slumber. She was both unremarkable and extraordinary at the same time; an angelic face that could belong to any girl and yet also unforgettable. He knew that if Afterlights dreamed, Mary Hightower would be at the core of many of them . . . and perhaps at the core of many nightmares as well.

“Estos niños te veneran,” he said, slipping into Spanish. “These children worship you—I’m not surprised you rest in such peace.” He wondered which would be better: to be in the service of Mary Hightower, or to present her as a gift to His Excellency? Certainly Jix would be rewarded for it; in fact, the king might even remember his name.

“Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” Jill said.

Jix spun and growled, reflexively crouching to a pounce position.

Jill came out of the shadows—but how could she even be in shadow? Afterlights all have a glow about them—the dark provides no concealment. Even now Jill’s glow filled the dim caboose as brightly as his own. How could he have missed seeing her?

“What are you doing here?” he growled, but it came out more like weak mewling.

“Waiting for you.” She pointed up to the skylight. “I saw you climbing up to the roof.” She produced the combination lock from her pocket. “Milos thinks he’s the only one who knows the combination.”

“So you were stalking me. . . .”

“Maybe you’re just not as stealthy as you think.”

Jix quickly composed himself. Jackin’ Jill was shrewd and crafty. He already knew she was dangerous—he knew that on the night he met her reaping. The thought of how dangerous she must be made him feel the slightest bit electrified.

“You hid in the shadows. How did you do that?” he asked.

“I dimmed my afterglow.”

“How?”

“You’re in no position to ask questions,” she told him. “I should go to Milos right now, and tell him I caught you breaking in on Mary.”

“You’re the one with the lock. I could tell him I caught you.”

“Do you really think he’ll believe that?”

“Yes,” said Jix. “Because he trusts you even less than he trusts me.”

The smug expression left her face, and she took an aggressive step closer. If she attacked him, it would be an interesting contest. Would she scratch or punch or slap? Or maybe she would move in closer than that, and wrestle him. Jix would often volunteer to fight for His Excellency’s amusement, and he knew many impressive wrestling moves. Which moves could he use on Jill, he wondered? Would he choose to pin her, or throw her off? Again, the thought of it sent a wave of excitement running through him.

“Why did you come in here?” she asked.

“I was curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” she quickly replied—exactly as he knew she would. It put him in control of the conversation without her even realizing it.

She glanced down to the coffin. “So now you’ve seen her. Is she everything you imagined she’d be?”

Jix shrugged. “She’s just a girl who sleeps, verdad?”

“And yet she’s more powerful asleep than most of us are awake.” Jill looked him over, and he tightened his abs for the event. “I still haven’t figured you out,” she said. “Why are you even here on this train? It can’t be because you want to be one of Mary’s loyal servants. You’re too much of a loner for that.”

“Like you,” Jix pointed out.

“I stay because I find it amusing. I like watching Milos spin his wheels and try to play ‘daddy’ to Mary’s little snot-noses. But you don’t have a reason to be here, and you never say anything about yourself. I find that highly suspect.”

Jix smiled and gave her his best catlike stare. Jill was unfazed. What was it about her that intrigued him? She was not particularly attractive, and yet he enjoyed gazing at her. There was a certain . . . rudeness to her soul that Jix could not define. It was almost like a scent; sharp, but not entirely unpleasant. It made his nose twitch. When he had first met Jill, he had despised her . . . but there’s a fine line between hate and certain other emotions.

“Are you going reaping tonight?” Jix asked.

“Mmmmmaybe,” she said. It came out like a purr. “If Milos lets me.”

How strange, thought Jix, that she shows Milos such disrespect, yet knows which rules must be obeyed. So very feline.

“You have an urge to hunt and to kill,” Jix said. “As a human, that makes you a criminal. But as a cat, you’d merely be following an instinct.”

She gave him an arrogant glare. “I don’t furjack,” she said. “If you ask me, I think it’s sick.”

“You say that only because you’ve never done it.” He moved closer to her. “Don’t you ever long to be something different? Something . . . other?” He reached out his forearm toward her. “Touch my arm.”

“Why?”

“It’s not just the color and the spots—it’s beginning to feel like fur.”

Cautiously, she reached out and brushed a finger across his velvet forearm the way one might touch a snake.

“It takes a very long time,” he said, “but you can change yourself into what you choose to skinjack.” Then he locked his gaze on hers. “There are no jaguars this far north, but there are mountain lions, I think. . . . If you became a lioness, I could be your male.”

“Gross!” she said, but Jix just smiled.

“Your lips say ‘no,’ but your eyes tell a different story.”

And at that, Jackin’ Jill, who clearly never stepped back from anyone, took a major step backward.

“We’re done here, Simba.”

“For now,” said Jix, the grin never leaving his face.

She turned and headed for the door, but didn’t leave quite yet. “Think of something awful,” she said, with her back to him.

“¿Como?” he asked. “What?”

“That’s how you dowse your afterglow. Think of something awful, and your glow goes away, but just for a few seconds.” And then she was gone, locking the door, and forcing him to leave the way he came in.

In her book Tips for Taps, Mary Hightower has this to say about human emotions:

“We in Everlost are bound by many of the same emotions that we had in life. Joy and despair, love and hate, fear and contentment. Only skinjackers, however, who still have access to flesh, are cursed with those unwholesome feelings brought on by biology, which includes all forms of burning desires. They should be pitied, because unlike the rest of us, they are closer to animals.”