Skylark Read online

  “Hello?” I croaked. My voice was hoarse, shocking, and strange. I swallowed, tried again. “Hello?”

  Nothing. They all seemed riveted to what they were doing.

  I walked between the girls and the cards on the floor, placing myself so that my body would be blocking their view. When that failed to garner a response, I walked up to the oldest daughter and waved my hand in front of her face, shouting in her ear. I tried to tap her on the shoulder, and my hand passed through.

  There was a strange crackle, and the whole scene flickered. For the briefest instant I saw the room as I had when I entered, only pitch-dark now, only the edges of rotting furniture barely discernible. But only a flash, and then the family was back.

  The phonograph buzzed and hiccupped with static, and then with a tiny snap, went quiet entirely. The father stood and crossed over to it, giving it a sharp rap on the side.

  “Honey?” said the mother. “What’s going on? Is the record broken?”

  “I don’t know; give me a sec.” The clock in the kitchen had stopped ticking.

  The youngest girl, who would not have been more than eight, was gazing out the window. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

  “Hang on,” said the father, preoccupied.

  “No, that buzzing,” said the girl. Her voice suddenly jumped in pitch, to a scream. “Look, the window!”

  Driven by the sudden urgency in the girl’s voice, the family turned to gaze out the window. I did the same, but I saw nothing, only vague, blurry shapes. Whatever they saw, though, electrified them. Everyone was shouting, and the mother threw herself on top of the children, barely a second before the windows all shattered inward and the room flashed brighter than the sun.

  The scene flickered again and without warning the two girls were back in the kitchen.

  “Well, I hope you gave her hell for it,” the older girl was saying.

  “Kacey!” gasped the child, who seconds before had been pointing, horrified, at the window in the living room. “You’re not supposed to say the H-word!”

  The scene flickered again.

  “Kacey! You’re not supposed to say the H-word!”

  Another flicker, and this time the figures were only halfpresent, superimposed over the dark, abandoned house.

  I leaned back against the wall, sliding down until I hit the ground. One of the more popular stories about the world beyond the Wall was that it was inhabited only by ghosts, roaming the wilderness, hungry and lost. As a child I had imagined pale, dead-looking things that floated and moaned. In the stories they were always wretched and angry, vengeful for having died before their time.

  These people, or memories—or whatever they were— didn’t even know I was there. They kept living their lives, that last day, that last night. It must have been during the wars, when some strike from a power-hungry Renewable knocked out this neighborhood.

  I thought back to the first Yuletide festival I could remember, when the Institute had brought out the phonograph to demonstrate holiday music from before the wars. The sound popped and fuzzed, full of static. At one point later in the festival, the needle of the device had stuck and the record repeated the same few bars endlessly, the melody transformed into a grating parody of music.

  I was reminded of that skipping record, watching the fragmented last day of this family play itself over and over. The house remembered them, or else the magic did, writing the memory and engraving it into the very bricks of the foundation. I could have left, gone upstairs to see if there was a place to sleep, or changed houses, but I stayed. Even fragmented, tinny with age, the voices felt familiar to me. It wasn’t my family but it was a family. I was lonely. And to them, I was no more than a ghost.

  I curled up in my corner, listening to their laughter, covering my ears when the phonograph skipped and the little girl screamed. Though the vision of the family came with light, it brought no warmth, and I shivered through the night, sleeping only fitfully, torturing myself with the sound of this family living and dying again and again.

  The scene became more fragmented as sunrise approached, the increasingly fitful skips and starts waking me from my doze. I had moved in the night, lying down on the mildewed carpeting, head pillowed on my hands. From this vantage point I saw that the boy had returned, something I’d never noticed from the previous versions of the memory.

  He crouched underneath the counter, gazing toward his family and the chair I was curled behind. How had I not seen him before? Perhaps he sneaks in, later in the memory, to listen to the music but not make up with his mother?

  I sat up. Wait. No. It wasn’t the boy. It was someone new. He was older and thinner. He was absolutely filthy, his clothes tattered. His hair was so grimy that the dirt concealed its color.

  And he wasn’t looking at the family after all—he was looking straight at me.

  The scene flickered again but the boy remained, solid and real. He looked to be in his late teens, though it was hard to tell underneath the dirt and the intensity of his face. His gaze was full upon me, fierce. The boy was slim, every limb taut and tense. Feral. Despite the dirt, the wildness, the frightening intensity, something about his face made my stomach tighten, my breath catch.

  The sun was rising. As the scene flickered again I saw that it was growing lighter. And as I watched, the family gave one more flicker—you girls finished your homework?—and vanished entirely, leaving me and the wild boy alone in the empty house. In the light of the just-risen sun through the barrier beyond the broken windows, I could just make out the boy’s eyes, glittering in the gloom. I never saw him blink.

  Perhaps if I ran now, I could make it outside the barrier before he caught me. Maybe the gloom would work to my benefit, hide me somehow. And yet, as the light grew stronger I was able to make out more of his features. He was dirty, absolutely filthy, his face stained with rusty-brown—blood, a fearful voice in my mind supplied—and his clothes tattered. There are cannibals beyond the Wall.

  He saw me watching him. His eyes grew round, but he never took them off of me. There was not a flicker of intelligence behind those eyes as they met mine. The hairs stood up along my arms as a near-electrical jolt passed between us. My heart threatened to break free of my ribcage, so frenetic I thought it might burst.

  My resolve cracked and I lurched to my feet, prepared to run. My legs blazed with pins and needles and I staggered, dizzy after such a long night spent curled up on the cold floor. My dazed vision barely caught his movement. Silently, he unfolded from his crouch and made a breathtaking leap for the window and was gone.

  •  •  •

  Though my restless night gave me little energy to face the day, I struck out as the sun began to trickle through the tree trunks. The morning was chilly, goosebumps rising on my arms.

  And despite everything, the mist-filled morning was also beautiful. I hadn’t yet been outside so early, and the way the sun, mild and peach-colored on the horizon, lit the mist was beyond anything I’d seen behind the Wall.

  The day passed swiftly, and I made good time. My pale face burned in the sun, but I couldn’t afford to stop in the shade except where I found creeks with clear enough water to drink. The ruins seemed endless, trees and buildings together in a strange stone forest. As afternoon crept toward evening I picked up my pace, to cover more ground and to keep warm. I was still waiting to see the Renewable’s birds. Go south through the forest until you find the birds.

  How far south? Would I know if I went too far? I remembered the frantic desperation in the touch of her mind against mine, the shreds of sanity lacing the edges of her thoughts—but only the edges. Would she have been more specific? Would she have known how?

  I was so lost in thought that I didn’t notice the hum until my head began to throb. I now recognized the differences between the sound of city magic and wild magic. The magic here in the wilderness hummed like a huge tuning fork, deep and resonant and powerful. The city magic, tied up in the hearts of the machines, twanged uncomforta
bly, jangled with a disharmonic quality that set my teeth on edge. My own magic had this sound now, too, but I refused to contemplate what that might mean.

  The approaching magic was harsh and discordant. Machines. Pixies. They must have picked up my trail again.

  I closed my eyes, trying to listen. Just there—to the southwest—the tiniest flicker of sweet humming. Natural magic. I veered west and broke into a run.

  A machine, still and silent, came into view between the ruins, one I had no name for. I knew it was from before the wars. It looked like a giant walker with a cabin on top for sightseeing. A tourist’s machine, maybe. How it was still upright I didn’t know, but the pocket I had sensed clung to its legs, and I made for it.

  This pocket was the smallest yet, barely larger than our apartment in the city. Still, it would conceal me for the night—and if it was small, perhaps that meant nothing dangerous could be inside. Nothing big, anyway.

  But how big did something need to be to kill me?

  The inside of the pocket looked the same as the forest on the outside had looked. The trees inside looked a little worse for wear, as if the barrier prevented them from getting enough sun. The ground was littered with broken, dead branches. One of the dead machine’s legs was inside, the metal corroded by time. Old leaves carpeted the area. I could see nothing that explained the pocket’s presence, felt no jolt or pull or energy— it must be something below the surface of the earth. Panting from the exertion of running, I pushed the leaves around until I had a little mound, something to cushion me from the cold, hard ground. I sagged to my knees in the moldering leaves, closing my eyes. Two nearly sleepless nights, too little food, and too much walking.

  The light, already dimmed through the violet filter of the barrier, was fading. I ate a carrot for dinner, telling myself that I’d eat more in the morning. For now the carrot would have to do. I tried to imagine Administrator Gloriette trying to survive out here in the wilderness—the thought of her bulk subsisting on a meager carrot for dinner made me smile.

  The light went from palest violet to deep, dusky gray. When I looked to the west I could see the faintest glimmers of gold shimmering against the barrier. The sun was sitting low beyond the horizon.

  I explored my face with my fingertips, finding scratches and hot, scorched skin from the sun. My lips burned when I licked them.

  I had worked up the barest of sweats as I ran for the barrier. As the temperature dropped, my damp skin chilled despite the unfamiliar heat of my sunburn. I emptied the supplies in my pack and pulled it over my arms, hugging myself beneath the thin material.

  I hunkered down, ears and eyes attuned for the slightest shift that would warn me the pocket was about to change with sunset. I waited until my eyes had to strain to see through the darkness, but as the time ticked by nothing happened.

  I was beginning to understand that every pocket of concentrated magic was different. One had twisted the landscape, animating the trees. Another had imprinted the moment of cataclysmic backlash from the wars, to repeat endlessly. This one, apparently, was simply still and quiet. Empty. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that whatever had attracted the magic of this pocket was beneath the earth, making this edge of magic small, weak. I hoped it was enough still to shield me from the pixies.

  I began to shiver. I tried to pile leaves over myself, closing my eyes and willing myself to sleep until morning warmed me again, but the shivering wouldn’t let me rest.

  There were dry leaves and dead wood all around. I gathered some, clearing a space near my makeshift bed. I had a vague recollection that you could start a fire by rubbing two sticks together—friction, I thought.

  Though I kept at it well after the moon rose, I never got anywhere with the fire. The sticks were only slightly warm where I had been drilling one into the other, and my palms were raw from the effort.

  Darkness had brought an edge to the chill that set my teeth to chattering, and I clenched my jaw. My limbs quivered, and my mind grew sluggish. I had never been cold, not like this.

  Part of me longed for the soft warmth of my mattress in the Institute, for their hot soup, for a simple cup of tea to soothe my aching muscles and pounding head. I wanted a blanket. I wanted socks. I wanted to sleep without shivering and without fear of what might find me as I slept.

  I tossed the sticks aside and tried to gather in some of my precious power to start a fire by magic. But I was cold enough and weary enough that every time I began to gather momentum, the energy slipped from my concentration.

  I finally gave up and curled against the leg of the ancient machine as tightly as I could. The metal was cold and hard at my back, and never warmed to my touch. I wrapped both arms around myself, the makeshift backpack covering my front as much as I could. I ducked my head and tried to let the hot dampness of my own breath warm my chilly skin.

  I dozed like I had the previous night, my exhaustion too great for consciousness but my discomfort too much for true slumber.

  It was not quite a sound that woke me from my daze. I opened my eyes to the sensation that I was no longer alone. I thought I saw a shadow move amongst the other shadows, a furtive, sideways scuttle.

  A dry, brittle leaf somewhere scraped against another. I held my breath, listening, shivering. I strained to see, but the filtered moonlight was too weak.

  Without warning, he was there. The wild boy from the dawn, crouched low, slipped from a shadow and gazed at me, the faint light defining his cheekbones and brows. He looked less filthy, the darkness concealing the caked-on grime. There was still a wildness about him, though, something that made my heart ache and hammer at the same time.

  There are cannibals beyond the Wall, said a child’s voice in my mind. My shivering was no longer from the cold.

  The boy darted forward, and with a metallic shhnk drew something from his boot. All I could see was the light glinting off the edge of a short blade.

  I gave a tiny, half-strangled shriek and tried to scramble aside. The boy leapt back, the knife held low. His other hand he extended, palm out, his breath catching audibly. I couldn’t see his expression, but the gesture was unmistakable. Wait. Be still.

  I stopped, mostly because my stiff muscles refused to cooperate. He saw that I was half-crouched, frozen, unmoving.

  He eased forward, the knife held between us. I tried not to stare at it. I knew my best chance to tell if he were about to lunge would come from his face, and my gaze locked with his. He never took his eyes from my face. With a quick, smooth movement he reached for one of the dead sticks I’d gathered. He could not have been more than two yards away.

  He put the edge of the knife to the wood and began shaving off tiny curls, his hands speeding up until the shavings were flying from the branch. Soon he had a small pile of them, and he carefully eased the knife back into his boot. The thumping of my heart, however, didn’t ease at all.

  Eyes still fixed on me, he gradually lowered his hand and dipped it into a pouch hanging at his waist. It emerged holding an object I could not quite recognize, only half-visible in the near-total darkness.

  Finally he broke his gaze from my face in order to look down at his hands. I should have bolted, but instead I stared at what he was doing, magical in its own right. He was glancing his thumb along the object, eliciting a scraping sound. Sparks darted up and away from his hands like pixies in the sun.

  One settled in the pile of wood shavings, fizzled, spread. He ducked his head and exhaled slowly, gently, with all the care of a mother brushing an eyelash from a child’s cheek. The growing spark lit up and with a tiny sound, burst into a single lick of flame.

  The boy took a step back, grabbed up a handful of tiny sticks, and slowly began laying them over the flickering fire, building it carefully. He glanced up at me and then laid the sticks next to the fire. He stepped back and then crouched again, setting the thing that had created the sparks on the ground in front of me.

  I could barely see him, my eyes robbed of their night visio
n by the orange glow of the fire. He inclined his head, a gesture that was both alien and gentlemanly at once. Then he was gone.

  I crept close to the little fire and fed it a few more sticks from the pile the boy had left. It was clear that, had I managed to coax any sparks from my attempts with the sticks, I would have smothered the flame with the big pieces of deadwood that I’d lugged back from the surrounding trees.

  I examined the fire-starter in the glow of the blaze. It was a solid, heavy silver lighter, rectangular and rounded at the edges. Tobacco was not something we had inside the Wall, but a few people still had these, relics from times past. I turned its wheel with my thumb, scraped against something below it. After several tries, a single spark emerged. No flame, but then, the fuel inside the lighter was long gone.

  As the fire popped and whistled, every sound made me jump and stare intently into the darkness. My vision sparkled with afterimages and phantom movement. But the wild boy was gone, and with him my will to stay awake, and so as soon as the fire was crackling on its own with one of the larger logs slung over it, I fell into a deep, thorough sleep.

  •  •  •

  Sunrise failed to wake me, the morning light too weak through the barrier to warm me more than the fire smoldering at my side. Instead, I woke to the sound of magic. And not natural magic—the discordant, angry sound of magic powering a machine.

  Unmistakable. I was so used to it behind the Wall that it still felt comfortable, familiar. I didn’t notice it starting; it must have been humming away since before I woke. I opened my eyes.

  There, sitting quietly on the moss-covered foot of the dead walker machine, was the pixie general. It sat so still that I thought maybe it was dead as well, that perhaps it wasn’t constructed for cooler temperatures. Then it opened its crystal-blue eyes and blinked slowly, lazily. The clockwork inside it began to turn with individual clinks and clatters, a metallic, musical heartbeat. So much for the theory that they couldn’t follow me inside the barriers.