Bring it down, Lev.
He knows he can do it! If he leaps high enough, he can dig his claws into it and pull it from the sky. And when it falls, the shock wave it will create shall blow out the blaze like the breath of God blowing out a candle.
Lev gathers his courage as searing heat blooms against his back. He must have faith. He must not fail. On fire now, he leaps to the sky, and to his amazement he grasps the moon . . . but his claws don’t dig deep enough to give him purchase.
It slips from his hands, and he falls, while behind him the fire consumes the last of the forest. He plummets from that world into an unfinished corner of the universe that not even dreams have reached.
• • •
Lev’s teeth chatter uncontrollably and he shivers with the force of convulsions.
“Playing the castanets tonight, little brother?” says a figure standing over him. In the moment before time and place settle in his mind, he thinks this is one of his older sisters, and that he’s home, a much younger, much more innocent child. But in an instant he knows it’s not true. His sisters, along with the rest of his family, have disowned him. This is his Arápache sister, Una.
“If I could shut off the air conditioner I would, but like everything else in this lousy iMotel, it’s automated, and for some reason the thermostat thinks it’s ninety-two degrees.”
Lev’s too cold to speak yet. He clenches his teeth to stop from chattering, but is only partially successful.
Una grabs his blanket from where it has fallen on the floor, and covers him with it. Then she takes the bedspread and covers him with that as well.
“Thank you,” he’s finally able to squeak out.
“Is it just the cold, or do you have a fever?” she asks, then she feels his forehead. There’s been no one for almost two years to feel his forehead for a fever. It brings him a wave of unwanted emotion, yet he can’t be sure what that emotion is.
“Nope, no fever. You’re just cold.”
“Thanks again,” he tells her. “I’m better now.”
His chattering becomes intermittent, and eventually begins to fade, his body heat now held in by the covers. He marvels at how far his dream was from the real world, how the searing heat of the flames so quickly became the cold of a roadside motel room halfway between two nowheres. But then heat and cold are two sides of the same coin, aren’t they? Either extreme is lethal. Lev closes his eyes, and tries to get back to the business of sleep, knowing his body needs as much rest as it can get for the days ahead.
• • •
In the morning, he awakes to the sound of a door closing. He thinks Una must have left—but no, she’s been out and has just returned.
“Good morning,” she says.
He grunts, still not having mustered enough energy to speak. The room is still cold, but with double covers, he feels warm.
Una holds up a McDonald’s bag in either hand. “Your choice,” she says, “heart attack or stroke?”
He yawns and sits up. “Don’t tell me they were out of cancer . . .”
Una shakes her head. “Sorry, not served until after eleven thirty.”
He takes the bag in her left hand and finds inside an Egg McSomething that tastes too good to be anything but deadly. Well, if it wants to kill him, it’ll have to get in line behind the Juvenile Authority and the clappers and, of course, Nelson.
“What’s the plan, little brother?” Una asks.
Lev gobbles down the rest of his breakfast.
“How far are we from Minneapolis?”
“About three hours.”
Lev reaches over and pulls out of his backpack the pictures of the two parts pirates they’re hunting. One is missing an ear, and the other is as ugly as a goat. “Do you need another look?”
“I’ve memorized every inch of those faces,” Una says not even trying to hide her disgust at the thought of them. “But I’m still not thinking it’ll make a difference. Minneapolis and St. Paul are big cities. It will be next to impossible to find two losers who don’t want to be found.”
Lev offers her the faintest of grins. “Who says they don’t want to be found?”
Now Una sits on the bed next to his, regards him closely, and says again, “So what’s the plan, little brother?”
• • •
Chandler Hennessey and Morton Fretwell. The two surviving parts pirates who infiltrated Arápache territory, and captured Lev and a bunch of younger kids in the woods.
It was Wil Tashi’ne—the love of Una’s life—who saved them. He traded himself for Lev’s life and the lives of the others, a trade the pirates took because he had something that would fetch them a very high price. Wil had talent. Talent in his hands, and in the parts of his brain that had mastered the guitar like few others. They took him, leaving Lev to deal with the consequences. He was helpless to stop Wil from sacrificing himself, and yet the Arápache blamed him. Lev was an outsider, like the parts pirates. He was a refugee from the same broken world. Even Una’s feelings about him had a measure of ambivalence. “You’re the harbinger of doom,” she had told him. And she was right. Where Lev goes, terrible things always seem to follow. Yet still, he dreams he can break that pattern. It certainly would be easier than bringing down the moon.
Wil Tashi’ne’s unwinding left a wound in the Arápache people that Lev knows he cannot mend, but perhaps he can soothe it. The scar will always be there, but if Lev has his way, he and Una will bring those flesh thieves back to face Arápache justice.