The Gift (3 page)

“Hey, if The One says it’s so…”

“Leave it to you to be launched into fame and fortune by a totalitarian thug.”

“Shut up!” I start chasing him down the track, laughing in spite of myself. “You’re just jealous!” And Whit starts pumping
his arms into a sprint, back in football mode.

“No fair!” I call after him. He’s bigger and older, and of course he can run faster. A lot faster.

For just a few minutes, we let ourselves be kids again. A brother and sister racing along the train tracks. Pretending that
one of their best friends hadn’t just been murdered, that they weren’t on the run from half the world.

With a burst of enthusiasm, maybe even fun, we run those last few miles to our destination—a little brick building that appears
on the map with an X and the instruction:
GO THROUGH SIGNAL HUT.

“You have
keys?
” I yell to Whit, noting the chain and padlock on the door.

“You have
spells?
” he calls back.

Oh yeah—that’s right. I’m a witch. And Whit’s a wizard.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember things like that when you’re busy running for your life. But I
do
have spells—and they do seem to occasionally work on chains and padlocks.

And pretty soon we’ve actually escaped from the fiends of the N.O.

For the moment anyway.

HE IS SURROUNDED BY a dozen or more famous works of art that he’s had confiscated—works by the likes of Pepe Pompano, Pondrian, Cezonne, Feynoir—the
best of the best. All banned and forbidden. All his now.

“Bring me The One Who Commands The Hunt,” bellows The One. He can’t take much more of this incompetence, this stupidity, this
repeated
almost
capturing of Wisteria Allgood and the very, very potent
Gift
that she possesses.

As if on cue, the hunt commander appears in the doorway, looking—despite his gray hair and middle-aged paunch—like a dim student
who has just arrived for a midterm he hasn’t studied for.

“You failed to capture Wisteria Allgood. Is that correct? Is that true?”

The commander nervously clears his throat.

“Yes, sir,” he agrees. He’s heard unsettling stories of cit
izens who have tried to defend themselves in similar situations with The One.

“And would you say today’s spectacle was anything short of a public relations disaster? I honestly want to hear your opinion.”

“Well, you did execute the other witch in a most decisive fashion, Your Excellency. The citizenry was uplifted by —”

“
She wasn’t a witch!
She was just a friend of the witch. Actually she was
bait
for the real witch.”

“Well, but… still… she was a valued member of the Resistance, and your destruction of her was magnificent and uplifting to
the public in its awe-inspir —”

“The One Who Makes Up The News is going to have her work cut out with tonight’s broadcast. Do you have any good ideas about
that? How we explain that we executed Wisteria Allgood and then, moments later, we suddenly happened to be chasing another
red-haired teenage witch through the city plaza? Be honest. Be forthright. Be quick.”

“Umm, well —”

“Silence!” yells The One in a stentorian voice that seems to make the building shake.

The next pause is deadly, truly deadly, and seems to suck all the air out of the room.

Now The One sighs and finally smiles, if you can call it that. “Well, I suppose it could have been worse.” His suddenly bright
tone entirely belies the anger from just
seconds before. “Tell me, Commander, do I recall that all you huntsmen enjoy cigars? I’m sure that’s correct. Is it correct?”

“Why, um, yes, thank you,” stammers the commander. He briefly wonders how he so suddenly has stumbled into his leader’s good
graces. He accepts a very fine cigar. And then—a light.

“I’ve always been fascinated with fire, Commander.… Have
you?
”

But the soldier doesn’t have a chance to answer.

The glowing red ember at the tip of his cigar quickly expands. It runs up the entire length, then across the man’s face, over
the back of his skull, and down his neck. Then the bright red, smoldering line races around and around his torso and arms,
down to the tips of his toes—leaving the hunt commander, for the briefest moment, a statue of ash.

Then The One taps his cane lightly on the ground, and the gray powder collapses in a soft plume of smoke.

“You failed to capture Wisteria Allgood, and failure isn’t an option in this Brave New World.”

Whit

WOULD YOU THINK that I was completely mad if I told you that what saved us in that signal hut was a
portal
that sucked me and Wisty through several dimensions and hurled us back into our current hellish reality at a completely different
location?

A year ago, I would’ve checked myself into a psych ward for that, but
crazy
is the new
sane
in a society defined by New Order nutjobs. FYI, a portal is one of these elusive spots where the fabric of this world is…
soft. But stepping through one can be anything
but.
It can hurl you into an entirely different place, time, or dimension… or sometimes force you into places you’d rather not
be. Violently.

Like, for instance, in this cramped pitch-black space we’ve landed in. For all I know, we might be locked in The One’s shoe
closet. The air feels close, stale. My shoulder’s on fire and my head is pounding.

“Whit? Are you here?” I hear a whisper. There’s a gentle shifting around about a dozen feet away.

“Yeah.” I grunt, half dazed by pain. The sweet female voice is warm, soothing.

“You okay?” the voice asks with concern.
Celia?
I imagine my long-lost girlfriend, kidnapped and killed by the New Order a lifetime ago. Coming closer, leaning over me,
about to touch me, heal me, save me…

“Mmmmmm…” I trail off, waiting for Celia’s scent, her arms around me.

“You sound…
hungover.
”

Oh. It’s Wisty. Of course.

I groan. “It’s my shoulder. Got dislocated in the portal, I think.”

“Seriously? I slipped right through that one like butter.”

I roll my eyes even though she probably can’t see them. “Guess it was just the right size for your runty witch butt,” I croak
out—affectionately, I swear. “So where d’you think we are?”

“How about… a prison? Seems like our favorite crib these days.”

I wasn’t so sure. “No. This smell—it’s not the smell of a prison. It’s something… good. Something that reminds me of…”

“Home,” we both say in unison.

Wisty releases a small flame from her fingertip to give us some light. I’m impressed at how she’s learning to con
trol her hot little temper and putting her talent to good use. In the old days, I used to be the accomplished star around
town—MVP varsity football player, plus a top-ranked runner and swimmer—while Wisty was mostly cutting class. Now she’s this
hotshot witch who can glow, morph, zap, and do other cool stuff. Just not necessarily on command.

In the dim light I see just enough to make out my sister’s shape and stacks of cardboard boxes labeled
INCINERATE
. “Books,” Wisty says reverently, paging through a few volumes from unsealed boxes. With my good arm I gingerly poke into
a crate and spy titles by all kinds of famous authors, from B. B. White to Roy Royce.

“Looks like a book-burning shipment,” I guess. The New Order is in the process of destroying just about every known book in
the occupied Overworld written before the takeover.

A stabbing pain rips through my bad shoulder, and I wince. “Speaking of burning… you gonna help me pop my shoulder back in,
Wist?”

“That’s positively revolting,” she says, but makes her way over to me anyway. “You need to learn a spell for that, Brother.
You wizard types are supposed to be good at that kind of stuff, right?”

“It’s worth a shot, I guess. Just give me a hand with my journal, okay?” Dad gave me this blank book before we were taken
away that awful night so many months ago, and I carry it with me everywhere. (Wisty carts around an
old drumstick/wand that Mom gave her.) Most of the time my book’s blank and I use it to write in—usually sad love poems for
Celia. But sometimes it fills with magazines, maps, whole works of literature… or, if we’re lucky, spells. I think wizards
are supposed to be able to control what comes when, but so far it’s basically a crapshoot.

Wisty takes it out of my pack and helps me flip through the pages for any sort of injury-healing spell, and we finally come
up with this mouthful:
Voron klaktu scapulati.

“Sounds like
devilspeak
to me!” Wisty quips, impersonating a crotchety old lady talking about rock music. But the most amazing warmth spreads through
my shoulder when I say it, and suddenly—just like that—it’s back in its socket. I raise my arm without a twinge of pain.

“Guess we’ve sold our souls,” I say. “Now let’s figure out where the heck we are and how to get back to Freeland.”

As we make our way to the rear of the cramped space, we figure out we’re inside a shipping container. I grab a few books for
the kids back at Resistance headquarters—
The Blueprints of Bruno Genet
and
The Thirst Tournament,
among others.

“You ready to face what’s out there?” I ask as we reach the door.

“Or
who’s
out there,” Wisty echoes warily. “Lemme get focused, in case I have to light up or something.”

On the count of three, we roll up the container door.

And there, staring right at us, are…
our parents.

Whit

WELL, AT LEAST it’s their
heads
anyway.

Our parents’ photos are on a twenty-foot billboard, their faces looking lost and lonely in this abandoned rail yard. And below
their mug shots are words that never cease to chill our bones:

Sure, we
know
our parents are wanted criminals—for the same bogus reasons we are. But having it in black and white for all the world to
see—and slapping the pathetic price of three million beans on their heads!—is a cruel reminder that this nightmare may never
come to a happy end.

Wisty, as usual, reads my mind and throws me a semihopeful bone. “They’re still free,” she points out quietly.

“At least they
were,
” I say, “whenever this poster was put up.” The paper does look a little weathered—faded, frayed, and even torn at the edges.
We both fall silent as the powerful smell of aging books’ brittle pages—full of dreams, stories, tragedies, laughter, and
imagination—seems to swirl out from the open door of the trailer and smother us with the bittersweet memory of home.