Blue Window Read online

  Max ignored them both and began explaining how he planned to slip into the bedroom, steal the knife, and get them out of there.

  But Susan had another idea.

  “She’s not a witch,” she agreed. “But you know what she is? A crocodile.”

  Even Max stopped when she said this. They all looked at her like she’d lost her marbles.

  So she told them the story of the monkey and the crocodile, in which the crocodile, hungry for monkey’s heart, tempts the monkey onto her back and tries to drown him in the river. The monkey saves himself by convincing the crocodile he’s left his heart in a tree back home.

  “Don’t you see? We’re the monkey. They don’t want us; they want whatever makes us look this way. You heard Liyla, didn’t you, when she called those people sleeping in the shed change-bringers? And her mother said Jean looked like an old painting! They think they used to look like us! And that we used to look like them until whatever happens in those workshops. So what if they thought we were changing back? What would they do then?”

  Nell turned on her in horror.

  “What do you mean, ‘back’?” she asked her. “We can’t look like them, can we?”

  Susan prayed it was true when she said, “No, we can’t. But they don’t know that, do they?”

  By the time the light turned from gray to pink, they had it settled. Susan got up, stretched, and peered outside. She shuddered. The strangers were gone, but their footprints still covered the chicken yard. Kate sat on the bed, legs pulled tight to her chest, her chin resting on her knees. There were dark circles under her eyes. Lack of sleep would be better than makeup, Susan thought.

  “Now, don’t overdo it, right?” she said, mostly to Nell but a little to Max, too. He had just returned from the fireplace with two fistfuls of ash. “Just enough to convince them to leave.”

  Neither of them said anything. Nell put her hand out, and Max dumped a small mound of ash there. He gave the same to Susan, Kate, and Jean.

  Susan took a pinch from her own hand and rubbed an ashy line down the side of Kate’s jaw.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  Kate nodded queasily. She looked at the curtain.

  “Where will we go when we get out?” she asked hoarsely.

  That, too, had been decided in the night.

  “Same place we started,” Susan said. “Who knows? Maybe the window will just come back for us.”

  It wasn’t a good answer, but Kate accepted it anyway. She sighed. “Okay, me first?”

  “You first,” Max told her.

  Kate seemed to be counting to herself. After a beat, she took a deep breath, looked swiftly at Susan, and screamed.

  “Ah! Ahhhh!”

  Susan winced and covered her ears as Kate flung herself across the bed.

  A crash sounded on the other side of the house. One, possibly two people had fallen out of bed. A second later, the bedroom door slammed open and Liyla’s parents thundered across the floor and ripped the curtain back.

  “What is it? What’s happening?” Liyla’s mother shouted.

  Kate writhed on the mattress, wailing in a voice so piercing that the woman drew back and goggled at her. Liyla’s mother’s hair was askew, and the faint bristle that had grown back on her forehead overnight stood on end. Her husband hung over her shoulder, blinking frantically, as Liyla, wearing a yellowed nightshirt, bounced behind them, trying to get a look. She caught sight of Kate and her jaw went slack.

  “It’s the change!” Susan yelled at them. “It’s coming back!”

  Liyla’s mother wheeled on her. “You said you didn’t remember!”

  “It’s coming back to us!” Max shouted. He slapped a hand to his head. “This has happened before! Yes! Yes, it has! If we don’t stop it, she’s going to lose it all!”

  Criminations! Susan bit her tongue and shot Max a warning look, but Liyla and her parents were captivated by the drama unfolding in the curtained alcove. Jean chose that moment to throw herself on the floor, raising a cloud of dust and startling a mouse, which shot from under the bed and zipped past them to escape under the curtain. Jean rolled over and passed a hand near her face, leaving a dark line there.

  “Ayeeee!” she shrieked. She hugged herself and kicked her feet, rolling across the dirty boards. Liyla’s father jumped back and uttered a couple of unfamiliar curses.

  “Look at that one’s face! We’ve got to stop it! How do we stop it?!”

  Susan didn’t answer him. She only looked at Nell, who had begun to vibrate. From head to toe, she shook as if she were standing at the epicenter of her own private earthquake. Max knocked her onto the bed beside Kate, where she continued to shake and kick her legs. She threw an arm out and it, too, was streaked with what looked like a coat of grayish hair.

  Liyla’s mother seized Susan by the arm and jerked her around.

  “He said it’s happened before! But you must have stopped it! How do you stop it?”

  Max moaned loudly and bent double, slamming conveniently into Liyla’s father’s knee as he did it. When he looked up, he had a smudge across his eyebrows.

  “Two days! That’s what we’ve got!” Susan shouted at them. “Two days and without the procedure, we turn! It’s awful! Please help us stop it!”

  She ground her teeth and let her knees buckle. Liyla’s mother, who still had hold of her arm, caught her as she sank to the floor.

  “The procedure,” Susan choked out. “That’s what stops it. Only that!”

  Procedure had been Max’s suggestion. Susan agreed it sounded appropriately complicated and forbidding. Over the next few minutes, between gasps, strangled cries, and a few well-placed shrieks, Susan got Liyla’s family to understand that the procedure for keeping the change at bay required eye of newt, toe of frog, and wool of bat, plus two large bathtubs, soap, and a good amount of warm water.

  Leaving them thrashing, moaning, and blooming gray, Liyla’s parents ran to get the supplies. Liyla bolted the doors behind them. When they’d safely gone, Nell hacked up what sounded like half a lung and begged the girl for water.

  “But I can’t leave! Ma says I need to watch you!” she cried.

  Max assured her there’d be nothing but a hair ball left of them if she didn’t get some water from the well, and at last she sprinted out the back door, still in her nightshirt.

  They didn’t stop running until the dirt road had turned to pavement again and they could move in the shadows of buildings.

  Panting, they walked along the sloping curbs, too hot and wishing they’d had breakfast. Already the streets were filling with people, men pushing wagons and occasionally a mule pulling one, its harness clinking along and the carter casually slapping the animal with a thin stick when it paused in the road. There were women, too, hauling baskets or children, hurrying on to wherever people went along these dirty, crowded streets. The five of them kept their heads down, and few people looked their way. Still, following Liyla’s example, they walked in the alleys when they could, despite the stench. Here, the narrow roads were full of the people Liyla had called sleepers, figures sprawled in doorways or against blackened walls, cats and even the occasional rat nosing at them. As they walked past one man, he stirred and groaned, and the children jumped and hurried on. At the end of the alley, Max dug into his pocket and pulled out Liyla’s knife. He ran his hand along the flat side of the blade.

  “You actually took it?” Susan asked him, shocked.

  He tilted his head to indicate the alley. “How else are we going to get back across this city?” He held the knife up to catch the sun, and it threw a brilliant shaft of light their way. “She needed it for the same thing, didn’t she?”

  Susan felt a strange pang of guilt, looking at it. Liyla hadn’t meant them any harm. . . . Well, maybe she had, but Susan felt that she hadn’t meant to mean it. She said so to Nell.

  “Are you crazy?” her sister asked her. “She was planning to turn us in for a reward at the lost and found!”

  St
ill, Susan couldn’t shake the bad feeling it gave her.

  “Put it away, anyway,” she said to Max. “We don’t need to ask for trouble, do we?”

  “Our faces are asking for trouble,” Nell said. “You don’t think that, out here in the sunlight, anybody’s going to be fooled by a little bit of dirt from the fireplace, do you? Besides, it’s only good planning to be prepared.”

  Max grinned at her.

  Susan thought that if the two of them were so keen on being Boy Scouts, they ought to at least work on the important things, like marking direction by the sun and finding running water now that the daylight glared down through the buildings in long, searing lines. By midmorning, the dawn cool had burned away, and even the patches of mud along the curbstones sizzled where the light hit them. The streaks of ash on Susan’s face itched, and the outhouse stench of the city rose with the heat. Worse, all the blocks had begun to look the same, full of squat, small-windowed buildings of pebbled concrete or wooden slats, flat roofed, with overhangs of cloth or rippled lengths of tin. Some had been painted, but the paint had chipped and faded, and occasionally Susan would catch sight of a flake of it underfoot, pressed into the dried mud in the road.

  “Max, do you remember this street from yesterday?” she asked him as they rounded a corner where an oily table displaying broken bits of machinery sat in the sun, advertising the wares of the dark shop inside. Past it stood another reeking shed, a single sleeper curled inside.

  “Sure I do. We go this way.”

  A few blocks later and Susan knew that they’d taken a wrong turn. They stood facing a tall building much older than the rest, though just as dirty. Sleepers lay thick along one of its walls, propped against one another or sprawling into the roadway. There was little traffic here. A stray cat snarled at the five of them, then went on hunting rats. Yet despite the ruin of the street, this building was better made than the others they’d seen. It sported an ornate front portico through which Susan spied a wide, high-ceilinged hall littered with shards of old crockery, legless chairs, and so much trash it looked impassable.

  “Now, this I know we didn’t see before.”

  Max frowned. “We just took one wrong turn. Let’s go that way.”

  They slid along the road, trying to keep their heads down and making their way back to the crowded avenues, which had grown more crowded as the lunch hour drew near. The five of them bunched together, moving as quickly as they could manage without drawing attention.

  Another turn and they found themselves facing a second grand old building, as empty of life as the first. It seemed to Susan a ghost city had sprung up in the midst of the living one.

  “We didn’t see this, either,” she said.

  They went on, but nothing seemed familiar. After a while, a bullhorn sounded in the distance.

  “What’s it saying?” Kate asked. “I can’t understand it.”

  None of them could, but at the sound of it, people started streaming into the streets, making for the source of the noise.

  “Is it laundry day again?” Jean wanted to know.

  Nobody was carrying any clothes. A few of them carried babies, though, and one had a picnic basket under his arm. They were in a jolly mood, too, talking and waving to friends. The few who glanced at the children only grinned widely.

  “That’s strange,” Max said.

  “We should go the other way,” Nell whispered to Susan as a man jostled them in his rush to get ahead. “Everyone’s going this way.”

  “Good point,” Susan said.

  But when they tried to turn around, the crowd was too thick. A woman knocked into Kate, ripping her from Susan.

  “Let’s at least get to a side street,” Susan said, grabbing Kate’s hand again. “Then we’ll get out of the crowd.”

  The bullhorn continued its squawking.

  And now Susan could make out the words.

  “Citizens, gather! Citizens, rejoice!” it screeched. “Come all, come all! It’s rally day!”

  Susan tried to backpedal, but the crowd swept her forward into a wide square dominated by a large open-topped bandstand. The platform was draped in scarlet bunting, and soldiers moved across it busily, their ruddy cloaks glossy in the sun.

  They were unrolling a long banner, and, watching them work, the people around Susan vibrated with anticipation. After a moment, the soldiers straightened and hoisted the banner in a sudden triumphant gesture of raised arms. The crowd cheered.

  Susan looked up and froze.

  A man’s face, fifteen times life-size, smiled down from the painted sign. But he wasn’t like Liyla. He had none of the stretched features, neither the hair nor the raw skin. He was just a reasonably good-looking middle-aged man beaming above a slogan that read “Our past, your future — all hail the Genius!”

  “He’s normal!” Jean gasped. “Look at him!”

  Hope rushed at Susan so fast it made her knees weak.

  “He’s normal,” she repeated.

  Around them, the square buzzed with excitement. People glanced their way and sang out “rally day!” as if the children themselves had brought it. They clapped Max on the shoulder and winked at the girls, laughing.

  At first the five of them shied away. Susan felt as if she had stumbled into a carnival to which she hadn’t bought tickets. But after a while, it didn’t seem to matter. Good feeling abounded. Soldiers moved through, shouting “rally day!” through megaphones. Children zigzagged, laughing, between the adults, and nobody scolded them. A woman handed out sweets, and a boy made a point of pressing one into Susan’s hand, then her siblings’. When she tried to give it back, he shook his head, laughing.

  “Rally day!” he said, as if that were an answer. Soon it felt like one. Joy radiated from every face, and so many people smiled at them that at last the children found themselves smiling back.

  “Rally day is fun,” Kate said.

  Susan watched people take their places against the walls of buildings, as if a parade were on its way.

  “It is fun,” she said.

  All the laughter and cheer loosened the knot in Susan’s chest. Nearby, a man whooped, and the group around him laughed. Someone else yodeled into the sky, and Susan saw it was a grown woman, her mother’s age, doing a little jig.

  People applauded, and the crowd whistled in appreciation. Couples turned to look at each other, beaming.

  “He’s on his way!” a boy next to Susan said. “He’s coming!”

  A woman clapped her hands, and the crowd hummed eagerly. Susan laughed. Her heart rapped giddily in her chest — pop, pop, pop — and she smiled back at the people in the square. This was exciting! Everything was going to be okay!

  The creases that had gouged their way into Kate’s forehead for nearly two days had finally been ironed out. Jean hopped on the balls of her feet. Behind her, Nell let out a cheer, and instead of shushing her, Max nodded.

  “Rally day!” the red cloaks shouted through bullhorns.

  The crowd took up the chant. “Rally day! Rally day!”

  The sound of it beat in the courtyard until Susan could feel it in the soles of her feet. The rhythm of it felt irresistible, music demanding a dance.

  “Rally day,” she tried.

  “Rally day!” Kate said beside her.

  They were all saying it now, chanting it, shouting it. Around her, the same words issued from everyone’s lips, all of them thrumming with the same feeling of excitement, expectation.

  Susan saw heads turn, and the adults craned their necks. A man lifted a small boy onto his shoulders.

  “The Purity Patrol!” a girl said, waving. With a blast of horns, a group of red-sashed children marched into the square as the people whistled and called. Soldiers followed with drums and trumpets, making way for a wagon swathed in crimson and flanked by red cloaks. On it stood a man, waving, a large black dog at his side. At the sight of him, the crowd roared.

  “Is it him? Is that the Genius?” Jean asked.

  Susan squi
nted. Though the dog beside him stood out sharp and glossy in the sunlight, there was something fuzzy about the man, something that wouldn’t quite hold still to be looked at. He jumped from the wagon and mounted the platform.

  “It is!” Kate said. “It’s the man on the sign!”

  Susan’s heart beat faster. Now she saw him. Yes! Yes, he was so beautiful!

  Jean bounced beside her. “Let’s go to him! Let’s get up there!”

  The crowd was too thick for that. A moment later, the Genius raised his hands, the music stopped, and for a second, there was no sound but the breaths and sighs of the people in the square, the murmurs of small children and the piping the babies made as their parents shushed them.

  Hemmed in on all sides, the children beamed up at the wonderful man on the platform.

  “I can’t see!” Jean whispered. “Max! I want to see!”

  He boosted her onto his shoulders, and Kate nudged Susan. “Could I get up, too?”

  Susan hoisted her. She herself could just see the man on the bandstand between the heads of those in front of her, and now she adjusted Kate on her shoulders as the Genius began to speak.

  “My friends,” he said, and the smooth richness of his voice enveloped the square, blanketing all of it, the breaths and the sighs and the murmurs. “We meet again in a fateful hour.” He paused and looked soberly down into the upturned faces.

  “Fateful, for you must sense, as I do, that we stand at the edge of greatness.”

  His voice was more stirring than the music had been. He smiled, and Susan felt he was sharing a secret with her, a gift that was splendid and precious. She only needed to reach for it. She smiled back.

  “Already, I see cause for celebration. There’s victory — a hundred victories, a thousand! — in your strong, useful faces. Celebrate that! Celebrate your victories!”

  Celebrate! The crowd cheered and the word filled Susan like an expanding balloon. Exuberant, she jiggled Kate on her shoulders, hugging her sister’s legs. How terrific it was! They were strong! All of them!

  “Yes!” the man purred. “Congratulate yourselves. Be proud of your city, of this marvelous Domain. Be proud of your broad avenues and the beauty of your buildings! Every one of you is a soldier, marching to battle the change with your busy hands! Each day of usefulness is a skirmish won! Each tall building is your triumph, your victory!”