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“It will take twenty-three hundred evenings and mornings.”

NIV Daniel 8:14

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Mily took a tumble on Saturday, July Fourteenth, Two-Thousand-One. As she fell, Mily lost all her marbles in the overgrown grass along the edge of her backyard. The jar that she had been holding shattered on the pink granite rock when she tossed it to free her hands and catch herself from crashing to the ground –

As usual, Mily was quick enough. She was a clumsy kid, but her reflexes were good. But that was too bad because even though she had reacted fast, it just so happened she was tripping face-first into a bristly patch of Pitcher’s thistle.

Mily caught her weight on her palms, and that instant her eyes went wide with pain. She tried to turn her head in time, but it smacked the ground on the left side, and her hands and cheek were stuck with what felt like a billion needles. She’d squeezed her eyes shut and kept her eyeball from a brush with the thorns – but it didn’t save her skin.

She could feel them, lots of them – her skin was coated in splinters, each one stinging as bad as a bumblebee. All at once, she was afraid to move a hair. If Mily shifted her weight one bit, a fresh blast of briers embedded themselves in her hands – and now her wrists – and her chin – Poor Mily was halfway through crying out when she spotted something strange.

At first she thought it was just those white spots she sometimes got when it was too hot outside, but they didn’t go away even after she blinked eight or nine times. Then she thought she must have injured her right eye because she couldn’t be seeing right.

But seeing didn’t hurt – both her eyes were just fine. She’d gritted her teeth and thrown herself backwards, landing bottom-down in the tall grass. Luckily, she’d escaped a scrape with scattered glass shards. Some of her bright-colored marbles had even split right in half, and they were sprawled about, making the brush glitter – In fact, Mily was seeing quite clearly, which was why she panicked when a cloud of buzzing white heat-spots started flying straight for her!

As they drew nearer, Mily saw that they were some sort of bugs – they were shaped something like cottony dandelion seeds, the way they glided on the wind, they were everywhere! The critters landed all in her hair, on her shoulders, coating her knees and bare feet, covering her head-to-toe with a glittery dust – but those spindly things were living. She raised her hands to swat them off, but her palms were so full of thorns – She was powerless to stop them as they crawled up Mily’s nose and into her ears –

They’d gone and nested in her head!

Mily leapt to her feet and barreled across the yard to the driveway, screeching, “Get em off me get em off get em off!” By the time her toes touched the cement a few seconds later, her big brother and both their parents had come out the garage to the driveway, and their two cousins, the twins – Eyani and Esabel, who had just witnessed the entire ordeal just past the tall grass – appeared behind her.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Bird said firmly.

Mily started crying and sat down, overwhelmed, a stiff and frantic mess in front of her mother. Bird hovered over her, inspecting, not touching until she could find the source of distress. “Calm down. Where does it hurt? You’re okay. Show me – ”

Everyone present held their breath as the light went on behind Bird’s eyes – her gaze combed Mily’s face and made their way down to the upturned hands, frozen aloft for fear of touching anything. She’d identified one source for sure.

Fresh tears poured out after Mily saw pore-sized blisters popping up like red rash across her callouses, skin swelling between her fingerprints, standing each and every one of the splinters on end – Like spiders legs! she thought suddenly, feeling like she might get sick.

“Mily tripped and fell into a patch of those pitcher plants!” Esabel exclaimed.

“Those flowers that never bloom, the ones with the thorny stems!” Eyani explained.

“I better go find my tweezers,” Bird concluded. “They’re in the vanity drawer upstairs. I’ll be right back.”

The evening was dream-sickle tinted and humid, and Mily’s heart banged loud in her ears – but the sound was changing, turning sharp and brassy, like scanning static between FM station frequencies. She’d forgotten to breathe because the incoming noises voided all other sense, and after a few moments, black dots spawned across her field of view, trailing wayward as raindrops on the train window – Heat-spots are black, not white, Mily thought with a fright, sucking air through her teeth.

{ Queeries, Uncle Dog thought. What’re queeries?

It must have only been seconds but each one seemed to stretch on and on and on… Mily’s sense was slow but brilliantly lit: her skin, the sky, and silhouettes of bluegrass blades outlined silver, focus-magnified, motion-blurred edges made of light….

D i d I j u s t h e a r — E ?

{ Mily you can hear me?

She gazed at Eyani’s wide-eyed double-blink and felt her stomach twist and do a somersault. Mily’s thoughts burned too close to the surface – she felt dangerous and dizzy, waving timidly like she liked to savor the last bursts of an Endependence Day sparkler.

C a n y o u h e a r D a d , E ?

Then Dog, Mily’s father, and Will, her brother, crouched down catcher-umpire style to where she was sitting on the driveway. Both carried unwavering gaits in their forward chins and the braced casts of their shoulders. Looking back at the pair of them, Mily went aloft: their gazes were a safety net: she fixed her eyes to their lines of sight and started breathing again.

“Looks like Outside gotcha good. Ye’all right?” Dog asked. As he spoke the time ticking on Mily’s inner clock reset and felt more like her till-then sense of real time.

“It hurts,” is all she found herself saying.

{ Will thinks how is Mily so unlucky?

It’s not UNlucky! It’s just my bad luck!

Will was mouthing out the end of his thought like he tended to do right before landing on a question: “Are the splinters the worst? Does anything else hurt?”

She wanted to scream, ‘There’s bugs in my brain!’ but the fact knocked the wind right out of Mily’s lungs. Bird was back then – she blinked at the sound of her mom’s tread on the garage steps and an odd ringing, a ting-ting! over and over. Mily felt her brow twist, bewildered by her sense hearing – It’s the tweezers Mom’s squeezing.

{ My ears are ringing…

“I think we should do this at the kitchen sink,” Bird said, looking right at Dog. “Can you walk inside, Mily?”

She nodded at her mother but couldn’t see her expression because her eyes were bleary with tears again. Raising her arms up stiffly, she felt her dad’s hands slip under her pits and lift her up to carry her inside the house himself. Mily had indicated that she was capable of walking, but she didn’t fight it when Dog let her rest her chin on his shoulder and swing her arms over so she could hang there without hurting too much.

With her eyes squeezed shut, Mily was inside before she knew it, being put down on the counter beside the double-basin stainless steel sink. She peeked at her palms and was appalled at the number of splinters her mother’s tweezers would have to pull out. The sight almost made her sick.

“Do I have to look, Mom?” Mily asked. Then she clenched her teeth to keep from weeping again.

“No, you don’t have to watch. Which hand would you like me to start with?”

Mily couldn’t bear to look at them to consider, so she just stuck out her left which was nearer the sink and said, “This one, hurry please.”

“It might hurt, but try to sit still, all right?” Bird cautioned and hopped straight into plucking the little splinters one by one. It did hurt, but Mily was distracted by the others, who were lingering in the doorway to the garage, speaking to each other in hushed tones that quite frankly were pointless because for some reason she could hear everything they were saying.

“She trips all the time inside, but never outside…”

“That’s why we didn’t know what to do, Uncle Dog - I never saw her fall like that before…”

“All her marbles got dropped in the grass, can we get them?”

“They all scattered because the jar broke when she - ”

“ - ditched it - ”

“ - on top of that big pink rock under the oak tree.”

“If there’s broken glass, I don’t want you to go digging in the grass without good shoes and gloves,” Bird ordered. After a brief pause, she suggested, “Why don’t we wait until tomorrow when it’s lighter outside?”

“But my shooter!” Mily bawled, picturing the pebble-sized sterling-silver starfish, encased in a crystal-clear orb. She prayed it wasn’t halved like some of the other marbles that had cracked when she tossed the jar. It was her great-grandfather’s best shooter, and she’d sworn up and down to Grandpa Bill that his prized-favorite would be safe in her possession. Mily’s insides hummed uncomfortably. She caught sight of the hand her mom was working on and almost threw up — it was covered in tiny holes, some bleeding and some not, like all the pores in her skin had opened up wide enough to see.

{ Will will find your silver starfish, Mily.

Mily blinked hard. Everything in her line of sight was far too bright — all depths of field fell into sharp focus no matter where Mily shifted her gaze, but the space between each focal point was filled with a brilliant, feathered gleam. It made her brow pinch and her eyes squint, and when her face tensed she became painfully aware of the pitcher’s thistle thorns still stuck to her left cheek and temple.

{ She keeps forgetting to breathe - Mily! Just breathe!

E! Mily jerked and Bird’s tweezers stabbed the end of her age-line where it faded into her wrist. Tears sprang to her eyes, but her teeth were clenched so tight already that she was braced for the pain. Her mother inhaled sharply but didn’t say stay still like she thought Bird usually would have. Overtaken by the changes occurring in her senses manifest, Mily didn’t question taking advice from her cousin’s voice in her mind — for some reason, she simply trusted her sudden, sprung-up understanding that E was using telepathy.

“I’ll go look for it, Mil!” Will volunteered from the door frame with vigor. Then he looked right at their dad and went on, “I’ll take the sand-bucket from the bin in the garage — Dad, is that flashlight still in your truck?”

Mily loved her big brother for that; Will was always fast to start solving problems.

Dog grinned great big and said, “I know just where that flashlight is: right under the middle seat. And there’s more good news…” He left it unsaid until Mily swallowed hard and looked up at him. She held his gaze — even though his eyes were strange, luminous as icicles at twilight — so her dad would know she was listening.

“There’s work gloves right under the seat too!” Dog was grinning so big that Mily felt herself return the smile without thinking about it. “Will and I will be back in a flash.”

“Dad!” Mily called because her dad was always fast to act on his words, and she wanted to warn him about the bugs before they went digging through the grass. She was just about to open her mouth when another one of E’s thoughts got caught in her throat —

{ Uncle Dog thinks he sprayed the yard Sunday and huh maybe

{ queeries ain’t died off yet after all.

Does Dad know about the bugs? Mily wondered. It was entirely possible, she guessed, because Dog knew just about everything about nature as far as she could tell. He always knew all the names of the trees, grasses, and other green things, and now that Mily was thinking about it, he’d taught her about every kind of fish, snake, squirrel, bird, bug, and in-between she could remember ever seeing in Diana. He probably does know about them, Mily told herself firmly, realizing Dog was still stopped next to Will in the doorway of the garage, waiting for her to go on talking. “Dad — um — watch out for bugs.”

He and Will gave yapping laughs and promised to be careful before turning on their heels to gather the scattered (hopefully, mostly unshattered) collection of crystal balls. That left just Bird and the twins in the kitchen with Mily as a wave of dizziness made her start to sweat.

“Almost done with this one,” Bird said perkily. “Oh, my silly Mily, you’re so accident-prone.”

Mily rolled her eyes and huffed. It was true — Mily loved to play rough, so she was usually sporting new bumps and scabs because her depth-perception had always been somewhat bad. Except now she was seeing wide and hearing open in ways she didn’t understand.

“What happened, Mil?” Esa asked as she came nearer the counter to stand beside her Aunt Bird. “How’d you trip?”

Mily grimaced because the moment she pictured her fall out back in the overgrown grass, her ears smarted — her sense of sound was flooded by a painful, high-frequency ringing. She squeezed her eyes tight to try to shut it out, but a sob broke through her lips instead. Then she was crying again, and Mily hated crying—especially in front of her mother. And up till then, seeing Mily in tears was really a rare thing.

“Left hand’s done!” Bird exclaimed, ploughing by her niece’s inquiry. “That wasn’t so bad! Right hand or your cheek next?”

“R-right hand,” Mily muttered back, choosing to ignore Esa’s question too. Her eyes were still closed, and she didn’t want to open them back up until her mom was finished pulling out all the thistle thorns.

Mily received a tap on the knee to tell her she should turn sideways, so that Bird could reach her right hand easier. She shifted around so that her feet were sitting in the sink instead of hanging over the edge of the counter, barely opening her eyes because she was trying to stop crying. Her senses were so sharp that she could still hear everything despite the loud ringing, which seemed to be coming from behind the inside of her ears. The sound didn’t drown out other noises but sort of brushed their voices with an echoey, metallic edge. Shut up, bugs! Mily shrieked at her brain. Get out of my head!

{ What’re you talking about bugs, Mily?

There’s BUGS in my HEAD!

“What do you mean!” E exhumed. Mily’s eyes burst open to greet her cousin’s befuddled expression. Esa stared back and forth between the two of them with puckered lips, looking perplexed. Then Bird’s tweezers stopped ting-ting-ing, and her forehead wrinkled like it did when she might giggle.

“What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’” Bird teased. Her mom’s gaze faltered when she met Mily’s eyes. “I’m not nuts am I? You weren’t talking?”

“No, Mom - nobody said anything.” Mily waited till her mother shrugged and went back to plucking splinters before giving E a look of reproach. Stop! I can’t hear ME when you’re thinking at me!

{ Welcome to my world.

Mily decided to ignore him entirely so she could put her energy into not crying anymore. After a few moments of silence, the painfully high-pitched whine subsided a bit, leaving Mily feeling a little less sense-blinded. She wiped her half-dry eyes with the back of her left hand just as Bird plucked the last splinter from the end of her right ring-finger.

“Ouch!” Mily hissed. Bird’s tweezers had pinched too close to her skin.

“That one was pretty deep,” her mom apologized. “Let me see…” She tapped Mily’s hiked-up knees again as a way of telling her to turn back to how she had been sitting before. Mily lifted her feet out of the sink and spun her legs over the counter again, holding her palms face-up for Bird to do a final inspection. “Nice, clean hands! We’re almost done!”

Mily grunted in response and thrust her chin forward so her mom would get to work on the thorns still sticking out of her face. The twins had quit talking and settled into the growing gloom of anticipation. Esa was leaning with her back against the counter on Mily’s right side, so they could easily see each other out of the corners of their eyes. Mily’s cheeks flushed — both because Bird’s nose was only millimeters from her own and because Esa’s incessant peeking was wearing her skin thin. Nerves fried from all the hype, Mily stole away to her inner seat of Stubbornness and mustered enough strength to suppress several irate groans.

“Mildred Junegrass!” Bird hooted just as she plucked the last piece of pitcher’s thistle from Mily’s stinging cheek. “You will not guess what day it is!”

“S...Saturday?” Mily answered, who year-round hardly ever knew which day of the week it was — Although, her whole family praised her knack for almost always knowing the time of day, often down to the very minute, without ever checking a clock. She thought Bird was going a different direction, but… Mily was at least sure of the day in this instance because she’d been counting down to her eighth birthday, which was only… Six more nights away.

An inkling of an idea rose from Mily’s diaphragm when she landed on the number, but Bird didn’t wait for the realization to bloom before giving it to her daughter straight: “It’s Saturday, July Fourteenth.”

Mily’s mouth fell wide open. “It isn’t.”

Her mother threw back her head and laughed. The twins were giggling in disbelief, squeezing their sides, and raising their fists at the ceiling in mock-defeat. It had become a date of strange omen in the Yoder family line. When the calendar arrived on the fourteenth day of the seventh month of the year (for reasons utterly unclear or beyond knowing), Yoders were often served with a pot of big’n bad luck from the Universe, ‘Brewed pipe’n hot and already boil’n over,’ as Uncle Earn, the twins’ dad, liked to say. Perhaps so relieved to be thorn-free, Mily forgot all about the bugs for a second and enjoyed their shared cosmic sense of ‘You’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me!’ Laughing made her lungs feel like celebration sparklers.

For a few moments, anyway. They were all still laughing when Mily’s dad and brother got back from outside, but her joy was so fragile that seeing them put out the spark of the moment before. Will wore a look of triumph that seemed awfully put-on to Mily, though she wondered if that was only because her eyes were still seeing funny.

“Good news!” Dog bellowed when he’d crossed the threshold of the kitchen. He held up a large crystal marble with a little silver starfish in the middle. “You’ll be shoot’n straight in the morn’n Missy!”

Only the twins had noticed that she was already not smiling, and Esa scooted a little to her left so that her shoulder was touching Mily’s knee. The thorns were gone, but a fresh prickly feeling crawled from the nape of her neck down her arms and legs, and it hit her full-force she hadn’t yet said a word about the critters getting cozy behind her skull. Ask about the queeries! Mily ordered herself, swallowing her caged, itchy anxiety. “Dad, were there bugs in the grass?” Mily asked. “Did you see any of those q— ”

{ NO Mily don’t! Don’t say it!

E’s mental beam was so loud that she choked on the word that she’d heard him say earlier Dog thought. Her dad started saying something about it being good of her to warn them because chiggers like this time of night, but she couldn’t understand the rest because Eyani raced to explain in-thought at the same time.

{ You can’t ask about queeries!

{ Your dad only said it in his head!

{ You haven’t ever heard that word before!

I heard it just now! You said it! Mily shot back, disoriented.

{ I didn’t say it. I’m thinking.

Mily mulled that information over long enough for everyone to move on to talking about something else. She forced her attention towards Will who was looking at her with hopeful eyes. He held a new glass ball-jar from the garage aloft, and it had been filled to the brim with marbles they’d recovered from the spill-site.

The jar that had been housing her collection before was twice as big as the ball-jar her brother presented there in the kitchen. Mily noticed this difference right away, but she was touched by the steps Will took to make the remnants seem full.

Bird bandaged her daughter’s palms with antibiotic ointment and gauze and taped two band-aids to her chin and cheek. When Mily was finally able to hold the jar of marbles in her own hands, she felt so drained that she couldn’t think of anything at all to say. How come I can hear you thinking? Mily asked Eyani in her head instead.

{ We dunno. It was just Esa and me till when you said -

E?

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/ n o t a r e

Excerpt from the Old Testament - Daniel 8:14 (NIV)

© Kailey Ann

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“In Diana is a garden where the seeds of peace have grown,

where each tree, and vine, and flower has a beauty all its own.”

Indiana, Arthur Franklin Mapes

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Mildred Junegrass Womack-Yoder vividly remembered tripping into that fateful patch of pitcher’s thistle. Reliving every moment was how Mily ultimately became convinced that the bugs in her brain weren’t just figments of her imagination. In fact, everything that had happened since she lost near half her marbles in the overgrown grass actually did happen. It was exactly a month past her turning eight, so Mily’d gotten to know the bugs a bit by the twins’ birthday. As a matter of fact, she’d decided that very afternoon to finally call the critters something other than queeries, since E had forbidden her from ever speaking the word until she heard it said... and because fashioning a new name made Mily feel better about the fact that the ‘clairs’ had given her magical powers.

“We like Harvest Road, we got a good piece ’a land here. Built the house smack in the middle of the moraines. See those marshy ponds? They get real pretty with the willows and all the cattails. Yup, four’n a’quarter acres. There’s a big treeline separate’n us from the farmer’s field. Trees ain’t technically ours, but we let the kids play in the woods anyway…”

Mily thought her best power was overhearing. The clairs had taught her how to keep hold of the sound of someone talking even when they were a long ways off. Mily was then in the kitchen snacking on cinnamon applesauce as Bird iced the twins’ birthday cake, yet she could listen-in on Dog cutting up with some person who’d parked at the edge of their yard (in a black car Bird said she’d never seen before) all the way out on the front lawn!

Bird had baked two cakes and cut them both down the middle, mix-matching the sides so that each twin would have their own half-and-half cake. Chocolate and angelfood were Esa and Eyani’s mutual favorites, and because Bird was of a mind that the twins had to share too much of everything, she often found ways to make her neice and nephew feel special. Mily daydreamed while watching her mom decorate the cakes with doubly-thick layers of buttercream icing. She noticed that Bird had already counted out sixteen candles from her surplus in the junk drawer, as the twins were turning eight.

Another power the clairs taught her was sightseeing. Mily found that when she gazed down somebody else’s line of sight, she could sometimes get a glimpse from their point-of-view. She tried it out again right there in the kitchen, but Bird was trying to keep herself from checking on Dog so often that every time Mily followed her line of sight, it would quickly jump to something else, making Mily’s eyes cross so much that she decided Bird might not be the best person to test out the clairs’ powers on.

Mily wondered whether the stranger with the black car was someone her dad knew from work. Dog had been promoted to manage a major restoration milestone: The Great Marsh of Grief was officially solar-powered, which meant all the old gas-electric and steel facilities were going to be renovated. Dog said that meant they’d be made into something new, to serve a new purpose - Dog’s job was to grow the grass.

Bird always said all Dog had to do was ask and the grass would grow. Mily knew there was more to it than that though. There was this one time a few years after the Hundred Year Flood when Bird travelled with the kids to see one of the drowned towns, and Mily got the chance to see her dad cast one of his special grassroot nets along one of the many muddied restoration sites in Diana. Bird wanted Will and Mily to see how their dad’s grass had sprung up and stabilized the whole stretch of woodland watershed that Mily remembered from when she was very little. She was awestruck by how the puddly landcape she remembered had turned so audaciously green thanks to a few good seasons.

Near everyone said that Mily’s dad was the best Jack in the trade. But the adults were often saying things like an honest-to-goodness, talented spadesman was hard to come by. “You could say I was born a spade,” she listened to Dog say to the stranger still standing out at the road in front of the house. “So I don’t mind you call’n me one. But I ain’t been a Jack forever so forgive me for put’n it so blunt: What can I do for you?”

Before the stranger had spoken in-response, Bird hooted at the sound slow tires rolling over the asphalt outside. Mily flew to the front door floor-to-ceiling windows and saw her aunt and uncle’s car bump and slow to a crawl before jerking to a halt at the foot of the driveway. Eyani and Esa leapt out of the car speedwalking, rushing around the arc of the flowerbeds and landing on the front porch where Mily was perched, waiting inside the paned-glass foyer.

{ Emjay! Permission to teletalk?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ! ! ! But BUSY please stand by.

{ Ten-four.

Mily threw the deadbolt and thrust the red-pepper painted door wide open. The twins grinned and hurried inside, happy to practice the telepathic-etiquette they’d been cooking up for a month. The three of them were amazed at the ways their brains were connected these days, and any intel they might discuss later - it was mostly boring adult stuff, with tidbits of information about upcoming plans and hints about the kids’ birthday gifts sprinkled into their parents’ conversations throughout the day. E may be able to hear inside all the heads in the room, but the way the twins liked to test Mily’s new abilities made it seem like his powers were nothing special.

Nothing special? Mily shook her head to clear the outrageous idea. What she would give to know what Dog was thinking as he turned on his heel and set his face to the road. Dog didn’t surprise easy, he was standing stiffly with his arms crossed, perhaps untangling a thought... Mily blinked hard, but vivid flashbacks rolled her inner eye back to all the times she’d ever seen Dog stand like that as the stranger said:

“Jack, you’ve been picked up by the team in Dianapolis.

Consider this notice of your rank and... suit.”

“My suit? You don’t mean to say...” Dog sounded confused. Mily was leaning with her left shoulder against the front porch pillar, remembering when she stood at the foot of a dam where a massive breach had been fixed. After their dad got off a machine and greeted them on the staked-off walking path, Will had asked him how long the new breakwalls would last.

“Who’s to say,” Dog had said, “that water and wind always win?” Mily had added that if water and wind would always win - well what was the point of pitching grassroots against the might of climate change? Dog just smiled at them under the turquoise brim of his Entact cap and said, “Well, water’s gonna go wherever it can fill or flow. Wind will cut everywhich way you can think. And I guess, rhyme-or-reason, grass grows long as it’s got what it needs.”

Mily moved out of her mother’s way as Aunt Elaeagnus arrived on the front stoop, giftbags hanging from her forearms and carrying four lidded glass dishes that smelled like dinner. Mily sidestepped outside to avoid further crowding the foyer, thinking she could buy a few seconds more to listen while Bird helped Elaeanus with all the food into the dining room.

{ Mily! Your mom wants you!

Huffing and rushing to clear the flashback fog, Mily heeded E’s warning and hurried inside the house, skipping into the connected kitchen-and-dining room where Bird was waiting for her to do something she couldn’t discern... Mily’s cheeks burned as she realized she had heard Bird call for her four or five times, but she’d been preoccupied trying to overhear what Dog was saying to the stranger outside. Bird might’ve said what she needed her daughter to do, but Mily must have missed it, and now she had to admit it. Her ears were blazing and she was so furious with the clairs for getting her lost in her own thoughts again that she grit her teeth and h e l d h e r b r e a t h , shrieking silently for a few seconds till she summoned enough gumption to look Bird in the eye and ask, “What did you say, Mom?”

“I asked if you could please help Aunt Elae set the table for nine?” Bird reiterated, pecking her consonants so they’d stick in her daughter’s ears.

“Who else is coming?” Esa asked as she and E followed Mily’s trail into the kitchen-and-dining room. Mily sighed quietly and went to fetch the nice cloth napkins and silverware from the china cabinet. The cabinet was stationed in a small corner alcove beside a sliding glass door leading to the back deck. Grabbing a fistful of folded napkins and as many spoons as she could carry in one hand, Mily pinged, Eyani.

{ What’s up?

I think that guy outside might crash your birthday dinner.

“Is it whoever’s talking to Uncle Dog outside?” E asked at once.

Aunt Elae smiled at Bird and said, “If you can follow suit...”

“You’ve got to follow suit,” Bird finished, shrugging. Mily found both her mother’s tone and demeanor odd. What’s that supposed to mean? she asked E, who must have relayed her confusion to Esa because she looked right at her with bug-eyes and high-brows that mirrored Mily’s own sense of ambiguity.

“Huh?” said all three kids together.

“Dad has a face now, remember Mily?” Will said, out from upstairs bedroom for the first time all afternoon. He cropped up between Eyani and Esa (who were both a bit taller than Will already, despite the two-year age difference) and squeezed them tight around the shoulders. “Happy birthday, you two.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mily demanded as the twins were saying thanks. Her ears were starting to ring and a frustrated knot was tightening in her forehead, which meant the clairs were growing impatient. Quit being so nosy, she told them, but more to convince herself that they (not Mily) were being busy-bodies than truly disapproving.

“It means that your dad has more responsibilities now that he’s a Jack,” Bird answered while lifting a stack of porcelain plates from a kitchen cabinet. “And evidently subject to housecalls,” she added in an undertone to Elaeagnus, whose lips puckered like she might giggle.

Mily wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but she reminded herself that she was supposed to be setting the table and set to work. First she swept around the long rectangle table and dropped a napkin and cutlery at each place setting. Then she unburdened Bird of her stack of plates before she could lay a single one on the maple tabletop.

As she was setting the last plate, Mily noticed that Will had shadowed her path and filled in the silverware she’d missed the first time around. He hadn’t said a word. Mily stared at her brother until he noticed and grinned back at her. Will was always doing things like that to help her out; she hadn’t told him about the clairs, but Will knew her better than anyone and seemed to sense that his sister needed help getting through whatever change was happening in her over the past few weeks.

Bird was putting the finishing touches on the twins’ birthday cakes when Mily’s ears perked up: she heard the telltale tread of her Uncle Earn’s steel-toed boots on the grouted tile floor and swung around to face him. “Do I know you?” he asked her straight away, scrunching up his face and squinting.

Mily rolled her eyes but was beaming - her uncle’s earnest teasing made him one of her favorite people on the planet, so she was always game to play along. “Don’t you know a fellow Yoder when you see one, Earney?” His kids giggled at the thin line his mouth made for one instant - Mily smirked. That was the game, to see who could get under the other one’s skin first. She knew Earn Yoder didn’t like to be called Earney.

But it took more than that to shake her uncle up. “You listen ere, Junesass - find me a great big piece a’cake, and I promise not t’sick my Dog on yees.”

“Who’s afraid of dogs?” Mily began, but as was wont to happen, somebody went on talking before she had the chance to finish setting up her joke.

“I hate to tell you this Bird,” Elaeagnus said. “But the twins asked for cake before dinner.”

“So we’ll have cake and eat dinner after!” Bird proclaimed. “How about we do singing and candles out back, since the table’s already set?” Then she smiled at Mily and thanked her for helping and listening.

Everyone cleared a path for Elaeagnus and Bird while they transferred the twins’ birthday cakes to the outdoors. Then they filed one by one through the sliding glass door, giving each other space enough to stand and stretch across the wooden deck. Earn walked behind Mily and gave her a hard pat on the shoulder to show that he knew his niece had been going somewhere with that dog bit. She didn’t look back but knew he could sense her smile - It’s fine. I didn’t get to the punchline. I can use it next time.

Their mothers placed the cakes on an outer corner of a beautiful orange and blue beachglass patio table that Bird had helped Mily make for the Art Fair during the previous school year. Since her dad was in charge of growing grass, he was always coming home with chunks and shards of rock and glass that needed some purpose. Many of the finer sand-smoothed, clear pieces were picked up by Mily or Bird while they wandered down the Great Lake shoreline or traipsed up the shifting sand mounds of Dune Park.

Mily was proud of the the way it looked in the August evening light. The white crystalline bits shimmered just like the foamy crests of the waves, indeed - they’d achieved the same sense of froth as the beach with their craftswork. Under the golden hour, blues too were especially dazzling; cerulean bokeh danced at all angles, midst bright cobalt gleams that made the twins’ sixteen birthday candles seem as if they’d already been lit.

“We can’t do candles without Uncle Dog,” Eyani said, summoning them all back to the task at hand. “We should go get him,” Esa added. “Or else E and me’ll be waiting on our wishes till September.” She side-stepped on tiptoe in the direction of the steps. E took a long, sweeping sideways stride to block and cover her.

“Hold your horses,” Elaeagnus said, and the twins obeyed, standing up straight and leaning into each others’ shoulders. Mily got concerned when her aunt spoke again - there was a timid edge to her brow that usually only came about during thunderstorms. “Ought we not give him a minute or two more, do you think, Bird?” Then Elae’s gaze jumped to her husband’s, and Earn rolled his eyes in the same good-humored way that Mily had inside the kitchen-and-dining room.

{ On your mark.

Eyani and Esa graced her with knowing smirks.

Mily returned their expressions with an achingly cool air of confidence. Her eagerness was a stifling breeze, but that didn’t change the fact that it was always Mily they asked to do the running - times like this, when their heads were bent, patience spent as sudden hunger settled over them, watching as confetti sprinkles morphed into the buttercream icing on the twins’ cakes like watercolor.

Clock doesn’t start till Will says go, she told E, inching her way to edge of the deck. Mily’d already slipped down the steps to the grass when, in exactly the sarcastic manner she expected, her uncle said, “Time to earn yer keep, Li’l Wo-Yo. Go’n getch yer dad and his keeper if he’s come’n... and say I may save him some cake if he hurries.”

She nodded to show that she understood her goal. Mily’s sure-footed swiftness happened to be one of those weird things she lived for - to be counted as the fastest runner among them made her happier than just about anything.

“Want me to time you, Emjay?” Will asked her, thumb hovering over a button on his waterproof wristwatch.

“Pick a time for me to beat,” Mily suggested, picturing herself sprinting full-force around the house and down the slope of the front yard towards a stranger and decided that wasn’t the sort of first impression she wanted to make on someone her dad worked with. Bet he’ll be walking this way in less than three minutes.

{ In your dreams, Mildred. Keepers have all the time in the world.

Don’t call me that.

Will’s pointer finger was poised to start the stopwatch. “Try to be back in under six minutes?”

Mily nodded - That’s fair.

“Ready? On your mark. Get set -

“Go!” She took off full-sprint around the corner of the house, but the speed was really for show. Time was running, but Mily knew she had enough to get it done and maybe even impress her brother a little... Will liked to keep track of all kinds of scores and records for sports or competitions, and he had a manner of old trophies and trading cards which he often categorized and sorted just for fun... Mily just liked to run. She had no shoes on, so she let her stride lose gradual steam and stopped just around the bend and beyond eyesight of the others. From her new vantage in the sideyard, Mily could just see her dad and the stranger still standing at the road. She bet that her mom’s sunflowers hid her from view if looking from their angle - I’m invisible.

{ You’re right out in the open.

Sure about that? Mily teased back, then frowned as her ears caught the tailend of Uncle Earn’s sentence: ” - remind the man he’s cutting into family time.”

She paused and took a few steps closer to the garden path and settled into the shade beneath some sunflowers. Feeling topful for time, she stretched a few more seconds to figure out what they were talking about on the deck.

“Mily is the fastest,” Esa seemed to defend, which made Mily listen harder.

“Well alright sure but if you sent Will to do the same thing...”

“We might not light the twins candles till midnight!” Bird’s words sound like an attempt to temper all the fuss.

With something like a static tiny zap to her temples, Mily sensed that Eyani had something to say. But then Aunt Elae spoke before his words had even formed in his head. “A little girl’s presence is a powerful thing,” she said.

Mily frowned, unsure if that was true or not. Besides, nevermind all that: she was fastest. She beat Will to the end of the yard by a second-and-a-half flat at least eighty-percent of the time, and that was a fact. Dog said he’d done the math. She heard Bird ask Will how much time had passed...

Mily shook her head and got back on track. As she gathered herself to make a polite impression on the stranger, who now she guessed must work for her dad at Entact. She and the clairs dialed back her back into their ongoing conversation...

“Like I was say’n,” Dog was saying. Something caught his eye, and he walked a few steps to his left and bent to pick it up. It was a tennis ball, sunbleached and weather-worn, evidently tossed and forgotten by one of them. Tossing the ball between his palms, Dog went on, “My daughter, now she’s about to be in Second Grade, and we only been here since before she was in school, only been since ninety-eight...”

I was five, she remembered. It was the summer she turned six, when the house was finished; the head stonemason let her cement the last bricks in the pavement border of the garden path not far from where she was standing. Mily took a deep breath and stepped out of the shade, loping across the lawn so it would seem like a casual jaunt, and not like she’d just spent forty-two seconds eavesdropping on her father from flowerbed while on the clock.

“Hi Dad,” Mily announced right about when she knew they’d begin to hear her footsteps approaching. The grass was very dry, like brown lichen, covering wide swaths of the moraines. Even on her tough kid callouses, some of the sunburnt patches were awfully prickly.

Dog was a self-acknowledged lollygagger, so he always knew right away when someone was only turning up to fetch him. “Well hey there,” Dog greeted her. “I reck’n everybody’s wait’n on me, aren’t they?”

Mily tapped her left wrist as if she were wearing a watch. Times a waste’n, she conveyed with a tight-lipped awkward grin. She waited for Dog to introduce her to the new adult like he always did, but instead her dad sent a sharp, short whistle through his teeth and tossed her the tennis ball. She caught it but felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment anyway.

“Go on back up to the house, Mily,” Dog told her. “And tell everybody I’ll be right behind you.” Because he so rarely used that tone, Mily took it seriously and obeyed him at once. Sort of nodding at the stranger still standing at the edge of Harvest Road, Mily turned on her heel and jogged back to her place in the shade under the sunflowers.

{ Half-time in ten, nine, eight...

Stop counting - that didn’t go how I thought it would go so oh well. Mily’s chin fell to her chest as she suppressed a moan. But telling herself Dog said he’d be right along after her, Mily put away all thoughts of racing and spent an extra few moments being invisible beside the flowerbed, summoning her wits. When she felt rebalanced and ready to rejoin the others, Mily looked up.

And then she froze, clutching the old tennis ball like a stone.

* * * * *

/ n o t a r e

Excerpt from the Official State Poem of Indiana. “Indiana,” by Arthur Franklin Mapes -

https://www.in.gov/history/about-indiana-history-and-trivia/emblems-and-symbols/indiana-state-poem/

© Kailey Ann

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

“I will read the writing for the King and tell him what it means.”

NIV Daniel 5:17

♥ ♠ ♦ ♣

A deer! A DOE!

Mily saw it standing in the sun, a magnificent, massive fawn. But how can you be? The beast had white spots speckled across her brassy back but stood half as tall as a basketball hoop... Where did you come from? Deer were very fast, Mily knew, but the yard had been vacant when she stepped into the shade - only - barely - a few seconds ago, hadn’t it been? She thought about it a few seconds longer, and then she was unshakably sure that the deer had appeared out of nowhere.

Oh, how the great doe shone in the late afternoon light. They stared at each other, and while Mily was quite stunned, the deer showed no signs of fear at all. She stood staff-legged and proud, fur turned down smooth like bronze suade, her white tufted tail swaying in the breeze. When their eyes met again, Mily got the sense that the doe was seeing right through her. A powerful whooshing sensation beneath her collarbone made her gasp and stumble a step backward.

The doe was unperturbed, but turned her head curiously at the kid halfway through her step out of the shadows beside the flowerbed.

“W-what are you - ?” Mily spurted as she searched for her voice. You’re not afraid of me? she wanted to ask the doe, but didn’t. Should I be afraid? she asked herself, and then goosebumps skated from the nape of her neck to her toes. She was in awe because she had only ever seen a deer in real life just once, a buck she’d spied through Bird’s binoculars from far across the duneland woods a few springs back. Mily admired the doe as their exchange seemed to stretch on and on... and then she was no longer afraid.

Taking a step closer, Mily mirrored the deer and cocked her head to the side with curiosity. She consciously loosened her grip on the tennis ball to show the doe that she didn’t intend to chuck it at her. “Hello,” Mily said, captivated by the emerald gleam of the beast’s eyes in the golden hour. She beamed and then froze again, ingesting the sight of the ground around her feet. From the backs of Mily’s heels and stretching to where the doe was stationed, suddenly the grass was teeming green.

Dry brown grass had bristled against her bare feet not two minutes earlier, but there was now a patch of grass dense and rich as Mily’d ever seen. “Look at that!” she cheered, but because they were standing in the blindspot of the sideyard, Mily doubted that anyone had heard her from either side of the house. “Do you have...” her question faded as the clairs started ringing in her ears in such a way that she might have said they were singing.

Then, beyond all common sense, Mily would never forget it - that magnificent doe cantered two steps closer and lowered her head, smiled, and said:

Call Me Ariel

“You can talk?” Mily responded, stunned. Ariel the doe inclined her head further, pointing a coal-black nose to where she had made a deep impression in the lawn with firm stamp of her front left hoof. Mily took another step. She had now come so near the deer that if she only reached out, she might just touch the creature’s underside.

Her senses quickened over a series of instants, each of which would leave her feeling flustered and lackluster when she remembered them later. First was the instant Mily remarked that Ariel’s hoofprint looked exactly like an evergreen tree. Second instant, she realized the doe’s mark a true work of art, for it was so well defined that she could make out the shape of the trunk and its branches - there was even light dancing in-between the whorls and sprigs! Her head was swimming as it tried to make sense of what she was seeing, all while the clairs went on singing, like little teabells that couldn’t stop ringing once they’d been swung.

Something clenched in her diaphram, and then Mily was afraid again. She leapt back and blinked a few times to clear stark, inverted silhouettes of Ariel’s evergreen hooves which were hopping around her vision like flash-burns. “Wait! W - will you just? Wait here!” Mily ran a few paces to the corner of the house and turned back to check if the doe had stayed.

Ariel raised her head up high, and Mily had to squint to counteract the brightness of the fawnish spots sparkling across her back. A little dazed, set off running to tell everyone about the incredible things she was seeing.

“Mom! Will! Come see - come see!” she whisper-hollared.

“What is it!” Bird and Will said at once.

Mily glared and held her index finger fiercely to her lips to shoosh! them. “Come quick! And be quiet!” she barked. “You’ve got to see the doe - the deer, she’s over here!” Waving them all over brusquely, Mily lingered long enough to see that Bird was leading all five of the others after her. She then hurried around the corner of the house.

Mily blinked. She swung this way and that, vision blurring as she spun and spun and spun... but the magical fawn was nowhere to be found.

How could she? She was just - “Here! I saw her right here.” Mily bounded further to where she’d been standing before, but the grass crackled as she went, brittle as it had been since the last heat wave over her birthday at the end of July. She gulped and looked about her feet, seeing now that the grass had regained its sunbaked-brown shade... But it was green just a few second ago!

{ Emjay, which way did she go?

E implored in-thought, scouting the lowly rolling, wide-open fields surrounding them.

“You saw a deer in our yard?” Bird beckoned, leaving the tiny throng gathered together outside the shade of the sunflowers to stand closer to Mily. “How cool is that!” her mom said next, bronze eyes full of wonder. “Where did you see her - by the pond, or out in the field...?” Her mother looked this way and that as if she had all the time in the world.

Mily’s mind was whirling. Bird and the rest of them didn’t understand. She was just here! And she bet it couldn’t even’ve been more than a minute prior to then in that moment, when - It doesn’t make sense! - she floundered with logic, gaze prizing open every fell and folly of the hills that stretched far and wide as the horizon - flat open plains, just the same as dangnear everywhere else in Diana. She could fix her eyes on every burnt-up bush and dusty croprow in-between, so Mily didn’t get why she couldn’t find wherever the stupid deer went.

She splayed her fingers wide and stretched her arms as big as they’d go. “She’s... gone,” Mily murmured, I don’t know where she could’ve went. “Mom, the fawn. She was right here.” She stamped the spot with her entire left foot. Dropping her arms slowly, Mily held out for hope that one last-ditch effort wish would work its magic and, somehow - zap Ariel back on a patch of green grass.

“Whoa, the deer really came so close to the house Mily?” Will asked, wearing a trademark look of puzzled-meets-peachy-keen which made his little sister want to scream. “How far were standing you when you spotted it?”

Mily was starting to feel silly with rage and sick of no one listening to what she was saying. Deciding to bite her tongue, she took a deep breath and walked the few steps to the edge of the shade under the sunflowers. Mily pivoted and mimed the surprise she had felt at first sight of the doe.

Earn snorted and didn’t even try to hide the fact that he didn’t buy it. “Are you josh’n us all, Mildred?”

“Don’t call me that!” Mily spat. She was on the verge of tears. She was no longer hoping, but rather ruthlessly choking on the fact that if she so much as mentioned how the doe had made the grass turn green - or how she talked! - absolutley no one would believe that she was telling the truth. I’ve got no proof.

A wave of disgruntled shame was swelling in her chest when Mily heard a crunch like fresh snow and felt Bird take a knee alongside her. Crouched at her daughter’s eye-level, Bird told her, “Wow! You’re so lucky to have seen her.”

So her mother believed her - that made Mily relax a bit. Bird was the best at unruffling tension. But the doe hadn’t just seemed big. She was huge!

“Must’ve scared the bejeezous out of her!” Esa said, coming to inspect the edge of the shade where Mily said it happened. There was a sly bend in her cousin’s brow that gave away comedic intent - Mily rolled her eyes so only Esa could see. It was her way saying it was okay for Esa to smooth things over with some of her good humor.

Everyone watched while she pivoted with the quickness of a pinball flipper, eyes bugging wide in horrified surprise. The two of them giggled - but sorely wishing to impress the seriousness of what she’d seen, Mily stifled her laughs, mustered what sternness she could and said, “Well, the doe wasn’t scared at all.”

“Maybe you were both so startled you couldn’t tell,” Will said.

“Oh, is that where they get that? Like a - like a deer in headlights?” Eyani asked.

“She wasn’t afraid!” Mily exhumed. “She smiled right at me.”

“Wish I’d seen her,” Elaeagnus sighed. “Was it magical?”

“I think it might have been,” Mily admitted, a little less defensive now that they all seemed to be getting on the same page. Miraculous. The word came to her mind right away for some unbeknownst reason. She added real quietly, “A miracle maybe.”

“Well then...” Bird’s voice was dreamy. Mily thought that her mom was probably the only one close enough to hear what she’d said - besides Eyani, who heard almost everything eventually, one way or another. “Where’s your dad?”

Mily grimaced and looked around instead answering, when she heard E thinking -

{ ...drop of golden sun?

Hm? The snippet of thought didn’t seem to be directed at Mily. Eyani’s tendency to ‘think out loud’ in his head was one of a growing list of telepathic quirks she kept noticing, but trying to work out the way it all worked scrambled her mind more and more and usually led to losing track of her own thoughts.

Thankfully, just then Bird offered her hand. Mily took it. She was happy to be led away from this letdown and return to the twins’ birthday cakes, and the dinner waiting in the kitchen-and-dining room. Ohh! Mily grinned at E as her mother tugged her toward the back yard. A doe, a deer? she sung, the snippet she’d caught mid-thought suddenly ringing a bell.

{ A female deer?

A ray -

“Did’ja drop this tennis ball?” Will asked, scooping it up near where the deer had stamped her hoof in the grass.

It took Mily a few seconds to process what her brother said. Guess I must’ve dropped it when - She couldn’t find words to finish describing the moment even for herself - the mere memory of gold flooded Mily’s senses - her skin felt radiant! Alight with vibrations which reminded her of the breedle-y chorus the clairs sang while - the deer was still standing here.

“Wuch y’all wait’n on?”

“You!” three voices griped in unison. Elaeagnus, Esa, and Will were sharing a good laugh about the exuberance of their vocal convergence when -

* Be-beep-be-beep-be-beep-be-beep-be-bee *

- the six-minute timer on Will’s wristwatch ran out, and none other than Dog Yoder appeared on the spot. “Look at that!” Will cheered while silencing his watch. “Six-minutes flat, Mil - I think that counts as mission accomplished.”

Mily shrugged - she didn’t care much about that since her mind was wiped of the stranger completely. She was consumed by what she’d just witnessed, and there was still a chance that Dog had seen the giant fawn too. “Dad, I saw a deer - a doe!” Mily told him, clutching her mother’s hand. “Did you see her? Right here?” Mily dropped Bird’s hand and restationed herself where the deer had appeared.

“Wow!” Dog’s eyes were wide and excited. He started looking around everywhich way, but Mily shook her head vigorously until he was paying attention again.

“I tried to get everyone in time,” Mily told him, not looking at the others. “But she was gone when I came back.”

“Well, deer are real fast,” Dog said, understanding. “At least you got to see her! How big was she, Mily?

She beamed and leapt high as she could in the air, reaching her fingertips for the skies. “Way taller than you!”

“Must seemed that big,” Uncle Earn chuckled.

Mily frowned at her uncle and the others for doubting her story. “I’m telling you I could’ve reached out and touched her!”

“Mildred Junegrass!” Bird warned. “You do not need to snap.”

Resisting retaliation, Mily bowed her head and mumbled ‘sorry’ so they could all hear it, but inside she was raging. She walked back over to her mother and held out her hand to show her she was ready to follow her lead again. Bird offered a smile that told Mily her mom found the outburst more funny than rude, and the fact that she wasn’t mad made Mily remember why they were all there in the first place.

“Time for the twins to blow out their birthday candles!” Mily called, dragging her mom by the hand into the back yard. ‘Where Bird goes we all follow,’ was something her dad used to say before he became a Jack and they had to move away. It was true though: in a matter of moments the whole family was finally gathered on the deck to begin the twins’ eighth birthday celebration.

Eyani and Esabel’s cakes looked like rainbow playdough. The confetti sprinkles had melted completely into the buttercream icing, which was glistening in the heat. Mily could tell Bird was sad about the way her cakes were sagging, so she volunteered to stick all sixteen wax candles in herself - she was careful to shove them straight in and a little deep so it would look like they stood up easy.

Once the twins were positioned at the ready, Elaeagnus sparked a long-barrelled butane lighter from beside the grill and lit her kids’ candles. She cradled the flame with the cup of her left hand, moving from wick to wick with grace. As soon as the last flame on Esa’s cake was going, Elae took the reigns and started them all singing:

“Happy birthdays to you!

Happy birthdays to you!

Happy birthdays Eyani and Esabel!

Happy birthdays to you!”

The clairs loved the sound of music and perked up as their voices harmonized into the simple melody. Mily didn’t mind they way they chimed in, extending all the high notes so they echoed like the sound of brass symbols struck in slow motion. Beachglass reflections dazzled the edges of the twins’ playdoughy cakes, like gemstones of every color, and the candles’ flames saluted whichever way the soft wind shifted.

“Make a wish!” the mothers shouted.

Esa and E looked each other full in the face as they held their breath, and then each turned to their own cake and blew -

{ I wish I had seen the doe.

She blinked as all sixteen flames changed into gray trails of smoke. What a waste of a good wish, Mily moped. Whether or not wishing really worked wasn’t what worried her. Everybody knew that the wording of a wish was very important, and getting it right could be quite tricky business - if all she’d been led to believe in her favorite fairytales was true, anyway. E should have wished for her to come back, she worried over her cousin’s past-tense phrasing.

{ I think it’s the spirit that counts.

Mily was mortified. She was constantly forgetting that Eyani could hear everything she was thinking. You’re probably right, she apologized, trying not to make too big of deal out of it so her emotions wouldn’t show themselves. It’s your wish, anyway. Sorry, E.

{ No biggy.

{ Esa’s wish was way worse than mine so

{ I bet I’ve still got a good chance.

Esa punched her brother hard on the arm, and the whole lot of them cracked up laughing.

* * * * *

/ n o t a r e

Excerpt from the Old Testament - Daniel 5:17 (NIV)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel%205:17&version=NIV

© Kailey Ann

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

“Do not be afraid, you who are highly esteemed.

Peace! Be strong now; be strong.”

NIV Daniel 10:19

♥ ♠ ♦ ♣

August ended, and with September came the undeniable fact that it was time to go back to school. Mily Junegrass Womack-Yoder loved school, but she loved summer better. It was Sunday the Second, the last afternoon before class went back in session, and Will and Mily were once again on the lookout for Ariel, the miraculous doe. After climbing the knobby old Red oak tree, the two of them scooted out on its sturdiest branch and sat side-by-side, taking turns being scout with Bird’s binoculars. Will was in his wits, making wild guesses about the doe’s home-range based off what they thought might be a deertrail running right underneath their feet.

“I reck’n she’ll come back by this way if she likes Sugar maple seeds,” Will said, bending the binoculars back to fit the bridge of Mily’s nose.

Mily did the sisterly thing and made a face like that had given her some thought; the truth was, she already knew that Ariel doe was nowhere around. Not today, anyway. During the past thirteen days since the twins’ birthday, the clairs had been teaching Mily three or four new tricks. What Mily had noticed right away was that her range of hearing had widened substantially.

Lately she was fond of doing just this - being perched high-enough to see over the roof of the house, but not-so-high that Bird wouldn’t allow it - to stretch and test her hearing to its very reaches. Adjusting her sights through the binocular lenses, Mily twiddled the focus dial and whistled, “Oh woah.”

“Ever seen’m cover the ground like that in your whole life?” Will asked.

Mily lowered the binoculars and gave Will a look of brash perplexity. “Why do you always ask such dumb questions?” She rolled her eyes clearly before bringing the binoculars back to the bridge of her nose.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re two years older than me,” Mily answered him. Her brother only noselaughed back as she returned to scoping the vast, rolling seas of maple seeds. “So how could I’of ever seen’m do this if you haven’t?”

“S’just a way of speaking, Mil,” Will said.

“Oh I know,” she huffed, sights hovering over a storm drain which was still gushing from a sudden downpour that morning. “I just mean, you’re right - like woah, this is crazy.”

During breakfast when the rain was really coming down, Dog had told Will and Mily some of his theories about the earth-covering surplus of winged seed they were seeing. Through the binoculars, it was evident that Harvest Road should be under a Flash Flood Warning. Torrents of groundwater were overflowing from the gutters, which were clogged up with stormswept piles of maple seed muck.

“Do you think Dad’s right about overplanting?” Mily asked, handing the binoculars back to her brother.

“He’s right about overplanting, and about longer summers,” Will nodded. “Remember when Dad first became a Jack? He worked on landmapping Diana’s reforestation for Erath Entact?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Dad says he fought some Kings early on in the zoning process - ”

“Zoning?”

“Deciding which trees to plant, and where, and how many.”

“Oh.”

“Dad talked to the Kings when he started working, real early on, like when they were still picking which kinds of trees Diana needed. Dad asked Entact to fund an ecological study - that’s like, when plant and wildlife experts go and find out how all the different trees and species work together, and what they need to grow and thrive...”

Will untethered the lanyard fastened to their mother’s binoculars and looped it around his neck, letting them hang against his chest. Then he plucked the old sunbleached tennis ball, which he’d been carrying around since Mily had unearthed it on the twins’ birthday, from his lap and started tossing it between his hands while he went on talking. “I guess the Kings thought the study Dad wanted was too expensive, and Entact had enough saplings in the treefarms already to get the job done.”

“So there’s so many seeds because they planted too many Sugar maple trees?”

“Sugar maple, Black maple, and...” Will stopped tossing the tennis ball and cocked his head sideways, seeming unable to recall the third one Dog had mentioned.

“Box-elder,” Mily enunciated, remembering it after only a short pause for thought. Since having the clairs, Mily also noticed that she was almost always able to remember new words she heard.

“That’s it!” Will cheered, resuming his back-and-forth tennis ball toss.

“I’m not going down to get that if you drop it,” Mily told him firmly. Will wasn’t even watching his hands, and his tosses were widening, crowding his sister’s elbow room.

“I won’t drop it.”

“Well if you do, I’m not climbing down just because I’m closer to the trunk.”

“Lucky you,” Will said as the tennis ball flew wide - right in front of Mily’s nose, where he caught it, and with a flick of his wrist sent it straight back into his left hand. “I won’t drop it.”

Mily giggled. “You should be in the big leagues.”

“Big league, Mil.” Will said. “Besides, even if I dropped it - I’d just hop down and get it.” He was holding the tennis ball out over his knees using only his fingertips, making his hands look stiff and feeble, like all it might take was a light breeze to knock the ball beyond his reach.

“Will! No!” Mily’s fingernails bit gritty bark while her eyes hunted the ground below for signs of Pitcher’s thistle.

“Oh alright,” he laughed, tucking the ball into his lap. “We should prob’ly head inside, though - I don’t think the doe’s coming today, do you?”

Mily shook her head. She’d spent the whole half hour they’d been sitting in the tree secretly listening to hear the sound of a big animal walking... But the maple seeds were so thick, and the stormwaters so swift, that it all just kind of sounded like static in her ears. She was sad that going back to school meant she wouldn’t be able to scout in the mornings anymore, while Bird read on the back deck with her coffee. Ariel has to come back, Mily assured herself as she scooted nearer to the trunk so she could begin to climb down. Why would she’of talked to me if she didn’t want to tell me something?

The siblings ambled down the oak, Mily minding their path to avoid stepping anywhere close to the pitcher’s thistle patch. It had grown back fine after getting smushed under her upper body. Bird had taken Mily to the library to borrow some books about duneland plants once all her splinter wounds had scabbed - and that’s how she learned that Pitcher’s thistle was an endangered species. Mily felt so bad when she discovered how rare the thistle was, that she had come out with popsickle sticks and string to splint every stem she’d broken.

“Are you ready for school?” Will asked as they cleared the tall grass and started crossing the backyard.

Their footsteps were squelching! as they walked. Mily stomped a few steps forward, splashing bits of mown grass and muddy maple seeds at their ankles. Their mother was alarmed the moment she spotted Mily from the sliding glass door of the kitchen-and-dining room: the bottom cuffs of her daughter’s capri pants were so covered in gunk that Bird ordered her straight to the garden hose with a sharp point of her index finger.

“I wish summer was longer,” Mily said as she skipped off to wash her feet, happy to shoulder-off having to answer Will till later.

✦

It was the morning of their eighth school day since the end of summer, and Mily and the twins were truly hitting it off with some of the kids in their new class. Once students aged out of the district’s Early Learning schools, they moved to the Elementary Learning level at the Schoolhouse Shop. Because Mily and the twins had all turned eight during the summer, there hadn’t been very many familiar faces on their first day of school.

But simply being related to Will Wood-Yoder made all three of them instantly popular. One group of second-year Schoolhouse Shop students even told Esa that she, Mily, and E could sit at their lunchtable whenever they wanted. By the second week of class, Mily was sort of impressed by how many people seemed to think Will was the greatest there ever was, or something.

The eighth day of school was a Tuesday, which to Mily simply meant there were nearly four entire dreadful boring days left of State Standard Assessment practice still ahead. Duneland schools started their semesters a good few weeks later than most schools in Diana, so their semesters were front-loaded with heavy review. Bird said the whole student assessment process ought to be rethought, but being Principal didn’t change the fact that Will and Mily’s mom was responsible ensuring the Standards were well taught. Principal Wood wanted all of her Schoolhouse Shop students to pass the Annual Assessments with flying colors so they wouldn’t ever be afraid of taking a test.

Being the Principal’s kid didn’t hurt her popularity one bit, because everybody thought Bird was even more the best than Will was - but it did mean that Mily was expected to behave a certain kinda way during class. Teachers always liked her well enough because she was bright, participated often, and was quick to praise others, but Mily also got teased an awful lot for being a goody-two-shoes.

Mily wouldn’t have wanted to make trouble anyways, but some days she wished she could whisper with other kids during silent reading, or pass notes when she finished her timed-tables. To avoid getting peer-pressured into joining a folded message chain, Mily kept her eyes down and instead talked to E telepathically.

{ Math is stupid.

Mily didn’t even have time to agree because Mx. Schwae, the New Entries class homeroom teacher, had tapped ting-ding-ding! on her desktop call bell, signaling the end of Tuesday’s mid-morning silent reading session.

Mily, Eyani, and Esa each hurried to mark their pages. They actually had read a bit of the class chapter book Mx. Schwae assigned the nine new kids. The three of them made it all the way to the second chapter break, which wasn’t even due until the end of the week.

Uncriss-crossing their legs and removing themselves from the bookshelf nook under the east-facing window, Mily and her cousins found their assigned seats. It was clear Mx. Schwae had placed them intentionally far apart, their desks and chairs three cardinal outliers in the square arrangement, all facing forward towards the front wall and chalkboard.

Theoretically, this should have made it very hard for Mily and the twins to distract one another. Of course, absolutely no one could have known that Mily and the twins had their heads connected like tin cans tied together with string. They swore to keep the clairs and their abilities an absolute secret.

Nine desks were arranged in a three rows of three, and a tenth desk was set aside since there was currently no student to fill it. Mily was placed at the left corner of the first row, which was closest to the classroom door. She loved her seat because most of the time, Mx. Schwae kept the door propped open, and that made overhearing everything happening in the hallway a whole lot easier.

But when Mx. Schwae handed out a State Standard-Practice Activity, Mily was usually asked go and close the classroom door. She observed that their teacher was tapping straight a fresh-printed stack of worksheets on the corner of their desk. From the look of it, the test would be quick - Mily’s eyesight was so good that she could easily read the heading of Mx. Schwae’s top page: ‘Fast Fact Practice: Multiplying Times Sixes’

It’s all times six! Mily declared as she pulled out her chair. She didn’t know if tipping the twins off was technically cheating or not - because really anyone close enough could have read the heading on Mx. Schwae’s stack of papers if they wanted - but she thought it was only fair since Esa divulged over the weekend that multiplying sixes kept tripped her up.

Bird sympathized with Mily’s feeling that the State Standard method of memorizing math problems was worn out, but the fact was... Kids have to learn simple math someway if they ever wanted to grow up and build bridges... or at least Dog had said something like that on Monday night, when Mily displayed a lack of motivation while doing her math homework.

Sixes are tricksters, Mily told Eyani, whose desk was the right corner of the last row, at the opposite end of the hypotenuse. Read each problem and don’t race ahead - tell Esa.

{ Six is for tricks, ten-four.

Trusting that Eyani would pass the encouragement along to his sister sitting opposite him in the front-right desk, Mily took a deep breath. Mx. Schwae moved to stand in front of the chalkboard where the class knew to look for instruction. Worksheets held firmly with both hands, their teacher rolled back on their heels and set to rocking, bobbing till each of the nine students returned their gaze to convey their undivided-attention. “Mily, would you mind shutting the door?” the teacher asked.

Once Mily stood, pulled the door, and was seated again, Mx. Schwae leaned forward onto their toes and said: “Okay Class! It’s time to practice some of our Fast Facts.”

An over-the-top groan rose from a student square-center in the room, where Lespedeza Reed-Wong was seated. Mily liked Lespedeza right away because they’d jived the week prior while seated beside each other on the first morning bus ride to school. It turned out that they lived only two roads apart, and they shared harbored distain for their full first-names. In other words, the Mily and Lespedeza - who went by Leza - were fast-friends and thereon, self-designated bus-buddies.

‘We’s a smart bid, you’ins me!‘ Leza said earlier that morning, when the bus was stopped on Haunted Hill Road. ‘Spot luck, Mildred! Junegrass plays well with bush clover, so plunk a squat for keeps!’

Mily found the eight-and-a-half-year-old likably clownish and thought Leza must’ve seen a ton of movies or something to talk the way she did.

The groan Leza’d admitted in the middle of the room set the whole class at ease... the air felt lighter, like this Fast Facts Practice was going to be no-biggy, a shrug-it-off sort of quiz - quick and easy. Their collective nervousness was lifted. Mily relaxed as Mx. Schwae began placing worksheets face-down on each desk, walking clockwise from Esa’s front-right corner seat, making their way around the outside edges of the square.

“Please leave your papers face-down until I say it’s okay to turn them over,” Schwae said from the back of the room. “Your goal is to correctly answer as many basic facts as you can within a set amount of time. This Practice Assessment has no impact on your grade. The reason we’re doing this is to test your current knowledge of basic Elementary-level math computations, and we also want to measure your present ability to apply math strategies using one of the four basic arithmetic operations. I will set a timer for a minute-and-a-half, that’s ninety-seconds. During that time, you should try to complete as much of the Practice Assessment as you can, but remember that accuracy and correctness count more than completing the entire activity.”

Mx. Schwae paused for breath beside Mily and placed the second-to-last sheet of paper face-down on her desk. “Does anyone think they can guess which operation we’ll be using?”

Hilarity Marlbrook-Quotient’s hand went up from the front-middle desk right next to Mily. She was wiggling her fingers in the air, waiting for Mx. Schwae to call her name.

“Hilly?”

“Multiplication!” Hilarity pronounced, sounding excitedly breathless as always.

“Why, yes! Good guess!” Mx. Schwae said. “For today’s Fast Fact practice, you will be multiplying. Can someone remind me which operator-sign we use to multiply?”

All nine students now had their own downturned page staring them in the face, and Mily observed a brief scuttle and clatter from students’ hands rifling in the undercarriage cubbies of their desks, blind-grabbing for fresh-sharpened pencils.

Multiply means times, she assured herself. So it’ll be the little ‘x’ or an aster-ix.

{ Asterisk.

Mily raised her hand and waited for Mx. Schwae to call her name.

“Mily?”

“We use the aster-isk...” Mily enunciated, fighting a grin as the clairs caught hints of the twins’ heldback giggles. “Or the tiny ‘x’ means times, um - the multiply sign.”

“Very good! Yes, thank you, Mily,” Mx. Schwae nodded. “So, every problem you encounter on the Practice Assessment will have either an ‘x’ or an asterisk - the little twinkly mark - which both ask you to use multiplication to calculate the answer.”

Anticipation made Mily’s left knee start jouncing. She was fiddling with a new graphite pencil, pinching the pink eraser between her thumb and pointer. When the whole class just kept on staring back at the teacher standing in front of the chalkboard, Mx. Schwae intertwined her fingers and called for questions and clarifications:

“Does that make sense? Would anyone be willing to summarize the task for us, just one more time from start to finish, before we begin?”

The student sitting directly behind Mily went by ‘Pomp,’ but his full name was Jean Baptiste States-Prestige. Pomp put his hand up and waited for Mx. Schwae to call his name, but his was the nickname written on the new student roster that still hadn’t stuck in their teacher’s brain. Mx Schwae frowned and glanced toward the list on their desk, making their way over to check...

{ Quick what’s two-times-six.

Twel - HEY don’t DO that Eyani! Mily smoldered in-thought, mad at him for picking her brain uninvited.

{ Just joking, Emjay

{ Esa says tricks are for kids so

{ You got this.

“Pomp!” Mx. Schwae cried, finger floating over a scribbled note on their roster.

Jean Baptiste States-Prestige had been patient while their teacher tried to find his preferred name, so he took his time preparing to speak to the class. He cleared his throat twice while pressing and patting his polo-shirt collar until its frame sat much more crooked around his neck. Narvel Bleau-Gill let out a loud laugh, and everyone turned around to see him just grinning from ear-to-ear.

Narvel sat behind Pomp in the back left-corner chair, so Mily overheard pretty much all of the whispered conversations between the two boys during class, because she sat ahead of them both at the top of their column. Evidently, Pomp’s parents were Narvel’s guardians too, and they’d been best friends since forever.

Mily was turned fully around in her seat, eager to take part in whatever it was that Narvel -the-Marvel Bleau-Gill, first-and-only Faceborn Prince in Diana, might be drumming up.

“Are you ready to give us a summary, Pomp?” Mx. Schwae prompted, resuming her spot in front of the chalkboard.

“Yes - alright then - I will - begin!”

Mily clutched her ribs to keep from laughing. It would have ruined the act, and she wanted to see how well they played it out. Pomp’s mouth was moving, but because she had been watching so closely, Mily knew it was really Narvel doing all the talking.

“Class - will have one! and - a half - minutes! That’s nine-ty seconds!

Clock’s got just ninety seconds on it, kids...”

At least half the class had keyed-in by then, but not a single one of them laughed because no one wanted to be the one who broke the spell of the boys’ good show.

“Correct - answers - matter -most!

Not! solving ev-er-y problem - is fine!

Now get this - pay attention!

Aster-isks and x-es tell us - it’s times!

Mx. Schwae led the class in a round of applause. Pomp and Narvel high-fived and went right on swashbuckling in post-performance swagger, tipping pretend top hats, and nodding many thanks around the room. It took nearly ninety-seconds for the quiet focus of class to be restored.

When it was clear that the entire class was ready, Mx. Schwae said it was okay to turn their papers over. They were allowed to fill-in two lined items at the top of the Fast-Fact Practice worksheet, but Mx. Schwae told them not to start solving problems yet. Mily read the first line, which asked for her first name and last initials. She sounded it out silently while writing-in: Em-eye-el-why. Double-yew dot. Why-dot.

The second line asked for Today’s date. Mily paused for thought, pencil poised... and did her best to recall it, but just couldn’t think of the digits for the month... or day... or... what year even is it? Mily was relieved when Merit Mark-Hough’s hand went up, and even more pleased when he asked his question without waiting to be called on: “Mixshway, what’s the date today?”

Their teacher didn’t speak but held up one finger, picked up a stick of chalk, and then turned it on its side. Mx. Schwae wrote with wide, bold-white strokes on the green vintage board, making the numbers big enough for the whole class to read and copy down easily.

0 1 . 0 9 . 1 1

Oh-one dot. Oh-nine... dot one-one, Mily mouthed as she transcribed it. Glancing about the room, she saw that most others held their pencils at the ready. Mily fixed her eyes on the clock hanging over the classroom door - she’d snuck one fleeting peek using the clairs’ sightseeing powers to follow Mx. Schwae’s field of vision. She had only looked for one instant - a glimpse! Just to check and see if the teacher’s preference for keeping time on the analog clock tick-tocking above her head would hold true.

The clock’s little hand was smack-dab between Eleven and Twelve, its big hand pulsating slowly toward Six. As the second hand coursed steadily past the three-quarters mark at Nine, Mily guessed that Mx. Schwae intended to start the timer at exactly Eleven-thirty, so she lowered her eyes to the upturned page and scanned the first few Fast-Facts...

Six-times-six is thirty-six

Six-times-nine is fifty-four

Six-times-ten is sixty - easy!

Six times seven is

A voice coming from somewhere in the Schoolhouse Shop caught the clairs’ curiosities, and without warning, they snatched control of Mily’s senses. Every shred of attention she owned was sent out cats-cradle, hunting down the disembodied voice someway calling out from both up and downstairs:

- tension / CODE RED

There Has Been An Attack In Atlantia

CODE RED / This Is Not A Test

Shelter In Place / Seek Cover At Once

Local Keepers Will Be In Touch

Attention -

Mildred lost complete and utter track of her thoughts. She looked around: Merit, Pomp, Narvel, Hilarity, Esa, E, and even River O’Riain-Forsythe, who did and said nothing more often than not, were all frenetically scribbling numbers.

When did Mx. Schway say start!? How many seconds had she wasted? What’s happening? Mily’s mind raced away in leaps in bounds, like her brain waves were wearing moon-shoes. By the time a sudden rush of blood which made her scalp itch gave her enough gumption to get going - tick-tock! - she had to reread the problem all over again twice, and her heart was pounding way faster than the clock was counting, leaving her with absolutely no sense of how much time had been eaten -

Six times seven is...

Six-times-seven-is-six-times-seven-is

Six. times. seven is...

Forty-six!

Mily chanced a glance at the running time and gawked at the measly seconds remaining to do more than two-dozen Fast Facts left on the page...

Shoot! Six-times-seven was not forty-six.

It’s forty-two!

As the ticking-hand hit the minute mark, Mily’s pencil fell plum flat on top of the unfinished worksheet. She stood up, and without understanding what exactly she’d just decided to do, she pushed the door open and wandered off down the hallway.

{ Why do I see red?

* * * * *

/ n o t a r e

Excerpt from the Old Testament - Daniel 10:19 (NIV)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel+10&version=NIV

© Kailey Ann

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

“Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.”

NIV Daniel 12:4

♥ ♠ ♦ ♣

CODE RED / There Has Been An Attack In Atlantia

Attack, attack... parrotted Mily’s mind. The topfloor hallway was way longer than she rememered it being - Mily was just walking and walking, but the end of the third-level Red maple nailed-hardwood corridor didn’t look any closer than before. Where was she even heading? Cubbied walls lined either side of her path, each one fitted with short, scratched, ancient, hand-carved ash-paneled doors, shutting up lunchboxes and other personal affects stowed by first-year students during the school day -

THIS IS NOT A TEST

Mily spotted her own cubby and realized that she must’ve made progress down the hallway after all. Everything in her sight was bright and clear, her eyes shining just like they had when the clairs first crawled in through her nose and ears the week before her eighth birthday -

So why did everything she was seeing seem fake?

Shelter In Place / Seek Cover At Once

Local Keepers Will Be In Touch

Seek... cover... she repeated, opening the big door of her cubby, which was the fourth from the left in the third set of closet stalls. Mily looked around - nobody had followed her out of the classroom: the door was still hanging wide-open. Can they not hear it?

CODE RED / There Has Been An Attack In Atlantia

Well Atlantia was real far away, at least if Mily was imagining the map the United Estates in her head right... Yes, she was fairly certain there was no way to even drive there from where she lived in Diana! Not to mention, the halls were empty...

It was nearing lunch hour, and not a single teacher had so much as poked their head out of a classroom door to figure out who was giving those warnings -

CODE RED / THIS IS NOT A TEST

Where is that coming from? Mily unclenched her fists and unpinched her brow and took a deep breath. Inside the cubby was empty except for an adjustable shelf which was set level at the tip of her nose. She pushed up underneath the shelf with her palms and removed it. Mily sat the board up thin as a rail on its side, and then looked back the way she’d come from one more time.

The hallway was empty. Every door was shut but the one she had left wide-open.

Shelter In Place / Seek Cover At Once

Local Keepers Will Be In Touch

Without wasting another moment, Mily sucked in her stomach, ducked her head, folded her knees and elbows into the cubby closet, and closed herself inside.

{ Where did you go?

I’m... Mily started to answer Eyani, but the clairs buzzed so loud in protest that she couldn’t remember what she was going to say in the first place. Instead, feeling trapped, she screeched in her head: It’s not a test!

{ So you just left?

The cubby was deep enough for Mily to sit on her bum with her knees scrunched up. The toes of her double-knotted sneakers bent just barely at the base of the wall. She could press her palms flat into the hardwood bottom board and wiggle her fingers. Mily was pleased for a moment she was petite enough to fit inside without knocking the door with her elbows.

The clairs were hungry for understanding - it was getting harder to concentrate. She needed to let them loose so they could listen. She swallowed hard and shut her eyes, gulped, and then pinched the top of her nose. Her temples were throbbing.

Eyani, quick listen-up!

{ Go-ahead

Something’s the matter - you need to read the teacher’s thoughts and find out what - I’m in my cubby closet - just hurry and listen till you hear -

CODE RED / The Right Bower Has Fallen

Mily was huddled inside her cubby, when a strange bell struck three times over the loudspeakers - Bee-oop! Bee-oop! Bee-oop! - and then she heard Bird’s voice in the ceiling saying: “Excuse me, I need everybody’s undivided attention.”

Principal Birdram Wood sounded the alarm without causing much. It was one of her gifts. A hush remained over the entire school. The school didn’t suddenly clatter with panicked hands and feet. Mily could still hear the Code Red warnings, but she didn’t struggle to focus on what her mom was saying because, as it turned out -

Her clairs found Bird’s words worth paying their absolute, undivided attention.

“This is an emergency,” Principal Wood said. “None of us is in any danger, so there is no reason for us to be afraid.”

The Corona Has Declared A Novel Emergency

Mily blinked - inside the wooden box with her palms pressed to the floorboard, she felt those warning tones course through her muscles. It’s coming from the library radio! She just knew it - that instant - almost glimpsed it: Mx. Rigor the librarian was fiddling with the volume spindle behind his big desk - when Bird said next:

“First, I need everyone to stop what they’re doing. Put down any tools or personal belongings in a clear space where you’re standing, and then return to your desks right away. It’s okay to leave your things on the floor. We’ll all have time to pick them up later - there’s no reason to rush. So students, please help your teachers by finding your seats...

{ Schwae saw you’re missing, Mily

″...and teachers, I need new roll call taken in every class. I need you to do attendance by-hand, paper and ink please, write it down - and double-check all absences against this morning’s attendance, even if - especially if tardy slips didn’t make it to the Front Office yet today, okay?”

Despite how much information was going over Mily’s head, she snort-laughed at the fact that it’d taken a full minute-and-a-half at least for Mx. Schwae to notice one of the students had somehow slipped out of their classroom. Am I invisible?

{ Cut it out Emjay

{ Come back quick I’m serious!

CODE RED / The Left Bower Has Fallen

A wave of fear and confusion locked Mily’s knees and elbows in place when she tried to follow Eyani’s order. Her thoughts were a racing river of memetic phrases -

Attack, fallen -

Red, code red -

Test, not a test -

Right-left -

Fallen, Left -

Bower, down -

Left Bower down!

“MOM!”

Mily’s sights wavered like she was looking up from the bottom of a swimming pool. There wasn’t any air left in the cubby closet. Bright blue and black spots went hopping across her vision, and she razed her vocal chords screaming a second time - “MOM!”

She squinted at the light as someone swung the door wide - it wasn’t Bird. Her face felt flame-licked, and Mily was suddenly aware of the very squirrelish way she’d drawn her hands to her chest and wondered how she must have appeared, spine-curled and tucked in the cupboard, looking in from outside.

“Hi,” Padrick Chance Birke-Altera said. A set of bellows was dangling from his left hand. His right hand wobbled the closet handle clean off - it had had a screw loose for some time. The pair of them watched it drop and roll a short distance away. There was a long pause while the kid scratched his rib.

“I’m uh, not your mom,” Padrick went on after a bit. “My name’s Paddy.”

Mily didn’t know what she could say to explain herself. She put both palms on her knees and pointed to the bellows with her nose. “What’re those?”

“Bellows,” he responded, and Mily nodded. She had no idea what that meant, but the casual way the kid said it made the spade-shaped paddles and spout seem unimportant.

“You’re one of Wood’s kids, right?” Paddy prodded.

Mily nodded again, unable to find her voice.

“Wanna walk with me? I was on my way to the front office when, uh - When I decided, uh - to open this cubby.”

That was enough to make Mily swiftly twist and tumble out of the closet. She scooped up the fallen knob to disguise her stumble and spent a few seconds screwing it back into the door, breathing deeply. Once she had spun the knob to just the place where she knew it would stick, Mily gathered her grit.

“Lead the way,” she told Paddy. Then Mily turned on her heel, teeter-tottered sideways a few millimeters, and set off walking a little too fast.

Paddy caught up with her and set a better pace. Her footsteps were clunking in her ears. She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her denim overalls and tried not to peek at him out of the corners of her eyes. When they were almost upon the double-doors to the stairwell at the end of the hall, Mily found her voice again.

“Sorry you had to see that.”

He laughed. “Were you trapped?” Paddy asked, leaning into the right-hand door and holding it open for Mily to pass though first.

“I might’ve been,” Mily said, lingering on the star-speckled carpet landing. She waited for him to ask how or why she’d gotten inside in the first place, but he didn’t. He just pulled the door shut behind them and then gestured to the stairs.

“After you,” he told Mily. Then Paddy grabbed the banister, side-eyed her for two considerate seconds, and set off straight down the steps.

She tore after him. They were neck-and-neck, both bent on being first to the bottom. She turned on her toes and skirted over the second landing, taking the lead with only one flight of stairs left -

Their feet made a thunderous racket.

Mily had cleared the bottom step with both feet and clearly won - but she had to hand it to Paddy because he’d landed right on her heels. They caught their breath on the ground level behind another set of double-doors, and Mily started to feel lighter.

“You win!” Paddy said.

Mily was about to laugh when Bird’s voice snapped her back to the present -

“Is everyone listening? I need these five students to come to the Head Office as soon as you hear your name...

Mily’s chin fell to her chest. She pushed the left-side door open and went through it.

“Mily, William Wood-Yoder, Eyani and Esabel Able-Yoder, and... Padrick Birke-Altera. Please come to the Head Office now!”

“So - you’re Mily?” Paddy asked as he followed her into the Main Hallway.

“Yep.” She looked away, unsure of what else to say and a little bit distracted by this stroke of good luck - Bird calling them all down to the Head Office gave Mily some leeway for an alibi.

“Your brother said you were quick as the dickens,” Paddy said.

“Will would say that,” she said eventually. All-a-sudden they were only a few strides away from the pewter benches stationed just outside Head Office, where the kids who were car-riders waited to get picked up after school. Mily stared along the brick herringbone floor and let her eyes follow the arrowed path toward the Schoolhouse Shop entryway.

Her stomach squirmed.

At the arm of nearest bench, Mily stopped walking. She wished she’d gone slower.

“I um - I want to wait for Will and my cousins,” Mily said. She took a wide lateral step and sank onto the hard-wrought seat furthest from the office door. Crossing her arms, Mily slouched lower and lower, trying feverishly to find someplace to stick her gaze.

“Mind if I wait with you?” Paddy asked, holding his strange paddle-thing by both grips.

“No.”

He sat beside the opposite arm and crossed his legs. Mily straightened a little but didn’t uncross her arms because she was feeling so freaking fidgety.

“Why d’you have bellows?” Mily asked after about four-and-a-half seconds of silence.

Paddy lifted the device and his eyebrows and said, “It’s Simple Machines Week.”

“Oh.”

“I left them in my cubby on purpose,” he explained. “You know, so that I wouldn’t have to go today.”

“How do they work?” Mily asked, finding interest.

“Huh - I guess I have to go today anyway, uh - okay see...”

Paddy aimed the bellows like he was piloting a mounted water gun on the Midway, shooting an airstream out of its long-barrelled nose and blasting Mily in the elbow.

“It makes wind!” she marveled, and a bit of lightheadedness lifted.

“They can kickstart a fireplace or stoke one that’s dying,” Paddy elaborated.

Uncrossing her arms, Mily leaned in to inspect the bellows closer. “So they help the flames breathe?”

“Uh, yeah! That’s it exactly.”

“Know why the tube-end is made of metal, Mil?”

Mily turned at the sound of Will’s voice - her brother was standing right behind her. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, but it couldn’t have been too long since she was very hard to sneak up on these days.

“So that it doesn’t catch on-fire,” she emphasized, rolling her eyes. “When the end gets poked straight into some buring wood.”

“Very good!” Will applauded, as if answering his simple question was the same thing as acing a pop-quiz.

“I’m a real wizkid,” Mily said.

“Takes one to know I guess,” Paddy said.

Right then Mily decided she would be friends with Padrick Chance Birke-Altera if he wanted to be.

Warmth filled only a couple of moments before Eyani’s telepathic worrying went on full-volume in her head, and he was getting louder - this was how Mily realized that it had been an unusually long while since she’d last heard E thinking... maybe even since she was still up on the top floor, before she raced Paddy all the way to the bottom of the stairwell and won...

{ Something IS the matter

{ Something bad

{ Something BIG

Mily remembered her earlier fear - Code red! Attack! It’s not a test!

{ But what’s the emergency?

That stumped her. The twins came through the double-doors at the other end of the hallway and were heading in her direction, gaits long and lanky. Mily put her hands in her pockets and waited for them to finish closing the distance.

Esabel got there first and plopped down onto the bench between Paddy and Mily. “At least you waited for us at the door after bolting,” Esa teased.

Feeling overscorned, she thought tattler! and sputtered a cough that was intended to be a scoff - rushing to pretend Esa’d meant that Mily just walked faster, but nonchalance wasn’t her strong-suit.

Will frowned at his little sister, his eyes suddenly flooded with questions.

Mily opened her mouth but found she didn’t know where to begin defending herself without airing the whole entire affair in the middle of the Main Hall.

Call it more luck, but her moment to fess-up about being a class-ditcher...passed. Whether it was the good or bad kind of luck that sucked the air out of the kids’ conversation, Mily couldn’t ever be sure.

Because Someone had just waltzed through the front doors of Schoolhouse Shop, wearing a stark black cap and uniform - Mily recognized the Stranger at once.

It’s the man from the lawn on your birthday!

The clairs confirmed Mily’s suspicion with a scary chorus of viper-like hisses, punctuating their venom by buzzing in her temples, turning the edges of her vision blurry.

CODE RED / Terrorists Have Attacked The Twin Bowers

{ He must be our local Keeper

* * * * *

/ n o t a r e

Excerpt from the Old Testament - Daniel 12:4 (NIV)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel+12%3A4&version=NIV

© Kailey Ann

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

“A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.”

NIV Revelation 8:12

♥ ♠ ♦ ♣

The Stranger’s name was Keeper Bigly-Tate, and he made sure Mily remembered September the Eleventh as the worst day that had ever happened.

Evidently, the order came straight from Deal Director Hensley’s desk. Which, according to Bigly-Tate, meant that Jack Yoder didn’t have a choice: Dog and his family were going into Lockdown.

Mily really hadn’t intended to overhear her dad’s debriefing while she’d been busy packing her bags upstairs with Bird, but the clairs had minds of their own. Lately the clairs had been sipping more and more of her energy, so she really didn’t have it in her - after such a horrendous day of events - to try and call the clairs off.

That’s what Mily told herself when she felt guilty anyway.

Plus, it was thanks to her curious critters that Mily now knew her parents hadn’t told her and Will the whole truth.

The truck-ride to Dune Park Waystation was a miserable time. At some point during the trip, Mily abandoned the separations between her own good Sense and the clairs’ greater Awareness. As the Keeper’s diesel-engine hummed along a familiar highway, Mildred Jungrass Womack-Yoder’s eyes combed the woods and streams in-passing one last time...

At least she guessed it might be.

Slumped deep into the backseat leather, Mily watched the breeze and rushes go. She had thought she knew this road well, but its curves were suddenly knocking her grips loose, and every tap of the brakes felt utterly uhn!-anticipated.

Mily ached for answers, but fear twisted her stomach. The sick-feeling was almost enough to disuade her impulse to hand her will-power over to the clairs.

Almost.

{ It’s up to you but...

{ Emjay, our parents might be right

{ It might be better to not-know some things

Well why do they get to decide?

Keeper Bigly-Tate’s truck had carried them into the dense trees that marked the end of the moraines. Mily could sense the great expanse of sand dunes ahead but knew, having once taken a train from Dune Park all the way up the shore to Millennium Waystation, that she wouldn’t get a glimpse of them before leaving.

I wish I could see Devil’s Slide one last time.

All the unknowns started twisting, constricting her insides again. Adults were keeping lots of secrets from them. Mily hated being kept out of the loop. She knew bits and pieces, because she overheard most of their ‘top-secret’ conversations, but Mily didn’t understand much of what was said. And E knew even more, since he knew whatever whoever nearby was thinking all the time.

Which was why Mily was doing her best to keep words off her mind - Eyani’s eyes were pinched shut like they had been for half the drive. He looked pained, pining after a blip of absentmindness. His head must’ve been swimming with inner-voices.

Esa reached between the seats and squeezed her twin’s thumb. E’s smile was warm, but his eyes didn’t flutter open even a little.

His head prob’ly hurts. Mily tried to kick herself and missed. Her boot banged against the scuffed-up truckbed, and the boom was so loud that her uncle threw up his hands to cover his ears -

But the sound settled fast.

{ Well NOW my head hurts

Her head was hurting too - Questions flooded it, tumbling one right after another; her mind became a rapid stream crashing in unanswers, never ceasing. Mily imagined what might happen once the Waystation elevator sank below the horizon line, and there would be no turning back:

She would be cast down.

Mily was swept up by a rush of worries -

What if we never come back up?

What if a cave collapses?

What if we get trapped?

What if the lights go out?

and I’m blind -

and fall in a crevice -

and nobody ever finds me?

What if I get lost?

Dad said he’s gotten lost -

What if I get lost and starve -

or get eaten!

Are there animals down there?

What lives underground?

Will earthworms fall from the ceiling?

Will it smell like earthworms?

Will it smell like earthworms all the time?!

{ Bet we’ll get used to it

What about spiders?

Will there be spiders?!

There will be spiders won’t there!

{ Prob’ly

And snakes -

{ And mud dawbers!

What’re mud-dobbers?

{ Crawdads!

Like crayfish?

{ X’actly

{ Mud dawbers look like l’il brown lobsters

{ Sometimes blue ones

How big do they get?

{ D’pends on their environment

Just then Bigly-Tate remarked from the driver-seat that Intake was ”...bound’a take longer since none a’these kids - except fer your oldest boy there - brought their Estate Eye-D cards.” The Keeper stiffened his grip on the steering wheel.

“School pictures would’of been the fourteenth,” Mily scoffed without thinking. Then she rolled her eyes at the steel cab-cover overhead.

Bird pinched her right knee in that way that made it hurt and tickle at the same time.

She knows I hate that! Mily could sense her mother’s tension simmering and knew Bird felt exactly the same way about Keeper Bigly-Tate as her daughter did.

He’s a busy-body! her thoughts went on impolitely; but outside she bowed her head to her lap in recognition of Bird’s forewarning pinch. The discrete discipline had been a kind move because really, Mily knew better than to go rude-for-rude, especially with someone new...

“Sorry, Keeper,” Mily said quietly. Bigly-Tate met her gaze in the rearview mirror. Her abdomen deflated, and an anxious knot spawned behind her belly-button; the Keeper’s piercing stare made her feel flustered, too-seen.

“I’m not very good at change,” Mily explained, nervous energy drawing words up from her gut as the truck approached Dune Park Waystation. “Some-um. Sometimes I’m, I’m pest - pess-mystic when I’m nervous so sorry um. For being rude.”

The Keeper’s brow flickered from puzzled to vexed, and then he blinked, breaking the trance of his unyielding glare. “No need t’be sorry for enything,” he said to the air, giving it a hard sniff for good measure without looking at Mily.

Mily didn’t like the way Bigly-Tate didn’t even glance in the rearview mirror when he accepted her apology - But this time, she remembered her manners. Mily turned her head and smiled sheepishly at her mom, who seized her daughter’s hand and squeezed Mily’s palm with her thumb.

Bird was beaming. Even if Keeper Bigly-Tate didn’t think a kid’s words were worth anything, her mother’s touch assured Mily that she’d made a good decision.

{ Bigly-Tate’s a real bug-brain

Hey - some of us’of got that, E...

The truck had air-conditioning, but still Mily found it a little hard to breathe. Eyani grinned apologetically across the steel box, where he was seated on a bench between Esa and Elaeagnus, each restrained with a lap-belt and cross-straps. Mily tugged at her own straps with her thumbs.

They’re too tight, she whined. Mily tried to scoot forward and shift some of the pressure to her toes, but there was absolutely no wiggle-room.

{ Hang in there

At least your feet touch the floor...

{ I can see the train station

✦

Mily didn’t say a word till they were so far underground that the temperature had dropped nearly ten-degrees. Her shoulders itched and twitched, sensing a great mass of dirt, roots, and rubble growing denser. They were nearly to the bottom of a long and steep rail-line, deep below the world they knew in a place where the sun never shined.

Tapping her heels, Mily told E - We’re nearly there.

Eyani raised his eyebrows and gulped. Esa elbowed him hard in the ribs.

{ Where d’you think we’re gonna live?

How should I know?

{ But your dad said he’s lived here before

Yeah, but, I don’t know.

{ Well did Uncle Dog say what it was like?

Why don’t you ask him!

“Uncle Dog,” E beckoned at once. “What’s Lockdown like?”

“Ain’t no other place like it,” Dog told him.

“That doesn’t tell us anything,” Esa giggled.

“You got me there! Hard to describe someth’n when you don’t have anything to compare - it’s a whole network of tunnels and caverns. Even lakes’n rivers. S’pretty easy to get lost if you don’t know where you’re go’n.”

“Dog.” Bird stared at her husband with eyes that demanded he mind his tongue.

“They’re not gonna get lost!” Dog laughed, as if he hadn’t just said it. “I was just think’n - when I was here last - well, like I do - I went and wandered off look’n for noth’n and found myself plum out in middle the subway somewhere. Forgot how many turns I’d taken to get there. But I found my way back.”

Earn snorted. “How long it take ya?”

“My shift was over.”

“How over?”

“Two days over.”

The brothers belly-laughed while their wives exchanged looks. Mily and the other kids were growing anxious but didn’t want to show it. Instead, they grimace-grinned at each other from opposite benches, jumping when a robotic voice announced out of thin air:

Approaching Dock

Please Fasten Belts For Stop

We’re slowing down.

{ Will Uncle Dog be in charge?

{ Because he’s a Jack?

The Aces are in charge.

{ Yeah but trump is Clubs now

Dad’s a Spade.

{ Spades is the same as Clubs now

{ Well for Jacks it is at least

What?

A high shriek of grinding brakes pierced the passengers’ ears, and Mily and E both forgot about their conversation entirely. Voices - two of them - were talking not far off. The voices belonged to two someones, not like the invisible, monotone voicboxe in the ceiling. And one glance around told Mily that she alone could hear them speaking.

“Think we’ll get a glimpse of the Million-Dollar Daughter?”

“What’re you saying?”

“The girl - Jack’s ward, you didn’t know?”

“No!”

“It’s true. The girl doesn’t share his wife’s last name... Go and ask the guys at Intake if you don’t believe me.”

“What’s his wife’s name got to do with it?”

“Well her boy is - older.”

“Older than the girl?”

“Yup.”

“So their boy has both of their names? But their girl doesn’t have her name...?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh so she does have his name though.”

“Yoder, yup.”

“Oh - Beau - shh!”

“SHH yourself! We’re the only ones down here to hear...”

I can hear you.

Mily’s ears were burning.

She blinked to clear her thoughts.

Why’d you call me a million-dollar daughter?

“Well - you ought not believe the gossip. Who said it’s scandalous as all that, anyway?”

“Well, I mean I’m not one to judge - ”

“I didn’t mean - ”

“But it’ s - well, it is some insight, you know? First-impression of the new leadership... See, Meg, this Jack’s a Spade - ”

“By trade...”

“Sure, but call em like I see em, okay? The only Reneg in the History of this country - ”

“A Spade, yeah okay. A-hundred years ago. Once.”

“A century isn’t actually that long of a time - but that’s not the point - I mean hey, Jack Yoder seems like a fine guy, I didn’t mean to insinuate...”

“Shouldn’t we call him Bower, now?”

“Bower! Yeah, I guess yeah. Well anyway, he and his family seem nice. A good Jack, grows grass for a living. Fact is, he can grow grass anywhere I guess - the dude just has green thumbs or something. You know he doesn’t even have a degree?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Dog left school at eighteen.”

Mily had to blink again.

Her eyes stung.

“Oh so what! I mean, he’s probably crazy smart on his own, then.”

“True! I’m sure the guy is smart. I mean obviously, he’s also a friend of some big Clubs. Dog walks the walk alright. Right? It’s just... when he talks... you can just tell he’s a farmboy, you know?”

“Sure.”

“Nothing against his intelligence or anything like that - ”

“Of course not!”

“It’s impressive, I mean, who cares if he sounds hilljack? Yoder’s a Jack! So he has to be the very best at - like growing grass, right?”

“Has to be, yeah.”

“And we will be needing a lot of grass down here.”

“That’s true.”

“All that to say... Jeeze, I sound like a jerk, don’t I? Nothing’s coming out right. I just feel like we know next-to-nothing about this guy. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“So I don’t know, he seems nice and all. But - I am a typical Imerican skeptic. I admit it. I’ll call a Spade a Spade. I’m just a little uh - a little fraid’a turncoats.”

“Ha, better get over that.”

“Right. Yeah. So. I’m not trying to judge a man by his suit. It’s just a shame that that little girl has to weather life with a mixed-up name like that...”

“Surely it’s not so bad.”

“Not now, maybe. Too young to worry about it. But when she gets older? Yeesh.”

“You said - what? Because she’s worth a-million bucks or whatever?”

“Well - I CAN’T confirm this but...”

“Rumor has it...?”

“Well the word is... Bird.”

“Say what now?”

“Yoder’s wife.”

“What about her?”

“Word has it he had an affair. Way back in Ninety-Two. Dog and...”

“Dog and who?”

“An Ace.”

“No...way.”

“So the story goes - I didn’t make it up.”

“I believe you, but it’s just rumors though right?”

“You’re most-likely right. What do I know?”

“I don’t get it though. How’s the Bower’s kid worth a-million dollars?”

“Well some have said - It was Yoder’s wife who did it.”

“Did what?”

“His wife bid on her. His daughter, but it was the wife’s deal. Heard she paid a fortune, too. All so that she could adopt the Jack’s bastard, you know, legally...”

“Well why would she do that?”

“Haven’t you ever heard, ‘Children of Aces are born with faces’ ?”

Welcome To Crossroads

Please Exit In A Timely Manner

Mily blinked and blinked, but she couldn’t see.

* * * * *

/ n o t a r e

Excerpt from the New Testament - Revelation 8:12 (NIV).

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+8%3A12&version=NIV

© Kailey Ann

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

“There might be a real Land of Youth somewhere.

There might be almost anything.”

The Magician’s Nephew

♥ ♠ ♦ ♣

The attack on the Twin Bowers changed everything.

When Keeper Bigly-Tate had escorted the Yoder family to their freshly-assigned Lockdown housing - and, finally, excused himself from their company - Dog and Bird had a long talk with Will and Mily about what exactly happened on September Eleventh.

As if both Mily and Will were utterly clueless, Dog began by explaining that the Twin Bowers were a set of grand National Monuments in East Atlantia, capitol city of the United Estates of Imerica. The first monument was out at Sea, facing east: she was Lady Liberty, otherwise known as the Right Bower.

The second monument was called Euchred Plinth: this was a massive monolith pedestal made of spacerock, a perfect star-pentagon pointing west toward the City. It was built as the intended setting for One Day When - when the Left Bower’s name became known to all the Pipt, Faced, and Aces of North Imerica.

Then, it was said, both Bowers would stand watch. One in the Sea, and one on the Land. And Erath would be put right again.

But then the Terrorists attacked.

Sense was less while Mily listened. Awareness grew.

It was Bird’s turn to tell the truth: “I remember watching the spaceship launch. It took off right from where they laid the Plinth. My Second Grade class watched it on an old roll-cart TV...”

“Second-grade?” Mily had interjected, distracted because her stomach got hot and uneasy everytime her mom talked.

“When we were in school,” Bird answered with grace, “there were Grade Levels instead of Grading Periods, like you and Will are used to.”

“Oh.” Mily had realized she needed to swallow her grudge. She wanted answers to much bigger questions.

“It was Nineteen-Sixty-Nine,” Dog had then offered as his way of getting them back on track. “July Twentieth, Nineteen-Sixty-Nine, the United Estates first landed on the Moon.”

“That’s your birthday, Mil!” Will’d told her, grinning great-big.

In spite of everything, the corners of Mily’s mouth upturned - She’d had no idea that the day she was born was significant in any way at all.

“Then in Nineteen-Ninety-One, the year Will was born...” Their mom gave her son a special look. “UEI astronauts brought the spacerock back to Benjamintown - that’s where the Declaration of Endependence was signed. It was on display for a few years there, and after that, they moved the Plinth to East Atlantia, where they’ve been building - ”

Bird’s lower lip trembled and then froze; she sat up very straight and shook her head rapidly from side to side, like she needed to break something loose. “The Left tower was being built. The law was that it would be under construction until the Bower’s likeness turned up - So that was the idea, to plan ahead, so it was still being built... until now.”

Bird seemed at a loss - she tossed Dog a look and just shrugged, then grimaced. Dog looked back at Bird with his lips pursed; it was the face he always made when he was trying to find something to say.

Mily snagged at her parents’ pause and asked, “Aren’t YOU the Left Bower, Dad?”

Dog chuckled - Mily glared. This is no laughing matter! The question had been nagging at her ever since she’d heard the CODE RED. She’d been afraid that her dad was dead.

“I am,” Dog began, something about the question seeming to untwist his wits. “But for me, be’n a Bower’s just a title. Since Clubs was ordered up, I’ll work with them for a while.”

“The same-colored Jacks can be both suits,” Will expounded.

“Well, only if their suit-color was ordered trump,” Bird tweaked. A crease fell between her brows: she was thinking heavily.

“But you’re a Spade,” Mily said.

Dog shrugged. “Well, I know I look the same, but tech’neckly, right now I’m a Club.”

“Why?” Mily asked.

“That’s the way it works,” Dog answered. “Some of us of’got to be ready to cross the line and work together sometimes. That keeps things fair, and keeps things work’n right.”

“Oh.” Mily wasn’t sure whether she got it or not.

“Clubs won the election last year, remember, Mil?” Will said. “Remember how we all got our own pretend-ballots at school last year? Remember circling a suit and sealing it in an envelope before you dropped it in the big fishbowl?”

Mily did remember, vividly. “I circled Hearts.” She glanced at her mom, who was suddenly smiling.

“Well, in the real election, Clubs got circled the most,” Will said, sounding concluded.

“So you didn’t switch forever?” Mily asked Dog.

“Nope! Not unless Clubs wins every election from here on out. That’s really unlikely. Eventually, I’ll go back to be’n a Spade.”

“So if you’d picked a different suit to be - ” Mily spat, scalding fury making her voice sound all raspy. “If you were a red one - like Mom - then we wouldn’t of had to leave!”

“Well, it’s not really that simple...” Dog said, scratching his head.

“Your dad has a really important job,” said Bird.

“But so do you! You’re Principal!”

“It’s not a contest, sweetie. It’s about safety. It’s better for us all to stay together.”

“Well I don’t want to be near you!” Mily screamed. She stood. Whirled around. Wanted to run away, but couldn’t remember which way the stupid door was. “ANY of you!” Her breaths were too fast - her head spun. Her eyes found the door, a bolt-heavy slider at the end of their railcar-turned-homestead. Her feet stomped towards it. “I NEVER WANT TO SEE ANY OF YOU EVER AGAIN!”

Mily knew her parents and Will would run after her, but she was by far the fastest of all of them. She shoved door sideways on its track and climbed down narrow iron steps to a brick-and-limestone paved platform. Sped down a double-line of railcar houses and came to a T at the end of the path - turned left - and took off racing into Lockdown, booking it faster than Mily’d ever run in all her life.

✦

A lot like her dad Dog, Mily liked to get lost. There was no better Sense of adventure than when she went wandering off, on, over, into and through, to wherever the wandering led her, to Something at the End.

Lockdown was starting to look like a maze. Mily wondered if she would ever end up wandering to the end of it.

Knees high, arms pumping, Mily bounded on her toes - Her hands were open and relaxed, not balled into fists, which kept her shoulders from tensing up and killing her momentum - She already far away from where she’d started, lamps peripherally whipping past - Each breath entered through her nose and exited out her mouth, in time with each stride. She left the trains behind - Her eyes went ahead of her and saw she was approaching a bend - Lungs burning, she willed herself faster, faster, faster!

Mily had no idea how long she ran. It felt like a long time.

She didn’t want to give her family any chance to turn on the juice and catch up to her, so she steered left for the upteenth time on her next stride -

Mily barrelled around the bend, barely observing it when a cold and sudden darkness overtook the tunnel because of a bright neon-orange sign that said -

Authorized Persons Only

DO NOT ENTER

She stutter-stopped, skidded off-balance, and crashed forward into the chipping particle-board, suspended by a big rusty chain bolted into mortared brick pillars on either side. The orange sign cracked down the middle on-impact: she braced her hands frontways, catching her fall on hard solid ground - just as two ends of a chain fell and clanked! against the cement floor.

Mily’s wrists took the brunt of the trip, jarring her forearms. It hurt. A lot. She grit her teeth and bit tears back, blinking through the throbbing pain. It was dark. With panic-stricken eyes, she searched wildly round till they landed on what was now an in-half warning sign -

Authorized Per / sons Only

DO NOT I / ΞNTER

Picking herself up, Mily looked back the way she’d come. That way, the long limestone shaft looked scary-similar to every one she remembered having sprinted through...

She looked the other way. The path ahead resembled none of the places she’d been in any way, and it was very gradually sloping downward...

Had she known she was running downhill? She couldn’t remember when/if she’d noticed the incline at all.

Mily stepped over the two ends of particle-board and chains and kept walking. She wondered how long she could keep heading deeper in, and decided to find out if that trickle-and-wooshing sound - like the sound of water running - stemmed from somewhere deeper down...

In fact... Huh.

Mily’s everpresently-humming clairs were all hush.

The realization made Mily afraid. Which was strange, because she had never thought about losing the bugs in her brain; she had only just started to get used to them.

She stopped running. It was very dark, but she could still see okay. She must’of sometime left all the lined brick and smoothed limestone behind. When, she hadn’t a clue. The cave Mily stood in now was genuine, untouched, low-ceilinged and muddy, a mishapen, bouldering sweep into a deep and dark somewhere.

Ooh-no.

Mily had just wanted to get away. She hadn’t meant to get someplace where they might not find her, not really. Suddenly there was too much pressure in her head, and it was building, fueled by questions that she still didn’t have any answers to, but the loudest pounded against her skull and radiated through her chest till she could hardly stand it -

Why am I not a Wood?

Mily shut her mind up and was running again - She forgot all about her aching wrists and the darkness, sprinting onward - Hopping rocks and rubble that appeared in her path, dodging from one point to next on her toes - Never thinking twice about being quiet but quite possibly streaking in silence -

If that were possible, Mily wouldn’of noticed - She sped with the swift-footedness of a doe, wide-eyed, wandering deep as the dusk would take her without worry, without ever looking back once.

Then Mily slipped, and fell in a blackhole.

She went gliding, slipping and sliding, and saw a brightness up ahead - Getting bigger, growing brighter! Whiteness flooded with full-flush force -Woah!

There, at the very end of the blackhole, was Something.

✦

Mildred was frigid - Sweat of her brow condensed on her lashes, became hoarfrost - It was hard to see through pine-needly eyes - She felt off-balance.

Will took Mily’s hand. She couldn’t see, but she knew it was him by the familiar weight of his grasp. It was the grip Will had when he meant to take her somewhere.

Mily gave Will’s hand a firm squeeze. She held on tight. Then leaning into her big brother’s steps, she helped Will lead her across the slippery crest of Devil’s Slide.

Something didn’t sit right; her head bent to block an icy wind sweeping down the slope of the dune. There was plenty of room for the two of them to walk - but the sun must’of been hot in the afternoon because sand and snow had frozen slick.

Still quite unable to see well, Mily watched her feet.

“Prob’ly twenty more steps Mily,” Will called through the wind.

One of Dog’s heavy-knit turquoise winter-hats he got from ERATHEntact was pulled snug around Mily’s ears - But she could hear well-near everything, or close to that. Mily matched her footfalls two-ticks behind Will’s guide-steps, following his rhythm till she fell into the flow his walk.

Something still sat wrong; her shoulders tensed and Mily was almost capsized by a shock of wind. She latched onto Will’s right arm to keep from toppling sideways and almost took them both down.

“Almost there,” Will said, turning their momentum into an assured step forward. “Promise. Just a few more steps.”

Mily’s eyes were on thin ice - Corneas frozen-over completely.

“March blizzard,” he hollared, squeezing and releasing her hand. “Who’d of thought that! Good job, Mil, you did it. Now we just gotta ride down, and we’re homefree!”

Mily blinked but it did little to unskew her worldview. She recognized the scrape of toboggan rungs across the snow and reflexively stuck her hands out to receive the frayed, braided twine reigns. Will said he would sled first and that she should follow after him.

“Just aim for the water, Mil, and you’ll get where you need to.”

Will was gone. Mily overcame her snowblindness and made sure to watch where he went.

The Great Lake was frozen solid - Mily saw straight across it, past the wide mouth where Devil’s Slide spilled out, to the outward-facing wave of a stories-tall shelf ice wall which bordered the whole shore, to the caps of skyscrapers entrapped just above the high-water-mark of the sunken, Windy City.

Mily got seated on her sled, digging her heels deep into the snow to keep from slipping. Her gaze traced and retraced Will’s sledline.

She was good at drawing lines in her mind and thought she spotted a cut-point where the shallow sandhills dipped lower just a few degrees to the right of Will’s trail... She would need to lean - hard - to make such a sharp curve... But Mily thought if she did she’d make it all the was to where Will was, for sure.

It would take a fair bit of luck too though.

Mily gripped the braided reigns and settled into her seat - Ready or not - dug in her heels and toes - here I! - and shoved with all her might -

Launched.

She was racing, embracing the slicing wind, sleighing straight for the water. It was the fastest Mily had ever felt - But she wasn’t flying - She held her center, entering a new plane - She was almost halfway the end of the path Will’d made, leaning right just slightly - Okay!

She soared over the edge of the dunegrass and banked left with all her might.

Reins wrapped tight in her fist, Mily bent forward till her nose touched her knee; all her weight was steeled in the right-angle of her elbow and ankle, a shifting center aligned with the inner toboggan rung. She fought the urge to brace and got a floating feeling that meant she was about to flip the sled -

Mily made the cut.

{ Emjay!

She was gliding!

A bullet on the beach, outsprinting the wind, it was blinding!

With that bewildering speed, Mily’s toboggan zipped across what had appeared to be a very broad swath of sand from ontop of the dune - Already, she was almost out of land - Too far! Too fast!

Mily’s sled reached the edge of the beach -

Slid up the shelf of ice and sand -

Topped the frozen wave and -

Barrelled over the ledge -

Where she was thrust into nothing -

Nothing but air and -

Wide Open Water!

Mily tried to brake, but it was too late. She plummeted, reigns twisting in her vicegrips.

Just the instant before she went under the wake, Mily saw it -

There, at the very end of Devil’s Slide, was Something.

* * * * *

/ n o t a r e

“What Happened at the Front Door.” The Magician’s Nephew, by C.S. Lewis, Barnes & Noble Inc. and HarperCollins Publishers, 2009, p. 54. The Chronicles of Narnia.

© Kailey Ann

♥ ♠ ♦ ♣

“And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.”

NIV 1 John 5:6

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

What exactly happened while Mily was underwater, she could never comprehend with a hundred-percent certainty.

When she broke the surface, it was March the Ninth, and the year was Two-Thousand-and-Two. How she knew, Mily never-ever understood. But it was true. She did remember.

Mily remembered Everything.

.

.

.

.

Underwater, there was Song.

The music started the second she saw Something - Mily heard the first notes as the undertow drew her down to the bottom of the lake.

Do-re-mi, do-re-mi

Somersaulting, the riptides yanked her further out.

Far-so-la, fa-sol-la-si

Mily knew how to swim and she tried with all her might, but it took all the breath she had left to curl in her four limbs and slow the topsy-turvy spinning.

Far-sol-re-si

Why is there singing ?

La-si, fa-si, re-mi

Waters shifted and twisted Mily’s head into the sand.

Sol-far-so-re-si

She was either dreaming or dying; Mily’s thoughts were rugged, but her gut said it had to be either-or.

Si-fa-la-mi

She wished it was a dream - anything that meant this wasn’t the way she Went.

Si-la-mi, la-si, la-mi-fa-sol-re-si-do

Help ! !

Do

Dad ! ! E ! ! Will ! !

Do

Anybody ! !

Do

Please Save Me

So-sol-se-re-do

Mildred Junegrass faded.

.

.

.

.

Bird appeared in the Infirmary in a whorl of worry, wildly piloting a scruffed-up wheelchair aimed for Mily’s bedside.

It was lucky they were both in the Recovery Wing because Bird really shouldn’t have been going anywhere - After all, she had just had a baby. Mily tried to sit up straighter, but she just sank squat into the old cot springs and ended up huffing when Bird landed alongside her.

“Are you all right?” Mily’s mom asked, full of foreboding.

“I drowned Mom!” Mily expelled. “They said I did, but I lived!”

“Thank Goodness. Are you hurt?”

“My chin hurts, and my voice does. And I’m really cold but my skin feels like it’s burned.”

Bird gave a tense nod. “You’re still cold Sweetie because you were hypothermic, but it’ll go away soon. Your skin hurts because you got frostnip.”

Mily gulped. “But not frost-bit, right Mom?”

“No, no frostbite. I’m so glad you’re all right.”

Mily tried not to sqirm because it made her skin sting way worse. But her fear of frostbite was longstanding, ever since she’d seen pictures of Uncle Earn’s little toe... She couldn’t get comfy on the lumpy cot and thought about crying anytime the sheets touched her body anywhere. “You promise I don’t have frostbite, Mom?”

“I promise. All your skin is still skin-colored, Doctor Moormen told me so himself.”

“No charcoal toes?”

“None whatsoever. He said he checked twice. I’m sorry it hurts though Sweetie.” Bird sank back into her wheelchair and slouched. Sweat dotted her brow, and Mily thought she looked a little green in the cheeks. The wave of illness lasted only a few seconds before her mom’s braveface was back in place. “We’ll both get better soon. And you can stay with me in my room!”

Mily’s eyes went wide. “With you and the baby?”

“Yes, if you’d like to. I know your little sister would love that.”

Mily beamed and wailed as her lips ripped in a couple of places - Her nerves felt as fragile as perforated trimmings of a wellworn spiral notebook. The salt of her tears stung in the small cracks and wounds.

“I - I - ” Mily sobbed, trying to hold the crying in. “I mi-might cry m-more than my n-new sis-sister does.”

Bird giggled and put a hand on top of hers, which somehow didn’t hurt. “She won’t mind, Silly M - ”

Doctor Moormen materialized from behind a privacy curtain. He wore a long white coat and a stethoscope around neck, and some of his gray, wispy shoulder-length hair was trapped beneath the tubing. He’d brought Mily a sugar-free sucker - She could see its wrapping poking out the top of the doctor’s breast pocket.

“There you are, Wood Women!” Doctor Moormen said when both Bird and Mily had only smiled in response to his presence. He had that effect on people, often setting patients so at ease that they forgot to speak or greet him.

Mily’s brows drew together in the middle. She looked down and caught sight of the waxpaper intake bracelet taped to her wrist:

ID#: 50003024

NAME: EMJAY WOMACK W.Y.

DOB: 1993-07-20

BT: O Negative

That’s how she remembered she was not called ‘Mily’ anymore. She turned the bracelet around so she wouldn’t accidentally see it again.

My name is Emjay.

.

.

.

.

The blackhole Mily had fallen into while sprinting through Lockdown spit her out at the edge of an underground spring. There was a babbling stream which stemmed from cracks and fissures in one side of the cave wall. Water dripped down and ran through narrow gaps in the rocks and pooled near the other end of the cave, where Mily found herself displaced.

It was light enough to see just fine. The light was strange, steady and blue, and she thought for a second that pool itself was glowing, making that cobalt hue.

But then Mily spotted them.

Those tunneling crayfish Eyani had wagered might live this deep underground covered the boulders and slick cragstone from floor to ceiling.

The mud daubers were glowing bright blue.

Mily stood up. She was wet with mud, and a couple of crawdads were latched onto her shoelaces. They had some mighty pincers but looked friendly enough. She attempted to detach one by pulling gently on its hind end, and another reached out and pinched the bent knuckle of her index finger.

Mily giggled. It didn’t hurt one bit.

I guess you can all hang-on if you want.

Her shoes were soaked straight through. She slipped them off and wrung out her socks on the ground. All the mud daubers released her laces as soon as her feet left the soles. The stone floor was spotted and bumpy, but it didn’t pain her feet to walk across it. Leaving her socks and shoes to maybe dry out some, Mily walked a few steps toward the edge of the spring, and the l’il lobsters crawled after her.

The pool was a perfect circle with one massive stalactite suspended above the very center, where a single column of sparkly droplets rained straight into the spring. Rippling rings stretched their circumferences to the pool’s edges. Mily stepped closer so her toes just touched the tiny waves as they splashed against shale and limestone rubble.

Mud daubers piled on top of each other under the surface, each one gleaming very blue, as bright as neon glowsticks, making the pool look like living glass. As she absorbed the stunning sight, Mily hardly noticed the water climb over her ankles, the wake grow wide and uneven, or the waves break in mist which coated her shins.

Like she’d been punched in the gut, Mily became suddenly conscious of the water level rising super fast. She whirled around but couldn’t identify any kind of exit, not even the hole she knew she’d been spit out of. Panic spread like icemelt throughout her whole body. Her gaze followed the ripples and swirls back to the center of the pool, where a whorlpool was forming.

The spring was bubbling right out in the middle.

.

.

.

.

The Maternity Wing was too cold. Mily couldn’t sleep. Bird and baby Novah were both snoring. Novah’s snores sounded more like a soft simmer - the grinding breaths belonged to their mother, resting with her mouth wide-open, propped up by so many pillows.

Ignoring the sting of her frostnip, Mily rolled off her cot. The bed Bird’s nurses moved into the room for Mily to sleep in was way comfier than the one they gave her in the Recovery Wing. But the sheets did nothing for the chill. She was shivering.

But that didn’t matter to Mily. She was having trouble staying away from Novah’s cradle for any great length of time. Minding her mom’s IV, she tip-toed to the edge of her little sister’s tiny bed.

‘Hi, Novie,’ Mily mouthed. Novah was swaddled tight in yellow blankie, but the matching knit hat had fallen off, revealing a headfull of black hair with white-frosted ends. Bird had said it was really uncommon for newborns to have so much hair already. Mily didn’t think it strange - She just thought Novah was beautiful.

Her baby sister didn’t stir. She seemed utterly at ease. Mily was right when she thought she might cry more than the infant did. She had. But watching Novah sleep settled her brain and helped her not think about how much her frostnip hurt.

‘I know you don’t know words yet,’ she went on silently. ‘But I want you to know my real name, okay? My name is Mily. I know you won’t remember, and... and it’s okay for you to say Emjay but - just so you know - I’m really Mily.’

Novah hiccuped and woke herself up. Big brown eyes, still cloudy from birth, which Bird said was normal because most babies couldn’t see well for a while, widened. She watched as spittle dribbled and blew into an impressive bubble and popped. Then Novah blinked and drifted straight back to sleep.

Mily thought maybe her sister did understand what she’d told her.

.

.

.

.

The water had risen to Mily’s knees, and she couldn’t see the floor anymore. She was afraid to move - The bubbling water was frothing and tugging, and a few times the current nearly knocked her off her feet.

Mily stood firm. Blue-lit mud daubers spun in spiraling arms, shooting stars on the water. She high-knee marched backwards until she hit a big rock and slipped a few times trying to clamber on top of it.

{ Emjay

{ Come in Emjay

{ Can you hear me?

E! E! I can hear you! Mily clung to her rock, which might’of been a stalagmite that got its top lobbed off at some point - it was awfully steep. Eyani! Can you hear me?

{ Yes! Yes!

{ I hear you too!

{ What is your location?

No idea, Mily thought back, watching the churning springwater prowl steadily higher. But I think I’m in trouble.

As quick as the thought sent, the water’s rise began to slow down. Mily expelled the air in her lungs and stared at the bubbling center of the spring - and held back a scream.

Something’s in the water!

{ Water?

{ Where?

{ How do we find you?

No time to explain!

Whatever was in there seemed to be letting the water out of the cavern. Away it all drained faster than it had risen in the first place, funneling round and round, dragging hundreds of mud daubers down what looked like the opening of a very large pipe.

Whatever it was, it was huge.

Mily remembered thinking of snakes during the truckride to Dune Park Waystation and felt punched in the gut again. It knocked the wind right out of her.

.

.

.

.

The digital clock above Bird’s Maternity room door said 4:32.

Mily still hadn’t been to sleep. She had been chugging dixiecups of water one right after the next, and everytime she thought about crawling back onto her cot, she had to use the bathroom and wound up wide-awake all over again.

Night sky outside the window was navy, but the horizon line glowed brightest blue. Snow was still falling, but the blizzard had passed. The sun would be rising soon.

Besides the frequency of Mily’s calls-of-nature, sleep evaded her because of the flashbacks. When she closed her eyes, she was back There.

She didn’t want to be but - try as she might - Mily kept going back.

.

.

.

.

Out of the spring rose what looked like two massive tree branches made of solid silver. They had perfect symmetry, every bend and twist of their metal mirroring their opposite. Reflected in the water, the boughs trembled and shimmered till the whole pool turned to quicksilver.

Mily was stunned. Was it magic?

She peered through the sterling backscatter underneath the branches and determined it must be some sort of magic or miracle.

Mily was struck dumb. A pair of gold eyes were watching.

* * * * *

/ n o t a r e

Excerpt from the New Testament - 1 John 5:6 (NIV)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%205%3A6&version=NIV

© Kailey Ann

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

“While Liberty’s bright natal star

Shines twinkling on her own domain.”

The Hoosier’s Nest

♥ ♠ ♦ ♣

Mily was lost in time.

Each and every pipt and faced person in Lockdown was looking out for the Million-Dollar-Daughter. The lost child belonged to the family of the Left Bower, and the fact made this search and rescue a top priority. Four suited Aces stationed teams at key places where the kid was bound to be located. Keepers worked in pairs on watch-duty around the clock, sweeping the whole compound.

It was all talk.

Prudences befell the undground. There wasn’t a person there who wasn’t aware of the missing minor in question, and the disappearance was clearly top-of-mind. People exchanged worries and hopes of a sure and safe return, for the family. In stead of taking to the tunnels with flashlights and ropes, most only turned to their neighbors and asked whether they had heard if there was any news.

Mily’s name was not disclosed so hardly anyone knew it. Politeness stole their tongues. It would have hardly been appropriate to call attention to certain things in light of the current circumstances. They all agreed that the child’s life was priceless, no matter their worth in rumors.

After the first day, her whereabouts became harder to discuss. Most fokes were new to the place and new to each other, so over-minded in the way they spoke to one another about the girl who got lost in the Spokes. ‘Any word?’ / ‘Any sign?’ / ‘Any progress?’ took the place of her name in their smalltalk. Nobody wanted to offend, but after twenty-four hours a lot more doubted the Search was still ‘and rescue.’

After the second day, her story had lost touch with what was really going on. Mily was fine and what was more, she was going to be - It’s just that she still had to do Something.

In the meantime, she heard every type of talking there was to be had in Lockdown. Listening inside long forgotten access tunnels running underneath loading decks in the Spokes, Mily overheard the garbled gist.

That’s how the tall-tales of the Millennial started.

Some people were awful cruel, so Mily did her best to tune those out; the assaults on her parents’ character were hardest to overlook, as if it’d been their fault that their daughter decided to run away and stay lost. She shook her head, remembering what the Deer Serpent said:

Pay Little Mind For What They Might Say

Mily knew the words were wise because they worked when she applied them in practice. The only way to win this trick was with mind over matter. She reminded herself as much while climbing down a mossy ladder, following directions given to her back in the cavern:

You Must Go Your Own Way

It was strange, but Mily knew where she was heading even though she’d never been there. She supposed that must be the Creature’s magic at work. Discerning eyes found passages worth taking, railroads hidden in rubble and entryways left unrecollected in newer maps.

Keepers didn’t bother with the old routes. That was partway how Mily knew she was on the right tracks; she was looking for a place that had been unseen for many many years.

The Twins knew she was alright, but their word wasn’t much in the face of such worry. When Esa asked why they weren’t allowed to tell anyone their cousin’s name, Dog, Bird, Aunt Elaeagus, and Uncle Earn decided it was time for the kids to know the Whole Truth of What Happened.

She plugged her nose from time to time while passing through the maze of an old wastewater system. It had long been dried up, but some of the earth still stunk. She’d claimed the abandoned water treatment office for the evening and found someone’s minifridge still plugged-in and running, stocked with canned drinks and preserved snackgoods.

Mily ate next to nothing but chocolate pudding that night.

The Truth of What Happened didn’t feel like the whole story. Will and the Twins may’of been satisfied by their parents’ telling, but Mily just wasn’t. When she woke on the third day of being Missing, she got the Sense that everything was going to come together here real-soon.

But she must do her best to be there by Noon.

First she dusted herself off and stretched out the pains of sleeping on the floor. Then she opened the office door and continued on with her exploration of Lockdown’s patchwork underground.

{ Please say today’s the day

Today is the day! Mily promised E. She was quite far along already when she spotted another ladder and felt her heart miss a beat. Almost made it, I can tell!

{ Emjay -

You swore!

{ Okay-okay

Three entire days - That was what they’d agreed, and Mily didn’t intend to go back on their deal. If she couldn’t get to the place she intended by then, she would give up the search and tell the Twins how to find her.

Mily was sure there would be a real shock when she was finally discovered. From all the talk, it seemed like her still being unfound made the people in charge look bad; fears of cracks in the halls and bottomless pits in off-limits places fell listlessly from families’ lips. Mily disliked being a source of so much stress, but she was thumbing the pulse of a discovery that was much more important.

Testing the ladder by pressing her palms to the lowermost rung, Mily felt sure this was the right way to go. Stepping and reaching, she made it halfway up and held on tight while she looked around. Giant metal rings fixed together with slabs of concrete ran forwards and backwards into darkness.

“We sprung a leak somewhere and don’t know where it might be,” Mily heard somebody say up above, where an old steel hatch was propped open, likely left ajar after someone was done working a long time ago.

I know where, Mily told the air. The Aces kept sending Keepers to look in all the wrong places, which couldn’t be helped since the place they were looking for wasn’t recorded and was frankly quite hard to find. It sure seemed like the flashfloods rose from some lower level because water was gushing up from the grates under trains in half of the main Spokes... but she knew that wasn’t the case.

Kind of like how she had mistaken the Deer Serpent’s antlers for branches, Mily knew things weren’t always what they seemed at first glance. It was a quick way for her to have learned that life lesson.

At the top of the ladder, Mily paused to get her bearings. The stench from some tunnels was starting to affect her breathing. It wasn’t just that it smelled bad - the scent was sharp metallic. It stuck to her nosehairs and dried the skin out inside, leaving her follicles feeling stung.

One at a time, Mily wiped her hands on her dusty pant-pockets and finished the climb. Her head popped out of the open utility hole and found the air somewhat more pleasant. This tunnel was so low-ceilinged that she would have to duck while she walked. Mily clapped once and heard the twack! echo much further than she’d imagined it would. But that was alright. Butterflies twittered in her stomach. She was positive that this was perhaps the last leg.

The Creature’d said all she had to do was trust her gut - At least, that’s what Mily thought was meant by the phrasing:

Wisdom Will Full Fill Your Understanding

Mily passed another utility hole in the floor, though this one’s cover was sealed shut. She kept walking a few paces, but something made her hesitate. Stepping back towards the metal door, she took a good look at its spinner knob handle.

The hole-cover diameter was a few inches wider than her shoulders. It appeared to be older than the one she’d crawled out of a ways back - It was tinted seafoam green, the same color as Lady Liberty, which told Mily it must be made of copper. Righty-tighty-Lefty-loosey. Fixing both hands to the knob, she gave it a firm shove counter-clockwise, but the hatch wouldn’t budge.

Mily shook out her fingers and refastened her grip, using her thighs to put her weight behind the next push. This has got to be it, Something told her. It was a fluttering in her gut, the feeling she’d decided to trust. It had gotten her this far, after all.

There was no way of knowing for sure, but Mily felt the time running short.

Now or never.

She shoved with all her might - And the wheel began to turn.

It was slow-going. Mily had to take a break twice to let the blood back into her hands. But each time she started again, it spun a little easier. She made three full circles before hearing a hiss which meant the seal had been broken.

A sulfuric smell flooded the tunnel. Mily’s head spun. She pulled her shirt collar over her nose and pressed forward hard as she could - And the latch stopped.

Sweat dripped down her forehead. Her shoulders ached. Mily was too young to have thought about rehydrating much the night before. Her vision was curvy, and she suddenly wished she’d had something to eat besides all that chocolate pudding.

After another deep breath, she grabbed the handle like a steering wheel at Ten and Two and lifted the lid wide on its hinge. Once it was open, Mily had to retreat a ways to keep from breathing in the haze of rotten-eggs. She sat down and crossed her legs, letting her wrists rest on her knees. Eyani, Mily pinged when she’d started to catch her breath.

{ Yep?

If you don’t hear from me -

{ Mily!

Just listen! If you don’t hear from me in six minutes, send help to the Old Spokes.

{ You’re in the bunkers?

Yep.

{ But I thought those were underwater?

Maybe they were. Mily stood up and stretched. The odor had settled throughout the passage, but it wasn’t getting any worse. She took a few steps back to the open hatch and peered into a deep dark gloom. They might flood again soon if I don’t hurry.

There was a long pause in which Eyani didn’t respond. Mily waited, wanting him to confirm he understood her instructions before she descended. In the time it took for her cousin to gather his thoughts, she saw that the ladder hung down further than she could see. And its rungs were all rusted.

E? Mily called after a while.

{ You better’of got a good reason for doing this

I do.

{ Then you got six minutes

{ Better get going

On my way. Wish me luck.

{ I’m wishing alright

Sure to test each rung with the ball of her foot before taking it, Mily headed down with her eyes Wide Open. There was no light at all to see by, but she could anyway. Something about her encounter with the Creature linked all her greater Senses together. It was the Silence of the chute which would have stirred a sense of unease if she hadn’t had a goal in mind to hold her focus.

A whispered word could’of shattered the stillness. But it wasn’t difficult to count the seconds passing; Mily set a steady pace, and her heart beat in-time. Step by step, Mily sank lower into the long forgotten reaches of Lockdown.

It was the sort of pitch blackness that inspired fear - A darkness so complete that time and space seemed more theory than real. Despite the swallowing chasm spanning far-far away towards a bottom she really hoped was there, Mily kept her cool. It did no good to be afraid when something much worse was on its way if she didn’t make it to the Place in time to fulfill the Deer Serpent’s task.

Mily tried her best not to think about falling into that black oblivion. Staring below showed nothing but clandestine murk bereft of brightness. Would anyone ever find her if she slipped, or would she be lost to the obsidian void for the rest of her days on planet Erath?

Stop that, Mily ordered. What good did it do to dwell on What-Ifs? She needed to keep her head - Lowering herself into this dense and precarious channel of nothingness was enough to overrule her Sense. Mily took a beat and fixed her eyes on the pinhole of light now very high overhead. She had to’of been at this for three minutes or more already.

Give me two more minutes, E.

{ Emjay that’s not the deal

Eyani Please.

Eyani didn’t send word, but Mily heard a { pop } that gave off the same disgruntled tone as a scoff. Mmph, she returned without meaning to. Her cousin wasn’t giving her the confidence she wanted, but she understood that this was the last time she should try his patience. Everybody was beyond worried...

Oh well most of them think I’m a lost cause already anyway.

Mily ventured further inward.

The ladder was sturdy. She needn’t have worried about the rust, as the descent was smooth all the way down to rock bottom.

I made it. Feet on solid ground again, Mily took stock - The copper piping didn’t extend to touch the bedrock, unlike the iron ladder bolted into the floor. There was just enough room to duck under the edge of the chute to see what was in store for her beyond it.

Pressing her right cheek and chest flat to the earth, Mily peered into the room -

E um - Eyani yew - you oughta ferget what I - forget the extra minutes E - I...

Her mind rambled with panic. It barely registered the returned radio-silence.

I mean it - E! Send some - send somebody to come - tell em ta take the elev - elevator down to Subway One-One-One and then fol - follow the railroad tunnel to Stop Forty-Two - part of it is uh busted so tell em they have to walk - RUN - tell em they have to run till they see a big CROSSING sign - thers a hole um no wait - was that be...fore or af...ter the unlocked door that says ACE NO FACE on it...?

Mily was still pressed flat to the earth, her heart thumping in her throat. Every nerve was on high-alert. What she was seeing made no sense - She’d never seen anything like it.

It was a boneyard. Fishes, rodents, persons. Mily saw some of every single kind of skeleton that ever lived it seemed like. There was even a mammoth. Its tusks were huge, each one long as three of her wing-spans put together. And there was writing on the wall, written in rusty red ink, which made her think gruesomely - Is it blood?

She would have to crawl out if she wanted to see more, but Fear locked her bent arms and legs to the uneven floor. Her eyes darted between cracked skulls and splintered femurs and fragmented ribcages. If not for the fact that not one bone-being rose from the dead since her eyes found this feast for time, Mily might have stayed frozen there forever.

But nothing did. Not one finger or toe so much as twitched. The graveyard was utterly unmoved by her presence.

Okay. Okay. I can do this. It’s just bones. Like at the History Museum. Just like the dinosaurs. You like those. This is the same. I can do this. Be brave. I promised I would.

Wits Will Not Stray Far From Faith

Summon Your Fates

Mily squeezed her eyes shut and rolled out from under the utility chute.

She squinted to peek and was dumbfounded. What the Creature’d said was Truth. Oggling at the ceiling, an open-mouthed grin filled her cheeks. Wits blew through her head and chest with a gust of recognition -

Guts took Mily to just the Place she’d been looking for.

* * * * *

/ n o t a r e

Finley, John. The Hoosier’s Nest: And Other Poems. United States, Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, 1866.

© Kailey Ann

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

“Regularity should be observed in dealing, and no party should receive from the dealer, in any round, more than the number of cards given to the eldest hand.”

The American Hoyle

♥ ♠ ♦ ♣

What might life’of been like if none of it had ever happened?

Emjay Womack Wood-Yoder could not imagine. They could only play Pretend.

“Pick it up,” Will ordered Dog.

Dog chuckled. “Clubs it is,” he said, taking the King into his hand and replacing it with something unknown, downturned on top of the kitty. Dog set the stack to the side, ready now for the first round to start.

Emjay met their dad’s gaze with raised eyebrows. “I lead right?”

Dog nodded. “Left of the dealer leads,” he said with an air of good-natured challenge.

Emjay considered their five-card hand, looking over each one carefully before deciding what to play. It wasn’t a bad deal, not by a longshot. But whatever they led would set the bar for this trick all four that came after it. They knew Will always said to count on your partner to win at least one. A team only needed to take three tricks to score. Emjay bet their brother had at least two in-hand, prob’ly even more, since he’d named trump.

Emjay held back their grin and plucked the Ace of Spades from their hand, placing it upturned in the center of the circle table.

“Your turn, Mom,” Emjay said like it was nothing, hiding the butterflies.

Bird, wearing a perfect euchre face, laid a Ten of Clubs alongside the Ace that was led.

“You have to follow suit,” Emjay reminded her.

“Only if I can follow suit,” their mom said.

Emjay went back to staring at their own hand.

Will played a Queen of Spades and gave Emjay a sideways grin as if to say, Cheer up, this is only the beginning.

Then Dog tossed a King of Spades on the table, and Bird hooted in victory. She gathered the four cards in the middle and pulled them in a single stack to her side of the table.

“Your lead,” Will told their mother.

Bird considered her four-card hand with care. Most fokes didn’t dare to look at the cards for so long, preferring to keep the game moving. But this, Emjay knew, was part of Bird’s strategy. She liked to make others sit and simmer while she considered - or at least while she pretended to.

After a few moments, Bird led with a Queen of Hearts.

“Sorry Mom,” Will said, following up with a Nine of Clubs.

Dog exhaled long and slow out his nose. “Tick-for-tack,” he sighed in a resigned way, spinning a Ten of Hearts into play.

Emjay threw an Ace of Hearts on the table too hard, and it sailed across the tabletop and fell into Will’s lap. He picked it up and pulled the rest of the cards toward him. Without a moment’s hesitation, he drew a card from his hand and slapped it on the woodgrain.

The Jack of Clubs.

“Knew ya had to have the Right,” Dog said, shaking his head.

Emjay grinned over the table at Will, and he smirked back - Their dad tended to get real competitive, especially when it was something silly, like a card game. Out of Dog’s hand came the card he’d been made to pick up at the start the round: He laid a King of Clubs alongside the Bower and waited for Emjay to play next.

Frowning, they set the card down nice and easy this time: an Ace of Clubs.

“Dealt our daughter three Aces, Dog,” Bird said over her hand.

“Lotta good they did me.” Emjay meant to sound light-hearted, but they were just about as competitive as their father was.

Bird threw off-suit with a Nine of Diamonds.

Emjay hadn’t been playing euchre long, but they’d watched others at it for as long as they could remember. While Will pulled their second-won trick to the side, Emjay thumbed their pocket to fiddle with the silver-starfish shooter stashed there.

A King of Diamonds was led.

Dog went with a Jack of Diamonds next. “Be a different story if we’d called it Red,” he said, smirking at Bird over the one card left in-hand.

Emjay played a Ten of Diamonds, hoping Bird couldn’t top a King.

She could.

“I’ll take that!” Bird declared, putting an Ace of Diamonds face-up for half-a-second before sweeping the trick beside the first one she’d won. Then she led a Jack of Hearts.

Will followed-suit with the King. Dog gave his son a look, and then without breaking eye-contact, played a Queen of Clubs.

“I think that’s a Euchre,” Dog bragged.

“Fat chance!” Emjay laughed. All three players turned and stared wide-eyed as Emjay flourished a Jack of Spades.

“Stopper!” Will cheered. He pushed the trick to his sibling, who gathered it up, cheeks a little pink with pride at the surprise win. It was Emjay’s favorite card of them all, even if it was only the Left - they didn’t care. Something about the Jack of Spades helped Emjay find their strength.

“I was saving it,” they said in a self-satisfied way.

“Good choice,” Bird praised. “Okay! Your turn to deal Mily.”

Everyone stared hard at Bird except for Emjay, who buried their face in their lap. Their mom realized her mistake at once and was all-apology.

“Honey I - I’m so sorry I - ”

“It’s okay Mom,” Emjay said. Even though it hurt, it also intensified the self-satisfied feeling brought on by the appearance of the Left Bower. No matter what anybody said, everyone thought of Emjay as the same person they’d always known. It was a huge comfort to know that for sure.

Besides - Emjay was done running. They would never put their parents through that worry ever ever again, they’d promised.

To break the awkward silence that followed, Will added a point to the scorecards.

♣

Emjay shuffled the twenty-four card deck. Once they felt it was mixed-up enough, they slid it to the right and offered it to Dog to cut if he wanted.

He tapped the top card with two fingers, which Emjay knew was a way of saying, Pass.

Three-then-two, they thought to jog their reflexes, doling out the cards in two rounds going clockwise: Three to Mom, two to Will, three to Dad, two to Me - Two to Mom, three to Will, two to Dad, three to Me.

Bird, Will, and Dog gathered the cards they were dealt and fanned them out. Emjay turned the top card of what was leftover face-up before looking at their own hand.

A Nine of Spades was optioned.

Bird passed fast. Will was just as quick, knocking on the table, staring hard at his hand. Dog pondered the Nine for a while, looking back and forth between his cards and the kitty like he was at an impasse. “Pick it up,” he said, sounding confident in whatever it was he’d been considering.

Emjay fought grinding their teeth. I wanted to call it, they thought, staring at a Jack of Clubs in their hand, impressed that they’d somehow landed the Left Bower again. Picking up the Nine of Spades, Emjay traded it with a Nine of Clubs, hiding the card with their palm and leaving it facedown on the pile so no one could see.

“Your lead Mom,” Emjay said, oozing encouragement so Bird would know she was forgiven for dropping the Dead Name.

Bird’s eyes were shiny when she smiled. She forewent her usual time-consuming consideration and led with a Nine of Diamonds.

Emjay thought it was odd to lead with such a weak card, but Bird and Dog had played euchre forever so, Emjay let it go. Will made a tut-tut with his tongue and responded with an Ace of Spades.

“Alright,” Dog raved, casting his Ace of Diamonds into the mix.

Emjay had no choice but to follow-suit with a King. Will took the trick grinning and played an Ace of Hearts to start the next bid.

“Sorry bout’cha!” Dog commented while laying a Ten of Spades beside the Ace.

Emjay had to follow-suit again and gave up another King - Hearts this time. Bird returned to stalling, looking at her cards so long that Dog, her own partner, coughed as if to remind her, Trick’s mine already. Bird was a lover of drama. She rolled her eyes and, oh-so-slowly, scooted a Ten of Diamonds out to the center.

Dog led with the Right Bower.

Deciding to try a trick out of Bird’s book, Emjay held their hand very close to their eyes and considered all three cards carefully, letting it go on quite a long time. Will was the one to interrupt the charade this time.

“Just play your lowest card,” he said. “Everyone knows you can’t top that Jack.”

“I know how to play,” Emjay snarked back. “I was just deciding what to get rid of.”

Will made a face like they were a total idiot.

“What!” Emjay exclaimed, hurrying to play the Nine of Spades in their hand.

“No table-talk, remember?” Bird giggled, dishing out a King of Spades.

Then Emjay got it. Delaying that particular play had basically told everybody that their whole hand was Spades. Heat crawled up Emjay’s neck to their cheeks as Will tossed out a Ten of Hearts and fixed his sister with forewarning stare. Be smart, it seemed to say - Quite a tone-shift from the last bid, when he’d been totally forgiving of Emjay’s tenderfooted euchre play.

Dog started the next bid with a King of Clubs. Emjay smirked, plucking the trump Queen from their hand and sliding it out to meet the King with their index finger. Evidently, Bird had to play what was led, so out came a Queen of Clubs - and Will, looking a little less stressed, went with a Jack of Hearts.

Sparing Will the narrow-eyed look they wanted to shoot back, Emjay turned to Dog instead and said, “Two tricks each. My lead?”

“You bet,” Dog said with a twinkle in his eye that told Emjay he found their brother’s ruffled feathers as funny as the kids had found his.

“You asked for it,” Emjay said, and with a flourish exactly like the previous hand, presented the Jack of Clubs for all to see.

Will’s smile grew wider than ever. “Okay, okay, my bad Emjay. I won’t doubt you again! You euchred’m!”

Bird, Will, and Dog threw their last cards at Bird without giving Emjay enough time to see what they were. It didn’t matter - the Left Bower was the strongest card left in the round, and they all knew it.

While their mother shuffled the deck, Will added two more points to his and Emjay’s scorecards.

The game went on for quite a few rounds, and Dog and Bird did gain some ground. The kids’ and parents’ teams were neck-and-neck, both sides having found their way to six - Each just four points off from and winning.

“Loner Range,” Dog said when he took three out of five tricks to tie the game.

♣ ♣ ♦ ♦

♣ ♣ ♦ ♦

♣ ♣ ♦ ♦

It was Will’s turn to deal. He clucked his tongue and shuffled the cards bridge-style. He pointed his eyes at the ceiling, tapping the cards even and sharing them in the usual pattern, clockwise three-then-two. When all four players had five cards each, Emjay scooped their hand up and absorbed the hand -

It was all Nines and Tens.

Emjay peeked at the expressions of the other three, but their faces gave nothing away. Fighting the urge to sight-see, their eyes travelled to the upturned card: It was a Jack of Diamonds.

No way, Emjay thought, declaring, “Farmer’s hand!” before their dad had said whether he wanted Will to pick up the Jack or passed.

“You’re kidding,” Bird breathed.

“I’m not,” Emjay pressed. Fanning the cards wide, Emjay laid the hand down flat so their family could see the truth.

“Well I’ll be darn’d,” Dog said.

“Cards in,” Will exhaled, tossing his own into the center.

Everyone followed suit, Emjay sliding their hand to the throw-in heap and gathering the rest into a neat pile before pushing them in Dog’s direction.

“I like that rule,” Emjay commented while Dog took to reshuffling the deck.

“That’s a Diana rule,” Dog said, mixing the cards hand-over-hand. “Try call’n that over in Purchase, you’ll be tossed right outta the game.”

“How do you know?” Will asked.

“Your dad was thrown out of a tournament for trying his hoosier tricks,” Bird answered. “Isn’t that right Dog?”

He grinned back in that humbled way that meant Dog had a story on the brain. “We’re not playing that hilljack crap!” He quoted, tone dripping judgment. “This is a one-strike club ya Hoosier, so don’t come back!”

Emjay’s eyes grew. “They really said that to you?”

“Oh yes,” Dog said laughing. “They take their Euchre real serious out West.” Once he’d finished reshuffling, Dog slid the deck his son’s way. Will made a cut four cards from the bottom and slapped the smaller half on top. Then Dog dealt again.

“Well why’d they call you ‘Hoosier’ like that?” Emjay asked.

“Like they were call’n me a name you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“We like to call ourselves Hoosiers here,” Dog said with a shrug. “But someplaces, I guess, hoosier means th’same thing as Redneck.”

“Well that’s mean,” Emjay said. They crossed their arms, not quite sure why it was so bothersome.

“Language is funny,” Bird said forgivingly. “Some words are universal, and some have regional meanings. Hoosier is a term of unity and identity for us. But, people in other places might not know we call ourselves that. It means something else to them.”

Bird always had a way of explaining things that made sense to Emjay. But in this case, they didn’t like understanding.

“So if I call myself a Hoosier someplace else,” Emjay said slowly while Dog dealt. “People won’t know I’m saying I’m from Diana? They’ll just think I’m saying I’m a redneck?”

“Most likely,” their dad said. “But you know what’chya mean, and that’s all that matters. Just don’t call someone else a Hoosier if they’re not from Diana.”

“Well I wouldn’t,” Emjay said indignantly. “Because if they don’t live in Diana, they’re not a Hoosier.”

“Sounds like your definition is clear enough,” Will said, inspecting his hand.

Emjay shrugged. The others were now all looking at their cards, ready to get back to playing the game.

Dog turned over the top card and revealed a Nine of Diamonds.

“Pass,” Emjay said.

A knock from Bird.

“Pick it up,” Will said at once. “I’m going alone.”

Emjay was stunned. “What does that mean?”

“Remember when Dad said Longer Range?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that means if I take all five tricks by myself, we get four points instead of two,” Will explained. “And we win the game.”

“I didn’t know that!”

“That’s a universal rule,” Bird said, wearing a bemused look like maybe she was impressed. “My lead. Let’s see what you’ve got, William.”

“Well what do I do?” Emjay asked before anyone had moved.

“You lay your hand facedown,” Dog said.

“I don’t get to play at all?”

“Not this time,” Will said. “It’s part of the game.”

Emjay felt left out but wanted to see how ‘Going Alone’ went, so they just said, “Okay,” and put their cards facedown on the table like their dad had said to.

Bird led with a Jack of Hearts.

Will smiled sideways so big his right eye squinted. Then he played a Jack of Diamonds.

“Worth a shot,” Dog said to Bird, tossing a King of Spades into the fray.

Will took the trick and then did something strange: He laid all four cards he had left in his hand on the table in one go: A Ten of Diamonds, a Queen of Hearts, a King of Hearts, and an Ace of Hearts.

“You yank’n my chain?” Dog interrogated, grinning greatbig. “Farmer’s hand followed up by go’n alone? What are the chances of that?” His eyes found Bird’s on the last question - both of them seemed to think it was really funny.

“Just have good luck I guess,” Will said.

“So we won?” Emjay asked just as Will moved to make the scorecards say so.

♣ ♣ ♣ ♣

♣ ♣ ♣ ♣

♣ ♣

“We sure did! Want to play again?”

“Actually...”

Emjay and Will turned to look at Bird, who was suddenly pink in the cheeks. Then they swivelled their heads to look at Dog, who was tapping the deck straight even though it was already as square as it could possibly be.

“We have some news to share with you,” Bird went on more evenly. Her face lit up, and she looked back-and-forth between the two kids faces without saying anything else.

Emjay got a funny feeling.

“Good news,” Dog added.

The parents stared at each other, smiling. Will and Emjay met each others’ gazes a few times, appraising the situation while they waited for either Dog or Bird to get on with it.

“What is it?” Emjay finally asked for the two of them.

“Well,” Bird said, taking a deep breath. “Will, Mil - Emjay - you’re going to be Big Siblings soon.”

Emjay met their mom’s eyes and was surprised to see that they were shiny again - but this time it looked like joy.

“You’re having a baby!” Emjay cried.

“Yes!” Bird cheered. She looked relieved by her daughter’s warmth. “I am. Not for a few more months though. Your little sibling still has quite a bit of growing to do.” Bird patted her belly with two hands. “I know there’s been a lot of change lately, but, I hope this is one we can all be excited about.”

“Of course we’re excited Mom!” Will almost shouted. He looked at Emjay, making sure they really felt the same way and, seeing that they did, went on and asked, “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“It’s a girl!” Emjay shouted.

“Well, we don’t know for sure yet,” Bird giggled.

“I do!”

Bird’s mouth squirmed, a question on her lips held back by her very wide smile.

“You think so?” Dog said.

Emjay saw it all flash before their eyes - Novah! She’s coming! She’s coming in March! - A head full of black hair with white-frosted ends, a little girl swaddled tight in a yellow blanket, sleeping through a blizzard while Bird snored in the bed beside her.

“I know so! March Ninth!” Emjay asserted. Their mind was racing with excitement. It wasn’t a dream! It was real! It wasn’t pretend! Little Novie is real!

{ So it’s true!

“Can - Can I tell the twins?” Emjay asked, wanting to talk about it at once since E already heard the news.

Bird was blinking rapidly. “Soon,” she responded, cocking her head to the side like she might be confused. “My...” Bird shared her bewilderment with Dog across the table, who stared back seeming equally at a loss for words. “My due date is March Eleventh.”

“Well she’ll come sooner!” Emjay said.

“Well if the baby’s a girl,” Dog said. “We think her name will be - ”

“Novah!” Emjay revealed. “Her name is Novah!”

“How did you know...” Bird blinked a few more times and then set Will with an asking stare, but her son was clearly just as astonished as Dog and Bird were.

That struck Emjay dumb for a few moments. The big grin froze on their face, gaze hopping from face to face to face... Oh. There was no other way to explain - It was time.

Emjay had to come clean.

“I’ll tell you everything,” they said. “But first you have to answer one question.”

Bird, Dog, and Will exchanged looks. Then all three turned to Emjay with the most bewildered expressions any of them had ever worn. For only a second, Emjay was torn.

Then they took a deep breath.

{ Are you seriously about to -

“What are queeries?”

* * * * *

/ n o t a r e

Dick, W. B. (1874) The American Hoyle; or, Gentleman’s hand-book of games. [New York, Dick & Fitzgerald] [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/05024784/.

© Kailey Ann