Depression over? Has rain come to the Dust Bowl again?”
Asa Skander opened his mouth to speak; then he got a desperate look on his face and clutched his throat. He buckled forward, gagged, and white smoke billowed from his mouth, disappearing into the air.
Fear shot through me. I stood up, knocking over my stool, legs bent, ready to run.
Then Asa Skander coughed a few times, sat up, red-faced and shaking. He regained his composure as well as he could and smiled weakly.
“I… don’t think I can talk about that,” he said. “Something’s… stopping me. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you really here?” I asked when I caught my breath. “Who are you?”
Asa Skander looked at me with those strange yellow eyes.
“I am what I say,” he said. “Just a magician looking for shelter. That’s all. And Mother Morevna has already vetted me for entry. Please, just trust me. I’m not here to cause any trouble.”
I focused on him, on the aura that seemed to gradually lessen the longer I was in the room with him. As strange as he was, as strange as the quarter in my hand was, I realized that there was not a dangerous feeling coming from him. Magician or not, he wasn’t here to hurt us.
“I believe you,” I said. “For now. But I think you know more than you say you do. And I’m going to keep my eye on you.”
Asa Skander smiled.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” he said. “That’s what Mother Morevna said too.” He stood and extended his hand through the bars. “I hope we can be friends someday.”
I took his hand and shook it.
“I hope so too,” I said. Then I put the quarter back in my pocket and slipped out of the jail.
CHAPTER 5
3 MONTHS
AND
27 DAYS
REMAIN.
I was up at six the next morning, long before Mrs. Winthrop arrived with breakfast (honey and biscuits made with fine white flour), dressed and ready, the quarter from Asa in my pocket. And when the clock in the hall struck eight, I ran downstairs, scooted past the empty baptistery tank, and opened the door to the narrow stairway that led up to Mother Morevna’s room in the attic of the church. My hands shook with nerves and black coffee. I took a deep breath and began climbing. Before I could even reach to knock on the door, Mother Morevna’s voice from inside said, “Come in.”
I opened the door, trying hard to seem like the climb hadn’t winded me. The room was wide, and the pitched ceiling rafters hung with dried herbs, some familiar like sage, and some I’d never seen before. A twin-size brass bed lay in the shadows, simple and tightly tucked. Beside it was a bookcase so tall that it required a step stool, and filled with thick leather-bound books, many of them with titles written in a strange, jagged-looking alphabet. Across the room was another small door with a sign labeled ROOF ACCESS.
From a high-backed chair, silhouetted in the multicolored light of the rose window behind her, Mother Morevna sat at a desk with her hands folded, contemplating a stack of papers. I gulped.
“Mother Morevna?” I asked, stopping at the door. “Can I show you something? It’ll only take a second.”
Mother Morevna sighed. “I suppose. What is it, girl?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the quarter. I handed it to her heads side up so she could see the date. “Mr. Skander gave this to me, and I just thought you should see it.” I waited for her reaction, waited for her to tell me that what I’d found was important. That she was wrong and my lessons would begin in earnest immediately.
“Hmmm,” she said instead. “Another of these, eh?”
My heart dropped.
“The guards keep finding them on desert patrols,” she said. “I believe them to be anomalies originating in the real world that exists beyond the desert.”
She handed it back to me, and it sat impotent on my palm, even more worthless than before. Maybe I’d been too quick to jump to conclusions about Asa Skander, I thought. Maybe he really was only what he said. I shook myself mentally.
“Then the real world is still there,” I said.
“Yes,” said Mother Morevna. “The small world of the desert exists separate from it, a bubble of space and time and magic, until the Game ends and we either rejoin the outside world or continue in this one.”
Rejoining the world… that would really be something. But even continuing in this one was better than the alternative. If