rocks: a pathway leading to somewhere inside the plateau—somewhere with light streaming in at the end.
“Is it safe?” I asked the penny. It buzzed once. Yes.
Gulping with my dry throat, I crawled into the crack. It was narrow—so narrow, I had to edge sideways at times, feeling the dust and pebbles scrape off onto my clothes. I edged onward, foot by foot toward the light until I nearly stumbled out into a small, sandy clearing.
“Fancy meeting you here!” said a voice.
I spun around, my hand on my belt, the word Entflammt on my lips. There, sitting on a rock to my left, looking like the world’s scruffiest Harold Lloyd impersonator, was the last person I expected or wanted to see.
“Asa?!” I nearly shouted.
“Sal,” he said, tipping his hat to me. “I was just in the neighborhood and—”
“You son of a bitch!” I shouted. “You left me there!” I grabbed a rock and threw it at him.
“Ow! Stop it!” He put his arm up.
I threw another rock.
“Hey, cut it out!”
“No!” I pelted him again. “You left me there to die!”
“Look,” said Asa. “I’m sorry! It was just getting a little tense back there and I thought—”
“‘Every man for himself!’ is what you thought!” I shouted. “Of all the slimy, spineless… You’re not even good enough to be called a worm, you… worm!”
“I get it, I get it,” he said. “But let me explain…”
“I don’t have time for that,” I said. “I have to get out of here, and that’s what I’m going to do. See you in hell. Never mind—we’re already here! Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Did you still want the water?” he said. And my throat was so hot and dry that I turned to him without thinking. In his hand, miraculously, he held a bag of rations.
“Where did you get that?” I asked. “Did you steal—”
“No, no, no,” Asa said quickly. “That old cowboy, Mr. Jameson, rode out here on a horse in the middle of the night last night and left them here. But these rations have got your name on them.” He rotated the burlap sack and, sure enough, the name SAL WILKERSON was written on it in smudged black charcoal. “I haven’t touched anything inside.”
Mr. Jameson. I remembered his sad, shocked face as they dragged me away, the surge of betrayal I’d felt when he hadn’t stood up for me. And now he was doing his best to make sure I didn’t die out here. Somehow, the world suddenly seemed a little better.
“Well, give it here,” I said, reaching for the bag. “And thank you for not touching anything in it. I at least need to make sure I don’t die of thirst before I either fix everything or find a way out of this desert.”
“There really isn’t one,” Asa said, and his voice sounded so sure, so serious that I looked up at him despite myself. “You’re wasting your time. I promise.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “What all do you know?”
“Look, I wasn’t completely honest with you before… and I don’t know how much I can say now, but—”
Then something about him shifted. Changed before my eyes. The lower half of his face was suddenly, terrifyingly different. His nose was more of a snout, but the end of it was gone, replaced by a sort of dark hole, like a horse’s skull. His teeth were long, black, and needle-sharp, and a snakelike black tongue lolled downward.
My body went cold and stiff, my mind trying its hardest to reject what I was seeing. I stumbled and fell onto my backside, scrambling backward, spluttering.
“What?” Asa asked, his eyes puzzled above the rest of the monstrosity.
I fumbled with my pouches, pulling out a handful of crossroads dirt.
“D-don’t come any closer!” I said. “I’ve got enough pepper here to roast you alive!”
“What do you mean?” he said. “Why are you so scared all of a…?” Asa put a hand to his face; then the human part blushed. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t… quite know what happened there.…”
He moved his hand over his face, and there was a flicker of electricity. Then his face went back to its normal, human shape. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.”
“What… what was…?” I gasped.
“My real face,” Asa sighed. “I…” He choked for a moment, searched for words. “I failed. So it’s harder to maintain the illusion now.”
My back was against the wall. But the crack through which I’d crawled was only a yard away. Slowly, I began