I tried to stop her, tried to cry out, but before I could, she fastened the mask—her mask—over my face. Then, as the wall of dust roared above us, she pulled me to her and held me close. Then the dust swallowed both of us, the grit and wind cutting us, hurting us, peeling the skin off anything not covered. The sky went black. And this time, even with Mama’s mask on, I felt for all the world like I was drowning.
“Sal!” Asa’s human heart pounded; he crouched, powerless with his hands tied to Sal’s rope. “Sal, please!”
But she was gone. As gone as someone could be while still being in front of you. Vomit bubbled up out of her throat.
“Quick!” said Zo. She bent and grabbed Sal’s braids out of the widening puddle and pulled her head up, but she was limp. Zo pulled her away from the puddle, checked her pulse.
“Rain…” Sal said softly. Then she was gone again.
“I need him out of the way,” Zo said.
“If you want to help your friend, don’t try anything funny,” Judith growled. She untied the rope that bound Asa to Sal and held it in her hand, her grip firm. But she needn’t have bothered. Asa couldn’t leave if he wanted to. He was rooted to the spot, watching, worried, and awestruck. Magic practically radiated out from her as she lay on the sand, a strange sort of magic, unelegant, brutal. It was a powerful, unhoned magic that could be anything and everything, good or bad, creative or destructive. He had seen Sal’s magic before, but never had he seen anything like this. And suddenly, irrevocably, he knew that Sal had a part to play in all of this as well. But what it was, he couldn’t say.
“Come on,” said Zo, lifting Sal in her arms. “Let’s find some shelter. I don’t want to travel until she’s awake.”
Then Judith jerked his rope and he started walking.
Shelter ended up being a hollow space in a fencerow covered with a thicket of tumbleweeds. Judith tied Asa to a fence post and laid Sal next to him, her hands also tied to a nearby post.
He crouched next to her silently, pondering, for hours. When she finally opened her eyes again, Asa let out a whooshing breath of relief and said, “Oh, thank goodness! You really had me there for a while!”
“Where are we?” Sal asked groggily, pulling on her rope.
“In a ditch,” Asa whispered. “Judith is asleep just over there. Zo’s keeping watch over us. But never mind that! What was that? What happened to you?”
“The… rain,” Sal said, something like shame rising in her voice. “I see rain sometimes. I’ve seen it since Black Sunday, but this… this was worse than usual. I feel like I’ve been run over by a tractor.”
“I can see why,” Asa said. “You have no idea how much magic you were using. It was like… It was more magic than I’ve seen all at once, maybe ever. What is this… rain you see? What does it mean?”
“Look, I don’t know, okay?” Sal snapped. “It’s been the thorn in my side for a long time, and I really wish I could just make it never happen again. But I can’t. And I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now.”
“All right,” Asa said. “I’m sorry. Forget I said anything. I’m just glad you’re back is all.”
“Thanks,” she said, and he could tell even through her tone that she really meant it.
They sat in silence for a moment; then Sal said, “Are they still taking us north? Still the same way?”
Asa nodded. “In a beeline.”
“Good.” Sal lay back and took a deep breath. “That’s where the penny was pointing. And it’s better to be taken there by them than to blunder our way over alone. For now, anyway.”
She seemed so sure of it, but Asa was anything but sure. A sense of dread was growing inside him and seemed to multiply the closer they got to their destination.
“I have a bad feeling about where we’re going,” Asa heard himself say. “Like it will be the end of me. Maybe it’s… intuition? If I’m human enough to have that yet.”
Sal peered through the tumbleweeds at Judith. She was asleep, snoring gently with that big stick clutched in her hand.
“Did you have this feeling before the duel?” Sal asked.
Asa shook his head. “No, it’s… different somehow. It feels like wherever they’re