He had to tell Astrid. If only to have her walk him through it, make sense of this thing with Orsay. Astrid would analyze it clearly.
But it wasn’t that simple, was it? Astrid wasn’t just his girlfriend. She was the head of the town council. He had to officially report on what he had learned. He was still getting used to that. Astrid wanted laws and systems and logical order. For months Sam had been in charge. He hadn’t wanted to be, but then he was, and he’d accepted it.
And now he was no longer in charge. It was liberating. He told himself that: it was liberating.
But frustrating, too. While Astrid and the rest of the council were busy playing Founding Mothers and Founding Fathers, Zil was running around unopposed.
The thing with Orsay at the beach had shaken him. Was it possible? Was it even slightly possible that Orsay was in contact with the outside world?
Her power—the ability to inhabit other’s dreams—was not in doubt. Sam had once seen her walking through his own dreams. And he had used her to spy on the great enemy, the gaiaphage, back before that monstrous entity had been destroyed.
But this? This claim that she could see the dreams of those outside the FAYZ?
Sam paused in the middle of the plaza and looked around him. He didn’t need the pearly light to know that weeds now choked the formerly neat little green spaces. Glass was everywhere. Windows not broken in battle had been shattered by vandals. Garbage filled the fountain. On this site the coyotes had attacked. On this site Zil had tried to hang Hunter because Hunter was a freak.
The church was half destroyed. The apartment building had burned down. The storefronts and town hall steps were covered with graffiti, some just random, some romantic, most of it messages of hate or rage.
Every window was dark. Every doorway was in shadow. The McDonald’s, once a sort of club run by Albert, was closed up. There was no electricity to play music anymore.
Could it be true? Had Orsay dreamed his mother’s dreams? Had she spoken to Sam? Had she seen something about him that he had failed to see in himself?
Why did that thought cause him such pain?
It was dangerous, Sam realized. If other kids heard Orsay talking that way, what would happen? If it was bothering him this much…
He was going to have to have a talk with Orsay. Tell her to knock it off. Her and that helper of hers. But if he told Astrid, it would all get too big. Right now he could just put a little pressure on Orsay, get her to stop.
He could just imagine what Astrid would do. Make it all about free speech or whatever. Or maybe not, maybe she’d see the threat, too, but Astrid was better with theories than she was with just walking up to people and telling them to stop.
In one corner of the plaza were the graves. The makeshift markers—wooden crosses, one inept attempt at a Star of David, a few just boards shoved upright into the dirt. Someone had knocked most of the headstones over and no one had yet had time to put them back.
Sam hated going there. Every kid buried in that ground—and there were many—was a personal failure. Someone he had not kept alive.
His feet stepped onto soft earth. He frowned. Why would there be dirt clods?
Sam raised his left hand over his head. A ball of light formed in his palm. It was a greenish light that darkened shadows. But he could see that the ground was disturbed. Dirt everywhere, not piled up, more like clods and shovels full had been thrown.
In the center, a hole. Sam brightened the light and held his hand over the hole. He peered down inside, ready to strike if something attacked. His heart was hammering in his chest.
Movement!
Sam leaped back and fired a beam of light down into the hole. The light made no sound, but the dirt hissed and popped as it melted into glass.
“No!” he cried.
He tripped, fell on his rear in the dirt, and already he knew he’d made a mistake. He’d seen something move, and when he fired the searing light he’d seen what it was.
He crawled back to the edge of the hole. He looked over the edge, illuminating the scene with one cautious hand.
The little girl looked up at him, terrified. Her hair was dirty. Her clothes were muddy. But she was alive. Not burned. Alive.
There was tape over her mouth. She was struggling to breathe. She had a doll clutched tight. Her blue eyes pleaded.
Sam lay flat, reached down, and took her outstretched hand.
He wasn’t strong enough to lift her cleanly up. He had to drag and haul, reposition, haul some more. And by the time she made it up out of the hole she was covered in dirt from head to toe. Sam was almost as dirty, and panting from the effort.
He pulled the tape from her face. It wasn’t easily done. Someone had wound it around and around. The little girl cried when he pulled the tape from her hair.