Whisperworld
Chapter 8
Yesterday, I didn’t even know that the Stormsphere had a door and today, Zach and I were in charge of protecting it. Thorn took my story of a Whitefinger killer seriously enough to double the guard on the Stormsphere and tasked us with organizing the defense. Zach and I now found ourselves reporting directly to the High Gardener.
“Someone has that key. And they may attempt to use it,” Thorn had said.
“Why?” Zach asked. “What could a Whitefinger want with the Tear of God?”
“Nothing good for the Whisperward, my child.”
I slept like shit that night. It took hours to fall asleep and when I finally did, I dreamed about the Whispers telling me that Liam was blameless. That I was guilty. That I had killed an innocent boy.
I was still tired when I hauled myself up out of bed the next morning and chewed listlessly on a couple of red pitayas. My eyes felt full of storm sand. I pulled on my Greenguard fatigues, combed and braided my hair, and then got ready for the most boring assignment in the world. I didn’t want to guard the Stormsphere. I wanted to be out there, hunting down that Whitefinger.
Not that I thought Thorn was wrong. For once, I actually agreed with Angel City’s biggest prick. The Whitefinger thief would likely try to use his stolen key at the earliest opportunity. Zach pointed out that this was our best chance to nab the thief, but until then, it was just a waiting game and I’ve never been very good at those. I preferred to be more proactive. Or hyperactive and impatient, as Zach more accurately liked to put it.
“How are you, Julia?” he asked when I showed up at the base.
“Rosy,” I said with a smile that I figured looked fake as hell. “Slept like a baby.”
Zach knew me. He knew it was all bugshit, but he smiled back and patted my shoulder. He checked the bolt on his crossbow and then led the way. Gregory had given us a list of Greenguard we could order out for extra protection. I was dismayed to see Woods’ name on the list, but there were some useful ones, too.
We picked up our new Greenguard from the base’s training yard and then marched them out to the Stormsphere. The Whispers were inaudible at first, but started as soon as we were within sight of the shiny glass Houses. I strained to make out words, but unlike my dream, I heard no accusations, no mantras of innocence or guilt.
“Good morning, Reed,” Woods said. He smiled broadly at me and then bade a belated good morning to Zach, as well. “If you’re free sometime soon, I could get my hands on another apple.”
I knew what he wanted to get his hands on, alright. If Woods had been a dreameater, then he could have read my mind and known it was a lost cause. And then I could have shot him.
“Zach and I are in charge of the Stormsphere’s security. Day and night,” I said. “Sorry.”
I still wasn’t looking forward to it, but at least the boring guard duty had this thin silver lining. I ordered Woods away to the first guard post Zach and I had picked out.
We stationed the rest of the Blackthumbs at seven other points all around the Stormsphere. Each pair was within sight of the next to provide backup and covered every approach to the Tear. Zach and I circled the Stormsphere to make sure that everyone was in place and that we didn’t leave any major gaps. When we had double-checked our work, we reported to a tall Gardener with dark skin and an intensely curling gray beard. His face was deeply lined, as if he’d been carved that way instead of naturally aged. He kept his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robes just to drive home the image of a keeper of the Gardeners’ secrets.
“I’m Gardener Torres,” he said. “You’ll want to know what you’re protecting. Thorn tells me I am to show you the Door.”
I could hear the capital D on that last word. Maybe this wouldn’t be the most boring job ever.
“Julia Reed. This is my partner, Zachary Dias,” I said, nodding as respectfully as I could manage.
Given five uninterrupted minutes, I could probably have pissed Torres off enough to get myself kicked from the assignment, maybe even get Gregory to put me back out on the streets. But Zach was right — this was our best chance to catch Byron’s real killer. I owed it to Liam to find that Whitefinger.
And I owed it to myself, or at least my curiosity, to get a look at this Door.
We followed Torres around the dark curve of the Stormsphere. It rose up out of the dusty concrete ground, utterly smooth and utterly black. White daylight reflected from the surface, but even that couldn’t seem to stick and appeared to hover a fraction of an inch up off the polished blackness. I knew that the Tear was huge, but close enough now to touch it — which I didn’t do — I could appreciate its true scale. There were taller buildings in Angel City: the Stormsphere was only about two hundred feet tall, but twice that wide. It was the biggest thing in the entire Whisperward.
“Hey, why is it called a Stormsphere?” I asked Torres. “I mean, it’s only half a sphere, isn’t it? Why not a Storm-hemisphere… or Storm-dome?”
The old Gardener actually laughed. “It is a sphere, Reed. You simply can’t see it from up here. The Tear extends as far beneath the earth as above.”
Rosy… That thing really was huge. And at this range, the Whispers were loud inside my skull, demanding attention as they rustled through my mind. I shook my head, but that didn’t help, of course.
Refugees gathered around the dome at a respectful distance, huddling in pairs or groups and looking to the Tear of God and the Gardeners for deliverance. For protection. Some prayed aloud, a susurrate murmur like an earthly echo of the Whispers. Others simply closed their eyes and listened. Could they hear something I didn’t?
Torres frowned and Zach paused to shoo the praying refugees back from the Tear. They withdrew quietly — this probably wasn’t the first time they had been told to disperse — but went no further than Zach ordered. By the time we were moving on along the Tear’s huge curve, they were creeping closer once more.
“They’re frightened,” said Torres. “The Whispers give them comfort and I’m glad… But we can’t let them interfere with the Tear of God.”
There was one building near the Stormsphere. It was a small, windowless thing, blocky and ugly. Someone had painted it with images of plants, but the decorations utterly failed to hide the bleak gray walls. Not this close to the immense, pristine glassy black of the Stormsphere.
This was the shrine where the Gardeners made offerings to God in thanks for His continued protection. Or so Torres told us as we approached. A pair of Blackthumbs stood at attention beside the entrance, the ones Zach had hand-picked as our best. Well, next to the two of us, at least.
Torres motioned us inside. I guess it was an offering day. Gardeners worked at tables with baskets of milkweed — bundles of small flowers, red and pink and star-shaped — and heavy-looking plastic jugs full of something liquid.
“What’s that?” I asked Torres, pointing.
“It comes from the flowers,” he answered, but didn’t offer any more details.
Zach shook his head when I opened my mouth to ask. I quieted, but stuck my tongue out at him. Zach smirked.
The milkweed was being carefully spread out in shallow metal trays and Gardeners poured the contents of the jugs into small bowls. It looked thick, syrupy like agave nectar and smelled sweet. Flower nectar, perhaps? I knew the milkweed was poisonous, but maybe the other flowers were edible.
The Gardeners bowed to Torres, then lined up in two rows with trays of milkweed on one side and dishes of nectar on the other. Torres dug into the pockets of his robes and produced a plastic key just like Thorn’s. He made his way solemnly to the back of the shrine and pushed open the doors there. He didn’t use the strange key, though, so I guess the show wasn’t over yet.
Beyond what I already thought of as the sorting room, I expected a temple with a big statue of God and burning flower oil or something. I was completely taken aback by the simple concrete staircase leading down. Torres motioned for Zach and me to follow, and we walked slowly behind him. The twin rows of Gardeners trailed behind, carrying their offerings.
I was beyond curious, but the air of mystery and tradition hung so thick down here that even I didn’t dare disturb it. Besides, I wasn’t even sure what questions to ask. What the hell is all this? just didn’t seem to cover it.
The only sound was the Whispers, rustling ceaselessly in the back of my mind. Long tubes of electric light glowed over the stairs. A few of them sputtered and one or two were dark, but the passage down into the ground was well lit and kept just as clean as Thorn’s office.
And there were paintings here, too. The walls were covered in intricate murals that surrounded us with painted fields of milkweed. Tall green stalks and clusters of flowers rippled in an invisible breeze. As we went down the stairs, though, the milkweed gave way to broad plains and mountains so that walking down the stairs felt like a long trek across a world that no longer existed. From Angel City to Apple City, God had left his children only miles of harsh desert.
The murals had been repaired. More than repaired, actually. Large patches of the scene had been entirely repainted — mostly swathes of blue sky and white clouds in paint decades or maybe even centuries old, but obviously still newer than the ancient mural beneath. I wanted to stop for a closer look, but the inexorable procession of Gardeners descending the stairs kept us moving.
Toward the bottom, the mural was full of painted trees. They were tall and slender, with leaves that looked like cactus spines. I had never seen anything like them before. I craned my head and squinted as we passed. The trunks of the strange trees had been repainted at some point, too.
Something else finally caught my attention. We had reached the end of the stairs and the passage terminated abruptly in a shining black wall that curved away to either side. It took me a moment to realize that we were looking at the Stormsphere — an underground section of the slick black skin. The Whispers were still quiet down here, but somehow… deafening. They filled my head like something soft yet vast, crowding out all other thought. I half raised my hands to cover my ears before stopping, knowing it was useless. Zach looked like he was engaged in the same internal struggle and I patted one big arm, trying to reassure both of us.
Torres stepped up to the surface of the sphere. It wasn’t perfectly unbroken down here — there was a large inset rectangle with softly rounded corners to match the curve of the Stormsphere.
The Door.
Torres held up the white plastic card he wore chained around his neck. There was a small protrusion beside the door, marring the smooth perfection of the sphere. It was black like the rest, but lacked that impossibly shiny sheen. A slot ran down the center, with a tiny red light glowing like an ember on one side. Torres placed the rectangular plastic key into the slot at the top — dark stripe first — and then slid it through, never losing his solemn, ritual grace.
The pinprick of light turned from red to green. A low mechanical growl sounded from beyond the door and I held my breath. This was a little closer to religion than I really wanted to get. Normally, I preferred it when God stayed up behind the clouds. He had done enough already, in my opinion. I was caught between curiosity and — frankly — abject terror. For the first time since leaving my mother’s house, I made the teardrop sign over my heart with one finger. I shrank back against the painted concrete walls.
The Whispers stirred, their murmur swept up like dust in a wind as the door opened. The shiny black surface sank back into the sphere and then slid away to one side. From my vantage point, I could make out only a narrow slice of the interior. It wasn’t black inside, but white. Blindingly white and clean. Even the twin rows of proud Gardeners looked dusty and haggard as they stepped forward into the Stormsphere with their offerings. With another swipe of his strange ancient key, Torres sealed the Stormsphere behind them again.
“This is what we protect,” he said. “The Door.”
I had no idea what we’d just seen, but I nodded my head dumbly. For once, I had nothing to say.
That was the only time we saw the Door that we were guarding. Yeah, it deserved the capital D.
Zach and I stationed ourselves right outside the sorting shrine. I tried to talk to Zach about what we had seen, about the murals and the strange plants, the toxic milkweed and sweet nectar offerings, the Door into the Stormsphere… But Zach didn’t want to discuss any of it.
“I’m not sure I want to know God’s mysteries, Julia,” he said. “It’s enough that God gave us His Tears and they protect us. We’re here to guard the Stormsphere and, if we can, catch that Whitefinger. That’s our job.”
I sighed. At least Zach believed that there was someone else to catch. He may not have believed Liam, but he believed in me.
We managed the rotation of the Greenguard to keep the Stormsphere protected day and night. We were up at odd hours and I had a lot more contact with Woods than I wanted. And after the initial awe of witnessing the Door, I grew swiftly bored again. Bored and agitated.
When I went home at night, I kept dreaming of Liam screaming as the storm tore him apart, and would wake with the torn piece of lace from the greenhouse clutched in my hand. Silva came running to my door once, but I told her that I was fine. She finally left, promising to pray for me.
I found myself tracing my fingers over the lace in quiet moments afterward. Just what the hell was it doing at our crime scene? I was sure that it was connected to our killer somehow. I was impatient to catch the Whitefinger and execute him for Byron’s death. Maybe some real justice would chase Liam out of my dreams.
The next morning, I leaned against the sorting shrine’s painted exterior, watching Zach and Myers chase off another group of faithful. More refugees, to judge by their tattered clothes and desperate expressions.
Would catching the Whitefinger be real justice? All of our evidence pointed to Byron’s death being an accident. Liam’s warning had surprised the Whitefinger and alerted the Gardener. It was the ensuing scuffle that forced the Whitefinger to kill Byron and the two Greenguard, injuring Liam. If the boy hadn’t been creeping through the Houses that night, maybe the Whitefinger would have completed his robbery without bloodshed.
Of course, then we might not have had any idea that he was trying to get into the Stormsphere. Even in death, Byron had protected the Gardeners’ charge. I couldn’t help a little grudging respect for the dead man. I readjusted the weight of my crossbow and nodded to Zach as he came trotting back to his post.
“Nice work,” I commented dryly. “How old was that littlest one? Five? Did she put up a terrible fight?”
“I feared for my life,” Zach answered with a perfectly straight face. “You must be bored, Julia. You’re sense of humor is usually sharper than that.”
“Eat thorns.”
“Well, it is about lunch time. Let’s go grab a bite.”
The Whitefinger was much more patient than I was. For a long and tedious week, I stood outside the shrine doors, trading lame jokes with Zach and avoiding Woods. The most interesting part was when Thorn himself came down to lead the offering procession through the Door and check on our progress.
“Nothing yet, sir,” Zach said.
His lantern jaw was tight. I don’t think he liked having to admit failure any more than Gregory did.
“Stay sharp,” Thorn told us, then vanished inside.
“Thanks,” I murmured once the High Gardener was safely out of earshot. “Wouldn’t have thought of that, sir.”
“It was encouragement, not an order,” said Zach. He seemed a little bolstered by Thorn’s visit, at least.
And with that, the exciting bit was over.
Another party of refugees arrived at the gates that afternoon and bled slowly into the overcrowded Whisperward. These were from Sun City, Woods informed me, not Bridge. I hadn’t asked, but I frowned at the news. How many other Whisperwards were failing out there?
Half of the newcomers made straight for the big black Tear, maybe because they had seen storms out in the deserts and gained new appreciation for its power, or perhaps just to give thanks for their safe arrival. The crowds were restless, though. A few had taken it into their heads to make offerings. The Gardeners did it daily and I could hardly fault the relieved travelers for making the attempt. But it was still our job to wave them off when they tried to place bits of concrete carved with names or other small, precious keepsakes at the foot of the shrine.
“Move back,” Meyers called out. “Step away from the Tear!”
“We’d better help him,” Zach said.
It was nearing the end of our shift and we were in the middle of the handoff to Ericson and Hollinger. But if this got any stormier, we weren’t going anywhere. Why did things always get worse when I was about to go home? I glared thorns at Zach and looked back at the growing crowd of refugees. He was probably right…
“Wait,” I whispered. “There!”
Someone was pushing through the crowd, ignoring the Greenguard’s instructions. They were wrapped in layers despite the heat, with a cloak thrown around their shoulders. Short, like Liam said, and his gloved hands were white with salt. A Whitefinger.
He was making for the front of the crowd, to where the pair of our Blackthumbs was trying to maintain the perimeter. I hissed another warning to Zach and we trotted forward, toward the crowd and the cloaked Whitefinger. I reached for my crossbow when I felt Zach’s hand on my arm.
“Not until we get closer,” he said. “Do you want to skewer one of these people?”
But then the Whitefinger was suddenly up at the front of the throng while Zach and I were still yards off. I brought my crossbow up and fired. Zach’s hands were a blur and his bolt was only half a heartbeat behind mine. One of them missed entirely, but the other shot — I wasn’t sure if it was mine or Zach’s — went right through the Whitefinger’s cloak and buried itself three inches into the dirt.
I charged toward the Whitefinger. My hands went automatically through the motions of cocking and reloading my crossbow, then aimed again. The crowd tore apart, scattering and screaming.
“Whitefinger!”
“Blackthumbs!”
“God help us!”
There were people everywhere, running and scrambling over each other to get away. The rest of the Greenguard leapt into action, aiming and firing more steel crossbows. The Whitefinger crouched and threw out his salt-stained hands. Our shots smashed into something invisible and spun harmlessly off through the air… just like a storm rebounding off the Whisperward perimeter.
“Oh, shit,” I said.
The Whitefinger was leaping back now, trying to vanish into the crowd, but they had pulled too far apart. I yanked my knife out of the sheath and held it up to keep from accidentally stabbing myself or an innocent refugee in the chaos. The crowd had identified the outsider and every time the Whitefinger tried to lose himself in them, they retreated again. I sprinted to close the distance between us.
“Stop!” Zach shouted at the Whitefinger. He swore and began running, too.
My legs pumped hard as I ran after the fleeing figure, but he swept his white-encrusted cloak in a backward motion. Sand billowed up from the ground into a thick, dirty cloud. I squeezed my eyes shut, felt the dirt against my face and spat it out of my mouth. I swiped the grit away and opened my stinging eyes again.
While we were blinded, the Whitefinger had fled down the road, running toward the market. The crowds there were even larger there and would have no idea what had happened at the shrine. He would have little trouble hiding. I yanked my goggles down over my eyes in case the Whitefinger tried that dust trick again and kept running.
“Julia!” Zach shouted.
I heard the warning note in his voice and dodged to the right. Zach’s arrow flew past me and just over the shoulder of the retreating Whitefinger. He stumbled, ducking the sharp whizzing noise and I closed a few more yards. We were coming to the top of the road, where it dropped down a hill and past the farming patches, and I finally managed to grab the wastelander’s cloak. The cloth was rough and faintly sticky in my hand. I didn’t have a very good grip, but I jerked as hard as I could to break his stride.
The Whitefinger leapt back, yanking his cloak out of my grasp and I charged in. I slashed at him with my knife and he slithered away, as quick as a snake, but I kept on my attack. Zach was right behind me with his big crossbow and deadly bolts. All I had to do was hold the Whitefinger’s attention for a few more seconds. And hope he was too distracted to use more of his dreameater powers.
The little bastard wasn’t unarmed, though. He reached under his faded cloak and whipped out an arm’s length of metal tubing. He swung it at me and I ducked, recovered and jumped in once more with my knife. I had to leap away again as the Whitefinger jabbed his weapon at me. The damned pipe had a sharpened head on it — a spear, albeit a short one.
I faked off to the right and then lunged left, grabbing for the Whitefinger’s wrist with my free hand. I got another handful of cloak instead, more of the cloth than before, and pulled hard. The Whitefinger stumbled and the cloak’s fastening snapped. The hood fell back. A bandana — not unlike my own — was tugged down around the Whitefinger’s neck, probably dislodged by our battle, and I finally saw my Whitefinger suspect.
She had a delicate face, with a pointed chin and fine, high cheekbones. The girl’s eyes were angular and a deep, earthy brown. Her shoulder-length hair was straight and as dark a brunette as you can get before giving up and calling it black. She was beautiful.
Wow… Not at all what I expected.
I almost caught her spear in the guts while I was staring, but I twisted and grabbed the shaft of her weapon. I threw an overhand stab that the Whitefinger ducked, pulling on her spear, but the girl was five feet tall — if I was feeling generous — and wasn’t going to recover it by strength alone. Her lovely face was hard.
Something I couldn’t see slammed into my chest and I flew back. Oh, right. She was a dreameater. She didn’t have to rely on brute force. Though I might have changed my mind and called the force that hit me pretty damned brutal. I lost my grip on the short spear and dropped my knife as I hit the ground. I felt bruised from shoulder to waist and struggled to suck air down into my lungs.
I heard the sharp twang of a bowstring and a bolt flickered over my head. The Whitefinger cried out sharply, but I looked up just in time to see her turn and sprint away into the city once more. I coughed and forced myself to stand, with or without breath. Zach stopped and crouched by my side. He dropped another bolt into his cocked crossbow and scanned the street.
“Did we lose her?” I managed to wheeze.
“Her? It’s a girl? No, we didn’t lose her. Not yet.” Zach pointed a few yards away, where the dust was busily soaking up a spatter of bright red blood. “I hit her.”
I reloaded my crossbow and we followed the road down into the market at a brisk trot. Thousands of people, Angel City natives and refugees from Sun and Bridge Cities, argued and haggled at the scale farms and cactus fields. The musky smell of reptiles competed with the odor of hot concrete and sweat. Stands selling roast fence lizards and baked snake offered a more pleasant scent, but shoppers moving through the square stirred up the dust and stomped our evidence into the dirt.
Zach and I moved forward in a low crouch, scanning the road until we found a lucky spot of blood on a corner of concrete. A hundred yards off, there was a commotion more frantic than the usual marketplace barter. A bugmonger shouted and pointed.
“Stop! Stop her!” he cried, alternating between gesturing at a running figure and panicking about the cage of fresh crickets that had been knocked over. The insects scattered across the street, squeaking and hopping.
The Whitefinger girl had pulled up her hood once more and replaced her bandana. But she was limping from Zach’s shot and even her cloak couldn’t entirely conceal the salt ground into her clothes.
“That’s her,” I told Zach.
We broke into a run again, right through the spreading swarm of crickets and past their shouting seller. The Whitefinger was bolting down the main street toward the city’s edge. My lungs burned and my legs ached from the chase. Zach brought his crossbow up again, but people were shrieking in terror and scattering across the road. He couldn’t get a clean shot.
“Shit!” Zach shouted. “Shut the gates!”
The Whitefinger was closing quickly on Angel City’s northern gate. I was right on her tail, but more refugees were sifting into the city and at least one of them must have been a Gardener or someone else important — most of the Greenguard stood off to the side, all gathered around a pair of robed men and offering up their canteens.
The Blackthumbs jumped when they heard Zach’s shout, but they reacted too slowly. The Whitefinger had reached the refugees at the gate, who were all staring out at Angel City, at their new home. By the time the Greenguard got to the gates, our suspect had already slipped through the crowd and bolted out into the sandy wastes beyond.
I staggered to a panting stop as the other Blackthumbs closed the city gates in my reddened face.
“Not now, you idiots,” I gasped. “Open up!”
The two men in brown and green patchwork fatigues started and then heaved the huge doors open once more. I stared at the empty husks of ancient Angel City, bits of the old world protected by the Stormsphere, but outside the walls of the Whisperward. Nothing but mutant bugs and lizards lived out there. In the distance were the stark black slashes of more iron stakes. Not the ones where we had taken Liam — those were at the west gate — but those dark spars had doubtlessly taken their own unfair share of lives.
There was a flicker of motion beyond the row of tall iron rods and their tangled chains. It might just have been heat shimmer or a swirling dust devil… or a cloaked girl on the run. Blood spattered the ground at my feet. The Whitefinger was still bleeding. If we moved quickly and if we stayed right on her heels, she wouldn’t have time to stop and bind the wound.
“Julia,” Zach said, staggering to a halt beside me. “She got away. I’m sorry.”
“She’s out there, Zach! We have a trail. Let’s go find her!”
“There’s nothing out there but mutants and Whitefingers,” Zach panted. “And the storms.”
“Whitefingers get through the storms somehow. And we’ve got thousands of refugees who survived the march!”
“Julia, one in ten made it here from Sun City. One in twelve from Bridge,” Zach said. He looked up. “And I don’t like the color of that sky.”
The blank white sky had a dangerously greenish tinge on the western horizon. But the Whitefinger was out there. Our killer. Our answers. I checked my canteen and felt the weight of water sloshing around inside. I had barely touched it today. I could make it last.
“I’m not going to let a storm steal our answers again, Zee,” I said. “I’m going after her. Tell Thorn I’m finishing this.”
Zach groaned and hefted his own canteen. “You can tell him yourself when we get back.”
I grinned at Zach. We pulled bandanas up over our mouths and Zach settled his hat down low on his brow. We started off into the sand-buried ruins of old Angel City, following the Whitefinger’s blood trail.
