tried to think of the marshes of Perfil, of the wizards. But Halsa was suddenly there on the train, instead. You have to tell them, she said.
Tell them what? Onion asked her, although he knew. When the train was in the mountains, there would be an explosion. There would be soldiers, riding down at the train. No one would reach Qual. Nobody will believe me, he said.
You should tell them anyway, Halsa said.
Onion’s legs were falling asleep. He shifted Mik. Why do you care? he said. You hate everyone.
I don’t! Halsa said. But she did. She hated her mother. Her mother had watched her husband die, and done nothing. Halsa had been screaming and her mother slapped her across the face. She hated the twins because they weren’t like her, they didn’t see things the way Halsa had to. Because they were little and they got tired and it had been so much work keeping them safe. Halsa had hated Onion, too, because he was like her. Because he’d been afraid of Halsa, and because the day he’d come to live with her family, she’d known that one day she would be like him, alone and without a family. Magic was bad luck, people like Onion and Halsa were bad luck. The only person who’d ever looked at Halsa and really seen her, really known her, had been Onion’s mother. Onion’s mother was kind and good and she’d known she was going to die. Take care of my son, she’d said to Halsa’s mother and father, but she’d been looking at Halsa when she said it. But Onion would have to take care of himself. Halsa would make him.
Tell them, Halsa said. There was a fish jerking on her line. She ignored it. Tell them, tell them, tell them. She and Onion were in the marsh and on the train at the same time. Everything smelled like coal and salt and ferment. Onion ignored her the way she was ignoring the fish. He sat and dangled his feet in the water, even though he wasn’t really there.
Halsa caught five fish. She cleaned them and wrapped them in leaves and brought them back to the cooking fire. She also brought back the greeny-copper key that had caught on her fishing line. “I found this,” she said to Tolcet.
“Ah,” Tolcet said. “May I see it?” It looked even smaller and more ordinary in Tolcet’s hand.
“Burd,” Tolcet said. “Where is the box you found, the one we couldn’t open?”
The boy with green eyes got up and disappeared into one of the towers. He came out after a few minutes and gave Tolcet a metal box no bigger than a pickle jar. The key fit. Tolcet unlocked it, although it seemed to Halsa that she ought to have been the one to unlock it, not Tolcet.
“A doll,” Halsa said, disappointed. But it was a strange-looking doll. It was carved out of a greasy black wood, and when Tolcet turned it over, it had no back, only two fronts, so it was always looking backward and forward at the same time.
“What do you think, Burd?” Tolcet said.
Burd shrugged. “It’s not mine.”
“It’s yours,” Tolcet said to Halsa. “Take it up the stairs and give it to your wizard. And refill the bucket with fresh water and bring some dinner, too. Did you think to take up lunch?”
“No,” Halsa said. She hadn’t had any lunch herself. She cooked the fish along with some greens Tolcet gave her, and ate two. The other three fish and the rest of the greens she carried up to the top of the stairs in the tower. She had to stop to rest twice, there were so many stairs this time. The door was still closed and the bucket on the top step was empty. She thought that maybe all the water had leaked away, slowly. But she left the fish and she went and drew more water and carried the bucket back up.
“I’ve brought you dinner,” Halsa said, when she’d caught her breath. “And something else. Something I found in the marsh. Tolcet said I should give it to you.”
Silence.
She felt silly, talking to the wizard’s door. “It’s a doll,” she said. “Perhaps it’s a magic doll.”
Silence again. Not even Onion was there. She hadn’t noticed when he went away. She thought of the train. “If I give you the doll,” she said, “will you do something for me? You’re a wizard, so you ought to be able to do anything, right? Will you help the people on the train? They’re going to Qual. Something bad is going to happen if you won’t stop it. You know about the soldiers? Can you stop them?”
Halsa waited for a long time, but the wizard behind the door never said anything. She put the doll down on the steps and then she picked it up again and put it in her pocket. She was furious. “I think you’re a coward,” she said. “That’s why you hide up here, isn’t it? I would have got on that train and I know what’s going to happen. Onion got on that train. And you could stop it, but you won’t. Well, if you won’t stop it, then I won’t give you the doll.”
She spat in the bucket of water and then immediately wished she hadn’t. “You keep the train safe,” she said, “and I’ll give you the doll. I promise. I’ll bring you other things, too. And I’m sorry I spit in your water. I’ll go and get more.”
She took the bucket and went back down the stairs. Her legs ached and there were welts where the little biting bugs had drawn blood.
“Mud,” Essa said. She was standing in the meadow, smoking a pipe. “The flies are only bad in the morning and at twilight. If you put mud on your face and arms, they leave you alone.”
“It smells,” Halsa said.
“So do you,” Essa said. She snapped her clay pipe in two, which seemed extravagant to Halsa, and wandered over to where some of the other children were playing a complicated-looking game of pickup sticks and dice. Under a night-flowering tree, Tolcet sat in a battered, oaken throne that looked as if it had been spat up by the marsh. He was smoking a pipe, too, with a clay stem even longer than Essa’s had been. It was ridiculously long. “Did you give the poppet to the wizard?” he said.
“Oh yes,” Halsa said.
“What did she say?”
“Well,” Halsa said. “I’m not sure. She’s young and quite lovely. But she had a horrible stutter. I could hardly understand her. I think she said something about the moon, how she wanted me to go cut her a slice of it. I’m to bake it into a pie.”
“Wizards are very fond of pie,” Tolcet said.
“Of course they are,” Halsa said. “And I’m fond of my arse.”
“Better watch your mouth,” Burd, the boy with green eyes, said. He was standing on his head, for no good reason that Halsa could see. His legs waved in the air languidly, semaphoring. “Or the wizards will make you sorry.”
“I’m already sorry,” Halsa said. But she didn’t say anything else. She carried the bucket of water up to the closed door. Then she ran back down the stairs to the cubbyhole and this time she fell straight asleep. She dreamed a fox came and looked at her. It stuck its muzzle in her face. Then it trotted up the stairs and ate the three fish Halsa had left there. You’ll be sorry, Halsa thought. The wizards will turn you into a one-legged crow. But then she was chasing the fox up the aisle of a train to Qual, where her mother and her brothers
