Scott Westerfeld - Blue Noon

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You thought about it. Don’t tell me that little twinge was you worrying about a dentist appointment.”

Jessica shook her head. “It’s just that Jonathan told me—”

“I know what he told you, Jessica. I can taste the way he pities me. I pretty much know how you guys feel about me, got that? And the more you worry about offending me, the more I know it. And frankly, I really don’t want to know about it anymore, so just give… it… a rest !”

Melissa’s voice broke on the last words, the awful sound disappearing into the flat, echoless desert. She sighed then, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry—” Jess began.

“Yeah, well.” Melissa waved her silent. “I’m sorry too. Didn’t mean to rant, but I thought maybe you might want to know what I was thinking for a change.”

Jessica swallowed, a dozen apologies tumbling through her brain. But of course, Melissa wouldn’t want to hear any of them. So Jessica concentrated hard, trying to banish all excuses and regrets and pity from her mind.

She cleared her head with thoughts of flying—imagining weightlessness rushing into her at Jonathan’s touch, the rolling quilt of Bixby’s streets from midair, the pleasure of a perfectly timed jump taking them directly to a target, the desert floor passing below….

The images crystallized, erasing the bitter aftertaste of the argument, and on an impulse Jessica reached out and touched Melissa’s wrist lightly.

Melissa didn’t respond at first, but she didn’t pull away. Jessica could feel the struggle in her not to flinch from human contact, fighting reflexes trained by years of isolation. And then the connection took hold.

Images and emotions spilled from Jessica’s mind—the sheer exhilaration of soaring at top speed across the badlands, scrub and sand and salt all reduced to a blur—and Melissa drew in a breath, amazed by the visions shared between them.

Jessica realized she was the only midnighter who had never touched the mindcaster before. It wasn’t like Jonathan had said; there was nothing twisted and pitiable about Melissa’s mind now. Through her eyes the blue world was suffused with a stately calm. And under that an old sadness, and worry about Rex.

After a long moment Melissa pulled her hand away.

“Flying…” she said softly.

Jessica smiled. “It’ll be fun.”

Melissa turned away, looking down at her hand as if Jessica had somehow marked it. Finally she said, “Just as long as we get there fast. Rex needs us.”

“Is he scared?”

Melissa’s head tilted, like that of a dog listening to a far-off sound. “Not really. He’s not afraid of darklings anymore.”

Jessica frowned. “Shouldn’t he be?”

The mindcaster shrugged. “I guess we’ll find that out soon enough.”

Jonathan came skimming over the desert like a rock flung across frozen water. His flying shield flashed, warding off a pair of fast slithers who were buzzing around him like gigantic flies.

Jessica stood and aimed Enlightenment.

“Don’t. You’ll blind him,” Melissa warned.

Jessica lowered the flashlight, sighing. Jonathan would probably rather deal with the slithers himself anyway. Why ruin his fun?

“I know what you mean, Jess,” Melissa added. “He’s enjoying all this way too much.”

Jessica looked at her, suddenly wondering if their brief physical connection had made her thoughts permanently easier to read.

But Melissa shook her head. “It’s pretty obvious, Jess. I used to hate daylight too, you know? But I never loved midnight as much as that boy does.”

An explosion pulled Jessica’s gaze back out to the horizon. One of the slithers had glanced off Jonathan’s shield, blue sparks arcing across the sky as it fell, and the other turned and fled. Jonathan bounded to a halt a few yards away, raising a cloud of pale blue dust that froze in midair—his acrobat gravity working its strange magic.

“Come on!” he cried, holding out both hands.

Jessica was glad to see that he didn’t flinch as Melissa grasped his hand, just looked at her, and said, “Do you know how this works?”

“Yeah, Jessica just taught me.”

A look of surprise crossed Jonathan’s face, and he shot a glance at Jessica. She could only shrug. She hadn’t thought about it that way, but all the techniques of flying were recorded in well-used grooves in her mind, honed by long hours at Jonathan’s side. Even those nights they didn’t fly together, she dreamed about it or puzzled over the mechanics of midnight gravity when she was supposed to be doing physics homework.

Had Melissa really taken all that in so quickly?

“Let’s go,” Melissa said, bending her knees.

The three of them jumped together, a small tentative leap at first. Melissa didn’t send them spinning or stumbling when they landed thirty feet away. They pushed harder on the second jump, launching into a low, fast trajectory across the desert. They built up speed, growing in confidence, dodging scrub and cactus bulbs without any exchange of words, as if Melissa had been flying with them a dozen times before.

Jessica wondered what was going on in Jonathan’s mind, if he was thinking about Melissa reading his thoughts as they flew. Or remembering his horror at their first contact, before Melissa had gotten herself under control. Or perhaps the emergency was too great, his mind too focused on flying…

Maybe that was the trick when dealing with mindcasters; maybe you just had to give your head a rest.

“Halfway there,” Melissa said, breathing hard.

Jessica asked, “Are they okay?”

“Dess is fine. Rex… he’s with the others.”

“With what others?”

Melissa stumbled on the next landing, and the three of them twisted in the air, spinning once all the way around before they set down again. Jonathan dragged them to a halt as they landed.

On the horizon ahead, a flicker of blue sparks rose up from the desert.

“What’s happening out there?” he asked her.

“Dess is holding them off. And they’ll scatter once they taste the flame-bringer on her way.”

Jessica frowned. “What about Rex?”

“Don’t worry about him. Moron—he said he’d warn me before he tried anything like this.”

“Anything like what?”

Melissa shook her head. “We should keep moving if we’re going to get there before Dess blows a fuse.” She looked at them both, pleading with them not to ask any more questions. “Let’s just keep going, okay?”

Jonathan glanced at Jessica, then bent his knees again. “Okay.”

They jumped again, eating up the landscape in long, bounding leaps. Melissa flew as if she’d practiced for months.

Half a mile from Dess they passed over a patch of small, stubby cacti. Jessica spotted a big black car with blown-out tires at its edge.

“That’s not Melissa’s, is it?” she asked.

“No. Grayfoots’,” Jonathan said. “Real ones.”

“Oh.” No wonder things had gotten messed up.

At the height of their next jump Jessica saw a huge black cat rising onto its haunches among blue sparks, surrounded by a whirling cloud of slithers. A thirteen-pointed star was traced out on the desert floor in glowing wires, Dess inside it, the darkling just outside. Melissa’s car sat nearby, looking battered and broken.

“That cat smells blood, Jess,” Melissa said. “It’s too young to be afraid of you.”

“Blood?” Jessica said as they landed, but the mindcaster didn’t answer.

They jumped again, hurtling toward the struggle. Jessica saw Dess’s long spear swing through the air, the panther batting at it with its claws, catching the spear point with a flash. The weapon spun out of Dess’s grip as the creature screamed, leaping backward from the contact through its entourage of winged slithers. It rolled across the desert, salt and sand flying into the air.