Margaret Stohl - Idols

“Water. It’s brown as Porthole Bay, but it’s definitely water.”

Handfuls of dog food and liquid mud have never tasted so good. Brutus seems to agree.

Ro shoves open one door, Lucas the other. The metal hinges complain, groaning like Ro when he had to feed the pigs in the morning, back at the Mission. Lucas retreats to Tima, who hands him the red fuel canister.

“Doc,” calls out Ro, from inside the car. “I need Doc.”

“You want the Lords to come after us? You looking to take a ride on the No Face Express?” Lucas looks at Ro like he’s an idiot.

“No, I want to take a ride in this car. Let’s call it the Ro Face Express. But I don’t know how it works.”

Tima flips open the relay, switching it on. “Keep it short, and then be ready to go. We’ll have to get out of here as soon as we get offline.”

Ro starts digging underneath the wheel, pulling on wires. I slide in next to him. The seat smells like old boots.

“Doc, are you getting this? I need a little help here, with a combustion engine. Petroleum based. You got some sort of scanning capability?”

“Ignition wiring is simple, Furo. Downloading instructions to your local map, now.”

“What’s this?” I open a small door in the panel in front of me and pull out a white furry thing, with old metal keys dangling from the back.

“Disgusting.” The thing is a severed animal foot. The sight of it makes me ill. It has toenails. “Who were these people?” I shake my head.

“Severed rabbit’s foot. An offering to the gods of luck, by some,” Tima volunteers. “In ancient times.”

“Why would a foot be lucky?” I stare at the lump of fur in front of me.

Ro looks at me—and then starts to laugh. “Because of what’s attached to the other end, genius.” He looks back to the cuff, shaking his head. “Forget it, Doc. I just got a better idea.”

Keys. The rabbit foot is attached to a set of keys. Most likely, to a car. More specifically, a Chevro. This one.

Doc’s voice echoes in the barn. “I object, Furo. Your logic is erroneous.”

“You know, I get that a lot.” Ro grins.

“One idea cannot be held to be empirically better or worse than another. More apt for a given context, certainly, but not intrinsically better, per se.”

“Yeah, this one is. She has the keys, Doc. To the car we’re trying to hand-wire.” Ro looks up at the ceiling, as if the voice came from above.

Silence.

“Yes. That is better. I stand corrected.”

“Don’t you forget, Doc, who the real brains are around here.” Ro grins and slides a key into the slit next to the big, round wheel. I’m surprised how quickly he is able to see where it goes.

Then he winks in my direction, smiling like he was meant to live in the time of Chevro transports and bloody animal feet offerings. “Wish me luck, Dol-face.”

“Good luck, Dol-face,” Doc intones.

I laugh. “Good luck, Doofus.”

And with that, Ro turns the key and the engine roars to life.

The road flows beneath us, streaming past our windows in the light. Ro drives in the exact center of the road, following a faded line of dried paint. “Why else would you put a line there?” he says.

“So you and Lucas can stand on opposite sides of it,” Tima says. “Now stop talking and watch where you’re going.”

“Was that a joke?” Ro looks astounded from the front seat. The Chevro swerves, almost barreling into the deep, grassy trench that parallels each side of the highway.

“You heard her. Watch the road, moron.” Lucas glares out the window.

Clouds of black smoke splutter out into the air behind us. “Do you think it’s supposed to do that?” Tima looks nervous.

“No,” says Lucas.

“Yes,” says Ro.

Tima sighs, wrinkling her nose. “Forget I said anything.” I notice she has belted herself to her seat like a Chopper pilot, tying the straps together above their useless, rusted buckles. I don’t know who is shaking more, Tima or Brutus, coiled at her feet.

This whole car thing is freaking both of them out.

Not me. After a Chopper crash and a hostile visit from the Lords, it would take a lot more than an old Chevro to freak me out.

So I don’t care where I am—not right now, anyway. I’m too exhausted. My legs are throbbing and my eyelids are as heavy as stone.

I lean my head back against the cracked seat, half asleep, staring out my window.

The highway runs along a ridge, and the top of the ridge is outlined against the sky.

The silhouette frames the rising slope of the tallest peak, and then my eye catches something else.

One small detail.

I sit up. A dark shape—tall, a jagged spike—rises in the distance, higher than any tree ever could.

“Is that an old comlink pole? All the way out here?” I tap my finger against the window.

“No,” says Tima, and when she answers, her voice sounds as cold as I feel.

“Didn’t think so,” I say.

Nobody speaks after that. We all know what it is—and we all want to get as far away from it as we can.

From them, all of them.

These new Icon roots.

Who can fight something that is everywhere? Who can win an unwinnable war like that?

I am too tired to think.

I am almost too tired to dream.

Almost.

Which is when I find myself losing consciousness.

“Doloria.”

I hear my name through the darkness of my dream. I can’t answer—I can’t find my voice. I don’t know which one is mine, there are so many in my head.

But when I open my eyes and see her, everything quiets. As if my dream itself is listening to her.

So she’s important , I think.

This dream is important.

But still, I don’t know why. And she’s no one I’ve ever seen before—a young girl in bright orange robes with a lightning shock of spiky white-blond hair, skin the color of wet sand, and icy green, almond-shaped eyes focused on me, full of curiosity.

Then she holds out her hand, and I look down.

Five tiny green dots the color of jade.

They glow in her skin almost like some sort of tiny, precious gemstones, but they’re not. Because I know what they are.

The sign of the Icon Children.

Our marking. It’s on her wrist, same as mine. I have one gray dot. Ro has two red ones. Tima has three silver dots. Lucas has four blue ones. Nobody has five.

Had.

Not until now.

This little girl. From the looks of it, she’s not our age, and not from the Californias. But somehow she’s one of us.

I feel my knees begin to buckle, and the girl takes my hand in hers. Her touch is cool, even calming.

“Doloria,” she says again. “I have a message. They are coming for you.”

“Me?” My voice is low and strange in my throat, a hoarse dream-whisper. The moment I speak, the unruly voices in my head begin to riot and clamor again.

Enough , I say, but they don’t listen. They never listen, and they never stop.

“You can’t escape them.” The girl squeezes my hand. “They’re everywhere.”

Then I realize she’s put something in my hand. A piece of carved jade, a human face, fat and round. Just like the jades the fortune-teller gave me, back in the Hole. “Do you still have them? My jades?”

They were for her.

She’s the girl who matters. She’s who I’m holding them for.

It’s a frightening, exhilarating thought—but all I can do is nod.

She smiles as if I am the little girl, not her. “Bring them to me. You’ll need them. And here. The Emerald Buddha will help you.”

I want to ask her what she means, but the voices grow louder and louder, and I drop her hand to press my own against my ears.