Daniel Abraham - Inside Straight

“‘Environmentally friendly,’” Ana said, and they both giggled.

Then Kate looked around, studying the lawn, turning serious. She put her hand on one of the mounds of dug-out soil and squeezed her fist around it, letting dirt run through her fingers.

“What is it?” Ana said.

“Just thinking. Look at all these piles. What if you tried to make piles of dirt, instead of just digging? Think about filling in the space instead of digging it out. Does that make any sense?” She wrinkled her forehead, which made her look particularly young and studious.

Dios! It was so obvious!

It couldn’t possibly work. “I don’t know. I never looked at it that way.”

“Well, can you try it?” she asked eagerly.

All her life her father, the neighbors, everyone, said—dig this, put a trench here, drill a new well. Never build .

She held her hand flat to the ground, fingers splayed, feeling . Build, make—positive space, not negative space. Feeling the earth under her hand, she reached for it, gathered the particles to her—not for shoving them away, but bringing them together. It almost felt backwards. Make the mound of dirt instead of the hole.

Before her, the earth came alive. It moved, crawling like a million tiny insects, swarming together. A lump formed, then grew into a mound, then a tower, a cone of brown earth rising from the lawn. All around the tower, the level of the ground sank, as the dirt in the center rose. Reverse ditch digging.

The tower reached a height of two feet before Ana pulled her hand back and clutched the medallion under her shirt. Her heart was racing, and her eyes were wide. If she’d been able to build a tower outside that burning building, she could have saved someone.

Kate’s face brightened with an amazed smile. “That’s so cool!”

“Yeah,” Ana said. “Wow.”

“You could do anything, I bet. Bridges, tunnels, castles—hey, have you ever worked with sand?”

Ana laughed. “No—I’ve been in California over a week and I still haven’t seen the ocean.”

“That’s crazy.” Kate’s gaze was unfocused, still clearly thinking of all the ways Ana could use her power. “You know how during a big earthquake the ground is supposed to ripple, like you can see the waves moving through it? What if you could do something like that—make your own earthquake and knock down an entire army or something.”

The image horrified Ana. She gave a nervous shrug. “They’re not going to be putting us against armies. I hope I never have to do anything like that.”

“Nice to know you could, though. If you had to.” Kate beamed at her, as proud as if she had the power herself. Her smile was clear, brilliant. Honest.

“Why are you helping me?” Ana said abruptly, and regretted it. She didn’t want to sound ungrateful, not for Kate’s help. Not for her friendship.

Kate shrugged, looking briefly confused, like she really didn’t understand the question. Like she hadn’t considered. “Because I want to help.”

“But you see how it is,” Ana said, nodding toward the lighted windows of the house. “They—the judges and them—all talk about teamwork, how we’re supposed to work together. But we’re all competing against each other. In the end, we have to turn against each other. We have to vote each other off. It doesn’t help you at all if I—I—” She stumbled a moment, at first uncertain what to say. “If I’m stronger.”

Again, for just a moment, Kate seemed young—a kid in a ponytail getting ready for softball tryouts. “If we win the next challenge, then nobody gets kicked off. That’s the way I want it. The more you can do, the better chance we have of winning. It only makes sense.” Her smile brightened again, and turned sly. “Besides, when it’s the two of us in the finals, it’ll be one bitchin’ catfight.”

The two of them fighting each other? No, it wouldn’t be like that. The only word Ana could think to describe it was … fun . Her and Kate in the finals? That would be the best thing in the world. Alight now with possibilities, her power tingled in her hands, limitless. Her imagination built castles of earth, dug moats, moved mountains, continents.

She wasn’t sure she’d ever want to change the world that much, though. It was enough to have control over her little corner of it.

And so, feeling strong, feeling mischievous, she moved the little square of earth Kate sat on. Tipped it back like a lever.

Letting loose a shriek, Kate fell back, rolling head over heels. She landed hard on her backside, and for a regretful moment Ana was afraid she’d been hurt—a broken bone or twisted joint—and it would be Ana’s fault.

Kate blinked and gained her new bearings. The lawn where she’d been sitting looked lumpy—that was the only sign anything had happened. It was enough of a sign.

“Oh, you bitch! “ But she was laughing when she said it. Then her hand closed on a nearby clod of dirt.

Ana knew exactly what was coming next. She reacted before the clod left Kate’s hand. Hand on the ground, she whispered a quick prayer—and up rose a wall of earth, a protective swell like a soldier’s quickly dug foxhole. Ana put it between her and Kate and nestled down to hide. Not that it helped, because Kate’s thrown projectile—glowing yellow-hot and throwing off sparks—flew over the barrier and came zipping straight into Ana’s hiding place. She squealed and rolled out of the way as the clod dropped hard to the ground just short of where she’d been sitting. Kate hadn’t been aiming for her. Still, the missile kicked up a spray of dirt that pelted Ana.

Kate ran, dodging around Ana’s foxhole, and her hand held another missile. Ana waited for her; Kate took aim, wild laughter glinting in her eye.

“You surrender?” she said.

Ana tried something new—that’s what this was all about, after all—and once again felt for the ground under Kate’s feet, but instead of rocking it, or digging it, she made it climb. She was getting better at making these mounds, these towers. She made the soil flow and creep over Kate’s shoes, up her ankles—then held it.

“What the—” Kate jerked her feet, kicking them free. The earth wasn’t hard and didn’t hold her long, but it gave Ana time to scramble to the other side of her shelter. Imagine what I could do with more , she thought. If she could build the earth up around someone’s whole body, bury them up to their necks so they couldn’t move at all …

Now Kate had marbles in both hands. “That’s it. No more Miss Nice Guy.”

Suddenly Ana was in a war zone, dodging bullets that pounded into the ground all around her, zooming in from all sides. They weren’t very big, and none of them came right at her—this was, after all, a game. But they kept her from fleeing, locking her into a small space on the lawn, and she was laughing at the dirt flying everywhere, at Kate’s wild expression, and the increasingly chaotic state of the lawn.

They both turned to the sound of the back door opening. DB and Hardhat emerged, rushing to the porch railing to look over the lawn. Ana tried to catch her breath. Kate, also breathing hard, her hair matted with sweat, joined her.

Hardhat frowned at them with a look of bafflement. “Christ, what the fuck are you two doing?”

Ana and Kate looked at each other. Ana, a gleam in her eyes, said, “Demolitions and excavations?”

Kate burst out laughing, Ana joined in, and the two of them fell against each other, hysterical.

DB shook his head, and Hardhat said, “You’re damn lucky we don’t have a fucking damage deposit on the line for this place.”

The guys seemed just as taken with Ana’s newfound ability. As they trailed inside, Hardhat mapped out great plans for their future exploits. “I can totally fucking see it—you dig this big motherfucking ditch, like a moat, see? Like if we had to protect something—then I’ll build a bridge, or a tower, or—”