One hundred and fifteen miles to the east on a little piece of property just north of her namesake, Syracuse rounded her verdant property one last time for the night. Her eyes darted back and forth in quickly fading light on a perimeter trail she had slowly been beating into the ground, a ring around the small parcel she had cleared of brush and most trees. Outside that perimeter was a forest that engulfed her land, comprised of all manner of thick and thorny vegetation that was too much for her to bother with. She wiped an accumulation of sweat off her brow, leaving a light trail smeared across the grime of her forehead.
It was taking all of her effort not to grimace as she pounded dirt. A girl no older than thirteen followed her, jabber jawing about her plans the next day. Syracuse did not know her name, she only knew that the girl was annoying and stupid. She talked about going to St. Louis and staking a claim there. Absolute drivel. If she were lucky, she would be dead within minutes of crossing into the miasma.
The crease of her frown deepened, and Syracuse whipped around to face her guest, which made her shut up immediately. If only she had known it would be that simple.
“Look,” she said flatly, “why are you so hell bent on going east? Where did you come from? What’s your name, for god’s sake?”
The girl looked frightened all of a sudden. A skinny, gangly thing in a ratty cartoon t-shirt and sweats, she looked oddly like a schoolgirl caught in the act of playing hooky. Annoyingly, it caused a small pang in Syracuse’s heart.
The girl’s breezy disposition was gone, an awful little tremor in her voice now: “I’m Winterset.”
“Bullshit. Winterset ain’t a name, and it certainly ain’t yours anymore.”
Winterset looked like she was going to burst into tears, god damn her. “I’m from Winterset,” she corrected, gulping a bit of air. “My name’s Cathy Renshaw.”
Syracuse consciously took in a breath, made a passing attempt to look less hostile. “Alright Cathy,” she sighed, “Where’s Winterset?”
Cathy looked down at her little Mickey Mouse tee, festooned with the little stains and holes which accompany all children’s clothing. “Outside Des Moines,” came out in a mumble.
Not a bad clip from here. Syracuse crossed her arms. “Let me guess,” she consulted the dozens of conversations like this she’d had already. “You signed the contract, whoever’s in charge found you, pushed you out. Des Moines is a no-go and Omaha is too far west, so you hitched it to Kansas City. You’re not strong enough to hack it so they told you to head here instead.”
“I was in charge of Winterset,” Cathy peeked up at her angrily, roses flaring in her cheeks. “There was no one else when I started, but after a month someone else came in. They were stronger than me, kicked me out.”
Getting beaten out of a no-name place like that did not bode well for this girl’s chances no matter the cardinal direction. “Well, what can you do?”
“Sorry?”
“What powers you got?” Syracuse twirled the fore and middle fingers of her right hand in the air. Hurry up girl, we don’t got all goddam day. “Don’t transform, just tell me. Don’t need you wasting your energy.” Too many chats like this. It made her impatient.
“Oh,” Cathy breathed. “Um. I can make… a mist.” She started turning red, creeping from the roots of her hair into her face. “It stuns wraiths, they get sorta slow and confused. Makes them easier for me to hunt.”
Jesus Christ on a cross. She supposed it could be worse, though she had to actively try to hide her annoyance with this useless child. Careful now, work through her logic. “Why are you so sure you want to go to St. Louis?”
“I heard magical girls can work together there,” the smaller girl said. “The people in Columbia are organizing it, you keep what you clear out.”
Syracuse’s stomach did a funny little flip flop. Sending less valuable girls into a fucking shredder was one of the more efficient ways she had heard for keeping competition to a minimum. She bet Columbia was responsible for spreading this twisted idea around.
She decided not to sugarcoat it, planting her fists on her hips. “Listen carefully, alright? You’ll die if you go there. You’ll fucking die.” She opened her mouth all the way to enunciate the syllable properly. “St. Louis is a pit that no one comes back from.”
Cathy’s breath hitched just a bit, but to her minor credit she didn’t outright dismiss this news. “Well, what’m I supposed to do then?”
God dammit. “Stay here for a bit,” she wished she could bite her tongue off even as she was saying it. “It’s the sticks and all, I know, but we have work. You saw that board near the gate?” Cathy nodded. “Keep an eye on that. It’ll tell you where you can hunt nearby. It’s not a lot, but it’ll keep you alive. Hell, maybe you can find a small town and stick there.” Why did she feel like she was begging? “Just don’t go to St. Louis, is all I’m saying. You’d have better chances with a grenade in your mouth.”
Then Cathy did start to cry, and Syracuse was fighting to keep back tears of her own. She fucking hated when people cried. Trying to ignore the sharp pain in her own chest, she wrapped her right arm around the tiny teenager’s shoulder, made cooing noises like a moron. What an awful day.
“Look, it’s okay. It’ll be okay,” she lied. “Shh, shh. Here,” she offered a nasty, sweaty handkerchief out of her overalls to her guest. “Let’s get you back, okay?” Cathy thankfully did not take the soiled offering, just wiped her arm on her nose. Little brat.
They hiked the rest of the path slowly, falteringly. Cathy wasn’t quite sobbing by the time they rounded the bend and came upon her Homestead: a glade populated by a smattering of tents, one edge taken up by a rusting fence with an iron cattle gate and an exceedingly small cabin a stone’s throw away from the tents. Humble and quiet, she noticed with irritation that there were articles of trash littering the grass. She’d have to pick that up before she was done for the evening.
“Here,” she ignored the garbage. “Do you want to know what I wished for?” She had no idea why she was saying it, though she told herself it was to get the kid to stop sniveling.
Cathy snorted snot back into her runty face. “Sure, I guess.”
“I wanted a place of my own.”
“What, this?” She sounded weirdly surprised by that, producing a lilt in the question which was definitely offensive.
“Yeah,” Syracuse sighed. “Not all the stuff on it now. I put that up later.”
“Why?”
Syracuse wasn’t sure if she meant why the wish or why all of this fucking crap, and mercifully Cathy did not press her any further. They ambled towards what she was pretty sure was the right tent: dinky and rusty red plastic with holes in the canopy, she was thankful it was already twilight so it was harder to see.
“Look,” she whispered, “you can rest now. Try not to think too much on it for tonight. Try and get some sleep,” she unzipped the entrance flap, though it caught near the end so Cathy had to awkwardly maneuver into the tent. Syracuse would have just set up a better one if she had any more to spare.
The flow of magical girls from Kansas City had lessened considerably in the last half year or so, but the reputation of her Homestead had grown enough that it didn’t matter. Country girls from all over flocked to her humble abode, swapping the latest hot gossip as they caught a night of sleep on their way to better pastures. Or so they hoped.
Syracuse had been told that other patches like this one had sprung up around the country during the Unveiling, as weaker girls fled the cities in droves, including a fucking huge one down near Dallas. Some of those tent towns were better organized than hers by now, but so far as she knew hers was the only one which preceded the event. A small point of pride, but for all her grumbling it was important to her.
Other migrants milled about, relaxing or studiously tending little campfires. There was some chatter here and there, too low for her to hear. Air rushed out of her, and she suddenly felt sapped of her energy.
With leaden bones, she forced herself to move on. Still the litter to pick up thanks to these ingrates. Couldn’t rest quite yet. She spent the next fifteen minutes in dwindling light picking up refuse from the corners of the campsite.
Lush oak trees soughing in the evening wind were interrupted by a sharp clang of metal on metal. The interweaving songs of twenty three different species of birds and countless insects were instantly cut short, replaced by a pronounced awkwardness. Idle conversations in tents fell silent too, their occupants offended at the lack of grace their host was displaying.
“Sorry,” Syracuse called out to the clearing’s occupants. “Just dumping the TRAAASH,” she called out to her shitty guests. After a few seconds of the unfittingly merry crackle of someone’s fire, there was a lot of audible grumbling from the closest tents. The bugs and birds also gradually returned to their inter locutions, whether to persuade others of their kind to stay out or invite them near. She heard someone lightly call out “bitch” from somewhere.
Yeah, she wasn’t all that sorry, she decided. It would be so much nicer if they didn’t bring all this shit for her to clean up. It had been better when there weren’t so many people here.
Gritting her teeth, she stalked away from the heavy steel dumpster to the tiny cabin–a large shed, really–that served as her home.
The Shed was of Syracuse’s own making, and given that she was no carpenter, it could politely be said to look like steaming shit. It was cobbled together from a few planks and no less than three different types of wood she had found on the property, speckled with small, poorly caulked gaps between the unequally sized logs. Various additions over the years such as a fading blue tarp on top helped improve its weatherproofing, but not by much. Were it not for a couple of opportune enchantments from grateful visitors, it would basically be completely unlivable.
And yet, live in it she did, for almost two years now.
Two?? Yeah, she supposed, perhaps a little more. It was June 2nd of 2015, a quick glance at her cracked phone told her. Hard to believe she’d made it this far, frankly. She had been convinced for some time that she would succumb to starvation or the Cycles, whichever got her first.
Dim memories swirled in her mind like the clouds of dust she kicked up, trudging along the short beaten path to her ramshackle house. Such a lonely first year, and now there was no shortage of visitors.
She guessed she didn’t mind them all that much, compared to what it had been like before.
Miss Wilds.
Her head whipped up, dirt eyes spying above a dirt path. A trickle of rage entered her.
He better not be on her porch.
Nah, worse. He was inside her Shed, the worthless slab of a door had popped ajar because everything about the place fit together so god damn poorly.
The Incubator stared at her from within, his blood moon eyes the only thing about him that she could see. She grimaced; these visits were always unpleasant, and often she wondered why he didn't go bother the city girls for a change. Feeling too fatigued to expel breath for this conversation, she squared her shoulders and indulged him telepathically: What do you want, cat.
In the interest of avoiding unnecessary conflict and reducing potential fatalities, I am here to urge you to dismiss your guests and evacuate the premises.
And why on earth would I bother doing that? Syracuse crossed her arms, sweat glistening even as it was carried away in the cool breeze of deepening night. This land is mine.
Please don’t mistake my meaning, Miss Wilds. As per the conditions of your wish, this land was indeed titled to and is owned by you. However, it has come to the attention of the United States Magic Force that an increasing number of Magical Girls dwell here alongside you. The organization has consequently deemed this gathering a threat and is moving to disperse it.
Whoa whoa, whoa now. They what? Realizing she had spoken the last word aloud, she wrenched her back to look behind her. No sign anyone in the tents heard her. While she was already looking that way, she took it upon herself to take count.
One, two… five… her heart sank as she tallied nine fabric tops out there in the glade, uniform in their shabbiness. A couple were, to her knowledge, being shared by more than one person.
Okay. That was definitely a lot of magical girls for this part of Missouri. Before, it had been typical not to have even a single girl per three or four counties across the middle of the state. Common enough situation for most of the Midwest or the South, to be honest.
Despite the soothingly dropping temperature, she felt a bead of sweat trickle down the back of her dirty neck.
Most of them are just passing through, she turned back slowly, calmly as she could manage herself. Come this time tomorrow, half of ‘em will be fifty or more miles away.
Kyubey’s red eyes remained unmoved in the deepening shadows of her house. The birdsong seemed to fall away as his thoughts intruded on her further. This is understood, and has been deemed irrelevant. Since last year, the number of visitors to this region has risen by an average of 32.85% month over month, and after thorough investigation there is no other rational explanation except your arrangements here, which are clearly intended to foster a community of some sort.
I explained this to you before, Syracuse thought, her fatigue slowly being replaced with a creeping dread. It stole the little feeling she had left from her roughened fingertips. It’s just the signboard, it helps us hunt. There are pockets of wraiths that pop up all the time around here, without word of mouth they would go totally unharvested. She licked her lips, tasting grit from the day’s work. When in doubt, appeal to Kyubey’s unfettered desire for production.
My model suggests that the potential gains here do not merit the degree of effort sustained by you and your cohorts. In other words, Miss Wilds, she did not see his ear twitch but somehow heard it, an absurd little squeaking noise that made her want to decapitate the fucking thing, the operations carried out here are inefficient to the point they are not worth defending. Even if they were, you have absolutely no chance of resisting successfully. In the face of an overwhelming threat, there is no rational reason to continue in this manner.
The fuck, she mouthed inaudibly and unthinkingly. Most of these girls don’t even have internet anymore . The cruddy little message center she had thrown up was the main way magical girls in this and the surrounding area got their work. Countless no-name towns and communities had their own smattering of wraiths to take care of, and girls–both those who lived in the area or those on their way to more bountiful lands–would check her roughshod community board to avoid wasting time or energy. It wasn’t the best system, but it had worked to keep them from falling to the Cycles quite as often.
When she thought about it, that’s probably how it had worked before cities were a thing. She bet Kyubey hadn’t been an asshole over it back then .
A twitch rippled through her and that spark of rage grew inside her. Unconsciously her fists clenched, unclenched. Breaths one, two, and three entered and exited. Restraint was needed.
How long?
They will be here tomorrow evening. This should allow you and all current occupants time to leave with your possessions. I would urge you to take advantage of this and not linger.
“WHAT?” There was no hiding it this time. Heads popped out of tents to glare as Syracuse transformed, draped in a green and brown frock as a giant steel mattock appeared in her weathered hands. “AND WHERE DO YOU S’POSE I SHOULD TELL EVERYONE TO GO, YOU LITTLE PRICK? ”
Given the mantle you’ve taken up here, I presume that’s your responsibility to figure out. Best of luck to you, Ms. Wilds.
She howled, guttural as her insides turned to white fire. She hurled the grub ax with startling force, spinning end over end like a helicopter blade to embed itself squarely in her floorboards. She knew she wouldn’t hit him–he was already gone.
Stomping over to wrench it back out, she whipped her head around towards the pasture: none of the girls were looking now. Let them think on that for a minute. But her fuming went as quickly as it came, and she sank on her rickety porch as the fight went out of her.
This wasn’t the first time people had tried to squeeze in on her territory by force. There’d been that one in her first year, some weirdo from the Chicago area who had been talking a lot of shit. Something about claiming the land as a castellum , if she remembered right. Frankly the girl had come across as kind of insane.
Then the one after she and Tipton had struck their bargain with Kaycee, the chick from Arkansas that was built like a brick shithouse. Dressed all in yellow, looked and kinda smelled like piss. Didn’t have two brain cells to rub together.
Each of those girls had a grave in the woods for their efforts.
This, though, was a different matter. After all, what the fresh fuck was she going to do against the military? The Homestead was a refuge for the weaklings, the dime-a-dozen girls without talent or strength who already couldn’t hack it elsewhere.
Syracuse stewed, not moving but crumpling inward all the same. The last light faded out of the dusk and the songs of the countryside shifted into their nighttime timbre. She didn’t have the heart to swat the errant mosquito that came to take a tithe from her.
After an hour or so, the sound of a large car approached from the east. Headlights swept briefly over the camp as it swung into the packed dirt path, then settled on Syracuse, turning the insides of her eyelids red, then back to an empty black as the engine stopped. Shoes swept through the grass toward her, and she felt her chest lighten. Just a bit.
“Oh dear.”
Despite the buoying sensation, Syracuse couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She sat there, a meal for the bugs that crawled through the unkempt grass. Maybe if she was lucky they would eat her outright, or some venomous snake would bite and kill her.
Tipton sat down next to her, and the trickle of optimism intensified. “One of the girls giving you trouble?”
After a few minutes, Syracuse gathered the energy to open her eyes and look at her companion. Garish pink caught the light of a full moon. Tipton was usually transformed, and she always looked bright and clean.
Syracuse drank it in, relishing in her presence. After a bit, she consciously breathed in for the first time since the Incubator had departed. Oxygen nourished her ailing brain. “No. Kyubey.”
Tipton offered a rare frown. “Weird. The little guy hasn’t been around much.”
“I’d have preferred it stay that way.” Syracuse closed her eyes again. “He said the army’s coming and we have to leave. Didn’t say what would happen if we didn’t, but I’m sure it’d be nothin’ good.”
Tipton sucked air in through her teeth. “How long have we got?”
No question of the facts, just straight to business. God, how nice it was for someone else to do that right now. “He said tomorrow. Probably don’t need to move them far, just can’t stay here anymore.”
“I’ll start moving people out in the morning.” Gentle arms draped around Syracuse’s shoulders, a cotton softness that she could feel scrubbing her soul clean. “It should be fine, love. We only really have to move the girls Kaycee sent our way, the others are used to taking care of themselves.”
“I know. Just… shit , Aimee,” Syracuse sniffled, and wiped at her stubby nose angrily. Here it came. “We just can’t win, can we?”
Tipton shifted closer, squeezing tight. “It does seem rather sudden,” she said soothingly. Placating her, like she was a fucking baby.
A couple girls were still fooling around in one of the tents, the two could see their silhouettes against the pale moonlight. Their forms were distorted through Syracuse’s magic, their proportions exaggerated and inhuman. They were less people, more amorphous blobs smashing together. Copulating aliens. Unknowingly squeezing the last bits of reasonable privacy they might have for a while. Maybe for the rest of their lives.
Syracuse continued grousing: “All of this sucks. None of us knew what we were getting into, doesn’t matter how much explainin’ Kyubey does. Not that I expect he’d be truthful about it even if he had to.”
“No, I don’t think so either.” Tipton sighed, looking for the right words and finding none. “You’ve gotta make the best you can of it, right?” Platitudes were quick and easy enough.
“Yeah, ‘course. That’s what we were trying to do out here.” The Homesteader balled her fists up, squeezing until her arms shook and color flared on her cheeks. “That’s what I mean. The cities are a meat grinder and the country’s a wasteland. We tried to set something decent up for ourselves out here and now it’s being taken away for no god,” huff, “damn,” huff, “ reason. ”
“Well, not for no reason–”
“No good fuckin’ reason! We weren’t hurting anyone out here!” Syracuse leaped to her feet, apoplexy in her face and eyes. “We did good work, we helped everyone out with this shitty little place, and now that’s over just ‘cuz the government got some bug up their ass?” And then she snapped and came undone, falling to weeping.
“Whoa, whoa.” Tipton clambered up to put her arms around her partner. “I know. I’m sorry, Sofia. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She mumbled it a few more times into her friend’s dark hair, kissed her head softly. The dirt and grime from the day’s work started to magically clear away, slowly but steadily.
“It’s just unfair,” Syracuse repeated in fits and starts. Snot and tears ran down her face, disappearing after a few seconds. “Of all the girls that have passed through here, I doubt one of ‘em will be alive in another five years.”
They held each other for a little while as the cool of night settled and the cricketsong slowed. When Syracuse was done, her eyes puffy and red, the two gently climbed up and into her humble house.
As small as it seemed on the outside, it took a minute of fumbling to find the switch to the crappy, $5 battery-powered lantern above her bed. Regardless of quality it did its job, revealing a space that was about five times larger than it had any right to be. The wooden floor and walls fit together poorly just as it did on the outside, but the dimensions were impossibly blown up to stretch the space. Syracuse’s own enchantment suffused the shoddy gray planks with a hint of jade.
She didn’t have many things to her name, so there was ample room for her to walk around. Aside from her bed–little more than a pile of sleeping bags and blankets in the corner–there was a little green propane stove, a portable battery for charging her phone (Tipton kept it full for her), and a dinky cooler filled with her food. The latter was mostly stuff she grew out on the property, plus a couple items from the store that Tipton brought her so her diet wasn’t 95% root vegetables and grass.
A lot of loose dirt decorated the floor as usual, but Tipton’s presence caused it to slowly vanish. Syracuse herself was almost completely clean again at this point, and the ache of the ill news wasn’t quite so sharp anymore. She looked at her soul gem–the green was horribly muddy, but less than it might have been otherwise.
She sighed and opened the cooler. Its interior was also stretched, the geometry wrong in ways that made her eyes hurt to look at for too long. She reached into one corner and brought out a healthy pile of grief cubes cupped in both hands. Her meager savings.
“We’re gonna need to be fresh for tomorrow,” she said as she offered some to Tipton. “I feel better now, thanks to you, so please take some.”
“You sure?” The pink girl fingered her own hazel gem, a ruby studded into a bracelet on her left arm. It had taken on the dirt and filth that her presence scrubbed away, and it was looking decidedly spotty. “I’m not that bad yet,” she said truthfully. She left it unsaid that Syracuse didn’t have all that many to spare.
“This time tomorrow we’ll be outta here. Probably best to use them now and not have to carry ‘em around.”
A few minutes later the grief cubes were spent, their umbral luster gone. With a sigh Syracuse dropped the magic and transformed back to her usual ratty messy self, then dropped onto her sleeping bags. Too hot to crawl in, and too tired besides.
Tipton was not quite glowing, but her cheerful demeanor was restored. She patted down her bright dress, flattening the petticoat. She stood out like a twinkling star in the dingy Shed. “Well, looks like I have some calls to make. You need anything else before I go?”
There was no response at first, but then the Homesteader stirred, her eyes flitting open. “Come lay down wi’ me,” Sofia mumbled, already half asleep. “Jus’ a few minutes.”
Aimee tittered under her breath. “Alright, love.” She didn’t actually lay down, opting instead to kneel on her knees, stroking her friend’s rough hair as she fell to sleep. She always had such an easy time drifting off. Sure enough, within 30 seconds there was a pronounced snoring.
Aimee stayed there a bit longer anyway, watching over her.
Sofia didn’t remember waking up. Happened often enough for her, when there were things needed doing. Tipton was gone by the time she was cognizant was all she could say for sure. Her soul gem felt just a little bit heavier for the absence.
The sun was already out–normally unthinkable, it meant she was sorely behind on the day’s work–but Syracuse did not give a single shit right now. She had the hard job of informing all present they needed to vacate, and rounded the tents. Some occupants were still sleeping. She hated late sleepers, and felt less bad about giving them the boot.
She didn’t avoid telling any of them why. Depriving them of that information could get them killed sooner rather than later. She avoided reconciling with the fact that most of them did not have long to live on average anyway.
Most got the hint and cleared out, saving her a headache. From a couple there was a lot of shouting and arguing, which ceased the moment her mattock came out. Cathy in particular was vehemently upset–understandable, given the informational whiplash. You can stay here, nevermind you gotta clear out, get fucked kid. That’s life for magical girls, get used to it or fucking die.
She was young, though. Made taking that message all the harder. Syracuse couldn’t help feeling a little stab in her chest when she saw the girl’s pimply face fall, watched her storm off into the woods.
As long as she was gone soon, that’s all that mattered.
There were a few out on the hunt she would have to tell later, but she set to tearing down the tents of the ones already gone. It took longer than it should have. She felt remarkably sluggish like her mind and body were disconnected, her spirit struggling to find desire and turn it into action.
Tipton returned at some point in the early afternoon and helped her clear the rest of the area. It was quicker work with two pairs of hands and a lighter heart. By the time they were done, the sun was well past its zenith and they were itching to be gone.
“So,” Syracuse sighed, sitting down in the packed dirt of the driveway. “What did Kaycee say?”
Tipton opted to stand. She was like a tinsel angel, a pink ornament without a tree to hang upon. “Kaycee said she has some space for us, thanks to Kyubey. Apparently the little guy has been giving her a hard time too. She gave me an address to our new accommodations, they’re expecting us tonight.”
“Us?”
“Of course, you little dork.” Good god, why did her stomach have to flip when Tipton said shit like that? “I was only staying out here because of–” Her? “--the Homestead.” Close enough. “They’ve wanted me to come over for a while, but I always said no.”
“Right,” Syracuse said noncommittally, absorbed in her private thoughts. They sat in comfy silence for a bit, relishing in the heat of the day and listening to grasshoppers jumping through the grass. The sun was clambering down, passing through some cloud cover coming in from the west.
A strange feeling wormed its way through her legs and into her belly: this was her last day here at home. It was a hollow sensation at first, but it soon turned to itching, an inflammation that made her hem and haw and fidget.
As the light dimmed slightly, Syracuse pawed her way up and stretched. “Fine,” she grunted. “Guess it’s time then.” She did her best not to look at her Shed while she said it.
“Sure enough, love.” Tipton bounced–actually bounced with the grace of a gymnast – to the driver seat door and the vehicle promptly roared to life.
Syracuse clambered into the interior like a fucking goblin, scattering soil all over the footrest and the seat. Tipton laughed at her crudeness, making her stomach do that little flip again. “C’mon. There’s a good hill just a bit down the way here, should be able to see… whatever it is they’re gonna do.”
By the time they had driven over, gotten out, scaled the hill of some nameless farmer’s property, angry clouds had formed out of the northwest and robbed the day of its brightness.
It wasn’t unusual weather for around here, but if you looked closely there were little things here and there that struck wrongly: the stormwall was unnaturally flat, and it was narrow. Storms should wrap around the horizon at least one way, but this one didn’t really fill the sky on either side of them.
A slice of some tempest had been carved out just for them. It built up and loomed, an ugly, bruised purple mass that was coming at them fast.
Looking back to the earth, that was when they spied it: a large van, unmistakably decorated in the camouflage of some military outfit, had pulled into the dirt path of the Homestead. A girl, two, three got out hastily, all clearly transformed into their magical girl outfits. One sported a black beret, completely incongruous on top of a long dress bedecked in bright blue and yellow. A couple of them spread out over the property and one entered her Shed, looking for god knows what.
After a few minutes they reconvened by the van… one of them dragging a girl out of the woods.
Syracuse choked on her own breath as she saw it: that was Cathy. The ratty Mickey Mouse shirt didn’t lie.
Probably thought she could wait out the eviction, stupid fucking girl. The three soldiers engaged in a curt discussion, the one with the beret was shaking her head. Once, twice. Barked something, impossible to tell what from this far away. They opened the back doors of the van and threw the hapless intruder in. Syracuse could feel Tipton shaking with anger next to her. She would have been doing the same if she could feel anything in the first place, but emptiness had made its home in her breast.
Then, as if this mortification was not enough, Beret looked square at them. There was no mistaking that visual contact, she knew they were watching somehow. She threw something shiny onto the ground and dug it in with the heel of one shoe. The soldier looked up at them again.
We’re watching. Don’t come back. Syracuse recoiled as if physically struck.
Their message delivered, the three of them climbed back into the van and took off, a blooming cloud of dirt and dust rising after them.
Within seconds of their departure, the heat of the day was swept away by a cold gust. Unnaturally cold. It swept through the treetops, shaking the boughs. The deep green around them clattered as the lighter undersides of the leaves were exposed by the wind.
Hot and cold air whorled, deepening on itself and forming that telltale tail. A cyclone wrought of magic swooped to touch the ground, to kiss it, and as if the swirling formation wanted more, it plowed down with a firmness that brought vivid, malapropos memories to the fore of their minds. Only briefly; the disaster unfolding in front of them brooked no delay.
The roiling reverse spire simultaneously widened and darkened. At first it was quite narrow, a bent straw reaching down to suck from the Earth. Then very quickly it resembled those obscene educational videos she remembered from somewhere in her stunted education, warping and stretching into a floating pyramid which seemed as if it must fall and crush them all beneath its unimaginable weight. But there was no weight, only the howling and screeching of a good old MIdwestern tornado plowing towards the Homestead. It bore down with cycladic forces that, given the chance, would have turned them into mincemeat long before they even had to enter the funnel itself.
“Well, it’s all fucked now,” Syracuse said, belaboring the obvious.
Tipton, snapped from her reverie, heaved a sigh that could not be heard in the pitching wind. Her mouth moved: “Everyone else was out, you said?”
Couldn’t even fucking hear themselves talk now, the wind was hurting her ears. Yeah. I was talking with the one they nabbed, but everyone else packed up and got out of here at least an hour ago.
Then that’s all you can do, isn’t it?
“Yeah… right. Who gives a fuck?” She whispered it with a growl which did not quite convince that she in fact did not give a fuck.
Indeed, her desperate eyes stayed focused on her dingy little hut that she had sweated and frozen in, gotten wet in, gotten bit by countless bugs in, failed to sleep in properly for two years. She watched her Shed hold on for longer than it had any right to–the enchantments at work, no doubt. Her heart plummeted into her stomach when suddenly the light touch of magic keeping it all together failed.
With a strange flicker of color the structure practically exploded into the wind, which was now surely in excess of a couple hundred miles per hour. Merely akimbo for a split second, it then truly broke apart like so much flotsam and jetsam on the waves of the storm. They watched it as it was sucked up into the sky, disappearing into the darkness of the cyclone.
Briefly she felt a spot of madness descend on her, a fleeting desire to leap into the vortex along with it. Take me with you, she thought, I want to go to Oz too. She had never even seen that piece of shit movie before. She giggled like a lunatic, but Tipton didn’t even look. The wind was too loud to hear the laughter bubbling up beside her, the Good Witch growing to meet Dorothy in Munchkinland.
Then as quick as it came, the fever passed. Wrong state anyway, Syracuse thought glumly. And there was no Good Witch to help her even if she could go. There was no such thing as a “good witch,” and the only Wizard was that little white sack of shit whose only gift had been to tell her to get out of here or else she could not keep working for him, not to whisk her away and give her and her friends a heart and a brain and courage and a way home.
No, the Incubator’s true gift was to render them as willful flesh with no other thought but to grind the ghoul grass in their teeth and eventually be harvested in turn, whenever their time came.
Well, at least she wasn’t in the back of that van right now. Wherever that poor kid was being taken, this girl was striking out west towards greener pastures. The Gateway Arch was lost, but Kansas City had always been the true Gateway to the West , where the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon trails finally diverged and scattered pilgrims to the far corners of the continent. It was there where she would look and start something better. Something more meaningful. Anything less awful.
She forced the edges of her mouth to straighten out, refusing to let any tears eke out as she watched. Didn’t work, of course. Unable to stomach witnessing the trees and the dirt of her awful little home being ripped up by the unending squall, she turned her eyes away from the screeching darkness.
She cast her face instead towards the fading glimmer of the setting sun, a droplet of gold that peeked at her just between treetops below and roiling gray clouds above. It mocked her, questioning her life choices as it hung there so serenely atop the canopy. It was still too high in the sky, the shine hurt too much to look at directly, and she looked away, down towards the earth. She didn’t owe the sky her attention, she decided.
Fuck her wish. It had always been worthless anyway. Should have thought to make it tax free.
An hour later saw them in Tipton’s oversized car, spotlessly clean as always. All of Syracuse’s earthly possessions were in the back compartment, squashed into the cooler, which she had wasted some magic resizing to fit everything. Some mindless grinding pop played on the radio, which she studiously ignored. She wasn’t into music and she did her best to tune it out so she could sulk in her ruination.
Westbound on 50, rolling pastures and clusters of trees flashed them by.
They were in the Desert of Billboards. Back when she had traveled wherever with her family, she had always fucking hated these monuments to stupidity on the side of the highway. Towering advertisements littered every quarter mile, half of them some religious nonsense (“KING YESHUA IS COMING” with a picture of Jesus poorly photoshopped as a half-lion, “ARE YOU PREPARING TO MEET GOD? CALL 1-65-FOR-TRUTH”, the infinite anti-abortion ads, take your pick) and the rest a smattering of advertisements for local colleges or the billboard owners themselves begging people to put up advertisements on them.
After a half hour, they were passing through Sedalia. There was nothing of interest here aside from an art college, everything else being warehouse stores and fast food restaurants packed right next to the highway for a couple of miles.
Despite being the closest sizable territory to her Homestead, this area was unfamiliar to her. Sedalia the person was absurdly territorial in a way that most other magical girls around here were not, a product of her transferral from some shit fuck place down south. For ages Sedalia had actively pushed all intruders east towards the Homestead. Syracuse wished avidly for her slow and agonizing death.
Mercifully, there was no sign of the self-serving bitch interrupting their peregrination today. As they emerged on the western side of the stroad, Tipton briefly dispelled the haze of misery. “I need to drop something off to Warrensburg,” She said cheerfully, “So we’ll be exiting there for a bit. Sorry love.”
Syracuse didn’t have the heart to respond. Whatever, Warrensburg was fine. Had only met her once, was a polite girl if kind of weird. It was the farthest thing from her mind at the moment. She was growing sick inside, like a snake had slithered into her guts and was eating away, hollowing her out. Thank god she had Tipton driving her around, she wouldn’t have been able to do it on her own. She grit her teeth, refusing to look at her soul gem. She would be fine, she told herself. The snake continued to eat.
Another 20 minutes of endless squares of farmland and the occasional, bizarre roadside business brought them to the turn-off to yet another stroad. The exit to business 13, rolling straight through the entirety of Warrensburg, was packed somehow even more tightly than Sedalia.
Syracuse closed her eyes as Tipton turned south towards the university, enduring the gentle stops and starts of streetlights guarding the path. She didn’t want to see the tenth McDonald’s or the fourth Wendy’s or the second Taco Bell for the day, just wanted to close her eyes and sleep.
God damn she hated the way these towns all felt, it was so cluttered and claustrophobic, endless shitty drywalled stores all shoved right in your face, horrible traffic, people everywhere, no peace or quiet. She hadn’t been to Kansas City since she was a little girl, but she knew it was going to be even worse.
The bevy of businesses began to thin as they got closer to campus. A short bridge over train tracks divided a strip mall and student housing, and suddenly it was like they were in another town all together. School was out for the season so there was no one left but the townies, scattered here and there on the cracking sidewalks. A pedestrian bridge loomed over the road, a couple students lounging with their arms through the safety bars and chatting aimlessly. Probably talking about what classes they were taking next semester.
Syracuse stared at them as they passed through and under the walkway. Couldn’t help wondering idly about what she might have done if she never contracted. She kinda hated farming, if she had stuck it out through school she likely would have gone for a degree in basically anything else.
Tipton turned right to go deeper into campus, passing the Union and going towards university housing. Buildings taller than any other in the town rose in front of them, dorm rooms awaiting the turn of another semester. How many people even still went to college, after everything? She supposed there must still be a demand for education, but so far as she had heard, things were still shaky after last year.
A few twists and turns later found them emerging on the opposite side of campus, towards residential apartments next to a sandy volleyball court. There were a few people playing, laughing loudly. Not sure if that was a pleasant sound right now.
Finally, Tipton pulled into a lot past a copse of trees. There was a girl standing out front, which she recognized as Warrensburg. Her dress was elaborate and elegant, bouncy with a dark blue and black design, a fine mixture of curves and edges. Her heeled shoes clacked on the pockmarked pavement as she moved towards the car’s driver window, which Tipton rolled down promptly.
“A pleasure to see you Aimee,” the girl said huskily.
“And you, Brenda.” Tipton offered a limp and opaque bag, large and completely unmarked.
The college girl took it gingerly. “My thanks to you again.” She made a show of peering into the car. “I see you’re carrying a passenger?”
“Yes,” Tipton said cheerfully. “This is Syracuse. We’re heading into the city together.”
“Ah, I remember you,” Warrensburg nodded politely. “You seem rather down today.”
What a remarkable fucking observation. Syracuse did not have the energy to give a response, but she envisioned something using a couple fingers. Or fists.
“I see,” Warrensburg nodded again. It was a strangely pronounced movement, her entire head bobbing up and down with exaggeration that Syracuse did not know what to make of. “Here,” she said, extending her hand. Covered in lace so she could barely see any skin, it held some grief cubes, which surprised her enough to momentarily dispel the acid brain fog.
“... Thank you,” was all she could bring herself to say. After a few seconds, she frowned. “Why?”
“You need them,” Brenda said simply. “None of us are strangers to hardship, and many of us perish without one another. Pass it along to the next girl who needs some help, yes?”
“... Sure.”
Appearing satisfied with that answer, the college girl turned smartly and clacked back into her apartment complex, a plain brown door closing to complete the brown edifice in its entirety.
Their business conducted, it seemed mere seconds before they were back on the lonely highway, westward bound.
“What was in that package?” the Homesteader asked quietly.
“Hmm? Oh,” Tipton tittered. “I have no idea. Never thought to ask before.”
More billboards lined their path as they rounded curves and flowed through peak after valley. Syracuse’s favorite was a dilapidated mess with no advertisement at all. On some bend past the lone gas station which made Pittsville worthy of incorporation, it was just a heap of particle board on which someone had lazily scrawled “STOP DRINKING” in maroon spray paint.
A few more hills passed by, then the town of Lone Jack with its population of two gas stations, a decrepit retirement home, and a Confederate graveyard. Supposedly there was a museum dedicated to the Civil War battle that had taken place here, not that either of them gave two shits about that. They passed the failing exurb without comment.
Rural green turned into the gray of civilian sprawl as they passed into the first of Kansas City’s actual suburbs: Lee’s Summit suddenly bloomed into existence around them with its countless, densely packed strip malls and interweaving highways. The roads suddenly expanded, the grassy median turned to concrete barriers. Oncoming traffic was suddenly only a few feet away on their left, and the burgeoning of the roads was accompanied by infinitely more cars around them.
Syracuse worried they would get in a fucking head-on collision like this. The snake squirmed, and her misery was joined by more than a smidgen of fear.
She had no idea how Tipton was able to handle this bullshit. There were dozens of them all packed tightly around, yet they moved in the smooth, practiced concert of regular commuters. A waterfall of blinding white headlights came at them on the eastbound side, chock full of people returning from the city to whichever cookie cutter neighborhood they called home around here.
At this point, Syracuse was officially lost. They flew around at a cool 75 miles per hour, getting onto a different highway and then another and switching lanes seemingly at random. The car hitched and accelerated and slowed down, causing her heart to race in the same erratic fashion. Tipton lightly honked at someone getting a little too close on the driver’s side. Syracuse did everything in her power not to physically claw at the upholstery, the fear turning now into a full blown panic.
They glided into an area she knew vaguely as the Triangle, an intermeshing series of highways that all exchanged in one spot just south of the downtown area. All she knew about it was that there had been a sniper briefly terrorizing people here back before she was born, a tiny fact which did nothing to ameliorate her worry.
There were buildings and streets everywhere , concrete highways fifty feet high that were impossible to follow with her eyes. Despite the enormity of it, Tipton appeared to know the way. Before she knew it the Triangle was gone as they angled north, swooping through the air onto yet another highway. They were thankfully lowered back onto the ground as the asphalt stretched out in front of them, exits peppering the road every mile at least.
Her heart slowly stopped hammering in her chest as they slowed down to match with gathering traffic. This part of the highway was crammed with cars going into the city, she guessed. God, she hoped they would just fucking get there already. She’d rather have taken the tornado than deal with this.
Just as that thought crossed her mind, they crested a hill and a splendor of skyscrapers and hotels and dazzling lights filled her eyes. Kansas City arrayed itself before her in all its bruised glory, glass and steel and stone monuments that reached to the sky.
It congealed into a throne to the aspirations of humanity: the staggered Art Deco of the Power and Light building and City Hall, blocky obelisks reaching out from the 1930s; the Pavilion and One Kansas City Place, glassen mountains that dwarfed the rest from atop rolling hills of concrete highway which surrounded the city, passed through and underneath it.
The vision of these heaven-bound spires dangled there in front of her for a second, and then the car dipped down into the next valley to obscure it all from her view.
“Just a few more minutes,” Tipton said. “I know how you feel, but it’s not all bad. You’ll see.”
Chapter End Notes
"Yea, for after I had reckoned up, it came into my mind to feel pity at the thought how brief was the whole life of man, seeing that of these multitudes not one will be alive when a hundred years have gone by."
The religious messages are slightly altered from real billboards I see on highway 50. The billboard saying "STOP DRINKING" is completely real, I think about it every time I end up driving out that way.
I had originally intended for this to be the first chapter, and there's a definite argument for putting it there in terms of ending up in Kansas City to establish it as the primary setting. I switched it around because Syracuse initially was going to be the only main character, but as the structure developed it became far more of an ensemble deal.
Descriptions of the Homestead are based loosely on my home from when I lived deep in the country, my family had a one square acre field cleared out with our house on it and we were surrounded by trees. Obviously we didn't live in a shack, though I did convert a medium-sized shed into my bedroom for a year or two. When I was younger and more hateful of people, very often I fantasized about moving out to the middle of a nowhere forest and building a little cabin, never speaking to anyone again.
If you've never been out to a place in the nowhere Midwest, just imagine endless miles of shit like this: