Lucy was quiet for a moment, but it was a heavy silence. “I bet my grandma coulda fixed his foot up nice.”
Lynn turned in her cot. She could barely make out the pale moon of the little girl’s face on the other side of the basement. “Your grandma?”
“Yeah. She’s a doctor back in the city. Said she’d come and find us, when she could get away. I thought maybe she could fix Stebbs’ foot, make my mommy better, too.”
“Your grandma is a doctor?”
“Yeah, she’s important in the city. Has a big office in the hospital and all that. I got to visit her there once, and I wanted to see the babies but they don’t even let her into that part of the hospital.”
“So she’s not a baby doctor?”
“No, just a sick people doctor.”
“Be nice to have one of those around here.”
“She said she’s coming,” Lucy said quickly as if her saying so would make it true. “Soon as she could get away, she said she’d follow us. She said Neva’s her little girl and she won’t be away from her, no matter what.”
“Follow you how, Lucy? It didn’t seem like you guys even knew where you were going.”
A long silence followed, and when she spoke Lucy’s voice shook. “My dad saw you on the water map.”
“What?” Lynn sat up in her cot, alarm spreading through her body. “What do you mean, a water map? He saw me?”
“I’m not supposed to talk about it.” Lucy folded up into the fetal position on her cot. “It’s a bigger secret even than Stebbs and me being witches.”
“No, Lucy,” Lynn said as calmly as possible. “I think you should tell me. I need to know what you’re saying about a water map. This is important.”
“I know it’s important. All the secrets are.”
“Jeez, little girl, how many do you have?”
“A lot!” Lucy’s voice cracked, and she started to cry. “I’ve got a lot of secrets.”
Lynn got out of her cot and headed over to Lucy’s to cradle the little head in her lap, a feral wave of protective instinct overwhelming her at the touch of the tiny skull. “It’s okay, kiddo,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me all of them. But I want to know about this water map.”
“It’s . . .” Lucy wiped the tears from her face while she looked for a way to explain. “Do you know what a computer is?”
“I’ve seen dead ones in some of the houses I’ve been in, never been around one that worked though.”
“Well, all the ones in the city work, and there’s these things up in the sky called stalactites. They take pictures and give them to the computers, so people can see all the land all around. People use the pictures to find water.”
“Like my pond,” Lynn said, a cold finger of fear running down her spine.
“Yeah,” Lucy said, her voice still thick with tears. “They don’t let everybody see those maps though, even in the city. Only soldiers get to look, and even then only the superspecial ones. ’Cause the people who run the city, they don’t want everybody who lives there coming out here to get water for themselves.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause then they won’t pay for it,” Lucy said simply. “But my dad, he said even if they did let all the people know where the water was, nobody would be able to get to it out here because of the crazy hillbillies. He said people were better off paying for it than being shot.”
Lynn ignored the rush of anger. “So how did your dad know about these maps? Was he one of the soldiers allowed to see them?”
“Yeah. Mommy and Daddy got real nervous a while back, right before her belly got big. They started talking a lot after I was supposed to go to sleep. I could hear them through their door. Daddy started sneaking looks at the water maps, to find somewhere for us to go. Then he’d come home and draw it out as best he could, and Uncle Eli would watch. They memorized them, then burned them up.”
“You said your dad saw me?”
There was another reluctant silence. Lynn opened up the door to the stove and threw some wood on the glowing coals. Lucy’s wet face gleamed in the firelight.
“We were supposed to take your house.”
“Excuse me?”
“Daddy said it was a good place.”
“It is a good place,” Lynn said stiffly. “It’s also mine.”
“He didn’t know you were here,” Lucy said, her face scrunching up to cry again. “Daddy didn’t know there were people here.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” Lynn crawled back onto the cot with Lucy, and cradled her head once more. “So why didn’t you?”
“We got caught. Daddy got killed, then me and Mommy and Eli got kicked out. Uncle Eli followed the map in his head but when he saw there was someone living at your house, he said he was too weak to take it by farce—”
“Force.”
“Yeah, force. And Mommy just sat down and wouldn’t go anymore.”
Lynn stroked Lucy’s hair and thought for a moment. “Did your grandma see these maps that your dad and Eli memorized?”
“Yeah, she learned them too.”
“It’s possible then, she could find us.”
“You think so?”