And yet. Even here. She drew a pattern on a slab of broken wood. Watched a young man drop a brick of peat for the fire. Watched a young woman pick it up for him and look into his eyes. He smiled.
Now if only she knew the pattern that would ensure that they survived.
When they launched the next plan—collapse the army high command’s headquarters, crippling the RLP and allowing the PTP to fill the vacuum, or so Gerald insisted—she had no part to play. She was not talented enough, Gerald didn’t say, but she understood it. She could only play with detritus from a kitchen table. She could never think big enough for them. Major hadn’t cared.
She did a little thing, though: scattered birdseed on a pool of soapy water, to send a tremor through the air and warn the pigeons, rats, and such that they ought to flee. And maybe that ruined the plan for the others. She’d nudged the pattern too far out of alignment for their pattern to work. The building didn’t collapse, but the clock tower across the square from which Fred and Marco were watching did. As if they had planted explosives and been caught in the blast.
Too direct, of course.
She left. Escaped, rather, as she thought. She didn’t want Gerald to find her. Didn’t want to look him in the eye. She would either laugh at him or accuse him of killing Major and everyone else. Then she would strangle him, and since they were both equally out of history she just might be able to do it. It couldn’t possibly be too direct, and the rest of the world couldn’t possibly notice.
Very tempting, in those terms.
But she found her place, her niche, her purpose. Her little village on the edge of everything was starting to build itself into something bigger. She’d worried about it, but just last year the number of babies born exceeded the number of people who died of disease, age, and accident. A few more cook fires had been added. She watched, pleased.
But Gerald found her, eventually, because that was one of his talents: finding people who had the ability to move outside the world. She might as well have set out a lantern.
She didn’t look up when he arrived. She was gathering mint leaves that she’d set out to dry, putting them in the tin box where she stored them. A spoonful of an earlier harvest was brewing in a cup of water over her little fire. Her small realm was tucked under the overhang formed by three walls that had fallen together. The witch’s cave, she called it. It looked over the village so she could always watch her people.
Gerald stood at the edge of her cave for a long time, watching. He seemed deflated, his cloak worn, his skin pale. But his eyes still burned. With desperation this time, maybe, instead of ambition.
When he spoke, he sounded appalled. “Clare. What are you doing here? Why are you living in this…this pit?”
“Because it’s my pit. Leave me alone, I’m working.”
“Clare. Come away. Get out of there. Come with me.”
She raised a brow at him. “No.”
“You’re not doing any good here.”
She still did not give him more than a passing glance. The village below was full of the evening’s activities: farmers returning from fields, groups bustling around cook fires. Someone was singing, another laughing, a third crying.
She pointed. “Maybe that little girl right there is the one who will grow up and turn this all around. Maybe I can keep her safe until she does.”
He shook his head. “Not likely. You can’t point to a random child and make such a claim. She’ll be dead of influenza before she reaches maturity.”
“It’s the little things, you’re always saying. But you don’t think small enough,” she said.
“Now what are you talking about?”
“Nails,” she murmured.
“You have a talent,” he said, desperately. “You see what other people overlook. Things other people take for granted. There are revolutions in little things. I understand that now. I didn’t—”
“Why can’t you let the revolutions take care of themselves?”
He stared at her, astonished. Might as well tell him to stop breathing. He didn’t know how to do anything else. And no one had ever spoken to him like this.
“You can’t go back,” he said as if it was a threat. “You can’t go back to being alive in the world.”
“Does it look like I’m trying?” He couldn’t answer, of course, because she only looked like she was making tea. “You’re only here because there’s no one left to help you. And you’re blind.”
Some days when she was in a very low mood she imagined Major here with her, and imagined that he’d be happy, even without the games.
“Clare. You shouldn’t be alone. You can’t leave me. Not after everything.”