“You,” Lucy-Anne said. She came to kill me, but that was before my dream. Or is this my dream?
“And you,” Nomad said. She started walking forward, raising her fisted hand as if ready to open it palm-up, presenting something for Lucy-Anne's perusal. But this was death she brought with her. She could scorch Lucy-Anne to a cinder with a gasp, blast her apart with a blink, crush her into a smear across the wild landscape with one stamp of her boot.
“I'm sorry,” Nomad said, and the wretchedness did not sit well with her strength.
But things had already changed.
“I dreamed of you,” Lucy-Anne said, “and you won't kill me here.”
The woman frowned, then—
—she opened her hand. But everything had suddenly changed. The power she had been nurturing in her fist ready to blast the girl and her bird-boy to nothing but memory had become something else; a swarm of flies, flitting to the air and dispersing from view. And Nomad was glad.
The fear she had felt whenever she thought or dreamed of the girl had changed into a stunned fascination. And she was pleased.
The girl has to die, she thought. She closed her eyes briefly and recalled the visions from her dream—the mushroom cloud, the blast-wave levelling what was left of London, and her boy Jack meeting his end before he had even touched a fraction of his potential.
She felt herself steered towards other actions. She experienced a flush of déjà vu, as if she had dreamed this same scene a thousand times. Now I walk forward and squat in the grass, the boy cannot accept me because I trouble him so, but the girl talks to me. We exchange information, discuss plans. We are like friends. Yet she had never dreamed of this meeting before. Not like this, and not with this result. The girl had been a horror in her imagination, but now she was rapidly becoming something else.
Nomad lowered her hand and walked towards the girl. She was confused, frowning. Shaking her head. I am my own woman, she thought, but the startling déjà vu remained. She grasped onto it for as long as she could, because for the first time in years Nomad did not feel responsible. She was not master of her own actions, and she could allow a small weight, at least, to lift from her shoulders.
In that moment of clarity she understood that her guilt would have killed most people, but she had borne it with madness. Perhaps because she sought a way to put everything right.
Maybe she is the way.
“But no one knows me,” Nomad said.
“It doesn't matter,” the girl said. “My name is Lucy-Anne, and I think you can help.”
Nomad went to her knees and ran her hands through the long grass, really connecting with the world. Heat grew behind her face. For the first time since she had become Nomad, she began to cry.
Rook stayed close to Lucy-Anne for a few more moments. She could hear his heavy breathing, sense his fear, and when he reached for her hand she took it and squeezed. His rooks were circling high above, and many had landed in the tree bordering this open land to the north. She had never seen them so far away from him.
“I need to…” Rook said. He let go and turned his back on the woman, retreating a dozen steps before sitting down and looking out over London.
“He doesn't believe in me,” Nomad said. Her voice was smooth, authoritative, even though Lucy-Anne had seen the glimmer of tears.
“I'm sure he does, otherwise he wouldn't be scared.”
“I saw you,” Nomad said. “In dreams.” There was more, but the beautiful, terrifying woman frowned and fell silent.
“Me too,” Lucy-Anne said. “And every time I saw you, the world blew up.”
“Yes,” Nomad breathed.
Lucy-Anne went almost close enough to touch and then kneeled before her. They breathed the same air. She could smell fire and death, and the scent of London turned to dust. But she could not be afraid.
“I don't know if this changes anything,” Lucy-Anne said. “Don't know if I can alter something that big.”