“Crud,” Kawashima said. “We need to move fast. Help him down the stairs.”
Patricia did her part, but Ernesto could barely walk even with two people (shielded by protective spells) supporting him. And the stairs had gotten treacherous, with vines and bracken coming up through all the crevices. Patricia already felt bogged down by a mixture of weariness, guilt, and anger, since she hadn’t slept in weeks and her mind was overtaxed with trying not to obsess about the same two or three things. Everything was hopeless, people were drowning in death everywhere, and Patricia felt like a selfish monster every time she dwelt on her own personal shit. Like her parents—which, whatever, she hadn’t been close to them, in spite of their recent weak attempts at fence-mending. And Laurence, who had randomly declared his love for her and then gone missing for months. Just when she’d opened up to someone and started to feel like maybe she was worthy of love after all … She shouldn’t obsess about these things, because there was no fixing them, and people needed her to be present. Like Ernesto, who was about to tumble down the overgrown stairs while she was wallowing.
The banisters were mossy and the stairs were growing branches. Patricia and Kawashima gave up on supporting Ernesto, and just carried him down, two stairs at a time. They reached the final flight just as the staircase burst open and erupted with shrubbery. Patricia and Kawashima jumped over the rising branches, in unison, and reached the bottom step, with Patricia supporting Ernesto’s head and Kawashima holding his legs. Ernesto was a green man. Patricia could feel her own clothes growing a layer of gunk.
The VW Jetta that they’d spent a week enchanting for Ernesto idled out front, with Dorothea honking the horn every few seconds. They jumped over roots and branches in the vestibule, and ducked under the low-hanging vines in the doorway. The sidewalk cracked the moment Ernesto came near it, as long-buried jacarandas crashed upwards, casting trumpet flowers everywhere. Patricia shoved Ernesto in the back of the Jetta and got in next to him. She and Kawashima slammed the passenger-side doors and Dorothea sped toward the freeway before anybody had their seat belt on.
The bridge was closed. There was a wreck. They had to veer off and head for the Dumbarton. People had set fire to a bank and the fire had spread to other buildings: black smoke over SoMa. Patricia closed her eyes. On the radio, the president fizzed about plans and resolutions, but Congress couldn’t even convene because nobody could agree on temporary chambers and it was a Constitutional nightmare. Next to Patricia, Ernesto sloughed vegetation until he looked human again.
Trapped in the car with three other witches, Patricia felt desperately alone. Her eyes stung from lack of sleep, and her body felt like it was cannibalizing itself. She only wished she could go all-the-way feral from sleep deprivation and devolve to a lower state of consciousness, shut her higher brain down, because there was no way to think without obsessing and she was absolutely not going to do that. Ever since Superstorm Allegra hit, Ernesto and Kawashima had been sending her out on missions constantly, and it had almost kept her distracted enough. People were in trouble and needed a discreet helping hand. Other people were being predators and needed to be devoured by flesh-eating bacteria. Patricia had gotten so she could inflict flesh-eating bacteria in her sleep, if she ever slept. Now, in this car, she had nothing to do but sit with her thoughts, and it was unbearable. The only person she wanted to talk to was Laurence, who had dropped a bomb on her and then disappeared with no explanation. Sometimes she felt as though she’d had a chance at happiness and self-acceptance dangled in front of her and then snatched away. But that was the most selfish notion of all.
*
THE LAST TIME Patricia had dreamed of the forest, there was a hailstorm, so sharp it nicked your face, and every hailstone was a frozen fish with a look of terror on its face. The razor-sharp fish sliced at Patricia’s skin and tore her clothes until she staggered through the icy woods wearing just her underwear and some cowboy boots. Her blood froze as it came off her. She skittered on the frosty ground, as the hail grew heavier and heavier and fish piled up around her bare ankles. At last she came to the great magic Tree, which was no kind of tree she could identify, and she threw herself on its base, crying for protection as the rain of tiny fish came thicker. She looked out from the shelter of the Tree and saw nothing but skeletons in all directions, not just dead trees but dead creatures of all kinds, animal skeletons and human skulls and leafless petrified trees as far as she could see, the only signs of life herself and the great shape she huddled under.