Freedom Fire, page 13
“I was worried about you,” she said.
Behind them, Sheridan was encouraging Buford to shout his own heartening words to the troops below. It wasn’t going well.
“I was worried about you too. I’ve lost track of all the people I’m worried about,” Magdalys said with a frown. “People keep … people keep dying. And dinos too.”
Cymbeline grimaced. “I know. This is … it’s been bad the whole war, but I guess … after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, I thought things had turned around. This … this is really bad.”
“Good job, men troops!” Buford yelled shakily. “Er … troop troops! Soldiers! Keep … keep at it! Excellent retreat!”
“What happens now?”
“That,” Sheridan said, startling both of them, “is precisely why I joined you on this magnificent creature.” He’d somehow made his way up front without either of them noticing.
“Stealthy, aren’t you, sir,” Cymbeline said wryly.
He leaned back and yelled over his shoulder, “Keep going, Buford, you’re doing great!” then leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered, “He’s not.”
“You have a plan?” Magdalys asked.
Sheridan shook his head and the brave, unflappable veneer came suddenly crashing down as his face creased into an anguished frown. “I … There is no plan. All I know is this: We need General Grant. Without those two mountain outposts, we’ll be starved out of Chattanooga in a matter of days. And then we’ll be crushed. Grant has an army at his disposal and he’s the only general with the tactical genius to get us out of this.”
Cymbeline looked stricken. “Isn’t Grant in —”
“New Orleans,” Sheridan said, leveling a look at Magdalys.
Her eyes went wide, but Sheridan quelled the yelp she was about to release with a raised hand and a solemn shake of his head. “What is it?” she asked.
“Of course, I would rejoice at this seeming coinciding of our needs and yours, but …”
Magdalys’s heart sank. The US Army needed an air cavalry now even more than ever, and without someone who could connect directly to pteros, what good would they be against a wrangler like Elizabeth Crawbell?
From not too far away, the booms of artillery shells concussed the night. The battle was still raging even as the Union Army did everything it could to escape. If the Confederates decided to pursue them it could be an all-out massacre.
Magdalys closed her eyes. “I …”
“This pteranodon is the only way we can get someone to Grant fast enough,” Sheridan said.
“I know,” Magdalys said, eyes still shut. A mounted dactyl would have to keep stopping for breaks and risk capture every time. A minidact would probably never make it. And traveling by land through that much enemy territory was far too dangerous.
“But without someone who can reach the dinos the way you do …”
“There is someone,” a voice said.
Stella let out a bellow that Magdalys was pretty sure was triumphant.
Magdalys’s eyes sprang open. Dactyls rose in the air all around them. Not just the Brooklyn dactyls — the Tennessee ones who’d helped them out earlier against Crawbell too. They glided silently up from the dark forest below, their eyes narrowed with determined intent.
“I can do it,” Hannibal said.
“What?” Magdalys, Sheridan, and Cymbeline all burst out at the same time.
“This … you’re doing this,” Magdalys said, waving at the squad surging around them. “And that was you who called them to help us earlier!”
“Remarkable!” Sheridan exclaimed.
Hannibal smiled but his eyes were sad. “That was the first time I’d actually got up the courage to try it. Every other time, it’s just sort of … happened. I … I’ve always known. I just didn’t have it in me to admit it. Not to anyone. I was afraid. I mean … I’d never met anyone else who could do that. And sure there were stories, legends really, but even knowing what I could do, I still didn’t believe it could be me … like, why me? I’m just some street kid from Tremé, you know? I thought I had just lost my mind, even though I knew I hadn’t. And then … and then I met Magdalys.”
Magdalys just stared at him, understanding where this was going but unsure how to take it in.
“And you,” Hannibal said, shaking his head and blinking away tears. “You’re just so … you know who you are, you know your power. And you embrace it. I … I want to be like that. I want to be like you, Magdalys. Or maybe I should say: I am like you, Magdalys, and for the first time, I know that’s something to be proud of.”
“Remarkable,” Sheridan said again, this time in an awed whisper.
Cannons boomed below them, and artillery tore the sky, its ragged echoes shuddering across the valley.
“Thank you,” Hannibal said, his eyes meeting Magdalys’s.
She grinned. “Anytime, freak.”
“In that case,” Sheridan yelped, “we have not a moment to lose! Cymbeline!”
“Sir?”
“You will accompany Miss Magdalys. Borrow a uniform from one of the men. You will pose as a Union soldier now, my dear. Can’t have you that deep in enemy territory as a woman. You are to cut your hair and find a man’s name. Is that clear?”
She nodded, eyes wide. “Actually, Cymbeline is a —”
“Never mind all that,” Sheridan said. “I’m sure it can be done! Why, just last week, we discovered not one but two of our men bathing in the Tennessee River, and do you know it turned out they weren’t men at all!”
“That’s not what I was —”
“Indeed!” Sheridan yelled. “Apparently it’s quite common. Now, Private Rey!”
Octave looked up from his position scanning the battlefield below. “Sir!”
“You are to accompany Cymbeline and Magdalys on their mission to retrieve General Grant. Keep them safe at all costs and alert the general to our present circumstances. He’ll know what to do. Is that clear?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“And give him this.” Sheridan passed Octave a sealed envelope. “It’s my report. Already vastly out of date by the sudden turn of events, of course, so you’ll have to fill him in on the rest yourself.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Magdalys!” Sheridan barked. “You are not one of my men, er, girls, ah, you know what I mean. I humbly ask that you fly this pteranodon to New Orleans to help us retrieve General Grant.”
Yes! Everything in Magdalys yelled. But the thought shattered almost immediately: Sabeen and Two Step were down there somewhere, running for their lives. “Is there any way … the rest of my friends …”
“There’s no time for that, I’m afraid,” Sheridan said, and Magdalys felt a tiny shattering feeling in her chest. She’d known there was a good chance that would happen, that any time they separated it might be for good, but … it still hurt more than she’d thought it would. “These two may go along, of course,” Sheridan added, “but that’s all. You must trust that your other friends are in the best of hands and we’ll do everything in our power to keep them safe.”
Two Step’s hurt, furious face flashed through her mind again. What if that was the last time they saw each other? She shook away the thought.
“Will you accept the mission, Magdadis?”
Sure she’d been about to take off on her own just the night before but … some part of her hadn’t really thought through what it would feel like to actually be separated from her squad for real. It hurt. Magdalys gulped back the sadness. Then she stood and saluted as best she could. “Sir, yes sir!”
“And,” he added with a sly wink, “I sincerely hope you find your brother while you’re down there.”
The grin that crossed Magdalys’s face rose from a place deep inside her.
“Now!” Sheridan spun around, facing Hannibal. “Young man! Why don’t you use some of these special powers you’ve been concealing to get us safely out of here so these folks can set off on their mission, yes?”
Hannibal flashed his cockiest smile. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to do that, sir!”
TINY, SHINING GLIMMERS of light danced in the darkness below — the moon again, winking at them by way of the Mississippi River to let them know that even as the stifling night closed in around them, they traveled the right path.
“I don’t trust him,” Amaya said, clipping another strand of Cymbeline’s hair.
“Who?” Magdalys asked. She had the comb held out but Amaya didn’t seem to need it.
“Sheridan.”
Instinctively, all three of them looked to the front of the saddle, where Private Octave Rey sat scanning the dark horizon beside Mapper, rifle ready.
They’d passed through Georgia mostly in silence, with the exception of Mapper’s occasional notes pointing out where this or that land had once belonged to the Cherokee or Creek. To Magdalys it seemed like the echoes of mortar blasts and those endless barrages of musket fire only got louder as the thrill of battle fell away and left behind only that rumbling, roiling dread. What would happen now? Where were Two Step and Sabeen? At sunset on the second day, Magdalys had looked out across the treetops and glimpsed what Mapper explained must be the faraway lights of Atlanta shimmering in the sky, and she’d realized they’d witnessed firsthand the army of a nation bent on enslaving them crush the army of a nation that wanted to free them. Or at least it claimed to. But even that nation had once enslaved them too. And it didn’t even seem so enthusiastic about freedom so much as it was about preserving its precious union. She’d shaken her head, turned away from the illuminated sky, back toward the gathering night, and let out a deep, exhausted breath as the cannons and muskets boomed through her memory once again.
Now, two days later, Magdalys watched Amaya chop away at Cymbeline’s thick hair and wondered: If all that had happened in just a few short hours, how much more had already happened since they’d left? And would Two Step ever forgive her for leaving him behind? It seemed like no matter what Magdalys did, she was letting someone down.
“You shouldn’t,” Cymbeline said with a sniffle. “You shouldn’t trust any of them.”
Magdalys looked at the older girl, caught a flash of moonlight reflected in the two streams that slid down her face. “Cymbeline … what’s wrong?”
Cymbeline shook her head, ran a hand beneath her nose and snorted.
“It’s the hair,” Amaya said. “We carry it with us everywhere we go for so long, and then suddenly it’s gone. Like losing our own shadow. My mom told me once we cut our hair when we’re mourning or during times of great change. So … makes sense, I guess.”
Cymbeline nodded, sniffled again, then shrugged. “Right. It’s a good kind of sadness. I feel … lighter somehow. Like I just threw away a big suitcase I’ve been lugging around for ages. But also, I … I love my hair.” She cradled some of the curls Amaya had let fall in her lap and then threw them up into the air for the wind to take. “Loved.”
“It’ll grow back,” Magdalys said, knowing that wasn’t much help.
“It’s also that … I’m scared. For all of us. Why don’t you trust Sheridan, Amaya?”
Amaya scowled, handed Magdalys the scissors, and pulled out her bowie knife. “Hold still. Because I grew up around those types.”
Cymbeline scoffed. “Overexcited short men in uniform who will promise the stars and sky then turn their backs on you in the blink of an eye?”
“Pretty much just described my dad,” Amaya said. “Except he’s six three. But yeah. And I get it: Winning the war is top priority, but that’s just it. Everything else is expendable.”
“Including us,” Magdalys said.
“You guys are black and I’m Apache,” Amaya said. “I don’t think they know how to see us as anything but expendable.” She sliced away some errant clumps of hair, then tilted Cymbeline’s head to the side to get a better angle.
“Whether there’s a war going on or not,” Cymbeline agreed.
“Exactly, and anyway, there’s a whole other war going on that nobody wants to talk about it. A perpetual one. The beloved savior Lincoln hanged thirty-eight Dakotas in a single day at the end of last year, and that’s not even to mention the ones who were massacred in the run-up to that.”
Cymbeline nodded sadly.
“I … I didn’t know,” Magdalys said. She tried to reconcile the gnawing sense of doom and betrayal with the beautiful world around her. The evergreen and pine forests of Georgia had given way to Louisiana’s murky swamplands below, and now the shimmering moonlight danced not just through the wide river but sudden stretches of lake and bayou amidst the trees.
And still, dactyls plummeted over and over again through the sky in her mind, as hundreds and hundreds of men collapsed beneath thundering cascades of rifle fire. She couldn’t keep dragging dinos and pteros into this bloody horror show. She wouldn’t.
She clenched both fists, watching the forest slide by below. She would get to New Orleans and find her brother and then together they’d run off to somewhere safe. Cuba maybe, or even further safe. Somewhere with no cannons or troops marching to their death, where she wouldn’t have to call upon giant reptiles for anything more dangerous than a grocery run.
Yes.
“And you’re done,” Amaya said, brushing away the last couple of strands from Cymbeline’s shaved head. “Did you come up with a boy name yet?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell the general,” she said, standing and wiping herself off. “Cymbeline is a boy’s name. He was a king in a Shakespeare play.”
“Alright, Private King Cymbie,” Amaya said, saluting with a wry smile. “Dismissed.”
Cymbeline rolled her eyes, returned the salute, and headed over to the front of the saddle.
Magdalys and Amaya sat beside each other in silence for a few minutes as Octave admired Cymbeline’s haircut and Mapper explained to her how she should walk to seem more like a man.
Amaya scoffed. “As if Cymbie needs acting lessons from that clown.”
“You know,” Magdalys said, and then the full hugeness of Amaya’s life and strange father seemed to materialize in a heavy cloud around Magdalys and she didn’t know what to say.
Amaya looked at her. “What?”
Magdalys dragged a hand down her face and realized how tired she was. “I just … we’re already scattered. You should … when we get to New Orleans … you should go.”
“Oh.”
“Find him, I mean. See what it is he’s going on about.”
They both turned back to the front, where Cymbeline was pulling one of Octave’s blue army jackets on.
“She was a cook at the Citadel,” Amaya said so softly Magdalys barely heard her over the wind. “My mom.”
Magdalys nodded very slightly, eyes still ahead. Off to the side, Grappler, Dizz, and Beans squawked and swooped back into formation from a hunting run.
“She used to take me aside late at night and tell me about what it was like back home, in Apache Country. About her family … our family. My older brother from her first husband, and all my cousins. The elders. She smelled like dish soap and a faraway flower and she said every word in English so carefully, like it was a fragile object she didn’t want to mishandle.” Amaya smiled; tears glistened at the edges of her eyes. “Mama tried to teach me some Lipan — that’s our language — but …” She shook her head, shrugged.
I’m sorry, Magdalys wanted to say, but what sense did it make? Words were so useless. She didn’t have any memories of her own mom, who was still somewhere in Cuba probably. She’d find her one day though. She would.
“One night,” Amaya said, “when I went to look for her in the kitchen after hours, she had tears in her eyes. She hugged me extra tight and when I asked what was wrong she just shook her head and told me to do what my father asked of me, everything, and to learn everything I could, and in time I would understand. Then she said the name of a place, an important place, she said, but it wasn’t that I was supposed to go there, not right away anyway, just that I should know it. Like” — she shook her head — “like one day I’d understand, I guess? But if she’s there …” Tears welled up. Amaya brushed them away. Magdalys wrapped an arm around her and squeezed. “If she’s there, I just want to go there, whenever we get out of this mess. I don’t want to go see my dad. But I also know that’s what my mom wanted me to do. She said if I wanted to help her, to help us, she said, I’d do what my father asked of me, even if it didn’t seem to make sense.”
Magdalys didn’t need her to say it to know that was the last time Amaya had seen her mom.
“And it wasn’t just her telling me to be obedient. There’s a lot I don’t know about my mom, but I know she was about more than just accepting the lot she was given. I mean … it felt like she was planning something. For me, I mean. Like, I was part of her grand plan somehow. But … that’s all. Then she hugged me tight and sent me to my room. And all I was left with was an order to do what the General says and a name of somewhere I’ve never heard of.” She scowled, wiped a few more tears away.
“So I did what she said. I became the best at everything there was to get good at. Practiced every move I saw them learning in combat class for hours and hours. Aced every test, memorized the ins and outs of each weapon I could get my hands on. But … I still don’t even know what I’m supposed to understand, and now …”
And now the war has broken up the squad, Magdalys thought, watching the swaying swamp trees below and wondering where Two Step and Sabeen were and if they were okay.
Amaya threw her hands up. “I don’t trust him. I don’t think I love him, even though he’s my dad. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
She put her head on Magdalys’s shoulder and day broke slowly across the Southern skies around them.
A LOW, RASPY DRONE sounded and a thousand paras galloped in their strange halting gait across a sun-streaked field as brittle, yellowish hills rose from the ground around them. The paras poured forward, trampling everything in their path. Magdalys swooped closer; she could hear them speaking — not that inner voice that let her know a dino’s thoughts — no, these were human voices, discussing the weather, the state of the war and the world, some indecipherable coming crisis … and beneath it all, that strange buzz droned on and on, rose and fell, simmered and then suddenly lifted into a startling, urgent shriek just as Magdalys realized those yellow hills were made from hundreds and hundreds of bones.
