X’s fever deepened as they drove. He should have wrested Ripper back to the Lowlands an hour ago—but leaving Zoe would have just ravaged him in a different way. She had yet to say a word about his plan. He could tell she was ruminating over it from her silence and the way she stared at the oncoming road without seeming to see it.
When they arrived at Rufus’s house, Zoe turned off the engine, and the car shuddered and bucked like it was having a coughing fit. Ten seconds passed before it quieted. X watched Zoe lean forward and push a button. A slow, sad tune replaced the silence.
“This is country music,” she said.
X listened a moment. He didn’t like it. Maybe it was the fever. He remembered Banger singing songs like it in his cell—badly.
“Tell me about your family,” he said. “And the dogs.”
“We’re not doing great,” said Zoe, “but compared to what you’re dealing with … We lost almost everything when Dervish wrecked our house. And one of the dogs has been sick. Uhura. Since the blizzard. Pneumonia, we think.”
“I remember Uhura,” said X. “She is the fiercer of the two?”
“Yeah,” said Zoe. “Spock’s so lazy that he’s basically a cat.” She blew air out of her cheeks. “Uhura’s lost fourteen pounds. If she doesn’t make it, Jonah’s heart is going to be a stain on the floor.” She paused. “Every time I think we’re done losing things, we lose something else.”
“That does seem to be the way of the world,” said X.
“Then I don’t like the way of the world,” said Zoe. “I’d like to speak to a manager, please.”
She pushed the button again, and the song vanished in the middle of a word.
“You will not lose me,” said X.
“You say that but, dude, your plan scares the shit out of me,” she said.
“Because it could be dangerous?” said X.
“Could be? And what makes you think your mother will have any idea how to help you?”
“She was a lord,” said X. “In any case, this is where hope comes in. And even if she tells me that escape is a fantasy, she can help me begin to understand—”
“Understand what?” said Zoe.
She never interrupted him. Only when she was frustrated.
“Who I am,” he said.
That stopped her.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, I get that. I want that for you. And I’m no one to talk about, you know, healthy decision-making. But …”
All her fears came pouring out now, as if she had to exorcise them. She reminded X of the last time he and Regent had plotted behind Dervish’s back: Dervish terrorized her family and destroyed their house in retaliation. She reminded him that when he returned to the Lowlands, his powers would disappear. He wouldn’t be a superhero anymore—“just somebody trying to do something nuts.”
It became hard for X to listen as the fever sank its claws deeper. The back of his neck was sweating. His hands, which lay facedown on his lap, had begun to shake. Ripper had to be close. X turned and peered through the rear window. Yes: there she was in her new silver dress, passing under a streetlamp.
Zoe was still listing her objections. She reminded him that the reason he had to eat—the reason he was getting older—was that unlike everyone else in the Lowlands, he had been born there.
Which meant he was alive.
Which meant he could die.
Ripper tapped on Zoe’s window, and made a strange gesture, as if pulling on an imaginary necklace.
“She tells us it is time,” said X. “In her other life, she wore a pendant watch about her neck.”
Zoe turned to him.
“Are you going to go through with it anyway?” she said. “Your plan?”
“You know that I am,” said X. “All the fire I have to do this, all the certitude—it was inspired by you. Surely that is plain?”
“No, it isn’t ‘plain,’ ” said Zoe. “What do you mean?”
“Did you not search for your own father?” said X. The shaking had spread. “Did you not go into a cave so narrow that you had to crawl upon your side? Did you not confront your father about his lies, even though you were so angry and hurt you could barely stand to hear his voice? Don’t pretend it didn’t happen. I was right there beside you.”
“I know you were,” said Zoe. “I remember.”
She took his face with just her fingertips, and kissed him. Her lips cooled him a little.
“Do not die,” she said. It sounded like both an order and a prayer. “I’m not losing one more person. I won’t put up with it. Not one. And definitely not you.”
Rufus’s house was squat and green, with a sloping, red metal roof. The backyard was enclosed by a wooden fence, the gate of which banged opened and shut with the breeze, as if a line of ghosts were passing through. X stood alone, staring at the house. Zoe went to say good-bye to Ripper, who’d retreated to the road so that her presence wouldn’t deepen X’s pain.
A shaggy brown head appeared in the bright kitchen window.
Jonah.
He was holding Uhura. He’d pressed his face into her fur, and seemed to be murmuring to her. The sweetness of the scene struck X hard.
Behind him, Zoe was telling Ripper, “I thought you were going to get new boots!”
“Tragically, I could not find a pair that I liked,” said Ripper, “at least nothing I was prepared to wear in perpetuity.”
X realized as she said this that he’d given no thought at all to the fact that this would be his friend’s last adventure in the Overworld. The lords would never let her return.
He turned to see Zoe hug Ripper, and tell her that she loved her and that she’d never forget looking for Belinda.
Ripper thanked Zoe for bringing her daughter, just for a moment, back to life.
X was seized with an idea.
He stumbled toward them, shrugging off his overcoat and letting it fall to the lawn.
“Is it the fever?” said Zoe.
“Doubtless,” said Ripper.
He stripped off his shirt. The air felt good on his skin.
“You are aware that I carry your story in my blood?” he said to Ripper. “That the lords put it there, so I could hunt you?”
“Of course I am aware of it,” said Ripper. “But you cannot possibly mean to show me my sins!”
No, she misunderstood. Zoe did, too—she almost looked frightened of him.
X turned away. He stretched out his arms. He summoned up a single image and froze it on his back.
Neither of them would look.
“It is a gift, Ripper, I swear it,” said X.
His voice, even to himself, sounded like a maniac’s.
But Zoe trusted him. Zoe was turning.
“She’s beautiful, Ripper,” she said. “She looks just like her mom.”
There on X’s back was Belinda. Curly-haired. Nine years old. Her mischievous eyes shining.
X prayed Ripper would turn now, too.
At last she did.
She saw her daughter and gasped. X heard nothing else. If Ripper was weeping, it was too soft for him to hear. Had he made an error? Was the sight of the girl too much?
He got his answer when he felt Ripper’s palm alight on his back.
She was not touching him—even in his fever, he understood that. She was touching her daughter’s face.
A bulb above the front porch went on, illuminating the yard. The storm door swung open, and Jonah emerged. He wore a white shirt, a bizarrely knotted red tie, and pajama bottoms. He was carrying Uhura.
“Go back inside, Jonah,” said Zoe.
“No,” said Jonah. “Uhura wants to say hi.”
X looked at the dog and felt himself go to pieces. Uhura was indeed nearly skeletal. Jonah carried her so carefully it was as if she were made of snow.
“Uhura’s been sick since Stan Mangled tried to drown her,” he said. “You can’t fix her, can you? With your magic?”
“Would that I could,” said X.
Blood drummed in his ears. He could barely hear his own words.
“It’s okay,” said Jonah. “She’s gonna get better. I’m in charge. Mom said.”
X petted Uhura because Jonah seemed to want him to. He could feel the stony vertebrae in her spine. Maybe Uhura would live, he thought. She’d survived too much not to survive this.
Jonah moved on to Ripper, and asked if she had better magic than X. It would have made X smile under different circumstances. He rubbed his forehead, trying to dislodge the spiraling pain.
He looked at Zoe, and tried to fix her image in his mind a final time. Could you memorize a person like you could a letter or a song? Could you take in every bit of them forever? Where did you start? Zoe stood on the lawn, half her face lit by the bulb over the porch. Her loveliness undid him, as always.
What could he say in parting? Should he tell her how moved he’d been when she told Ripper that she loved her—how moved he was right this instant as Jonah and Ripper stood comparing the state of their fingernails, which both had vowed to leave in peace?
A warmth, like a light, seemed to surround everyone.
“I will find my parents,” he told Zoe, “but I have already found my family.”
He knelt in the street, and slammed his fist against the asphalt. A wide fissure opened before him.
He called to Ripper. She dove into the ground first. Her dress gleamed, and she was gone.
X couldn’t bring himself to look at Zoe again, but he heard her call out that she loved him as the earth pulled him down, swallowed him up—and took him back.