“In this world,” I said slowly. “You started to say in this world.”
“Yes,” said Casimir. “But I did not know if . . .”
He trailed off again. I was so not enjoying this conversation with the most beautiful boy I had ever met. Aside from the fact that he had been interested in me for reasons other than, uh, me. Not that this was a surprise. I took a deep breath. “Let’s go back a little. Let’s, uh, pretend that I’m totally stupid and clueless, okay? Tell me what just happened. With the wind and the weirdness and everything.”
Now he was wearing that “I don’t understand” smile. Apparently it was the same smile in Ukovia. It looked a lot better on him than it had on my first-grade teacher. “It was a nazok. What you call a cobey. Since it is the second, we must consider the likelihood there will be a third.”
I didn’t want to consider anything. Except for the sitting-alone-with-Casimir-in-the-park-on-a-beautiful-day part, I wanted all of this to go away. The all of the rest of it that was ruining the alone-with-Casimir part. The rest of it would include that he only wanted to be here with me because I was this historical thing. “But—it’s gone. It’s gone, isn’t it? They—cobeys—don’t do that.”
He made another odd gesture with his hands—a kind of folding over and winding together gesture. “They do if they are properly bound. And it is much likelier they will be properly bound if someone who can do this is present as the nazok opens. Which is why foreseers are so important to us. My mother is a foreseer. In Eruopa and the Slavic Commonwealth if everywhere that had been disrupted by a nazok was lost, there would be very little human land left.”
I was silent a moment. I knew that about binding, of course; I was forgetting my basic history. Oldworld was pretty much a patchwork quilt of shut-down cobeys; most of Newworld was more like your favorite jeans with mends on the knees and the butt and one or two where you’d torn yourself up on your mom’s rosebushes or a particularly badly placed nail. They were still mostly jeans.
But it had been kind of an overexciting few minutes, just now, and it was easy to forget stuff, like your name and what day of the week it was. And here in Newworld we were taught to Run and Report. There hadn’t been time to run. And it didn’t look like there was anything left to report.
He glanced at me. “Usually a team is sent when a foreseer predicts a nazok. But a mgdaga could perhaps bind a nazok alone.”
I ignored this. “Is this the way they usually happen?” Was there a “usually” about cobeys? “Like—” Like what? Like a spider being washed down the kitchen sink? “Like a storm out of nowhere?”
He shook his head. “Not one big enough to swallow two people. That is why I don’t understand why I did not sense its approach. My Oldworld instincts are of even less use here than I had begun to realize.
“Little ones may happen unexpectedly—ones like what you call silverbugs, only bigger. It is not wise to step on them, however; when they burst, they will throw you down, and the earth will not be where you expect it, when you fall down in the ordinary way.” He smiled. “Every small boy discovers this. Myself included.”
I wasn’t crazy about big ordinary bugs—beetles and spiders and things, although the next spider I found in the sink I’d catch in a glass and put outdoors. The idea of big silverbugs made me totally queasy. “Big enough to swallow two people,” I repeated, like it was a lesson I was trying to learn. I didn’t want to learn it.
He looked at me again. Steadily, without glancing away. I had to look away. It was funny in a way because Run and Report, with the “don’t think about it” that goes with it, always made me a little cranky, but I assumed it was either because I was a control freak or because I had a mad aunt (maybe) from her knowing too much about physwiz. “People disappear when big cobeys open,” said Casimir. “No one knows where they go. But there has been work done on trying to find out. My trust thinks Professor Hlinka, at Runyon, is close to a discovery about this; it is why they placed me here.”
Several things jostled for position in my poor bewildered brain. The first one was: his trust must think a lot of him. But, wearily, this thought also came: someone is always close to a breakthrough. The breakthrough never arrives. I knew people occasionally disappeared. Gwenda said it happened oftener than was reported. Not one of them has ever come back but they’ve never found any bodies either. I remembered this. With my name and what day of the week it was: Thursday. One more day till the first weekend of my senior year. The longest short week of my life.
I was still dazed from—whatever had happened—but I had a weird sense of uneasiness. A weird increasing sense of uneasiness. I looked around. Not that I knew what I was looking for. Another cobey? Please the holy electric gods not. Would I know what one looked like after this? I didn’t want to find out. The afternoon was still clear and sunny and the breeze mild and smelling of leaves and that sharp clean smell of fast-running river water.
To me the breeze also smelled of Hix. She shifted a little and I thought, I’m picking it up from her. She’s worried about something. Her anxiety was spilling over me like pizza sauce over your last clean shirt. “I—I think maybe we should get going,” I said, and began to struggle to my feet. I was suddenly so tired that the weightless Hix felt like an iron chain. I picked up my algebra book and looked sadly at my gigantic knapsack . . . and if I wasn’t already in desperate unrequited love with him (to him I was a historical figure like a statue or a chapter in a book) I’d have fallen in love with Casimir when he picked it up as if it was totally his problem (in Ukovia they teach you to be polite to little old ladies and historical figures).
“Yes,” he said. He was frowning slightly. It made his eyebrows arch more and his eyes looked bigger and darker than ever. Aaaugh. As I stepped toward him, dropping each foot back to the ground again like I wasn’t sure it belonged to me, he reached out and grabbed my hand again. Whoa. That wasn’t why I was walking like a little old lady who had come out without her cane (how did historical figures walk?) but hey, whatever. And we did move a little faster that way. He wasn’t exactly dragging me but I was walking a little harder to keep up. Some of the long sinuous Hix had moved to the top of my head again, to her lookout point. I could still feel her on my left shoulder, but not my right, and I thought I could feel feet on my forehead again. It was like wearing a fuzzy invisible crown.
Casimir and Hix were right. We were out of the trees and crossing the meadow when the army arrived. I was having to concentrate on walking and carrying my algebra book at the same time—I felt like “I” was a committee arguing among themselves: the keeping-head-upright part was arguing with the algebra-book-carrying part, which was also snarling at the one-foot-after-the-other part. (Nothing was arguing with the holding-Casimir’s-hand part.) The I part was trying to keep them all doing what they were supposed to be doing instead of lying down and not doing anything. We’d’ve done lying down together really well.
I gaped at all these guys in uniform running toward us—bright orange cobey badges bobbing on their hats. I was retroactively aware that there’d been some kind of uproar at the gates as we started walking—and stopped. “No, don’t stop,” said Casimir, and tugged me on.