“I don’t know. About.” He paused and bent for a last kiss, dry and warm. His smile was bright, genuine. Perhaps he’d remember her. “God bless you and your hard path, Dreamer.”
Elsa dressed, packed her blankets, and started on her way more slowly. It was almost midday when she returned to Brewersville and saw a crowd gathered by the oak at the edge of the market. No musicians played today. She pushed through to the front to see what had happened.
The town constable was about to hang a man from the tree. The condemned man—barefoot, stripped to his waist and wearing ragged, third-hand trousers, stood on a stool with his hands bound behind his back. The noose around his neck was tied to a sturdy branch.
The man was Conrad, his expression slack, his gaze staring forward at nothing.
“That man,” she said to a laborer beside her. “What’s he done?”
“He’s a thief.”
Elsa still carried hopes. “A famous one? A highwayman or a rogue or such?”
“No,” the man said. “Just a common thief. Got caught this morning cutting the mayor’s purse.”
Then he saw her. He hadn’t seemed to be looking at anything, but his gaze found her. A look of such tenderness, such regret passed over his face. Like he would have kissed her right then, if he could have.
She knew what to do.
She knelt and pulled at the tie that fastened closed her pack.
When she wore the spotted horse’s skin, she became the Dreamer, and her words were prophecy. He will be a hero! Free him and he will lead your armies to victory! He is a savior! She could say these things and make a grand story, how the Dreamer snatched the rogue from the maw of death.
But you’d be lying.
Yes, she would. Conrad wasn’t a hero. But if she could make him one, if she could inspire him . . . He could make this prophecy true, after the fact.
If you use me for a lie, I will never speak to you again.
So. She could save Conrad, or she could be the Dreamer, but not both. She thought she wanted that, to leave Falla and never hear her speak again. Falla, who had rested her muzzle on Elsa’s shoulder with trust and love. So because she had known Falla for half her life, and Conrad for only a day, the choice was not as hard as she wanted it to be.
The story was so much larger than she.
The hardest thing was to leave her pack closed, to stand while he watched. Seeing this, he must have known what she had thought of, and what she’d decided not to do.
She hoped he understood why she couldn’t help. But he probably thought she was being cruel, and that was probably the thought he died with. The constable kicked the stool away and Conrad hanged. Elsa shut her eyes, but heard the crowd gasp and the rope creak as it swung with its weight.
Conrad or Falla, but not both. She’d have liked to have Conrad as a friend, but Falla was the only friend she knew.
The crowd dispersed but the body stayed hanging to serve as a warning. Elsa lingered, chasing away crows and stray dogs that came too near. She wanted him whole.
Late at night, when the town was asleep and no one would come near the gallows tree, she retrieved the stool and stood on it to cut him down, using the Wizard’s sacrificial knife. She hefted the body over her shoulders and took him to the woods to do the rest.
The first time she put on his skin, it was still wet with flesh and blood.
The Bravest of Us Touched the Sky
Evie curled up on the chairs in the ready room at the landing field. I sat with my head against the wall, my legs stretched out and propped on my B-4 bag. The place was empty except for us, the field quiet after a day full of roaring engines.
We had just ferried a B-26 bomber to Harlingen Army Airfield in the far south of nowhere Texas. It was late, so we had to wait until morning to catch the bus to Corpus Christi, where we could find a train back to New Castle in Delaware. WASP weren’t allowed to hitch rides on Army planes with male pilots—just didn’t look right, according to the powers that be.
I had started to doze when the door opened and two military types walked in. One wore a flight suit and bomber jacket without rank markings or insignia. The other was an Army colonel. He looked like he’d stepped straight out of a war bonds poster. He’d say, “I need you,” and you’d say, “Yes sir.” He was tall, broad through the shoulders, and fit. He could probably still make it through Basic—couldn’t say that about a lot of colonels.
I shook Evie awake. She rubbed her eyes as the men stopped in front of us.
“You two are WASP?” the colonel said, before we could stand.
What else would two women wearing flight suits be doing at an Army air field? I nodded and answered more politely, “Yes, sir. I’m Jane Bateson, this is Evelyn Harris.”