Blightborn Read Free

like Scooter’s toys from way up here.
    Scooter. The Heartland. Cael. Boyland.
    Her heart hurts. She blinks back tears. Gwennie bites the inside of her cheek, tastes blood, and feels that little jolt of pain that spins the thread of her grief into a tattered rag of rage— I hate this place; I hate these people; I want to go home.
    Eyes winced, she upends the wagon.
    Corn husks and Pegasus waste go out through the hole.
    And fall. Breaking apart in midair. Bits turning to specks turning to nothing. She thinks, We always used to wonder exactly why shit was falling on our heads. And not necessarily metaphorically, either.
    Just then the door to the stable flings open.
    Young Balastair Harrington, the man behind the genetic half of the Pegasus Project, hurries into the room, leading ashe always does with his head and shoulders. Gwennie thinks he looks as if he’s in a perpetual state of almost falling forward, his legs the eager and only saviors that stop him from landing on his face.
    He’s a few years older than she is. Different from the Heartlanders she knows. They’re rugged, dirty, broad shouldered. He’s thin and bony, like an articulated wooden doll. Handsome, though. In his own peculiar way.
    He is not dressed in his usual white coat. His hair is not in its typical disarray: the blond wisps atop his head have been tamed and forced to lie down, and his white coat has been replaced with a pinstriped mandarin collar suit, the stripes themselves a liquid gold that bubbles and climbs from hem to shoulders. An effect that is, in its way, quite hypnotizing.
    A caviling grackle with a small jeweled collar hops about on his shoulder. Wings fluttering. The bird is Erasmus. Forever on Balastair’s shoulder—though Gwennie’s never seen the jeweled collar on the bird before.
    Or the pinstriped suit coat.
    “Why are you—” she starts to ask, but he interrupts her.
    “We’re late!” he barks—a sentiment of panic, not anger.
    “Late!” Erasmus chirps. The small, bruise-colored bird shakes its wings and dances side to side.
    “Late for what?” she asks.
    “Late,” he hisses through clenched teeth, “ for the party .”

THE RIVER SLURRY
    THE RAIL-RAFT ROCKETS FORTH .
    Lane hoots and cackles while Rigo winces, eyes mostly shut.
    For Cael’s part, he just likes the reminder of how it feels to captain his own boat and to stand at its helm. As if he’s the knife that cuts the sky in half—wind sliced in twain, rushing on all sides.
    They got the raft moving pretty fast by jamming a pair of dry, broken cornstalks against the earth—stalks they’d taken on the first morning of travel to use as makeshift oar-poles. The brace roots were thick; the stalks were stiff. Rigo asked Cael if he could use the butt end of Pop’s lever-action rifle, but Cael shot him a look that contained the singular message of Have you lost your cotton-headed mind?
    Only took a minute or two to really get the raft zipping along.
    The tracks ahead of them are a steely blur. Individual railroadties smear together in a single dark streak. The corn, too, is just a blend of green, like so much spilled paint.
    Ahead, a shuck rat squeaks in terror and hurries across the tracks.
    Lane fishes in the food bag, plucks a carrot, sticks it into his mouth like a cigar, and fake-puffs on it as the air tousles his dark hair.
    Then Cael sees—ahead, the corn disappears. Drops off the map. The earth sinks. The Heartland isn’t much for topography—a few hills here, a shallow valley there—but for the most part everything is as flat as a sheet of hammered tin. The train tracks continue over the gulf.
    He knows what it is even before they get close.
    It’s a slurry river.
    Corn-processing plants dot the Heartland. Pop’s explained the process a few times, but mostly Cael just tuned out—he didn’t like hearing about breaking down protein bonds or microbial fuel cells or whatever else Pop tried to tell him. Talking about corn was about as much fun as