Blue Magic by A.M. Dellamonica Page B

what? Lie back and enjoy?”
    “I’m not dumb, Will. I don’t expect you to just assume the children will fall into your lap. Why do you think we’re pursuing them?”
    “Then what are you trying to say?”
    She shook her head. “The sun burns out, everyone dies, the well blows … that’s big, unstoppable. But we can have an effect. Shrinking the Small Bang by releasing vitagua up front. Giving people chantments so they can deal with the disasters.”
    “Deal how?” he asked.
    “I’m making things that heal, stuff to dig through rubble, find survivors…”
    “Rubble? Good God, Astrid—”
    “We can reduce the casualties, Will. The Small Bang can be a stupid mess instead of a…”
    “A what?”
    “Horrific. A calamity.” She swept an arm out, indicating the whole ballroom, and now he let himself really see the boxes on the dance floor, the snowdrifts of pencil sketches.
    “Jacks made a picture of everyone who’s going to die?”
    “Everyone we can save, Will,” Astrid countered. “And before you ask, your children survive, I know that. I know it.”
    Pictures in the thousands. Tens of thousands? His legs felt watery. “How many people are at risk?”
    “Focus on this,” she said. She led him past the bandstand and up a curving flight of stairs to the mezzanine. On the back wall, a collage of faces rose to the ceiling. He saw Olive Glade first, then Katarina. Unlike the pencil sketches, these were paintings, colored in and vibrant.
    “This is the Big Picture,” Astrid said. “It’s everyone we saved already.”
    Will looked at the faces, thousands of them, lacquered to the wall. “There’s more down there—is that Limbo?—than there are up here.”
    “That’s why we need time. To get more vitagua out, more magicians in place.”
    “The more, the merrier. The more you save—that’s what it means?”
    “Yes.”
    “And these?” A few portraits were still black-and-white sketches. But before she could answer, he saw: “There’s your dad. And Chief Lee.”
    “It’s everyone who’s died already.”
    He looked from one set of images to the other: the colored pictures of people they’d saved, the black-and-white of the dead and, below, all those people at risk. There must be some way to make it stop, stop it all, bring the old world back. Make his daughter whole, halt this insane runaway train and let all these endangered people off.
    The tuning fork at his wrist hummed, not forming words, just wailing, like an air raid siren.
    Astrid frowned. “That’s weird.”
    Will pushed her to the floor, shielding her with his body. Jet engines tore the air, and molding fell from above, bouncing harmlessly off his back. A tickle rippled through him, the ring, protecting him from the impact, drawing energy from his chunk of letrico.
    A shout: “Get Astrid to the plaza!”
    “I’m okay,” she called.
    A second explosion jolted the building. Will dragged her to Bramblegate.
    Within the ruin of the train station, the roar of planes was even louder. Hundreds of Astrid’s volunteers were crossing the plaza, moving swiftly but without apparent fear as they vanished into the glow.
    “Is there a bomb shelter?” he asked.
    “We dig one,” Astrid said, with that faraway look that meant she was listening to the grumbles. “Cave of wonders.”
    “Astrid—”
    “Don’t worry.” She pointed at a muscular Latino—Jupiter, the Rolodex told him, one of a pair of formerly conjoined twins from Nicaragua—who stood atop a letrico boulder. He wore a catcher’s mask and asbestos gloves. “Jupe’s on Mark’s defense team. There’s no danger.”
    “Then where’s everyone going?”
    “Some volunteers go out to heal people or disperse chantments. Some go home.”
    He blinked. “You evacuate?”
    “It’s no fun getting bombed, so why not skip it?” She crooked a finger. “Come on, let’s put this time to use.”
    She led him between the pillars, murmuring “Green Gate One,” as they stepped