The Diviners by Libba Bray

and perched on the shoulder of a tall man in a funny hat. His skin was as gray as the sky, his eyes black and shining. The half moons of his nails were caked with dirt, and every finger wore a ring. “The time is now,” the man said, though Memphis did not see his lips move.
    The dream shifted. Memphis stood in a long corridor. At the end was a metal door, and on the door was the symbol: the eye surrounded by the sun’s rays, a lightning bolt directly beneath it like a long zigzag of a tear. He heard the soft flutter of wings, and then he was lost in heavy fog, and his mother’s voice called to him:
“Oh, my son, my son…”
    Memphis was not aware of the tears damp on his own cheeks. He moaned softly in his sleep, rolled over, and was lost to a different dream, of pretty chorus girls waving fans of feathers who blew sweet kisses and promised him the world.

EVIE’S DREAM
     
    Evie’s dream began as it often did, with fog and the snow and the forest. James stood on the edge of the wood in his crisp khaki uniform, pale and grim. Evie’s lips formed his name in her sleep, but inside the dream, there was no sound. With one arm, James motioned to her to follow.
    The trees grew sparser as they came to a small clearing filled with soldiers. A boy in sergeant’s stripes began shouting orders, and the camp blurred with sudden movement—cigarettes tamped under boots, tin coffee mugs abandoned, gas masks donned, positions taken, every man alert and waiting. Dark clouds swirled overhead. Flashes of lightning broke the gloom like a charge—one, two, three! Someone was pulling her down into a deep trench, and Evie slid along the earthen, tomblike walls, hiding from an enemy she could not see. There was a haunting silence, like the world holding its breath, and then Evie watched in awe as a fierce wave of bruising light spread across the sky, followed seconds later by a violent force that knocked her to the ground like the punch of an invisible giant.
    The air swirled with smoke and ash. Evie climbed out of the trench and fell onto a soldier whose bones shattered into dust. It was as if he’d been hollowed out completely. His eyes were gone, his mouth stretched into a hideous grin. Bloody tears scarred his shriveled, sunken cheeks. Evie screamed and scrambled forward across the scorched ground, where soldiers’ strewn bodies lay like trampled wildflowers. The beautiful trees were no more than blackened wisps now. Here and there, she caught glimpses of ghostly soldiers on the field’s misty edges, but when she turned her head, they were gone. Evie called for James, and there he was on the path up ahead, safe! She ran to him, but his expression was one of warning. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear it. His eyes. Something was happening to his eyes. James stretched out his arms and threw back his head. There was another blinding flash.
    Evie woke, biting off the start of a scream. The little fan beside her bed whirred, but she was drenched with sweat. With trembling fingers, she felt for the lamp switch, then blinked against the sudden light. The unfamiliarity of the new room made her jittery. She needed to breathe. She climbed onto the rickety fire escape and up to the roof, where it was cool and open. Jericho was right—the view was great from up there. Manhattan unfurled before her like a jeweler’s velvet adorned with diamonds. The trains still rattled over the tracks, even at this hour. The city was as restless as she was. On the ledge, a pigeon cooed and pecked at scraps of bread.
    “You and me, kiddo, we’re gonna take this town by storm,” Evie joked even as she wiped away the tears that blurred the skyline into fractured light. “Don’t be a sap, old girl,” she scolded. “Buck up.”
    Evie let the wind kiss her cheeks. She opened her arms as if to embrace Manhattan. Starting tomorrow, she told herself, thingswould be different. There would be shopping, a picture show with Mabel. On Saturday, they