I.

Under the dry desert sun, the crackled landscape teemed with its own variation of life; scrubby trees and bushes pressed through the rock and sand, lizards alternately baked on rocks and flittered behind them, and bugs sizzled around in thick waves. Two children, their skin browned with sun and their faces streaked with dirt, crouched together atop a large rock, poking at the surface of their territory with sticks idly.

“So what we gonna do today?” asked the girl, eyeing her companion and slowly dragging the stick over the bumps on their rock. She was very skinny, even her longish face, with straight dark brown hair and the sort of large eyes that deceived adults into believing that she was innocent and sweet.

The boy grunted in response, tilting his face towards the sky and squinting. His faintly freckled cheeks had pink sunburn arching over them, and he was stockier than the girl, although he still had the slender limbs of a child who spends their time running around. At last, his head made its way around, and he met his friend’s stare with dull blue eyes. “I dunno.”

“I’m sick of poking at this stupid rock,” grumbled the girl, throwing her stick over the edge. It was an impressive rock, jutting twelve feet from the ground at its highest point, and not easy to clamber atop of. Both children had several scrapes and scratches, red and white on the dingy film of tan, to attest to the glory of the rock.

Her stick clattered along the sheer stone face, landing silently in the hot sand below, and she scowled.

“Just wasted a good stick,” pointed out the boy, glancing after it. He turned his face back to look at her. “Not gonna find another stick like that up here.”

The girl unwound her limbs, crawling out to peer after the discarded prize. Then she sat on the edge of the rock, letting her legs dangle over the edge and kicking them through the air. “It was a dumb stick anyway.”

In his crouched pose some five feet away from her, the boy’s expression twisted into something sour. “Was not! You’re just jealous, ’cause I found it.”

“Was too.” She stuck out her tongue for emphasis.

“Was not!”

“That was the dumbest stick that ever lived!”

“You’re the dumbest stick that ever lived!”

The girl glared at him, turning to face him with a feral snarl. “Take that back!”

“No! You’re a dumb, skinny stick!” he repeated, proud of thinking up something so offensive to her. A rather nasty smile broadened his round face, and he continued to taunt her. “Scrawny, skinny stick-girl! You’re just a stick-girl. And you’re dumb, too. You’re the dumbest girl ever!”

With a screech, she dove at him, tumbling them both back onto the rock. His head cracked unpleasantly, making tears spring to his eyes, but he wasn’t about to cry in front of some dumb girl. Nor was he about to let her beat him up. Batting haphazardly at the fury of blows she rained down on him, he finally got a decent hit in, turning the tides of the fight.

Snarling and growling at each other, the children rolled over the rock, scratching and kicking and biting. Both were considerably more scraped and bruised in a matter of minutes, their shouts and curses echoing through the empty valley, frightening carrion birds and lizards.

Everything happened very quickly. The boy managed to give her a good shove off of him, jolting her body away. He didn’t realize how close they were to the edge of the rock, and neither did she. Wide brown eyes met his, shocked, and she seemed to pause in midair, before tumbling over the rock with a horrible scream.

He crawled to the edge, peering over at her. She was just lying there, one arm horribly askew, her face in the dirt and her shoulders shaking.

“Cassidy!” he yelled, finding his throat choked. She didn’t move, and he found himself scrambling back down the rock, ignoring the dirt as it ground into his cuts, ignoring the new scrapes as he felt them form, and the jolts of pain as his shins and knees and elbows cracked heedlessly into the stone.

“Cassie, Cassie,” he groaned, rushing over to her. Had he killed her? The best girl ever, the only kid he really liked, his best friend—she was just shaking there, on the ground, her face still in the dirt, concealed by her hair.

Kneeling beside her prone form, he reached a shaky hand out, brushing some of the hair from her face. She had screwed her eyes shut, but tears still ran from them, dripping off the curves of her cheeks and pooling in the dirt below.

“Go away,” she whimpered. But she didn’t get up, didn’t shove him or punch him. “I hate you.” Her words were punctuated by a loud sniffle.

“Cassie,” he said, too afraid to say anything else. “Come on, get up. I’m sorry. Get up, Cassie.”

“No,” she ground out. “I hate you.”

“Please?” He was begging her, touching her shoulders, trying to shake her and rouse her from this place in the dirt.

She didn’t answer, just sniffled and turned her head away. Up close, he could see that her boney arm had a lump in it, that the arm wasn’t straight.

“Your arm, Cassie. Cassie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he moaned, tears running down his face. What had he done? Could she move? Did he just break every bone in her body?

“It hurts,” she whimpered, sniffling again.

“Can you get up?” he asked, desperate. “Can you stand up? Do you think you can walk?”

They had to get home, he thought desperately. Had to get to their parents, to someone who’d know what to do. But here they’d wandered down into the valley, a good mile away, where the little ramshackle development couldn’t even see them. People would come looking when it got to be dark, but that was when nasty things came out. Snakes and scorpions and spiders—nasty things that bit and poisoned you.

He shuddered and reached for the hand that wasn’t hurt, squeezing her fingers.

“Cassie, we gotta get outta here. We gotta get you back home, to your mom,” he gave her hand another squeeze for emphasis, and felt her fingers curling around his.

She turned her head towards him, her face muddy and streaked with grimy tears. “I dunno,” she wailed. “My ankle hurts a lot, too.”

Her ankle? What had he done? Doubling over her, he began to rock back and forth.

“I’m sorry I’m sorryI’msorryI’msorrysorrysorry,” he babbled, just repeating the mantra. What was he going to do? He could run off and get some adults, but it would take at least an hour to get someone and get back, and a lot of things could happen in an hour. If they stayed here, they’d be waiting for hours, though, and a lot more could happen in that space.

Her fingers squeezed his once, and then drifted out. Painfully, trying to keep her arm close, she rolled to her back, leaving one shoulder draped over his boney knees. Rising up, he sniffled, wiping at his eyes with the back of a hand, and then he helped to pull her head and shoulders into his lap.

“Come on,” he said, looping her good arm around his shoulders. “I’m gonna stand up, okay? Use your good foot and hold onto me. We’re gonna get home, okay?”

She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut against the sun’s glare and her stinging tears.

Slowly, he levered himself up, struggling all the while to pull her to her feet. Once there, she swayed dizzily, one foot raised slightly and her arm cradled against her stomach. He shifted, wrapping both arms cautiously around her, to ensure that she didn’t fall. Standing there together, they stared out over the valley, at the parched sand and cracked rock.

“I’m scared,” she whispered. Her face looked gray underneath the mud and tan and tears, her eyes shadowed, laced with red from her crying.

“Okay,” he said, licking his lips. They were very dry, sort of crackly under his thick tongue. “Okay.”

They started walking—rather, she hopped, and he walked alongside, holding her up with both hands. It was tiring, and they were sweating profusely within a few minutes, the sun burning into their skin and eyes. Every few steps, they had to stop and breathe, while Cassie blinked back tears and tested her weight experimentally on the sore ankle.

Barely ten minutes into their trek, they had to stop and take off her sneaker. Her ankle was grotesquely swollen, the flesh bulging over the edges, scored with red marks from her socks. He reached out and tried to touch it, as if he would know how to tell if it were broken, but she flinched and shrieked, and he drew back, afraid.

“Cassie,” he said, “Cassie.” He couldn’t stop saying her name. It was like checking to make sure she was awake, or that she was real. She felt real—the bones of her shoulders and ribs pressed into his arms, the sticky sun-warmed skin of her shoulder, where it was exposed by her tee-shirt, the tickling strands of hair that got in his nose and mouth and made him want to sneeze. But he had to make sure it wasn’t some ghost, making him suffer for killing her.

Her head pivoted slowly, until he was staring at her large, watery eyes. They seemed dull, sleepy, as if it were late at night and they had been up late giggling in a tent in his backyard. Swallowing a lump in his throat, holding back the tears, he led her to a rock and helped her sit.

“I’m gonna carry you, okay? You’re not that heavy, okay? So I’m gonna carry you, cause we’re going too slow. And you look sick. Are you okay?”

She nodded blearily, and mumbled something. He leaned closer, and she repeated herself. “Thirsty.”

“I know, Cassie, me, too. I’m thirsty, too, but we gotta get home. There’s no water out here. We gotta get home, okay, then I’ll go get you a big old glass of the coldest water ever. And I’ll have my mom make you a whole pitcher of lemonade, and some cookies, too…” His voice trailed into a senseless babble, of all sorts of things he meant for them to do, utterly unrealistic, but just the sort of childish fantasy that would rouse their spirits.

With a tearful smile, she nodded, scrubbing at her eyes with her good hand. He crouched in front of her, and she wrapped her scrawny knees around his waist, and swung her good arm around his neck. They’d done it a million times, piggyback rides, and they could outrace most of the kids they knew together. He suspected it was because Cassie tended to reach out and punch their competition.

Lurching to his feet, he caught her knees in his hands, shifting to make sure she wouldn’t slip. Treading slowly onward, he realized that down in the valley, where they didn’t have timed sprinkler systems, or the citywide water system, it was much harder. The sun did not abate, relentlessly scorching through their flimsy tee-shirts and scruffy jeans, making their hair thick and matted, making their eyes sting as sweat poured into them.

He had to stop several times to pull her back up, when his sweaty palms began to lose their grip on her small, knobby knees. Her hold around his neck was loosening, weakening, and it made him nervous.

“Cassie? Hey, hey, tell me a story. You tell really good stories, you know that?”

Her fingers tightened, and his shirt bunched up in them. Shifting herself up, she let her chin hang over his shoulder, sweaty hair falling in to obscure his peripheral vision on the right.

“Once upon a time,” she started. She spoke slowly, wearily, and her voice was very soft. “There was this princess. But she wasn’t like other princesses. She wasn’t stupid and frilly and pink…”

“Good. Frilly princesses are stupid.”

He could feel her cheek against his ear as she smiled, and he thought he could feel the cracking of her lips, too.

“She had a sword. A magical sword, called Diamond, and it could cut through anyone’s armor. Even a knight. And one day, the princess was outside practicing with her sword, and her best friend, the squire came out to play with her. But they got in a fight, and she got hurt.”

He blinked, his eyes stung and her story made him feel sort of sick to his stomach. But he listened, not interrupting, not breaking stride as the hill out of the valley loomed ahead.

“And the squire was very brave, and he helped her, picking her up and carrying her home. But it was a very long journey. And on the way, they were attacked by a dragon, but the squire fought him off. And then they were attacked by a group of evil knights, who wanted to steal the princess. The knights tried to take her, but the squire picked up her sword, Diamond, and killed the evil knights.”

He grinned. It really wasn’t such a bad story, after all. She was good at telling stories. That’s what had made him like her in the first place, when they were little kids and she told him a long, winding story about a magical super-dog who could shoot laser beams from his tail. He secretly hoped that laser beams would appear in this story, too.

“But when they got back to the castle,” she said, her tired voice taking on an ominous tone, “The whole village had been burned down, and even the castle was crumbling. There was no one around except the princess and the squire. They wandered through the village for hours, calling for help, but no one came. Everyone was dead.”

He stumbled, and she yelped, nails digging into his skin through the sweaty fabric of his tee-shirt. They jerked forward, and he jogged a few steps up the hill before he could right them. Her story was scaring him. His shoulders were tense against her flat, boney chest, his steps were picking up a certain anxious bounce that they hadn’t had before. She didn’t continue her story, which made it almost worse.

They trekked onward, heaving over the bumps in the hill, sweaty and silent. He felt that he needed to get home, that he needed to make sure their little village and castle weren’t all burned down. Cassie was growing heavier with every step, and he could feel her hold loosening on him.

“Hold on, Cassie,” he whispered. Her hand twitched, and she tried to pull herself up, to no avail. He could almost see their houses, the sprinkler systems and the power generators. High overhead, a few of the outermost balloons from the weather balloon network bobbed into view. A grin stole across his face, unbidden, and he tilted his head back, reveling in his triumph.

She moaned on his back, her fingers unwinding from his shirt.

“Cassie! No! Wake up! We’re almost there! Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

He heard her moan again, but a tired, waking moan, and he began to jog, encouraged by the line of green just becoming visible over the hill. They rounded up to the furthest edge of the neighborhood park, a scruffy outcropping of scrawny saplings and scrubby grass, but it was grass, and it was home.

The winding roads carried them that remaining quarter mile through the houses, mismatched and hastily constructed, some with patches of grass, most with sand or rock yards. Though it wasn’t a terrifically wealthy area, people tried to make it look decent, and most of them had managed to create southwestern gardens of rock and cacti, with a few potted plants here and there.

Normally, they would have been stopped, noticed by people in their yards, and helped by them. But no one was outside. No children, even, or dogs. He ran on, his chest burning with the strain, the sweat pouring over both of them as she jarred against his back. Something was wrong. Her story sprang into mind, and he shuddered again, stumbling and speeding up, then pitching forward with a yell. He caught himself on his arms, but the fall jolted her arm, and she screamed as the shock and pain tore through it, tears running freely from her eyes.

The silent street echoed with the shrill sound, but no one seemed to hear it through their shuttered windows and locked doors. The silence was terrifying, as if everyone had died and left them alone, just two helpless kids, one of them hurt and the other one slowly losing the battle against panic.

“Cassie, I’m sorry, Cassie, Cassie…can you hear me?” he was rambling throughout the fall, talking without realizing he was speaking as he maneuvered his arm beneath her knees, levering the other around her shoulders and heaving, struggling to stand.

She didn’t respond, just staring blankly on, her face distinctly gray now. He could feel himself starting to cry, could feel the tears gathering on his cheeks as he began to rush again, still talking to her, begging her to answer.

“Come on, come on comeoncomeon…” he was just repeating the words now, as if his chant could somehow force her back to life. She felt so heavy, but so hollow as he carried her down the street, just a few more blocks through the eerie silence of the neighborhood.

Cassidy’s mother lived in one of the grubbier houses, with a childishly half-neglected garden, a crumpled porch, and a patchy-looking roof. Inside there was a mix of cheap, ugly furniture, and the kitchen always smelled like something had recently burnt or rotted. The screen door swung in as he kicked it, shouldering them through and depositing her on the couch beside her mother.

Ms. Zekelar was spellbound, staring at the monitor with a hand over her mouth, droopy eyes fixed on in horror. Something babbled on, a newscast of some sort, but he ignored it, altering his chant and speaking more loudly, until she turned, startled, and rushed over.

“Help us, help, help, help help helphelphelphelphelp…”

“Oh my god!” she cried, kneeling beside her daughter and reaching to feel her head. “What did you do to her?” Accusing eyes turned on him, glaring and threatening.

He shook his head, terrified, hearing nothing but a loud ringing in his ears, slowly building to a crescendo. It was broken by a pained groan from Cassie, as she struggled her way into a sitting position.

“I fell off a rock,” she said weakly. “My arm hurts, Mama.” Turning large, sad eyes to her mother, she worked a bit of her magic, and Ms. Zekelar relented, turning her attention to fussing over the girl.

“You broke it! Jesus, Cassidy, what were you doing?” As she talked, she pressed the button on her network link. “Emergency, hospital.”

He stood by, awkward and afraid, but unwilling to leave. Ms. Zekelar was talking to the hospital, making sure that they had space in the Emergency Department, running around and getting things ready. Everything was blurry, like he was looking through water, and everyone sounded far away—the phone, Ms. Zekelar’s voice, the TV.

“Ben,” whispered Cassie. He jerked and stared at her, snapping from his trance. “Don’t cry. It’s okay. Don’t cry, Ben.” Belatedly, he realized that he was crying, again, and he rubbed his eyes with gritty fingers, blinking. With a muffled sniff, he sat down next to her, pulling her good hand into his.

“I didn’t mean it when I called you dumb,” he said tearfully. “You’re the best girl on earth. And you’re really smart, really.” His lower lip stuck out, trembling as he spoke. She looked on with her large, sad eyes, squeezing his hand gently. With a sob, he flung himself forward, hugging her. He didn’t even hug his parents anymore, so the fact that he hugged her now was a breath short of miraculous. “I’m sorry! You’re my best friend, and I want you to be okay. I’m sorry.”

Startled, she drew her arm around him, tightening it around his shoulders briefly. He continued to cling to her, weeping and begging for forgiveness, as he had in the valley. She made a few soothing, shushing sounds, until he finally drew back, and then he saw that her face was likewise streaked with stray teardrops.

Mrs. Zekelar chose that moment to return to them, her bag slung over her shoulder and her keys in hand. Her face was hard, as if she was clenching her teeth, and her hair was slightly mussed, perhaps from rushing around under strain.

“You two picked the worst possible day for this,” she muttered, glancing at the television monitor in the center of the room. The newscast blared on, oblivious to their troubles, and she bent to scoop her daughter up. “All right, Ben, time for you to go home. Your parents will be worried.”

He frowned, puzzled. Why would his parents worry about him? It was the middle of Saturday, and they knew he was always out playing with Cassidy on Saturdays, from the moment they woke up until they fell asleep.

Ms. Zekelar read his expression correctly, and grimaced, although it was with a sort of parental pity, rather than annoyance. “Could you open the door for me, please?”

Obediently, he did so, trailing along after them as she carried Cassidy to the car, where he opened up the backseat for her. Before Ms. Zekelar could shut the door, he leaned in again, giving her another hug.

“Be okay, Cassie,” he whispered, before scooting out of the car and turning to face her mother.

Ms. Zekelar put a cigarette between her lips and fished a lighter from her pocket, snapping it to life. “They just announced it on the TV.”

“Announced what?”

She paused, thinking whether to tell him herself or leave it to his parents. At last, releasing a cloud of putrid smoke, she looked him in the eye and said: “Ben, we’re going to war.”