Everwild

Nick took a moment. This one wouldn't be as easy. He tried to sit up as straight as he could in the low-slung sofa, and looked Isaiah in the eye.

"I'd like fifty of your Afterlights."

Isaiah's expression became so stony, the features of his face actually seemed changed. "They're not for sale," he growled.

"No--that's not what I mean." Nick said. "Mary Hightower is a threat to all of us, and I can guarantee you that she's building an army. Which means I need to build one too. So I'm asking you for fifty volunteers. Only those who want to go--I don't want to force anyone."

Isaiah took his time to think about it. "I don't like it," he said. "I don't like it one bit ... but I do get the feeling that living under the Sky Witch would be a whole lot worse."

Nick leaned forward. "Will you do it, then? Will you ask for volunteers?"

"If I give it my blessing, you'll get your volunteers," Isaiah said. "But it's go

"All right, then--what?"

What Isaiah asked for was a feast. A Christmas feast for his entire vapor, regardless of the fact that it was the summer. Nick supposed that in a timeless world, each day could be whatever day you wanted it to be.

"Everyone knows how hard it is to find food that's crossed over," Isaiah pointed out. "You saw how they acted when they saw that ice cream. Coulda had a riot if I wasn't there to keep the peace." Isaiah indicated a little jar in the corner that held just one unbroken fortune cookie. "Mostly we get those damn fortune cookies--and when it's a bad fortune, no one'll even eat the crumbs."

"So," asked Nick, who knew more than anyone that every Everlost fortune was true, "was your last fortune a good one, or a bad one?"

Isaiah raised his eyebrows. "At first I thought it was bad, but maybe it's turning halfway decent."

"What did it say?"

Isaiah gave him the slightest hint of a grin. "It said 'Embrace the bittersweet'."

The feast took some time to arrange, and since all the ripping effort was Zin's, it exhausted her--but she was a trooper. Nick had her rip a smorgasbord of edible items from dozens upon dozens of restaurants, markets, and homes.

"Why cain't I go to some big ole' banquet hall," Zin asked, "and rip all the food from there?"

"That would be easier," Nick admitted, "but it would also be obnoxious. If we have to steal hundreds of meals from the living, we should spread it out--so that no one feels the cost of what they've lost."

It was obvious that Zin cared little for the living and their loss. The concept of "responsible ripping" was foreign to her. Fortunately, in her many years in Everlost, her designs were never so grand that her ripping created major problems for the living. Unless you count all the missing artillery.

In the end, Zin did what she was told, and asked if this earned her a raise in her military rank. Nick told her a good soldier never asks.

It took three days, working round the clock, to rip enough food to feed the Afterlights of Atlanta, but it was worth the effort. Nick had to admit, when they gathered for the meal, he'd never seen a group of Afterlights so joyful and so content. Whether he got his militia or not, he was glad to have done this.

When all was said and done, and everyone had eaten until they were satisfied, Isaiah asked for volunteers for Nick's army. "Someone's gotta stand up to the Sky Witch," Isaiah told them. "And we gotta do our share."

Nick had asked for fifty--and he ended up with almost eighty--which posed a logistical problem, since the train had only an engine, a parlor car, and a single passenger car. That's when Zin, to everyone's amazement, had ripped her first train car from the living world.

Isaiah was true to his word, and just before they left, he gave them pretty good intelligence as to where they could find friendly Afterlights, and which ones should probably be avoided. He also gave Nick a word of friendly, heartfelt advice.

"You need to remember who you were," Isaiah told him. "Because more and more you got that mud-pie look about you. There's more chocolate on your shirt--it's even getting into your hair now. I gotta say, it worries me."

"We can't choose what we remember," Nick said, repeating what Mary had once told him, "but I'll try."

"Well, I wish you all the luck in both worlds," Isaiah said. Then, as a gesture of friendship, they put their hands together, and crushed Isaiah's one unbroken fortune cookie between their palms.

Their fortune read, "Luck is the poorest of strategies."

While Isaiah might have felt insulted, Nick took this as evidence that he was doing the right thing--preparing for his confrontation with Mary as best he could.

That was more than a month ago. Since leaving Atlanta, Nick and his train had zigzagged from town to town, city to city, on any dead rails that would get them there.

"I'd rip us fresh train tracks," Zin said, "but I can only rip things I can actually move."

The "mud-pie" look that Isaiah had spoken of was even more pronounced than before--so much so that Nick had taken the mirror in the parlor car, and spread his chocolate hand back and forth across it until it was too thick with the stuff to show his reflection. He had work to do, and thinking about himself, well, it was just a distraction.

Based on what Isaiah had told him, they traveled to more than a dozen towns and cities in Georgia and the Carolinas, bringing in volunteers everywhere they went. Zin had become a whiz at dazzling audiences with the items she ripped right before their eyes, and once they were wide-eyed with wonder, Nick offered them a feast without being asked, because if there was one thing that was universal in Everlost, it was the absence of, and the craving for, a good meal.

By the time they reached Chattanooga, Te

"It's good to be part of an army again," Zin told Nick, as they headed south toward Birmingham, Alabama. "I've been waitin' halfway to forever for someone to fight."

"We fight because we have to," Nick told her. "We fight because it's the right thing to do, not because we want to."

"Speak for yourself," Zin said. "Everybody's gots their own reasons for the things they do. Alls that matters is that your reasons and mine carry the same flag."

"We don't have a flag," Nick pointed out.

"I could make one."

"Just as long as it's not Confederate."

Zin thought about it. "Whacha say I rip some fabric into Everlost, and come up with sumpin' brand spankin' new?"

"Great--you could be our own Betsy Ross."

To which she replied, "Betsy Ross was a Yankee." It was a strange thing to build an army when they had no idea where to find the enemy. "I've heard rumors that Mary's gone west," Joh

"D'ya think she's afraid to come this far south?" Charlie asked.

"Mary's not afraid," Nick told him. "But she is cautious--which means she'll only come after us when she feels she can't lose." He wondered if she knew where he was right now, and what he was doing.

"What d'ya think's go