The Book of M Read online

  Ory tried to read her face for some kind of tell, but the woman looked earnest. She was tired, and too wise to hope for too much, but there was no lie there. Whatever the rumors were, that they existed and that people were heading for New Orleans, at least, was true.

  “Then why are you still here?” he asked.

  “We aren’t,” she said. She rested the butt of the rifle gently on the ground. “We leave today. As soon as this one finishes his goddamn cigarette.”

  The smoke trailed out between the tiny gaps in his teeth as the man beside her grinned. “Helps me remember,” he said.

  They all waited in the silence as the man exhaled and put the roll of embers to his lips again. Against the cool deck, its tiny shadow f loated in midair, attached to nothing. After a last long drag, he pushed the remains into the ground and then placed his shoe slowly over it, snuffing the life out. It was time to go.

  “How are you getting there?” Ory asked when they all looked at him again.

  “We can’t—” she started.

  “No, I know. I didn’t mean . . . I just meant, how are you getting there?”

  The woman crossed her arms. “We’ve been saving. There are still cars that run if you look for them. Victor here was an engineer before everything went to shit. He calculated it for us. How much food, water, gas. We want to survive, but we want to travel light. We’ve been building our group for a year, and have just enough to get the twelve of us there, no more. That’s why I said you were too late,” she said, an explanation as an apology.

  “There are only two of you,” the shadowless man with the blue eyes said. The wind pushed his pale yellow hair in front of his cold stare for a moment. “You’ll travel fast as such a small unit.” His face was grimly determined. “Find a car. You’ll make it.”

  “I just . . .” Ory shook his head. He looked at the ground-floor unit closest to the pool that had obviously been theirs. There were bicycles propped up against the railings in the back, a grill chained to the wall, clothes hanging to dry. Here they were, sitting around the empty pool in the last warmish sun of the season, smoking cigarettes they had made themselves. It was almost a normal life. “You’re leaving all this—you’re going to go out there—for a rumor?”

  “We have to,” the woman said. She looked at the shadowless man, and they watched each other for a long moment. “Or there won’t be anything left anyway.”

  IT WAS A LONG WAY BACK, BUT AS SOON AS ORY GOT AWAY from Broad Street and was cutting through backyards again, it was quiet once more.

  The older woman’s name was Ursula, she’d said. Ursula. The first shadowed person Ory had met since the Forgetting took Arlington. And probably the last.

  Ursula told him he was welcome to everything they’d left in their unit—which wasn’t much, but it was still better than what he’d hoped to find at all. They had finished packing a few days ago, and were leaving what was there behind. “We’d rather you have it than anyone else, I guess,” she’d said. Ory scrounged around every corner and crack. There was no food, but in the end, he was dragging back to their shelter two of the bikes, four small knives that were still fairly sharp, a bottle of vinegar, three glass jars, and the curtains from every window. He knew the bikes were too cumbersome, but he took them anyway—one looked just like Max’s old roadster, and he wanted to see her face light up when she saw it. Maybe they could ride them around the grass outside the shelter once or twice, like the old days. By the time he finished packing and went back outside, the pool area was empty. They were already gone.

  The return took longer, with such a heavy bag and guiding two bikes with a hand on each of their handlebars. It was later than usual—the sun had already almost disappeared beneath the horizon, and the last dying rays backlit everything into a dark shade of greenish-blue. Ory had to make good time to get home to Max by when he said he’d be there. He looked down between his boots as he stepped. His shadow lurched with him, slithering jaggedly over the overgrown lawns, fragmenting around tangled weeds. Still there.

  They were crazy to leave Arlington, he thought. Just when things had finally started to get quiet. Just when it was finally starting to get safe enough that he could walk around to the back of their shelter to check the game trap without fear, no longer needing to jump at every single little snap of a twig or rustle of leaves in the overgrowth. They’d finally gotten to a place where they were almost safe.

  And honestly, now that he knew almost everyone with or without a shadow had emptied out of Arlington, and the only things left he’d have to contend with were the last straggling shadowless and the odd wild animal that had moved in from the lurching woods, it made Ory want to hole up in their shelter and stay even more. Maybe society had been nice before, but he wasn’t sure it would be great again. Maybe after everything was settled there in New Orleans, after they’d figured out some way to control the place. Maybe years from now, he’d consider it. But with what was coming for Max, they couldn’t move now. They needed to stay, and be safe, when the time came. Max would agree with him.

  Ory had just about convinced himself that the last thought was true when a strange ripple in his shadow caught his gaze. But it wasn’t his shadow, he realized—just as something heavy and metallic smashed into the back of his head.

  THE BUZZING SLOWLY FADED. CONFETTI GLITTERED AS IT fell, everywhere, golden. Candles, sunset. Overhead, a wrought-iron elk, leaping over a wrought-iron cliff. The guests raised their party noisemakers to their lips again and blew.

  “Champagne?” Max slipped her arm into Ory’s. She shouted over the squealing chorus. The soft, brown coils of her hair spilled across the sleeve of his suit as she leaned to him. Lavender, warmed by the summer air. Bubbles popped against the crystal.

  “Here they come!” someone cried. The band roared. Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” Another hand clapped his shoulder. “Best man! You’re up!” Streamers exploded above.

  “Ory?” Max asked. He turned to look at her—and everything froze. Things suddenly moved as if underwater. The piano echoed, time-stretched. Twirling slivers of gold imprisoned, floating in midair. He loved her so much. “Ory?”

  Ory’s eyes opened. Everything was gone. The music, the sound. The world was black. He was blind.

  He felt the cool, wet grass beneath him then. No. He wasn’t blind. It was just night. Then he knew his pack was gone.

  Of course. That and the supplies were what he’d been attacked for. He shivered at the absence of it against his back. Naked, as if the clothes were stripped off him. The blackness blurred, and he realized he was crying. All gone. His knife, his watch, the canteen, his first-aid kit, the flashlight. His pack. His pack. Every precious thing it had taken so long to collect. Everything that kept him alive when he scouted. All gone. Ory clutched at the shoulder straps for comfort as he hugged himself, realized they weren’t there either anymore, and started to cry harder.

  When the strangled sobs finally subsided, he sat up as cautiously as he could. His head was pounding. Everything else was numb. He couldn’t tell if he was injured anywhere below his neck yet. His fingers dabbed at the back of his skull and came away warm and wet. He couldn’t see it in the darkness, but it felt like blood. That’s not good, he thought vaguely. Then he pitched over and vomited onto the grass.

  MINUTES OR HOURS LATER, ORY WAS SHAKILY ON HIS FEET. There was no way to tell what time it was. It was just dark. So dark he could barely see his hand in front of his face, even with the moon out. Night now was not like night before, navigable in the vague, faint haze of streetlights. Night now was oblivion.

  Was it a shadowless that had knocked him out, ripped his pack off his back, and sprinted away? he wondered. Or a shadowed survivor like himself, who had been stalking him since he entered Broad Street? A chill shuddered through his clammy body. Was it the group he’d just met? They were about to set off on a dangerous journey. They’d seen his hunting knife, his backpack. They had plenty of supplies, but why not have a few more? He tr
ied to picture Ursula circling back, her buzzed hair, her solemn face, creeping calmly up behind him, the butt of her gun raised with grim determination. Would she have done it, knowing he had a shadowless of his own to take care of?

  Max, Ory thought then. He took a few faltering steps. There was no point in wondering who’d gotten the drop on him. It didn’t matter now. His pack was gone, and the bicycle he wanted to give her, but he was alive. And so was Max. And she’d be panicked out of her mind by now. Ory had never been this late before, ever. Not even the first time he went out and almost got killed, and then got lost trying to get home. He wanted to sit down and close his eyes again. Instead, he kept walking.

  HOW HE MADE IT TO THE SHELTER WAS HAZY. HE MUST HAVE retraced his steps from memory, able to navigate the demolished neighborhoods even in darkness. Once or twice he thought he heard something rustling in the bushes nearby, but he was too dizzy to spot it, and in no shape to fight it anyway. It was almost as bad as death to lose that pack, everything he’d had in it, but he might not have made it back at all in his condition if he’d been carrying all that extra weight.

  Suddenly he was on the ground floor of the shelter. He’d made it. He leaned over and vomited again, and then almost fell into it.

  Just two floors to go, and he’d be home. Please let her still remember how to clean a wound, Ory thought. Please let her still remember everything right now. Tomorrow he could face it, but not now. If he opened the door and it was the moment that Max had forgotten who he was, in his current state Ory doubted he could string together a coherent sentence at all, much less convince her they’d been married for the past five years, and he went out and got himself almost killed like this every week. At least she wouldn’t remember that he’d had a pack to lose.

  Ory climbed the stairs slowly, leaning against the wall as he ascended to stop the world from spinning. The back of his head felt freshly wet. He’d need Max to check it to make sure it didn’t need stitches. He grimaced as he imagined the possibility. Her having to shave a patch in the back with their last dull disposable razor, the piercing pop of one of her sewing needles through the skin, over and over, a sensation he knew far too well by now. The back of his scalp tingled in reluctant anticipation. Just don’t fall asleep, Ory thought dimly when he reached their door. He’d read that somewhere once—if you had a concussion, you shouldn’t go to sleep. Otherwise you might never wake up. That was all he wanted now, though. To curl up with Max and close his eyes until everything didn’t blur and tilt.

  But as soon as he put his key into the tumbler and started to turn it, everything snapped into humming, crystallized focus.

  The door was unlocked.

  No.

  No, no, no.

  Ory shoved the door open and ran inside before he could think about it for another second. Before the terror of all the horrible things that could have happened to her—bandits, robbers, wild animals, her memory—could overwhelm him. Please don’t let something have happened to her in the hours I was gone, he prayed. Please don’t let it be that if he hadn’t gone to Broad Street, if he’d only been home on time, he could have caught her before she forgot. “Max!” he screamed, and tore across the living room to the kitchenette, then the bedroom, then the bathroom, and then farther out, down other halls, into other rooms, searching every inch of the shelter. “Max! Max! MAX!”

  She was gone.

  WAIT, LET ME TURN IT ON . . . OKAY, SAY IT NOW.

  “BLUE.”

  FIFTY-TWO.

  Part II

  Mahnaz Ahmadi

  NAZ DREAMED OFTEN ABOUT THE NIGHT IT ALL BEGAN. THERE was just so much joy, so much wonder. No one knew then what the shadowlessness would lead to. Even when she dreamed about it now, now that she’d seen what it all became, the dream still never turned into a nightmare. She didn’t know what that meant. Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all.

  Naz, her coach, and her teammates were celebrating the approval of her green card that evening. They’d just found out the paperwork had gone through, and she was officially allowed to stay in the United States forever, to keep training. It sounded silly, because tryouts weren’t even for another three years, but somehow the green card made it all real for her. She might someday become the first Iranian to medal in archery at the Olympics. She might even have a shot at gold.

  They were all gathered around the couch in her apartment’s living room in Boston, her coach leaning over the coffee table to uncork a bottle of wine. Two of her teammates had gotten a banner printed that read, Congrats, Naz! Olympics, watch out! and another that said, Bull’s-eye! and hung them on the wall right above the case where she stored her competition bow.

  She’d mostly tuned out the vague blinks of color coming from the TV as they laughed, drinking and snacking on a cheese plate and a cake she had baked, but something caught her eye. A red news ticker at the top of the screen flashed: BREAKING NEWS. That’s when she first heard the name Hemu Joshi.

  There was an annual festival that day in India, so the local news crews were already out in the bigger cities, including Pune; they’d been on Hemu for all of seven minutes before someone working for an international station caught sight of their live feeds. Everything exploded.

  Within six hours, it was on every channel and website in the United States, and crews from every country were touching down in Mumbai and frantically renting cars by the dozen to drive three hours away to the outdoor spice market in Pune—Mandai, the locals called it—in a span of time that seemed impossibly short for a transatlantic flight. Naz, her coach, and her teammates all stared transfixed at the screen, unable to look away.

  At the time, none of them knew that they actually should have been terrified. Instead, they were fascinated. Obsessed. And Hemu obliged them. He stood gamely in the street of Mandai’s largest aisle for those first three days, giving demonstrations for curious passersby. No matter how many times he did it, it never got old. Naz could watch him for twelve hours straight, with breaks only to microwave food and bring it back to the couch or go to the bathroom.

  First he would smile and say something, to prove he was real and that it was live, not a tape being looped. Then he’d hold out his hand, or stand on one foot and dangle the other one in the air. The street children who had been haunting Hemu like little ghosts since the first moment would giggle and run circles around him. Photojournalists had a heyday with those shots. News sites were filled with vibrant images of the kids playing with him, laughing, dust swirling around them, the oranges and purples of the open-air spice stalls throbbing with such rich color that it made Naz squint.

  Fortune-tellers made their way in rickshaws and on bicycles from every corner of the city to look upon this new wonder. Cripples were carried to Hemu by their relatives as if he could somehow cure them. Fathers were in the street, shouting at him and waving pictures of their daughters. By the end of the first day, Hemu had sixty-two marriage proposals, all from extremely wealthy families. There was a picture of Hemu’s mother, a sturdy old woman with hair still as ink black as his own, trying to hold all of the photos of prospective brides being pressed upon them. She’d pulled down the shoulder sash of her sari to use it like a makeshift basket, but there were so many pictures that they overflowed, the tiny faces of so many beautiful young women escaping her arms like dragonflies, flitting away down the crowded street.

  The day before, Hemu had been a junior customer service representative at a call center for a U.S. cell phone company, and a second-string amateur cricket player for the Maharashtra team. A glorified benchwarmer. He’d batted once in the last fifty games, if that. Now he was almost godlike, something out of a fairy tale or a science fiction film. The world was captivated.

  Hemu Joshi was the first person to lose his shadow.

  WHEN NAZ AND HER LITTLE SISTER, ROJAN, WERE KIDS IN Tehran, the year before their father died, he bought them a little telescope for one of their birthdays, to take up to the roof of their apartment building to try to spot constellati
ons. The girls both went every night, but for different reasons. In truth, Naz could have cared less about it. She was already old enough to be allowed into the specialized sports section of the gymnasium after school, where the bows were kept. She helped drag the heavy metal instrument up the stairs as soon as darkness fell because Rojan cared. Because she had never seen her little sister so spellbound. Astronomy had become Rojan’s version of Naz’s archery. So every night Naz grabbed one end of the telescope and helped Rojan edge up the dark stairwell.

  The rest of the family used to joke that those two things never really seemed to go together, archery and astronomy. To Naz there seemed to be a connection, though. The dark sky, the stars. The white gold of the sun. Her arrow arcing through the air beneath them. She wanted to watch Rojan watch the stars forever. But when Naz won nationals at the age of twenty-one, and the man who would become her coach called from faraway Boston, his English fast and whining and almost impossible for them to understand, and she heard his offer—athlete visa, sponsorship, the Olympics in a few years . . .

  After Naz moved to Boston, she went back home only once. That was the last time she saw her sister. She hadn’t meant to mention her first American boyfriend to her mother, or dating at all. It had just slipped out. But then in the heat of the ensuing argument, she spitefully told the old woman everything about him—and the ones after.

  She wasn’t welcome in the house anymore after that. Her mother swore she’d never speak to Naz again. Naz swore the same. She left that night and went to visit Rojan at her university, where she was studying—Naz’s heart swelled for her—astronomy. She’d managed to win a full scholarship. The next evening, they sneaked into Rojan’s lab to see her research. By then Rojan knew far more than Naz did about the sky, but Naz followed as best she could. She’d remember forever the stolen looks through the telescopes she shared with her—the glow of distant planets, the streaks as comets shot by.