Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“I’m not leaving Mr. Gray here,” Blue said. She supposed after she said it that it was a brave thing to say, but at the time, she’d just said it because it was the truth, even if it was scary.

“It’s a touching thought, but no,” Piper replied. “He can’t go. Please don’t make me ask not nicely.”

The Gray Man was all hunched to fit in the cavern, his hands behind his back. Stones and dust shivered down the walls behind him in an ominous way. To Blue, he said, “Listen to me. Take them and go. I’ve earned this. This is how I’ve lived and this is what it’s come to. You haven’t done anything to deserve this, nor has your mother. Now is the time to be a hero.”

“Listen to the man,” Piper said. “When he says ‘earned this,’ he means that he held a gun to my head in my own kitchen, and he’s right.”

Think, Blue, think — her head felt buzzy and clouded. Probably it was the third sleeper poking round the corner of her consciousness. Maybe it was the dread of that lake creeping up the tunnel. Perhaps it was just the growing supposition that something terrible was about to happen here. A bigger rock rolled free from the tunnel the others had emerged from. This little cavern was so small already; it didn’t seem at all like a difficult thing for it to collapse entirely.

“Sorry, can you speed it up?” Piper asked. “I know no one wants to say ‘Oh, look, this particular shitty cave is collapsing,’ but I’m going to point it out to lend some urgency to the proceedings.”

“You’re beginning to sound like Colin,” the Gray Man said.

“Say that again and I’ll shoot you in the nuts.” Piper gestured to Blue. “Are you going, or what?”

Blue bit her lip. “Can I — can I hug him good-bye? Please?”

She shrank her shoulders down, arms clinging round herself, looking miserable. The last part wasn’t hard.

“You want to hug him? What a zoo,” Piper said. “Fine.”

Boredly, she pointed a gun in their general direction as Blue ducked over to the Gray Man.

“Ah, Blue,” he said.

She threw her arms and hugged him tightly in a hug he couldn’t return. Leaning her cheek against his stubble, she whispered, “I wish I could remember how you said that hero bit in Old English.”

The Gray Man said it.

“Sounds like cat puke,” Piper observed. “What’s it mean?”

“ ‘A coward’s heart is no prize, but the man of valor deserves his shining helmet.’ ”

“I’m working on it,” Blue replied as she used the switchblade she had hidden in her hand to silently slice the zip ties that bound his wrists. She stepped back. He remained bowed over, with his hands behind his back, but he raised one colorless eyebrow at her.

“Okay, get out of here. Scram. Farewell,” Piper said as more of the wall moved uneasily, the uppermost surface shifting dustily to the floor. “Go be short somewhere else.”

Blue hoped fervently the Gray Man could do something now.

The problem was that Maura and Artemus were no more mobile than before, even if Blue had been willing to utterly abandon the Gray Man in the cavern. The only thing she could do was return to struggling them toward the cavern exit. It was like a fever dream, though, except instead of her own legs being turned to lead, Maura and Artemus were the hideously slow ones.

Piper permitted this for about thirty seconds before she said, “This is ridiculous” and clicked off her gun’s safety.

“Blue, down!” the Gray Man shouted. He was already moving.

He must have hit Piper, or Morris, because bodies shoved wildly against Artemus and then Blue. Did it count as falling down if you were already on your knees?

A gun blasted nearby, and for half a second, it was silent. Every sound had been smashed up against the walls of this tiny room, and when it came back, it was only ringing. Dust moved through the space from wherever the bullet had ended up or glanced off. More rocks slid precipitously. They glanced off Blue’s shoulders — it was the ceiling.

Blue couldn’t tell whose arms were whose, and if she should be ducking or punching or stabbing. All she was certain of was that someone could die in a moment here. The threat of it was thick in the murky air.

Morris was strangling the Gray Man. Blue wanted to attend to that — could she? But she saw Piper scrabbling around between shuffling legs for her gun, which she must have dropped. Blue, scouring the floor herself, spotted someone’s gun. She snatched for it and missed just as the Gray Man and Morris staggered by together. One of them kicked the gun, and it chattered crazily across the rocks and into the black of the tunnel.

The other gun went off in someone else’s hand. The sound made it impossible to think. Had someone been shot? Who was shooting? Was it going to happen again?

In that moment of stillness, Blue saw that Morris was still choking the Gray Man. She stabbed his arm, right in the meaty part. She felt considerably less bad than she had when she’d stabbed Adam.

Morris immediately released Mr. Gray, who picked him up and began bashing him against the ceiling.

“Okay, stop,” Piper said. “Or I kill her.”

Everyone turned to look. Piper had a gun pointed to Maura’s head. She tossed her head to get her blond hair out of her eyes, and then blew out her lips to remove a few strands from her mouth.

“What do you want, Piper?” the Gray Man asked. He put Morris down. Morris stayed down.

“I want what I asked for before,” Piper said. “Remember when I was letting the women and children go so I could feel good about myself? That was what I wanted. I guess none of us are getting that now.”

Behind her, Artemus blinked, which was notable because he hadn’t really been blinking before. His shoulder was bleeding in a way that seemed like he might have been shot. Every time he dripped on the cave floor, the blood ran together and trickled through the fallen rock toward the red door.

Uphill.

They all stopped to watch it.

Piper’s gaze followed it all the way to the door, and to the handle, and her bubble-gum pink lips parted.

Then Artemus used his tied hands to swing the ghost light at her hands.

It careened into the gun, colliding with an unremarkable snick sound. The ghost light went dark, and they all stood in the perfect blackness of the cave.

No one moved, or if they did, they were soundless. No one except Piper knew if she was still holding the gun to Maura’s head.