Root: Coda
Having saved their world, at least for now, Hasta and her friends make the long journey back home, facing difficult truths along the way.
For more on this project, please see “This Year a Serial Takes Root.”
Coda: The Neighborhood
1.0 Hasta
It took them three full days to make the drive home to Chicago. Since Juan was their best able driver by far, he spent most of their time on the road behind the wheel of the Barchetta. Ivan, whose only experience was driving the work truck from the cemetery, handled duties in the minivan, with Frida sometimes spelling him. They tried to limit their driving hours, since everyone was exhausted and on the edge of collapse.
No one who’d been there remembered exactly when they’d left the Gameplain. They only remembered waking up again at the bottom of the sloping new pit in the Grand View Terrace at Mount Rushmore. All but Hasta, that was, who awoke on the Presidential Trail and then had to help everyone else out of the pit. Ivan fashioned splints for Bobby’s leg by refashioning two pieces of wood they pried from a Park Service bench.
They had found the Barchetta parked a good distance from the minivan, and had found Moses and Elaine both safe. Moses very solemnly deposited a slobbery piece of ripped brown fabric in Hasta’s hand before jumping up on his hind legs to lick her face.
Before they set out for home, Ivan turned the Barchetta red.
Everyone took a turn riding with Juan in the convertible, which only seated two. When Hasta’s turn came, she tried to enjoy the wind whipping her hair back. The mist was gone, the sun stood high overhead, and a landscape of gently rolling brown hills covered with scrub grass lay spread before them like a wrinkled blanket. But Juan took her hand and drove while their linked fingers lay limp between the two bucket seats. He said nothing for the longest time.
Finally he asked, “Are you with him now?”
Hasta sighed. She would have liked to just sit and hold hands with him, but she’d known this was coming.
“I don’t know, Juan,” she said.
He looked at her through aviator sunglasses he’d salvaged from the lost-and-found at the visitor center. “But you’re not with me.”
“You lied to me,” she said. “I can’t have that.”
“I won’t do it again.”
She looked hard at him. “Will you use drift again?”
He shook his head, took his hand away, and returned it to the steering wheel. He leaned his head on his other hand, watching the road with his elbow propped on the window sill. “We don’t even know if there is any more,” he said.
“If you had some, would you use it?”
Juan took a long time to answer. “Let me get something off my chest,” he said at last. “On our way out here, when I told you I was over drift? I only felt that way because Ivan somehow took my addiction away. Took it onto himself. Later he gave it back.”
Hasta turned to watch the hills rush past. “He never used?”
“Not as far as I know.” Juan let out a long, slow sigh. “So would I use again? Hasta, I don’t know. I want to. That’s probably not what you want to hear.”
“At least it’s honest.” She pushed a flapping strand of hair out of her eyes and watched the road rush toward them. “Everything’s different now, Juan. Don’t you feel it? This world . . . I don’t know what to think about it. I don’t know what I want, or what I can live with. Do I have to know now? I don’t think I do.”
“I don’t know how I feel about a world where God is a whiny grad student named Donald,” said Juan. “It doesn’t particularly fill my heart with sunshine. I’m going to need a lot of help with that.”
“I think we’re all going to be in that boat,” Hasta said. “Juan, I’ll always be here. I’ll always be your friend.”
He frowned at the road and said nothing back.
They stayed both nights in vacant motels. No locked door could keep them out, and Ivan kept the both gas tanks up near the F line, though everyone made a pact to stop using magic once they were home.
About fifty miles from Chicago, late on the third day, they began to encounter traffic again on the interstate. By the time they reached the city, the noise and humanity was as great as it had ever had been. According to the radio, some parts of the city were still without power after the freak blizzard. The war in Asia had cooled some under a ceasefire, but the peace seemed unlikely to hold.
They took Bobby and Elaine straight to the emergency room at Swedish Covenant, where Elaine was rushed into surgery. Bobby insisted that no one wait with him for his turn to see a doctor, but of course everyone did. After the hospital, Juan took off in the Barchetta while Ivan dropped off Frida and Kylie. They all agreed to meet up again the next day, a Tuesday, after school. There was a whole lot to talk about.
Ivan pulled up in front of Hasta’s house as the sun was touching the tops of the trees. Moses jumped down after Hasta as Ivan came around from the driver’s side. She stared up at him until the silence grew uncomfortable. Then Ivan bent toward her.
Hasta put a hand up, reluctant. “Can we wait a while?” she asked. “Take our time?”
“We don’t know how much time we might have.”
“Good point.”
He kissed her lightly on the mouth. His lips were dry and warm.
But before she could do much in the way of kissing him back, Ivan straightened up again. He grinned shyly. “Of all the unbelievable things we’ve done, I think that takes the cake.”
Hasta made a mock-dismissive wave. “Yeah, saving the world, that’s all in a day’s work.”
“You’re awesome, ace,” he said, backing away. “See you at school tomorrow?”
“See you there, boss.”
Ivan stumbled getting back in the van. Smiling, Hasta watched him drive away.
When she turned with Moses toward her house, a short figure in a hat and trench coat emerged from the shadows of the bushes. Its green eyes glowed in the pre-dusk light.
“Hasta Veeramachaneni,” said the daemon.
Moses moved in front of her, snarling, tail straight up.
“Moses, it’s okay,” she said. The dog moved back to her side but didn’t take his eyes off the daemon. “Lamm. I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again.”
Lamm nodded, coming closer. “I wasn’t sure you would either.”
“You weren’t with the others. On the Gameplain.”
He stared at her for several seconds. “I’m different now,” he said at last, and the pain in his eyes was obvious. “There’s been much discussion of how to deal with me. My future is unclear. But there is a future, at least.”
“You’re okay with that?”
Lamm shrugged. “The world may be fragile, but this is a new age. Axil insists I have new things to learn and experience. She sends a message, by the way.”
“Oh?”
“She says they hid him as well as they could, away from those who would wish him harm. But nothing can remain unseen forever.” He turned, then looked back over his shoulder. “Farewell for now—my friend.”
Lamm crossed the lawn and lumbered away down the street, shoulders hunched. Hasta watched him go, her hand buried in the soft fur atop Moses’s head.
She sighed. “Okay, I can’t put this off any longer,” she said to the dog.
As Hasta and the dog climbed the front steps, her father came out onto the porch.
“Little flower,” he said, his cheeks sparkling. “You did it.”
As the tears filled her eyes, Hasta crooked her finger and called up his stats. ∅
THE END