Page 83 of Butterfly Effects

I got the distinct feeling that while she was saying these things at least partially for my benefit—and the benefit of the rest of my family—she was also restating this for whatever portion of the crowd was meant to serve as my jury. I might not have committed the full scope of the crime I had been accused of, she was saying, but not for any lack of trying. I would have killed him if I’d been able. I just hadn’t known how.

And none of that mattered, because I wanted to faint, throw up, and burst into tears, all at the same time. Artie. This wasn’t Arthur, wasn’t the collage I had created from the people who loved him: unless the queens were lying to us, this was Artie.

I almost wanted them to be lying to us. If they were lying, nothing had changed except for their capacity for cruelty. If they were telling the truth …

If they were telling the truth, this changed absolutely everything. This made it all so much harder.

“The cuckoo designate Sarah did hurt you,” said one of the queens. “She performed an unauthorized revision on your mind. She destroyed you. Does that not make you condemn her?”

“What?” Artie turned to face the queens. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not condemning Sarah.”

“You were brought here to provide evidence of what she’s done,” said the queen, implacably. “You were removed from control of your own world, and ownership of your self was given to another.”

“I … I feel like I’ve been asleep,” said Artie. “I was … we were in Iowa, and all the cuckoos were coming together to force Sarah to end the world, and I didn’t want her to do that. I like the world. I didn’t want her to have to live with that. So we went to Iowa to stop her before she could do something she wouldn’t be able to take back. We … stopped her?” He paused, then turned to look at me. “I feel like we stopped her, but everything gets fuzzy after that, and then it all goes away. And then I was dreaming. I feel like I was … I was dreaming for a long time. A long, long time.”

“You died,” said Annie. “The dreams were the person who replaced you living your life in your place.”

“Artie, I’m sorry,” I moaned. “I didn’t understand what was happening. You touched me while I was in the middle of finishing the math to get us home, and the equation jumped into you and hollowed you out, the same way it had all the cuckoos. Then you wouldn’t wake up, and when I looked into your mind there wasn’t anything there to look back at me. I was so scared. I thought you were gone forever, and your body didn’t know how to survive without someone inside it, so I reached into everyone around me, everyone who loved you, and I built you from all the pieces I could find. Only it wasn’t you, not really. He called himself ‘Arthur,’ and he didn’t know the parts of you that you kept secret. He couldn’t work computers or log in to our chat rooms, and he … he loved me, but only because other people knew you loved me. He loved me because he didn’t have a choice. I’m so sorry, Artie. I never meant to hurt you. I would never, ever have hurt you on purpose.”

“I know.” He turned back to the queens. “You called me evidence and asked me to condemn her. Well, I won’t. She didn’t do anything on purpose except try to repair what she hadn’t meant to do in the first place. I don’t know why I was stupid enough to touch her when she was in the middle of an equation. We grew up together. I know what happens if you touch a cuckoo when their eyes are lit up. I knew better. So this is on me. It’s my fault.”

It wasn’t, but I didn’t want to interrupt to tell him that. He’d touched me because he hadn’t remembered growing up together, hadn’t remembered how much touching me when I was that far gone could resemble grabbing hold of a live electrical wire. I’d wiped myself from his mind before we reached that point.

“I love her,” he said, and his voice was firm and clear, unwavering. “I’m in love with her. I have loved her for most of my life, and if she hurt me, she didn’t mean to, and I am not going to side with you against the woman I love. I have—I have no idea what’s going on right now, but I know two things for sure: Sarah would never intentionally hurt me, and Sarah loves me as much as I love her. Everything else is irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant?” asked the central queen, sounding very nearly amused. “She broke our laws. She stole years of your life from you. She prevented you from knowing when your own mother died—you weren’t here to mourn her. Your poor sister had to do her grieving by herself, with no one who could understand her sorrow…”

Artie paled. “My mother? What are you talking about?”

“Sarah can tell you. She’s the reason you missed it, after all.”

Regret washed through me, bitter as bleach, wiping everything else away. “The Covenant came,” I said. “Aunt Jane went to the carnival with Annie and Sam and Grandma Alice, and me. I was holding the Covenant operatives in stasis and it … it slipped. One of them got loose. He shot Aunt Jane.”

“Now I know this is a dream,” said Artie. “Mom would never get in a car with Grandma on purpose.”

“She did, sweetheart,” said Alice. “I’m so sorry, but she did.”

“Grandma?” Artie’s voice was quiet and confused. “But—no. No, Mom can’t be dead. My mother can’t be dead.”

“She is,” said Antimony. “I’m so sorry this is how you’re finding out.”

His head snapped around, attention focusing on me, and for once, I was grateful I couldn’t properly understand his expression. “My mother died because your powers failed you,” he said. “And I died for the same reason.”

“Yes,” I agreed, miserably.

“And you know what? I don’t care. I mean, I care about my mother being dead—I care a lot about my mother being dead—but I don’t care whether your powers glitched or what. I know you loved her, and I know you love me, and I know you didn’t do any of this on purpose. This is all bullshit. I’m not going to be evidence against you, and I’m not going to help these people do whatever it is they’re trying to do.” He looked at the queens. “I don’t know why you’re doing this to us, but it’s not going to work. Whatever your goal is, you may as well give up on it. I’m not going to turn against her for you.”

“Brave little creature,” said one of the queens, her eyes flashing momentarily white. “You owe us, you know that? She erased you improperly, shoved you to the bottom of your own mind where you would have withered into nothing if not for the revision anchoring you where you were. You would never have surfaced without our help. We were the rope that let you pull yourself out of the darkness. We could put you back there.”

“Over my dead body,” snarled Annie.

I looked over at the four of them. They were all facing the queens. Alice had moved to the front of their little cluster, with Sam standing directly behind her.

“You are not going to harm my grandson,” she said—shouted, almost, her voice raised to turn the acoustics to her advantage. “Let us all go, or this is going to get ugly.”

“The cuckoo has the ability to make this stop whenever she wants to,” said the queen. “All she has to do is let us in and this can all be over for the rest of you.”

Bringing Artie back made me want to go home even more than I already had. I’d been grieving him since I’d lost him, and while I’d come to terms with the idea of spending the rest of my life without him, that didn’t mean I’d been excited about the idea. The thought that we could finally be together was very nearly intoxicating. And all I had to do was hold out until we all got to go home.