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Sam put up his hands in a peaceful gesture. “It isn’t true.”
“Which part isn’t true? Are you them?”
“We’re Diviners, yes, but we didn’t do those things. I promise,” Evie added. “We’re innocent.”
“No one is ever truly innocent. As you’ll soon see,” the King of Crows tutted.
The street teemed with people. The citizens streamed out of their pretty houses and shops to gawp at the strangers in their midst. A man with a napkin stuffed into the neck of his shirt arrived. He didn’t remove it. He was accustomed to handling any small squabble in the town easily, and he hoped to go back to his early supper. “Afternoon. I’m the mayor here,” he said without offering his hand.
“What a fine town you have here, sir,” the King of Crows said.
“Towns don’t come much finer than Gideon,” the mayor agreed. “You can have your Kansas City or New York. Why, this is the good life right here. In Gideon. And now we’ll be known as the town that caught America’s Most Wanted.”
“Indeed, a fine town,” the King of Crows said, ignoring the mayor. “We’ll take it.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“I said we’ll take it.”
“Gideon isn’t for sale, mister.”
“Ah, yes. Like the Louisiana Purchase, or Manhattan. I see. Should I have come with a purse full of beads and a wagon of diseased blankets?”
“Mister, I think you should leave. We’ll take care of things from here.”
“Will you? I rather doubt it.” He breathed in deeply, and if he exhaled, it was hard to tell. “Can’t you smell the history in the air? No doubt their grandfathers rushed across these prairies in their wagons, knocking down the natives, smashing in their brains in their zeal to stake their claim. That pioneer spirit. My, what a land! What a people! I’ve learned so much from you.”
He turned to Memphis and Ling, to Isaiah just behind. “They’ll never let you in, you know. Not without constant vigilance and revolution. And even then, they’ll do it begrudgingly. This land bleeds with its wounds still. Wouldn’t you like to see justice served? Maybe even revenge for the generations destroyed?”
Memphis could feel the “yes” crawling up to sit angry and hurting on his tongue. Beside him, Theta whispered, “I would.”
Several of the men from Gideon had loaded their rifles. They took aim at the King of Crows.
“Look how small and scared they live. Reaching for their guns at the slightest provocation.” The King of Crows tsked and shook his head. “They don’t want to hear what you have to say. This is what they want: blood.”
The sheriff cocked his gun. “Mister, we don’t want any trouble here.”
“And yet.” The King of Crows inhaled deeply. Exhaled. “So be it. Behold! Feast upon the story of yourselves.”
With that, the King of Crows opened his coat, and the citizens of Gideon were mesmerized by what it held inside: A history that shifted to suit whatever the viewer wanted to see. One that let them be the heroes of their stories, with a right to whatever they held, whatever they had taken, whatever they wanted next. One that granted them permission for their greed. “Who wants to etch their names into this story?”
A gleam dawned in the sheriff’s eye. “I do.”
“Me! I want it.”
“So be it. But first, let us call forth your dead. Come. Come out.”
One by one, the dead of Gideon appeared, faint wisps between houses, a handful of phantoms standing beside the headstones that marked their lives with a few etched words. A boy with brown hair and freckles walked from the cemetery and into the street.
“Harry? Is that my Harry?” a tearful woman cried. “Harry, it’s Mama.” She started toward the boy. Evie and Theta tried to hold her back.
“You mustn’t go,” Evie said.
“But that’s my boy!” the woman said with great longing.
“No. Not the way yo
u remember,” Evie said.
