Flicker and Mist Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Singular Reads

  About the Author

  Clarion Books

  3 Park Avenue

  New York, New York 10016

  Copyright © 2017 by Mary G. Thompson

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhco.com

  Cover design and Photo Illustration by Lisa Vega

  Unaltered photograph © 2016 by Maksim Shmeljov/Shutterstock

  Map illustration by Jennifer Thermes

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Thompson, Mary G. (Mary Gloria), 1978–, author.

  Title: Flicker and mist / Mary G. Thompson.

  Description: Boston ; New York : Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt [2016] | Summary: “In a story rich in intrigue, adventure, danger, and romance, a mixed-race teen heroine must decide which part of her heritage to claim: her privileged status, or her ability to become invisible for which her kin are being persecuted”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016001078 | ISBN 9780544648401 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Fantasy. | Invisibility—Fiction. | Persecution—Fiction. | Racially mixed people—Fiction. | Love—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.T37169 Fl 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016001078

  eISBN 978-0-544-64867-8

  v2.1216

  for Amber Hyppolite

  One

  HAVING THE ABILITY SHOULD HAVE BEEN FUN. In another world, a child who could become invisible might play pranks on her parents, might sneak around with friends, might go ride the beasts in the dead of night. In another world, the Ability might have brought freedom and joy. But I was not born in another world, I was born in the Upland, where the Ability was used as a weapon of war.

  I didn’t know the Ability existed until the day I learned I had it, when I was five years old. I woke up from a nightmare and began to cry, and my father came into my room, but when he turned on the light, he couldn’t see me. In that way, he learned not only about me but also about my mother. She had sworn that she was an ordinary Leftie, that she had no blood of the Flicker Men, but she had lied.

  My mother cried in silence. My father pounded his fist on the table.

  “She has the Ability, Rhonda. You have the Ability!” my father yelled.

  My mother said nothing.

  “You lied to me. You entered the city. You had a child.”

  “I never wanted a child,” my mother said. Her voice was soft, and for the first time I could recall in my short life, it wavered.

  “You never thought to tell me why not? When I pushed for a family, you couldn’t tell me this might occur?”

  “I hoped it wouldn’t,” my mother said. “She’s only one-sixteenth Flicker.”

  “You lied!” my father raged. He turned his back to her, faced a window with the curtain closed. After this day, it would remain so.

  “Would you have loved me if I hadn’t?”

  My mother’s words hung in the air. She and my father didn’t know I was peeking around the corner of the hallway. I don’t think they remembered me at all. One thing I always knew was true was that my parents loved each other. Often their eyes would meet and they seemed to float upward, leaving me below. They spoke their own language, using only their eyes—​his dark brown and hers pale gray-blue.

  “Rhonda . . .” The rage had left my father’s voice. He remained looking at the window. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  “I’m the same woman, Donray,” my mother said. “Myra is the same child.”

  “You know the Flicker Laws,” he said. “The penalty for a Flickerkin caught outside the Left Eye is Judgment by the Waters.” I didn’t know then what that meant. I thought the Waters judged us always, that in the scheme of life, they rewarded good children and punished bad ones. I didn’t understand that when citizens committed the worst of crimes, like murder or treason or being a Flickerkin outside the Eye, the Council would toss the criminals over the cliff’s edge, into the ocean, and the Waters would save them or let them drown.

  “I do not intend to be caught,” my mother said.

  “What of Myra?” my father asked. “How can a child control this?”

  “I will teach her,” my mother said. “Children who suppress the Ability may go their whole lives without flickering. We have caught it in time.”

  “You must go back to the Eye,” my father said. “You must take her and leave.”

  “No.”

  My father turned around. Tears were rolling down his face. I jumped back into the hallway. I had never seen anything like that before. “It is not safe here,” he said. “I am only one vote on the Council. Some Members will not care that you are my wife or that she is my daughter. They will throw you to the Waters.”

  “I will not leave you,” my mother said. “No.”

  I heard sobs from both of them. I didn’t see what they did, if they embraced or merely stared at each other, eyes meeting, floating in their own space. But I didn’t hear another word, and we did not leave. No one ever spoke of us leaving again.

  So they taught me in secret about the Flicker Men: that they were a race who were like humans but with differences, that they had come to the Upland many generations ago and lived in the Left Eye with my mother’s people, who were called Lefties, that there had been a war, and that the Flicker Men had left with a cycle of the oceans and never returned. And that these Flicker Men could become invisible and had left this Ability with many of their mixed-blood descendants, who were called Flickerkin. This was before I knew what it meant to be a Leftie, to have lighter skin than the Plats and curlier hair, to be shorter than Plat women and to have more curves. I didn’t know that Plat men and Leftie women did not marry, that my parents had bought the necessary papers with my father’s money. Back then, I thought I might like to be invisible.

  “Momma, how do I do it?” I asked.

  “You must never do it,” she said. She said it quietly, but with that look, with that tone that scared me more than someone else’s mother shouting. She held me by the shoulders and looked at me with cold, hard eyes. “If you cause yourself to flicker, the Ability will take control. You will be required to suppress it at every moment. I will help you to never flicker again. You must never try to flicker. Do you hear me, Myra?” She shook me.

  “Yes, Momma,” I said.

  “There are known Flickerkin in the Eye who have never flickered even once, and others like you, who accidentally flicker once but never again. If you do not trigger your Ability, you will be safe.”

 
; I didn’t understand what she meant to keep me safe from. I only knew that I must protect myself from her cold, quiet anger.

  “Yes, Momma,” I said again.

  “Good,” she said. She ran a hand through my hair and kissed my cheek. “You will not be like me.”

  My father was with me every night after that. We would read together and play games, following a Leftie practice designed to help children control nightmares. I suppose my mother knew that if she were the one to help me, she might scare me more. The nightmares stopped, and I didn’t flicker. We didn’t speak of that awful night, and after a while, it was almost as if it hadn’t happened.

  So it was that between the ages of five and sixteen, I lived like any other child of a Council Member. I can’t say that some didn’t see me as half Leftie or take long looks at me as I walked past. But after all the years of being normal, I no longer worried about flickering. I worried about ordinary things such as young men and friendships. And, of course, the annual athletic contest called the Games. In the summer of my sixteenth year, I wanted nothing more than to ride Hoof, my purebred wetbeast, and win the ride in front of all the citizens of the Upland.

  From THE DECLARATION OF PEACE

  By Order of the Council of the Upland, approved by the Deputy to the Waters, may they hear us: . . . while these Flickerkin remain atop the Left Eye, they shall live peacefully without any interference, but they shall not participate in the mining of prezine. It is further prohibited for any person, having knowledge of the Ability, to harbor, abet, or assist any Flickerkin found outside the Left Eye. Any violation of this section shall be punishable as the Waters judge.

  Two

  “TRY THIS ONE,” PORTI SAID, PULLING A FINE BURGUNDY gown off the rack. “The color is perfect for your skin tone.” Its skirt swished and swirled as she passed it through the air toward me.

  “Porti,” I said, exasperated, “you know this won’t fit me.” We stood in front of a long row of ladies’ dresses, every single one of them made for a lady like Porti—​tall and thin, with no appreciable parts sticking out this way and that. How she had managed to drag me down to the Drachmans’ cloth shop in the hours before a party I wasn’t sure. It was simply that Porti was Porti, and ever since she had ridden into New Heart City one year ago—​literally ridden, winning the ladies’ ride at the Games and stealing my title—​she had used her insufferably friendly heart to convince everyone to do anything.

  “Myra, these Lefties are the best clothmakers in the city, masters at alterations,” Porti said. She looked up at Mr. Drachman, who rented the shop with his wife. Lefties, as noncitizens, could not actually own property in New Heart City. His pale blue eyes smiled at us, and he nodded, but he said nothing. I had never heard Mr. Drachman say more than a few words. “See, he can have it ready before nightfall,” Porti interpreted. She held the dress in front of me. “Look at the neckline. If this doesn’t reel Caster in, nothing will.”

  “Porti!” My cheeks began to fill with color, a phenomenon inescapable and mortifying, especially in front of the silent shopkeeper.

  She leaned in to me and whispered. “I have it on good authority that tonight’s the night. Let’s not give him the option to lose his nerve.”

  “Who told you that?” I whispered back. “Orphos? Have you actually spoken to him, then?” Anyone could tell that Orphos and Porti were mad for each other. Porti had stopped speaking to him or looking at him or acknowledging him in any way. Yet somehow her aggressive indifference only made Orphos more insistent upon gaining her attention, and the whole city more sure that they would be together forever. I didn’t understand her behavior at all. If Caster Ripkin, the Deputy’s son, were to make clear that he wished to be more than my friend, I would leap into his arms with no games whatsoever, color in my cheeks or no.

  “Well, he’s Caster’s best friend, isn’t he?” Porti said.

  “Tell me you didn’t ask him straight out.” I covered my face with one hand. If Orphos were to tell Caster that Porti had asked . . .

  “It’s all fine,” she said. “He likes you. Word is he’s liked you for years.”

  “Years?” I whispered. “We’ve only become friends since you arrived.” It was true, but I wished I hadn’t said it. There were many with whom I had grown up, with whom I had attended school for my whole life, with whom I had made small talk at obligatory state occasions and been grouped for countless official photos, who had been blamelessly polite to me but never warm, who had never invited me to their parties or spoken to me as if I was one of them—​not until Porti had taken me under her wing. And I was a native of New Heart City. I was the daughter of a Council Member. She had been the daughter of no one, an orphan raised by beast ranchers far away in the Head, until she won the ride in last year’s Games and was taken in by Council Member Anga Solis. And of course, she was one hundred percent Plat, tall and thin with dark, straight hair and eyes three shades darker brown than mine.

  “A gentleman need not be friends with a lady to admire her bosom,” said Porti, as Mr. Drachman approached with his tape measure and pins. He waved his arm at the dressing room. His face was stoic, but his eyes sparkled. I hoped he wouldn’t tell his son, Nolan, what he had overheard. I didn’t need all the children of the Leftie workers gossiping about me in addition to their furtive looks. I didn’t like the attention they paid me already, as if perhaps they thought I was of their kind. But I was a citizen of New Heart City, something Lefties could never be. I had a paper that proved it, signed by the last Deputy himself. Legally, I was a Plat.

  “Thank you, Mr. Drachman,” I said, taking the dress from Porti. As I pulled it over my head—​the dress was a size too big, as required for my unusual proportions—​Porti chatted at Mr. Drachman, insensible to the fact that he was not going to talk back. She also failed to understand that she was now of a class with the children of Council Members and should not be so familiar with the workers.

  “I suppose Nolan will compete again this year?” Porti asked.

  I imagined Mr. Drachman nodding.

  “I will certainly be cheering for him,” she went on. “No one else from the city has a chance, do they?” She spoke of Nolan’s prowess at the stone throw, which required strength most common in Lefties. Most of the serious competitors would be Plats from near Porti’s home—​those used to hard work. But a few Lefties would compete, Nolan among them. He had placed third last year, a surprising loss. In the Leftie community, it was whispered that he had been cheated, that the gameskeeper had given him a stone two grades too heavy. My mother certainly believed it. I didn’t wish to think of this, though. It reminded me that I had lost the ride to Porti, though no one had cheated me.

  “I’m ready,” I called. I stood awkwardly as Mr. Drachman pinned the cloth. By the time I was done, Porti had already paid for her purchase—​a delicate pink gown off the rack without a single alteration—​and was chatting with Mrs. Drachman, a friendly woman as pale as her husband and with the same roly-poly shape.

  “Oh yes,” Mrs. Drachman said. “He’s improving by the minute. We hope to have a champion in the family this year.” She beamed with pride.

  “I’m sure you will,” said Porti.

  “I too,” I said, thankful to be back in my ordinary dress, though of course I wished I were dressed to ride. I wished, as always, that I were in fact riding. My beast, Hoof, would never put me through the indignity of being pinned for a gown to prepare for a party at which I would sport the palest face, the lightest brown hair that wouldn’t straighten, and the sole substantial bosom among the guests.

  As glad as I was to be invited now, parties were nothing compared to being on the back of a horned purebred wetbeast, flying at a speed no human could manage, leaping over walls, swimming through the deep moat of the arena. Feeling the weight and the warmth of my beloved Hoof underneath me while we flew as one.

  “Ah, there she goes,” said Porti. “Off on a beast.” She smiled conspiratorially at Mrs. Drachman.


  “Sorry,” I said. I would train again tomorrow, as I did every day. But until I was on Hoof’s back, I would be squirming inside my gown, always with one part of my mind on her and on the upcoming Games. They were held once a year and featured every important sport. The winners were lauded and interviewed on the radio and received large cash prizes, but I cared nothing for that. What I wanted was to win, for myself and Hoof to be known as the best rider and beast in all of the Upland. This year would be my year. Last year, Porti had beaten us by only a horn.

  And perhaps Caster would win the men’s, and we could stand on the winners’ podium together. The picture of him and me standing side by side filled my head. I would be wearing my riding clothes, my pants and boots, with my curly hair gloriously windswept and my cheeks flushed. He would take my hand, and we would raise our joined hands together—​no, he was tall even for a Plat, he would have to lean down awkwardly to do that and my arm would be pulled out of its socket. He would not take my hand, but we would raise our arms together—​the crowd would cheer; my beast would stomp her feet to join in the celebration. My mother would smile and clap, and my father would yell his head off.

  “I think not,” said Porti, winking at Mrs. Drachman. “Nice Boy and I won’t let that happen.”

  “Perhaps I was thinking of you winning,” I said. “Because I am a good and generous friend.” But we both knew that was not true. If either of us was generous, it was Porti. And even she was not generous enough to wish a victory for any woman but herself.

  Porti laughed. “I’m sure that was it.”

  “May the best woman win,” Mrs. Drachman said, taking my bills. She winked at me. “We’ll deliver the gown to Member Solis’s apartment?”

  “Thank you,” I said. As we left the shop, I poked Porti in the arm. “Now all the Lefties will be gossiping about me.”

  “Let’s not worry about what he or she or whoever says,” said Porti. “Let’s make sure they have something to say.” She shook her practically nonexistent bosom and smacked her lips in a grotesque imitation of a kiss. “Oh, Caster,” she cooed. “Caster Ripkin.”