Read Blue Magic for Free Online Page B

pile of mulched blue sawdust, trapping the particles beneath it, presumably so they couldn’t be inhaled. A bandy-limbed, tattooed skatepunk, meanwhile, was using a big barrel to draw tainted pollen from the air, clumping it together in balls. Workers were planting carpets of vitagua-blue moss and mushrooms over the slosh, the crushed mixture of vitagua, dead vegetation, and wreckage at ground level. Others carved flutes from contaminated deadwood, or poured vitagua into glass vessels, putting its internal radiance to use by making lanterns.
    Most called greetings as Astrid passed.
    Clad in jeans, work boots, and a brown T-shirt, her red curls hanging every which way and a hint of mud under one fingernail, Astrid reminded Will of the Communist leaders of the mid-twentieth century, with their working-class garb and lack of pretension.
    She paused to wave at a fair-haired family—a middle-aged couple and three children—who were carving planks from a dead cedar tree. Will caught a snatch of their conversation; they were speaking German.
    Was she drawing volunteers from around the world? Will asked: “Why are you still clearing forest?”
    “Lots of reasons. There are chemical spills we’re trying to get to, to clean up. The ecologists say making space helps the animals.”
    “You have ecologists?”
    “Ecologists, an ethics board, malaria-eradication team, salmon experts…”
    “Malaria?”
    “Curing malaria outbreaks overseas frees up aid money for other kinds of disaster relief.”
    “Who says?”
    “We have a couple economists, and development experts.”
    “Only a couple?” His eye fell on a picnic, a circle of lunching townspeople seated on a blanket, passing around a set of barbecue tongs and clicking them together like castanets to create sandwiches from thin air.
    “We call that spinning,” Astrid said.
    “What?”
    “Making something from nothing. It’s called spinning. It’s another of Mark Clumber’s words.”
    “Do I see Jacks Glade’s mother over there?”
    She nodded, murmuring something he didn’t catch into the tuning fork hung at her neck.
    Olive Glade had disappeared soon after Astrid escaped from government custody. Now she was presiding over what was obviously a working lunch—the picnickers were poring over a scattering of drawings spread out on their blanket. A bread box–sized crystal at Olive’s side was throwing off tiny white sparks.
    Will opened his mouth to ask what she was doing. A fluttering, like paper shuffling near his ear, interrupted him.
    “Lifeguards,” he said. The knowledge had simply dropped into his mind. “They rescue people endangered by the magic spill … get them out of harm’s way.”
    “That’s right,” Astrid said.
    He felt a thread of excitement. “I knew that. I just magically knew it.”
    “Yes. I connected you to the … Oh, what’s the word?”
    “A wiki,” he said. “I magically know that, too.”
    “Right. It’s a pool of information everyone adds to.…”
    “I’m familiar with the concept. You made a wiki? You? Astrid, you don’t even watch TV.”
    “Someone explained it to me,” she said. “If you wonder who someone is, why they volunteered—”
    “I wonder where my kids are,” he said, bracing for disappointment as he spoke. He and Roche had run down dozens of fruitless leads after Caro’s arrest.
    But now he heard a flutter, and knew: The children were in hiding with a team of eight Alchemites led by Sahara’s chief Prima, Passion. They were healthy, well fed, and a bit homesick. The Alchemites’ focus was on avoiding arrest while turning both children into devout Sahara worshippers. It seemed to be working, on Ellie anyway.
    The group stayed on the move, but just this morning one of the Indigo Springs seers had learned they were in Missouri.
    “Will?”
    “They’re in St. Louis,” he said, a little breathless.
    Astrid nodded.
    “Why haven’t you gone after them?”
    “And then what? Keep them against