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And then Nina appeared, sweat slickened and breathing at a tremendous pace. She ran with her skirt scrunched in her hand, toward the landslide rather than away from it.

“Nina!” Patrick shouted. Scrambling for her, through the river of scattering bodies. “NINA! STOP!”

But Nina was now clear of the crush. She clambered over the fence, her dress ripping. She grounded her feet in the grass and lifted her chin, as though the wave of mud about to eclipse her was an old friend and she was there to greet it.

The earth shook.

CHAPTER 45NINA

The wall of dirt came crashing downward, ripping tree roots in its path, ever closer.

Strong enough, I knew, to demolish buildings. Behind me, at the town’s border, was the fenced yard of a school, the children within shoving through the door, hiding beneath their desks. Nothing to save them now but brick and mortar.

I climbed over a low fence, ripped my skirt free when it caught, and wove through the torrid sea of bodies rushing in the other direction, abandoning their shovels and picks. I heard Patrick shout my name, again and again.

But the crush of dirt was nearly upon us, close enough to swallow us all. Specks of it hit my face, sharp as knives. Seconds left.

Adrenaline flooded my chest, coated my tongue. Idium bloomed in my blood.

If someone had asked me in that moment, I could have told them the precise texture of all that earth, the way it would taste—copper, grit, sharp and mired. Its smell and the color and exact weight. All of it burst into my mind. I felt its ridges and planes and the exact points of momentum. I raised my hands, felt the expanse of all that earth in the widths of my fingers.

Then I bent it all.

I crushed it in on itself, brought billions of tumbling particles to a grinding halt. They were impossibly heavy. Heavier than anything I’d commanded before. I gasped beneath the weight of it. It rose up before me like a wave, and I shuddered beneath it, holding it steady.

But then slowly, ground shaking, I forced it back, back, then held it steady. I held it until the rumbling stopped, until I felt my mind might burst, stray pebbles and clumps tumbling to my feet. It settled in enormous mounds a foot from the fence line, splaying up the hill. But it did not breach the town.

And all went silent, the ground no longer shuddering, no longer roaring. Only the scream of the siren from Kenton’s belly.

“Nina!” called Patrick. And quite badly I wanted to heed that call, but instead, I climbed. I climbed and climbed, my shoes sinking into the mud, up and over the mounds. And behind me I heard others follow, climbing through the formicaries and shouting to one another again.Get to the pit. Dig. Idia, please, grant them a few minutes more.

Halfway up and a man’s fingers wriggled their way out of the soil, grasping at air. I forced the dirt to reveal him until he was uncovered to his waist. He slumped forward and I didn’t stop to slap the dust from his lungs or offer my hand. There were so many others.

I heard shouts of “Here! Here!” and the thwack of shovels slicing the dirt. All those people swallowed up in the landslide somehow reaching for the surface.

But I tracked on, my legs screaming, up, up. Until the summit was reached, the ground a concave. Sunken atop whatever maze existed below.

I sunk to the ground, my hands to the earth. Closed my eyes.

“Get the horses! The barrows!” a voice shouted—Patrick’s. He was running for the pit entrance, half destroyed as it was. He wound rope around his waist and secured it tightly. Scottie followed, donning a strange hat with a burning filament in its front. He passed one to Patrick.

“Wait,” I said. Was I shouting? “WAIT!”

Patrick turned, his expression firm. “Stay here.”

“I can help,” I said, nearly tripping on my skirt. “I’m going with you.”

“No,” he heaved, adjusting the lamp on his head. The look he gave me was stricken. “You will stay right fuckin’ here. You hear me?”

“Are you mad, Pat? She’s anearth Charmer!” Scottie blustered, his voice rising over the din of the rest.

“Your brother’s down there,” I said forcefully. “I can get him out.”

“We’ve got minutes, Pat!” Scottie shouted, his face ruddy, spittle flying.“Minutes!”

Patrick only eyed me a second longer. Then he squared his chin. A veil came over him. “You stay behind me,” he said, the words bitten out through the cage of his teeth. “If I tell you to go back, you go back.”

“Let’s go,” I gritted out. “We’re wasting time.”