The Country of Ice Cream Star (77 page)

Roos scramble out, rid wonderful away. Yo, Pasha take my hand again, stand to his feet. I come shaky after him, and only when we steppen out, I feel the ground be wrong. Be weirding, lifting underfoot.

Take a minute of brainless fear before I know, it be a boat. We standing on its roof, that pose unsteady on enormous water. Air breathe wet, feel big and wrong. Floor change again, and I clutch Pasha’s hand. Feel our sweat. Soldats stalk behind–around, and the helicopter breathe down. Its noisy wind come deaf; a different wind cut sleetish at my face. And in this wind that feel like icy nakedness, soldats still noising past, my Pasha say hoarse in my ear, ‘If you do Razin’s ask, I help. What you ask. I help.’

I flinch, touch to his arm. Already his sleeve be damp from rainy wind. ‘The cure? But you ain’t lying?’

‘You got to heed me. You will heed?’

‘I heed you always,’ I say choken. ‘How we do this war. We killing everyone.’

‘Ice, be asking.’

‘Nay, you help?’

‘Cure, can get from Europeans. Yes. But you must live.’

‘Nay, you ain’t lying?’

He take an angry breath. I look to him, be steadying myself to ask again. But when I only see his face, its owlen grief, I know. His face be like a moon that cannot bear to see. Is like my heart.

So this be how I bring the cure at last to all the Nighted States, save every poory children, young to die. Be how the new America begin, in wars against all hope – a country with no power in a world that hate its life. Be what I seeing, when our Russian boat pull to the nighten waters, as the shore hush from me, drift away all worlds I
known. See the shore and see the smoke of Quantico afar, and I comprehend, this all a country, and is mine. Pasha be by me, in his sorrow, talking how he bad for life, and I hold his hand in habit, watch my townie stars, the brushy land beneath their eyes. And I know, inside this final loss, I going to save this place. I be small in all this blackness world, this ship of drunken vampires, but through my hearten wounds, I living yet, and all my love the same. Nor death been ever arguments to me, I know my truth. I know, ain’t evils in no life nor cruelties in no red hell can change the vally heart of Ice Cream Star.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First I’d like to thank my wonderful editors, Craig Pyette, Lee Boudreaux, Bella Pearson, Karen Maine, and especially Juliet Brooke. All of them gave priceless feedback in the revision of the somewhat chaotic 900-page first draft. Juliet was there from the very first stages, did an amazing amount of work, and gave innumerable thoughtful and inspired suggestions. Special gratitude also goes to my always wonderful agent, Victoria Hobbs, who has been the book’s best friend from the time when it was only a dozen pages long, and a devoted and brilliant advocate for it. And additional thanks to the book’s US agent, the charming and gifted Christy Fletcher.

I’m also grateful for the input of early readers of the book: Paul Bravmann, Matt de la Peña, Jessie Sholl, Michelle Herrera Mulligan, Ellen Tarlow and Gail Vachon.

And most of all, I’d like to thank Howard Mittelmark, who read every version of the book, and was my most trusted advisor at every stage. Howard is one of the greatest editors walking the face of the Earth, or burrowing beneath the Earth’s surface, or living at the bottom of the ocean. Plus, dreamy.