“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “People come and go.”
“Do they?” the conductor said. “Are there other towns nearby, perhaps down the coast, where people typically travel?”
“There’s no town nearby,” he said. “But everyone”—he looked over his shoulder at the silent crowd, smiling at them, and spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear him—“everyone here, of course, is free to go as they please.”
“Naturally,” the conductor said. “I wouldn’t have expected otherwise. It’s just that we wouldn’t have expected them to set off on their own, given that they knew we were coming back for them.”
The prophet nodded. Kirsten edged closer to eavesdrop more effectively. The other actors were receding quietly from the stage. “My people and I,” he said, “when we speak of the light, we speak of order. This is a place of order. People with chaos in their hearts cannot abide here.”
“If you’ll forgive me for prying, though, I have to ask about the markers in the graveyard.”
“It’s not an unreasonable question,” the prophet said. “You’ve been on the road for some time, have you not?”
“Yes.”
“Your Symphony was on the road in the beginning?”
“Close to it,” the conductor said. “Year Five.”
“And you?” The prophet turned suddenly to Kirsten.
“I walked for all of Year One.” Although she felt dishonest claiming this, given that she had no memory whatsoever of that first year.
“If you’ve been on the road for that long,” the prophet said, “if you’ve wandered all your life, as I have, through the terrible chaos, if you remember, as I do, everything you’ve ever seen, then you know there’s more than one way to die.”
“Oh, I’ve seen multiple ways,” the conductor said, and Kirsten saw that she was remaining calm with some difficulty, “actually everything from drowning to decapitation to fever, but none of those ways would account for—”
“You misunderstand me,” the prophet said. “I’m not speaking of the tedious variations on physical death. There’s the death of the body, and there’s the death of the soul. I saw my mother die twice. When the fallen slink away without permission,” he said, “we hold funerals for them and erect markers in the graveyard, because to us they are dead.” He glanced over his shoulder, at Alexandra collecting flowers from the stage, and spoke into the conductor’s ear.
The conductor stepped back. “Absolutely not,” she said. “It’s out of the question.”
The prophet stared at her for a moment before he turned away. He murmured something to a man in the front row, the archer who’d been guarding the gas station that morning, and they walked together away from the Walmart.
“Luli!” the prophet called over his shoulder, and the dog trotted after him. The audience was dispersing now, and within minutes the Symphony was alone in the parking lot. It was the first time in memory that no one from the audience had lingered to speak with the Symphony after a performance.
“Quickly,” the conductor said. “Harness the horses.”
“I thought we were staying a few days,” Alexandra said, a little whiny.
“It’s a doomsday cult.” The clarinet was unclipping the Midsummer Night’s Dream backdrop. “Weren’t you listening?”
“But the last time we came here—”
“This isn’t the town it was the last time we were here.” The painted forest collapsed into folds and fell soundlessly to the pavement. “This is one of those places where you don’t notice everyone’s dropping dead around you till you’ve already drunk the poisoned wine.” Kirsten knelt to help the clarinet roll the fabric. “You should maybe wash that dress,” the clarinet said.
“He’s gone back into the gas station,” Sayid said. There were armed guards posted on either side of the gas station door now, indistinct in the twilight. A cooking fire flared by the motel.
The Symphony was on their way within minutes, departing down a back road behind the Walmart that took them away from the center of town. A small fire flickered by the roadside ahead. They found a boy there, a sentry, roasting something that might have been a squirrel at the end of a stick. Most towns had sentries with whistles at the obvious points of entry, the idea being that it was nice to have a little warning if marauders were coming through, but the boy’s youth and inattention suggested that this wasn’t considered an especially dangerous post. He stood as they approached, holding his dinner away from the flames.