Worlds War One

lvii [Badia]

Bad.

She felt bad.

Standing at the end of the walkway that led to Drill Sergeant Camilo Cabello's small and unassuming home, Badia was sick. A uniformed official had delivered the news a couple of days ago. It had taken some time to get Drill's body back to America and delivered to a funeral home. Callie had left after she'd given Drill one last salute. She left Bad alone to pay respects to Drill's family.

War. The Wider World was full of wonder and magic. Yet immortal beings like Johnny Rotten still wanted to wage war. Evil entities like Changelings and Leviathan and vengeful Magi still resorted to violence instead of peace. Badia had hoped that a universe so fantastic might feature less strife, but the terrible truth of the Way Things Really Were was that there would constantly be conflict. Soldiers forever die. Monsters, magic, and myth were the truth, and peace remained the fairy tale.

Bad stared at the small stones along the path. Polished quartz. Mica flecks caught in the setting sun, twinkling like tiny, terrible stars as if there were a hundred galaxies between here and there. The thirty feet across Drill's yard seemed to stretch between worlds, from one place in existence to somewhere she couldn't even imagine.

All those years, and she'd never known Drill was married.

Bad walked up the path in a funereal procession. She didn't want to face the grief. She didn't want to accept this reality.

The door was green, like the prairie where she'd played with her daughters in Montana before the world turned Wide. No doorbell. No electric eye staring at Bad. Just a knock. And a woman answered who was no bigger than Badia's Mary, a small and slight figure opposite her mountain of a husband. Mr. and Mrs. Cabello must have looked very strange standing together.

No stranger than a princess married to Johnny Rotten or a Golem paired with a Human.

Red rimmed the woman's eyes, and Bad regretted the color of the tulips she held in her hand. Red was the color of grief. The color of blood. But she held out the red tulips, and Mrs. Cabello took them and thanked her. The widow thanked the person responsible for her husband's death.

Drill hadn't wanted to be there. He hadn't understood the Wider World. He couldn't comprehend it. The Way Things Really Were had ended up being too much for him. Yet Bad had pushed and pulled. She couldn't let him go. Bad had known Drill would get her home alive, back to her girls, safe and sound. No matter what. Like before. Like Raqqa.

This time he'd died trying.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," Bad said. She was terrible at consolation.

"Come in," Mrs. Cabello invited. "Come sit a spell."

Bad followed her into the home, small and cozy. Drill would have had to duck through doorways and squeeze past furniture. Like a Cyclops in a ferret Fauna's hovel. Pictures adorned the walls as Mrs. Cabello led Bad down a hall—Drill decorated for valor after Syria, a wedding picture, then portraits of two boys, big and brawny and certainly taking after their dad.

Those boys were sitting at the kitchen table, stone-faced and dry-eyed. Both younger versions of their father resembled figures made of Lego blocks more than flesh and blood. Neither blinked as Bad walked into the room, but both stood like true gentlemen as the officer entered the kitchen.

"Stan and Dan," Mrs. Cabello introduced. Drill had been as imaginative in naming sons as he'd been in accepting the truth about Angels and Ghosts.

"Your father was a good man," Bad said. "The best. I have never had a more loyal friend."

The boys nodded and gave thanks. Bad hadn't known Drill had sons, either, because he'd never spoken of his family. But here they were, as alive and authentic as Charlie, Mary, and Rebecca. She had readily accepted Golems and Changelings and other dimensions over recent days, yet she'd never paused to realize that Camilo Cabello was just as real.

Bad sat with them for a while, sharing in loss. A breeze came in from the window over the sink, fresh air carrying the scent of spring. The smell of change was in the air, the promise of something new. It was supposed to be sweet, but Bad smelled sour. Like the thaw was melting away and releasing the stink of old things. August things. Undead, zombie things that ought to have stayed frozen.

"He spoke highly of you, Lieutenant Robinson," Mrs. Cabello said as Bad stood and started to excuse herself.

"Please, call me Bad," Badia said.

"He said you were the bravest soldier he ever met."

"There are different ways to be brave," Badia replied. "Camilo is a hero."

"I'll miss him," Mrs. Cabello whispered. She held back the rest of her tears. No more crying. "So much."

Bad reached out and took her hand. "Camilo didn't believe in much. He was a practical man who trusted in the things he could see and touch. But he knew one thing by the end. There is a Heaven, and it's a place for good people like Camilo. The universe is a vast and mysterious place, Mrs. Cabello, and your husband is still out there waiting for you on the other side."

And there was one tear yet to shed, a single droplet that traced the widow's cheek. She nodded, and Bad turned and walked away. Out. Back down the walkway. Away from the house of grief that Bad had made.

A butterfly flitted by, bright blue and as big as Bad's hand. She had only seen such a brilliant insect once before, in the fields of Montana where Rebecca held a caterpillar on the tip of her finger as she wandered through the tall broom grass. It had been that same rare and special shade of blue. It was a small world. The Wider World was borderless and unbelievable and brash, yet the butterfly...

It flew up into the sky, blue blending into blue until it was all the same. An empty expanse full of everything. On and on. So big. Too big.

If Bad was the kind of person who believed in symbols, she might have wondered if the butterfly meant something. She wasn't the kind.

Badia Robinson just headed home.

End