by Holly Hook
"In a hole," I tell him. "I pulled him out with a branch. He's smart. I named him Pit."
"We've never named ours," Ned says. There's another smirk. He's making fun of me again and I bristle. How cute, he means. Then he shouts at the big cabin. "Breakfast!"
Two people walk out, a man and a woman. They don't look as tired as Jaden and Weslie, though. Maybe these are people who got to sleep most of the night. They carry what looks like a gurney made of twine and sticks and it's got a huge slab of meat on it. A third person, a little girl, comes out of the cabin holding a pile of flat things that might be clay plates. They look made in a high school art class. I imagine these people don't have fine china out here. They had to learn everything from scratch.
At least we'll have something other than rocks to eat on. That's a plus. And a warm meal that I didn't have to hunt or cook. I wonder when it'll be my turn to make food for everyone.
"What's that?" I ask, eyeing the meat. It's big enough to be a deer, maybe bigger. I smell it. My stomach rumbles and I can't wait to dig in. But I want to know what it is first.
"It smells like cow," Jaden says. "I'm hungry. Enjoy sitting down, because we won't be doing that until we're done with our jobs.” Then he leans closer. “You still have the notebook paper?”
“Yes.” I'll be sitting down with him later today, having him write out letters. I actually can't wait. It'll be the most normal thing I've done all day.
My feet still ache inside my shoes. After this, Ned is going to have me standing and doing chores. But at least I won't be running from Dwellers or Flamestone Society members that turn out to be people that I thought I loved.
The girl passes out the plates. She must only be ten. Born here, like Jaden.
I take a plate and the man and woman set the meat down on the ground. The woman produces a long, crude knife that looks made of some shiny black stone and slices away. The meat falls away from the bones in slabs. My mouth waters. It smells a lot like beef at home, like the kind Garrett used to grill.
Garrett.
The thought of him chases all hunger away for a minute. I wonder where he is and if he survived the stab. How will he explain that to my mother? Will he tell her he got injured on a trip for work? My dad used to go on long trips for work, too, but on one of his, he murdered his lawyer.
What a great family I have.
How can I possibly be good, coming out of that?
And does my mother know anything about the Flamestone Society?
Shawn's there. Tell these people you're a foster kid, too. Don't tell them you're rich.
I won't.
They pass the meat around. I get a slab on my plate and steam rises into my face. There's no silverware. It looks like it's the custom here to eat with your hands. That's fine. I've been doing that this past few days, anyway.
The food is awesome. I feel better as I eat. The headache fades between my temples and strength flows into my limbs. I might be able to handle whatever they have me do today.
We eat for about twenty minutes. The bags vanish from under Weslie's eyes a little. Jaden perks up even more.
At last, we pile our plates next to the fire. I wonder who washes them and how. I think of the river that runs not too far from the town and the waterfall. That must be where everyone bathes, too. I haven't smelled any body odor yet. The waterfall must work wonders for that.
Weslie shows me where the outhouse is and I use it. "Ready?" she asks when I come out.
I nod. "What exactly are we doing today?"
She smiles. "Picking stingberries. Then, we need to milk the cows. It's more work than it sounds like."
"Stingberries?" I ask. We're walking towards the gate now, which is being lowered by two new guards. The gate creaks as the planks meet the ground. Pit's already bounding out after three guys who are heading out already. All of them carry spears that look made of bone. The hunters. Jaden's with them. Pit looks back at me like he's not sure if he wants to go, but Jaden pats him on the head and leads him out.
"You've probably seen them," Weslie says. "They're purple. We use their juice to coat the town walls so things don't get in at night. Haven't you noticed that the outside of the wall is purple?"
We walk through the gates and out into the valley. I look. She's right. The logs that make up the town are purple on the outside. It's the same color as those first berries I tried to pick, the ones that burned my fingers.
"Oh." I say. Where's my axe? It must still be out there where the rocky hills meet the valley. I wonder if Ned has ordered anyone to go out and get it. I imagine he will. It's useful out here and unlike these crude tools that these people have to make from scratch. "I call those burnberries."
She smiles. "That's a good name for them."
"I wrote it down in my notebook."
Weslie pokes me in the arm. “You can teach Jaden how to read the stuff you wrote. He'll really like that.”
“I like him,” I say, “but I already have a boyfriend. He's in the mines.”
Weslie's face falls. She's not going to hook us up after all. I'm not giving up on Shawn. “Oh. Sorry.”
“I'll still show Jaden how to read, though.”
Her mood changes. "I haven't seen paper in forever," Weslie says. She turns towards where the river cuts through the valley. "Not since I left school the day before I came here. The last piece of paper I saw, I think, was my Lit homework."
Weslie must have been fifteen or sixteen when she came here.
About my age.
It must be the cutoff for getting to work in the Dweller mines.
"Were you in foster care?" I ask. I regret it as soon as I ask.
She nods. "All of us originals were. Just like you were. You were in foster care, right?"
Lie time. "Yes." How much of s stretch should I make the lie? I need to explain the fact that Garrett was after me just in case someone around here sees him again. Like Ned. "I was the foster child of a man named Garrett."
"Garrett?" she explodes, looking right at me with huge eyes. "The Garrett? Garrett Monroe?"
I've hit something bad. "That's his name. I never really liked the guy." That's another fib. Before last night, I did like Garrett and I feel stupid for not seeing his true nature until now. "I don't get why he took me in. He was never home. My real dad's in prison and my mom couldn't take care of me by herself. That's how I wound up with him." That's the truth. Well, part of it. I might be safe telling her this.
Weslie shakes her head. "I didn't think the Flamestone Society leader would bother with taking foster kids himself. He must be getting low on cash if he did that."
"He's what?" I explode.
Weslie looks right at me and stops on the grass. "You didn't know? Oh, you wouldn't have. They never tell us what they are until we're already in the Dwellers' hands. But Garrett's family has been leading the Flamestone Society ever since it was founded hundreds of years ago. I overhead it down there from the other workers.”
I remember his story about the miners coming through to Selwyn by mistake. One of his ancestors was among them. One who liked slavery and eventually made a horrible deal with the Dwellers hundreds of years ago.
I feel like I'm going to throw up.
My mother's jumped into the arms of something she's been trying all these years to escape. She must not know. I have to get back home and tell her that the man she sleeps next to every night is a monster. Mom wouldn't stay married to Garrett if she knew the truth. She didn't stay married to my dad, that's for sure.
"We all used to talk in the mines," Weslie continues as we walk. She talks over the growing roar of the waterfall. "I was down there for a month. You must have gotten away soon after they took you down there. It's terrifying." She looks so distant and sad. "You hear stories. Everyone has one. Everyone came from someone who had connections to the Flamestone Society." She sighs. Hugs herself. "My foster parents wanted into the Society. They wanted to get rich. I was their first sale. I didn't know what their flame tat
toos meant until they led me and my brother down to the basement where the Dwellers were waiting to snatch me. I passed out and woke up underground here in Selwyn. The work was awful. We must have been working twelve hours per day, digging out Flamestone. And gems, too, so they could pay for more slaves. The Dwellers feed and water us, but that's all. We sleep on rock. People were sick down there all the time. My body ached every day. And you hear noises coming from some of the older shafts. The Dwellers are not the scariest things down there."
She's shaking. I don't want to press on about that. Not yet, anyway. My stomach ties in an even tighter knot as I think of Shawn down there. What's he hearing right now? What's he doing? Is he sick yet?
"I can imagine." I think of the Megapede. "How deep do the mines go?" I have to learn everything I can before I go after Shawn and Talia and Travis.
"I don't know." Weslie walks, leading me closer to the river. "Very deep. And there are caves below them. I only glimpsed one of them once. It's not something I like to remember."
My heart pounds. "Has...has anyone ever tried to go down and say, rescue any slaves?"
Weslie gives me a grave look. "Once."
"Once?"
The color drains from her face. "Our founder, Steven Wompitt, went after them way before I even came here. He took five people with him to go free some of the slaves. And he wanted to find a way to stop the Dwellers from buying them."
"Did they die?"
Weslie shrugs. "I don't know. But Steven was Ned's older brother. When Steven went missing, Ned had to take over. People have told me that Ned gets more strict every year. Ever since Jaden went out looking for his missing mother and spent two weeks out there, Ned's made it a law that no one can stay out of the town walls overnight. We thought Jaden was gone.”
“Jaden went after his mother?” I ask. “He spent two weeks out there?”
“It was a year ago. To be fair, the Dwellers weren't looking for him. That helped. We're here.”
Weslie stops. We're very close to the river. There are rows of bushes next to the water. Burnberry bushes. Or stingberries. They hang heavy on the shrubs in clusters, ready to be picked. I'm not looking forward to doing this, but I don't want these people to think I'm lazy, either.
"Do we have baskets?" I ask, mulling over Weslie's words.
Not allowed to stay out overnight.
Does that also mean we're not allowed to go after any escaped slaves? Ned really doesn't want to try finding his brother?
Weslie seems lost. She nods to several collapsed blobs on the end of the row that look made out of woven vines that died long ago. "That's the best we have," she says. "We haven't figured out how to make really good baskets yet. The plants around here just aren't well suited. They're either way too big or way too dangerous."
"I agree." I pick up one of the baskets. It's more like a sack of woven fibers than anything. These people really have had to make everything out of scratch.
There must be hundreds of burnberry bushes here. These people must have to redo the walls all the time around Wompitt. This is the source of the purple dye.
"Oh." Weslie's caught me looking at them. "Nothing eats these berries. They're a good defense. Nothing wants to climb our fence. And they're good for spear points, too. Makes hunting much easier. Just don't squeeze them when you pick them."
I go to work up and down the first row of bushes. At first I'm slow, terrified of the burn that's going to explode across my skin if I squish one of the berries by mistake. Maybe that's why these people planted these next to the river. It's in case someone needs to wash off in a hurry. Weslie works beside me on the next row. My mind won't stop spinning as I work. This is such a huge farm of burnberries. They must be easy to grow.
"Are there any plans to go back after the people trapped underground?" I ask.
Weslie stops, facing away from me. "No."
"How come?" I sound like a whiny little kid. My heart sinks.
"Ned says it's too dangerous. He says we can't afford to lose anyone else.”
“But his brother might be down there!”
“I know,” Weslie says.
I check to make sure no one's out here with us. Two people are washing the walls of the town with something that looks like a giant broom. It's really just a bunch of dried grass tied to a really long stick. It has purple stuff on it. The burnberry juice. It's the dye. They're putting on a new coat. One of them stops and faces us as if he's waiting for us to get more of the berries picked. We must be the first in the chain.
"So we're just supposed to sit here?" I ask. I can't help it. "I have friends down there in those mines. My best friend and my boyfriend, in fact."
Weslie whirls around and faces me through the bushes. "We all do. We're just trying to stay alive and free up here. It's no easy task. Ned's plan has worked for us for the past twenty years or so."
She sounds so nervous, so horrified that I don't want to press any further. I hope not everyone here is like this. That not everyone is too scared of Ned to try anything.
I pick another cluster of berries and drop them in the basket. How much longer will it take me to forget the sound of Shawn's voice? The exact shade of his eyes? How much longer before I forget what my mother looks like? I don't have to ask to know that these people don't know where a gateway back to the regular world is. If they knew, they wouldn't be here, doing nothing but work all the time.
I have to ask about Steven, then. Weslie won't be too upset about that—will she?
"What did Steven want to do to stop the Flamestone Society?" I ask. That's just as good. Maybe better, actually. If I can find a way to stop them, we can free everyone who's stuck underground.
"I don't know. It had something to do with the Flamestone. If you get a chance, you might want to ask Antoine. He's obsessed with experimenting with the stuff. He's such a nerd."
"Who's he?"
"You'll usually find him behind the waterfall. Don't do it now. They're going to have our heads if we don't get these berries picked in time. They have to stain the walls just about every day and thankfully, these berries grow fast."
I face my basket again. It's half full. I'm picking them by the cluster, which I hope is right. So far, I haven't burned myself and I can relax a little. “Thanks. I don't mean to be annoying."
Weslie smiles at me. "You are not annoying. You're normal. Every single one of us dreams of going down and saving the slaves. We all know people down there. Or knew people." Her tone darkens. "Seriously. You should go talk to him. He's a pretty cool guy. Real nice. You might even want to give him some of that Flamestone that you brought. Antoine might be the closest person we have to figuring out what exactly Steven Wompitt wanted to do to stop the Flamestone Society."
"I'll have to." I pick faster, filling the basket.
We have to take the baskets back to town. Weslie and I drag them back through the gates. Wompitt's just about empty now except for two women on a roof, replacing some of the thatch. Everyone's out, doing chores. I don't even spot Ned walking around.
"This should be enough to stain the walls for tomorrow," Weslie says, depositing her basket in the storage cave. I do the same.
"Agreed," I say, studying my hands to make sure none of the stuff's on them. I've done well.
"Now we need to milk the cows. When we're done with that, we have the rest of the day off. Don't worry. This place isn't the mines. We do get some time to rest so we don't die.”
"I'm glad." I'd been expecting fourteen hour work days from Ned's attitude. Maybe he just gave me the wrong impression.
Weslie steps into a house—the same one where the cooking took place—and produces a stack of clay bowls. They're actually well made, like something I would have done in my art class last year. "Antoine figured out how to make these," she says. "He took art in high school before his foster mom sold him to the Dwellers. He did a lot of pottery and had it displayed in his school. He even won a couple of art awards."
The cows here look a
lmost like regular cows, except that all of them have blue stripes on their backs and a pair of bright orange spots by their ears. It's like someone has gone over them with paint and done a really weird color matching job.
She shows me what to do. I get over the gross factor fast, at least. I've had lots of practice at that over the last several days. The milk looks just like Earth milk and even smells the same. “What do we do with this?" I ask.
"We've figured out how to make butter and cheese. Thanks to history lessons back home. So we're doing a little better than the stone age."
It's late afternoon by time we take all the milk back into town. Weslie faces me. "Time to crash," she says, yawning.
"It sounds like you deserve it." I need to go find this Antoine. I can talk to Weslie again tomorrow. She needs to go to sleep for a while. So far, the work hasn't been that bad. I can still function, at least. I feel better than I have since I got here.
Go talk to the guy, Shawn says. He might be helpful.
I head back out of the gates. I know I've got to be back in before nightfall. Before they close this. Before I get shut outside. Will the Dwellers be back?
I search the cliff faces in the valley. The cows graze over by the river now and one's lying down. There's a baby one following its mother towards the burnberry bushes, but the cows don't dare touch them.
And there's the figure of a man standing over by a tiny cave in the cliff face, about half a mile away. He's on the other side of the river and close to the waterfall. I have to go talk to him.
I approach the river. It's lazy and I make it to the top of a small hill. There's a couple there, casting a fishing pole into the water. It's so peaceful.
And there's a bridge.
It's crude, a couple of logs tied together over the river, but it's something. I walk across it, tiptoeing until I make it to the opposite side. The guy's more clear now. He walks out of the little cave and back in again. I wonder if he's the town hermit or outcast.