Lark opened her mouth to reply but her mother beat her to the dialogue.
“She’s going to say you’re overreacting,” Lucy said to Grant and waved her hand in frustration. Her mother started doing that a few years ago: guessing Lark’s reactions and stating them into existence as if Lark had any other choice than to deny.
“Don’t tell me how I’ll respond,” Lark said as part of her song and dance. She could feel the emotions crawling. “I understand. I get it. I didn’t—”
“That man…” Grant interrupted, his eyes heavy. He breathed a long breath through his nose. “That man, Elijah, we knew him…a long time ago…”
She learned that silence prodded people into talking—quiet people were like predators that way, aware of all the ways to keep conversations moving in one direction. More questions, more silence, more nodding of approval, while people awkwardly fill the gap.
“Before we made this place our permanent home…” Lucy added.
“The man is a hothead,” Grant offered breezily. “And you shouldn’t be afraid of him…”
For that, Lark couldn’t stay silent any longer.
“I wasn’t afraid of him,” Lark said in quick defense. “You were afraid of him. I just listened. You have a lot you need to tell me…”
It was true and they couldn’t deny it.
Lucy looked to the ground, exasperated, but Grant remained firm and calm. These were their roles, always their roles, never changing only expanding to fit the lives they now inhabited. Lucy was not quite the hero of her own story; not the way she’d wanted to be when she was younger, but that was the natural progression of life, Lark thought. No, her mother’s time was over and it was her chance to make some choices for herself.
She imagined her parents’ reaction if she round-housed the bookshelf, littered with copies of stolen books from the Lodge and the hardbacks tumbled to the floor. Lark just didn’t know what would get their attention and make them take her seriously. In that moment of feeling misunderstood, she felt a swell of violence, a thirst for it; they’d kept her long enough chained within a mile of her home without answers, with sighs and deep looks that said we’ll tell you about that world when you’re older, but now she was older, wiser, and better at her job, and she was tired. So, so tired.
“You are forbidden from entering the dining hall when we have visitors,” Grant said with a definitive nod.
“I’m forbidden? Oooh, from visitors?” Lark asked with petulance. “Or am I just forbidden from the ones you deem too important to share with the rest of the community?” That seemed to land well. Grant straightened, his head lifted as if pulled by a string. Lark continued, “Are you mad at me because I was there or are you mad at me because I heard something you didn’t like me hearing?”
Grant and Lucy exchanged a glare; it was clearly the latter. And they were at odds about what to do about it.
During simpler times, she rounded up news of clandestine crushes and brewing feuds between Colony members, but this—this stranger, this news, this piece, Islands, and a Bayou, mysterious pronouns, a girl who knew them—was off limits.
Grant closed his eyes. He inhaled and exhaled to a controlled rhythm, and the measured nature of his breathing made Lark nervous. She expected him to snap his eyes open and bark at her to stay in her room, but instead, he shook his head once, twice, and pointed at Lucy, his finger trembling.
Lark stepped back, afraid for the first time since she got home.
“It’s no different, Lucy,” Grant said, speaking to her mother. He dropped his hand. “I told you that once. I told you to you remember what it would feel like...”
Lucy crossed her arms over her body and shut her eyes tight. “Stop,” her mother implored. “Stop right now. We agreed. You don’t get to change your mind now, on a whim, because we agreed. It is different…”
“We didn’t agree,” Grant interrupted with venom on his tongue. “I just lost the argument. That’s not the same thing.”
Lark noticed the vulnerability, the way her parents turned on each other and away from her, and she saw it as her chance to drive the wedge further and absolve the spying punishment she knew was coming. She knew she was doing it, too, and it made her feel guilty for a minute, but not guilty enough not to take a chance.
She raised her voice to match her parents’ intensity.
“Listen to you! Angry because you were caught hiding things from us? This is about your lies. Where was I born? Who is Ethan? You knew you’d have to answer those questions…so, no, you’re not really angry at me…you’re angry at yourselves for lying your way here,” Lark said as her parents winced. Perfection. “Do you remember what it felt like to be my age? At all? You had freedom and I’m in a cage and—”
“In a cage,” Lucy repeated, unable to hide her disgust. Lark still knew it was a victory. “Without freedom.”
“You have freedom,” Grant pushed but as the words left his mouth he regretted them.
Lark knew she hit an unexpected nerve with both her parents, and now Lucy, who was known to stress but never known to hit her anger full throttle, trembled with temper.
“Freedom?” Lucy seethed, her jaw tight. “You think you know what that word means but you don’t. Freedom.” She said the word again. The third time she mumbled the word, she seemed to hold it up with reverence before spinning to her daughter and saying it one more time, “Why don’t you tell me what freedom looks like when the kind of freedom you want will KILL you. You think we hide here because we’re trying to personally offend you? I can’t do this…”
Lark lifted her chin in defiant silence.
She looked at her dad, who was not looking at her but rather his wife, his jaw set in strong disapproval, his eyes pleading for her to look at him so he could communicate some unspoken argument. She didn’t. She remained hyper-focused on her daughter, and Lark didn’t understand anymore what was happening.
Grant stood up and walked to her, but she took several strong steps backward to put distance between them, and stopped pursuing. He put up his hands in surrender.
“We were your age, you know. Your age. Everything we knew was ripped from us….you know what we dealt with? The world was hideous and we were all unhappy, but there was life, so much life,” Lucy said. Grant turned to watch her once again. “And then one day we woke up and it was dead. The world. Dead. I haven’t stopped thinking of that first dead kid’s face I saw. The first. Some random kid, my age, your age, whose whole life was gone. You had an ideal childhood. You had true freedom. You had everything people in the Old World wanted and couldn’t have…fresh air and nature and beauty and love and family and time to explore and I tried to raise you without fear…”
“Without fear? You’re mental,” Lark scoffed without realizing how hurtful her scorn appeared. Lucy’s mouth dropped open and she hesitated, on the verge.
“Why was it so wrong to want something on my terms,” her mom said back, spit flying. Lucy rubbed her eyes. “How can you, my child, stand there and say you wanted my life when we gave you everything—”
“Lucy,” Grant warned.
“Don’t,” Lucy snapped back, but she softened and her shoulders slumped. “Just don’t.”
“We came from a different time with different trauma,” her dad added after a few tense moments with a somber pause. He rolled his head over to his wife and pled with her, “Please, Lucy. We always said—”
“You think we’re in danger?” Lucy asked. Her face drained of all color and her mother looked for someplace to sit. “If you think we’ve misjudged, if you think—”
Grant inhaled and looked at the ceiling—lost in calculations no one could understand. And she could see the whole scene playing out, the way they told her bits and pieces of a past that didn’t make sense.
Lark made a small clicking noise with her tongue, not as eager to pick a fight anymore. No, now she wished she’d just made an afternoon of hanging at the shack.
And that was when they all he
ard the knock on the door.
Her aunt Harper flooded into their cabin, her body a flash of color and energy. She smelled like strawberries, real ones, and Lark wondered if Theo could’ve recognized her smell if she smelled like her aunt instead of artificial lotion from the Old World.
Lucy’s shoulders sagged for a moment at the presence of her younger sister at such an inopportune time, but it was a slight only her daughter could recognize. Things were tense long before she came around, but Lark was aware of each subtle comment and sideways glance.
Aunt Harper had been the baby of her family before and after the virus split the King family into pieces. When she gathered information about their lives, she was told Lucy and Harper were the only survivors of Grandma Maxine’s six kids. At some point, Harper rebelled against the Colony’s strict anti-wandering policy and took up with the Children of the Lake.
As the baby of her family, her aunt was unaffected by the stony silence and aggrieved disdain from her older sibling and found Lucy’s anger inappropriate and hilarious.
Harper was chaos. Controlled by nothing. She floated in and out of their lives with ease, ignoring the rules set in place and paving her own way with a smile and a laugh. Rules were for chumps. Larkspur idolized her.
Harper ditched her worn coat and gave Lucy a warm and fluid hug, bending down to kiss her brother-in-law on the cheek in one quick movement.
“Hello, hello,” she said with a bow.
The knock, Lark realized with sudden embarrassment, was because she wanted to give the family a warning before she burst in on their anger. Lark wondered how long her aunt had hidden outside the door, how much she’d heard, how much she already knew about the day.
The siblings hadn’t seen eye-to-eye on much in recent years; not since Harper left the Colony to join the Children of the Lake with a bitter monologue about why she couldn’t stay.
“Might as well not even try to hide the fact that I’m here with a message,” Harper said. She looked over at Lark and smiled, warmly. “Hey, kiddo. You well?”
Lark nodded.
Harper swung her head toward her sister and motioned to the kid. “You need her to leave or are we beyond that? Can’t keep up with what you’re keeping down,” she said in a faux-whisper. “I have a message from the Fathers…”
Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose and made an indecipherable sound of frustration.
“At this point, it’s safe to say if we send Lark out, she’ll find a way to listen anyway, so…” Grant answered. His attempt at being tongue-in-cheek fell flat, and he motioned for his wife to continue.
“You know that sounds ridiculous,” Lucy said and she crossed her arms over her chest. “A message from the Fathers. Who are they the father of, Harper? Or that’s right…I’m sorry. God made Father Joshua the new prophet because the Pope died in the Old World and all the other current prophets died….and he found, through divine calling, the other eleven…”
“Don’t be mean,” Harper said sing-song. “Religion can evolve with the time and the situation…God doesn’t need your…”
“Please. Don’t be ignorant,” Lucy replied. Everyone paused, too stuck in their ruts to carry the conversation forward. It was tiring to have the same argument on repeat through all their interactions.
“Well, sister, maybe I believe it’s possible to live in this world without making the mistakes from the old one, right? Maybe one thing our dead country got right was this idea that we could all choose our own way…didn’t you also adopt that? You of many freedoms…” Harper cracked her knuckles and moved further into the room, continuing. “Thanks for your love.”
So, she’d been listening longer than Lark imagined.
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be mean, but it’s hard for me to understand why you chose them…chose to stay,” Lucy admitted.
“The Children of the Lake are deeply religious…”
“Mystic,” Lucy amended. “The Children of the Lake are believers in magic and folklore and they actively pray for chaos because they’re ready for it and crave it. And Harper, I get that, I do, but you know better…” her eyes darted to her daughter and back, meant there were layers to her mother’s argument that couldn’t be repeated while she was present. Lark was used to that.
“I clearly chose them because of my love for human sacrifice. And I love the taste of blood, so the drinking blood ritual is my favorite…”
“Is everything I think some big joke to you?”
Grant interrupted, tabling the intensity. “Enough, Lucy. Harper means no disrespect,” Grant said to his wife and he turned to Harper who didn’t budge from her position but smiled warmly to him, acknowledging that she wasn’t offended by Lucy’s sternness; this was just what they did now. But she was certainly dishing out plenty of disrespect.
“Right,” Lucy said. She took a breath.
“The Fathers protect you from harm. Don’t you understand? I left you…to go work with the people who keep you safe. And it’s my home,” Harper said with a sweet sadness and Lucy’s eyes darted to her younger sister with hurt.
“This is still your home,” Lucy said. Lark watched as her mother swallowed a sob and tried to keep the tears from falling.
Harper clapped her hands together and raised her eyebrows. “Right. But it’s not. And I’m tired of the where is our home conversation? This one is fun and it goes on and on.” She took a breath and raised her eyebrows in mock surprise, “Where will our opinions take us? What old hurts will we spout? What will we say? Oh, I know! We’ll both think we made good choices with the information we had…and now life goes on. or is this really how we’re ending tonight?”
“Life goes on,” Lucy repeated with a heated scowl. “Says the one who doesn’t have anything to live for—”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Grant said and he moved to stand between them—unworried, but cautious. Lark knew he’d played his peacekeeper role to the detriment of his own relationship. Lucy, for her part, wanted his entire support, but Grant, Lark remarked, attempted neutrality. Others in the Colony saw Harper’s abandonment as a sign that the Colony was doomed. It was an experiment and it failed, and Harper was a constant reminder of that failure.
Lark wished she had her aunt’s ability to swim effortlessly through a swamp of predators and not break into a sweat. Harper looked casual and flippant while her mother stewed, no doubt angry that her tirade was cut short and her daughter was off the hook, so her sister emerged the hero.
“So, let’s go to the community dinner! I’ll bring my share,” Harper said.
“Harper—” Lucy attempted to push again. “I don’t want you there tonight. I imagine the appearance of Elijah is causing quite a stir…you’re here because of him…go home. Darla and Jenna, Theo, too, will address the Elijah issue…”
Harper’s buoyant smile snapped into ice and she leveled her gaze at her older sister, their faces similar but trapped in different decades. King genes were strong. Her aunt, Lark realized with growing distress, was her mother in a time-machine sped back a decade—and every time Harper showed up, Lucy was forced to face a version of herself that no longer existed. Someone cruelly connected to and yet unhooked from responsibility, and it drove Lucy to anger. What are you hiding, Mama? Lark thought with growing despair.
“It’s funny you should mention them, actually. I stopped by Darla and Jenna’s already to ask. It’s a good thing you don’t get to be the only one who decides these things,” Harper said without a hint of fear. “I’m going to dinner. See you there. Oh, and, Lark?” Harper tossed her head to look at her niece and flashed her a white smile. “Wanna walk with me?”
Lark moved forward but Lucy raised an immediate objection. “We’ll walk as a family,” she said. She moved to the front of the cabin where the family’s winter coats hung on rusted nails. Her mother wanted to keep her close and it solidified what she already knew: the details Lark uncovered today hadn’t meant to be uncovered at all. If she persisted, kept listening, kept d
igging, she’d discover everything.
Nothing stayed hidden forever.
Chapter Five
The Atlantic Ocean
Somewhere between the former
United States and the former Europe,
aboard The Queen
KOZO
Nightmares plagued Kozo since he was a child.
His jiji used to have him write down all his dreams in a small journal covered with embossed vines and force him to re-read them to her before he went to sleep as a ritual they’d invented for the two of them. No one ever seemed to question the strange tango of Kozo and his jiji reading about bizarre universes where everything was different than reality.
Although looking back on his childhood, no one ever questioned much.
It wasn’t the way.
Jiji craved Kozo’s unreal stories and delighted in the basic captures of his brain. She read the dreams like tea leaves at the bottom of a cup.
They lived on the ocean and water his whole life.
He was born on the sea and of the sea in a commune of boats and yachts tied together into a nest; it was an entire floating city built in and around the Trash Islands. As mobile units, the dwellings circulated in calm waters and moved with the weather; but storms did ravage their cities from time to time and there were many moments during Kozo’s childhood where he felt doomed, riding out a swell or a storm, watching the water whip their collection of boats around like toys.
Even in those terrifying moments, Kozo knew he would survive.
Civilizations rose and fell in the histories of his ancestors, but Kozo and Megumi were children of the future.
Children of the apocalypse. Children of the trash.
The Bedrock Page 7