When Lark was ten yards from her house, her front door flew open and Lucy bounded out and wrapped her daughter in her arms. It was obvious her mother was waiting for her so any chance of sneaking up to open windows or crawling in through the back part of the cabin was dashed. They anticipated her presence.
Her mother always smelled a little bit like body odor and wood. She’d retained no vanity in the years in the Colony, which made Lark feel frivolous for still taking care of herself or stopping to dab on that ancient lotion before she left the house. And yet despite the weathered skin and hair, Lucy still looked young. Young and tired.
“I need to say something before you walk inside that cabin,” her mother started. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, an old habit she knew her grandmother had, too, and waited for her mother to confess. “I don’t have time to tell you the stories and the reasons…if the Fathers go on the move, they’ll no doubt trigger an exodus of the Children of the Lake, and we believe that will give away our location. You need to know we are safe. We are. If we stay. And no matter what you hear in there you need to know that. If they leave…we still stay. Bottom line. Okay? Now come on, stay quiet…”
She already couldn’t stay quiet.
“Why can’t you tell me what’s happening?” Lark asked. Her emotions spun between worry, confusion, and anger. “Real fast. Ten seconds.”
“I’ll answer any questions you have when the time is right. The time isn’t right. Now…come inside and do what you do best. Listen and glean…process. And don’t say a word.”
Lark didn’t say a word.
She didn’t say a word when she stood in the dark corner and crossed her arms, standing firm and silent. She didn’t say a word when she realized there were strangers in her house. She didn’t move or breathe loudly while she examined the faces in her cabin main’s room, trying to understand.
Harper was in control—that was obvious—and Lucy and Grant looked pale, thin, and determined—each frowning an identical frown, waiting and pondering, saying nothing.
But it was the presence of a man and a girl that called upon her powers of observation. Dressed in drab, hand-sewn clothes, a black man, in his 50s, weathered and weary, sat next to his daughter, who wore an altered pair of jeans and a t-shirt a few sizes too small. The girl was a shade darker than her dad with her hair in dreadlocks.
The girl seemed drawn to Lark and glanced over often, assessing her clothes and her hair, perhaps the touch of gloss she’d dabbed along her lips. Sometimes, when the girl didn’t know anyone was watching her, she mouthed something under her breath and it would draw her father’s attention for a brief flash.
He’d silence her, but she always started again, drawing his irritation and attention again. If she had also been instructed to keep quiet, she was doing a lousy job.
The man and his daughter were Children of the Lake—part of the super religious majority who protected, but did not believe, the pontifications of the Colony. They trusted the Fathers were modern prophets and that the earth was suffering at the hands of demons as they worked through the seals of the apocalypse.
It was a terrifying doctrine.
Harper carried on about the move and the Fathers, the closeness of the threat, and Lark watched as Grant lifted himself off the chair and took a step forward, his hand already out in a mea culpa.
“Harper. We are prepared to tell you and only you…that we do have a girl,” he said.
The news seemed to surprise no one but Lark.
She shut her mouth and leaned back. “The girl…that you call the runaway… is hidden and safe for now, but she won’t be for long, as you know. But you have to listen to me. She isn’t who you think she is and before we tell you her location we need you to understand—”
Lark pulled in a breath and held it tight in her chest, concentrating on not breathing on the pull of dizziness and the rock-like pressure in her lungs.
“Is she—” Harper started, but Lucy didn’t let her finish her question.
“No,” her mother said with a small shake of her head. “But she was kidnapped and raised by something called the Bermuda Project and that has to be where—”
“Lucy,” Harper breathed, unbelieving. She turned around and looked for a place to sit and when she did, she slumped into a heap, eyes wide. “I stood up for you…”
“This not an Island girl. This is not who they think it is. They are not right,” Grant called to her in anger. “They will kill her. You know they will. And we believe her story…”
“This is a dangerous game,” Harper said.
“I won’t disagree,” Grant answered and Lark lifted her eyes to watch her father as he appealed to her aunt, his arms on his waist, his head hung low. He was tall and lean, his face drawn downward into a heavy-lidded plea.
“I won’t lie to the Fathers,” Harper said.
“I’m not asking for that…I’m asking for time…”
“Don’t think I don’t know what time earns you.”
Lark watched as the girl in the corner kept mouthing something, like a stream of prayer, while the adults talked. While Harper and Grant went back and forth, Lark inched around the room and made her way to the other side in the shadows, hoping to catch a few pieces of the girl’s ramblings.
With one ear trained on the conversation and the other on the whispered chants, Lark worked her way closer and closer to the girl and her father.
“I can’t believe you are standing there saying you know the girl will die if we bring her to you and that you simply don’t care…is that what we’ve become?” Grant asked.
“We’ve become nothing. That’s the oath,” Harper said in quiet defeat. “They tracked her here. If she hadn’t been traceable, we wouldn’t have this conversation. And no, based on what I’m hearing, I’m not ready to trust my enemy today. You have to understand. It’s over. I told them you wouldn’t be stupid enough to actually lead the girl to our location…that we could get out of here before it was too late…”
“Harper,” Grant walked to his sister-in-law and put a hand out to touch her shoulder, but she batted him away. “We haven’t lied to you…”
“And they have?”
“The Fathers don’t know the full picture. Neither do you. We have a full picture.”
“Here’s the thing, Grant. If I trusted you,” she replied, “I would’ve stayed in the Colony, but here we are. Your declaration of having a fuller picture than me is really insulting…” Harper didn’t back down.
Grant turned away, too angry to continue, and Lucy stepped up to take his place, shaking a finger at her younger sister like she was a child.
“But it’s true! Be insulted if you want, but it’s your own fault. You are right. You left this place, and here we are living in different worlds and fighting different beasts,” Lucy interjected. She stepped closer to her sister and further from her partner, and Lark was now even closer to the strangers. “You don’t trust us? No, you don’t agree with us, and honestly, that’s fine. But hear me out…and if you go and tell the Fathers, you will have all the control and all the pieces, you can bury her, your runaway, and us and everything. And it would be wrong. Figure that out now or later, I don’t care, but it will still be wrong.”
“We have rules so you can’t be led by emotion,” Harper said, unaffected. “Orin—” she shifted her attention to the man and his daughter. Lark froze—too close to the movement of the conversation. She planted herself and tried to continue to look inconspicuous which proved easy with the mounting suspense. “I think I know why you’re here.” She made a small sound like a cough and a laugh and her chin wobbled. “You and Octavia? What? The rest of your brood isn’t in on it, too? The Fathers will be so disappointed to have a reason to put your kiddos in a nice little reasonable family unit…” she started a mean laugh and Lark stopped. She knew the insult had gone too far because the room gasped and drew back. If Lark knew the players, maybe she’d have understood the insult. Instead, she watched.
>
“Save it, Harper,” Lucy said with disgust.
Lark saw the girl’s lips move again and she strained to hear but couldn’t pick out anything but the rhythm of a nursery rhyme, something repeated in a beat.
“Save it?” Harper repeated, and Lark recognized the tremor of rage in her aunt’s face. She recognized it as her own, and she knew Harper was going to double-down. “I’ll save nothing because nothing matters. You have killed us. Your pride and your stupidity undid everything we created here. You invited an Islander into our location and kept her here in the vicinity….long enough for any tracking software she has to alert the Islands that something is out here. She has a small transponder you haven’t noticed, even if she’s good, even if she isn’t an enemy—”
“She removed her own tracking chip.”
“That’s a load of—”
“She’s from Ethan. Not the Islands, Harper. From Ethan.”
His name hit the room and silenced everyone. Even the girl stopped muttering.
When her mother decided enough time had passed for everyone to be thoroughly shocked, she added, “And she did have a chip. She operated on her dead partner, easing through his flesh until she found his chip so she could locate and pull out her own. Operated on herself on top of a broken down ambulance in the middle of a highway somewhere in the former state of Texas…”
“I don’t understand…” Harper said through a clenched jaw.
“She was born in the Bayou. And she was taken…”
“Please,” Harper replied. Her cheeks burned red. “You already told me it wasn’t—”
“Ethan sent her. And she wasn’t followed,” Lucy argued. She balled up her fists and punched them to her sides. Everyone in the room froze and stared as the frazzled matriarch of the Colony shouted at her sister. “You don’t understand what’s happening, and so you can’t possibly make a decision for our Colony based on misinformation.”
“I get,” Harper paused, sucked in a breath, “that you feel…for her. To travel all this way…with that story…” she spoke slowly, clipped and careful. “But you know how much a story is worth…”
“It’s the truth,” Lucy said.
“You couldn’t possibly know that.”
“She doesn’t care,” Grant sighed to Lucy. He ran his hand through his hair and held it there, eyes closed, worry lines between his eyes. “She’s right. She decided when she left the Colony not to trust us anymore.”
“I don’t think you understand. The truth does not have to conflict with my desire to survive,” Harper said over them all. “The Fathers could have determined her intentions and her story…all you had to do was present her and you took an oath. They took an oath. We have coexisted all this time because of those oaths, but now you’re done? Not this time? This time, you’ve got it on your own.”
Now the nursery rhyme was clear and Lark heard the girl in her gravely voice mutter, “Grant and Lucy and Lark make three. Making a New World, how will they see?”
The whispering attracted Harper, too, so swung her gaze back to her own people. She moved closer to Orin, “Tell me why you’re here.”
“I’ll take you to the girl. Lucy, Grant, and I decided it would be best to let you see her,” Orin replied with a nod. Lark felt uncomfortable by the way the stranger said her parents’ names with familiarity. She frowned. “Octavia and I been tending to the stranger. We were the ones to first identify her in the mountains. She was in bad shape…”
Harper lifted her chin to the ceiling and closed her eyes. When she lowered her head and looked at Orin, her nostrils flared. “Noble. But why didn’t you report her?”
“I don’t answer to you,” Orin replied. “Report me to the Fathers if you want some swift justice. Otherwise, I’m the only one that can lead you to her.”
“Is she at your home?” Harper asked, angry again.
“No. She’s in my cave. Up in the mountain. Twenty-four-hour hike there and back with the girl if you want her. Because, hell, we knew not to bring her too close, Sister Harper, but she’s been through a time. I haven’t wanted to move her. Octavia was tending her wounds…” he motioned back to the whispering girl.
The obvious relief on Harper’s face was clear to everyone in the room. Twelve hours away was scary but not imminently scary—from whatever was stalking their presence.
“Take me to her,” Harper said. “Twelve hours on foot? We have emergency gas ration for the rover and I bet the Fathers would vote in favor of using it to get the girl here…”
“And then what?”
“They take over the interrogation and get some answers.”
“They’ll torture her,” Grant objected.
“That is ridiculous,” Lucy said and she marched across the tiny cabin and confronted her sister face-to-face. “Don’t you see how badly I want to respect you and the Fathers and your differences then you pull some shit like this?” Tears ran down her face, but Lucy didn’t wipe them away, and she kept her voice from wavering. Wet splotches bloomed on her shirt. “I’ve done what was asked of me for fifteen years and I’m tired of being some voiceless cog in the machine. Why don’t you trust us? Answer that. Why can’t you look at me and Grant and Darla and Theo…” she laughed at the absurdity of it, “and then announce you’re off to kill a child…”
“She’s a child now?” Harper squeezed in with a laugh and Lucy nearly screamed with anger.
“She’s sixteen…”
“Is Lark a child? Is Octavia a child?” Harper asked and she threw them into the mix. Lark had been on the move and she froze, again. “They’re more than capable of lying…”
The girl named Octavia shoved her hands into her pockets.
Orin cleared his throat and stood. Octavia fell in line behind him, sure to stand so she couldn’t be seen, hands down at her sides, twitching.
“Sister Harper,” Orin said with a reverent tone. “I accepted the land and the access to the lake and its benefits as a glorious blessing…but my daughter Octavia,” he motioned behind him, “is also sixteen…”
It was hard not to compare herself to the Child of the Lake. Lark was short and sturdy, Octavia was long and lean, her body strong and muscular. Octavia directed her attention straight to Lark and stared her down, feeling the intensity swarm the room.
“…and she’s prepared to hike with you to get the girl. She’s been there and the girl knows her, trusts her. But understand…Octavia will protect her, too. She’s been taught to fight if she thinks her life is in danger.” It was a vague threat, and Harper smiled.
“Oh, so, you believe her?” Harper asked Octavia, turning on her with a look of incredulity.
“Yes,” Octavia answered plainly, unaware the question was rhetorical.
Harper tilted her head and clutched at her chest with a histrionic laugh. “Do you hear yourselves? We have procedures in place for a reason and you both took an oath…”
“We’ll bring her here and you can decide.”
“Absolutely, not. That monster in the cave stays where she is until I get a chance to ask some questions. Come on. We go now,” Harper said and she snapped at no one and started to move to the door.
“Fine, Octavia will guide you—”
“Again, no. My bike will get there in a blink.”
“The girl knows how to flee if she hears an engine,” Orin said with a stomp of his foot, his daughter jumping behind him. “Your bike won’t get to her and you won’t ever get to her then…”
“Then we ride halfway.”
That hung in the air. No one dared to make a move to draw attention to themselves.
“And I haven’t forgotten that you’re still a traitor,” Harper finally blinked, ending the standoff. The idea of Orin not falling in line with the Fathers’ plan disrupted the harmony of her idealized group, but Lark didn’t feel sorry for her aunt then—drowning in her own issues, unwilling to sacrifice any sense of rightness to her older sister. “We ride halfway.”
The Octavia gi
rl started mumbling again.
This time, Orin didn’t move or try to silence her as she repeated her rhymes and sighed and shifted on the balls of her feet, bewitched by some madness.
“You owe it to us to listen to this girl’s story. When you get there,” Lucy interjected, stepping into the fray, her arms still crossed. “Harper, I love you. I love you…but this girl… we have always fought against dogma that taught there was only one story—”
Again, Harper laughed, a condescending harrumph. “No. We account for stories. But we also created a constitution with rules in mind so this exact situation wouldn’t happen. And I’m sorry that you see me as some young, naïve, ridiculous little sister who has run off to a mystical land of bullshit…but I trust the Fathers. You have for fifteen years, too. They have kept you safe in more ways than you could ever imagine and you pay them back by inviting an enemy into our space? Because her story convinced you? I can’t—”
“Harper—”
“She had details only someone from Ethan would have…”
“You’re so weak. So easily swayed. If you really were certain, you wouldn’t hide her.”
Lark withheld a small gasp. Her mother was anything but weak.
“And that’s the impasse. Get out of my house,” Lucy said in a stern and even voice that conveyed every ounce of civility and bravery she could muster.
“With pleasure,” Harper spat. She turned to Orin. “Come on. With me.”
“I’ve offered up Octavia as your guide. That’s your option. Or go find the runaway yourself,” Orin replied. He kept his eyes on Harper, black and steely, all emotion concealed.
Harper pulled a metal box from her front pocket, pointed it at Orin, and in one swoop Orin was on the ground, wires throbbing into his thigh. An Old World weapon. Lark pushed herself against the wall and watched as he cried out and tugged the prongs free. Lark’s mouth dropped open in disbelief and she pushed herself against the wall of her family room, now wishing she could disappear. It was possible no one in the room remembered she was there at all.
“When all you have is a weapon over me, you’re not very strong,” Orin coughed and Octavia started to rush to her father’s aid, but he put up a hand and motioned for her to stop.
The Bedrock Page 14