I can say one thing for certain; I’m not going to feel a damn bit of remorse when I go take my people back from the thieving blackcoat oppressors.
Sleep comes easy and without fear.
9
For the first time in ages, I don’t dream of Nurse and the needle. I dream of a roaring fire under a clear night sky. I can see stars. I can see Big Pot and Little Pot. The Bear and The Cub. Heaven’s Angel and Warrior Man. I know I’m dreaming but how long has it been since I’ve seen this back in the real world?
It feels like it’s been raining for most of my life, but in reality, it’s only been a year, I think. None of the Elders could guess why it happened; their only reasoning was that an angel had angered God, and now God was wringing every last tear from the offender.
I know it wasn’t true when they said these things. Some of the more sensible Elders would whisper tales of man performing what they called “experiments,” and, “abominations against humanity.” I could hardly gather what any of this meant, but it seemed possible, and even more so now. Given what I learned from Finn about the history of the Kinders—supposing he was telling the truth—then it’s easier to believe that men in white coats could pull levers and change the weather.
If they can create superhumans with a little bit of blue juice, then wouldn’t they be advanced enough to control other aspects of Mother Nature, too?
I can’t quite tell if this is a discussion I’m having with myself in my head or if it’s a part of the dream. I hear voices. Wait, yes, voices saying my words. I look away from the stars, back to the crackling fire, and I see everyone I’ve ever loved, cared about, and lost sitting around the outer stones, cross-legged, as they warm their hands over the dancing flames.
I see Grandfather and Grandmother, Ellery, James, Squirrel, and Marla, Brandon, too. Even Rawley, the Republicon who was hanged by Crockett and her men a month ago during our retreat sits with a smile. Mosley is here, and I wonder if it means he’s dead. My stomach wilts at the thought. There’s also Ellie, the blonde-haired soldier girl who was so excited to fight for her freedom. The other Republicons are here as well. Can’t forget about them.
More and more people arrive and sit down around the campfire. We scoot together to make room. It’s strange, because the fire doesn’t look so big, but there must be twenty people here beside me now, if not more. Elders that passed away when I was a child. There’s Clayburn, the man who was General Chief of the encampment before that idiot Hawkins took over. Libby One-Eye, who fell down into a ravine when I was six. Dane, the man who had a two-headed chicken for a pet. He died of the same illness Grandmother had so, so long ago.
Spirits, every one of them—all dead and gone. Some of them are buried. Some aren’t.
If they’ve all passed away and gone to the Great Beyond, up to Heaven, then…why am I here?
Am I seeing the future of my afterlife? Are my prophetic dreams trying to tell me something?
Quickly, I glanced down at my hands. They’re my today-hands, not the hands of a woman decades older. They’re hardened from the elements, from work, and from life in the forest. I see dirt underneath the fingernails and the scratch on the back of my hand from this morning. I’m wearing the same clothes.
The me of my dreams is dead now, or soon enough that the small wound on my hand hasn’t had time to heal yet. It’s not the me of the future, that’s for certain.
I… I don’t know how I feel about this. Scared that I might die soon? Happy that everyone I care about will be there waiting on me? Smiling, singing, holding hands next to the warmth of a fire, underneath starry skies?
That’s a good thing, isn’t it?
It would be if I were ready to go.
Just like the dream of Ellery, and the dream of Nurse, and the prophetic dream of a field soaked in blood, if this is real, if I’m meant to die soon, then I can only pray that it happens after I’ve freed my people.
What if… Would one of them know?
I tap Grandfather on the shoulder. He turns to me with his loving smile. It’s so wonderful to see again. He asks, “Yes, sweetheart?”
“Am I dead? Or… Will I be soon?”
His head rocks back with a quizzical look on his face, as if I’ve asked him a ridiculous question, like, “What color is the sky?” He giggles—the way he always did, too high pitched for such a manly man—and shakes his head. “Sometimes I forget that this isn’t easy for people to understand. No, sweetheart. You’re not dead. Not yet, anyway.”
“I’m not? But soon, maybe? I’m here with all of you, and you’re all gone.”
“No, no, it’s not like that. I don’t know if you’ll die any more than you know if it’ll stop raining tomorrow.”
I shrug. “It won’t, and everybody dies eventually.”
“Quite true, yes.” Grandfather pulls his legs up to his chest and crosses his arms across the tops of his knees. This is how I wanted to remember him. Calm, confident, and knowledgeable, the way he always was while I grew up playing Catch the Rabbit and learning how to set snares for curious squirrels. I’ve wanted to remember him like this, as he should be, instead of the sack of bones lying on the floor of our shack with a fever so high his skin should be on fire. Like this, instead of croaking and wheezing through a chest filled with illness.
This is my Grandfather. This is the man I knew.
He says, “Caroline, you didn’t come to see us. Not here, not in the way you think. We came to visit you.”
“Oh?” As this escapes my mouth, I realize that everyone who has gathered around the campfire has gone silent. The spirits of my past sit and listen to Grandfather speak, eyes watery, grins creeping into the corners of their mouths.
“We came to wish you well. You’ve come a long way. Tens upon tens of thousands of footsteps and your journey is nearly coming to an end.”
“The journey, yes,” James says, holding up a finger, “but not the war.” He winks and strokes his beard.
Grandfather sighs. “I wish we all had something to tell you. Some big secret to help you win the fight to come, but it’s not that easy, honey. One person, or a tribe, or a nation, they might come out victorious, really, but nobody ever really wins a war outright. There are always casualties and losses and destruction. Families torn apart, lives wrenched completely away from the paths they were meant to be on. No matter how many times a winner raises his flag in victory, somebody, somewhere, on his side, has lost something. It’s a shame that wars have to be fought with weapons, isn’t it? The problem is, and it’s the same problem that man has failed to correct for thousands of years… Wounds solve disputes faster than words. It’s a sad fact of life. It’s a horrible, horrible thing, Caroline, but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t right a wrong with handing the other side a good, solid asskicking. Sometimes, the bastards deserve it.”
The party around me, who had been listening intently to everything he has to say, laughs loudly and lifts each of their fists into the air.
“What’s war good for?” Grandfather asks. Not to me, but to anyone listening. We all know he already has an answer prepared, so we remain silent. He leans closer to the fire so everyone can see his face. “War is good for one thing: teaching the bad guys a lesson. My home, my land, my people, my rules, my laws, my happiness…my life. Go back to where you came from, and don’t you ever, ever let me catch you with your feet on my soil again, and, while we’re at it, play a little nicer with your own people, because I’ll be watching.”
I ask him, “And who’s going to do the teaching, Grandfather?”
His eyes get an excited, crazy look to them. A wild grin reveals fine white teeth he’d lost decades ago. He answers, “You are.” He pushes himself to his feet. The glowing flicker of flames casts an orange glow up his entire body, all the way to his long white hair. “Maybe war is bad, but somebody has to fight the battles. Our someone is Caroline. Long live Caroline. Long live Caroline. Long live Caroline!”
In a way, the dream feels good. It gives me hope.
There are many sides to a war, more often they’re bad than good, but like Grandfather says, “Somebody has to fight the battles.”
Somebody has to teach the bad guys a lesson.
I can only pray that this isn’t false hope.
I open my eyes to the soft droplets of rain that manage to squeeze through the weeping willow branches. It’s evening; I can tell by the position of the sun pushing through the western clouds. The rain is lighter for the time being, yet still it falls. Foolishly, I had awoken with the idea that the downpours had stopped, as they had in my dream with Grandfather and all the spirits of my life.
Of course I wouldn’t be that lucky.
I feel refreshed. The best I’ve felt in weeks. Hours have passed and whether my body is shored up by the hope-filled dream, or if it’s merely because I got the rest it required, I’m ready to do Grandfather’s bidding. I’m ready to fight the war ahead.
I roll onto my side, intending to say thank you to the man who raised me, the man who taught me to become the young woman that I am, and something catches my eye that’s so unexpected, I shove backward and feel my hands slip in gooey mud.
The sunset-colored blossom of a honeysuckle flower lies on the soil of Grandfather’s grave. While they grow here in the north, I haven’t seen any around the lake in almost two years. The last collection of them I came across was three miles to the south last summer. How’d it get here? Who left it?
I had been sleeping with the two hatchets and the shovel by my side, and now, I grab one hatchet to attack with, and the shovel to defend with. I would prefer a slingshot or a bow and arrow so that I could defend myself from a distance.
Stop, I tell myself. Breathe for a second. You were asleep. They could’ve killed you if they wanted to. You would’ve been easy prey.
I spin in circles, holding my weapons out, waiting for someone to approach and attack. It only takes a few retreating steps to hide behind the wide trunk of the weeping willow. No sense in being out in the open if someone wants to try their luck with an arrow.
I wait and I watch. I try to keep the rhythm of my breathing under control.
I should go. It can’t be a fluke.
But which direction? What if the intruder is back the way you came?
You know how to get to Blackvale from here. Go straight over the Ridge!
Mother and Father will need—
A small voice calls down from the branches of the weeping willow. “I liked your grandfather. He was always nice to my family.”
My eyes flash upward to see a young girl, maybe seven years old, clinging to the trunk about a third of the way up. It’s Merrin, Brandon’s cousin.
“Merrin! You scared me to death. What’re you doing up there—here? Alive?”
“Hi, Caroline.”
“Come down. My gosh, come down, please.” I’m so thrilled that it’s not someone else who wants to kill me, but rather someone whom I’m familiar with and known for her entire life. I can’t believe it. My heart is overflowing.
She wriggles around to the western side of the tree and slowly works her way down, limb by limb, gently feeling out a foothold on the slippery bark.
I’m dumbfounded. She’s seven. “How did you survive here for so long by yourself?” I ask.
“There was food in the General Chief’s house.”
“And you ate it? That’s how you made it?”
“Yeah,” she says, shrugging. “But, I didn’t eat all of it.”
10
Food, food, glorious food. The kind you don’t have to chase. The kind you don’t have to die for. The kind that fills your belly until you’re absolutely to the point of bursting your stomach.
If I weren’t so full, I’d dance.
As if I didn’t hate General Chief Hawkins enough already, the fact that he was hoarding all of this while the people in our encampment fought for scraps, well, let’s just say that he deserves his special place at the right hand of the Devil.
His basement, which I seem to remember being a point of much discussion about ten years ago, is chock full of boxes of cured meats and dried fruit in tightly sealed packaging.
The fires set by the DAV destroyed most of his house, but the flooring stayed solid. Somehow it survived, and somehow it concealed what lay hidden underneath. I’m guessing that the blackcoats started the fire and didn’t stick around to search through the rubble, because if they had, none of this would’ve been left behind.
I belch, pat my tummy, and pick up another package to see what the tiny print says.
I’ve never seen most of these things; I’ve heard of them but thought I would never get a chance to try them. Silver bags give off a puff of air when I rip open a package of dried bananas. The same happens with apples and apricots. The dried beef says it’s flavored with spices and pepper; again, all things that the Elders have mentioned but haven’t seen for a hundred years. Elder Caller had this ancient binding of something she called a “cookbook” and we all thought the idea was ridiculous, because who puts that much effort into eating when all you need to do is build a good fire and make sure it’s cooked thoroughly?
Although, I do remember that the children had hours of fun flipping through the delicate pages, looking at the pictures of things called spaghetti and meatballs, grilled salmon with rosemary, along with sweet and sour chicken from a place called China.
I’ve gorged myself to the point of having food fall out of me if I bend over, but I shove another dried banana chip in my mouth and ask, “Where did all this come from, Merrin?”
“You mean how did it get here?”
“Yeah, and how’d you know it was down here?”
She averts her eyes, sheepish and ashamed. “Papa made me swear not to tell.”
We had called her father Whitebeard for so long, I don’t recall what his real name was. He’d never achieved Elder status, mostly because he was constantly drunk off of sour mash and some of the better quality corn whiskey when we were able to make it.
“Your daddy’s gone now, though, right?” I try to say this as gently as possible.
She nods.
“Then I’m sure he won’t mind.”
Physically, Merrin looks good, healthy, but I don’t know how well she’s doing mentally with all of that death and destruction outside in the encampment. She seems fine, and I guess you could pass it off as the strength of children. I’m not too far from being one myself.
Children are brave because they don’t know enough to be afraid.
Merrin glances around the basement, as if someone might overhear, and whispers, “Okay, but you gotta promise not to tell.” She puts her finger to her lips and softly shushes me.
“Cross my heart,” I say. I watch her work the information around inside her head. It’s almost as if she’s mentally chewing it. Her dark brunette hair is unwashed to the point of being shiny. It’s greasy, stringy, and tangled. Poor thing. I’d love to take a brush to it. In simpler times, maybe, but now survival outweighs a couple of knots.
“Papa would go down south,” she says, holding her arms out like she’s carrying something. “And then he would bring back these big, big boxes full of all kinds of these things. Mr. Hawkins always let him keep a couple for his troubles.”
“Huh,” I grunt. “So that’s how you guys always had so much dried meat to trade. Did he ever keep any of this other stuff, like the bananas or the other dried fruits?”
“Sometimes. But we always had to keep the secret. He said if we ever told, we’d never get ‘em again. He said we could only trade the meat so we could keep getting the sweet things. I liked it better, anyway.”
I grin and poke her tummy. “You little rascal. How come you never shared with me? I can keep a secret, can’t I?”
She shrugs. “Papa said not to tell.”
“Well, then, you’re a good girl. Good for you for keeping your daddy’s secrets.”
Whitebeard must have been pretty smart about the situation. If I recall correct
ly, it seemed to me like he would only trade things out in The Center that people wouldn’t get suspicious over, like the cured meats and buckets of corn. If he had started bringing around bags of dried bananas and apricots, everyone in the encampment would’ve been full of questions he wouldn’t want to answer, at least not under the eyes of the General Chief, not if he wanted to keep his family in food.
I don’t bother asking Merrin about where the food came from and what it was meant for. She wouldn’t know that. My best guess is, Hawkins was intercepting supplies that were supposed to belong to the whole encampment. Instead, Whitebeard never went on these “hunting” expeditions like he claimed. He was the delivery man and got a few bits of scraps tossed his way for his efforts.
Whatever. That’s a time long past and what people did or didn’t do for the betterment of the camp doesn’t matter a single bit. Not now. I never found out what happened to Hawkins, and I’m sure he’s dead, gone, and got what he deserved, but Whitebeard, well, his body is out there leaning up against a shed with a hole in his forehead. I saw him while we were walking in here.
I can’t blame him for wanting better for his family. Times being what they were, I probably would’ve done the same thing for Grandfather and me.
Merrin stares at her fingers, fiddling with them in her lap. “Caroline?”
I’m full and sleepy. “Yeah?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“For what?”
“The food. We should’ve shared. I wanted to, but Papa said…”
I reach over and take her hand. I squeeze it gently and then pat the sack of potatoes that I’m using for a pillow. She climbs up beside me and lays her head down. “I can’t be mad at you, silly. You did what you had to do, and we’re going to be doing a lot more of that in the next few days.”
It’s then that I realize, Oh my God, I’ll have to take care of her.
At least until I can—until you can what? Her parents are dead. If she stays, she might die out here by herself before long. If she goes, she’ll grow up a slave, won’t she?
The Light of Hope Page 7