Ruthless

by Sarah Tarkoff

  “I grew up there,” Sousa said, and it took me a minute to notice the little house in the distance, resting on a mound of dirt between the trees. I tried to imagine what it must have been like to grow up so far away from everything and everyone else.

  “Why did you leave?” I asked him.

  He tensed, gesturing to his face. “My mother was ashamed of me.”

  “She kicked you out when you became an Outcast?” I asked, shocked.

  “I was seventeen when the Revelations happened. I was homeless for a year before I finally found my way to Redenção.”

  A pang of sympathy went through me. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shook his head. “It is okay. I have done well, look. Someday, I will tell her I met with the great Prophet Grace, and she will not be ashamed of me anymore.” I saw him glancing at his old house longingly. But we continued moving past it—his estranged mother would have to wait.

  “I think she’d be proud of you,” I offered hesitantly. “Her son is very brave.”

  He shook his head, seemingly unable to accept the compliment. “For the one true prophet, I would gladly risk my life. Anyone would.” My stomach twisted, remembering all the half-truths Dawn had told him—that we were being persecuted by the other prophets for preaching on behalf of the real Great Spirit.

  Before I could say anything else, Sousa pointed up ahead. “We are not far now.”

  About ten minutes later, Sousa landed our boat on a rickety dock, and we disembarked to discover a rustic but spacious lodge—several wooden buildings nestled into the greenery on a steep mound of forest. “Looks good to me,” Dawn said in her usual, matter-of-fact way.

  Zack marveled at the scenery around us, the peaceful sounds of nature. “This is pretty cool.”

  I agreed. All we could see and hear was the wild roar of jungle. As I looked up at the towering treetops, Zack took my hand, and a rush of excitement flowed through me. Maybe exile wouldn’t be so bad after all. Immediately, I regretted that excitement, thinking of the friends we still needed to help and the strangers I’d professed to prophesize for. Though I was relieved we’d found a safe haven, I was determined to find a way to use this place as a base to help them, to rebuild the resistance. Worries nagged at the back of my mind . . . we were penned in here, on our heels, just trying to survive. How could we ever go back on the offensive, when our defenses were so flimsy?

  We’d find a way, because we had to.

  Sousa’s accommodations were less than luxurious, but we had the necessities—a fan to deflect the sticky tropical heat and mosquito nets over our beds to stave off tropical diseases. We’d brought some dry goods with us, but it quickly became obvious that we’d need to forage for additional food if we were going to subsist out here for long.

  Luckily that wouldn’t be a problem; despite his outwardly dapper and urban persona, Sousa was a jungle kid at heart. He hadn’t forgotten the skills he’d used to survive for the first seventeen years of his life. Our first night, he showed up at dinner with freshly caught fish, which we devoured ravenously. The next morning, I saw him scampering up a forty-foot tree with just his bare hands—one minute he was on the ground, the next he was at the top, gathering fruit and nuts for our lunch.

  During meals, he insisted we speak in Portuguese. “When my prophet leaves here, she should speak the language of her people.” The Outcasts of Redenção, he meant. Though I doubted very much if I’d ever leave this hideaway and actually talk to any of them, I did appreciate the distraction. Dawn and Zack took poorly to the lessons, but my high school Spanish helped me pick up the vocabulary quickly. After a few days of intensive practice, I felt quite comfortable speaking simple sentences.

  But even our Portuguese immersion wasn’t enough to take my thoughts away from the troubles of the outside world. To protect our location, we’d brought no phones, and this place had no internet, no communication lines at all. No way of finding out what might be happening to our friends. I felt safe, but trapped. Alone.

  At the end of our first week, Zack noticed I was growing antsy, and after lunch he pulled me away from the others with a comforting smile. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  There wasn’t much space to move, since the jungle was flooded all around us, but Zack and I traced a zigzag path through the trees. “I’m scared,” I admitted, finally feeling free to air my fears. “Aren’t you? Of the prophets finding us?”

  “Less scared, more frustrated,” he confided. “I was terrified before, that your mother would figure out I was protecting you. Working against Esther, that was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. Now, I just feel powerless.”

  “No one to punch,” I said, poking fun at him.

  He laughed. “I would have really enjoyed punching a prophet or two, yeah. And now . . .”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “I don’t like living in hiding. I want to get back out there, do something.”

  He shrugged. “Even in hiding, you are one of the most powerful people in the world. You just have to figure out how to use it.”

  The thought of wielding that power still left me gutted, terrified. “Yeah, easy-peasy, no problem,” I muttered. “Even if I do figure out how to use it, I don’t know if I want to. I don’t want my strength to come from lies.”

  Zack took my hand. “I’ll help you. Dawn will help you. We’ll find a way.”

  “Thanks.” His reassurances left me feeling stronger. Like I could handle anything.

  We emerged on the other side of our temporary island, at the edge of the river. “You want to go for a swim?” he teased.

  I remembered all Sousa’s warnings about what lurked beneath the surface. “With the piranhas and the giant alligators? No thanks.”

  “Come on, it’ll be fun!” He hoisted me up, playing like he was going to throw me in. “Water’s warm!”

  “Stop it!” I warned him, and he obligingly put me down. My adrenaline rushed, being so close to him, and even once I was back safely on the ground, I found myself clinging to him, not leaving his embrace. I wanted to ask him a thousand questions, to crawl inside his brain and see what things looked like through his eyes. How I looked. Did he like me, did he want me? With his confident swagger, that playful grin, I’d be a fool to think I could hold his attention for long. My eyes bored into his, like I was drilling that hole to excavate his thoughts. But he held my gaze, looking back just as fiercely, and I knew.

  After all the worry, the doubt between us, I could feel it. I knew that he cared about me, that what was between us wasn’t all in my head. Our attraction was more than skin deep—months of spending time together, even under contentious circumstances, had bonded us in a way that was unshakable.

  My heart raced with the sudden thought that everything I’d been hoping for, fantasizing about, might be about to come true. And in an instant, he was leaning in and I was leaning in and there we were in the hot, humid jungle, even hotter as he pressed against me, the warmth and sweat of his body, his lips brushing my lips.

  Zack was all mine, and suddenly, though every other piece of my life had fallen away into a heap of disaster and despair . . . one thing was going perfectly.

  5

  The next few weeks were surreal, like living in suspended animation. For all I knew, everything outside our little bubble had hit pause. I was immersed in the symphony of animal sounds that filled the air, with all the new sights and smells and tastes, and . . . Zack. Zack was everywhere, even when he wasn’t; he consumed my thoughts so completely that it felt like he was following me, his words echoing in my dreams.

  Meanwhile, actually following me everywhere: Eduardo Sousa, attempting to attend to my every need. Though I kept insisting I needed “private prophet time” to rest and reflect, he’d find me to interrupt with anything he thought might be helpful. New kinds of fruit for me to try, new Portuguese slang to teach me. Once he even appeared at my door holding a tarantula. “Do you want to pet it?” he asked in all earnestness.

  I nearly
slammed the door on him, shrieking and retreating deeper into my room. Realizing his mistake, he released the spider into the jungle and apologized profusely every time he saw me for the next several days. “Don’t worry,” I reassured him each time, worried he might be Punished for any guilt he felt. “I don’t mind. But no more spiders, please.”

  I knew why he shadowed me; that much he said outright, once a day. “I want to learn from you,” he’d tell me. “I am so blessed to spend this time with a prophet. Please, tell me all your wisdom, so I may pass it on to others.”

  I wanted to brush him off, tell him I didn’t have any wisdom, and that he certainly shouldn’t be trying to enlighten anyone else based on the random things I said. But I thought of our cause, our safety, and I tried my best to play my part. Said benign things about being good to people, anything that might sound wise. He nodded and drank in every word, and it made me feel sick. Though Dawn just listened with an amused grin, tickled by the whole thing, I could see Zack starting to feel uncomfortable, too.

  The next time Zack saw Sousa ready to ambush me, he grabbed my hand, pulled me away. “We’re going for a boat ride.”

  “Be careful,” Dawn called out, ever nervous that someone might spot me and discover our location. But I also saw a little smile on her face—though we hadn’t told Dawn a word, she’d immediately picked up on the vibe between me and Zack, and watching our budding romance seemed to be the one thing that cheered her up during our exile. It felt like we had a fan, someone rooting for us, someone else invested in seeing this relationship work.

  And I couldn’t think of any place more beautiful to get to know someone. As Zack and I rowed down the river, I was overcome by the cacophonous stillness. We couldn’t see another human anywhere—just him and me and the sound of our oars cutting through the water.

  “This was your plan, wasn’t it?” Zack teased me as our boat drifted farther into the jungle. “Recruit me to join the resistance. Put my life in danger. Strand me a million miles from civilization so you could have me all to yourself?”

  I grinned. “You figured it out.”

  For a moment we both stopped rowing, and we let our craft float. Let everything else fall away, and it was just us, looking into each other’s eyes, sharing this moment.

  “As evil plans go . . . I guess I don’t mind,” he said, reaching over to play with a wisp of my hair.

  “You wanna get stranded with me?” I asked him.

  “With you? Anytime, anywhere.” There was an easy comfort to being with him. Even in the midst of all this chaos, he made me feel safe.

  I moved over to sit next to him on the tiny wooden seat. Held him close as the boat swayed from side to side. An image of Jude flitted through my mind, wondering what his reaction to this gorgeous scene would have been. He’d always marveled at natural beauty . . . I knew he’d love it here. Did some part of me wish I were sharing this view with Jude, not Zack? The thought scampered off just as quickly as Zack leaned over and kissed me, so passionately, so perfectly, I was sure this must be a dream.

  But all dreams end, and this one was more fleeting than most. Still clutching Zack, I heard an ominous sound in the distance—the rumble of a motorboat engine. He froze, hearing it, too.

  Who is that? I mouthed to him.

  He shook his head—he didn’t know either.

  As quietly as we could, we rowed ourselves behind a thicket of trees, out of view, as the other boat chugged into our line of sight. I ducked my head, hiding my face, and Zack watched warily out of the corner of his eye.

  “Who is it?” I whispered.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Tourists maybe?”

  I snuck a glance to see a few well-dressed Brazilians idly chatting in Portuguese, gazing around the jungle. What I gleaned from their conversation did seem to be touristlike—they complained about the heat and the bugs and admired the beauty of this place. I took a deep breath in as they passed—they hadn’t seen me, so all was well.

  “We should go back,” I whispered, now nervous that Dawn’s fears might have been an omen.

  But as we returned to the dock, my stomach flip-flopped. The tourist motorboat we’d seen earlier was sitting in our spot. My usual fears rocketed to the surface—we’d been discovered. Before we could make any moves to flee, I saw Dawn emerging from our lodge, walking to the shore, waving to us. Zack and I glanced at each other, then rowed in. As I gestured to the motorboat, I could see Dawn shaking her head, her face a mix of worry and frustration.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as we disembarked.

  “Sousa has invited friends,” she said through pursed lips.

  And indeed, a few dozen of those friends streamed out of the lodge after her. Up close I could see they were fellow Outcasts, all of whom stared, disbelieving, when they got close enough to recognize me. “Prophet Grace!” they called out, running to the dock, clustering around me. One look at Dawn’s face made the problem clear. Our location was compromised.

  6

  Though I knew I should play my part and humor these strangers with my prophetlike words, I was too worried. I pushed past them, looking for Eduardo Sousa, eventually finding him in the dining hall, preparing our next meal. “What’s going on? Who are all those people?” I asked. Dawn and Zack trailed behind me, listening in on our conversation.

  Sousa seemed confused. “They are my friends. And your most loyal followers.”

  “And you invited them here?” I was done trying to hide my anger. “While everyone’s searching for us, when our lives are over if word gets out about where we are?”

  “These are people we can trust, and this is my home,” Sousa said defensively, looking to Dawn and Zack. He was clearly horrified to have angered a prophet.

  “We can’t trust anyone right now,” I said, trying to keep my tone as calm as possible.

  Sousa considered me carefully. “You are a prophet, but you do not want to see any people? Talk to anyone? What good is it to speak directly to Great Spirit if you keep all your wisdom to yourself?”

  Though I was still furious, I knew what he was getting at. From his perspective, I was a pretty useless prophet. All the platitudes I’d been spouting couldn’t have been very inspiring. If he was starting to lose faith in me, even just a little, maybe this was his gambit to prove to himself that I wasn’t so useless after all: forcing me into an impromptu sermon.

  I wasn’t happy about it, but I knew our options were limited. “Take all their phones,” I told him. “Anything they can use to communicate with the outside world.”

  “Already done,” he said, proud to have anticipated my request. “I met them on the water, and I confiscated all electronics before they arrived.” A bit of relief went through me.

  “Good. No one leaves unless we say so,” Zack piped in from afar, and I nodded my agreement.

  This stipulation left Eduardo less happy, but he acquiesced. “Fine.”

  He left the room to pass on this new information, leaving the three of us alone.

  “I guess he isn’t so trustworthy after all,” Dawn muttered.

  I shook my head. “Like you said, we’re out of people we can trust. People we can manipulate are our next best option.” As terrible as that made me feel, I knew our survival depended on it. And I hoped I’d turn out to be any good at it.

  Eduardo passed on our new edict with as much gusto as he could muster, and everyone nodded along, their faith still strong. My stomach sank, realizing that helping to nurture that misplaced faith was the only thing that could truly keep us safe. I took a deep breath and stepped over to meet this crowd of strangers, who fell silent as I approached.

  “Prophet Grace,” Sousa said nervously. “These are some of the most respected members of the Redenção community. Julianna is a fashion designer, whose clothes are the height of Outcast fashion.” The woman he gestured to was dressed in an avant-garde style, a tunic clearly designed to hide her Outcast imperfections, disguising her neck and half her face. Sousa then tur
ned to a pale man, who struggled to support his larger frame on his spindly legs. “Felipe is one of the best chefs in the world; he owns restaurants and nightclubs all over the city.”

  As Sousa spoke, I found myself growing frustrated by his motives. He simply wanted to show off a prophet to his famous friends. To ease the insecurities of being cast aside by his own family, he sought validation from anyone who would make him feel important and accepted.

  Julianna, the designer, stepped forward holding a shopping bag. “From my newest collection. I can take your measurements, adjust it to the correct size.”

  “Thank you,” I said politely, taking the gift. “And I appreciate that you came all this way just to see me. But I have to warn you, as I’m sure Eduardo has already mentioned, just how important it is not to give away our location.”

  Everyone nodded along, as I repeated my speech in the bit of halted Portuguese I’d learned—helped out along the way by Sousa correcting my grammar.

  Just as I thought I’d found a way to wrap up, Dawn stepped forward, interjecting. “I’m Dawn, a guru of Prophet Grace,” she explained, giving herself the highest possible nonprophet designation. While it annoyed me to have her take on that role without consulting me, I knew that giving Dawn authority and credibility was important, so I nodded along.

  The crowd turned to Dawn, excited to realize they were in the presence of a second important figure, as she continued in a menacing voice, “If you do reveal our location, even inadvertently, you will face a Punishment more horrible than death.”

  My breath caught in my throat as she issued this blistering proclamation on my behalf. Since Punishments were caused by feeling guilty, and threats of Punishment made people feel guilty, those threats were tantamount to death warrants. But I couldn’t contradict Dawn, not now that she’d given herself guru status.