Than living a laborious life. Like me.
I shrug at him. I loved my job and I’m definitely glad that I never passed any test that said I should be in school. He doesn’t look any happier for it.
Mykal rubs at his eyes with a rough hand. “I won’t be worshipping you if that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want,” Court says firmly, arms falling to his sides. “And I want you standing next to me.”
Mykal nods over and over. “I’ll always be next to you.”
Court’s silent, hot tears scald his cheeks. I feel each one slip down his jaw, like they could easily be my own. Then he swipes them away and takes a few rigid steps back toward the building. “We all need sleep before tomorrow, so don’t stay up too late.”
Before he turns his back to us completely, I shout, “Wait!”
Court hesitates, staring off at the snowy road beyond us, and then slightly rotates his head to me.
I haven’t said anything to him yet and only one word bites at me. One word that I remember to use now and again.
I smile a tearful smile and say, “Thank you.” What he shared was no small feat. I see that.
I feel that.
His nose flares, stifling emotion. Then his gray eyes ping between Mykal and me, and in the hollow of the night, he whispers, “May the gods be in your spirit.”
Mykal and I both smile and together, we say, “And I in your heart.”
PART
Two
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
—DYLAN THOMAS
FIFTEEN
Court
“Give it to me.” Franny wags her fingers heatedly at my pocket. Her scowl could kill someone on their deathday.
The three of us just spent four unbearably silent hours squeezed in the backseat of a Purple Coach, the car bumping along an icy stretch of road to Yamafort. As we rode into Bartholo’s large neighboring city, our silence drew my gaze to the window.
And there it was.
An affluent, ice-covered city made of blanched stone and elaborate crown molding. One that contains my forgotten name and a childhood that I touch sparsely and sporadically.
Welcome home, I thought and then hung my head.
I prefer the muted blue and gray cobblestone of Bartholo and its rust-colored brick buildings. In Yamafort, the stark white skyscraping opulence is almost painful to the eye, and when the sun radiates behind layers of lilac smoke, the whole city is swathed in purple.
After the driver dropped us off a few blocks from Altia’s Museum of Natural Histories & Figures, I convinced myself of a miserable idea. That an enraged Franny Bluecastle would remain in that car and ride far, far away from me.
I was wrong.
The Purple Coach peels down the road, joining a jagged line of vehicles—and Franny is right beside us. Fuming in place.
Still waving her hand at my coat pocket. Anger crosses her black brows and pinches her lips, and I don’t have to be a Wonder to know that I’m the cause.
“Give. It. To. Me.” Franny snaps her fingers at my coat. “Or I’ll take it myself.”
I raise my brows. “You don’t steal.” Which is why I dig in my wool pocket.
“There’s a first for everything,” she refutes beneath her breath.
“Not that,” Mykal interjects. Cramped from the car ride, he stretches his muscular arms a few feet from us. He said he’d let me smooth this out with Franny on my own, but he can’t hold his tongue for long.
I open my russet wallet.
And I crave to just hurry. To the museum. To the end where we all survive … or where we all die.
The sole of Franny’s boot taps the cement sidewalk repeatedly. Waiting. An hour to spare. We have time. My shoulders tense, no pressure releasing.
While I flip through my wallet, men and women dressed in typical Altia fashion—dark wools that kiss the snow, many jewels, leather handbags, fur mittens and shawls—saunter up and down the sidewalk and tend to their own business as though wearing blinders, not seeing us.
Purple Coaches idle against the left curb, and to the right, winter-clad bodies slip into a Bank Hall and Mortimack’s Sandwiches. Lilac smoke billows out of each chimney stack.
I swing my head away from the shops. My older brother and I would often bring Illian to Mortimack’s. The storeowner knew his order by heart: lamb on wheat with goat cheese and chives.
Don’t think about them.
I extract my blue card. “I would’ve given my identification to you in the car.”
“I couldn’t stand to speak to you, let alone touch something of yours.” She tries to pluck the card from my fingers, but I retract.
“But now you can?” I ask, bite to my voice.
“I don’t want to, but I need to.” Franny huffs. “I can’t believe you decided to tell me right before we climbed in the fyk … car…” She trails off, glances over her shoulder, and lowers her voice. “Just give me your card so I can see the truth for myself.”
I hold the card out. “You can sense when I lie.”
She seizes my identification. “I want proof of your truths.” Eyes narrowing, she searches the card for my name.
For weeks, I constructed her reaction in my head to “I’m an Icecastle, Franny.” I said those exact words before we left Bartholo.
Yesterday she thanked me for opening up about my past profession, but with this news, I prepared for her to grow ill. To curse me. To shove me.
I’ve tried to keep Franny at a distance. She’s just common. That’s all she is. Maybe not knowing Franny will be less painful when she rejects me. As her lungs expand and contract indignantly, I restrain the urge to touch my abdomen. I sense the heat of her anger.
I sense her hurt.
And I can stand here and say that I kept Franny Bluecastle at a distance, but I didn’t. Not entirely. Because I know her.
I know that riled girl. Her radiant and unfailing morality burns eternally bright inside of me. When she boils at the sight of cruelty and unkindness, I boil. Part of me has grown callous toward indecencies, so to feel my heart ignite again—I am more and more alive.
But then, I take a breath, and I remember.
I am what she despises.
My soul is at war and I would rather not care what she thinks. She’s just common.
That’s all she is.
“Say something,” I breathe, her glare scorching holes in my card.
“At least you aren’t a thief.” She must recall my other explanation. I told them the truth of how I landed in Vorkter.
I can’t touch the memory again, but I was glad to finally share the story with Mykal. He said that it made no difference to him, but his shock coiled through me for two hours straight.
“I’m still a thief.” I push my dark brown hair out of my eyes.
“Not grand theft though.” She tries to justify my immorality to herself. “Which is a capital punishment.”
Capital punishment is just the polite way of saying “sent to Vorkter” where most will live until their deathday arrives. Those freed before their deathday are rare and few.
I dip my head and say quietly, “I’m a criminal, Franny. Accept it or move on.” I gesture to the long street, my jaw locking.
Mykal shakes his head at me and mouths, Stop it.
I’d rather her like the ass that I am than love the god that I am not.
She flips the card between her fingers. “I accept that you’re the most complicated, cold boy I’ve ever known.” Quickly, she adds, “But do you really think StarDust will accept you? You couldn’t find anyone to change your identification?”
I stiffen, surprised at what she homes in on. “It’s um…” I rub my lips. “Removing an Icecastle surname from a card is a capital punishment. No one was willing.”
Whipping away from us, Franny marches to an empty Purple Coach—and then crouches by the chained tire.
Without pause, she scrapes my identification across the sharp iron spikes
. Scratching my last name. As the wind howls and sky darkens, a storm gathering overhead, I can excuse the damage by citing a blizzard as the cause.
“Looks like she’s more resourceful than you,” Mykal says with a crooked smile and we both sidle near Franny with leather travel satchels in hand. Towering above, we block her frame from anyone’s sight.
I have no response to Mykal. Since his words are true.
Dense snow begins to pour down and settle on the collar of my black coat, on Franny’s sleek, center-parted hair, and on Mykal’s refined green wool. No crude patchwork of animal skins. My friend has even donned a suit beneath his proper coat. Polished and clean.
It’s harder on the eyes than I imagined it’d be.
Mykal lifts his hood and studies the dimmed lilac clouds, sky rumbling. “Sounds like a nasty blizzard.”
I tighten my gloves and stare off at the stark white stone. When I was just a boy, my older brother would wait outside of an extravagant apartment building with me. Eight-pointed stars and winter hares were etched finely in stone window frames. We lived on the twelfth floor and each morning we would exit those revolving glass doors, reach the shoveled sidewalk, and stand beneath an overhang. A pristine scarlet mat beneath our buffed boots.
We would wait for a Purple Coach to drive us to school. My older brother, Kinden, always hugged his arms and repeated the same exact phrase.
Every morning.
Every time.
“Cold is a monster.”
In the Free Lands, I often thought that Kinden was right. Cold is a monster. It clawed down my spine; it gutted and knifed me, slashed through my body little by little.
Today, covered with rich fabrics and expensive leather, it can’t reach me. I try to take comfort in this fact, but other miseries cling too hard.
“Hurry,” I tell Franny, my tone sharper than I intend.
She shoots a darker scowl, then rises and returns my identification to me.
While I lead them to the museum, I examine the card, my first name perfectly intact and legible. She could’ve easily carved Court away, but she let me keep that part of me.
I have three names. Three lives: before, during, and after Vorkter. I have shed myself too many times to count and put on new clothes, new layers. I am a jumbled mess of who I should be and who I want to be and who I am.
* * *
The Museum of Natural Histories & Figures hasn’t changed since I last visited for a school field trip. We enter the rotunda where vaulted ivory ceilings broaden the spotless area. Our boots, along with many others, clank the glossy marble floors.
Throughout many, many years, the museum has kept the same glass display in the middle: a taxidermy crocodile with bared teeth, set on fake flora and a murky river. Mykal scrutinizes the display, then me, clarity in his blue eyes.
The tattoo that I had covered across my back—it was a replica of that exact crocodile.
I walk farther inside and unconsciously canvass the walls, most decorated with pieces of old fighter jets, black helmets from wars I’ve never seen, and classic art salvaged from eras with no names.
I don’t want to travel down these memories where I’ll trip and fall flat on my face. We’re here for one reason only.
While Franny and Mykal peruse the lobby, I watch a cluster of Influentials in fur-lined coats meander down one of five hallways, flyers in hand. Their voices rebound.
“Maybe it’s this way.”
“What if the location was misprinted?”
“The date could be wrong.”
I crack my knuckles to trounce my nerves. Since the hallways lead to exhibits of extinct creatures—Reptiles & Amphibians, Arachnids & Domestic Pets, The Great Deserts, Tropical Specimens, and Warm Oceans—I doubt that’s the right direction.
Every so often, two or three more young and old Influentials push through the revolving doors, carrying travel satchels and inquiries that no one answers.
Two fashionable fiftysomething women strut ahead of us, hand in hand. The couple takes a seat at a wooden bench. Right next to an empty podium for collecting tickets.
“Are we supposed to be standing around doing nothing?” Mykal removes his green coat and carefully folds the fabric over his arm. Just how I showed him. His tailor-made black three-piece suit fits the muscular contours of his broad build, but his harsh features and hard-hearted eyes contrast with the finery.
“We’re waiting,” I say. “Some more patiently than others.”
“Heya, I’m patient.” He fiddles with his cuff links and rambles about how patience came naturally to him, and I just haven’t opened my eyes enough to see it. Shorter than me, his shoulder rests slightly lower, but he still props his arm on mine.
I nearly smile, too fleeting, and then I lean my head down to him, whispering, “Will you ever shut up?”
“Will you ever be growing a better sense of humor?” He searches his pocket—I search his pocket. My hand might as well be fumbling around in his empty slacks. No dry root. No cigarette. His heavy sigh fills my lungs.
A few feet ahead of us, Franny ogles the ceiling’s intricate oil painting, a visual dedication to the God of Wonders. “Maybe the welcome station is on the second or third floor?”
“No, this is the main entrance,” I say. Last I remember, the second and third floor change annually, most likely showcasing the history of deathday marks.
In 2420, every citizen had to ink their deathday below their right ear, which led to a divide in classes. Subsequently, the terms Influentials, Fast-Trackers, and Babes were formed. The Law of Deathday Marks caused uprisings and rebellions that threatened the established presidencies, but with the Great Freeze of 2501, the need for peace and unity became necessary. So a little over a thousand years ago, the four presidents abolished the law, helping mend bridges between those who’d die old and those who’d die young.
“Just remember, times could be worse,” my father used to say.
Times could be worse. I believed it, and then I dodged my deathday—and I wasn’t sure of anything that I’d been told.
Elevator doors suddenly ping open. I stand at rigid attention.
A short, lively female is inside the leaf-wallpapered compartment; her strawberry-printed sundress and golden jacket contrasts with her smooth brown complexion.
“So many of you!” she exclaims, causing people to assess one another. There are about forty of us lingering in the rotunda. “I apologize dearly for being held up. I was assisting a much smaller group before you.”
Shuffling out of the elevator, she secures her brunette hair with two pencils, clipboard tucked beneath her arm. “If you’ll form a line, please.”
Everyone rushes toward the podium, squeezing and bumping to be first. We don’t have to be first—in fact, I don’t want to draw that much attention. So I clutch Mykal’s shoulder to keep him from shoving his way to the front.
Somehow Franny has been pushed far ahead in line and she hugs her leather satchel protectively to her chest, as though someone will steal it. Glancing back and forth, she locks eyes with me.
Before I can mouth a word, she makes up her own mind and snakes her way back to us.
“Everyone’s talking over one another!” Franny shouts over the chatter and slips behind our builds. “I can’t even hear the woman—”
I smother a wince.
Franny truly winces.
Someone just elbowed her in the lower back and she staggers forward. Mykal catches her waist before she barrels into him.
“You cut in front of me!” A little rosy-cheeked girl in pigtails and a fur hat perches her hands on her hips. She’s unattended by a parent since she’s probably ten years of age.
Franny glowers. “So you thought you’d punch me?”
“I tapped you. Don’t be a baby.”
Franny’s mouth drops and her accusatory gaze drills into me like, You said Influentials are proper, not insulting.
They can be both.
I wedge myself between a ve
xed Franny and the little girl. “She didn’t cut you,” I say bitterly. “She was far ahead of you, so you’re not waiting any longer than you were.”
She tilts her nose up and averts her eyes.
I roll mine. I hate this city.
“Can you all hear me in the back?!” Behind the podium, the woman cranes her neck and Influentials begin to hush and nod repeatedly. At the very head of the line, the fashionable couple stands perfectly straight.
“Good, well then”—she clears her throat and adjusts her clipboard—“I’m Amelda Hobblecastle as said so by my…” She flashes the pinned nametag on her sundress. “I assume you’re here for the StarDust enrollment. When you reach my podium, I’ll need five thousand bills apiece and then your identification. The majority of you will be turned away, our spots are limited, and you’re to leave at once.”
I watch how quickly that becomes true. Amelda snatches ten thousand bills from both of the women, hardly examines their identification, and then says, “I apologize, but you’re not qualified.”
Qualified?
What other qualifications are there?
As the line continues to shorten and we move forward, no one truly speaks except those at the podium. Only two young girls have been enrolled, maybe twelve or thirteen years of age. They’re given directions to wait on a bench in the rotunda.
Mykal continuously grinds his teeth, so much so that my head pounds. A second later, Franny nudges his arm so he’ll stop. He nudges back and they nearly start pushing and shoving in jest.
When he ruffles her hair, I pinch my eyes and then whisper, “Stop.”
Their arms fall to their sides and the bottom of their stomachs drop.
I have to be this way, I remind myself.
“I’m sorry, sir, you’re not qualified,” Amelda tells a man of thirtysomething years, trimmed stubble along his fair-skinned face.
“And why not?” He refuses to budge and yanks at the sleeves of his trench coat.
Amelda recites, “To preserve the integrity and confidentiality of StarDust, you would have to be enrolled to know why. I apologize, Mr. Frycastle—”
The Raging Ones Page 16