Children of Refuge

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “You know this Cana?” Kiandra asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “Back in Fredtown, everybody knew everybody. It wasn’t like Ref City, where people just pass each other on the street. Or Cursed Town, where . . .”

  “Where people fight,” Kiandra finished for me.

  I had to look away. I let myself think about Fredtown, about all the community events there: the endless school programs and the potluck suppers and the group birthday parties that occurred once a month, celebrating everybody born in March, everyone born in April, and so on. I’d probably started whining, Do I have to go? to my Fred-parents way back when I was a toddler. I hated all those community events. But now . . .

  Was it possible that I missed even that aspect of Fredtown now?

  I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again.

  “Cana was the smartest of all the little kids in Fredtown,” I told Kiandra. “Sometimes she figured out things I couldn’t.”

  Things . . . and people, I thought.

  Cana had been the one who’d told me Rosi was just as upset as I was about going back to our real parents and their hometown—to Cursed Town. Because all I’d seen was Rosi doing what the Freds wanted her to. Just like she always did. But Cana had brushed her little curls out of her face and whispered, No, Rosi’s sad and worried. She just doesn’t want anyone to see her cry. . . .

  “Maybe it’s genetic,” Kiandra said, and I had to snap my attention back to remembering she was talking about Cana, not Rosi. “Maybe her mother’s really smart too, and she knows exactly what she’s doing, playing out some story for the interrogator.”

  “Yes, my daughter Cana is five,” Drusa was telling the interrogator. “So?”

  “You expect me to believe that humans are such vile creatures that a twelve-year-old girl would take a five-year-old girl hostage?” the interrogator asked.

  Drusa lowered her head and narrowed her eyes at him.

  “You are sitting in Cursed Town, the scene of a massacre so horrible that twelve years ago alien creatures had to intervene to stop it,” Drusa said. “And now you are here to stop the warfare that started today. And you have to ask if humans are vile creatures?”

  “Whose side is she on?” Kiandra asked.

  “There were rumors flying that the Alvaran girl had escaped from prison,” Drusa said. “I went to their house to warn her parents that they couldn’t expect any help from anyone in the neighborhood if they tried to hide her. But when I stepped through the frot door, the girl was already there. The patroller arrived a moment later, and when he tried to capture the girl, she grabbed my daughter Cana and held her body like a shield, to keep the patroller from attacking.”

  “That would be . . . against our protocol,” the interrogator said.

  “Wait—does he mean it would be against their protocol to attack someone with a five-year-old hostage, or against their protocol to care?” Kiandra asked.

  I didn’t know, so I didn’t answer.

  Drusa let out a sob.

  “Please find my little girl,” she said. “Please bring her back to me.”

  “You have to help us,” the interrogator said. “Tell us everything you know about this Rosi. Even if you never met her except when she kidnapped your daughter, you must have heard lots of rumors about her in your town.”

  “Oh, but I did meet her before tonight!” Drusa said, reaching across the table as if she were about to grab the interrogator’s hand. Then she stopped herself, as if it would have been too presumptuous to touch the interrogator. “Rosi and her brother, Bobo, came to the Watanabonesets’, where I work, earlier today. This afternoon. Right before the riot in the marketplace.”

  “Indeed?” the interrogator asked, a certain slyness back in his voice. “Please, tell me what happened.”

  “Edwy, is this true?” Kiandra whispered. “Was Rosi at our parents’ house?”

  “How would I know?” I said helplessly. “Drusa’s talking about what happened on Monday afternoon. I was already in the truck with Udans then, on my way to Ref City.”

  I watched the gleam in Drusa’s eyes, the animated way she waved her hands, telling her story.

  “Rosi knocked at the door, asking if her friend Edwy could come out and play,” Drusa said. “But Edwy was already out playing—wandering the town, most likely, up to no good. You know how boys that age are.”

  Even if Drusa didn’t know Rosi very well, it seemed like she’d figured me out. Well enough to have come up with a plausible-sounding lie about where I’d been that afternoon.

  “So then this Rosi left?” the interrogator asked.

  “I thought so,” Drusa said. “But a few minutes later, I discovered she’d sneaked into the Watanabonesets’ house.”

  “Rosi would never do that!” I protested. “Not Rosi! That just isn’t—”

  “Shh,” Kiandra said. “You made me miss the rest of what Drusa said.”

  She had to back up the video a little, so once again we heard Drusa say, “. . . sneaked into the Watanabonesets’ house.”

  And then Drusa went on: “I found the girl in Mr. Watanaboneset’s office. I chased her away.”

  “Did you tell your employers?”

  Drusa shook her head.

  “I was afraid they’d fire me, if they thought the girl had gotten in because I forgot to latch the door.”

  “That is plausible,” Kiandra mumbled. “Our parents would fire a maid without even thinking about it.”

  “So nothing really came of your encounter with Rosi, earlier in the day,” the interrogator said. “You’ve wasted our time, telling me this story.”

  “No, no—you haven’t let me finish!” Drusa said. “Later, after I heard what that girl did in the marketplace, I went back to my employer’s office. I started worrying . . . what if she’d stolen something? What if, when I chased her away, she’d already taken something that was small enough to hide in her clothing?”

  “And did she?” the interrogator asked, leaning so far forward now that he practically could have kissed Drusa’s cheek. “Was anything like that missing from Mr. Watanaboneset’s desk?”

  “Yes, sir,” Drusa said. “A map. Rosi stole a map.”

  I buried my face in my hands and moaned, “No . . .”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “What’s wrong with you?” Kiandra asked.

  “I looked through everything in our father’s desk!” I confessed. “There was only one map in there! It had one route marked on it. I know Rosi wouldn’t steal a map, but . . . what if she saw it? And memorized it? Rosi’s really good at memorizing stuff. If Drusa tells the interrogator about that map, the Enforcers will know right where to find Rosi!”

  Kiandra tilted her head to look sideways at me.

  “But didn’t you just say Drusa was lying?” she asked. “If you think she was lying about Rosi taking this kid Cana hostage, why would you think she’s telling the truth about some map?”

  Oh yeah, lies, I thought.

  It was weird—I’d been so used to telling lies myself, back in Fredtown. But I was also used to the Freds either telling the truth or giving some non-answer like You’ll learn that when you’re older. (I hated that reply!) The little kids I’d been around lied sometimes, but their lies were so obvious, it was easy to figure them out.

  So as much as I’d lied, I didn’t have much practice with figuring out if someone else was lying or telling the truth.

  I’d watched Rosi’s mom and dad and had been pretty sure they were lying. But Drusa seemed much better at it. So . . . I didn’t know.

  I looked back at the screen and realized Kiandra had frozen the action. She ran a finger back and forth on the keyboard, making the cursor jump around.

  “What was the map you saw at our parents’ house?” Kiandra asked. “Why is Drusa even bringing it up?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It showed a river, and mountains, and—”

  “Cursed Town? Refuge City?” Kiandra asked. She typed so
mething quickly. “Was it one of these?”

  She called up a whole array of maps depicting Cursed Town. Then she opened a new screen and opened a bunch of maps showing Refuge City.

  “No,” I said impatiently. “Don’t you think I would have remembered the name if I’d seen the words ‘Cursed Town’ on that map? Or ‘Refuge City’? Don’t you think I would have asked someone about it?”

  “Hmm,” Kiandra said. “Then maybe . . .”

  She began typing again. I saw the words “out-of-date” before a new screenful of maps opened up.

  These maps showed creeks and rivers and mountains much more prominently. The only settlements listed seemed to be small towns and villages, with names like Loveliness and Joy and Beautiful View.

  “Kind of the opposite of Cursed Town, huh?” I joked.

  “These are bad translations of the language people used to speak around here before everyone agreed to one universal language,” Kiandra said. “Don’t look at the names. Look at the things that don’t change, or that don’t change for millennia at a time.”

  The mountains, the rivers . . . , I thought.

  “Oh!” I jerked upright, and pointed at one of the first maps on the screen. “That tiny pinpoint beside the mountains—that’s Refuge City, isn’t it? And this town—Loveliness? Really?—that’s where Cursed Town is today. I see it now, because of where the creek bends. Kiandra, this is the map our father had in his desk. Only there was a route drawn between Loveliness and the pinpoint that was going to become Refuge City. . . .”

  “I thought so,” Kiandra said triumphantly, as if she’d been the one to figure everything out. “Edwy, this is a copy of the map that Udans used to bring Enu and me here to Refuge City. It was how he found Refuge City, when it had just begun. When it was just refugees and aid workers here.”

  I stared at the map, trying to ignore the weird, overly hopeful names.

  “It’s missing something else,” I said. “That thick dark line you said was the border . . .”

  “That’s because there wasn’t a border when this map was made,” Kiandra said. “It’s from before the war.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Kiandra switched back to the scene she’d frozen of the interrogator and Drusa. She started the video again.

  “What was on the map you say Rosi stole?” the interrogator asked. He bent forward, as if writing something down. I hadn’t seen him write anything down when Rosi’s parents were speaking.

  “It showed a route out of Cursed Town,” Drusa said. “South, along the creek . . .”

  “She’s awful!” I shouted. “Despicable. There’s no way Rosi kidnapped Cana. So why does Drusa want to help the Enforcers catch Rosi?”

  Kiandra flipped back to the old map showing Loveliness and just the beginnings of Refuge City.

  “Edwy, look—south goes toward the bottom of the map; north, toward the top,” Kiandra said, pointing. “Refuge City is north of Cursed Town. Drusa didn’t tell the Enforcers which way Rosi went, if Rosi followed this map. Drusa told them to go the opposite way!”

  I felt a glimmer of hope. But only a moment of staring at the map made the hope die.

  “But would Rosi know about the border?” I asked. “If she’s coming toward Refuge City, how’s she going to cross the border?”

  “How would she cross the border if she’s trying to escape from Cursed Town in any direction?” Kiandra asked. “Nobody can cross the border!”

  I stared at Kiandra, and she stared right back—grimly, without blinking. Kiandra was saying there was nothing we could do: Rosi, Bobo, and Cana were doomed to be caught.

  She was saying Rosi, Bobo, and Cana were doomed to die.

  I shoved the laptop away.

  “You’re wrong!” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was arguing against Kiandra’s words or just the hopeless tone in her voice. Her despair fit with everything else people kept saying to me in Refuge City, from Enu’s Why think about unpleasant things you can’t do anything about? to Kiandra’s Don’t ask questions like that ever again to Udans’s That’s just how life goes and There’s nothing you can do.

  Udans.

  I jumped to my feet.

  “Udans can cross the border!” I reminded Kiandra. I remembered that I’d been too timid to ask him about Rosi before. But that was before I knew Rosi was being hunted down. And before Kiandra had shown me maps and interrogations. “And you’re going to help me figure out how to get him to rescue Rosi. Before she even gets to that border!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Why would Udans help?” Kiandra asked.

  “Because, because . . . it’s the right thing to do!” I said.

  I had never sounded so much like a Fred in my entire life.

  Kiandra snorted.

  “Oh, right, because that’s what Udans cares about,” she muttered. “Sometimes, Edwy, I think those Freds really did turn you into an alien creature. Are we talking about the same Udans? All he cares about is obeying our father so our father doesn’t fire him!”

  “Then . . . we convince him our father wants him to rescue Rosi,” I said. “We convince him he’ll be fired if he doesn’t rescue Rosi!”

  “Don’t you think Enu and I have tried a million times to convince Udans that our father would want Udans to just obey us?” she asked. “Udans may be a country bumpkin, but he’s not stupid!”

  “Kiandra, I have to try,” I said. “I have to do everything I can for Rosi. When will Udans be back? How often does he come to visit?”

  This wasn’t like me, to state something so plainly. I wasn’t joking, wasn’t lying, wasn’t being snarky or sarcastic. It was as if I’d ripped open my chest and was letting Kiandra watch my heart beat.

  Kiandra ran her fingers back and forth over the keyboard. It reminded me of the way little kids back in Fredtown comforted themselves rubbing their hands or faces against a favorite blanket or stuffed animal.

  “Udans may still be in Ref City,” she said slowly, almost as if she was trying to make up her mind. I’d never heard Kiandra sound so indecisive. “He was just here yesterday afternoon, and he wouldn’t have started back to Cursed Town so late in the day. He probably loaded up his truck last night, checked into some flea-bitten hotel, and planned to get back on the road first thing this morning.”

  I’d lost all track of time. It’d been early—practically still nighttime—when I’d gone to the soup kitchen and met Zeba. It had still been early when I’d gotten back to our apartment, and when Zeba had left with Enu for the basketball game. But how long had Kiandra and I spent watching Rosi’s parents and Drusa being interrogated?

  What would Udans count as “first thing in the morning”?

  It was ridiculously optimistic of me—ridiculously Fred-like—but I decided to believe that we still had time.

  “Then let’s go to his hotel right now!” I cried. “Before he leaves!”

  “What makes you think I would know where Udans is staying?” Kiandra asked, still aimlessly running a finger over the keyboard.

  “Because if you didn’t, you’d say so,” I told her.

  Kiandra didn’t say anything.

  “Kiandra, I can’t do this without you,” I whispered. “Didn’t you want to have a choice about something important? This is important! It’s—it’s life or death! This is your chance to make a bigger decision than how to paint your nails or what dress to wear!”

  Kiandra winced. Then she straightened up, as if I’d said the magic words. Her fingers spun across the laptop keys, full of purpose now.

  “Our father keeps a tracker on Udans,” she said. “Udans thinks it’s practically magic, the way our father always seems to know where Udans stops for lunch, where he encounters the worst traffic, and so on. But it’s really because of me. Me tracking Udans online, and tattling to our father.”

  “What? I thought you hated our parents!” I asked, baffled. The more I got to know about Kiandra, the more she confused me.

  “They’re still our pare
nts,” Kiandra murmured.

  A map of Refuge City came up on the laptop screen. A dot blinked at a crossroads in an unfamiliar part of the city. I realized it wasn’t far from the soup kitchen where I’d met Zeba.

  “Udans is still at the hotel,” Kiandra said.

  I grabbed her arm.

  “Then let’s go!”

  Kiandra winced, and I realized I’d screamed a little too loudly in her ear.

  “Let me just . . . grab my bag first,” she muttered. “And we’ll take the laptop with us, so we can keep tracking Udans. . . .”

  It seemed to take forever for her to get ready. But finally we were out on the landing by the elevator.

  “Hurry up, hurry up . . . ,” I chanted, as if that could make the elevator come faster.

  The elevator dinged, the doors opened—and there were Enu and Zeba, back from their basketball game.

  “Kiandra?” Enu asked, as if she was the only one he noticed. He stepped into the doorway of the elevator, holding it open. “You’re actually leaving the apartment?”

  “I’m helping Edwy,” Kiandra said, swaying slightly. “He thinks Udans might be able to rescue his friend.”

  Enu looked from Kiandra to me.

  “So could you move out of the way?” I asked impatiently. “We’ve got to get to Udans’s hotel before he leaves!”

  Enu glanced back at Zeba.

  “I’ll come too,” he said.

  “Could you use my help as well?” Zeba asked.

  I pictured all four of us kids lined up in front of Udans. More people would be more convincing, wouldn’t they?

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Enu moved back out of the way. Kiandra and I stepped into the elevator, and it zoomed down to the ground floor. Enu put his hand on Kiandra’s elbow, guiding her out of the elevator, across the lobby, and out onto the street.

  Finally, as she took a step into the sunshine, she shook Enu’s hand away.

  “Enu, I’ll be fine,” she insisted.

  Enu just grabbed her other elbow.

  “Just making sure . . . ,” he muttered.

  “Why wouldn’t she be fine?” I asked, annoyed that they were slowing us down again.