20
WHO AMONG US
A n oppressive gray settles over the earth with the dawn drowning in rain and sleet. Smudges of clouds skid across a paler sky, but Sophie is stuck. Children in cages all around her, yet she is the one who can’t escape. Walls, bars, and gray smoke closing in, trapping her. Trapping them. She looks for the keys that will free them, but there are no locks. Over the cries of the children, she hears her old song. Familiar, but different.
“So when my thoughts begin to stray . . .”
Who is singing? She feels around on the floor, crawling under the billowing smoke. Her fingers in a thick liquid, touching something warm. A body. Thin arms sticky with blood. Her sister Laurie is crying. She looks like she wants to say something, but Sophie can hear nothing over the music growing louder by the second.
“. . . I know you’re not far away . . .”
The music shifts into a minor key. Sophie can now see nothing but the smoke. Smoke blending into the rush of water of the falls. Laurie is gone. The children are gone. She’s swinging her arms, trying to fight and hit at an adversary just out of her line of sight. She knows she’s fighting shadows but can’t stop hitting into the nothingness.
“I’ll see you always near me, or so it seems . . .”
Sophie feels herself losing her balance. A shift in the ground being pulled from under her feet. Her quick breathing is loud in her ears, louder than the rushing waters. As she leaves the ground behind and feels only the air around her, her breath stops completely. She’s falling with the water down into the gray void. An oppressive gray settles over her drowning. Falling up, falling down in empty space. Gray.
“For you will always be here somewhere in my dreams.”
Sophie jumped, waking herself up, and felt her sore fingers clinging to the edge of the bed. She wasn’t in her own bed, but Ethan’s. Her stiff muscles, molding her into a ball on the single mattress, fought her as she tried to raise herself. Muscle spasms shot electric jabs through her feet and legs. The dim gray dawn seeped into the room like condensation on the walls, dripping with a weight of what the day would bring. The drizzling rain outside slapped at the window.
Ethan hadn’t been gone twenty-four hours, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to leave his room, still fraught with his essence. He’d hung some of his photographs around the room and had stacks of them in messy piles on a tiny desk in the corner. Butterflies, lizards, flowers, a photograph of a little girl. Sophie assumed that was Daisy. There was an art and an innocence to the pictures he captured. Nothing faked or planned, but as if you had just stumbled upon something, and Ethan was pointing it out to you with his air of excitement and wonder. There were smooth rocks, picked flowers, and homemade slingshots strewn about the room as well. Sophie wondered what he shot at, since she’d never seen him show anything but affection for living creatures. His Peter Pan book lay open on the nightstand to a page where Captain Hook had captured Wendy and was using her to lure Peter Pan to him. The illustration on the page showed Wendy tied up, but with a look of defiance on her face, chin raised.
Sitting up in bed, Sophie waited for the nausea she knew was to come, but it didn’t come. She placed her hand on her belly, more round than it had been a few weeks before. A roundness seemed to be settling over her whole body, and she wondered if Sam had noticed yet. She thought for the thousandth time about her unborn child in just as much danger as Ethan, trying to live in a world where there were more atrocities than children, more poisons than cures. If she had been a different person, she maybe would have wished for a miscarriage, an accident to rid her of the responsibility and terror of trying to raise another illegal child. But nothing—not even the Corsairs and their punishments—could make Sophie wish away the existence of any child. The children would just have to be protected at any cost.
“Sophie! I’m back!” she heard Sam calling from downstairs.
“Up here!” she answered.
Entering the room, Sam landed on the bed as if his legs couldn’t hold him anymore, bouncing on the mattress next to Sophie. “Did you sleep at all? What are you doing in here?”
“I slept a couple of hours, I think. Nightmares.”
“I’m sorry, Soph.”
“Where were you?”
“I got the messages out about the meeting later. We’re going to meet in the cave at low tide. Hopefully more than just the Watch will come. We need all the help we can get. Are you going to be okay?”
“I needed to be near his things. Smell his pillow.” She took a deep breath as if the pillow were in front of her face and she was trying to breathe him back into their home through his scent.
Watching her, Sam remembered similar rituals she had performed with Bridget’s things when he and Ethan had first met her.
“We have to find him, Sam.”
“We will.”
“I didn’t fight hard enough for Bridget.”
It was the first time Sam had heard Sophie say her daughter’s name in months. He slowly laced his fingers through hers. “I don’t think that’s true . . .” he started to say.
“I can’t . . . I can’t lose another . . .”
“Shh . . . Sophie, I know. You don’t have to say it. Everything you feel, I feel. Everything you go through, I go through. And we will find him. Together. I promise.”
“What if we don’t?”
“We will.”
Since Sam and Ethan had come to stay at the farm by the sea, Sophie had never mentioned her feelings over losing Bridget. She knew they had seen the nightmares, the cries in the night, the sleepwalking, and soul-crushing depression. They’d seen it all and walked the dark road with her. And that was enough.
“Will you tell me if you’re really alright, Sophie? You’re pale. This is more than just not having slept well or worrying about the boy. What is it?”
She had imagined a hundred different scenarios of how she would tell Sam he was going to be a father. She could see the joy and the fear wash over his face. Standing by the river. Telling him over a morning cup of coffee. Lying in bed in the middle of the night. In every scenario, he was happy and scared. She wondered if she could wait for a time when he would just be happy, when the pure joy would not be soiled with the stain of fear. She wondered if that would ever be possible for any of them. Sophie knew this was not the time to have Sam worried about her. There were difficult tasks ahead to bring the children to safety, and she knew he’d never let her do what needed to be done if he knew she was pregnant.
Her brow furrowed slightly, and she looked out the window and around the room. Anywhere but in his eyes. “I’m fine, Sam. Really. I’m naturally pale. You know that. The curse of the redheads.” She tried to laugh it off.
“I’m not at all sure you’re telling me the whole truth, woman. But I trust you that you’ll tell me whatever it is when you’re ready.”
“I’ll tell you when I can. I promise.”
Sam looked down, and Sophie thought she saw a tear fall from his eye.
“Sam, what is it?”
“All the way home, walking back here to you, I was thinking about choices. We have choices. Humans shouldn’t be compelled by outside forces to do things or go certain ways, at least that’s the way it used to be or was supposed to be. The people of Before had their Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence. But that’s not the world we were born into, is it? We were born into a world of one choice. The choice between death or survival.”
“I don’t know that it’s that simple.”
“There are no creatures that walk the earth . . . which will not show courage when required to defend themselves. You know I am not a violent man, Sophie. And you know that I don’t believe having a gun gives you courage. But sometimes to show courage and loyalty and love, sometimes merely for survival, we have to pick up a gun. I just don’t know what it all means. My mind is spinning with all the shoulds and should-nots.”
“We have been left with a choice, Sam. Perhaps the most impor
tant one—the choice between living and surviving. If we stayed here and did nothing, we would survive—possibly. But we wouldn’t be living. Any more than other animals in cages. Asserting our humanity and our right to choose, that’s the only way we’ll ever really live.”
“Maybe.”
“The only way we’ll be successful is if we believe what we’re doing is right.”
“I think it is. I hope it is.”
“And as for courage—of course courage is more than holding a gun or even fighting. It’s getting up in the morning when your body is begging you to just stop. It’s staying with someone when it would be easier to walk away. Courage is believing in and hoping for the future. Those are choices we still have. They haven’t found a way to control our minds yet. I don’t have all the answers, but I do believe we’re making the right choice because we are making a choice and not allowing the choice to be made for us.”
Sophie took his face in in her hands and waited for his eyes to drift up to hers. “And courage is loving, giving yourself to another human being. You’ve done all of that. Hold on to those things for dear life, Sam. They’re the only things that will get us through this.”
“I don’t know what ‘this’ is. There’s no way for us to know what waits for us across the Border, but I promise you again, Sophie, I am here for you. I’m here for Ethan. And I will make sure we’re a family again. And if that is the only choice that’s been left to me to make, I choose you.”
Sophie placed his head on her shoulder, holding tight to him, knowing that whatever courage she had that pushed her forward—his made it possible. With the same intensity she had tried to breathe in her children, she buried her face in his hair, breathing him in. She believed in his earnestness. She knew she could believe him that he felt everything she was feeling because she felt everything he was feeling as well. Their fears and their love were compounded, joined in an inseparable whole as impossible to separate as the sand on the beach moving as one entity. She hadn’t been telling Ethan a comforting lie when she said he was their son. Sitting on Ethan’s bed with Sam, she knew he was their son just as much as the tiny life now growing inside her. No amount of blood flowing in their veins could have bound them stronger.
* * * * *
Z’s house was ringing with a song Gemma had never heard. She was relieved to hear the children playing out back and trying to sing along with Jesse’s clear voice. The Corsairs had not yet come for them. There was still time for escape. With Jesse there, the house seemed brighter than it had ever been, even with the new threats hanging over them. How was it that the very light in the house was changed?
Jesse was moving about the kitchen as if she’d always lived there. She went up and down the cellar steps with more ease and vigor than one would have expected in someone her age. She brought up sweet potatoes, beans, and had gathered herbs from the garden, throwing them all in a large pot, singing as she went. It was like watching a performance, her hands moving with the grace of a dancer. She was as invincible as the woman she was singing about.
“I’ve never heard that before. What song is it?” Gemma spoke quietly from the doorway.
“Gemma, love. Come in, come in. Just an old song I used to listen to from Before. I always used to sing it when I cooked in my kitchen for my own children. Habits dies hard, I guess.”
“I don’t want to intrude. I just needed to talk to Z for a few minutes.”
“Z? Is that what you call him? I always called him Zack. A younger man’s name.”
“He seems like a younger man since you’ve been back.”
“I feel younger too, truth be told. He’ll be down directly. Can I offer you something to eat?”
“No thanks, I can’t stay. There’s a meeting I have to get to. I just needed to talk to the two of you, I suppose.”
“About this business with the children, I’m sure.”
“Well, yes.”
Zacharias came bounding down the stairs, not with his normal labored gait, but with the energy of a teenager. “Gemma! I’m glad you’re here, sweetheart.”
Gemma gave him a kiss on the cheek he offered. “Z, we’ve got to talk.”
“Yes, I know.”
“It’s only a matter of time, maybe hours, maybe minutes before the Corsairs come for the rest of the kids. Honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t been taken yet.”
“Here, come sit at the table. Let’s talk.”
Zacharias pulled out a chair for her, then walked around and pulled out another for Jesse, kissing her on the top of the head before he sat down himself.
“So what does the Watch propose to do?”
“I’m the last surviving leader of the Watch, Z. Our numbers are dwindling. The meeting is meant to rally the rest of the citizens to help us. Sam has been delivering messages to everyone left in Boswell and Jesse’s Hollow.”
Z’s eyebrows went up in happy surprise that Sam was finally getting himself involved.
“But I want you to take Daisy and the twins back to the cabin, if you would.”
“What cabin?” Jesse asked.
“Our old cabin, honey.”
Emotion flooded her eyes. “That haunted place . . .”
“It’s where the kids lived for a long while before we brought them here,” Zacharias offered.
“It’s still within the borders, but the Corsairs may not know about it yet,” Gemma continued. “It’s pretty far off the beaten path. At least they won’t check there right away. I think it’s the safest place for them for now.”
“They can’t stay there alone, these little ’uns,” Jesse insisted.
“They’ve done it before. They’ll be alright. And when we get the other children out of the facility, we’ll bring them there too.”
“No, Jesse’s right,” Zacharias responded. “I’ll have to stay with them.”
“You mean we’ll have to stay with them.” Jesse took his hand. “I have no intention of letting you go alone.”
“Would you?” Gemma hadn’t wanted to ask it of them but was grateful for the offer.
“Of course.” Jesse took Gemma’s hand as well, holding their little group in a circle.
“There’s no telling how long you’ll have to stay there, so bring plenty of food. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
Concern showed itself in the deepened creases of Z’s forehead. “What do you plan to tell Kyle?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you think he could be trusted with the information?”
“I’m sad to say, I don’t think so. There’s something wrong with him, and I haven’t been able to figure out what is bothering him. But I won’t be giving him anything else to worry about or be suspicious of.”
“You don’t think he’s the spy, do you?”
“I honestly don’t know what to think anymore, Z. I can only handle one crisis at a time, though. And right now, that’s saving the children.”
“Very well. We’ll get things packed quickly and be gone within the hour.”
“I wish you could come to the meeting with me. We could use your help convincing the citizens to help us.”
Jesse was surprised the citizens needed to be talked into the fight that lay ahead. “You don’t think saving their children will be enough of an incentive for them?”
“For some, maybe. They’re just all so frightened of the Corsairs.”
“With good reason.” Jesse held tighter to Zack’s hand.
“But if we have any chance of succeeding, we’ll all be needed to fight as one. Now, where’s Daisy? I want to say goodbye to her and explain things.”
“She’s up in your old room. The twins are out back.”
“I’ll go up to her first. Thanks, Z. And Jesse, thank you for everything.”
“I’ve done nothin’ much, love.”
“More than you know.”
“You take care, now, and come back to us and these children. Safe.”
“I will.”
Sprawled
on the floor of her old bedroom, Gemma found Daisy among scattered drawings and what few books they had left after the Corsair raid. Her blonde hair was pulled back from her face in a loose braid that kept falling over her shoulder. She was working on what seemed to be a picture of a boy with a butterfly. She bent over her work in deep concentration, not hearing Gemma enter the room.
“Hey, kid.”
“Gemma!” Daisy was up in a second, flinging her arms around Gemma’s neck. “I’m glad you’re here! I wanted to show you my new drawings.”
“They’re great!”
“Do you want to take one home with you?”
“Maybe another time. Right now, we’ve got to get you packed, and I’m going to need you to help Z and Jesse with the twins.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ve got to go back to the cabin for a little while until we can figure things out with the Corsairs.”
“Aren’t you coming too?”
“I’ll meet you there in a couple of days.”
“You promise?”
“Promise.”
“Are the Corsairs coming after the kids like you said?”
“Yes, sweetie. They’ve already taken some to a government facility.”
“Ethan?!”
“Yes, I’m afraid.” Gemma thought Daisy would cry at this news. But she started to head for the door instead, ready to take on anyone in order to save a friend.
“We have to go after him!”
“Hang on now. That’s not your job. That’s my job. Your job is to go help Z and Jesse, alright?”
“But I want to help! He’s my friend.”
“You will be helping. You’ll help me because I won’t have to worry about rescuing you, too. While you’re safe, I can focus better on saving Ethan and the others. Maybe even Toby, too. Alright?”
“It’s not fair. I can fight.” Daisy turned toward the window, the sun catching the silent tears on her cheek, her lips a fine line of defiance. She shoved her hands roughly into her pockets.
A Light From the Ashes Page 39