by Anna Carey
Page 35
Marjorie knelt down by the fire and scooped a spoonful of berries onto each plate. “I found them in the woods. Some savage was trying to kill them. ” She stared at Otis a moment too long. I sensed something had gone unspoken.
“What were you doing out there?” Otis pulled a chair from the dining room, its legs scraping against the beaten wood floor, and sat down beside us.
Lark’s eyes welled. “This man, Fletcher, captured us. He was taking us somewhere to be sold. ” As she said it, she tucked her thick black hair behind her ears, her fingers shaking.
“We’re from the Schools,” Arden added. “We escaped. ”
Marjorie passed me a plate of steaming berries and I breathed in the tangy smell. The china had tiny purple roses along the rim. It was a welcome contrast to the simple metal saucers we’d eaten off at School and the gouged wood bowls Caleb had given us in the dugout. “How long have you been on your own?” Marjorie asked.
“Four days,” Lark said.
Marjorie pointed to Arden and me.
I swallowed the berries. “I’m not sure . . . a few weeks?”
“Yes,” Marjorie said. “It’s hard to keep track of time out here on your own. ” As she spoke her eyes darted back to Otis. “Where are you headed then?”
Arden glanced sideways at me and paused. I raised one shoulder in a slight shrug. It was dangerous to trust anyone out here, but Marjorie had just saved my life. “We were going to follow Route eighty, to the place called Califia,” Arden said, poking at her food with her fork.
“Smart girls,” Otis said. Now that he was sitting down, his pant legs came above his ankles, revealing a wooden right leg. I stared at the light grain, the crudely cut corner that formed the ankle, burying a wedge deep into the pocket of his shoe. It looked like it had been carved from a downed tree limb. “And how do you plan to get there?”
“We’ve lost the road now,” I said. “I don’t know. ”
Lark shoveled the berries into her mouth, starved.
Marjorie glanced one more time at Otis. Then she stood, walking slowly to the lantern in the window. She picked it up and blew out the candle. “I do. ”
My gaze fell on the shelves behind her, where a black metal radio sat, a handset perched on its side.
“The Trail,” I said out loud, to no one in particular.
Otis pointed to the floor. “Yes, you’re on it right now. ”
“What do you mean?” Arden asked. She dropped her plate to her lap, letting the fork clink against the china. I had told her about the Trail when we were in Paul’s room, but in her fever she must’ve forgotten its name.
Marjorie stood before us, her wrinkled hands laced together. “This is a safe house, just one stop along the way to several different dugouts, and Califia. We help orphans escape the King’s regime. ”
Lark stared at the candle in the lantern, the smoke twisting from its black wick. “But the troops. Don’t they know you’re here?” She folded her thin arms across her chest, hugging herself.
“They’re always suspicious,” Otis told her. “They come by with their Jeeps every so often, ask us questions or inspect the house. But without evidence of any wrongdoing, there’s not much they can do. We have permission to live outside the City of Sand. ”
“Permission?” I asked. I had heard of Strays before, of course, but they were scavengers, directionless wanderers. I likened them to those who had been called “homeless” in the old books, not people who lived in houses—in homes—like this.
Otis pulled his pant leg down, covering the sliver of wooden leg. “It’s a long process and not many choose to go through with it unless there’s a definitive reason. But we’re old, and there’s not a demand for us in the City of Sand. For the most part they leave us be. ”
Lark bit the skin of her finger. The firelight had warmed her cheeks, bringing out the beauty in her round, soft face. “What would they do to you if they knew you were helping us?”
“They’d kill us,” Marjorie said simply. She gazed into the burning logs. They crackled, their charred carcasses shifting in the fire. “The King doesn’t tolerate opposition. There have been so many disappearances in the City. A citizen who was working for the Trail, a man called Wallace, accidentally told an informant about the mission. He was gone within a week. His wife said he was taken right from his bed, only God knows where. ”
My tongue curled in my mouth like a shriveled snake. I had dreamed so much of that place, the clean slate streets, the man-made beaches where women sat under umbrellas with their books. How had I believed those lies for so long?
“You’ll stay with us for a few days,” Otis said. “Then we’ll move you to another safe house. You can tell them by the lantern in the window—if it’s on, there’s room for you. ”
Lark kept nibbling at her fingers, the skin peeled back until it bled. “But if we get caught, we’ll be killed—you said it yourself. ”
Marjorie tucked a strand of thick white hair into her braid. The shadows flickered in the glow of the fire, her expression unchanged. “Almost two hundred years ago, Harriet Tubman led slaves to freedom. And when they told her they didn’t think they could, when they said they were too afraid, she pointed a gun at them and said”—Marjorie mimed a weapon in her grasp—“Go forward or die. ”
Otis put his hand over Marjorie’s, bringing the invisible gun down. Then he turned to us, narrowing his eyes. “All she’s saying is there’s no room for fear anymore. That’s what the King’s regime is built on: the assumption that we’re all too afraid to live any other way. ”
I remembered that feeling when I was at the edge of the wall. As much as I knew, as much as I’d seen inside that horrid building across the lake, something held me back. I heard a chorus of students whispering about the dogs and the gangs in the wild. I heard the steady beat of Headmistress Burns’s gnarled fingers against a table, as she urged me to take my vitamins. The Teachers added to the melody with their tirades about men, who could manipulate women with a simple smile. My past had come together at once, in a great seductive song, telling me not to go.
“I suppose you’re tired,” Marjorie finally said. “Let me show you to your room. ” As Otis collected the empty plates, she stood, leading us down the narrow wood stairs. Beneath the house was a basement filled with stacked chairs and boxes, a beat-up gray machine with a keyboard, and some water-stained newspapers.
I picked up the one on top of the pile—the New York Times. It showed a picture of a woman reaching over a barricade, her mouth open in a wail. Amid Crisis, Barricades Split Up Families, it read. Teacher had described that city, the plague striking whole apartment buildings, their doors padlocked shut to lock people inside.
“Here?” Arden asked, pointing to a tattered couch nestled in the corner.
But Marjorie moved to the other side of the room, swinging open the doors of a pantry. She pulled off can after can of food, finally removing the middle shelf. “Actually,” she said, pushing a cobweb aside, “here. ”
She lit a lantern and shone it into the secret room. Two sets of bunk beds lined the walls and a metal sink sat in the corner. The walls were unfinished dirt, the earth floor covered with a thin gray mat. It reminded me of the mudrooms in the boy’s dugout. “It’s better, in case the troops surprise us in the night. Around the corner, about a hundred yards back, there’s a trapdoor leading into the backyard. There are towels in there, a few changes of clothes, and some shoes as well,” she said, glancing down at our bare, dirty feet.