Lizard Radio

by Pat Schmatz

  “Kivali.” Her voice is so soft. So kickshaw. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  I turn and walk toward the door.

  “Please.”

  Machete said please. I hesitate.

  “Tell me one thing.” I keep my back to her. “What did the lizard mean?”

  “What lizard?”

  “The one on the shirt. The one you left me in.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I turn and study her eyebrows, her cheeks, the color of her skin. She’s not lying. She really has no idea. I shake my head and turn for the door. Rocks rattle, and before I can escape, her hand falls on my shoulder.

  I spin, springing at Machete with a full-throated roar. She stumbles back and catches her balance on the nearby bench, looking up to meet my flat-eyed lizard gaze. I do not take my eyes off hers.

  “What are you?” she whispers.

  For the first time in my life, I have a complete answer.

  “I am me.”

  POWER. WHEN YOU FIND it in your hands you’d best act quickly, because nobody holds it forever. Machete makes one last grab as I cross the threshold of the Pavilion.

  “What about your toy lizard?”

  I turn and meet her eyeball-for-eyeball.

  “Keep it to remember me by.”

  I stride past the fields and down into Pieville. My back itches with the expectation of a hand, a fist, a lasso, a laser, but nothing lands. At the bottom of the slope, I finally look back. Lacey stands at the brink of Pieville looking down with her arms crossed. Surveillance, not interference. So far, anyway.

  I am clearer than I’ve ever been in my life, and ideas come fast and sharp. I jog past the privo, round my own pie, and drop to my knees in front of my slice, hurrying while I’m out of view. I scrape away the pine needles and dig, sifting the dirt through my hands. I gather a clump of dirty hair and yellow shreds in my fist and zip inside.

  Taking my secateurs from the shelf, I crawl under my cot and use the point to punch through the fabric wall that separates my slice from Nona’s. Then I snip along the seam until I have a hole big enough to put my fist through. I ease my arm through the hole up past my elbow, and with a sideways flick I toss the ribbon and hair into the center of Nona’s floor.

  Nona and her knowings. She’ll know that I’ve been here. I scramble back out from under the cot and look at the center pole. There’s no way to put something in Sully’s slice without Lacey seeing. Nona will have to tell her. She’ll have to believe Nona. It could happen.

  I pull my own clothes from a pouch and toss them on the cot. Quite the young lizard I was, last time I wore these clothes. At first I think I’ll take them, and the secateurs, but then I remember that I’m supposed to be vaping. I take my kaggi anyway. Sheila will be thirsty.

  When I poke my head out of my slice, Lacey is posted between my slice and hers, leaning on a tree, watching. I guess her job is to be sure that I really leave, without contaminating anyone on my way. I head over to the spigot, fill my kaggi, and drink it dry twice. I fill it again. Because you have to be hydrated to vape, right? What do they know?

  I hit the privo, wash up, wave to Lacey the sentinel, and head out of Pieville the way I came in, directly into the woods, trying to strike the same angle. When I’m well out of view I stop, ease to the ground behind a thicket, and wait.

  Eventually I hear footsteps, crunch-crunch. Lacey stops maybe thirty paces shy, and although I can’t see her, I can feel her look, watch, search. I barely breathe. Footsteps rustle, turn. Stop and listen again. Recede. Stop. Recede farther.

  I count slowly. At six hundred and forty-seven I hear footsteps approach off to my right. They advance, then stop, and recede. I start the count again, slower. When I hit one thousand, I cautiously rise and stretch. The sun is on its way west, and the woods slowly rise to life along with me — a tweedle here, a chippie scurry there.

  I force myself to move slowly, picking my way quietly through the brush. Finally, I spot the splash of yellow boundary sign and let out the breath that I didn’t know I’d been holding. Before I can figure out how to get to Sheila without yelling, she steps from behind a tree. Right there, waiting. I should’ve known the scarf scraps weren’t just for me. Of course she’d follow me to the boundary.

  I slam my finger against my lips, look back so she knows that I might have been followed, then turn forward and toss the kaggi underhand. It lands on the other side of the border. Sheila looks down at it and then back up, eyebrows drawn.

  I point from one sign to the next, tracing the boundary with my finger. Sheila picks up the kaggi, drinks, nods. Drinks some more. When she caps the kaggi, I begin to walk in the direction of the grove, signaling her to follow me on her side of the boundary. I carefully spot the next yellow sign and stay clear of the boundary line. Sheila walks with me on the other side.

  Every fifty paces I stop, listen, wait. I keep watch to my right for the path that leads to the grove. On the fourth stop, I cup my hands around my mouth to keep the sound from going behind me, and speak out loud, soft and low.

  “I’m waiting for my friends to come meet me. We’ll cross together.”

  “Did you see Darlene?”

  I nod. I want to say more but not here, not now. Sheila nods. We understand each other well enough.

  We walk on. It’s not easy, staying close to the boundary but not going over, tramping over fallen logs and through pricker thickets. We each struggle along on our own side. I thought the grove path was much closer, but it’s hard to tell how far we’ve actually gone. Finally, I spot the path to the right and stop.

  “After dark,” I whisper. “They’ll come in the night.”

  I settle against a fallen tree, hidden from the path but visible to Sheila. Sheila settles as well, taking another drink.

  My heart slows, and I breathe deeply. My komodo stays with Machete. I mean what I said — I really do want her to keep it to remember me by. What might that mean to her? Anything? Will the komodo walk in her dreams the way it does in mine?

  I hope that I’m right about my friends coming. It’s hard to see how it can happen, and it’s not safe to try, but if they come, I’ll be here. Maybe safe isn’t even the point. I’ve always been so afraid of Blight, but if it’s full of people like Korm and Sheila and Nona and Sully, how bad can it be?

  I am fully out from under Machete, even if she catches me. She can cage me or expul me or Blight me but I’ll never put my tail beneath her boot again. When night falls, I will set my feet on grove ground one more time, and I want to touch the place where I last saw Rasta. Once I cross the border, I can’t do those things.

  Dark takes its own sweet time strolling into the woods. I wait while the sun dips lower and lower still, eases itself to the purpling horizon, and finally gives up the day. I wait while the birdsong droops from sleepy to silent and the cicadas hush. I wait until the moon is on the rise, cresting the treetops.

  Then I stand, and Sheila mirrors me.

  “I’m going in.” I pitch my voice even lower than before. Noise carries at night. “I’ll be out before sunrise.”

  Sheila nods. She drinks from the kaggi again, and holds it up to me. I shake my head no. I watered up plenty at the spigot. Besides, who knows how late it’ll be before I come back, and how long it’ll be after that before we have access to water?

  I set my feet on the path to the grove. It’s easy to follow in the moonlight, and much easier to be quiet when I’m not crashing through brush. The closer I get, the slower I walk. Maybe Machete has sensors or cams all over the land. Maybe she knows exactly where I am. She might even be there waiting for me, ready for her next strategic move in the like-it-or-fear-it game. I make myself stop every ten steps and listen.

  Finally, I’m only a few paces from the grove. The path opens ahead, and the oak leaves glint silver in the moonlight. I don’t think Machete is here. I don’t think anyone is. No magnetic pulse, no dragon beat. Only the night air on my skin
, the musky deep smell of the oaks, and a shiver of nerves from the inside out.

  The grove is silent. I skirt the edge. I haven’t heard a gong since I came onto the CropCamp grounds, but it must be past curfew. I trail the bushes until I find that faint opening out the back side.

  I retrace the narrow path, finding it with my feet in the glow of the moonlight. When the ground begins sloping up and the path takes a sharp left turn, I stop and look around. There. The rock. It’s not quite as big as the ones outside the CropCamp gate. Only waist-high. I approach, touch the cool granite.

  Yes, this is it. The ferns and bushes are well-tromped, and the slope stretches sharp and steep. And this tree, right here — yes. This is it. I swallow hard and wrap my arms around myself. It’s all so real and so unreal, and somehow Rasta and death seem like the realest real of all, and that hurts. It hurts like a knife so sharp that you don’t know right away when it cuts you. But then you see the damage.

  I fall to my knees and feel the earth. I curl my body next to the rock, as close to Rasta as I can get. I close my eyes and see how she looked in the double kickshaw haze. Shimmery purple, spread out on the grass. Nobody else shimmered.

  She was the one who knew her power not. Her feathers are stitched into my dragon heart. Rasta didn’t know one thing about Sheila or Korm or Darlene or any of it. She just knew me, and somehow that made me more me. Or maybe more her. I’d give anything to have her come walking into the grove. We’d find a way to get to her MaDa. We would. Imagine how happy her da would be. Maybe he really was all-powerful when Rasta was still here. Maybe she made him that way.

  I push myself to my knees, close my eyes, and imagine wrapping that shimmer of purple around me like a warmer. I open my fingers in a curled spread and touch the tips to the earth. Just for a second, I swear, the dark earth meets me with a breath of human baby-crow touch.

  How I wish that dying wasn’t dead. I stand, bow my head, and touch the rock. The rock meant no harm. No more than the trees or the rain or the mud underfoot. Or me.

  AS I WALK BACK to the grove, Rasta’s purple shimmer puts a quiet on my nerves. This might be Machete’s camp, but it’s my grove — and tonight, she is not welcome here. The moon hangs high, draping the woods with a light that fills and swells my entire chest. My heart pumps its own steady pulse, strong as the dragon beat and light as lizard feet.

  When I step onto the grass, the surrounding oaks hold me in a hush. If ever there is a place and a time to believe in other worlds, this is it. Not faraway worlds but worlds right here, dancing just on the other side of the moonbeams. Worlds after worlds after worlds, particles and waves, lizards and lightning, neither and both. Radios and knowings and trance-missions of freedom. Sheila and Donovan, Korm and Rasta, maybe even a very young Darlene.

  I bathe in that silver moonlight of possibility. I breathe in deep. I don’t need to tune in to Lizard Radio because it is broadcasting live, here and now. It surrounds me, and I only have to reach out my fingertips to touch it, strong-alliance style. This is an all and a one that I can live with, even if I never see another kickshaw for the rest of my days.

  I move into the middle and turn in place, using the moon-shimmer for a spot. The oak tops whirl around me as I spin like the child I was before anyone starting asking what I was. When I stop moving, the treetops spin on. The ground tips softly to greet my knees and my hands. I crawl across the grove, lifting one heavy dragon foot at a time, claws dragging the dew-wet grass.

  I roll over on my back and look up at the stars. They are so close and so far. Like everything. Like every single everything. I lie there for a long time, immune to night chill or fear shivers or worries about anything, as the moon passes slowly across the clearing. It is on the downside of its peak when I hear movement from the direction of Pieville.

  Footsteps plod along. Not hurrying. Not sneaking. Just walking. A shadow approaches the opening and pauses at the entry. A shadow with a poof of hair. My friend Nona. She steps into the clearing. I wonder what she feels. Pulse? Chill? Peace? Can she see the worlds and worlds?

  “Lizard?” she whispers.

  I rise from the shadowed ground.

  “I knew it!” She lurches and hops. An awkward skip-dance that only Nona could do. “I knew that you’d be here.”

  Nona and her knowings.

  “Emmett?” I ask. And barely daring to hope, “Sully?”

  “I whispered to Sully in the privo. I couldn’t get to Emmett. Katrina is on watch outside our pie. Probably someone on Emmett’s, too.”

  “How’d you get out?”

  It’s the first time I’ve seen Nona smile with teeth.

  “Found your split on the seam. Made it bigger. Crawled through to your slice and out. I thought for sure that Katrina would hear, but I made it clear away.”

  I smile, but the no-Sully disappointment drags on my heart. Emmett, too.

  “So you think there’s no chance on the others?”

  “Can’t think of any way to get to Emmett. And Katrina is planted right in front of Sully’s slice.”

  So that’s that. I close my eyes, and on the backs of my lids, I see Sully with her lights behind the lights, her own breed of both and neither. And Emmett’s endless gentle warmth. I can’t see any way to save them. Like I did with the komodo, I’ll have to leave them to their own powers.

  I open my eyes to the moonlight and nod at Nona. We head out of the grove. Once we are well along the path but before the boundary, I stop and whisper a short summary of Rasta’s da and Sheila and my face-off with Machete.

  “She thinks I’ve vaped,” I say. “But when we cross the boundary, she’ll know. Sheila’s waiting there to underground us. We’ll probably get caught. It’s not too late for you to go back —”

  But Nona is already shaking her head no, bigger and harder as I continue to talk.

  “I’m a Blight baby. My fosters are just as happy to be shed of me. Donovan Freer is the closest thing I have to family, and you’re the closest thing I have to him, and worst case I go to Blight where my real parents are.”

  She shows me her leddie and full kaggi and extra socks, and for the first time I notice that she’s wearing precamp clothes. She brought her secateurs. Nona came prepped. Nona is a good person to have along. I nod, and we walk on. I take the leddie and flash it ahead, searching for the yellow splash of border sign. I don’t want to cross by mistake.

  “Sheila’s just on the other side of the boundary,” I whisper.

  Ten paces later, I flash the leddie again and catch a glimpse of yellow, maybe two hundred paces away. I flash the leddie on my face, then on Nona’s, so Sheila will see that it’s us. Then I turn it off, but before I can take a single step, Nona grabs my arm.

  “Sully,” she says.

  “Sully what?”

  “Sully is moving — she’s out of her slice.”

  Nona’s voice is as flat as ever but my pulse skyrockets.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. Go back and get her. I’ll wait here.” Nona hands me her leddie and sits on the ground. “Be careful.”

  I’m halfway back to the grove before the chitter-bang of excitement in my chest eases off and an uneasy wondering creeps in. Maybe it’s a trap.

  No, this is Nona! NonaNona. I’ve lived right next to her for the past —

  Right. Not even a month. I don’t know her at all. And now she knows where Sheila is, and she knows where I am, and . . . I stop dead on the path, between this and that. Of course Machete knows that I’m still on the grounds, and that I’m trying to get Sully out. Of course she wouldn’t just let me go.

  I stand still for a long time. The moon has started to drop west. A single bird begins its first sleepy morning song, and still I stand in indecision. The east is completely dark but it won’t be for long. I can’t walk away. Not from those first days of being Sully-chosen, that rush-n-wash of excitement, the splitting open of my lizard skin, the pound of our hearts together on that last hug.

 
; I continue on the path. Step, step, step, pause. Listen, listen, listen. The entry to the grove is just ahead. I step off the path behind a tree trunk, and I wait. Those are not footsteps I hear.

  Are they?

  Yes, they are. And that’s a moving shadow. My heart pounds so hard that it rocks me back and forth, and blood roars in my ears, and surely the whole camp can hear it. The shadow hurries closer, looking for me, coming to find me, to get me, and —

  It’s Sully. I step out and startle her, and her startle startles me so we leap away from each other. I recover, step closer. Still cautious. Sully’s hands are in her pockets. She is in CropCamp coveralls.

  “Okay, so fiking Nona fiking knows more than I do.”

  “Yup.” I nod. “Nona knows stuff.”

  “I coughed a few times for cover when she was sneaking out your slice so Katrina wouldn’t hear. Where is she?”

  “Up ahead.”

  “Why are you still here?”

  “Didn’t want to leave without you. Come with us?”

  Sully’s expression blurs, an uncertainty I’ve never seen on her. She shakes her head.

  “I can’t.” Her voice quavers. Not like Sully’s voice at all. “I thought you were gone, and for once in my life I made a decision, and now here you are.”

  I reach out to her but she pulls away.

  “No, you don’t understand. Machete — she’s letting me off this whole thing without even a culpa. She says that she’ll work with me. She’ll make sure that I cert.”

  “She lies,” I say. “She lies whenever she can get away with it.”

  “Maybe so, but Lizard, I’m not a kid. It’s grown-up decision time.” She doesn’t sound very grown up. “This is my chance. You’re the one who said I could do it, make her believe in me. She says that she’ll make me a guide.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  Even as my heart is crashing down into my feet, down underground, I am seeing how smart Darlene is, and I am remembering that guides don’t get implants, and that Sully might stay Sully. She’s not shining any lights in my eyes. I love her more than I ever have but she’s far, far away from me. Getting farther every second.