The Cage

by Megan Shepherd

  “Tomorrow,” Lucky said. “We’ll divide into teams, and start our escape.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  16

  Nok

  NOK HAD BEEN STANDING ankle-deep in slime for the last two hours.

  The day before, when Lucky had suggested they search the habitats, this wasn’t what she’d had in mind. Lucky and Cora had gone to the forest. Leon had set out on his own for the mountains. Why she and Rolf had been given the swamp environment to explore, she’d never know. Next time she’d request someplace dry and warm, like the farm.

  She looked at the sky between the breaks in the trees. Perfect and blue, but no birds. Around them, set into mossy banks, black panels watched. She shivered, thinking of the beast with the gleaming skin who had called himself the Caretaker. He looked like a man, but his shimmering bronze face reminded her of the iridescence of lizard scales. When she’d been a little girl, the monk in her village would read stories from a leather-bound copy of the Ramakien. There was an illustration of the god Phra Phai, with blue skin and a celestial beauty that masked his treacherous nature. That painting had always both terrified and enchanted Nok. That’s how she thought of the Caretaker, as Phra Phai. God of wind, giver of life—and of death.

  Ahead, Rolf was nearly invisible among the trees.

  “Hey, wait!” she called.

  Rolf came tromping back through the slime. “Sorry.” He held out a twitchy hand to help her across a knot of roots, and her mood softened. How easy it was to manipulate boys like him. Shed a few tears, and they’d do anything.

  Nok rubbed her arm, looking at the slime swallowing her feet. She’d gone along with Delphine’s lessons because she’d had no choice: Delphine controlled every aspect of their lives. The flophouse was supposed to keep them “safe” and the pathetically sparse food was supposed to keep them “thin.” Instead it kept them starved and enslaved as they were driven around to shoots in an ancient black van with sticky seats.

  And Nok had been good. She could look into the camera and give the man on the other side exactly what he wanted. A smile full of promise, an alluring tilt of her chin. But each time, resentment had grown in her, bit by bit, like a cancer.

  She blinked. Delphine isn’t here. For once, she didn’t need coy smiles. She could just be herself.

  “No . . . I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s this headache.”

  “We’ll turn back soon.” Rolf helped her trod though the sticky mud. “Wouldn’t want to stay out here after dark.”

  “Seriously,” Nok muttered. “We’d probably wake up in the morning to find the Kindred had dressed us in Halloween costumes.”

  Rolf snickered, and Nok gave him a surprised look. She hadn’t been joking.

  They continued through the swamp, as Rolf pointed out each clump of green muck and gave her its scientific name—alder twig, cattail, loosestrife. She’d never met a boy more in love with slime; it made her smile as much as it made her roll her eyes.

  “Look!” He slushed toward a cluster of fungus. “Pleurotus ostreatus. I didn’t know they grew in wetlands.”

  “Swamp mushrooms.” Nok feigned rubbing a hungry stomach. “Mmm.”

  He grinned.

  They kept walking. She’d warmed up to him, she realized, as she watched him take careful steps ahead of her to avoid crushing any plants. Neuroses and fungus and all. She didn’t mind that he was four inches shorter than her and looked like he hadn’t seen daylight in weeks. Handsome boys were insufferable, always checking themselves out in mirrors. Judging by the cowlick in his red hair, Rolf hadn’t glanced in a single mirror since they’d arrived.

  “What will you get with the token?” he asked over his shoulder.

  She patted her dress pocket, where a heavy bronze token rested. Rolf had solved the swamp puzzle after only ten minutes. It involved listening for a bullfrog croak (it had a metallic ring to it—definite not real), then searching for water bubbles and reaching into the silty bottom to get a token before the bubbles stopped. “It isn’t really my choice, yeah? We have to save up to buy something Cora can make into a weapon.”

  He glanced at her. “Well, if you could choose anything, what would it be?”

  She took another slushy step through the slime. “More nail polish?”

  No, stupid, she cursed herself. She didn’t care a quid for nail polish—but Delphine was still hiding in some deep pocket of her brain, telling her to say what he wanted to hear.

  “Ah, scrap that. I’d take the radio,” Nok answered, more confidently. “The red one in the arcade. I liked the way the knobs formed a little face.”

  Her first few months in the London flophouse, she’d both loathed her parents and missed them painfully. The only comfort she had found was a little shortwave radio she’d discovered crammed on a bookshelf, which she could tune to a Thai station. Now she had a feeling she would never see home again.

  Her foot sank deeper in the slime, which splashed the hem of her dress. She cringed. Rolf rubbed the back of his neck, blinking a little fast.

  “I could try to carry you,” he offered.

  She snorted. She’d squish the poor boy. “It’s fine, really.”

  As they kept walking, Nok wondered what kind of a baby they would have, if they did go through with the Kindred’s insane plan. Maybe with her looks and his brains, it would be some super child. Or else with his twitches and her height, it would be the most awkward thing ever. She pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling sick. Were they really going to have to go through with it? Sixteen years old and trapped in an alien zoo didn’t exactly make her feel ready to be a mother.

  “Some of my friends back home got pregnant,” she said. “Only one kept the baby, though.” The girl had married a photographer—a real classy guy—and had brought the baby back to the apartment to show the other girls. Nok had held it uneasily. It wasn’t entirely awful; it had smelled nice, at least.

  Rolf stopped, blinking steadily, and faced her. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Nok. But I can promise you one thing. Whether we end up having a child or not, whether they take it away from us or not, I’ll always be there. For you, I mean.”

  She swallowed back a surge of tenderness. No one had ever been as sweet to her before.

  She cleared her throat, suddenly nervous. “Hey, look. More Pluris ostrus or whatever.”

  He smiled. “Pleurotus ostreatus.”

  “Well, we can’t all be geniuses.”

  The grin fell off his face as his cheeks reddened. He pushed at the bridge of his nose. “I’m not a genius.”

  “You think Leon can identify swamp mushrooms? Why do you downplay it so much?”

  His fingers twitched by his side, performing some calculations, as though that might help him think better. “Girls don’t like smart guys,” he said at last.

  She looked at him in surprise. Suddenly she regretted all her crocodile tears, all her acts of helplessness. She knew when a boy liked her, and Rolf had it bad—but he didn’t even know who she really was.

  “Let me be the judge of what I like,” she said softly.

  They reached the end of the swamp at last. As they climbed out, the moss lining the bank soaked up the slime on her feet, so that she looked utterly clean. She glanced at her reflection in the nearest black window and adjusted her hem.

  The light overhead changed. Late afternoon.

  “Nok, look.” Rolf pointed ahead. “What’s that?”

  Through the swamp trees, distant lights came on. Nok’s heart beat a little faster as she recognized them. Her headache returned tenfold, and she doubled over in pain.

  “Impossible,” she gasped.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................


  17

  Cora

  THE FOREST WAS EERILY quiet as Cora and Lucky passed among the trees. It had been almost three days since they’d found each other on the beach, but in a place without clocks or lengthening shadows, did time even exist the same way?

  Cora hadn’t slept more than a few groggy hours, and it made her headache worse. At home, there’d been one sleepless night, driving the Virginia back roads, that she’d heard a radio program on a psychological experiment where they put test subjects in a room without natural light. Strange things started to happen: people would sleep for days on end, then wake for a week at a time. Was she changing, like the people in the experiment?

  Her temper had gotten snappier—everyone’s had.

  She hugged her arms around her dress. She’d found a dozen of them the night before, in the dead girl’s armoire. Rolf had said it was wrong to wear the dead girl’s dresses because the Kindred might punish her, but it was worth the risk to feel like herself.

  They followed the trail passed a chalet with murky black windows. “They find a way to watch us everywhere, don’t they?” she said.

  Lucky glanced at the window. “I’ll give them something to watch.” He raised his middle finger.

  Cora grinned, but then she glanced behind them at the trail that had somehow telescoped in distance, and pain shot through her skull. “Ah—my head. Feels like someone’s stabbing screwdrivers behind my eyes.” She leaned her head against a tree, fighting the pain. “It has to be like Rolf said. Our minds can’t handle the unnatural angles and distances.”

  “It can’t help that you’ve barely slept,” he said. She looked up at the worry in his eyes, as he crouched next to her. “Didn’t you think I’d notice? You look like you’re practically sleepwalking. I . . .” His voice faded as he caught sight of something behind her. “Are those . . . platforms?”

  Cora shaded her eyes as she looked in the direction he pointed. Dark shadows in the trees formed into rough shapes that looked a bit like platforms and tree houses and ladders. “You think it’s one of the puzzles?”

  “I doubt it’s an Ewok village.” He stood. “We should check it out. I’ll give you a boost, if you feel up to it.”

  Cora hesitated. In seventh grade she’d climbed a high ropes course at day camp. She’d been fearless, the first one to the top, and that night her mother had invited her friends over for cake to celebrate. But that was before that horrible weightless fall when her car had plunged three stories off a bridge.

  You were fearless once, she reminded herself.

  “No. I can do it.” He formed a stirrup with his hands. She stepped up and clambered up a branch, blinking through bleary eyes. Lucky hoisted himself up beside her, as effortlessly as if he’d spent his life climbing trees, and she gaped. “Maybe that’s why the Kindred took you,” she said. “Supernatural climbing ability.”

  He grinned and then pointed down. “It helps to know we don’t need to worry about falling. The ground cover’s spongy pine needles. I bet we’d only bounce.”

  “Yeah, they wouldn’t want to bruise any of their precious specimens.”

  Slowly she climbed higher, until they reached a platform circled by a thick rope. She gripped the safety of the rope, trying to catch her breath. Ten feet away, a metal object gleamed on another platform.

  “Do you see that?”

  Lucky shaded his eyes. “Looks like a token chute, like in the shops.” He crouched at the platform’s edge, judging the distance, and then looked back at the rope. “The only way over is to swing across.”

  “Swing across? Go ahead, Tarzan. I’ll wait here.”

  “I’ll go first. Just watch how I do it.”

  He swung out. Alone in the tree, Cora grabbed the trunk harder, eyes squeezed shut. She waited for the terrible crash as he fell, but none came. When she opened her eyes, he was standing on the next platform, dusting pine needles off his shirt.

  “See?” he called. “Easy.”

  “Easy for you,” she muttered. He threw the rope back. She searched her brain for words of advice from her father, but none came. She couldn’t smile her way through this one. She gripped the rope, blood pulsing in her ears. Don’t look down. She jumped off, shrieking as she hurtled through the air. The world was a blur. Branches and leaves and Lucky, and then his gentle laughter was in her ear, and his body was pressed against hers.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  She pulled away to hide the burn in her cheeks. “Okay. I’ve met my vine-swinging quota for the day. I’m ready to head to solid ground.” She punched the chute’s red button. A flood of tokens slid out. Lucky pushed it too—just one.

  “I guess I’m better at this than you,” she teased.

  He wrapped his fingers around his single token. The smile fell off his face. “That’s the second time you’ve gotten more for solving the exact same puzzle. Listen, maybe we should keep this just between you and me. You know what Rolf said about how lab rats get angry when they sense unfairness. Not that we’re rats, but . . . When you got more tokens before, Rolf seemed frustrated.”

  She shoved the tokens in her pocket nonchalantly, but Lucky’s words stuck in her mind like a thorn. What could the Kindred hope to achieve by spreading unfairness?

  “Well. At least we’re done.”

  “Uh . . . not yet.” He pointed toward the clearing. “We have to climb down.”

  Any sense of accomplishment she’d had collapsed.

  Lucky went first, moving fast, and was on the ground in no time. Cora took a deep breath. Not letting go of the trunk, she crawled to the closest branch, her muscles shaking. Left hand, then the right. Not so bad as long as she didn’t look down.

  “You’re almost there,” Lucky called. “Two more branches.”

  His voice gave her enough courage to glance down. That was a mistake. The ground was dizzyingly far, telescoping toward her, and her mind was already so sleep deprived.

  Her tired hands slipped.

  She grabbed for the branch, but her hand glided off it, and she tumbled toward the clearing.

  Lucky caught her. It was awkward and painful and she must have landed half against his head, because when she found her feet, his ear was red and his hair was ruffled.

  “Whoa. That was close.” His breathing was only slightly taxed, his eyes glinting with the thrill of having finished the puzzle.

  She tried to comb her hair into some semblance of neat. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were enjoying yourself.”

  “Rescuing a pretty girl? I don’t mind too much.” He still held her tight. He was warm—she had missed that. The only other boy who had ever hugged her so close was Charlie. Her brother had always smelled of cologne, but Lucky was pinesap and cut grass. Home. The burn spread to her cheeks.

  He let go of her almost reluctantly, and she almost wished he hadn’t.

  Overhead, the light grew brighter.

  “Noon.” Lucky slipped his token into his pocket. “We should keep going before it’s time to turn back.”

  “I hope Rolf and Nok are getting along,” Cora said, as they ducked through a perfectly engineered tunnel of vines. “They’re sort of a mismatched pair.”

  “Maybe the Kindred’s research found that opposites attract. Look at us—I mean, back home, guys like me don’t end up with girls like you.”

  “Girls like me?”

  “Rich girls. Important girls.” He paused. “Beautiful girls.”

  Beautiful? Not with her eyes sunken from lack of sleep. Not with her hair tangled and wild. At least she was walking in front, where he couldn’t see her burning cheeks. The last thing she needed was to start blushing whenever he threw his dimple around. The Kindred would love that. The researchers were probably checking off boxes left and right. Attraction? Check. Witty banter? Check. Rescuing a girl in distress? Check.

  “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with opposites,” she said. “Maybe there’s some connection between the couples we don’t k
now about. We both lived in Virginia for a while.”

  “Right. That’s true.” Lucky kept walking in silence. Cora tossed a glance over her shoulder. What wasn’t he telling her?

  They crested a ridge and stopped. Ahead, colored lights twinkled between the trees. One flashed blue, another orange. Neon signs.

  “Is that . . . another town?” She squinted at the lights. “Maybe there are more kids like us. Or maybe it’s where the Kindred live.”

  Music slowly trickled through the trees, finding its way to her ears.

  Don’t belong in paradise,

  Don’t belong in hell . . .

  She shot Lucky a worried look. “That’s my song.”

  They pushed through the last of the forest, toward an enormous cherry tree that rose in the center of a town square exactly like theirs. Pooled in the grass was one of Leon’s ties. The same tie he had ripped off their first day.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  “It’s our town,” Lucky said quietly. “We’ve come back.”

  Across the town square, Nok and Rolf emerged from the jungle, looking stricken.

  Cora ran toward them. “Did the paths loop you back too?”

  Nok had gone pale. “Yeah . . . we didn’t turn once, I swear.”

  A curse came from the boardwalk, where Leon came stalking up the beach. “Am I going mad? I must have tramped up that mountain for six hours, and in five minutes I was back. After a couple hundred feet, it started snowing. Looked like goddamn Siberia. Then I find sleds, a whole stack of them just sitting there, and a racecourse marked with colored flags. Rode a sled down the mountain and ended up right here on the beach.”

  “I told you all trails lead back,” Rolf said. “It doesn’t matter what directions we took, or what time of day we left, or how quickly we walked.”