by Scott Wilson
And next to it—just as large—the metallic moon Metl stared back at him from far away.
Chapter 2
Last Night at the Home
Mother Mildred ordered Caden to spend the rest of the afternoon lying down indoors. The Home wasn’t big enough to have an infirmary, so she had him lie on a burlap mattress in the boys’ bedroom, a room Caden hadn’t been in for years. He lay there alone in the cramped space surrounded by eleven empty mattresses, the light from the open window in the wall slowly fading as the day went on.
The whole time Caden could only think about one thing: he’d been adopted. He’d been dreaming of this day his entire life, but now that it was finally here he’d give anything to stay at the Home. Even being a stable boy for the rest of his life would be better than living with Dom and working for a man who thought throwing people around was a good idea.
Mother Mildred had given Caden an emergency checkup when she and the other Mothers first brought him indoors, but to her surprise he was perfectly fine. She’d used her hardened, scarred hands to feel around for signs of broken bones but had found nothing. Now, hours later, she was back giving Caden another inspection. She placed six heated stones on his bare chest and stomach, tapping and listening closely to each one to see if anything sounded out of place. But still, there was nothing. Even the pain Caden had felt when Annika landed on him was now like a faraway memory.
“You are one very lucky boy,” Mother Mildred said. “She must have hit you just the right way. I would’ve expected at least a cracked rib or two.”
She placed a wooden cone over Caden’s heart and leaned in to give one last listen to his insides. After a few nods and a sigh, she finally seemed satisfied that there was nothing wrong, and she packed away the cone and stones into her black bag of medical tools. Caden was relieved that she didn’t have to break out the bone sewing needles or leeches. There were only two things Nobodies were afraid of at the Home: never being adopted, and Mother Mildred’s medical bag.
But right now, Caden would rather take on an army of leeches than go to live with Mr. Stercus and Dom. He had to do something to get out of it.
“Mother Mildred?” Caden asked.
“Yes?” she said, giving him a quick smile.
Caden tensed, but he had to try. “Is there any way that, well, you could just tell Mr. Stercus I do have a broken rib or something? And that I have to stay in bed for a few weeks? I won’t tell anyone the truth, I swear by Gotama’s Ant.”
Mother Mildred looked at him confused. “And why on Earth would I do that?”
“It’s just … I don’t think I want to be adopted right now.”
Mother Mildred’s puzzled look turned to understanding. “Oh, is that all? Don’t you worry. Plenty of Nobodies feel the same way when they’re adopted. It’s a big change. You’re going to feel nervous.”
“No, it’s not that,” Caden said, sitting up and fastening his overalls. “I know I’m supposed to be happy about being adopted, and I mean, I wouldn’t mind being adopted someday. By someone else. Maybe even by … well, just not with Mr. Stercus and Dom.”
Mother Mildred took a deep breath and readjusted herself on top of the neighboring mattress. She sat knees knelt and legs folded under her thighs. Caden knew what this meant: serious talk.
“Caden. Adoption is the greatest thing any Nobody could hope for. It’s the only way for your soul to be saved, so that you can join Gotama inside Metl in the sky after you die. Otherwise you’ll just … turn to dust.”
“But I’m not a Nobody,” Caden protested. “For all I know my soul is already fine.”
Mother Mildred gave a patient smile then shook her head. “The Great Gotama instructs us all to find our purpose, Nobody or not. And now he has put you on this path to find yours. He wanted you to be adopted, and now all you can do is trust that he knows best.”
Caden expected this. The Mothers said the same thing every day during daily meals and classes. “Find your purpose” and “trust Gotama” were as common as cockroaches. But this was no dinnertime prayer. This was the rest of Caden’s life.
“Yeah but you saw what Mr. Stercus did. He ordered Dom to throw that girl, Annika. Something just doesn’t feel right about him.”
Mother Mildred pursed her lips. “I will admit, that was excessive. But look at what came from it. Annika is perfectly fine, and it is because of Dominic throwing her that you were adopted. It was fated by Gotama all along. Perhaps he wants you to help Mr. Stercus become a better person and embrace more of the Six Virtues.”
“But what if my—”
Mother Mildred put a finger to Caden’s lips. “You’ve been here a long time. But Gotama has decided it’s time for you to move on. The adoption is a holy binding contact, and there is nothing anyone can do.”
Frustration burned through Caden, but he knew arguing with Mother Mildred wouldn’t get him anywhere. He had to try something else.
“I mean, is Dom at least going to be punished for speaking out of line? Maybe he shouldn’t be adopted or something.”
Mother Mildred laughed. She stood up on her unsteady legs, brushed off her robes, and picked up her heavy medical bag with both hands.
“Dominic, and you, are no longer mine to punish. You’re both Mr. Stercus’s sons. You’re brothers now.” Caden winced at the thought. Mother Mildred didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Now, let’s go to the hall. It’s dinnertime.”
The Home was divided into four rooms: the boys’ room, the girls’ room, the Mothers’ quarters, and the hall. Close by outside were the kitchen shack and washroom shack, where each Nobody had to take a bath once a month, sometimes twice if there was an adoption scheduled. The outhouse was farther away, a huge pain to walk to in the wintertime through deep drifts of snow. The Home’s roof was topped by a steeple housing the bellrock—a massive, hollow stone that rang out for miles with a piercing crash when hit with a rock hammer. It was used to signal when fieldwork was done for the day, and if there was an emergency. In Caden’s thirteen years at the Home there hadn’t been an emergency worthy of the bellrock.
Inside the Home, with twenty-four children and three Mothers crammed into such little space, the hall’s long, bark-covered pine tables and tree-stump chairs had to serve multiple purposes. During mealtimes it was a dining area, during prayer times it was a church, and in the afternoon and evenings after fieldwork, it was a classroom where the Mothers taught reading, writing, religion, and math to the Nobodies.
Caden’s favorite subject was religion, not for the boring readings out of the Book of Metl that the Mothers would torture them with, but for the ancient artifacts. Every now and then the Mothers would bring in some Iltech from the town church that had been safely blessed, to show the Nobodies what to be careful of.
The first time Caden laid eyes on Iltech, he was in awe. He was four years old and only permitted to look at it through a glass covering, but it was still unlike anything he’d ever seen.
It was a spoon. Made of metal.
It reflected light like water, but also looked as tough as rock. Caden couldn’t stop thinking about it—or talking about it—so much that the older Nobodies dared him to go into the hall at night and touch it. Back then Caden slept in the boys’ room, so he crept out with the others to the hall where the spoon lay protected under a glass box. The oldest boy carefully removed the glass, revealing the naked spoon underneath. Caden reached out with a single shaking finger and touched it.
He let out a yelp of surprise that woke up the entire Home.
The metal was like nothing Caden had expected. It was cold as ice, lacking the warmth of wood, and it was unnaturally smooth, much more than anything made of stone. Caden felt like he was touching the corpse of something that had once been alive.
If Caden’s scream wasn’t enough to get them in trouble, the spoon clanging to the floor and the other boy dropping the glass case and sending it crashing into a hundred pieces was plenty. The gi
rls and Mothers came rushing in, and after that night all Iltech was hidden away for safekeeping inside the Mothers’ bedroom. Caden was also sentenced to bathroom-cleaning duty for the next year.
But he didn’t care. If anything, Caden’s fascination with Iltech only grew stronger. Whenever the Mothers brought in something new to show them—whether it was an impossibly thin disc called a “CD,” or an ancient book-box called a “computer”—Caden couldn’t get enough. When he was younger, he’d ask the Mothers how the Iltech worked, or how it was made, but he quickly learned to keep his mouth shut. That wasn’t the point, the Mothers insisted. Caden and the rest of the Nobodies were supposed to learn to fear the Iltech, not be curious about it.
Caden had even less success talking about Iltech with the other Nobodies. He’d thought they might know something about it, since their parents had been taken away for using it. But at the mere mention of Iltech, the Nobodies would turn pale and run in the opposite direction. It took a long time for Caden to understand that they didn’t want to relive the memories of the Holy Police ripping them from their parents. It took him even longer to realize that he was so fascinated by Iltech because he didn’t have any horrible memories of his own to relive. But that didn’t stop Caden’s curiosity, and he kept asking them questions. Eventually the Nobodies stopped talking to him, and then even acknowledging his existence. When it came to Iltech, Caden was a fertile field ripe for sowing, but he was the only one, and that made him an outcast.
Now that Caden was leaving the Home, he could understand how the Nobodies felt. He was being forced to go live somewhere else, with people he didn’t know, or even like. He wouldn’t want to be reminded of that either.
Caden walked to the hall. The Nobodies were busy getting dinner, back in their normal, stained clothes, the boys in patched-up pants and shirts and the girls in faded dresses and bandanas. They were walking through the hall door to the kitchen shack outside, coming back in with steamed corn and bread soup in wooden bowls, buzzing with laughter and conversation. But when Caden—who they usually pretended didn’t exist—walked by, they turned silent. They took their seats at the three long tables, and even though the hall was only illuminated by the setting sun and glass candle lanterns, Caden could clearly make out their glares of jealousy. He could practically hear them thinking: “Why was he adopted? He’s not even a Nobody.” If only they knew he’d trade places with them in a heartbeat.
Not wanting to hold up dinner, Caden dashed out the door to the kitchen shack, a small shed with a massive stone cauldron inside. Heated stones in the cauldron it boiled the soup, and the steam it gave off cooked the corn laid over top on thin hickory wood beams. Caden grabbed the last available bowl—the smallest one—scooped out a ladle of pork-bone soup with bread dumplings, and grabbed a hot ear of corn.
When Caden got back inside, everyone was waiting for him, their own steami bowls of soup untouched, and their faces varying levels of envy. He sat down, and Mother Mildred and the other two Mothers at the head of the hall stood up to begin the dinner prayer.
“Tonight, we have a special blessing,” Mother Mildred said to them. “As you all know, Dominic and Caden were adopted today. They will be leaving us tomorrow, to seek out their new purpose in life. Though we may be sad to see them go, we must remember that the Great Gotama instructs us all to find our own purpose, and we must have faith that he knows best.”
Mother Mildred smiled first at Caden, then at Dom who was sitting at another table as far away from Caden as possible. She motioned to them both with outstretched hands.
“Dominic. Caden. Both of you, please stand up. I’d like you to lead us in your final dinnertime prayer at the Home.”
Begrudgingly, Caden stood. Across the room, Dom didn’t look too happy either. The shadows from the lanterns showed off his freckled face twitching with misery at the idea of living with Caden.
Caden couldn’t believe this was happening. Every other time a Nobody had been adopted, he’d imagined himself being the one asked to stand up, to lead the final dinnertime prayer. That would mean he’d be leaving the Home, starting a new life, maybe even finally meeting … someone. But now it only meant living with Dom and Mr. Stercus, which was nothing to look forward to.
“Metal things are not meant for this world,” Mother Mildred spoke, starting the prayer. “Metal things are permanent, imbued with eternal life. They belong to the Great Gotama, who resides up in Metl in the sky. Any metal in our world was stolen from him, and the thieves must be punished. Gotama cleansed our world a thousand years ago, and your parents have paid for their crimes against him. But your souls are not yet clean. Your chance at redemption will come when, like Dominic and Caden, you are adopted into a pure household, and given a new name and purpose. Continue to fulfill your duties here and uphold the Six Virtues, and you too will be rewarded by Gotama.”
The three Mothers turned to face the cloth tapestry on the wall behind them. It was the only decoration in the entire Home, a common fixture in every Metlist household: Gotama’s Ant.
It was a large square piece of white fabric with a giant black ant sewn in the middle. The ant’s six legs represented the Six Virtues that gave purpose to life: worshiping, working, ruling, creating, serving, and loving. Unfortunately, Caden thought, running away from terrible adopters was not one of them.
The Mothers closed their eyes, bowed slightly, and put their hands in prayer position: the tips of the three center fingers pressed together, pinkies and thumbs folded away underneath. All the Nobodies, Caden included, followed suit. Now it was his and Dom’s turn to say the prayer. They recited it together:
“Please have mercy on us all, O Great Gotama in the sky.
And guide our souls to Metl, on the day when we do die.
We beg of you to please forgive the sinners of the past,
In return we will devote our lives to everything you’ve asked.
To worship, work, and rule using legs that we are granted,
To create, serve, and love using arms with purpose planted.”
The three Mothers turned back to the Nobodies. “We are his Ants,” they said in unison. Everyone repeated after them, completing the prayer. The Mothers sat, and immediately the hall erupted in clattering and conversation. Everyone started drinking, chatting, and ripping the husks off their corn. Caden took one last glance at Dom, who was already busy eating and ignoring Caden. The only one not stuffing their face was Annika, a few seats down. As soon as she saw Caden looking at her, she turned her attention back to her meal.
Caden sat down, sighed, and brought the bowl of soup to his mouth. Bread dumpling soup was his favorite. Today it tasted like dirt.
After dinner when the Nobodies and Mothers retired to their bedrooms, Caden did what he did every night: grabbed a lantern from the hall to light his walk to the horse stable. But as soon as he took his first step into the dark outside, something gripped his shoulder. Caden spun around. It was Dom. And his fist was already coming at him.
Before Caden could react, Dom slammed a beefy punch right into Caden’s stomach. He doubled over in pain, his hand shaking as he struggled to keep a grip on the lantern. Dom grabbed a handful of Caden’s hair and ripped him back up to standing.
“Listen to me, no one,” Dom seethed, inches from Caden’s face. “If you really think you got adopted today, then you’re even dumber than I thought.”
Caden used his free arm to whack Dom’s hand off his head. Finally free, Caden stumbled back, wishing he could just thrust out his palms and send Dom flying away. Caden steadied himself and prepared to fight, but to his surprise Dom just stood there, his massive form silhouetted against the shadowy light of the hall.
“You’d better find a way to make sure that when Mr. Stercus comes tomorrow, I’ll be the only one leaving with him,” Dom said.
“Believe me, I’d love for that to happen,” Caden said through heavy breaths. “But I already asked Mother Mildred. There’s nothing anyone
can do.”
Caden expected Dom to come out and deliver another punch, but he didn’t. He just crossed his arms and looked down on Caden like a bug.
“I don’t care what you have to do. Get sick. Break one of your legs. Break both. Because if you don’t, I’ll pick what happens to you. And I promise you won’t like it.”
“Dom, listen to me,” Caden said. “I want to be your brother even less than you do, but—”
Something set Dom off. He stuck out a single finger and shoved Caden in the chest, sending him stumbling back. Caden knew that Dom could’ve hurt him more if he wanted to, but he didn’t. He just wanted to make a point: Caden was at his mercy.
“Don’t you ever call me ‘brother,’” Dom hissed. “You’re no one. And you have until tomorrow before I make you into nothing.” With that he left Caden alone in the dark. Up until now Caden wasn’t sure if being adopted was the absolute worst thing that had ever happened to him. Now he knew.
Caden waited until Dom was gone for good then started his walk to the stable. The pain from the punch was already gone, but Dom’s words still burned deep. Caden usually enjoyed the walk from the Home to the stable; it gave him time to think. But tonight, all he could do was dread tomorrow. At best, he’d be leaving the Home with Dom. At worst, he’d be leaving the Home dead. Or maybe it was the other way around.
The worst part was, Caden knew that despite Dom’s threats, nothing was going to change. Like Mother Mildred said, the adoption was a holy binding contract. Mr. Stercus had to adopt Caden no matter what, even if he had all broken arms and legs, or else he’d risk upsetting Gotama and losing his afterlife. Dom’s threat only meant was one thing: living with him was going to be a nightmare.
Caden sighed. He tried not to think about it and took in his surroundings, one last time. The crickets chirping, the soft crunch of grass underneath his boots, the stars and moon shimmering like sand poured across the night sky. As usual, Metl stole the show. Its perfectly spherical body, without any blemishes, gave off a ghostly gray glow. No matter where you were, it always felt like it was staring directly at you. Caden felt reassured knowing that, no matter where he went, at least Metl would be the same.