While they introduced themselves, Lin rubbed Nugget between the eyes. “I hope Yuki comes back soon. He taught me to ride dolphins. You have to be a good rider and a good swimmer. We all swim, but not everybody rides. Only traders own horses here.”
The horses eagerly followed Lin as she led them to the stable. “Leucadia sent parakeets to let us know you were coming. But we thought you’d be here yesterday. Did something hold you up?”
“We stopped to listen to the whales sing,” Kerry said. “Do you hear that often?”
“No, you were lucky.” Lin glanced out to sea. “They only go north once a year, and usually they don’t come close enough to hear them from the land. I’d have stopped, too. But it’s a good thing you didn’t wait any longer. The Catalina Players are having their last performance tonight. Their ship sails out tomorrow.”
Jennie winced at the close call. If they’d missed the Players one more time, she’d have had to decide whether to make everyone turn back. She probably would have, given Kerry’s news. And then Summer would have had a tantrum, and Ross would have been upset, and Mia and Kerry would have been disappointed.
But instead, everyone was happy and excited. Rusty let out a bray that sounded almost like a cheer. Summer snickered.
“What can we trade to take care of our animals?” Ross asked.
Lin shrugged, clearly willing to take anything that Yuki’s friends had to offer. “What have you got?”
As he displayed their trade goods, Jennie again checked for guards. She couldn’t believe this prosperous town had no defense.
“Are you hungry?” Lin asked. “If you go up that catwalk to the town square, you’ll see booths with—”
An unearthly shriek split the air. Jennie’s sword was in her hand before she was even conscious of drawing it. Mia fumbled her crossbow off its shoulder sling, Ross snatched up his dagger, Kerry brandished what had to be an invisible sword, and Summer tensed to leap.
Lin gave them a puzzled look. “It’s just the captain’s peacock screaming to call a militia drill. Want to watch?”
People burst out of the round houses, ran along the catwalks, and swarmed into two fleets of canoes, one floating on the lagoon and one on the lake. Others leaped into defensive formations along the streets and catwalks. Most were armed with swords and crossbows, but a few bore rifles. There were more people in the militia than the entire population of Las Anclas.
With advance warnings by the bird messengers, Jennie reflected, Dai La would never be taken by surprise. No wonder it was so open. She bet the drill had been timed for their arrival, so they could bring the news back to Las Anclas that the town was prepared. It was disconcerting to realize that Las Anclas’s reputation was bad enough for Dai La to think it might attack them. Did they really see no difference between Mr. Preston and King Voske?
At some inaudible order, the canoes all skimmed out into the lagoon and in along the lake. The canoers pulled in perfect synchrony, with archers balancing at the prow and the stern.
“They’re fast,” Ross said.
Lin laughed. “They have to be, or they’ll be doing it again tomorrow, and Auntie Hoa says we’re due for a thunderstorm.”
There was no way they’d have to do it again tomorrow. The drill ran far better than any Jennie had seen in Las Anclas. Given Kerry’s news, that was also disquieting. Dai La was probably safe from Voske, but Las Anclas wasn’t. And it wasn’t likely to get any help from the Saigon Alliance, either.
When the drill ended, and the watchers broke up, moving away, Kerry asked Lin, “Did Yuki say where he was going?”
Lin’s round face took on an ominous look, as if she were about to tell a ghost story. “The Burning Lands. We warned him, but he was set on it.”
“The Burning Lands?” Mia echoed. “What are they?”
Lin lowered her voice to a menacing whisper, reminding Jennie even more of scary campfire tales. “A deadly place where fire shoots from cracks in the ground and they have earthquakes every day. All the houses are made out of paper, or they’d collapse and kill everyone in them.”
Dubiously, Jennie said, “If fire shoots from the ground, wouldn’t that burn the paper houses?”
Lin waved her hand as if that were a silly question. “I guess they rebuild them every day. Anyway, it’s way too dangerous to go there. Everyone knows that. But Yuki was determined. He went around asking if anyone had ever been there.”
Jennie knew the answer already. Paper houses and burning earth had all the marks of a legend, not a firsthand report. Sure enough, Lin went on, “Of course we haven’t. No one could survive out there!”
Except the people with the paper houses, Jennie thought. Yep. Legend.
“But where is it, exactly?” Ross asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Southeast. Somewhere,” Lin said vaguely. “But don’t worry, I’m sure Yuki won’t actually go there. He’s much too smart for that. Once he gets to the border, he’ll take one look at the fountains of flame and falling boulders, and go around.”
Jennie summoned all her willpower to keep a straight face. “I’m sure.”
Lin gave the horses a final pat as they contentedly munched their hay. “I have to get back to work. You’d better get your seats now if you want good ones. The play is on Sunset Terrace. Just ask along the walks. Anyone can direct you.”
They thanked her, and Summer eagerly led the way up to the highest level of the city. They bought snacks from the line of booths selling food, and carried them along the catwalks over the lagoon. Ross and Summer got heaping platefuls of tacos, Kerry got cold rice noodles with shredded pork and cucumber, Mia got an oozing grilled cheese sandwich, and Jennie got skewers of broiled meat and vegetables.
Parakeets fluttered in and out of the wide windows, and landed on the wrists of people outside. It seemed most long-distance communication was done by messenger birds. Jennie spotted people extracting tightly rolled scrolls from containers on the birds’ legs, or summoning a bird with a shrill whistle to dispatch their own message. Dai La didn’t seem to have rats, but hippos patrolled individual houses like guard dogs; their trotters made the bridges quiver as they clopped along.
Catwalks stretched out in a bewildering web work around and below them, some wide, some narrow, some made of wood and some of rope and some of reeds. Kids swung through the air on vines and ropes, laughing and sometimes letting go to dive into the rippling waters.
It was all so different from anything Jennie had ever seen. And this was just one city out of the hundreds—maybe thousands—that must exist. No wonder Yuki, who had sailed the seas, had found Las Anclas so small and confining.
Troops of flamingos wove fearlessly between the humans at every level of the city. Jennie couldn’t figure out if they were pets or working animals or wild animals that knew they wouldn’t be harmed. Summer tried to pet a brilliant blue one, but it ducked its sleek head in an unexpectedly cat-like way.
A tug at her belt startled Jennie. Something invisible pulled at it the same way she used her Change power. She slapped the pouch flat to her hip, but it pushed up against her fingers. A ruby-red flamingo was staring at it with intent and beady eyes. As it flapped its wings sharply, she felt the tug again.
Jennie clapped her hands. “Shoo!”
The flamingo squawked at her and bounded lightly away. Now that was something familiar: an animal trying to steal her stuff. Laughing, Jennie ran to catch up with the others.
Sunset Terrace was a huge platform covered with timber worked into geometric patterns. Much like the town square of Las Anclas, the open space was surrounded by buildings and small gardens, though here plants were grown in boxes of earth.
The stage was set up in a building with only three walls. Benches faced the open side in a semi-circle. The front rows were already filled, mostly with kids, but Jennie and the others found seats with a good view of the stage. She could see a little bit of the backstage, with a rack of costumes and a box of masks. Jennie remembered si
tting with her family in the town square, eagerly waiting for the show to begin. It had been so wonderful and magical—when she was seven. She wondered if any of the magic would remain, or if it would be like finding a doll she’d loved when she’d been four and seeing only a corncob wrapped in rags.
The benches filled rapidly as the sun touched the ocean beyond the floating world of houseboats. A forest of masts heaved slowly on the waves that rolled in to crash below, sending up a scent of brine.
Summer sat swinging her feet and nibbling on her last taco. Ever since the whales, she’d seemed less angry and more like Ross when he’d first arrived, wary and skittish. And just as Jennie had that thought, she spotted Ross shifting uncomfortably as more and more people pressed in around and behind him. His right hand clasped tight around Mia’s and his gauntleted left curled into a fist in his lap.
Jennie laid her palm on his back. He stiffened, then relaxed and cast a brief smile her way. Last summer he wouldn’t have been able to tolerate either the crowd or being touched. Now he leaned into her hand so she could rub between his bony shoulder blades.
Mia nudged Kerry. “I loved the Catalina Players when I was a little girl. Did they ever come to Gol—ah, to you?”
Jennie thought, Of course they didn’t. Nobody goes to Gold Point if they can help it.
Smoothly, Kerry replied, “No. We had our own theater troupes.”
“What were they like?” Mia asked.
“Oh, lots of fun.”
Mia persisted. “But what sorts of stories did they tell?”
Jennie thought, Everyone’s head ended up on a pike.
“All sorts of stories. Dramas, adventures, romances, comedies . . .” Kerry glanced skyward at an arrow of bright little birds heading south. “But they all ended the same way. Just when everything seemed hopeless, the king would come in and fix everything. If it were an adventure, he’d scare off the bad guys or defeat them single-handedly. If it were a romance, he’d order whoever stood in the couple’s way to let them get married. He rewarded the good and punished the evil.”
Ross touched the scars on his throat with his gauntleted fingers, then dropped his hand like it was red-hot. Jennie was sure he was thinking of the heads, too.
Stiffly, Kerry finished, “Well, we all enjoyed them.”
A horn blew a flourish, and a middle-aged woman strode onstage.
“This play is adapted from an ancient book,” she intoned, her voice carrying across the square. “Ten thousand years ago, the evil government controlled everything.”
A slim man dressed in black took his place on a stool at the far end of the stage.
The woman went on, “Color is banned!”
The man gestured, and the white backdrop upstage turned to a dull gray. The vague shapes of a gray city appeared. Like a rabbit illusion, it was hazy and more convincing when you didn’t focus on it.
“But most oppressive of all, the government controlled love.”
Now the backdrop showed vague human shapes, everyone walking about with their heads down. They all wore clinging one-piece gray garments.
Dramatically, the woman announced, “All but the ruling aristocracy were forced to wear . . . the unitard!”
The actors stepped onstage. A bright light shone on a teenage girl whose Change had given her beautiful pearly scales and a ruff around her head like a lacy crown. The players mimed the action as the narrator recounted the story of Madison, a girl of the oppressed Norm class, who had unexpectedly Changed.
“And so Madison ascended to the Changed aristocracy. Her family was so thrilled that they cast away their unitards and dressed in forbidden colors to celebrate Madison’s good fortune.”
Thunder and lightning! Bright colors shimmered over the players as they danced in a ring around Madison, who spun in perfect pirouettes in the center.
“But the government was watching,” the narrator announced ominously.
As Madison ran to and fro, miming horror and clasping her hands pleadingly, masked unitard-clad minions marched onstage and grabbed her family, holding their hands behind their backs.
The audience gasped as a new actor stomped onstage with footsteps of doom—someone pounding a drum in time to each step. Jennie stuffed her knuckles into her mouth to stop herself from laughing. The ‘terrifying’ actor had his face painted bright red and wore red feelers attached to a headband. Best of all, he held giant wooden lobster claws on poles.
He clacked and snapped the claws over the heads of each of the family members. At every snip, the actor slumped down and lowered their head, while players in the background waved scarlet streamers, presumably indicating spraying blood. As the final touch, stage hands hurled fake heads across the stage. They bounced.
Jennie forced herself not to look at Kerry. But she had to see if anyone else thought this was hilarious rather than tragic. Apparently not. Mia was actually mopping her eyes with her shirt. Summer was totally engrossed, her fists clenched as if she wanted to leap on stage and do battle with the lobster man. Even Ross was staring glumly at the heads.
“Alas, poor Madison,” the narrator intoned, “Witnessing the tragic deaths of her entire family made her lose her voice forever. She became The Princess Who Cannot Speak.”
Jennie heard each capital letter, and bit her lip. At that point the other actors began to talk, rather than just mime to narration. But Madison only communicated with interpretive dance. Jennie wished there were more dancing, which was quite beautiful, and less dialogue. Especially when the government assigned Madison two potential boyfriends, one the sweet aristocratic boy she’d known from childhood and the other a prince who appeared to be evil but was secretly a tormented rebel.
As Madison danced between the two boys, miming her anguish at having to choose between them, Jennie couldn’t resist glancing at Kerry behind Mia and Ross’s backs—at the same moment that Kerry leaned back to look at Jennie. Kerry rolled her eyes, and Jennie winked. If they’d been sitting together, they’d have nudged each other in the ribs.
Then Madison met Kayleigh, a blonde Norm girl who introduced her to the secret underground rebellion. They had much better chemistry than Madison had with either of her assigned boyfriends. Jennie was pulled into the story as the girls danced together, secretly wearing forbidden colors, and fought side by side to overthrow the evil government. She even caught herself leaning forward in excitement during the final battle, as the colorful rebels tumbled and whirled, some dying under fluttering crimson streamers, and Madison and Kayleigh fought their way to their society’s shadowy rulers.
Cheers rang out from the audience when the villains crashed to the stage amid a sea of red streamers. Madison and Kayleigh got engaged and established a new and more just government, Madison’s assigned boyfriends declared their love for each other, and there was a grand dance finale with every player wearing a different color.
As the actors took their bows before a hazy rainbow background, Summer turned to Jennie, her eyes wide and shining. “That was wonderful! I’m so glad we came. I wanted to kill that lobster guy! He was so evil!”
Mia mopped her eyes again, smiling happily. “Those lobster claws were really clever.” She added under her breath. “But I could give them better rotation.”
I’m never saying a word, Jennie decided. Except maybe to Kerry. In private.
But while the bouncing heads and designated boyfriends had made Jennie want to snicker in a way that she was sure the Players hadn’t intended, the dancing and mock-fighting had been every bit as magical as she’d recalled. Jennie would never be seven again, but she appreciated the Catalina Players’ skill and effort in a way she couldn’t have before she, too, had spent years and years training her body.
“Come on. Let’s talk to them before they pack up.” Jennie led the way to the stage and stopped the first actor she saw, the boy who had played the tormented rebel. “Excuse me. We’re from Las Anclas—”
The teenager flung back his beautiful hair, his expression ha
ughty. “I’ve heard all about Las Anclas.” His eyes went from warm brown to ice blue. “I’m surprised you’d condescend to mingle with us Changed folk.”
Jennie held out her hand and pulled a wooden stage sword into it. “Some of us are Changed ourselves. Anyway, things are different in Las Anclas now. Can I talk to whoever is in charge?”
The boy’s eyes shifted to spring green, and he gave her a tentative smile. “Okay. Grandma Jing is over there.”
Grandma Jing, who was surrounded by a crowd of townspeople complimenting her on the show, reminded Jennie of Grandma Wolfe. She was tiny, but carried herself as if she were much taller, and moved with the same commanding elegance. She even wore her hair in a similar style, upswept and held with mother-of-pearl combs.
Jennie waited for her turn to speak, while Mia wandered off to inspect the lobster claws, and Kerry struck up a conversation with the girls who had played Madison and Kayleigh. Ross watched his sister cautiously, but she was silent, apparently fascinated by Madison’s actor. Jennie supposed Summer was impressed by her beautiful Change.
“May I help you?”
Jennie started. The crowd had thinned, and Grandma Jing approached.
Avoiding the dreaded I’m from Las Anclas, Jennie said, “We all loved your play. I’m the representative of a town up north, and we’d like to ask you to come visit us and put on a show.”
“Is that the town that doesn’t help its own neighbors if they’re Changed?” Grandma Jing’s voice, precise and melodious, carried across the stage.
A heavy silence fell. Jennie had been eight when Mr. Preston had made the Rangers throw out the delegation from Catalina that had come to Las Anclas to ask for help during a drought, but a burning rush of shame washed through her at Grandma Jing’s words.
She chose her words carefully, both for Grandma Jing and for the listeners she could feel behind her. “We recently had an election. Mr. Preston is no longer the defense chief. In fact, he doesn’t hold any elected position anymore. The new defense chief is Mr. Horst . . .”
Jennie tried not to pause too long while she tried to figure out if Grandma Jing had heard of him. She hoped not. Grandma Jing didn’t react, so Jennie went on, “Part of his campaign was a promise to invite the Catalina Players back to Las Anclas. That’s probably why he won.”
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