UnSouled

by Neal Shusterman

Page 22

 

  “I don’t. But I have a right to know what he’s doing, don’t I?” It’s so like Janson to take everything she says literally. Shutting her out to spite her, like a child.

  “He says he’ll tell you when he’s ready. ”

  It’s no sense trying to get anything out of the boy—he’s got the loyalty of a German shepherd.

  She supposes this obsession of Janson’s is better than the despair he felt before. At least now he has something to focus on, something to take his thoughts away from the cascade of events that the Unwind Accord has brought about. Their new reality includes clinics that have popped up nationwide like mushrooms on an overwatered lawn, each of them advertising young, healthy parts. “Live to 120 and beyond!” the ads say. “Out with the old and in with the new!” No one asks where the parts are coming from, but everyone knows. And now it’s not just ferals that are being unwound—the Juvenile Authority has actually come up with a form that parents can use to send their “incorrigible” teen off for unwinding. At first she doubted anyone would use the form. She was convinced its very existence would finally spark the outcry she’d been waiting for. It didn’t. In fact, within a month, there was a kid in their own neighborhood who had been taken away to be unwound.

  “Well, I think they did the right thing,” one of her neighbors confided. “That kid was a tragedy waiting to happen. ”

  Sonia doesn’t talk to either of those neighbors anymore.

  Day to day, Sonia watches her husband waste away, and none of her pleas for him to take care of himself get through. She even threatens to leave him, but they both know it’s an empty threat.

  “It’s almost ready,” he tells her one evening as he moves his fork around a plate of pasta, barely putting any into his mouth. “This’ll do it, Sonia—this will change everything. ”

  But he still won’t share with her exactly what he’s doing. Her only clue comes from his research assistant. Not from anything the boy says, but because he began his employment with three fingers on his left hand. And now he has five.

  18 • Lev

  He bounds through a dense forest canopy, high up where the leaves touch the sky. It’s night, but the moon is as bright as the sun. There is no earth, only trees. Or maybe it’s that the ground matters so little, it might as well not exist. Stirred by a warm breeze, the forest canopy rolls like ocean waves beneath the clear sky.

  There is a creature leaping through the foliage in front of him, turning back to look at Lev every once in a while. It has huge cartoonish eyes in its small furred face. It’s not fleeing from Lev, he realizes; it’s leading him. This way, it seems to say with those soulful eyes that reflect twin images of the moon.

  Where are you leading me? Lev wants to ask, but he can’t speak. Even if he could, he knows he won’t get an answer.

  Branch to branch Lev leaps with an inborn skill that he did not possess in life. This is how he knows he’s dead. The experience is too clear, too vivid to be anything else. When he was alive, Lev never cared much for climbing trees. As a child, it was discouraged by his parents. Tithes need to protect their precious bodies, he was told, and climbing trees can lead to broken bones.

  Broken.

  He was broken in a car accident and left with deep damage inside. That damage must have been worse than anyone thought. His last memory is a cloudy recollection of pulling up to the eastern gate of the Arápache Rez. He remembers hearing his own voice telling the guard something, but he can’t remember what it was. His fever was soaring by then. All he wanted to do was sleep. He was unconscious before he learned whether or not the guard would let them in.

  But none of that matters now. Death has a way of making the concerns of the living feel insignificant. Like the ground below, if indeed there is ground.

  He leaps again, his pace getting faster. There is a rhythm to it, like a heartbeat. The branches seem to appear right where he needs them to be.

  Finally he reaches the very edge of the forest at the very edge of the world. Star-filled darkness above and below. He looks for the creature that was leading him, but it is nowhere to be seen. Then he realizes with a dark sort of wonder that there never was a creature. He is the creature, projecting his anima before him as he launches through the treetops.

  Up above, the full moon is so clear, so large, that Lev feels he could reach out and grab it. Then he realizes that is exactly what he is meant to do. Bring down the moon.

  It will be a devastating thing if he plucks the moon from the sky. Tides will change, and oceans will churn in consternation. Lands will flood, while bays will turn to deserts. Earthquakes will re-form the mountains, and people everywhere will have to adapt to a new reality. If he tears down the moon, everything will change.

  With infinite joy and absolute abandon, Lev leaps to his purpose, soaring off the edge of the world and toward the moon with his arms open wide.

  • • •

  Lev opens his eyes. There is no moon. There are no stars. There is no forest canopy. Only the white walls and ceiling of a room he hasn’t seen for a long time. He feels weak and wet. His body hurts, but he can’t yet identify the location of the pain. It seems to come from everywhere. He’s not dead after all—and for a moment he finds himself disappointed. Because if death is a joyous jaunt through a forest canopy for all eternity, he can live with that. Or not live, as the case may be.

  This room is where he hoped he’d find himself when he awoke. There’s a woman sitting at the desk across the room, making notes in a file. He knows her. Loves her, even. He can count on one hand all the people in his life whom he would be happy to see. This woman is one of them.

  “Healer Elina,” he tries to say, but it comes out like the squeak of a mouse.

  She turns to him, closing the file, and regards him with a pained smile. “Welcome back, my little Mahpee. ”

  He tries to smile, but it hurts his lips to do it. Mahpee. “Sky-faller. ” He had forgotten they had called him that. So much has changed since he was last here. He’s not the boy he was when they first took him in as a foster-fugitive. That was the beginning of his dark days—between the time he left CyFi and the time he showed up at the airplane graveyard.

  Elina comes over to him, and immediately he notices the gray infiltrating her braid. Was it there a year and a half ago and he hadn’t noticed, or is it new? She certainly has reason to have new gray hairs.

  “I’m sorry,” he rasps out.

  She seems genuinely surprised. “For what?”

  “For being here. ”

  “You should never apologize for existing, Lev. Not even to all those people out there who wish you didn’t. ”

  He wonders how many of those people are right here on the reservation. “No . . . I mean I’m sorry I came back to the rez. ”

  She takes a moment to look at him. No longer smiling, just observing. “I’m glad you did. ”

  But Lev notices that she didn’t say “we. ”

  “I decided that once you were stable, you were better off here in my home than in the medical lodge. ” She checks the IV leading into his right forearm. He hadn’t even noticed it was there before. “You’re looking a little puffy, but you’re probably just overhydrated. I’ll turn this off for a bit. ” She shuts down the fluid infuser. “That’s probably why you sweat so much when your fever broke. ” She looks at him for a moment, probably assessing what he needs to know, then says, “You have two broken ribs and suffered quite a lot of internal bleeding. We had to give you a partial thoracotomy to stop the bleeding—but it will heal, and I have herbs that will keep it from scarring. ”

  “How’s Chal?” Lev asks. “And Pivane?” Chal, Elina’s husband, is a big-shot Arápache lawyer. His brother Pivane isn’t one to leave the rez.

  “Chal has a major case in Denver, but you’ll see Pivane soon enough. ”

  “Has he asked to see me?”

  “You know Pivane—he’ll wait until he’s invited. ”


  “My friends?” Lev asks. “Are they here?”

  “Yes,” Elina says. “It seems my household is overrun by mahpees this week. ” Then she goes to an entertainment console, fiddles with it a bit, and music begins to play. Guitar music.

  He recognizes the piece from his first time on the rez, and it pulls at his heartstrings. That first time, he had climbed over the southern wall to get in and was injured in the fall. He woke to find himself in this same room. An eighteen-year-old boy was playing guitar with such amazing skill, Lev had been mesmerized. But now all that remains of him is a recording.

  “One of Wil’s songs of healing,” Elina says. “Wil’s music goes on, even if he doesn’t. It’s a comfort to us. Sometimes. ”

  Lev forces a smile, his lips not hurting quite so bad this time. “It’s good to be . . . here,” he says, almost saying “home” instead of “here. ” Then he closes his eyes, because he’s afraid to see what her eyes will say back.

  19 • Connor

  “He’s awake,” Elina says. That’s all, just “he’s awake. ” She is a woman of few words. At least few words for Connor.

  “So, can I see him?”

  She folds her arms and regards him coolly. Her lack of response is his answer. “Tell me one thing,” she finally says. “Is it because of you he became a clapper?”

  “No!” says Connor, disgusted by the suggestion. “Absolutely not!” And then he adds, “It’s because of me that he didn’t clap. ”

  She nods, accepting his answer. “You can see him tomorrow, once he’s a little stronger. ”

  Connor sits back down on the sofa. The doctor’s home—in fact, the entire rez—is not what he expected. The Arápache have steeped themselves in both their culture and modern convenience. Plush leather furniture speaks of wealth, but it is clearly made by hand. The neighborhood—if one can call it that—is carved into the red stone cliffs on either side of a deep gorge, but the rooms are spacious, the floors are tiled with ornate marble, and the plumbing fixtures are polished brass or maybe even gold—Connor’s not sure. Dr. Elina’s medical supplies are also state of the art, although different in some fundamental way from medical supplies on the outside. Less clinical, somehow.

  “Our philosophy is a little different,” she had told him. “We believe it’s best to heal from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. ”

  Across the room, the boy playing a board game with Grace growls in frustration. “How can you keep beating me in Serpents and Stones?” he whines at Grace. “You’ve never even played it before!”

  Grace shrugs. “I learn quick. ”

  The boy, whose name is Kele, has little patience for losing. The game, Serpents and Stones, appears to be a lot like checkers, but with more strategy—and when it comes to strategy, Grace cannot be beat.

  Once the kid storms away, Grace turns to Connor. “So your friend the clapper is gonna be okay?” she asks.