Sol was rising again as they approached Lodon on foot. Dime still used her walking stick, though the soreness was much less pronounced after her foot’s extended rest. The other foot, though, was now tired and angry from pedaling so far. Dime had never appreciated the act of walking so much. She felt a new understanding for Tum’s routine.
Family in mind, her heart pounded as they made their way over the next hill and the Great Gates of Lodon formed in her view, the stone towers beyond rising up against their hazy mountain backdrop. Sol’s first light burst from behind, casting long shadows like a hand, reaching to welcome them. She’d spent her life in this city, and the fact that it was still here, still something familiar, reawakened her.
She hastened her wobbly steps, thinking of Dayn, and Luja, and Tum. Of Da-da. She would see them soon.
“Stop,” Ella called out, throwing a hand in caution. “What’s this?”
The main gates of Lodon loomed large, but rather than a dotting of fare-takers and leisure strollers, there was an organized line of pyrsi, wearing bright colors and carrying large banners atop thick poles. Pyrsi entering the city walked between them, like a greeting line at a reception, except some stopped and bowed, while others hurried.
It was like she had returned to a different place after all. Dime had no idea what this could mean. Were they guarding the city, now?
Ella pulled a small glass from her jacket, expanding its concentric metal rings to peer ahead. “Well, this is a twist. Sol’s Pillars! Seems you’ve wrested the slime from the muck.”
Sol’s Pillars—a fringe political group. Dime knew all about them; the IC kept a running list of their activity and suspected registration, making sure nothing got out of hand. They did this with any organization speaking independently of the Circles, including Ador’s group, the Free Winds. Speech itself wasn’t a crime—and Sol forbid it ever would be—but in reality it was punished with equal fervor and less attention.
The Circles didn’t like the Free Winds, and they used their network to keep its leadership out of positions of power or influence. But that’s where the comparison ended. While the Free Winds challenged the laws set by the Circles, and sometimes the structure and authority of the Circles themselves, Sol’s Pillars heralded their exclusionary views in loud rallies, calling for a re-strengthening of prosperity.
Prosperity, they said, was central to the continued survival of the Ja-lal. Pyrsi must be encouraged to thrive, free from lowered standards and the threat of criminals. Society must be strengthened, not weakened, to survive.
Perhaps without context, Dime would have agreed. Prosperity was essential to taking care of all pyrsi. But Dime herself had sweat and clawed her way up to the role that she wanted as part of a low-class family, a child to a maintenance worker who’d found her lying in a sky alley.
And so, as a pyr who had always been seen as low-class first, she understood that the undertone of these dreams of success was a sense of social boundaries—who deserved this freedom, who was safe to include, and who would have to earn the right even to try.
A new reality struck her as she watched the pyrsi below, raising and lowering their banners. Sol’s Pillars frequently used the fairies’ lurking threat as a rallying cry for their supporters, the reason the Ja-lal must stay focused and sharp. Some viewed the reference as a metaphor against immorality, but Dime now considered their messages in a new light. Speeches of renewed prosperity, references to Ja-lal as the pyrsi of Sol, hints at the unfairness of the fairies stealing and hoarding, of the need for permanent peace—
While she found their words divisive and loathsome, she had not considered their full implication. To Dime, the fairies had been distant, fictional. To Sol’s Pillars, they were a match, ready to be lit.
Dime understood, as she was sure Ella did beside her, that their presence here, in the open and wearing their sigils, was no coincidence. The rumors of the winged invaders must have been spread, and believed, and in pyrsi’s fear, they turned to the organization they most trusted to protect them. Sol’s Pillars had been viewed as a fringe group, warning against a symbolic enemy. Now, they had been validated.
“Sala must be beside herself,” Dime muttered. Ella, who looked as shocked to see the amassed crowds as Dime was, said nothing. Her gaze hardened.
“Can’t risk it. You must know that.” Ella motioned to Dime. “Now, with me. We’re too close already. They’ll be at all the entrances, I’m sure. They may be watching for Fo-ror, but they don’t know what happened at the cliff. From their perspective, you left with the fairies. Every one of them probably has a sketch of you on hand. I’m sure you’re all over the Caller, your name and description.”
“Who cares?” Dime glared in fury at the lines of pyrsi. “It’s my home; I’m welcome in it. What could anyone do to me? I have no career to lose!”
“Dime,” Ella whispered. “There is more to this than you know. I don’t understand it myself, but we need to talk. Please. Let’s talk. And . . . not here.”
“But my family! If I’m in the Caller, or even the street reports, they’ll be scared. I’m not going to let these—”
“Dime. I have contacts in the city and information that they’ll want. I’ll find a way to check on anyone you name. I didn’t know how things had escalated here; you’re not healed. At worst, we’ll need to run and we can’t. At best, they’ll spread news of your injuries as propaganda that the Fo-ror have returned the Violence and so it can no longer be stayed. Please—we’re not ready for this. We need to go.”
Dime started to think through her options. She had snuck out; she could sneak in.
Ella got right in her face. “Do you trust me or not?”
“I don’t even know you!” Dime felt rude snapping back; the fe’pyr may have saved her life, and she’d grown attached to her during their long, difficult journey. But Dime would make her own decisions and Ella was stepping too far.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Ok. There was something Ella wasn’t telling her and wasn’t going to tell her here. Dime knew there was no danger greater than a lack of information. Harm and destruction. “Fine, we’ll go.” Dime remembered that Ella lived by the dark woods. She tried not to think about another endless stretch of walking. Still fueled by anger at what she had just seen, Dime was almost feeling tough about it.
Taking in a long view of the walled city and pretending Dayn could hear her thoughts, Dime turned to her left and hobbled off behind Ella down a long, shrubby hill.
Now without their car and with Ella insisting that no one else must see them, they continued on, ducking across roads and walking in the shelter of rocks or hills when possible. Frequently, Ella gritted her teeth and muttered to herself. Dime tried to ignore her and instead sort this new information. Dime had always thrived on information; it was an agent’s blood.
The Fo-ror wanted her for some reason she couldn’t imagine. Now, Sol’s Pillars could be looking for her too. They wouldn’t try to capture her, at least she hoped it hadn’t gone so far, but she knew Ella was right that Sol’s Pillars wouldn’t hesitate to use her for propaganda against the Fo-ror. But, it wasn’t like she was on the fairies’ side either. They did try to capture her. Maybe she should go into Lodon and warn the others, dealing with Sol’s Pillars as best she could.
No. She was not going to deal with them, whatever that meant. Dime was finished placating ignorance for the sake of calm. She saw now the direction they pointed, to hostility, to—she forced herself to think it—even to a rekindling of the Great War.
Dime would not risk helping them pave a path to the Violence. She would not associate with those who fostered superiority. Also, they were creepy and Dime had standards. She’d avoid them until she knew more, at the least.
Ador. She could send a message to Ador, to enlist his help. Though he’d been held back from traditional power in Lodon, he was connected in his own w
ays. She knew never to underestimate him. He could sneak her into town, keep her hidden, and help her figure out what was going on. She turned back over her shoulder, seeing only a silhouette of the tall towers against the clouds.
Frustrated that she was leaving the problem right when she arrived to resolve it, Dime began to mutter as much as Ella. After a while, they were two grumpy fe’pyrsi, lugging big bags up and down the steepening hills.
“Here. One more meal.” Ella stopped and exhaled. “If you agree.”
“Hmpf,” Dime wasn’t sure they should stop now, but she was hungry and kind of mad. She eyed Ella, trying to decide her position.
“I’m tired of dragging this food and I don’t see to waste it,” Ella added. “I have supplies at home, so we might as well stop for a bit. It’s not much of a biscuit, but it’ll do.”
Dime looked over the hill, realizing why Ella had chosen to stop here. They’d see anyone approaching from Lodon before they were seen; they had time to move along.
“But no fire,” Ella said.
Of course no fire.
The food they had bought at the Crossing was plain and not fresh, and Dime, especially in light of her recent hardships, couldn’t shake the craving for a hot patty melt with pan-fried chips. What she settled for was another bunch of longfruit, a stack of crackers, and what was left of a preserved garlic spread.
The garlic spread did help. “Never met a garlic I didn’t like,” Dime said with a grin.
“Suzanne was the same.” Ella’s face turned again. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bring her up so often. But, with the Fo-ror, and . . . other things. It brings back memories.”
Dime’s spirit sunk at the heartbreak in Ella’s eyes, undulled by the passing of the cycles. “May I ask you? How did you meet a Fo-ror in the first place?”
Ella stared her down for a long stride, and Dime almost took the question back. Then Ella answered.
“I was a journalist. Still am, though that’s between us. Back then I was always looking for the next piece, the big edge, the story that would make pyrsi flock to the theaters to hear it. The story to lead the Caller. So I went after the biggest one I could imagine.”
“The Fo-ror?” Dime asked, leaning forward.
“No. The newts.” Ella took a sip of cold tea. “I moved in with them, basically, approaching a little each turn until they began to trust me. I learned to communicate with them. I understood their culture. I had the best story of my career, built over long seasons away, hidden in a place I was never supposed to go. It was a masterpiece.”
The wind whistled by over the hill.
“Well, don’t you want to know what happened?”
“Oh,” Dime said. “I figured you were going to tell me. Um, what happened?”
Ella cleared her throat. “I didn’t submit it.”
“Ok.” Dime wasn’t sure where this was going.
“It was wrong. They trusted me, they let me into their homes, and what—I let the Ja-lal ooh and aah over their quaint animal ways? The newts couldn’t possibly understand what I was planning to do, so they couldn’t grant consent for me to share their private lives. And it’s not like documenting stone lizard migration; the newts have troops. They have friends. I don’t know if you can call them pyrsi. I don’t know if you need to. They are no less important.”
Ella looked away. “My editor had it all set up: private investors, a pen name, secret delivery. The Circles couldn’t pin it on me. Even if they could, they wouldn’t want to bring attention to it. I thought about taking out the details, just letting pyrsi know the newts are real. They’re kind. They’re not monsters. But who would read that? Who’d believe it? How would it help?”
From Ella’s tight lips and pained expression, Dime had the sense that there was more. She waited.
“There is so much over the cliff, Dime. So much we don’t understand.”
Dime nodded slowly. “If you could go there, others could go there.”
“It’s not even difficult. Despite what you think in Lodon, pyrsi do it all the time. It’s only going to take the wrong one. What if the Ja-lal understood the richness of the forest? What would happen to the newts then? To—” She drew a sharp breath.
“After all that, I picked the wrong side, didn’t I? I kept their secrets from the prying eyes of the Ja-lal and then the Fo-ror ran them right out of the forest. We saw signs of it then, but we didn’t think it would go so far. It did.
“The Beds, the place you stayed, is a shadow of a newt village. They live now, cold, hungry, and in exile on beaches that don’t support them. And I haven’t done a violent thing about it.”
Ella stared at the horizon as the wind raced by. Dime tried to put together the pieces of Ella’s tale while wondering how to raise the point that she hadn’t mentioned Suzanne at all. Surely Suzanne didn’t also live with newts.
After a bit, Ella continued. “When I refused to turn the piece in, after all the resources and latitude they’d given me to do it, my career was over. I told them I’d pay them back, but they didn’t care. They got wordy with me and I got wordy back.”
Dime thought about pyrsi actually crossing the Great Cliff. Interacting with the newts. With the Fo-ror. While she couldn’t grasp the consequences of it, it was no longer a hard line in her mind. With a shock, she realized her world no longer ended at that cliff. And she would never see it that way again. She tried to imagine Lodon’s reaction to Ella’s story. Whether that line would blur for others, as well.
“You did a good thing,” she offered, speaking slowly as she thought through it. “I mean, about the newts. Whatever the Fo-ror did to them, we might have made it worse.”
“Perhaps,” Ella said, tearing apart a longfruit. “It could also have been better.”
The last few turns had given Dime many of these same thoughts. Doubt. Regret. She had survived it by knowing she needed to move forward. And Ella would too. “We should have talked more about the Heartland. But not the way your editor wanted.” Dime exhaled. “Ella, we never know the consequences of our choices. We can only do what seems best at the time. And then look forward.”
“That’s what Suzanne said,” Ella murmured. “Oh. That’s what you asked. So, long story short, the newts were still in the forest then, though they’d been pushed out of their original home, ‘Home Sha’ in their language. It’s by a lake,” she explained, “so to them it was their own version of Sha just for them. And Suzanne was in the forest a lot, journeying far outside of the villages. She liked to explore, you could say. Always finding new plants, new spicebeds—”
Ella’s speech sped up and she held her gaze away. “I ran into her in the forest, neither of us ran away, and . . . soon we were meeting there, whenever she could. But I wasn’t going to live with the newts forever, so I returned to Lodon, as I’ve mentioned. Returned, ruined my career, and left. Built my own private tower with my savings, out on the edge of the old woods.”
She waved in the direction they’d been traveling. “Harm your towers, Lodon.” Ella struggled for her next words and Dime pretended not to notice the fe’pyr’s water flask shaking in her hand. “It was too empty without her. I went back.
“Suzanne was there, in the Heartland, waiting for me.” Ella breathed in. “She told her family about me, that I was Ja-lal. They were nice to me, at first. Oddly accepting. I could barely contain my excitement, that first biscuit together—well, they don’t use the term. But there I was, with a whole family of Fo-ror, sharing food, and laughing. Then it started.
“They reminded Suzanne in whispers that I was uncivilized. An animal. They reminded her that we use currency for greed. That we cut the trees and mine the rocks. They hugged her and explained that life was difficult and sometimes confusing. They wouldn’t stop. Meanwhile, they smiled at me and welcomed me to the family pots.” Ella waved. “It’s a food thing,” she murmured. Then, changing
tone, “I thought things were going well!”
She set the flask down against a clump of grass.
“When Suzanne left, she left with a temper.” Ella kicked her heel against a loose rock. “She loved that forest. She loved it. More than anything. But she wouldn’t go back. Not after the way they treated me.”
It sounded to Dime that Suzanne did not love the forest more than anything, but it wasn’t the point and so she held her tongue. Without warning, Ella stood up, gathered and wiped her dishes, grabbed the large sack, threw it over her shoulder, and grunted. “Not safe here; better to get home.”
Dime didn’t argue, but leaned against her walking stick and moved as best she could down the hill, away from her own.
“This is it,” Ella said, as they approached the edge of a small ridge.
Dime had long been admiring the lines of spiky trees in the distance. She’d never been this far wesside; no assignments ever sent agents near the woods; it was said that the land was unpopulated, too close to the dark woods for safety. Maybe I can make excuses for one more thing I haven’t done on account of the Circles!
Peering below, Dime was struck by awe at the unusual structure. Hidden from view by the steep crag, you’d almost need to know where the lone tower was to find it.
Unlike the towers of Lodon, painted with decorations of leaves and berries and branches, which now Dime understood were ironically native to the Undergrowth, Ella’s tower was natural. No paint, no trim, no adornments—natural, leafy vines wound around the tower. Some panels were covered, some cross-hatched, and others almost bare.
She breathed in deeply, strong scents of pine and sap filling her nose. Birds chirped and screeched in the background.
Diamondsong 01: Escape Page 10