“Grandpa, there is no one else. It’s just us. And the books. We’re all that’s left,” I say quietly.
“You don’t know that,” Ledger says, stepping forward. “There are six Sovereigns left. The new Rising could still be out there.”
“Maybe. And if it is, we have to find it.”
When we’re hiking through the forest back to the RV, I pull Ledger to one side. “Hey,” I whisper. “What was that back there? I thought you believed in us? In the new Rising.”
“I do.”
“Then why did you side with my grandfather?”
Ledger sighs heavily. “He’s just trying to protect you, Noelle. Don’t you think if there was just the slightest chance of there being another reader out there, he wouldn’t want to find them?”
I catch Ledger’s pained expression. Then I get it. “Wait, so, you’re worried about me?”
“We’re talking about your grandfather, Noelle.”
“Yeah but back there what you said. You’re worried, too. How can you be worried when you’ve come here for this very purpose, Ledger?”
“Because, Elle. Don’t you get it?” I scan his face. His eyes turn down at the corners and he turns away. “I care about you.”
So that was it! His pained expression as I crossed the river. His unreadable anger near the old mill. Ledger has been worried about me. Because he cares. Deeply. The realization lodges in my throat. I’m afraid to acknowledge what it really means.
“I wish I could change what was written, what was foretold. But I can’t.” Ledger turns to me and holds up his hands as if to grasp my arms, then stops himself. “Just like your grandfather, I’m still praying that by some slim chance you’re not what everyone thinks you are.”
“I don’t understand.”
Ledger sighs. “I know.”
“Then help me understand.”
“Soon,” Ledger says. “I’ll show you the next part of the story. Maybe that will help.”
“Can’t you just tell me?”
He shakes his head. “It won’t make any sense to you. You have to feel it. Experience it. That’s what the visions are for. For you to go there and live the story for yourself.”
“When we get back on the road, I want you to give me the next part of the story.”
Ledger lets a laugh escape. “Why are you so stubborn? You say you want this, but you don’t. You don’t want this, Elle. Trust me.”
“Yes, I do. I need to understand.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
When we get back to the RV, Grandpa rushes inside to the display on the dashboard. “Noelle, bring up Pedanta. We need to contact France and find out what’s happening.”
“Uh-uh, no. That’s not a good idea,” Ros says, clomping inside. “Fell might be listening.”
Grandpa sighs. “That’s a chance we have to take. If Pedanta really is occupied, we need to confirm it. Now.”
I power on Pedanta’s stream. To my surprise the P is already pulsing red and white, waiting for me to accept. When I do, it’s France on the other side, but I cannot see her face. It’s just static and her voice. “Noelle Hartley? I hope you are there?”
“I’m here!” I answer, but I soon realize the voice is a message, a leaf left floating on the stream just for me.
“If you’re listening, you need to know our stream has been compromised. You must not return to Pedanta under any circumstances. You must not try to contact us, Noelle Hartley. Fell is . . . they are looking for you. They know about the volumes. I think they know about you, too. I implore you, stay off the stream. We will not be simulcasting anymore. When this message is done playing, the entire system inside the RV will be erased. You will have no navigation. You must get yourselves to the other Sovereigns. I’m sorry we failed you.”
The voice fades, and as promised, the display turns to lines of code. They run into oblivion until the entire dashboard goes dark.
I look at Grandpa, his face is blank, afraid. “How will we get there?”
Ros riffles through her pack. “I can get us out of the forest. And after that, I have this.” She pulls out a huge sheet of paper. “It’s a map.” She looks at each of us in turn. “What’s the matter? You’ve never seen one before?”
I touch the paper lightly. Sure enough, it’s real.
“Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll get us there. But I’m not gonna sit back and be just some copilot.” Ros shoves past me into the driver’s seat. “Look out. I’m driving this bus.”
“Have you ever driven an RV before?” I ask.
Ros shakes her head. “How hard can it be? Besides, take a look around. This isn’t the UVF. We’re the only ones taking the chance to drive on these roads.”
“Okay but if you get stuck, one of us will take over.”
Ros starts the engine, throws the RV into reverse, and swivels to look at me. “I don’t plan on getting stuck.”
When we’re out of the forest and back on the main road, everyone starts to relax a little. Grandpa’s eyes grow heavy, but he tries to keep awake. “Get some rest,” I say. “You’ll need your strength.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
He shuffles to the back of the RV, leaving Ledger and I alone on the sofa bench. A few seconds go by before I turn to him. “So?” I say. “Let’s do this.”
Ledger shakes his head. “Noelle, you’re exhausted. It’s not a good time.”
“There will never be a good time. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Ledger, but time isn’t exactly on our side.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. Fell is a day behind us, maybe two at best. If we want to stay ahead of them, I need to know what you know.” I move nearer, but Ledger backs away.
“Okay, okay,” he says, holding up his hands. “There’s one thing you must understand.”
“What’s that?”
“There are certain things I have to show you. I can’t change what you need to see. If there were any way for me to change it, believe me, I would.”
“I understand,” I whisper. “I’m ready.”
I hold out my hands. He moves closer, his eyes boring into me with a silent apology as he levels his palms atop mine. They hover inches above my flesh, but something about it feels wrong, empty. I yank my hands away. “Wait.”
Ledger exhales. “What? What is it?”
“Something’s off.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I’m going to do this, I might as well do it in my own way.” I inch toward him slowly. Ledger flinches.
“What are you—?”
“Just trust me.”
To my surprise he stills as I near him. We’re inches apart before he breaks.
“Wait, Noelle. This . . . closeness . . . are you sure this is what you want?”
His eyes search me. It’s already happening. He’s pulling me under with him, pulling me in, and no matter what happens in this torn-apart world outside us, I know unequivocally what I want.
“I’m sure.”
I lean toward him. He doesn’t move or dart away this time. I find his hand at my side. His eyes close as I interlace my fingers in his, feeling his warmth. My body hums with strange delight. I can scarcely believe what’s happening is real. The blitz of light overtakes me, pulling me into his sky. I’m with him again in that other world.
I hold on just long enough to turn my face and brush my lips against his cheek toward his ear. I feel the softness of his skin, the twitch of a million volts of electricity crackling between us.
“Show me, Ledger,” I say before the light disappears and the darkness consumes me. “Show me the story.”
*
My ears are on fire. That’s how loud the alarm is. I wake to it blaring all around me, the whooping of a siren. But I’m not awake. I’m here. Inside the past. Ledger’s past. I shudder, hearing something pounding repeatedly behind me. I turn. It’s him. Holofernes. He’s holding a long piece of twisted metal, bashing
against an enormous glass case. It takes me only a moment to realize where we are. This must be a museum, or a library of some kind, because inside the case is the largest, oldest book I have ever seen.
Macbeth is crouching at his side, holding a gun. He’s shaking violently. “We have to move!”
“This damn glass is triple thickness, but I almost have it,” Holofernes shouts over the siren. “Just cover me.”
“They’re coming!”
“I know, but I’m not leaving without it!”
The glass case cracks. Holofernes bashes it until the crack expands and the entire thing shatters. He pulls gloves up over his sleeves to retrieve the book from inside. There’s a large suitcase ready at his feet. He stops for a split second and stares at the book in his arms.
Macbeth screams in between his cover fire, “Holofernes? Holofernes! What are you doing? Let’s go!”
“Gutenberg,” he whispers. “There you are.”
“Let’s go!”
Holofernes snaps to and stows the book in the suitcase. Just as he locks it, unseen Fell troopers open fire. Macbeth throws something in their direction, and the room fills with smoke. “Go! Get out of here!”
Holofernes looks blank until Macbeth grabs him and shakes him. “If you don’t leave now, we’ll both be dead. Get out of here! Save the Gutenberg, for Christ’s sake!”
Holofernes’s face crumples. He throws himself to the floor and pulls Macbeth to him by his collar. “Come with me, damn it!”
“That’s not my ending,” he says, calmly. “Why do you think I chose this name?” Macbeth shoves him toward the door. “Now for all of us . . . go!”
Holofernes scrambles toward the door on his hands and knees, lugging the case. Gunfire opens up all around him, blasting holes in the walls, in the other glass cases. Books explode. Bullets rip through pages. The cases ignite, and another alarm begins blaring.
“You goddamned Fell bastards!” Macbeth yells, rising to his feet. He darts into the smoke, searching with his weapon, wheezing uncontrollably. A fit of coughing overtakes him before he refocuses, pushes back his black hair, and walks toward the fire. He’s talking to himself in a low voice. I cannot make out what he’s saying until it rises. “I will not yield! I will try the last! Before my body I throw my warlike shield.”
Macbeth pauses, opening fire into the smoke until several bodies fall before him. A red light finds his torso, but he just carries on, marching toward the source. “Where are you, you bloody cowards? Face me! Or are you afraid of just one boolo with a gun?”
His weapon screams into the smoke. Bullets course right and left in a torrent of mad fire. A red light steadies on his forehead, and Macbeth stops abruptly. He drops his weapon. It clatters to the ground as he sinks to his knees. The red light follows him. Three Fell troopers step out from the billowing smoke. Their weapons focus into a single red dot between his eyes.
“Lay on,” he says, raising his hands.
“Get it all out, boolo. Say your peace now, while you still can.”
Macbeth closes his eyes. “Post tenebras spero lucem.”
The shot is fired. The Fell troopers run after Holofernes and the Gutenberg. Macbeth falls to the floor. He doesn’t stir.
A scream cuts through the silence from the corner of the room. A woman stops, dropping the case she was lugging with both hands. I recognize her only by her eyes. They’re wide with panic, but I know them all the same. It’s G.
She lunges to the floor, throwing herself to her knees. Tears rain down her full brown cheeks. “Goddamn it, boy. Why’d you have to play the hero this time?”
The blood gushes from Macbeth’s head. She leans forward and holds him to her breast, soaking her clothes with the life force spilling from him like a river. She sobs uncontrollably, then sniffs in all her pain.
“Why can’t they just leave us alone?” She tilts her head to the ceiling. “You hear me, you pieces of Fell shit? You killed my friend, goddamn it! Come back here and finish what you started! I’m waiting for you! Ganymede is waiting to take your sorry asses down!”
The troopers’ footfalls echo through from the exit. Ganymede begins pulling Macbeth’s lifeless body into a corner of the room. She maneuvers him behind a demolished bookcase, the books inside it piles of ash and paper. “Sleep, my dear Macbeth,” she whispers, planting a single kiss on his cheek. “Sleep now.”
Ganymede rushes back to grab her weapon and Macbeth’s from the floor. She hunkers down against a bookcase, facing the exit, ready to open fire. Good, I think. She’ll see them coming.
Moments pass before I see it. Then I want to yell out. I want to scream, but I have no voice. There’s nothing I can do to stop the gun pressing into her temple, the troopers surrounding her from the other smoke-filled exit, their smug faces jeering for another victim, another kill.
I wish the vision would end, but it doesn’t. There’s nothing I can do to stop the images pouring into me as they drag Ganymede to the center of the room, as they drive the butts of their weapons into her body over and over and over.
“Filthy boolo!”
They force their weapons into her face, her ribs, her chest. Her flesh distorts. She tries to cover her face, but the blows just keep coming. Her cheeks burst open. Her nose breaks. Her eye sockets turn purple and blue. Her lips bulge with blood. I try to shut my eyes, but it’s impossible. I can’t stop seeing what I’m seeing.
Get me out of here, Ledger, I want to yell. Please, make this stop!
Ganymede lies unconscious, her blood mixing with Macbeth’s as the troopers take books from their cases, then strip out their pages, handfuls at a time. They crumple the paper, throwing the wads to the floor.
“Garbage on top of garbage.”
“You said it.”
“Crazy. That’s the only way to describe them. Just a crazy bunch of boolos.”
“Why don’t they just give up? I mean, they have to know they can’t win, right? Isn’t it obvious? Fell is going to destroy every last word and every last boolo who tries to stifle our progress.”
“They’re ungrateful, that’s what. They don’t appreciate what Fell is trying to do. Ungrateful rebels, every last one of them.”
“No commentary, men. Get the gasoline. Start the fire. We’re sending a message here. That’s it.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
The sergeant leaves the room while the others bury Ganymede in the torn flesh of old books. When she’s covered in pages, one of the men brings over a can of gasoline.
“Wait. Shouldn’t we, you know, be getting something out of this?”
“You heard him. We’re supposed to burn the ones we injure. Sends a message.”
“Yeah but, there’s more than one way to send a message.”
“Go on.”
“Well, what if we didn’t burn her right away?”
“You mean . . . ?”
“Might as well. If she’s just going to lie there.”
“You first. I’ll keep watch.”
I stare in horror as the Fell trooper takes down his pants. He kneels, then hastily starts pressing himself on top of Ganymede, who is unconscious and as near death as can be. I don’t even know the word for what I’m seeing, but my gut sickens as I’m forced to witness this excruciating act of cruelty and depravity. I feel myself becoming hysterical. I cannot make the vision end. I can scarcely breathe as I try to scream, to do anything that will make this stop. Please! I beg uselessly. Please just stop this!
Then I remember: Ganymede survives. I have seen her, an old lady with a happy smile. I hold on to this simple truth until, to my surprise and wonder, Ganymede’s eyes open. Her hand moves toward the gun. Her arm lifts wearily. She raises the weapon to the side of the trooper’s head. Then I see her lower it, placing the tip of the gun right into his ear. He freezes atop her, but before he can save himself, before he can beg for mercy, she pulls the trigger.
Incredibly, he does not die. He lies clutching his face, his head, the pieces of him sc
attered . . . everywhere. He’s been blown apart by Ganymede’s careful aim. The other Fell trooper rushes over and finds him on the ground, clutching his disfigured face writhing in pain. He covers his mouth and starts to retch, but regains himself, then aims and fires a single shot into the trooper’s head, killing him instantly.
He takes one look at Ganymede. “See? See what you made me do?”
He searches for the can of gasoline, then douses her before setting her body and the book ablaze.
“Burn, boolo.”
The flames attach themselves to her like leeches. Ganymede writhes on the floor trying to escape. The smell is overpowering, the bodies of the books, the human flesh, the nauseating fumes of the gasoline. There’s no end to the horror. As she moves, the fire burns higher, engulfing her in the flames.
Ganymede’s helpless screams fill the air. Her arms flail and her legs kick as the flames inch up, covering half her body.
Satisfied, the Fell trooper laughs. “Here, this will put it out.” He spits twice into the fire. Methodically, purposefully, he tips more books into the flames, destroying the precious collection. Ganymede’s eyes fill with terror as she watches every book char and blacken into ash. There’s not a thing she can do to save them or herself.
When there are no more books left to burn, the Fell trooper leaves. Moments later, a man and a woman rush inside. I barely recognize them as Lady M and Goodfellow. They look so different in their uniforms. Goodfellow spots Ganymede, then darts out, returning with a large blanket. He covers her body, snuffing out the flames.
Lady M holds her head in her hands and cries quietly. “Oh my god, oh my god. Look what they did to her. Goodfellow? What can we do? What can we do?”
Goodfellow shakes his head. “I don’t know, I don’t know. Let me think!”
“We can’t let her go on like this, just look. Look what they did to her! Oh god, Ganymede!”
Goodfellow stands, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a little fold of fabric. He tips a single yellow pill into his hand.
“Titus is at least ten minutes away. She won’t last that long. This will put her into a suspended state, keeping the shock to a minimum.”
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