Flicker and Mist

by Mary G. Thompson

  “A stupid boy,” my mother repeated.

  “Did he have no right to escape jail?” I wasn’t friends with Nolan, but I didn’t like my mother’s tone—​as if his display somehow reflected back on me, though I had done nothing.

  “They will vote soon to test us,” my mother said. “We must leave. Tonight.”

  “Rhondalynn, we need not be so hasty,” my father said. “You have been tested before and passed.”

  “So have the Drachmans,” my mother said. “And what of Myra? We spared her when the Deputy’s father gave the orders, but with this Ripkin—”

  “He voted against it, Rhonda.”

  “He is playing a game,” my mother said. Her voice grew quiet and filled with ice. “It is Ripkin who has the power. And he is now forced to act.”

  “He has assured me that he will not support testing you,” said my father.

  “Oh, he has assured you?” my mother scoffed.

  “I can’t leave before the Games!” I cried. I couldn’t leave at all. My friends were here, and Caster, and my home. But the Games were everything, and less than a week away now. This was supposed to be the run-up to the best day of my life—​the day I would win the ride. And I couldn’t leave Hoof. There were no beasts in the Eye. I tried to hold my emotion back, but it boiled inside me. I couldn’t miss the Games. I couldn’t leave Hoof. I couldn’t believe that this would happen.

  “Let us think,” said my father. “Why take the Games from Myra when she has worked so hard? If the Waters are against us, then we will leave when the Games are done. They will not finish testing before then. But, Rhondalynn, I don’t believe they will test you. These incidents are the product of hysterical imagination; the Guard will find no other Flickerkin, and things will all go back to normal.”

  “You are naïve,” my mother said. “You see the good in all people. But there is no good in Nelston Ripkin. He carries the hate of his grandfather and great-grandfather before him—​it was a Ripkin who gave our miners the dip to start the war, but you forget that.”

  “Rhonda, there have been no executions for thirty years. They have deported Flickerkin; that is all.”

  “And who ordered the last execution? Ripkin’s father, the best of the lot!”

  I couldn’t stand there and listen to them argue. My mother had her fears and would not give them up. My father had been outvoted and would be again. Perhaps my mother was right to fear. But we were not to be tested yet. I was to have my Games, and I didn’t want to think beyond that. I changed in a hurry and sped back out past them.

  “Myra!” my mother called as I passed her.

  “Let her go,” my father said. “She will be fine today.”

  “Donray—”

  I closed the door on my mother’s next objection. If she was right, then I would lose everything. But surely my father was right. Surely now that testing had begun, the people would see how wrong it was. Caster would see. Before I realized consciously what I was doing, I found myself heading not toward Hoof’s stable but toward Monster’s, and I found Caster there with him, brushing the giant beast’s glossy black coat.

  He turned to me with a smile, and then the smile faded. “Myra, what’s happened?”

  Of course I couldn’t hide it. I put my hand to my cheek, as if I could wipe the flush away. “It’s the testing,” I said. “My mother says it’s torture. She thinks they’ll do it to us.”

  “To you?” He wrapped me in his arms. My face pressed against his chest. “You have nothing to fear from it.”

  “They will test us until they are sure,” I said. “What if it hurts me and I can’t ride?” I couldn’t, of course, share my true fear. I couldn’t share that my mother wanted to leave the city. To say it would be admitting guilt.

  “My father won’t do that,” Caster said. He unwrapped his arms from me a little and leaned down to kiss me. I stood on my tiptoes, and we connected, and now I felt a whole different kind of flush. He ran his hand through my hair, which was pulled into a ponytail but sprang out from the back, impossible to contain. “Myra, you are safe. You are not a Leftie. It’s only Lefties who are being tested—​Leftie workers.”

  “My mother thinks it will come to us,” I said.

  “You are a Member’s family,” said Caster. “How could you be suspect?” But then he frowned. “My father began the testing with the expectation that they would find nothing and calm fears. But now that they’ve found a family of Flickerkin, I don’t know what will happen.”

  “They’ll torture every Leftie worker in the city,” I said. “How can my mother and I sit and be happy even if we aren’t tested?” I shouldn’t be saying this to Caster Ripkin, I thought.

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s terrible. I’ve told my father what I think about it. He says he agrees but is forced to calm the people’s fears.”

  I winced at this confirmation of my mother’s words. As the Deputy, he couldn’t be forced to do anything. At the very least, he could hold off implementing the Council’s vote.

  Caster wrapped me in his arms again. “Perhaps Nolan was the one playing those pranks. He might come back and confess, and this will all be over.”

  “Nolan and his parents were in the arena that day,” I said. “Fully visible.”

  “Then they’ll find the real culprit soon,” said Caster. “Before the Games.”

  “Yes,” I said. We were now talking as if, indeed, the strange occurrences were caused by Flickerkin. Now that the clothmakers had been arrested and Nolan was on the run, there would only be more stories, more panic. “I must ride,” I said. “I can’t stand here.”

  “Ah, that’s my lady!” Caster said. “Perhaps I can give you a ride to your beast’s stable?” Before I could answer, he had picked me up by the waist and lifted me onto Monster’s back. The beast mooed a greeting.

  “Hello, Monster,” I said, thinking only of Caster’s hands on my waist.

  He climbed on in front of me, and I wrapped my arms around him and pressed my head into his back. This was how things were supposed to be, after a lifetime of wishing for it.

  “Find Hoof,” Caster said softly. We passed through the stables slowly, savoring the minutes. Riders rode together infrequently, and I had never been this way with a boy, our bodies pressed together, and on top of a beast, the one place in the world that made me truly happy. I was not going to give this up.

  When I returned home, my mother and father had ended their argument, and he had gone back to the Council. I came quietly to the dining table, ready to hear my mother’s anger at how I had walked out the door. But her anger had been replaced with a truer calm.

  “Your father and I have come to an agreement,” she said. “We will stay at least until the Games are over. You have worked too hard and come too far for me to take this away from you.”

  “Thank you, Momma,” I said. I didn’t wish to ask about after the Games. This was one fight I had won, and I would take my victory.

  “But I will not rely on Ripkin’s assurances. We must prepare you for the test.” She held up a set of two rings. They were thin and delicate, bronze-colored, and looked like a large pair of hoop earrings, but they were connected by a long, thin chain of ordinary metal. I didn’t understand.

  “These cuffs are made of prezine,” she said.

  “Prezine?” I had rarely seen the metal naked. It was always hidden inside things, too precious for people to wear. It took all we had to power the city. My mother must have gotten hers from her relatives in the Eye, and at great cost.

  “This is how they do the test,” she said. “Hold out your hands.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I am going to put the cuffs on you and shock you to see how much you can endure.” She said this without flinching. “If you flicker, we will leave the city at once. If you pass my test, then we will stay for the Games.”

  “What does it take to pass?” I asked. The cuffs were small and looked harmless. But my mother
had used the word torture. And now she wanted to do it to me.

  “The last Deputy stopped at ten shocks,” she said. “His son was a close advisor at the time. He argued for at least fifteen.”

  “Will it weaken me?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “It will strengthen you. You must learn to endure. Don’t you want to stay? To ride your beast, to be with this boy?”

  “Yes,” I said. There was no arguing with this. “But not the day before the Games. All right?”

  She nodded. “All right, Myra. But every day until then.” She snapped the cuffs around my wrists. They felt cold, and there was a slight buzzing, as if electricity was already flowing through them. I didn’t like it. I squirmed in my seat.

  My mother gave a little smile. “Good girl. It’s bad for us to have prezine next to the skin. It prevents the flicker.”

  “Prevents? I thought it was supposed to cause it.”

  “By itself, it prevents,” she said. “With stimulation, it causes.” She held a thin rod of prezine in one hand, the length of an arm from wrist to elbow. At its top, it mixed with some other metal, something black and shiny, and the part she touched was cased in wood. “I touch this to the cuffs, and you will feel a shock, all right?”

  I said nothing. It was not all right.

  She shocked me.

  I screamed.

  She shocked me again.

  Again, I screamed. Sweat poured down my face. How could such delicate cuffs cause this?

  “It’s all right to scream a little,” my mother said. “If you don’t, it will look like you practiced. But holding back the scream is part of maintaining control. You can maintain control even through the pain.” She shocked me again.

  This time I didn’t scream. Instead, I bit the inside of my lip.

  “Good,” she said. She reached down and unclasped the cuffs. I gasped with relief and rubbed my hands. She took one of them and rubbed it for me. “Myra, I do this because I love you. Because I don’t want you to be tossed into the ocean. Because I couldn’t live without you.” Any other mother would have shed tears as she said this. My mother’s eyes were not even wet. But I felt the pressure of her hand on mine, the control it cost her to say this.

  I couldn’t hold the tears back. “Momma, you torture me.”

  “I’m trying to make you strong,” she said. “As I know you can be. When you are a mother, you will understand. You will do anything for your child.” As she said this, she turned away. Perhaps her eyes were beginning to get wet. I didn’t like to see this weakness that she hated, so I turned my head, too.

  “You didn’t even want children,” I said. “I heard you say so. The night Poppa found out about us.”

  “I wanted to spare you this,” she said, still looking away.

  I was not in a mood to understand. I still felt the residue of the shocks, still sweated beneath my gown, still itched from the feel of the cold prezine. I jumped to my feet, raced to my room, and slammed the door with all my might. And then I sat on my bed, trying to stop the crying, trying to stop the anger, trying to be everything she wished me to be. Because no matter how much I hated her in that moment, I had to be like her; I had to endure or risk my life.

  My mother wanted me to stay home from school, but I refused. First of all, she wished it, and I had hate brewing in my heart for her; second, I didn’t want to look guilty; and third, I needed to see my friends. I needed to see Porti and Caster and feel that something in my life was still right.

  “I think I’ll go with something simple,” Porti said. “Let my healthy flush take the place of ruffles and lace.”

  “What?” I asked. I was lost in my memory of last night’s radio broadcast, heard during my attempt to calm myself. Nolan, whom the Deputy called “only a boy,” had evaded justice. The guardsmen were deploying more sensors and assured the people that they would work, though they had never been tested on real Flickerkin (an assertion my mother didn’t believe—​she thought the Deputy had tortured many). More strange happenings had been called in, which Sky was only too happy to repeat. He had urged citizens to lock their doors, to be vigilant about the sound of footsteps and strange breezes. Why would Nolan choose to walk around inside people’s homes at night, turning lights on and off? I wondered. It was dangerous nonsense.

  “Or do you think I should go with something bejeweled? Because others will be doing simple and I will wish to be the center of attention?” Porti was speaking of what she would wear to the winners’ ball, I realized.

  “Orphos will like the simple,” I said.

  “Hmm, maybe. What are you wearing?”

  “I don’t know, Porti,” I said shortly, almost snapping. “I just want to win.” My arms were sore from the shocks, and my heart was sore from recalling who had given them. I couldn’t take this idle talk of dresses and balls.

  “Gregor!” Porti called, flouncing away from me, as she would do when I had offended her.

  “Porti,” I began. But I didn’t have the heart to go on. I went into school by myself while she chatted with Gregor, who happened to be standing right next to Orphos. I couldn’t endure these games when the Games were so near. What I wanted was to sleep and recover and forget about all that had happened.

  Nolan’s chair was conspicuously empty. Mrs. Invar didn’t speak of him, nor did anyone else. We all kept up the appearance of a normal schoolday. Overtly, there was only the restlessness of knowing that school would be canceled for the rest of the week in preparation for the Games. But there was a silence underneath it, perhaps a fear. Did they worry that Nolan would come into their homes? That all the beasts would be let loose to roam the streets?

  Caster walked me home that afternoon, not Porti as usual. He kissed me in the courtyard, melting away the tension of the day. “I’ll see you at the arena,” he said, giving me one last kiss.

  “Soon,” I said.

  But when I walked in the door, I knew it would not be soon at all.

  From THE REGULATIONS OF NEW HEART CITY:

  PARTICULAR TO THOSE PEOPLE OF THE UPLAND WHO RESIDE THEREIN

  Each Citizen of New Heart City shall receive living quarters as described:

  For Citizens, one bedroom for each man, woman, couple, or child.

  For people of the Left Eye, half the quarters allotted Citizens.

  For Members of the Council, additional quarters as befits length of service.

  Nine

  MY FATHER WAS STANDING AT THE WINDOW, staring through a tiny gap between the curtains. As I closed the door, he turned to me. He seemed thinner, grayer, as if he had aged ten years in a single day.

  “They took her,” he said.

  I froze in place, unable to speak. I had never seen such a look on my father’s face. His eyes were red, his skin blotchy. He clenched his fists so tightly that the skin on his hands was almost white.

  “She was right, Myra,” he said. “We should have left in the night.”

  “But the Deputy said . . . Caster . . .” I clutched my schoolbooks to my chest as if they could protect my heart. They took her.

  “The Council held another vote early in the morning before I arrived,” he said. “All those with a drop of Leftie blood must be tested.”

  “But she could pass,” I said. My blood pounded in my ears. She was an expert at fooling everyone. She must have passed.

  “And so they came for her before I heard of it. The Deputy himself performed the test.” He unballed his fist and clenched it again. The assurances meant nothing; Momma had been right.

  “But she can endure it,” I said. She would not have screamed. She would not have cried.

  “I went to his office just as it ended,” my father continued. “She was sitting as calm as could be, and they were reviewing the photobox reel—​the Deputy and the guardsman Brach.”

  “The photobox?”

  “She didn’t flicker during the test,” he said. “But they recorded it, in case something should appear that could be seen only if played
back slowly.”

  I waited.

  “There was a finger,” he said. “The littlest finger could be seen to flicker.” A tear rolled down his face. “I insisted on seeing it, of course. I ranted and raved, claimed to know nothing. But the finger was gone.”

  “Where have they taken her?” I asked. But even as I did so, I still couldn’t believe it was real. Perhaps my parents were playing a trick on me, to convince me that this was serious and I should practice well.

  “He gave her seventeen shocks, Myra. Seventeen. She didn’t flicker but a finger.”

  It was not a trick. They wouldn’t do that. Momma, perhaps, but not Poppa. “Where is she?” I asked. I should have dissolved into sobs. That was what Momma would have expected of me. But I didn’t. I felt as if I were not there in the room, as if I were looking down on my crying father from a great height.

  “She went away with perfect calm, saying we knew nothing about her, that you didn’t have it.” He wiped his eyes. “To the jail, Myra. Behind bars.”

  “But what will they do?” I knew what the law said. Punishable as the Waters judge. That meant a cold dip.

  My father shook his head. “The Council may suspend the Judgment. In the past they have deported Flickerkin back to the Eye.” My father suddenly broke from the window and sped past me. He locked the bolt on the door and set the chain. He turned to me and grabbed me by both my shoulders, towering over me. “You could be tested at any moment.” I crashed back into reality, into my body, looking up at my father from far below.

  “Poppa, I can’t pass,” I said. “I can’t do it.” My tears threatened to well up now. How could I have control that even she didn’t have? How could I possibly endure seventeen shocks? Momma had given me only three.

  He shook me. “You can do it. It’s not only how you react, it’s what they want to see. She is a Leftie, but you are only half. They have known you all your life, watched you grow up with their own children. They will want you to pass.”

  “They have taken Momma!” I cried. “They don’t care about me.” I put my hand to my face, my pale face, surrounded by hair that bounced and curled.