“That’s not how Algies works. You could be dead in minutes. I might not be able to pull you out in time again.” She hobbles into the darkness without letting me answer.
While she’s inside, I sit and wait, pawing through my backpack without paying attention to its contents. Occasionally, a noise—the girl’s voice, or a crash of something falling—tumbles out the open door. In all, she’s gone only ten minutes, but it feels like ages when she finally limps out the door and flops down to sit next to me.
“Most of what used to be there is little more than crumbling bits and pieces,” she says. “Even the rats have gone. All I found was this. It was upstairs.” She pushes the thing to me. “The stairs were mostly gone, but I managed my way up.”
It’s a strange box with a blue lid and milky white sides, smooth as a tumbled river stone and oily like a tallow. I slip my fingers under the lid and pull up, and the ends pop off. The lid weighs next to nothing, and it’s thinner than a knife’s blade. The air from inside the box smells a bit like a dried-out wet dog, but it fades into the trees and I don’t feel any Algies.
Inside are books. Small ones with brightly colored fronts, and bigger ones with thick, hard shells. If my uncle saw these, he would order every one of them burned. Then he would have the house razed and each stone carried away to different parts of the wilderness. It’s what Laws demands.
Only two books are not forbidden in Southshaw, and only Semper and the Council are taught to read. God provided us two books in the days after the War. Truth is the word of God, and Laws is the word of man.
I push through the books in the box until I come upon a big one, even bigger than Laws, with a hard, blood-red shell. Silver letters across the front shout, “How Things Work.” The hard cover is rough like threads woven tightly together and painted with a thin varnish. The silver words are raised and smooth, richly designed in strong, powerful letters.
It’s heavy. How can I sneak this into my room? Where can I hide it? My heart is pounding hard, and my skin tingles. How things work. The very question God has said man should never ask. Yet the very question that fills my soul every day.
I let the book fall open to a page somewhere near the beginning, allowing it to choose the page it wants me to see very first. The left page says “Balloon” above a line drawing of a roundish shape tied to a big basket. A man stands in the basket. Many items are labeled—furnace, blower, sandbags, guy lines. I puzzle at it a moment. I now know what these things are called, but I still don’t know how they work or why I would want them to.
Sunlight breaks between the branches and falls hot on the other page, which says “Bomb” at the top. By reflex, I look upward to the source of the bright light, just in time to see a sliver of the sun brilliant behind a white pine before a sheep-gray cloud drifts in front of it and darkens the eye of God.
I do not want to know how Bomb works. If I had been smiling before, I am no longer, and I quietly shut this book. There are more books in the milky white box, but now I don’t want to look at them. Where I had hoped to find gilded wonders, I now expect tarnish and rust. The beautiful, sturdy covers are like a thin layer of ice on Little Lake—one has only to step on it with trust and confidence to be plunged into icy darkness. That’s how my soul feels right now. Plunged into icy darkness.
I lift the lid from the ground next to me and place it gently back on top of the box. Somehow I’ve forgotten to return How Things Work to the box, but I don’t want to open it again. Instead, I slip it into my pack, where it just barely fits.
“I also found these.” The girl turns out a purse strapped to her wrist, and a handful of baubles tumble to the grass between us. “Coins and marbles, and this one little box with a very strange picture inside.” She holds it up and examines it in the daylight, ignoring the other things. It is perhaps the blackest thing I’ve ever seen. “Look at this,” she says, handing it to me.
I take it, feeling sick in my stomach at its smooth, oily blackness. It taints me. Like the residue from this… thing… will never wash off.
She prods, “Open it. It’s weird. It’s like a special picture or something. I don’t get it.”
I wrap my fingers around it and pull at the top, which cracks and opens on a hidden hinge. The box is no bigger than an apple, and inside is a strange picture indeed. It’s green, with golden lines in strange shapes crisscrossing it, like tiny golden roads on a green field. To one side is a black raised area, like a black barn with all the golden roads leading to it.
The sun breaches the canopy again and lights up the box. Instantly, music leaps from within. Tiny faerie bells playing a sweet, simple tune. The girl sits bolt upright and then scootches over next to me, peering down at the insides of this wondrous box. She whispers, “It didn’t do that inside.”
“Maybe it needs fresh air to sing,” I suggest, realizing that I sound stupid.
“Or sunlight,” she whispers.
“Or a boy holding it,” I continue, but she looks at me as if I might yet say something more stupid, but if I do it will be the stupidest thing she’s ever heard in her life. “What,” I answer, only half defensive, “why would sunlight and fresh air matter but not who’s holding it?”
“I guess you’re right,” she says with a shrug. “The ancients had a lot of things. Men invented guns. Men invented The Bomb. Men invented war. Why would I be surprised to find out that Men invented objects that would require man’s touch to be pretty?”
I hold it out. “Here. One way to find out.”
She takes it from me, and the music plays on. She closes the lid, and the music stops. She opens it, and it starts again. After a minute, the song repeats. I’ve never heard this tune, but it’s cute and catchy, and soon I’m humming along with it. Then the girl is humming with me, smiling at me.
I reach out to take the box, and I allow my hand to brush hers. It’s warm, and rough, but still with the softness all girls have no matter what life they come from. I feel a flush of heat rise in my face and wonder if I actually blush. She appears not to notice the momentary touch, but I know right away that I will never, ever forget it.
She hands the box to me as we hum and smile at each other. I find myself wanting to touch her arm, her shoulder. I want to put my fingers in her long, black hair, to run my fingertips along her cheek and eyebrow and jaw. I want to kiss her.
Instead, I look down at the box and say, “I don’t know your name. Do you have a name?”
“Well, uh, yeah. Of course. Doesn’t everybody? I’m Lupay.”
She doesn’t ask me my name. But I want her to know it. “My name is Dane.” I want to tell her I’m the second most important person in all of Southshaw, that in ten years I’ll be Semper. But I don’t want to mention the Wifing. And I don’t want to sound like some braggart trying to impress the cute mutant girl. I’m so powerful, blah blah blah. No, I have to find a good way to tell her without sounding—
Without warning, the world crashes upon us.
Yelling of men everywhere, something thrown over the girl, maybe a net, perhaps a blanket. Two men crash into me and fling me to the dirt. One lands on top of me, pinning me down and knocking my air out. My head hurts so much I’m blinded for a moment and can’t think straight. I try to mumble something, possibly something about not hurting the girl, but it doesn’t come out right and my mouth fills with dust and blood.
I try to struggle out from under the heavy man, but he clamps me to the earth with his massive, ox-like bulk. “Don’t move,” he hisses in my ear as commotion scuffles around us, but only for a few more seconds. Then, silence backed only by some rough breathing. Of all the things I could think in this moment, with my face smushed in the turf and the oaf’s stale sweat and rotten breath dripping around me, the one notion that comes to me is this: The music has stopped. I hope they didn’t break that little box.
CHAPTER 6
“It’s a mutant!” The man’s voice pushes through the hairy, thick body above me and into my searing brain. Lupay
. Lupay is her name, I want to say. The voice, even through my haze and all the flesh pressing down on my head, sounds a little familiar.
“Kill it.”
This time, my voice comes loud and heavy into the dirty moss. “No!” I’m on my stomach, and the moves come as naturally as if I were back in the training room with Baddock. My knees shoot forward, shifting the weight of the bull on top of me, and my left leg presses into the soft earth. The mass of fleshy sweat slides off as I spin up and out from under his weight, and he oofs to the ground as I spring to my feet. I cry out again, “No!” and the word cracks the air like a bone snapping.
My fists are so tight my forearms burn, and my knuckles ache to crush something. But there’s nothing near enough to hit. My breath returns in rapid bursts, and without thinking I count six men, plus the one on the ground. Two more emerge from the greenery on my left, making nine total. They are armed. Knives. My knife is still buckled to my belt, and I’ve no time to unbuckle it.
All have stopped and turned to look at me, as if frozen in motion. The one lies at my feet, two more holding down a rough, gray, horse blanket a few yards away. The others are spread around except one, and him I recognize immediately. And it’s clear he recognizes me.
Baddock. He regards me with a look of curiosity and concern and a shadow of anger behind his cool, brown eyes. He’s standing half turned away from me, his feet pointed at the two men who emerged from the greenery and his torso twisted and neck swiveled so his gaze meets mine directly. I take it all in instantly, as he’d taught me over and over again, noticing each detail.
He’s in the middle, standing, posture of order-giving. His heavy boots are freshly mudded almost to the knees. His trousers bear dark stains and are torn slightly, with a new but inconsequential wound on the side of his thigh. He wears only a sleeveless brown undershirt, and his lean muscles tense and relax with his calm breath. His face, normally cheerful and smooth-skinned, prettier than all my potential wives, is dark with nightash. He—and the others, I realize—hunted last night and have not yet washed their dark camouflage away. His intense gaze lets me know he has similarly assessed me, and we have both reached the same conclusion. He could kill me without much trouble.
This all takes a second, perhaps less, and the others remain motionless. I feel their eyes flicking from me to Baddock and back, waiting for a sign from him or a move from me. The oaf I dislodged begins sputtering at my feet and scrambling in the dirt. It takes him a comically long time to stand up, but no one laughs as we all sense Baddock’s mind racing. He is a smart man, a deceptively clever man who taught me more than even he realized.
He takes at most three seconds to decide.
“Dane!” His clear voice puts so much into that one word. I hear in its sharp tail the command of the training room, the teacher asserting control over the student. I don’t miss the lengthened and heightened ay in the middle, for the benefit of his men. It’s a touch of surprise and warmth, to ease their growing tension. And the barest flick of his eyebrows gives me the question he can’t ask me, his superior. And which I can’t answer.
So instead he relies on the question he can ask: “Are you all right?”
To the men, it sounds as if he’s asking after my health. Maybe the mutant has contaminated me, they wonder. Maybe I’ve been hurt by her, or put under one of her wicked spells. But I know he’s really asking if I’m still on his side.
For the first time in my life, I wonder if I am.
“Yes,” I say, hoping I’ve put the confidence in my voice that he’s looking for. A minute twitch of his lip lets me know I did not. It’s unlike Baddock to slip like that. He’s on a knife’s edge. The camouflage, the twitch, the wound… I don’t like the idea that I have to be careful, possibly even deceptive, with my own people.
“Well,” I add, visibly relaxing and smiling now to show his men that I’m fine, “my head hurts some. I fell earlier when I was in the house.” I unball my fists and wave in the direction of the ancient building, casually as if it’s my own home. “Something in the air is bad there, and I couldn’t breathe. I collapsed. I may have died if I’d stayed in there.” I take a few steps toward him, lifting my arms in the manner of a typical Southshaw embrace. He turns to face me as I speak, his eyes unblinking. We perform for his men, an act they do not fully understand. “This mutant girl dragged me out. I think she saved my life.”
I reach him and say the final words as we embrace like brothers. We are the same size now, but there is so much more power and danger in his muscles than mine. To the men, it looks like a happy reunion of close comrades. But I feel the threat in his arms, the overly tight grip. It lasts seconds, then we separate.
“That,” I say with a laugh in my voice, “is why I wish her not to be killed.” I see momentary confusion in Baddock’s eyes, and I realize it’s because my laugh is genuine. Everything I’ve said is truth, and Baddock understands that now, to his own surprise. And to my surprise as well. I laugh again, this time at Baddock’s reaction. It’s the first time since my training began that I’ve caught him off guard. Twelve years of failing to fool him in the training room. Twelve years—and what finally throws him is the truth. A truth I could never have dreamed up in my most imaginative moments.
But the tension still binds all the men around us. They are still unsure, still tight like caged and wild wolves. My embrace with Baddock should have set them at ease. My command to keep the girl alive should be enough for any of them. I am not Semper—that is my father and will be until either my twenty-sixth birthday or his death—but I am the Semper’s son, and as such I am in command when they are in my presence.
Lupay, under the horse blanket, starts wriggling, trying to free herself. The two men hold her down with steel hands and brutish determination, and all that escapes is her muffled voice telling them to get off and let her up. But they sit unmoving, like they’re made of stone, staring at Baddock.
And once more I feel the realization creep in, just as when I fought that ghost-man last night, that I am miles and miles from the nearest Southshaw hut. In Southshaw, my station is based on the Law. Here in the forest, in this place that went undisturbed for twelve generations, the only law is what men make up as they go along. They are nine; I am one.
I am Semper’s son, second in command of Southshaw. Baddock is Captain of the Guard only. An important position among the people, but less than I. He is not the one who has broken the Law, however, by speaking up in defense of the mutant.
All of these thoughts fly through my head as I watch Baddock. Really, he is the one in charge here. I could play on my authority as Semper’s son, but it would come to nothing. And all these thoughts reflect back at me in Baddock’s twitching mustache and unblinking, quivering eyes.
The two men holding Lupay down grow restless after a few seconds. One has a knife out while the other pushes her harder into the dirt.
“Baddock?” The one with the knife has a thick voice, like his tongue is too big for his mouth. I know him, but not well. He’s one of the Scouts. Prefers to be alone in the woods, lives at the very eastern edge of Southshaw, past the ancient ruins. His hut is tiny and spare, and he wanders the woods like a homeless bear. His powerful forearms bulge under his shirt, and his long, curly beard is tattered and speckled with bits of leaf and dirt. “Baddock!”
Baddock turns his face to the man but keeps his unblinking gaze on me.
“Do we kill it? Or no?”
Baddock hesitates only an instant, and I move without thinking.
“Of course not! Did I not say she is to be spared?” I walk with a glib step toward the pair holding Lupay down, ignoring the burning aches all through my body. They must see no weakness, only authority. “I am Semper-son. My wisdom is given by the Father, and my right to command is written in God’s Law.”
They look up at me, wary and unmoving. I reach them and am relieved that they do not stand. The bearish one with the knife is easily a foot taller and a hundred pounds better than I
. I throw those thoughts behind me and stand tall in front of my fears, pushing them into the shadows.
“Does not the book of Truth declare that Compassion, among all things, is prized by God? Does not Truth say that righteousness comes not from retaliation, but from offering the other cheek?” I look around at the other men and smile at them. It’s a fine line; they're simple as schoolchildren but prideful as any men. “Are not these the traits of the virtuous? Thus, I say—no, I command!—spare the girl’s life. She rescued me from death. So shall it be rewarded.”
“That is very wise, Semper-son.” Baddock’s voice runs a clear ring around the little clearing, honest and warm but also chilling and precise. The man’s voice lays clear his own being. “And is well to be heeded with other men.” He reaches my side, and we stand equal height looking down at the bear with the knife, the lumpy but still horse blanket, and the skinny but potent man holding it tight.
“But,” Baddock continues in a softer voice as he lifts his hand to my shoulder. “We are not talking about another man, Dane.” I see dried blood under his fingernails and in the creases of his knuckles, see bruises on his fingers. Now that we are side by side, I see a fresh bruise, not yet bluing, on his cheek, and I see he is missing a tooth he was not missing last week. He looks at me with sadness and shakes his head. “This,” he says as he waves his other hand at the lumpy horse blanket, “is a mutant from the north, illegally on Southshaw land. This is no person, Dane.”
He takes a deep breath. “Suppose a rattlesnake were ready to bite you, and a rabid wolf bit it in half. Should the rabid wolf be left to roam free?”
He turns to me again and is whispering now. “And the Law, Dane, says all mutants must be killed on sight. I am unaware of exceptions made for any reason.” His hand presses down on my shoulder.
“I am not saying, Captain, that she should be left to roam free.” I laugh as if this is a preposterous idea, even though it is exactly what I’m hoping to achieve. “I am commanding only that her life be spared. We could tie her hands and feet and leave her here. Or,” and even before the words are out of my mouth I know they are a mistake, “we could bring her with us as captive.”
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