Mayfly Series, Book 1

by Jeff Sweat

  The only one who’s dangerous is Heather, who leans against the wall and watches her. Heather is smart, and all that smart pours into an acid tongue. She talks like a true believer in the gods, but mostly she talks of the weakness of boys. Every mistake the boys make is a reason to take something away. Heather got the Olders to create a rule that made boys get a girl to speak for them before the boys are allowed to become anything that isn’t a Muscle or a worker.

  The boys get only the strong jobs, not the smart ones, which means most of the Muscle are boys. Any girl can be a Muscle, but with so many other things girls are allowed to do, most don’t bother.

  A group of girls, mostly Tweens, have started following Heather around: the Hermanas. They carry big sticks. When a boy breaks a rule, increasingly it’s the Hermanas, not the Muscle or even the Olders, who punish him. There never used to be beatings. Now the boys find themselves under the sticks all the time. Trina tried to make a rule against the Hermanas, seeing how much power that gave Heather, but that time she got outvoted by the council. “Girls need girls to protect emselves,” In-sook said.

  None of this would have happened without Pablo’s Rebellion. Pablo was the head Muscle of the Holy Wood, one of the best they’d ever had until he decided that the strongest should rule, not the Olders. Trina was thirteen when Pablo rose, when he peeled away a dozen other Muscle. He was tall, cunning, full of fire.

  He claimed the gods spoke to him. Their voices rang in his ears. He saw visions tinged in blue. He said that boys were not meant to serve.

  “We ain’t Muscle!” she remembered him rage in the Circle the night he declared war. “We the rightful Oldest. You oughta be following us.” He claimed that boys once owned the earth, a lie that shook the entire Circle, it was so bold. None of the girls believed him, but it was the lie that some of the boys needed. The Olders didn’t see the hunger the boys had to be equal. When the Oldest exiled him, most of the Muscle followed, with scores of Tweens.

  The weeks that followed froze the Holy Wood. Pablo burned wagons full of corn, killed Gatherers in lonely houses. Some of the Muscle rallied in defense, but most of the strength was with Pablo.

  When the sentries saw him coming in force with burning arrows, the village retreated to the Zervatory, the holiest Holy Wood place in the hills above them. If the gods had brought Pablo to that place, they abandoned him there. He broke on the Zervatory walls.

  The Zervatory was big enough to fit the entire village behind its barred windows, which Trina knows from a long week hiding in the lower chambers with barrels of water and rations while Pablo’s Rebellion went on above.

  She heard the shot that ended the rebellion. The rebels rushed the gates, most of the first wave falling to the archers. Pablo stepped out from behind the Star Watchers Pillar, a monument in the center of the Zervatory’s great lawn.

  “The gods do not speak to girls,” he said, his speech flowery and unnatural. “They’ve shown me what used to be in the Parents’ day, and what is yet to come.” She remembers thinking: Even the priestesses don’t claim to speak for the gods. Why is he different?

  The Zervatory was silent. Between his pauses, Trina could hear a drop of water escaping a cask.

  “The Holy Wood will fall,” Pablo said. Trina can almost remember seeing his face, but of course she couldn’t. “There are weapons that will destroy—”

  The Oldest shot him with the One Gun, resting the rifle on the Zervatory wall to steady her aim. The bullet tore through his throat and burrowed into the feet of the bearded Star Watcher behind him. The rebellion was over. No amount of boys could fight the One Gun.

  That’s the biggest secret the girls keep from the boys. The boys think all guns died with the Parents, although some wonder. There is more than one gun still out there—but for the Olders to stay in power, there can only be One Gun. When the Gatherers find guns, the Gatherers who are always girls, they bring them to the Olders, who destroy them. If the Muscle ever believed they could have their own guns, if they didn’t walk in fear of the Olders’ gun, the balance of power might shift to them.

  The lie bothers Trina, just a little, but it’s one that has gone from Oldest to Oldest to Oldest since the Holy Wood began. And it has kept them safe.

  The Holy Wood beat Pablo, but it never recovered from the terror. The Olders set curfews for boys. No one balked. They gutted the Muscle, left their defenses weak. No one protested. By the time Trina became the Oldest, the boys found themselves hemmed in, weakened.

  The Hermanas, the girls who follow Heather, are supposed to keep the girls safe as well, but they terrify the shit out of Trina. They hang out near the kitchens and demand that smaller kids bring them their food. The Hermanas cut marks in their wrists to show that they can hurt themselves worse than a boy ever could. They wear matching pink lipstick, freed from some Gatherer’s stash. Only the Mamas were supposed to wear lipstick, the red lips of their Waking. Trina tried to ban the pink, too obvious a sign of defiance and violence, but it keeps coming back.

  Trina has no love for boys, for all the chaos and violence that comes with them. But if she had to choose between them and anything Heather wanted, she’d bring in a whole army of boys.

  Heather doesn’t waste any time. “The Muscle been leaving the gates without asking,” she says.

  “Everyone leaves the gates without asking,” Trina says.

  “Yeah, but the Muscle are a lot more dangerous,” Heather says.

  “That’s what makes em good at their job,” Trina says.

  “We should make em ask before they leave,” In-sook says, and just like that Trina loses the vote: Heather, Mira, In-sook. They usually don’t have to vote on things, really—Trina could look around and see which way the group’s decision will go.

  “I been thinking,” Heather says. “Don’t you think we got too many Muscle? I talked to Hyun. He says it’s hard to train em all.”

  “So he just wants to … not train em?” It should surprise Trina, but it doesn’t. Hyun is the head of the Muscle and has tried his hardest to run them into the ground. Ever since Pablo, the Olders have been scared of anyone too strong or smart heading the Muscle, afraid he’ll take their power. They picked the exact opposite of that with Hyun. They should have picked Apple, who’s as smart and calm as a girl.

  “What would you do with em?” Lupe says.

  “Keep some as Carpenters or Farmers—or Exile em,” Heather says. Trina just stares at her. Some boys go through the rage when they became Teens; some get it so bad that the Olders make them leave. But they’ve never Exiled them just for being boys.

  “Aww, don’t get rid of the Muscle,” Mira says, squirming a little on the throne. “They’re my favorite.”

  The past few months, Mira has been rolling with any boy she can find. It’s her version of the Last Life. Instead of not caring how she dies, she doesn’t care how she lives.

  “We ain’t cutting down the Muscle,” Trina says. “We need the protection. And if we wanna make babies, we gonna need someone for the girls to roll with.”

  “We ain’t had a vote,” Heather says.

  “You don’t got the votes. I can tell you that right now.”

  “We gonna.” They don’t vote on it now, but Heather will push and push it until one of the Olders goes her way.

  On the way out, she watches two kids go, in moments, from hoisting well water to shouting to punching. She grabs the bigger kid’s shoulder.

  “What you doing?”

  “He said I ain’t doing it right!”

  “Are you?”

  “He can’t tell me what to do!”

  Trina looks at the two boys, both trembling with anger, and the water sloshed all over the dirt. She’s about to answer, then just shakes her head and walks away.

  There are shouts at the gate, and Trina looks up in time to see them clanging shut. They’re never shut in the daytime, except for in times of danger. She sprints toward them. If Hyun is manning them, he might end up killing someone. I
t won’t be the right someone, because he’s too stupid to know the difference.

  Trina shoves through the crowd that’s sprouted in front of the gate. Behind the fence, behind a wall of machetes, are three dusty boys. “Exiles,” Hyun says, suddenly at her side. But she didn’t have to be told. Exiles—Malibus, based on the shorts they wear.

  The Malibus live along the ocean and eat fish. It’s too far for the other Angelenos to fish themselves. When whales beach, though, the Malibus tell the other Angelenos so that they can all feast on the whale. Trina has made the trek to the water to harvest the whales, one of the only Holy Wood to see the ocean. She’ll never forget when she stood on a cliff and saw the blue open up beyond the fringe of pounding white. She felt as if she were about to fall off the edge of the world.

  Every few months boys wander in from the other Angeleno peoples: the Downtowns, the San Fernandos, and the Malibus. The Angelenos are a united people. They keep the peace, although squabbles over land are common, and they trade. Sometimes, they trade boys.

  The Exiles are cast out from the Angeleno tribes because they were too violent or too strange for their people. So they roam in packs, sometimes looking for a home that fits them better, or they die. But sometimes those Exiles are what other tribes need—a boy who steals from the Downtowns might fit into the San Fernandos because he’s a good hunter. All of the Angelenos do this. It keeps their boys calm, their babies healthy.

  The first Exile at the gate is a giant compared to the other Children. He must have been a threat to the Malibu Olders, who are stricter than other Olders and don’t tolerate even a little rebellion. With his size he will be in demand as a Dad. Trina knows the tribe will vote to accept him, even if it means they kick him out in weeks for the rage he shows simply standing there. That’s the line with the boys: You want someone strong enough who will create strong babies, but not so strong that you can’t control him.

  The second Exile looks strong like him but smaller. The third, though, doesn’t look like an Exile. He’s too young, too small, as if an earthquake would topple him. If they expelled him he must have caused harm of a different kind. He’s the one Trina watches.

  And he is the one who speaks. “We traveled through the lost city and hidden hills to the Holy Wood,” he says in the stiff official speech that only gets used when you talk to other Angelenos. “Under the ways of our peoples, we Exiles ask you to accept us.”

  “Bad timing—we was just talking about how we got too many boys,” Trina says. She doesn’t even try to echo his tone.

  “We got strength and skill to share,” the little one says. A standard Exile line.

  “We all full up. Try the Downtowns.” She doesn’t like the look of the first two, and if the little guy was too much trouble for the Malibus … Less than half of the Exiles find a new home. These will be ones who don’t.

  Trina turns to Hyun. “Keep the gate barred. If they reach through, chop off their arms.”

  She’s stopped by that small, calm voice. “Please,” the little one says. “We got news of the Malibu.”

  “I hear more than I want,” she says.

  “You ain’t heard this,” he says. “The Malibus got someone who lived.”

  Trina doesn’t breathe. Someone who didn’t End? A way to dry the trickle of life that seeps out of this village every year. Maybe the kid’s lying. But what if he’s not? She has to hear more.

  She tries to keep her expression neutral as she says, “Open the gate.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE CIRCLE

  Gonna kill that girl. If she’s alive. Lady stays at the gate long after the Exiles have passed through, long after the coyotes have started howling, long after the gates shut in her face.

  She should have known. No, she knew. She’s been best friends with Jemma her whole life. She saw that set in the jaw last night at Zee’s fire and read it again this morning for what it was: Jemma was already halfway to stupid. She has a little bit of Last Lifer in her, Lady thinks; ready to shank the world the second it pushes too hard. Lady has a short temper, but Jemma has something different, sometimes worse.

  Apple is with her; that’s what the sentries told her. That’s the only thing that doesn’t send Lady out into the night after her.

  Lady hears the rising sounds of the Children in the Circle, the night promising a jolt. Whenever Exiles come, the Holy Wood changes, its pattern weaving in new threads from the Exiles, and becomes new cloth.

  She saw the big Exile, the beautiful one, looking like the old pictures of the holy ones on the billboards in the Flat Lands. When he came through the gates she rushed toward him to be seen. That has less to do with him than the ball of excitement she feels all the time lately rising in her chest, threatening to burst out whenever someone touches her skin or casts her a lingering look. His eyes slide right past her.

  The sentries see Apple and Jemma before Lady does, stumbling out of the night. No, not stumbling. There’s nothing wrong with them, but something drags their bodies down, slows their step. Something happened to them in the night.

  Anger fights with relief, and for a moment anger wins. Luckily for Jemma and Apple, it’s directed first at the sentries who are blocking the gate with drawn machetes.

  “Open the gate,” she hears Jemma say, her voice sounding old.

  “Hyun says don’t open the gate. Why you out?”

  “We was jumped by Last Lifers,” Apple says. “Let us in.”

  “But you was outside the wall.”

  The other sentry says, “Hyun says we gotta ask him first.”

  “Jesucristo, you idiots, let em in,” Lady says, pinching one of them hard on the neck and dragging him away from the fence. He’s a little bigger than her, but she’s madder. She glares at the other one until he sheathes his machete and draws back the bar.

  “Thanks, Lady,” Jemma says, walking through the gate and leaning forward to hug her. “It’s been—”

  “You shut up,” Lady says, grabbing Jemma in a headlock that Jemma barely resists. “I been waiting for two hours. Last Lifers? What the hell you doin anywhere near em? What the hell you—” But then she sees streaks of tears on Jemma’s cheeks under the headlock, Jemma who she’s only seen cry when she fell off a house and knocked her wind out. And the always-calm Apple, jaw now tense and tight.

  Lady releases Jemma but keeps her hand on Jemma’s arm. “Last Lifers? You—you okay?”

  “It’s … it’s tranquilo now,” Jemma slowly says.

  Tranquilo. All good. But Lady knows from that voice that it isn’t all good—and whatever happened out there, Jemma won’t tell it right away.

  Then she remembers why she came to the gates in the first place, the news that couldn’t wait until they were back in their house.

  “Exiles,” she says. That should be all she needs to get Jemma’s attention. But Lady has more. “The Malibus,” she says. “They got someone who lived.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jemma says, seeming to stumble over the idea.

  “Someone’s—old. Actually old.”

  Jemma squeezes Apple’s hand at that, and he squeezes back. Lady catches the movement but looks away. The two let go, but as they walk toward the Circle, she sees the way they lean toward each other, providing invisible support. They went out two. They came back one. What else happened out there? Only the waiting Circle keeps her from asking.

  There’s a difference in the Circle: part party, part war council. The bonfire is lit, the Tweens dancing around it, and the Olders sit back in a tight knot.

  Across the flames she sees Trina, remembers her arguing with Jemma last night. Trina starts speaking. The Tweens stop dancing and are pulsing around the Circle.

  This is the Story. Every night starts with the Story.

  “Once we was a family, Children and Parents,” Trina says. She’s flinty. You have to be like that to be the Oldest, the keeper of the One Gun. “They stayed with us forever, and we grew old and grew Children of our own. Then came the E
nd. The End of the Parents, the End of our lives. We wasn’t warned, and the Parents died in minutes. They didn’t know what killed them, but still they died. In oceans and the hills, still they died.”

  “Still they died,” the crowd repeats in unison.

  Trina glances around the fire, watching the red glow flicker on the faces. The Children are still rapt after hearing it every day, because, really: It is the only Story. “The Parents died. The weak Children died, them who lived in high places. The strong and humble lived. We was all colors, Whiteys, Tinos, Korenos, and now we one. We grew our food, we Gathered. But even that wasn’t enough, cuz we lived but we didn’t make new life. We died before we could become Mamas and Dads. But we learned how the body dies fast, and we lived our lives faster. Of all the people of the world, the Angelenos last, cuz we remember this: ‘Never leave the Holy Wood empty.’”

  “Never leave the Holy Wood empty,” they repeat.

  “To keep the Holy Wood full, we bring in Exiles,” Trina says. “Do we accept them?”

  The biggest Exile, named Li, goes first. At least half the thirteen-year-olds raise their hands to accept him. Lady’s hand shoots up first. They accept the second Exile, Tomas, although with fewer votes. Lady doesn’t raise her hand.

  The third Exile is so small. So small. Lady didn’t notice him before when he came in the gates, but now she can’t quite look away. Such a strange kid, the way he watches them, as if he’s the one who decides who stays or not. Lady can’t tell his age. She guesses fourteen, but he’s twelve in size and seventeen in his eyes.

  “Do we accept him?” Trina says, and no one shouts “Yes.” He’s too young for a Dad, too weak for a Muscle. None of the Holy Wood see him in the future. The ring is silent.

  “He’s gonna die out there,” Jemma whispers. Lady knows it’s true. He won’t have an Exile gang to protect him in the wild.