“Scan complete,” says the same voice from the elevator.
The light explodes in a flash, and we huddle together on the floor, startled. Then, I’m spinning, shooting like a comet through space. Momentum tugs at my insides, while streamers of light-and-black whirl past. I feel for Jax’s hand, but it’s not there; I reach for him, but he’s gone.
“Jax!” I try to scream into the dizzying void around me, though my voice only comes out in a whisper.
Then, everything stops, and I’m hugging my knees. Gradually, my eyes adjust, and I find I’m sitting on smooth, pale wood with thin grooves. In a panic, I glance around for Jax who’s a few feet away in the same strange room, staring back at me, his panic matching mine.
“Where the hell are we?” he asks. “What just happened?”
We stand and turn, surveying the small, simple room made of wood. We stop when we finally face a window in the corner, where light pours in to bathe the floor a creamy golden-brown. We clasp hands and ease toward it. To the right of the window stands a red wooden door with a fancy handle. A long rectangular bench on the other side appears to have hand-carved etchings around its edges. Behind us in the far corner lies a mattress with a woven blanket and two pillows. Other than that, the room is bare. The ceiling peaks to a gradual point in the center, where wooden posts meet and hold it all together, and the roof above reminds me of the kitchen broom at the Tree Factory.
When we reach the windowsill, my body goes numb. I must be dreaming. Trembling, I grip Jax’s hand tighter. On the other side is a ground covered in green, crawling up a hillside dotted with a rainbow of fluttering flowers. The sky—which I’ve only ever seen through purple-tinted windows—is an aching, quaking, brilliant blue, that drenches me with bewildering elation. And if that weren’t enough . . . to our right, off in the far distance, is a forever-rippling cobalt—the ocean—sparkling across the horizon. . . . And all of this, beneath a blazing sun.
“Are we dreaming?” I whisper. Jax doesn’t answer but pulls me to the door and opens it. A gust of air blows the hair from my eyes and brings with it the fragrance of an unknown world. Together, we descend three rocky steps onto green ground interspersed with patches of white sand. I squint right into the sun, amazed that I’m not burning to death right now.
“It doesn’t make sense. . . .” Jax, releasing my hand, spins in a slow circle. “It’s not real,” he says. “None of it. It’s impossible.”
I scoop up a handful of sand, like the stuff we use at the Tree Factory for smoothing out metal. I let it sift through my fingers and blow away into the wind. “But, Jax—”
“It isn’t possible!” he insists. “We were hundreds of feet below the ground! We walk into a room, it fills with smoke, and then—poof—we’re suddenly in a perfect, picturesque world with clean air and life? No.” He shakes his head, chest heaving with unease.
“Relax, we’ll figure it out.” I brace myself against the side of the hut. Maybe I’m telling myself this more than anything.
For a long, silent moment, we absorb the unimaginable splendor.
“Who cares if it’s not real?” I shrug. “Let’s enjoy it anyway. I mean, look at it. . . .”
He reads my face for a minute, then soaks in the splendor around us. He nods. “Okay. Let’s check it out.”
With a wide smile, I take his hand and try to search for possible explanations for this, but I come up empty. We start down the gradual hill, wisps of tall green—grass—brushing our pant legs. A few more yards, and mighty trees come into view, swaying in the breeze.
“Jax!”
“I see them!”
We sprint toward them, past fluttering creatures with brightly-colored wings that dip and dive around us in the blue. Something huge and brown and alive appears ahead of us and steals my breath away. I stop and grab Jax, yanking him back.
“What?” he asks, panting.
I point, having trouble catching my breath. I’m not used to running free. My heart beats like it never has before, as the creature lifts its great head topped with long, winding, pointy things.
“Deer,” I say. “I think that’s what it’s called” It spots us and scampers off through the trees. “If this isn’t real,” I add, “then how come it saw us and ran away?”
“You got me.”
“No speculations?”
“Uh, nope. You?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“Okay? What?”
“Maybe it’s a portal,” I say.
“Huh?”
“Like a . . . a wormhole or something, to the Other Side.”
“You’ve been reading too many sci-fi books.”
“Well, how else would all this be possible?”
We walk in silence to the nearest tree, my words echoing through my mind. And Jax’s, too, I’m sure. The feelings of both magical illusion and unbelievable reality wash over me like a mighty flood when we draw closer to the trees. Real trees. Now I’m positive everyone has been wrong about God. Because I’ve found God right here. Swaying in these branches, reaching high into the blue abyss of perfect impossibility. Rocking gracefully as though there’s never been a day of pain, or there has, but it sways on anyway. As if it’s always been, and will always be, swaying here forevermore in perfect, unobstructed bliss.
Tears roll down my cheeks as I squint upwards. Sunlight dances enchantingly through its branches, offering glimmers of blinding light. More perfection. We lie down on the prickle-covered ground gazing up at it, unable to speak beneath its majesty. I run my fingertips along the rough brown base that digs deep into the earth, marveling at its inherent ability to create what we have spent our whole lives manufacturing: sweet, pure, oxygen.
§
Chilly air wakes me in a panic, and I open my eyes to sparkling in the dark above, a low grumble around us. Jax is curled up on the ground beside me. “Jax!”
He stirs, then sits up, peering around frantically, then at me. “We’re still here.”
“Yeah, and it’s night. We must’ve been asleep for a while.”
Lightning strikes the ocean, electric branches shooting off through the sky in all directions. It’s both beautiful and frightening.
“Storm’s coming,” I mutter.
“How do you fall asleep and wake up, in a dream?” he asks.
“Yeah, I was thinking that. So, we’re definitely not dreaming.”
“I don’t know how, but. . . .” Jax’s eyes drift upward. “Man, check out those stars.”
For a moment, we gaze at the twinkling darkness directly above, completely awestruck; the midnight blue is a tattered blanket long-since stretched over the daylight, letting enough light shine through to illuminate an incredible, sleeping paradise. Lightning strikes again, closer, this time followed by louder thunder. A droplet hits my forearm, and my heart skips a beat as I wait for the burn of toxic sky-waste. Yet all I feel is wetness. It slides down my arm as another lands on my head, then my nose.
“We’d better get back to the hut,” Jax says.
We jog back up the hill, surprised to find the hut’s windows glowing orange as if a light were on inside, though I don’t remember there being any lights. Water pours down from the sky, and we take our final few hurried steps toward the hut, whip open the door, and run inside, struggling to catch our breath. I laugh, pinching at my drenched shirt, and Jax chuckles, too, then he tugs me over to the bed. We collapse in a wet heap, shivering more from excitement than from the cold, and his lips inch slowly toward mine. . . .
Then, I’m spinning back through the swirling dark void, shooting through space at a trillion light-years a second until I’m lying on my back on cold concrete. We scramble to our feet, Jax picks up the spear and aims it at the evil around us. “Who’s doing this?” he screams into the dark. “Show yourself!”
Silence.
I pick up our discarded breathers. I don’t remember removing mine. And then I realize . . . my clothes are dry. My thoughts spiral out of control, and I fight the
urge to vomit.
Jax pushes the green button, and the door opens. We hurry from the room, then my stomach lurches, and I heave onto the concrete floor. I brace myself against the wall and feel wetness there. Jax paces nearby, fists clenched and spear at the ready, challenging the shadows to come forth and show themselves.
He lays a hand on my back. “You okay?”
I nod, and glance at my own hand. “Still wet,” I say. My body quivers and my forehead grows clammy. Jax’s glistens in the light, too.
“That’s impossible, we were gone for hours.”
I hold my palm up to his face, spread my blackened fingers apart. Then, I point a shaky finger at the handprint in the painting on the wall. “Obviously it’s possible. Do you feel sick?”
“A little. Like we were rocketed into another dimension or something, man—shit!”
“And our clothes are dry. I don’t underst—”
“Tell us what’s going on!” he screams, voice echoing off the walls and into the stillness.
“The paint,” I say. “Was it that wet when we went into the room? I have a feeling, somehow, wherever we went, time moved faster there. Or, I don’t know . . . sped up and slowed down again, or. . . .” My head spins from too much conflicting information. Nothing makes sense. It’s not possible, and yet . . . it is. Because we experienced it. It’s all entirely incomprehensible.
Once we get back to the elevator, the door opens before Jax’s finger even reaches the button. We make uneasy eye contact, then cautiously step on and replace our breathers. The elevator rattles back up to our original floor without our telling it where to go, and when the door opens, I stumble out, weak in the knees and lightheaded. The door closes, and the light above it goes dark. Like nothing ever happened. Only the scent of citrus lingers in a stir of primal dust.
SIX
“Where is The Wall?” I asked my daddy one night while he brushed my hair. We lived in Bunker A, where all of the Tree Factory workers lived back then.
He cleared his throat. He hadn’t yet developed “the cough,” but “the tickle” had crept in, and he cleared his throat all too often. “The Wall?” he said. “Somewhere east. And you’re going to find it one day, I know you are.” He poked at my ribs, and I squealed. “I hear,” he whispered, “there’s an underground passageway that leads straight there.”
“You mean like the trolley tunnels?” I’d never been in one, but I’d heard about them. People traveled from city to city in Bygonne through the trolley tunnels.
“No,” he said. “Deep underground. Mysterious. . . .” Then he flipped a coin out from behind my ear and made it disappear. He was always doing magic, anything to make me smile. But he kept on and on about how someday I’d be free, through the mysterious magical wall to the green paradise of the Other Side.
I didn’t realize it then, but I know now—he didn’t say those things to make me feel better, he said them to make himself feel better about leaving me. A few more years and his time would be up, too. No one makes it past thirty in Bygonne.
Except for the Superiors.
Someone shakes me—
“Joy, wake up.”
—and I moan in response, covering my head with my blanket, body aching with need for sleep.
“Joy, it’s rise time . . . and Baby Lou’s sick.”
My eyes pop open. Aby’s sitting on my bed, holding a whimpering brown bundle. I sit up and take her, cradling her to my chest. Heat rises from her dry skin like a furnace. That listless-eyed stare into nothing clamps a vice around my heart.
“We need medicine.” Aby wrings her hands, avoids my eyes. She knows exactly what she’s asking.
“I’ll ask at breakfast.”
Arianna Superior, with her motorized, diamond-studded oxygen tank, comes to escort us to the common area this morning. This is unusual; she hardly ever steps a toe off of the catwalk. Usually Humphrey, or her stumbling, muttonhead son, or one of the other Superiors, comes to get us. Rumor has it she’s scared of the diseases we might carry, and of getting infected. But I know it’s not that. Her eyes are a dark and empty abyss of hatred and homicidal famine. Not one rotten piece of her decayed heart has shed an ounce of fear or care for humankind in a long, long time. No, she has other reasons for floating above us like the angel of death. Waiting for the perfect time to strike and take us from this life, perhaps.
My heart skips a beat. I’ve been so focused on Baby Lou and my need for sleep, only now am I remembering last night’s discovery. Or . . . was it a dream? It had to have been. I check my hand. Still, it bears remnants of black paint.
Definitely not a dream.
We all march quietly down the hall toward the disheartening smell of another foul breakfast. In my arms, Baby Lou gulps water from her bottle, shivering violently. I wrap her tighter in her blanket, and kiss her. “You’ll be okay, sweet Baby,” I whisper. “Momma Joy will take care of you.”
When we get to the common area doorway, I step aside to let everyone pass. Then, I walk cautiously—not too bravely, not too feebly—up to Arianna Superior at the catwalk stairs. “Baby Lou’s sick with fever,” I say. “She needs medicine, or she’ll die.”
Arianna Superior glances from Baby Lou to me, with no expression. She cocks her head with a click that chills my spine. “Is that so?” She draws out the last syllable like she’s sharpening a knife, seemingly amused by the possibility of Baby Lou’s death. Maybe she’ll help it along. . . . Or perhaps my begging arouses her lust for our suffering.
She takes a long, dramatic breath into her golden mask, the diamonds on her tank twinkling in the overhead lights, and I remember my promise to Miguel. Someday, they’ll get theirs. But today, the bluff of weakness. Done right, you’ll get virtually anything you desire. One of the lessons learned from the sparse years I had with my parents—a prostitute, and a gambling magician.
“Please, Madam Superior,” I say. “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll do extra work, and . . . and anything I need to. Please. . . .”
Arianna Superior smiles. Except, it looks more like if you dug up a corpse and spread its rotted lips apart. “Very well,” she says. “Bring the beast to the office after breakfast. I have something you may do to earn it.”
“Thank you, Madam Superior, I will.”
I hurry to take my place next to Jax, as Humphrey makes his rounds with the slop pot. Diaz Superior stumbles down the catwalk to his mother and slumps into a chair. With a grimace of disgust, Arianna Superior leaves him to watch over us, and heads to the office. Seconds after she disappears, Diaz Superior closes his eyes and passes out, drunk. Humphrey eyes me as he ladles slop into my bowl, and gives me a slight nod. Jax shrugs at him. With everything that happened last night, we forgot to even look for his “payment,” and we had no choice but to sneak by his sleeping body and into our dorms.
I grab his hairy arm and, leaning in close, whisper into his ear: “We found something that might be of interest to you. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the right tool for picking its lock. Next time, we’ve got you covered.” I wink and give him a flirty smile; a lesson from my mother.
He rolls his eyes and continues down the line.
“What’d you tell him?” Jax asks.
“You know, about the lock we needed to pick next time?” I nudge his boot under the table.
Whispers rise up as the children take advantage of Diaz Superior’s passed-out drunkenness.
Jax nods. “This morning, I thought it was a dream.”
“Me, too. In fact, if I didn’t have this here”—I show him the black paint on my palm—“I might have still thought it was. Seems impossible, right?”
Another nod. “We need to find an explanation.”
“It’s our way out, that’s the explanation.”
“Then why did it bring us back?”
“Well, someone obviously led us down there. Maybe they knew we couldn’t leave the children—”
“Why would someone lead us down there, and then not show themse
lves?”
“I don’t know . . . maybe they’re shy . . . ?”
With a roll of his eyes, he stuffs a bite of bread into his mouth. “There’d have to be a better reason than that.”
“What are you two talking about?” Aby leans over, breaking away from her conversation with Miguel.
“I’ll tell you later,” I say, and shovel slop into Baby Lou’s mouth and a few into my own, fighting back a gag.
“Oooh, secrets?” Miguel snatches the lump of bread from Jax’s plate and rips off a chunk. “Let’s hear ’em.”
The room falls deathly silent, and Jax lays a finger to his lips, nodding slightly toward the catwalk, where Arianna Superior approaches her son. He’s slid halfway out of his chair, probably drunk off of six month’s rations. Arianna Superior jerks a leg back in her long, thick, black skirt and kicks with the force of a factory machine. Diaz awakes in an earsplitting scream, flailing to the floor, gripping an ankle bent sideways. Bone protrudes from the skin and red spurts through the metal grates, splattering on the concrete below. With one hand, she grabs him by the throat and drags him behind her toward the office.
Humphrey stands rigid in the corner, like he’s peed himself, while the rest of us are frozen in shocked astonishment. I’m thinking Humphrey won’t be sleeping on the job anymore.
“What . . . was that?” Jax says.
“I don’t know,” Miguel replies. “But it’s about time somebody broke a few bones of his, right?”
Nervous laughter flits around the room for about two seconds before it’s cut off. Mona and Emmanuel Superior appear above us, no doubt gossiping. Mona’s wild hair has fat pink and green curlers in it today.
“Sunday,” Jax and I mutter at the same time.
She always wears those ugly curlers on Sunday. Usually, the black satin or velvet waistcoat would accompany a patterned skirt that mimics a bed covering. Today, though, she and Emmanuel wear new threads, and their matching peasant dresses make me choke on the laughter that almost bursts out. I play it off as though I’d swallowed wrong, but really, I’m dying. I’ve never seen anything so ridiculous.
The Treemakers (A YA Dystopian Scifi Romance Adventure) Page 5