Green Jack

by Alyxandra Harvey

  Chapter 17

  Saffron

  Fires burned everywhere. Angry Elysians had swarmed down the street, tossing anything they could find through shop windows, smashing the abandoned cars littering the streets, knocking Protectorate soldiers off their horses. Soldiers responded with tear gas and bullets. Search lights pierced through windows.

  Saffron knew they’d find her leaf mask before long. She couldn’t let them have it, not now that the heat was coming, anyone with half a brain could tell that much. The rain had stopped but the air was humid and thick, and when the hot months cooked the City it made everything so much worse.

  Soldiers streamed out of their apartment building. “They’ve already been in so it’s safe now,” she whispered to Killian. “Check on Oona. I’ll be there soon.”

  She darted behind the soldiers, praying they wouldn’t turn around. Smoke lingered between the buildings. The red light continued to track through the alleys and the windows as dawn flirted with the horizon. She was halfway across the rope bridge when more lights snapped on, pouring painfully bright from the rooftops of the buildings. She was starkly outlined, a target. The dying riot was a dull roar, as if lions circled the Core, refusing to give up entirely.

  She made it across to the balcony and dug out the mask. The ivy tendrils wrapped around her fingers. She stuffed her pockets with radishes and beet tops and tried not to notice how tightly the mask held onto her. She made it back down to the street before someone grabbed her. She whirled, dagger in each hand. The man collapsed, making a strange sound, like a branch cracking. No, not a man.

  The Green Jack.

  His hair was the colour of soil, the kind that grows the best food. His skin was nut-brown, bisected with scrapes and a raw hole where one of the guard’s bullets struck him. His blood was such a dark green it looked black. Oona might have been able to heal him a few days ago but Saffron knew it was too late now. “I need your help,” he wheezed.

  She stared at him. He didn’t know her. She could call the Protectorate. They’d offer a reward for returning him and they’d never have to know her part in it.

  “You’re an idiot,” she finally said. “I could be anybody.” She wasn’t of course. She was the girl who’d stolen his mask. That was probably worse.

  “I followed the mask,” the Jack replied. It was responding to his presence, growing tendrils that reached out from under her jacket zipper towards him. They were the same green as monarch butterfly cocoons. “It’s part of me. I could find it anywhere.” He reached for it and she stepped back, frowning. “I need it to heal,” he said simply.

  “Shit,” Saffron said, but she handed it to him.

  The braided leaves looked too simple to be so powerful. He held it up to his face but nothing happened. He didn’t have the usual Green Jack glow. He was a candle gutting out.

  “I thought you said the mask would heal you!” She burst out. Her throat cramped, as if she was trying not to cry, which was ridiculous. Beet leaves trembled in her pocket.

  He sat back weakly against a recycling dumpster. “It might have healed me if I’d found it right away. But I had to track it for days, riddled with buckshot. Now it will only buy me a few minutes.”

  Saffron squashed a small flare of guilt. How was she supposed to know he’d be back for the leaf mask? Was she supposed to just leave it there for the Directorate?

  Still, the guilt had her listening to the rest of his story. Until it was clear he was insane, anyway.

  “They found me before I could get to the rendezvous point,” he explained, though she hadn’t asked. She didn’t want him to be a real person. It was easier if he was a symbol. She wasn’t sure what to think of herself otherwise, or her part in his death. Tiny ivy leaves wound through his button holes. “I let myself get caught so they wouldn’t find the Greencoats.”

  Saffron wasn’t sure what to be more surprised about: a Green Jack, or the Greencoats. The Spirit Forest was thousands of acres of trees days away from Elysium City. The Directorate couldn’t control it and they needed it too much to burn it down. The glass farm domes they’d built on the edges produced the most food. It was full of Green Jacks, and the Greencoat rebels who liberated them from domes and laboratories and the constant battle between them.

  “This is all fascinating,” she bit out. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s kind of a riot going on. The streets are lousy with Protectorate soldiers.” He just stroked the leaves of the mask, looking bewildered and tired. “Hell, just come on,” she grabbed his shoulder, forcing him up. “We can’t stay here.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m dying.”

  “Not yet, you’re not. Let’s go.”

  “You need to wear the leaf mask now. It has to be you.” He tried to grab her hand but he was pathetically easy to elude, even as she held him up.

  “What? Hell, no.”

  “You found the mask,” he replied, as if that explained everything.

  “So?”

  “So you don’t have a choice anymore. It’s already linked to you. You’re a Green Jill now.”

  “You talk too much,” she grunted, dragging him to the fire escape. She had to hook her arm around his waist and tip him half-against her, dragging him like a backpack.

  “The mask already chose you. You have to have noticed that it winds around you like ivy growing on a tree.” She refused to admit to it. “It knows I’m dying. Certain plants require certain types of soil and shade and sunlight. This mask just happens to need you now.” He looked at Saffron, the leaves twined in his hair wilting. “If you ignore the calling, it will die. As will its power.”

  “And if I answer, I die,” she pointed out.

  Green Jacks couldn’t have babies, not through science or witchcraft. They reproduced like strawberry plants sending off runners. Saffron didn’t need to be told that the world needed all the Green Jack help it could get.

  She couldn’t help but remember the very first Jack she ever saw. He was barely twelve years old and his collarbones jut out like knives. He was so skinny; she could see them even from the rooftop she’d hidden on. It took a lot of energy to help plants grow and that energy had to come from somewhere. The Directorate used them up until they were sad, dancing skeletons. She wouldn’t be a slave to the Directorate.

  But the mask had already sent another curling tendril to wrap around her arm. The Jack sighed once, his head falling limply back. “Go to the Spirit Forest, you’ll be safe there.”

  “Sure,” she replied. “Right after I get invited to an Enclave Society ball.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Don’t you dare,” she snapped, propping him up against the wall. “Hey,” she slapped his cheek. “Wake up. I don’t want your damn mask, so wake up!”

  His body cracked; it broke apart, turning into rich, dark earth. It smelled like spring and rain, as it crumbled between the metal slats. The leaf mask toppled out of his empty coat, tightening around her. He could have been lying. It was absurd to think otherwise. She was just a scavenger, a Core rat.

  It was too much too think about crouching on a fire escape. She climbed up the ladder and slipped through her bedroom window, careful not to knock Oona’s plants over. The mint responded immediately, scenting the air as it stretched its leggy stalks up.

  “Thank the Green Gods,” Oona sighed from her rocking chair. The bruises on her face were still dark as soot. Killian stood beside her. “You made it back.”

  Saffron tore the vine off of her arm and tossed the leaf mask onto Oona’s bed. The creaking of Oona’s chair snapped into silence. She reached out, stroking it the way she’d stroked a dying wren she’d once found on the balcony. The mint was already halfway up the window. Saffron leaned against the wall, as far from it as possible and told them everything.

  “This is a little piece of the Wild,” Oona said quietly. The green started to look dusty. “It’s precious, Saffron. We can’t let it die.”

  “I’m not handing myself t
o the Directorate.” She clasped her hands behind her back.

  “Who said anything about that?” Oona snapped. “As if I’d send my only granddaughter into that nest of vipers. Now take the mask before it crumbles away completely.”

  Oona’s gaze didn’t falter and she didn’t lower her arm. The leaf mask looked so simple in her hand, made of leaves and braided vines. But she was right. It was wilting too fast. Killian snatched it. It continued to wilt. Saffron brushed her fingers over it. For a moment nothing happened. She met Killian’s eyes and laughed out loud. The Jack was wrong.

  And then tingles and sparks shot up her arm. Her laugh strangled. For a brief moment, she could taste mint and sage. She could have sworn she could actually hear plants growing, leaves unfurling. Tendrils wrapped around her, leaves turning green again, though the edges burned like fire. Tiny red berries glistened. Oona’s miniature garden shot up, growing so thick so fast it blocked the fires still burning from the riots.

  Saffron sighed, disgusted. “I guess he was telling the truth.”

  Oona smiled. “I always knew you were special, my girl.”

  She stepped back. She didn’t want to touch the leaf mask anymore, not until she absolutely had to. “You always said I had demon blood.”

  “And so you do, with a temper like that,” she answered easily. “Being special’s not easy.”

  “Oh, Oona, I’m not special. I just stole the wrong thing from the wrong person.”

  Oona and Killian exchanged one of their secret speaking glances, the kind that made Saffron want to scream. They had a way of making her feel all of five years old sometimes.

  “We can’t let the Directorate turn us into small petty creatures who don’t fight for what’s proper and good. Ain’t enough Green Jacks in the world that we can be wasting those we have. He didn’t deserve to die alone. None of us do.”

  Neither Killian nor Saffron looked convinced. They’d met lots of people who deserved to die alone. Though to be fair, the Jack wasn’t one them. “You get to the Spirit Forest,” Oona continued. “You find the Greencoats and you make them protect you. And you remember to offer tobacco to the spirits when you get there. Could be they’ll remember your ancestors used to do the same.”

  Killian looked like his head might actually explode. Saffron knew exactly what he was thinking. People died trying to reach the Spirit Forest. People died just trying to cross out of the Ring sometimes. Not to mention that according to the Directorate, the Greencoats were cannibals. “I’d happier on my own,” Saffron muttered. She didn’t see how trusting a bunch of strangers was a good choice.

  “You promise me,” Oona demanded fiercely. “You can’t do everything alone. Certainly not this.”

  The only person Saffron would trust in this was Killian.

  “Promise me, Saffron.” Her lips were pale. That only happened when she was agitated and straining her heart.

  “Fine,” Saffron said, before Oona made herself ill. Bad enough the cuts and the bruising and the bloody gash scabbing in her hairline were Saffron’s fault. “I promise. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I can’t pay the Ferryman,” She reminded her. “How am I supposed to get across the Wall? Even without the damn riots, they’d shoot me on sight if I even get near it. And I clearly can’t wait.” She pointed to the mint plant which now touched the ceiling.

  Killian pulled a tin coin from his pocket. It was stamped with the Directorate’s symbol on one side, and the roman numeral for one on the other. Saffron gaped at him. She’d had no idea he had a coin, never mind where he got it from. They were the only way through the Wall. They were incredibly rare in the Core, even if you had money to buy one, which no one ever did. “You had a chance to leave this place all along,” she accused. “To get out of Elysium City and away from your brothers. Why the hell did you stay?”

  He raised his left eyebrow at her as though she was an idiot. He held up two fingers. He’d been waiting for another coin, so they could leave together. And now he was offering her his only chance out of Elysium City.

  She started to hate the Green Jack, just a little, even though it wasn’t his fault.

  Killian fetched his sister’s extra Protectorate uniform from his room. Even with the coin for passage, she would have to be careful. The uniform was a little short but not by much. Her boots were tall enough to cover the gap. She tucked her braids up into the black cap. “Don’t let the idiot brothers take any of your rations,” she said severely.

  “As if they’d dare.” Oona kissed her cheek, her lips dry and wrinkly. “Be careful.”

  “You too, Oona.” Saffron hadn’t cried since her mother died. She had to remind herself of that. Curfew and lockdown bells rang out from the Core again, reverberating through the Rings.

  “Go,” Oona gave her a little shove.

  She’d have climbed up to the roof but people always went to the roof when the alarms sounded and there were too many gardens growing in clay pots and discarded oil drums up there. The mask would leave a trail of thriving carrots, cucumbers, and lettuce. The Protectorate would be able to eat their way to her location. Killian ran at her side, crossing rope bridges until they finally reached the Wall. There were still bodies on the ground from the last time the electricity shorted. “Look after my Oona,” she told Killian. “And use my bed from now on, away from the idiots. I’ll try and send word if I can. And if----.”

  He cut off her rambling with a fierce hug that made her eyes sting. He smelled like leather and rain and metal. She smelled like leaves and mint. Already, she wasn’t the same person. She was the first to pull away.

  She walked towards the Wall, and the mask in her rucksack felt like a ball of sun. The guard lights glinted off barbed wire. She forced herself not to look back. She already felt the loss of Killian, as if one of her arms had been lopped off. “I can pay the Ferryman,” she called out, hands lifted to prove she was carrying nothing but a passage coin.

  The light from a guard’s rifle pierced her. She squinted, trying to look confident and bored, and not like someone smuggling magic. She tossed him the passage coin. Her pack grew heavier, filling with leaves and flowers and berries. The grass at her feet was suspiciously thick. “Now?” He asked. “During a riot?”

  “Why do you think I’m here?”

  “Aren’t you a little young?”

  “Are you arguing with the Directorate’s orders?” she returned, heart thumping like rain on a metal rooftop. “Or with Cartimandua?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Under any other circumstances she would have snickered at being called ma’am.

  “Pass,” he finally barked.

  The gates clanged shut behind her.