The Collective

by Lindsey Whitlock

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. I hear it all the time. Whim gets to be brave and inspiring, while here I am just cleaning and packing, cleaning and packing,’ Enid said.

  ‘You’re strong, you have a head on your shoulders. Why don’t you just tell your mother you’ll be staying behind to march with us?’

  ‘She likes to talk about it, but doesn’t have the gumption,’ Neste piped in, wringing out her hair. ‘Oh, don’t be offended, Enid. I like you with gumption or without.’

  ‘It’s not that. Gumption I’ve got. I’m spitting mad at Mam, but Allun’s leaving with Posy’s family and now Dewey’s going with him. If I leave, there’ll hardly be anyone left with her.’

  ‘Do you believe what Mam says?’ Neste asked, dropping her voice a bit lower.

  ‘What? That trying to get Aelred out of jail will just stir Hill people up against us and hurt the cause? Who cares? We’ll do what’s right or die trying!’ Enid sighed a disgruntled sigh. ‘Or I would, anyway.’

  ‘I saw a letter Mam got from Aelred the other day,’ Neste said, dropping her voice even lower.

  ‘Aelred? She shouldn’t be writing to Aelred,’ Caradoc said easily. ‘We’re supposed to keep things quiet.’

  ‘What did it say? Don’t tell me you didn’t read it,’ Enid said.

  ‘Shh. Of course I read it. I’m sure Mam wasn’t too explicit in her letter – she’s smart enough. But from what I read, it sounded like Aelred knew that something was in the works, something being led by Whim.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He told Mirth to keep Whim with her, to keep her safe. To not, under any condition, let her risk her safety.’

  Whim was still for a while, quietly letting the words soak in. She hated the idea of other people conspiring to keep her safe when she didn’t want safety, not for herself.

  ‘Whim Moone will find a way,’ Caradoc said.

  Enid sighed heavily. ‘Maybe I don’t have gumption.’

  ‘At least you’re here,’ Neste said. ‘Not off with Elwyn, living with the people who fought Allun and put Aelred in jail.’

  ‘I’d give my right leg to see Elwyn’s face when he sees everyone marching through Liberty,’ Enid said, this time with a bit of a laugh in her voice. ‘Do you think he’ll join in?’

  Whim didn’t hear what they said. She quietly made her way over to the shore and climbed out of the water.

  CHAPTER 20

  Trust

  THAT WEEK BEFORE THE MARCH, Badfish Creek was in a state of anticipation. The first families were leaving and being given their farewells. Some farewells were warm, others were accusatory. Having lost her husband so recently, everyone understood when Janie Wilder shut down the post office and sold off the goods in the store; Mirth, meanwhile, was considered nearly a traitor. People stopped by to tell her so as she worked, and she brushed them off like a large animal brushes off a fly with the flick of their muscles.

  For those who stayed, excitement bubbled as the day of the protest drew near. People packed sacks for the two-day walk to Liberty – they would start in the morning, make camp, and arrive midday of the 30th. The fires lit were bigger than Whim had ever seen before. There was a lot of singing, too. Finchy said her bees wouldn’t do well without her, so she would stay behind and keep things in order. In the meantime, everyone was well supplied with her mead.

  And maybe it was the mead or maybe it was the common goal they all shared, but aside from the usual skirmishes there was no real discord. Old disputes faded, quarrelsome siblings quarrelled less. There was an odd peace and a sense of purpose that prevailed in the woods.

  But though everyone was happy, Whim was more eager than ever for the preparations to be over and the march to begin. She was afraid that something might keep it all from happening. She walked down stony paths carefully to avoid twisted ankles, and she took elderberry tinctures to avoid illness. She kept away from the Brambles, and whenever she saw Mirth, Whim felt as alert as a young rabbit. And like a rabbit, her fear only made her quicker. Her work was done with more speed and agility than ever.

  Every few days, on top of her preparations and tasks at the distillery, Whim walked to Kegonsa, where she now had to go if she wanted to pick up her newspapers and send word to her father. As usual, no letters arrived from Elwyn. She thought perhaps he had become too wrapped up in money and new clothes and had forgotten about her, but she decided long ago not to dwell on it. The bitterness was acute, and she had no time for bitterness.

  Whim had no time for anything, really, not even newspapers. She carried them home in a pack over her shoulder and read as she walked, having few opportunities to just sit down. She walked and read, sun slanting through the shivering cottonwoods.

  One day, turning the page, she was surprised by an image. She dropped the newspaper, and it landed face up to show Elwyn’s eyes looking at her, smiling. Wind in the high branches of the trees didn’t reach the ground; the newspaper was still as if it had been carved in stone. Kneeling down over the paper, Whim was almost afraid to touch it. She thought that her imagination, her repressed anger and anxieties, were playing games with her. But no. There he was. Elwyn.

  She picked up the paper and quickly flipped through it. She saw another image, then another. They were advertisements, at least one of them in every paper. There were many editorial cartoons mocking it, too. One had a group of Foresters with various skin tones and invariably gaudy clothing – large hats, massive bows – shaking hands with Rhoad, their high-buttoned shoes crushing miniature Hill farms beneath them. The Rhoad to Disaster.

  It took some time before she got to the headline buried in the St Louis Times: Injured Rhoad Takes Forester as Campaign Assistant.

  Fire flashed from her feet to her chest. She dropped down where she was and read through the stack of newspapers until the words began to blur, and then she read some more. It was then that she reached the odd sections, ones she normally didn’t pay attention to. Business. Finance.

  TEN YEARS AFTER INTRODUCING BONDS, COLLECTIVE RESOURCES COMPANY ON THE RISE

  ‘We are opening several new sand mines this year,’ says owner and aspiring Central Territories Chancellor Cronus Rhoad. ‘Not only will this utilise underutilised land and labour force, but it will set the Collective on a path towards modernisation.’

  Whim sat up taller. She read the article three times, read it furiously. She knew that business interests were behind the seizure of land, but business interests had seemed like a faceless force in the world. She had never put a name to them. And here was a name. Rhoad. The man Elwyn had admired all this time, and now, apparently, was working for.

  Whim hurried back to town, for what purpose, she didn’t know. She just felt an urgency in her, urgency with no outlet.

  ‘Teilo! We are not bringing a skunk with us to your uncle’s,’ Whim heard Mirth say as she passed the Bramble house. Mirth had leant her weight over the side of their wagon and was lifting a stack of blankets to reveal another hand-made cage, this one holding a comfortable looking skunk. ‘It’s a long enough journey without getting skunk-sprayed.’

  ‘Mike won’t spray us. Skunks only spray when they’re scared, and he knows we won’t hurt him. Mike’s a really trusting skunk.’

  ‘No more animals. How many times do I have to say it? This cart will be heavy to drag across the forest without stowing away an entire menagerie. You’re lucky we’re letting you bring that filthy bird of yours.’

  ‘You didn’t say no animals. You said no rodents when you found Roger under the pans.’

  ‘Roger?’

  ‘My groundhog. Skunks aren’t rodents. And neither are opossums.’

  ‘Teilo,’ Mirth warned, before diving back into the wagon, her large bottom in the air, eventually finding the caged opossum below the store of dry breads. ‘If I find one more animal…’

  As she went by, Whim kept one eye on Mirth. She kept waiting for her to act, to speak, but so far, Mirth hadn’t. Instead Mirth, like Whim, was constantly looking out
of the corner of her eye. They seemed to orbit each other, bound by mutual love and distrust.

  ‘Hello, Whim. Back from picking up your papers, I see,’ Mirth said as Whim went by. She tightened the wagon ties roughly. ‘Have you heard from Elwyn?’

  Whim stopped. ‘No,’ she said. She tried to keep her voice even.

  ‘He must be very busy. If anybody can make the most of an opportunity, it’s Elwyn.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Whim swallowed, turning to walk away.

  ‘Wait,’ Mirth said. There was a change in her tone. ‘Whim, I need to talk to you. Privately.’

  Whim turned, afraid and relieved that the confrontation she had prepared herself for was finally coming. They went to Whim’s house. Whim poured lukewarm sun-tea and brought out chips of ice while Mirth sat, looking uncomfortable, like she always did when she wasn’t working.

  ‘Whim, I wanted you to know that I’ve been in correspondence with your father,’ Mirth finally said. ‘I was a farm girl when I lived in Hill Country. I don’t know much about the legal system. But I wanted to offer him whatever advice I could.’

  ‘And that’s all?’ Whim found herself saying. There was a harshness she didn’t intend in her voice, but Mirth didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘I also wanted to give him some idea of what you have been up to. A parent can’t watch a child deceive another parent. It’s not right.’ Whim waited, knowing Mirth was about to say more, wondering what she would try to do or say to make her go with them. For a moment, the two of them were quiet. Then Mirth continued hesitatingly. ‘As you know, Neste, Enid, Teilo, Loew and I will be leaving tomorrow,’ Mirth said. ‘Your father asked me to promise that you would come with us. But I could not do that.’ Whim could feel her own heart beating in her chest. ‘You are like a daughter to me, and as with my own children, I have a bias towards your safety. But if it were my own father facing a trial that could cost him his life, well, I could only hope I’d do just the same as you are doing.’

  At first Whim didn’t understand what Mirth was saying. She had been too braced for the opposite. Then Mirth smiled with a rare gentleness.

  ‘What I’m trying to say is, I’m proud of you.’

  CHAPTER 21

  Legacies

  ELWYN BEGAN HIS JOB as Cronus Rhoad’s assistant in mid-July, and ever since, his life should have been saturated with colour, like old cloth dropped in a vat of dye. Elwyn was given a new wardrobe of good linen expertly cut in colours that looked good on his brown skin. And he got to stand with Rhoad for portraits, photographs and interviews. The coffee they drank wasn’t dandelion coffee like they drank back home, but real coffee from Mexico, and the cakes were flavoured with things Elwyn had never tasted: nutmeg, saffron, vanilla. Everything smelt good and was served on gold-rimmed plates in the glittering parlour. The air itself seemed brighter there, full of life and interest.

  But Elwyn had seen Aelred’s face in the newspaper, and he could not unsee it. The image stayed with him, all morning every morning as he worked. He tried asking Rhoad questions about it, but Rhoad said that all he knew was that this gunman, identity unknown to all, claimed to have led the violent demonstration at the city hall and to have fired the gun that hit his foot.

  ‘And that’s the man’s picture?’ Elwyn asked more than once that first week.

  ‘The trial is on the second. You can go and see for yourself then, if you are interested in that sort of thing. They aren’t letting anyone into the jail to look at him – they claim that’s for public safety. But if I know Garreth’s campaign, he’s pulled some strings to arrange it that way. Nothing keeps a story in the papers like a mystery, and every reminder of the protest is a free advertisement for his backward ideas.’

  ‘So how do we know that’s him?’

  ‘Thinking too much about this mystery gunman is only playing into their hands, and is pointless. The courts will do their work. I don’t waste my time with things that don’t serve me, and I suggest you do the same.’

  But every day after work, Elwyn haunted the jail behind the courthouse. He wasn’t alone; there was always a crowd of a dozen or so people trying to catch a glimpse of the man through the slats in the window. Petty thefts and incurable drunks usually filled the jail, but now there was an assassin from the woods, one that some folks said wanted a revolution. People stood out in the heat of the day, swapping gossip and buzzing with excitement over the ever-nearing trial. Elwyn tried getting close to the slats in the wall and calling out, hoping Aelred would recognise his voice. A moment from the protest replayed itself over and over again in Elwyn’s head: a cloaked man had asked Elwyn whose side he was on. A familiar voice. Aelred’s.

  If Aelred heard Elwyn through the slats in the jail wall, he never answered.

  Elwyn didn’t notice how people in the crowd looked at him any more. The question didn’t interest him – he had a million others always bubbling in his mind. Why was Aelred keeping his identity secret? Could Elwyn tell anyone that he knew him? What would Aelred have been doing at the protest? Why would Aelred, who hated guns, have fired one?

  It all seemed wrong to Elwyn. He wrote again and again to Whim and to his family for answers, putting his sealed and stamped letters, as usual, in the brass mailbox at the front of the Blackwell house. But Elwyn never got any reply. He began to doubt what the newspapers said. If Aelred was in jail, someone surely would have told him. What if the courts didn’t have anyone to blame for that gun at the demonstration? What if the rioters all got away, and they needed to pretend they had someone to hold accountable. They could just circulate a picture, say he’s too dangerous to be in contact with the public. At the last minute, they could make the trial private, say it’s for public safety.

  Elwyn had been spending his mornings around politicians and newspaper men. He understood that this was often how things worked for people like that. Rhoad’s words about Garreth influencing the courts for his own politics echoed in Elwyn’s mind. Every day, he doubted Aelred’s presence in the Liberty jail more and more. But he felt he had to know for sure. He had to find a way.

  Elwyn spent hours walking around the jail, inspecting it from all directions. He missed lunch with the Blackwells more days than not, but he hardly thought about that. He had a bit of money in his pocket from his work with Rhoad and any time his hunger became a bother he bought a roll filled with sausage or sorrel from a vender. He ate absently as he thought, walking around the jail again and again.

  He was buying one of these rolls when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  ‘Hello there, goat boy,’ Hestia said coolly, but in good humour. Elwyn saw Hestia almost every day now – the family was always sitting around the breakfast table when Elwyn arrived – but he and Hestia hadn’t ever really spoken. She was groggy-eyed and irritable in the morning, and after breakfast she disappeared to work with her tutor. It was different seeing her out in the world. She stood with the ease and energy of a small flame.

  ‘Hi,’ Elwyn said.

  Hestia looked at the roll Elwyn had chosen and wrinkled her nose. ‘The beef is much better, you know,’ she said, thanking the vendor and paying him for her roll.

  ‘I can’t eat beef,’ Elwyn said. If this encounter with Hestia had happened a couple weeks earlier, he would have been transfigured with joy, but now Elwyn was more eager to get back to the courthouse and find a way inside.

  ‘Can’t?’ Hestia said. ‘I’m suspicious of people who don’t eat delicious things.’

  ‘I promised my brother I wouldn’t eat any cows while I’m here. I used to walk him down to the train tracks to watch the cattle cars pass through – you could hear the moos and see a few noses and shadows through the slats, but not much. He was really happy I was going to a place where cows lived until he heard that people kill and eat them. And he’s just six, you know, the youngest of our family. It’s always hard to say no to the youngest.’

  Hestia looked at him as if what he said was completely foreign. Elwyn felt that she was appraising
him, her eyes narrowing as they looked him over. It was the first time since he arrived in Liberty that he felt he was being judged as a person rather than a Forester.

  There was a noise back by the jail; people cheered, then groaned collectively. Elwyn whipped around in that direction, but there was nothing to see.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re wasting your time on this ridiculous trial. The Mystery Gunman,’ she said in a mocking tone.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s always the same. People do everything they can to keep danger out of their lives, then when something terrible actually happens, they tear into it like starving dogs.’

  ‘That’s not how it is for me.’

  ‘Oh, of course not,’ she said.

  ‘You’re just like your dad. “Don’t put time into what doesn’t serve you.”’

  ‘I’m nothing like my dad.’

  ‘No? Well, anyway, this does serve me. For me this is personal. It isn’t about thrill-seeking. It’s about family.’

  Hestia took a bite of her bun and assessed Elwyn more closely. They were walking around the square aimlessly, or so it seemed to Elwyn. The sun was bright, but the day was fresh with clouds the colour of moth’s wings. He looked back at the jail again, which was now blocked from view. He was tired of carrying all the questions in his head alone. He wanted to talk. He wanted to be understood.

  ‘The man whose picture they have in the paper, the man they say is going to be tried as an assassin – it’s my best friend’s father. Whim. She’s like a sister to me, and I’ve known her dad all my life. I haven’t told anyone—’ Elwyn began.