One of the elders speaks back, his gaunt face pockmarked like a peanut shell. “You’re wrong. You’re dead wrong. You’ll see. Dead wrong.”
The elders start to laugh. A snicker at first, then a jocular outburst, like a braying that sends shivers down my back.
“Keep moving,” I whisper to Sissy, “just keep moving.”
Back in the village square, the streets are deserted, not a soul in sight. Even the cottage windows are shuttered closed, doors shut. Echoes of male laughter from the train platform ring out in the distance, trailing us all the way back to my cottage.
32
WE WAIT FOR dawn. Huddled around our packed bags in the room, ready to flee at the first hint of light. Sissy, Epap, and I have drawn up a plan: we’ll follow the railway tracks. On foot. A journey that might take several weeks, if not months, but at least we’ll be free and not trapped inside a train car. We can forage and hunt for food. And once we draw close enough to the destination, we should be able to view it from afar and decide whether to proceed or not. It is this ability to determine our own destiny that sells us on this plan.
Sissy wants to leave immediately but I talk her out of it. Darkness in the woods would be so dense, we’d be at the utter mercy of unseen dangers. Better to wait for light. And besides, we won’t be able to cross the bridge until it lowers tomorrow. Best to hunker down for now, stay warm, conserve our energy. Sleep if possible.
Gathered in the hearth, we watch the fronds of fire. Ben complains of thirst. Grabbing a jug, Sissy and Epap steal out to the river, bring back enough water for everyone. No one’s around, everything is quiet, they say. The night deepens, thick with menace. Not a light shines in the village, not even a speck of green light or the flickering waver of candlelight. The night air is thick with menace.
Fatigue eventually settles on us, nudging us to sleep. We decide on one-hour shifts. At the first sign of trouble, we’ll run out together. Still wired from the fight at the train station, I volunteer for the first watch. It’ll be hours before I can sleep, I think.
Alone now, the cottage has fallen quiet. Minutes pass; I think I hear the sound of faint snoring. My breath frosts the windowpanes, then dissolves away, only to reappear seconds later, an ephemeral phantom.
The sound of singing arrives gently and gradually. At first, I think one of the boys upstairs is singing. But as the voice gains force, lyrics emerging, I realize it’s coming not from upstairs but outside.
I lean forward, peer through the frosted glass. It’s pitch black outside—nothing to be seen. I crack the window open and the voice comes in clearer. Here in the Mission, there’s nothing unusual about singing, but something about this is strikingly different.
For one, it’s a solo. Stripped-down, almost naked in comparison to the usual choral singing. And something else. The voice is imbued with a haunted mournfulness, not the usual sprightly exuberance, and the lyrics are stripped of the usual saccharine optimism.
Lord and God of Power
Shield and sustain me this night.
Lord, God of Power
This night and every night.
My breath, frosting on the glass, quickens. I know this song.
It is a lullaby my mother used to sing to me.
The voice is completely off, of course. My mother’s voice—the only thing I remember of her—was smooth and melodic, whereas this voice rattles like a dragged chain of metal links. But the melody is exactly the same. Even the lyrics, though I do not know them, fall into place like a lost key into a forgotten lock.
Within seconds, I’m out the door and in the cold air of night. The singing stops. But not before I see a faint haze of gray retreating away. I give chase.
He’s fast. It has to be a he; the village girls, hampered by their lotus feet, couldn’t come close to achieving this speed. “Hey, you! Wait!” I yell.
He doesn’t look back, doesn’t slow down. Instead, he picks up the pace. He ducks behind a cottage. By the time I reach it, he’s nowhere to be found. It’s all silent cottages and darkness. Then—there. His shadowy, wafer-thin figure cutting across the meadows, toward the fortress wall. Bleach-white hair glinting in the darkness. Now I know who it is.
“Clair,” I shout.
She keeps moving forward. I’m on the coarse grass now, trying to keep pace. A few minutes later, she’s reached the fortress wall. She disappears into the shadows like a stone dropped into a black lake. She’s there, and then she’s not.
When I reach the wall, I touch the cold black steel. Smooth. No grooves indicating an entryway. Then I see her footprints, little silvery splotches in the night dew, whisking beside the wall toward the corner tower. I race along, find a door. Pull it open, and then I’m inside the tower. Her boots clomp-clomp on the spiral staircase.
“Wait, Clair!” I yell, and my voice echoes back at me in diminishing waves, startling me. I climb the stairs, my boots thumping loudly on the metal steps.
She’s not in the tower room. A door that opens outside to the top of the fortress wall is open. When I walk through, I see her standing outside halfway along the length of the wall, gazing out at the moon-splashed mountain ranges. She’s waiting for me.
She doesn’t turn around until I stop a few meters from her. And yet still, she waits, her breath gusting steadily, calmly.
Finally, she turns to me. Her eyes are shiny and wet.
“I knew it was you,” she says. “You’re just the way your father described you.”
33
“WHAT?” I STAMMER. Too many thoughts whirl in my head all at once. I step toward her on suddenly unsteady legs.
“From the moment I first I saw you,” she says with a sad smile, “I knew it had to be you. His son.”
“He told you about me?”
“I knew it couldn’t be any of the other boys—too young. And the older boy—Epap—just didn’t look the part. But you. That same determination coursing through your blood. That same look in your eyes, angry and sad at the same time.”
“Clair! What are you talking about?” I grab her elbow. “How do you know so much?” She looks suddenly afraid, and I ease my grip.
“Do you have the Origin?” she asks. “I’ll tell you everything, I promise, but please, tell me: Do you have the Origin?”
I let go of her arm. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. But tell me what’s going on here. Explain everything.”
She gazes out at the dark meadows slanting downhill into a black precipice. Here and there, large boulders bulge through the landscape. “I don’t have much time,” she says. “We were followed. You were followed. You really riled up the eldership at the station tonight.”
“They’ll get over it.”
“Trust me. They won’t.”
“Don’t worry, okay? Nobody followed us. Stop imagining—”
“Nobody followed me. I was quiet as a mouse. But somebody followed you. You moved with all the subtlety of a roaring avalanche.” She points toward a cluster of cottages. “Look over there. You can make out two people standing. Now coming this way.”
She’s right. I see two gray smears walking carefully off the path, heads stooped down. They’re tracking us. “Hurry, then,” I urge her.
She speaks without hesitation, her thoughts logical, her sentences flowing as if rehearsed. “He told me this song would draw out his son. A foolproof filter. And he was right.” She smiles. “I practiced it in my head every day so I wouldn’t forget.”
“Why did you wait so long? I’ve been up and about for a couple of days already.”
“I tried, believe me. But I couldn’t exactly sing the song from the rooftops. The lyrics are subversive, the elders would have grilled me to death about it. No, I had to wait for the opportune time.”
“Tonight.”
“Less than ideal, with everyone on edge because of what happened at the station. But given your imminent departure for the Civilization tomorrow, I had little choice.”
I look out to the meadows. The two men are bent over, examining the ground. They start toward the fortress wall.
“Hurry,” I urge, “fill me in on everything.”
She inhales deeply. “The Mission was built many decades ago—”
“Just cut to the chase. Pretend we’re five minutes along in this conversation. Tell me what’s going on.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not that simple. I need to tell you about—”
I exhale loudly in frustration. “Hurry. Please.”
She sighs. “Tell me what you already know. We’ll go from there.”
“My father became a recluse here,” I say, hurriedly. “He supposedly raved about a cure for the duskers—the Origin. Eventually, he had to be removed to a cabin, the one in which you found us. And that’s where he committed suicide.”
She doesn’t answer, only stares in the direction of the two approaching figures. They’re closer now. She grabs my arms and leads me quickly back to the tower room. She closes the door behind us and the room plunges into blackness. The crack of plastic snapping, then another. The room lights up green.
“Most of what you just said is true,” Clair says, handing me a GlowBurn. “Your father found it hard to fit in again with the Mission community. He claimed things had changed for the worse, accused Krugman of running a—” She pauses, remembering. “—a ‘totalitarian dictatorship.’ The elders didn’t know what to do with him. Some thought he was a cancer to village morale and wanted him returned to the Civilization. Others believed he still had value and might prove in time to be an asset. So they reached a compromise. He could stay, but away from the village. They let him stay in the cabin.”
“All by himself?”
She nods. “They made me the gopher. I’d go down two times a week with medicine, supplies. That’s why they didn’t bind my feet but let them grow into man feet—so I’d be able to walk the many miles, climb the cabled ladder. I hated it, in the beginning, mostly because of how my feet got so big and ugly. The other girls were merciless with their taunts. Man feet, man feet, man feet.” She grimaces from the memory. “But then I came to enjoy the solitude of the hike. And eventually, his company. At first, he’d offer me a glass of water. Then later, he offered snacks; in time, we started having meals together. Over the months, we became close. He told me about his family, his wife, his children. About you. Where he used to work—”