UnStrung

by Neal Shusterman

  •

  They walk into the village. Lev, so used to bland sienna suburbia, feels out of place among the red cliff homes, the whitewashed adobes, and the sidewalks of rich mahogany planks. Although the place appears at first to be primitive, Lev knows upper crust when he sees it, from the luxury cars parked on the side streets to the gold plaques embedded in the adobe walls. Men and women wear business suits that are clearly Chance-Folk in style, yet finer than the best designer fashions.

  “What do your people do here?”

  Wil throws him an amused look. “My people as in ‘Slot-Mongers’ in general, or are you asking about my family in particular?”

  Lev reddens, wondering if the medicine woman told Wil how he’d accidently called the ChanceFolk by the rude slang name. “Both, I guess.”

  “Didn’t do your homework before scaling our wall?”

  “I needed a place to hide and had no time to be choosy. A kid at a train station told me that since your people are protected, I would be protected too. And that you know the legal mumbo jumbo to make it stick.”

  Wil relents and offers Lev a brief history of the tribe. “When my grandfather was a kid, the rez made a bundle—not just from gaming, but from some lawsuits over land usage, a water treatment plant, a wind farm that went haywire, and casinos we didn’t want but got stuck with when another tribe rolled on us.” He shrugs uncomfortably. “Luck of the draw. We’ve got it better than some tribes.”

  Lev looks down the street, where the curbs gleam with gold. “Way better, by the look of it.”

  “Yah,” says Wil, looking both embarrassed and proud at the same time. “Some tribes did wise investing with their casino cash; others squandered it. Then, when the virtual casinos got ritzier than the real ones and it all came crashing down, tribes like ours did very well. We’re a Hi-Rez. You’re lucky you didn’t jump the wall of a Low-Rez. They’re much more likely to sell AWOLs to parts pirates.”

  Lev has, of course, heard of the wealth chasm between the rich tribes and the poor ones, but as it was never a part of his world, he never gave it much thought. Maybe people this rich don’t need to profit off AWOLs. Still, he tries not to let his spark of hope ignite. He has quickly learned that hope is a luxury the hunted can ill afford.

  “Anyway,” says Wil, “my tribe knows the law and how to use it. In fact my dad’s a lawyer, and has done pretty well for our family. My mom runs the pediatrics lodge in the medical warren and is well respected. We get rich tribal kids from all over North America coming here for healing.”

  Lev wonders at the irony in Wil’s voice but feels awkward about asking him more questions. His mother always told him it was rude to talk about money, especially if you didn’t know the person well. But on the other hand, after listening to Wil play the guitar for him, he feels he knows him better than much of his own family.

  Wil stops before a small storefront at the end of the street. A carved oak sign says LUTHIER. He tries the handle, but it’s locked. “Huh. I wanted to introduce you to my fiancée, but I guess she’s taking a break.”

  “Fiancée?”

  “Yah,” says Wil. “It’s like that around here.”

  Lev looks up at the sign above the door, feeling increasingly ignorant. “So . . . what’s a luthier?”

  “Guitar maker. Una is an apprentice to the rez’s best.”

  “You mean there’s more than one?”

  “It’s kind of a tribal specialty.” Wil looks around, clearly disappointed, and Lev realizes this was less about showing him around than about showing him off to his fiancée. “Ready to go back yet?”

  But Lev is tired of hibernating at Wil’s house. Besides, if that petition is approved, this could be his new home. The thought gives him a strange chill: excitement laced with fear of a future so new and unknown. There have never been unknown quantities in his life. Until a few weeks ago, everything was carefully laid out for him, so he never needed to consider the concept of possibilities. But now there are possibilities enough to make him dizzy.

  “Show me more. How about your schools? What kind of school would I go to?”

  Wil shakes his head, laughing. “You really don’t know anything about us, do you?”

  Lev doesn’t dignify that with a response—he just waits for an explanation.

  “Very young kids learn what they need to know from extended family and the neighborhood elders,” Wil explains. “Then, as their talents and passions are recognized, they’re apprenticed to a master in the field, whatever that field is.”

  “Seems kind of narrow to learn only one thing.”

  “We learn many things, from many people,” Wil says, “as opposed to your world, where you’re taught all the same things, by the same people.”

  Lev nods, point taken. “Advantages and disadvantages to both, I guess.”

  Lev thinks Wil will just defend his tribe’s ways, but instead he says, “Agreed.” Then he adds, “I don’t always like the way things are done here, but the way we learn works for us. It even prepares kids for university every bit as well as your system. We learn because we want to, not because we have to, so we learn faster. We learn deeper.”

  Then Lev hears a young voice behind him.

  “Chowilawu?”

  Lev turns around to see three kids, maybe about ten years old, staring admiringly at Wil. The kid who spoke is skinny as an arrow, and just as tightly wound. He has a pleading look on his face.

  “Something wrong, Kele?” Wil asks.

  “No . . . it’s just . . . Elder Muna asks if you’ll play for us.”

  Wil sighs but grins, as if he feels put upon and flattered at the same time. “Elder Muna knows I’m not permitted to play lightly. There must be a need.”

  “It’s Nova,” Kele says, indicating a girl beside him, her eyes downcast. “Ever since her father divorced his spirit-guide, her parents have been fighting.”

  “It’s bad,” Nova blurts out. “My ma says she married an eagle, not a possum—but he was the only accountant in his office who wasn’t a possum. So now they fight.”

  Lev wants to laugh, but realizes that this is no laughing matter.

  “So shouldn’t I play for your parents, not you?” Wil asks her.

  “They won’t ask,” Nova says. “But maybe some of what you give me will rub off on them.”

  Wil looks to Lev, offers him a shrug, and agrees to perform. “Not too long,” he tells them. “Our new mahpee can’t have too much excitement on his first waking day.”

  Lev looks at him, puzzled.

  “Mahpee is short for ‘sky faller.’ It’s what we call AWOLs who climb the wall and drop into the rez as if they’ve fallen from the sky.”

  Elder Muna, a white-haired woman, meets them at the door a few streets away, clasping Wil’s hands with both of hers, asking him about his parents. Lev looks around the round room with its many windows. The maps on the walls and the computer stations make the place resemble a classroom, but only slightly. A dozen children mill about in what appears to be total mayhem: Two argue over a helix on one monitor, one child traces a path on a map of Africa, four act out a play that could be Macbeth if Lev remembers his Shakespeare correctly, and except for the three who have shanghaied Wil, the rest are playing some complicated game on the floor with a pile of pebbles.

  Elder Muna claps once, and the children instantly look her way, see Wil, and swarm him. He shoos them away, and they stampede to the center of the room, jostling for the best place on the floor. Wil settles on a stool, and all the kids start shouting their favorites at him. But Elder Muna silences them with a raised hand.

  “The gift is for Nova today. She will choose.”

  “The Crow and Sparrow song,” Nova says, trying to hide her delight with a solemn expression.

  The song is markedly different from the music Wil played for Lev. This tune is bright and joyous, evoking perhaps a different kind of healing. Lev closes his eyes and imagines himself a bird flitting through summer leaves in an orchard that
seems to go on forever. The music captures, if only for a few moments, a sense of an innocence recently lost.

  When the song is done, Lev raises his hands to clap, but Elder Muna, anticipating this, gently takes his hand before he can, and shakes her head no.

  The group of kids sits in silence for a good thirty seconds, filled with the aftermath of the song. Then the elder releases them, and they all go back to their games and learning.

  She thanks Wil and wishes Lev luck with his new journey, and they leave.

  “You really are amazing,” Lev tells him once they’re out on the street. “I bet you could make millions outside the rez with your music.”

  “It would be nice,” Wil says wistfully, almost sadly. “But we both know that’s not going to happen.”

  Lev wonders at his sadness, because it seems to him if you never have to worry about unwinding, you can do anything. “Why no applause?” he asks. “Are people here that afraid of clappers?”

  Wil laughs at that. “Believe it or not, we don’t have clappers on the rez. I’d like to believe that’s because people here don’t get angry enough to become suicide bombers and make their blood explosive . . . but maybe it’s just that we vent our anger at the world in different ways.” Then he sighs and says, with more than a little bitterness, “No, we don’t applaud because it’s not our way. Applause is for the musician, and the musician is ‘just an instrument.’ Accepting applause is considered vanity.” Then he looks at his guitar, stroking the strings with his fingertips, peering into its hollow, like maybe something will speak out from inside. “Every night I dream of cheering crowds and wake up guilty for it.”

  “Don’t be,” Lev tells him. “Where I come from, everyone wants to be cheered for something. It’s normal.”

  “Ready to go back?”

  Lev isn’t sure whether he means Wil’s home or back to the world outside of the rez. Well, Lev isn’t ready to do either. He points down a winding path. “What’s down there?”

  Wil huffs, his mood clearly darkened by Lev’s talk of adoration. “Why do you need to see everything? Maybe there are some places it’s best not to go!”

  Lev stares at the ground, feeling more hurt by the rebuke than he wants to admit.

  When he looks up, Wil is staring with pain at the cliffs on the other side of the village, then down the winding path. “The medical warren is down there,” he tells Lev. “It’s where my mother works.”

  And then Lev recalls something. “And where your grandfather is?”

  Wil nods, saying nothing for a moment . . . and then he takes off his guitar and leaves it hidden behind a boulder. “Come on. I’ll take you there.”

  Lost in thought, Wil walks down the cobblestone road. His face looks grim, and Lev leaves him alone, wrapped in memories of his own. Clappers remind him of the last time he saw Connor and Risa, and guilt prickles him. They had rescued him, and in his own uneasy ambivalence between his past and his future, he had betrayed them. Connor and Risa had pretended to be clappers, solemnly applauding in grand, rhythmic sweeps—and it caused a panic. They had escaped. He hopes. The truth is, he has no idea what befell them. They could be unwound by now. In a “divided state.” The more he thinks about it, the more he despises that euphemism.

  The road curves outside the village toward the wide fissure in the cliff and dips into a gulch filled with gleaming one-story buildings separated by greenbelts.

  “This first building is the pediatrics lodge,” Wil explains tersely as they pass. Wil doesn’t stop, but Lev peers through the windows and into the patios, hoping to see the medicine woman. He sees other healers and groups of children, but not Wil’s ma.

  Lev shoots a look at Wil and sees his eyes glued on someone ahead: a short girl with warm almond eyes, a cascade of feathers woven into her vest, and a faint smile that reminds Lev of Risa. She is standing in front of another medical lodge, stalling at the door, when she catches sight of Wil.

  Even before they speak, Lev realizes that this must be Wil’s fiancée. There’s a connection between them perhaps even more powerful than Wil’s connection with his guitar. As Wil approaches her, Lev thinks they might kiss, but instead Wil reaches for the beaded ribbon restraining her hair and unties it, sending her shiny black locks cascading down her shoulders.

  “Much better,” he says, with the slightest of smiles.

  “Not for the workshop,” she points out. “It’ll wrap around a saw blade, and my head will get cut off.”

  “Now that’s what I call unwinding!” Wil says with a smirk. She gives him a glare that’s more like a visual rim shot, and he laughs.

  “Una, this is Lev. Lev, Una.”

  “Hi.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lev.” She snatches at Wil’s hand, but as he’s a foot taller than her, he easily holds the ribbon out of reach. “Give it to me, Guitar Boy.” Then, as if she’s had years of practice, she leaps and yanks it from his hand. “Ha!” Winking at Lev, she says, “Take notes, little brother. If you hang with this one, you’ll need that move.”

  Lev isn’t sure why she’s calling him little brother, but he feels pleased.

  Una studies Wil. “Is your uncle back?”

  Something intense passes between them. Lev notices that this long, narrow lodge has CARDIOLOGY carved in large wood letters above the door.

  “Yah,” Wil says. “Didn’t find anything. So are you here to see my grandfather?”

  “Someone has to,” she says. “He’s been here for weeks, and how many times have you visited?”

  “Stop it, Una. It’s bad enough I get it from my family.”

  “You get it because you deserve it.”

  “Well, I’m visiting now, aren’t I?”

  “Then where’s your guitar?”

  Something crumples in Wil’s face, and Lev looks sideways, not wanting to see the tears building in his eyes. “Una, I can’t do it. He wants me to soothe him into death. I just can’t do it!”

  “It doesn’t mean he’ll actually die.”

  Wil’s voice gets louder. “He’s waiting for me when he should be waiting for a heart.”

  And although Lev knows none of the particulars, he touches Wil on the arm to get his attention and says, “Maybe he’s waiting for both . . . but he’ll accept one if he can’t have the other.”

  Wil looks at him like he’s seeing him for the first time, and Una smiles. “Well said, little brother,” says Una. “I suspect if you were one of us, your spirit-guide would be an owl.”

  Lev feels himself go just the tiniest bit red. “More like a deer in the headlights.”

  Lev follows them inside and to the far end of the building, where a spacious round room is subdivided into four open enclaves. It feels less like a hospital and more like a spa. There are large windows framed in rough-hewn wood. Blooming flowers decorate the walls, and in the very center is a fountain gently drizzling water over a copper sculpture made to look like a stylized dream catcher. There is state-of-the-art medical equipment in each enclave, but discreetly placed, as not to disturb the calming nature of the place.

  Of the four beds, only two are occupied. In the one closest to the door rests a young woman who breathes irregularly, her lips tinged blue. In the farthest bed is a gaunt old man, who looks tall even lying down. Lev stalls in the hallway with Wil and Una until Wil takes a deep breath and leads the way in, mustering a smile.

  His grandfather is awake. Seeing them, he chuckles delightedly, but the laugh turns into a ragged cough.

  “Grandfather, this is Ma’s patient Lev. Lev, this is my grandfather, Tocho.”

  “Please sit,” Tocho says. “Keep standing around me and I’ll feel like I’m already dead.”

  Lev sits with the others but scoots his plush chair slightly back, disturbed at how pasty the old man looks, his face drawn and his breathing ragged. Lev sees the family resemblance, and it unnerves him that this frail man probably looked like Wil sixty years ago. This man is dying for lack of a heart. It reminds Lev of the heart h
e might have provided someone. Did a person die because Lev kept his heart for himself? There’s still a part of him that wants to feel guilty for that, and it makes him angry.

  Wil picks up his grandfather’s hand. “Uncle Pivane says he’ll bag a mountain lion tomorrow.”

  “Always tomorrow with that one,” Tocho says. “And I suppose you’ll play for me tomorrow too?”

  Wil reluctantly nods. Lev notices how he won’t meet the old man’s gaze. “I don’t have my guitar today. But yes, tomorrow for sure.”

  Then Tocho wags a finger at Wil. “And no more talk of changing my guide to a pig.” He smiles hugely. “Not happ’nin’.”

  Lev looks to Wil. “Pig?”

  “Nova’s dad isn’t the only one who divorced his spirit-guide. My dad writes petitions to the Tribal Council all the time asking to switch people’s animal spirit-guides to something more . . . helpful. It’s no big deal.”

  Tocho’s expression is mutinous. “Big deal to me. Lion chose me.” He turns weakly to Lev. “My grandson thinks I should change my spirit-guide to a pig, just so I can have a new heart quick and easy. What do you think?”

  Wil throws Lev a forbidding look, but Una nods at Lev, giving him silent permission to voice an opinion. But how can he have an opinion? “This is all new to me,” Lev says. “I don’t think I would want an animal part . . . but sir, I think whatever lets you keep your dignity is the right thing to do.”

  Wil’s frown is so severe, Lev backpedals.

  “But on the other hand, a pig heart would be okay if it works. If I eat pork chops, I can’t object to you using its heart, can I?”

  The old man starts to laugh-cough again.

  “Uh . . . maybe I should wait outside.” Lev starts to get up, ready to make his escape, but Una stops him.

  “You’ll do no such thing. It’s refreshing to hear an outsider’s view. Isn’t it, Wil?”

  Wil considers it. “We can learn things from the outside, just as they can learn things from us. And if an old tradition ends your life before its time, then what good is it?” Then he turns to Lev, making him the mediator once more. “Not many mountain lions on the rez anymore, Lev. But there are plenty of pigs, mustangs, and sheep. It makes no sense to insist on a part from his animal spirit-guide. Choosing a different animal is simple logic. Shouldn’t a flush of logic beat a straight of tradition?”