The Bedrock

by Shelbi Wescott

  The man raised his voice and commanded the room. “Your leaders are hiding the truth from you,” he called. Lark shivered as she watched the faces of the people in the Colony as they glanced between Elijah and Lucy, Grant, and Darla—in pure conflict. The Fathers were intimidating, but that was the only power they held. For Lark, there was no conflict. There was only the truth.

  “Why are you here Harper?” Lark asked again, but this time her breath caught. The fuller picture was forming about what she’d heard and what was happening.

  “The Fathers only speak to the Children of the Lake, and not all the time. I’m here…to be their voice,” she said without apology.

  “You knew they were coming,” Lark said. But of course she did.

  She didn’t answer and her aunt walked away, toward the front and the gathering Fathers, leaving Lark feeling very alone and confused. Harper conferred with Father Joshua who leaned down and whispered in her aunt’s ear before she took the message to Lucy and Grant, her hands moving as she spoke. Lark couldn’t hear the conversation, but she saw the vein in her father’s forehead pop and throb, and Lucy sat down, slumped, head in hands.

  Elijah, undeterred, stood tall.

  “It is proven,” he emphasized, “that one of your monsters,” he used the term Lark knew would most resonate with the Colony, “made her way here. To Jackson Lake. The longer she stays in this area, the more of a threat she is to everyone and we demand her surrender.”

  Lucy and Grant and Darla seemed tired from the arguing in circles and they stood in an array of silence and stewing tempers. Several side conversations began and the Colony members reflected the dismay of their leaders back to them as a mirror. This was their home—this was a home they’d created with the sole purpose of insulated security—and it was threatened. Although, whether or not it was threatened by someone from the outside or by the Fathers themselves, Lark wasn’t sure.

  “Go home,” Grant said and dismissed him with a short burst of irritation.

  “Harper?” Elijah directed and Lucy’s head spun at the name of her sister on the intruder’s lips.

  “Harper doesn’t speak for us…” Lucy snapped.

  “She isn’t here to speak for you,” Elijah replied. He motioned and Harper adopted a more regal posture, both strong and conciliatory.

  Lark hated how much she admired Harper in that moment and how small her mom looked by comparison. Parental fragility wasn’t something she was ready to tackle; in her world, mental and physical toughness was rewarded since they were, after all, survivors, thriving. She scanned the room and looked at everyone in turn, assessing their faces and reactions with careful attention.

  Theo stared at Harper with growing and visible disgust.

  “If the Colony’s location was compromised, it means the entire area is in jeopardy,” Harper called out not the entire room. “Every hideout. Just because someone hasn’t found us for fifteen years doesn’t mean we’re safe. Elijah’s men died in a raid not that long ago which means they are moving west. A thousand miles is not far enough…especially if they are following the girl. A girl we believe is in this area. This army will find her. Which means they’ll find you.” Harper paused and kept her eyebrows raised, she didn’t give her sibling and brother-in-law a chance to deny the claim again. “The Children of the Lake will honor their protection oath. But it’s time to move away from Jackson Lake.”

  “No,” Lucy breathed.

  “Lucy,” Harper responded with empathy in her voice, “you’ve left us no other choice.”

  “You have this all wrong,” Lucy whispered, barely audible.

  Darla, for her part, said nothing. She stared at the floor and inhaled and exhaled, percolating on the shift in mood and alliances. Harper was raised in the Colony until her mother died when she was a teenager, and Lucy described the pivot as rebellion, assuming her sister would find her way back to the Colony eventually. The room took in the call to action but stayed still and perplexed.

  Oh, Lark thought with growing sadness, they really thought they‘d been safe. She wondered who promised them that.

  Grant stood and addressed the concerned people before him with a lump in his throat. “The community dinner is canceled. Go home. We’ll call a meeting tomorrow…”

  He grabbed Lucy’s hand and out they went, despite the immediate protests of the people. Harper followed, but Darla and Jenna stayed, Theo by her side, and Elijah didn’t follow the fleeing contingency either. Lark didn’t know who to follow—her family or their leader—so she stayed hovering in the chair by the exit, watching the Fathers as they bowed to the crowd.

  It was Father Joshua, Harper’s connection, who stepped forward to address the crowd and Lark, who’d never heard one of the Fathers speak in her entire life, perked with interest and curiosity. Everyone else did, too, recognizing the moment for its rare appearance.

  “We are committed to our promises,” they said. The voice was neither high nor deep, but full of gravitas and sincerity. “We will move our people to safety. You may join our caravan or you may stay. Our decision is firm.” They stepped back and the Father closest to the door began to move out of the dining hall in a line, their robes fluttering behind them, the entirety of the Colony silent and watching.

  Elijah scanned the faces of the dining hall. “Staying is stupidity and suicide. Not just for you…but for everyone in the region connected to you.”

  Darla, overcome, slumped into an open chair and shook her head while Theo stepped forward to rub her back with kindness.

  “Go,” Theo instructed to the intruders. “You’ve said your piece. Let us process without an audience.”

  Elijah contemplated a response but decided against it and took his leave, stomping through the dining hall for the second that time day, leaving bombshells in his wake. Darla waited until she was certain the man was gone before she stood again and addressed the people waiting behind.

  “My dear friends. I’m sorry you had to endure a fragile man’s breakdown. We don’t have to leave,” she promised with a hand on her heart. “Don’t you see? This is the same fear repackaged for a new day…but we can be strong and…”

  “Are we in danger?” someone asked.

  Darla shook her head no, reassuring the crowd. “We are only in danger of losing our perimeter if these people cannot see reason…and I am not convinced the entire Children of the Lake community will leave with the Fathers—”

  “So, they are leaving?” someone asked and then the trickle of worry and arguing began. Theo attempted to take some questions while Darla stepped forward to calm the crowd, and while the tensions flared, Lark knew this was her personal moment to disappear.

  It would be Darla’s job to lead the masses and calm the group—and it would be Lucy and Grant’s job to work diligently to clean up the mess in the background. Lark knew how the Colony worked and it was because of that she knew that Darla was in pure leader-mode. Everything that came out of her mouth would be sanitized for the crowd. If she wanted answers…she needed to follow her parents.

  For the second time that day, she shoved some food in her pockets and took off at a brisk walk out the dining hall exit.

  Chapter Eight

  Lost somewhere in the

  Western Atlantic Ocean

  KOZO

  He woke with a start. The small boat moved with the waves and he could tell it was mid-morning by the way the sun floated in the sky, not quite above him, but still high above the horizon.

  The ocean waters lapped against the side of the boat and Kozo didn’t know at first what roused him but soon he realized his sun appeared and disappeared, at intervals, slipping his face into shadow and back.

  Something was out there.

  His eyes adjusted and he scanned the sea.

  Kozo stared as a large shadow eclipsed his sun, and he realized the blocking and unblocking was a silhouette of a man cast down on him.

  With the great fear of knowing he’d been watched for longer than he rea
lized, Kozo scrambled upward and slipped on the plastic bottom of his lifeboat. His hand found an oar stuffed to the side and he went to grab it and wield it like a weapon. His body was still weak from the drugs and so he dropped it, and sat, breathing heavily. No, he had to pause and he had to think things through—he was in a boat.

  He was wearing his kimono robe and shorts and nothing else. In a plastic bag, ripe and bloated from the sun, was a small black transponder and a piece of cloth with coordinates sewn in thread. The kidnappers gave him water, too, but not a scrap of food.

  Hunger was intended to drive him to land.

  He held the items in a trembling grasp and felt the shadow fall on him again.

  The larger boat in front of him swayed, its engines off, and the man at the helm seemed disinterested in hurrying Kozo into a response.

  English was the language of the ocean, but not always, and Kozo wondered if he would be able to communicate with the man who smoked a long pipe—the smoke drifting up and onward into the atmosphere.

  “Hello,” Kozo said and he mustered his pride and straightened his spine to appear tall. He poured forth his perfect and accented English. Grief was his first language. Japanese his second. Someday he had hoped to attempt a visit to his ancestral home, half a world away. It crossed his mind to take his ship AWOL and attempt a flight there anyway. Instead, he was sunburned and dehydrated. He had lost his sister.

  “I was the captain of a boat called the Queen. My sister was taken by a woman and her crew—”

  Kozo couldn’t make out the detailed features of the man’s face as he nodded along with Kozo’s story. It was the long slow nod of someone who wasn’t surprised by any detail and was waiting for him to finish. The man wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old. He was simply a man in a larger boat somewhere out in the middle of the ocean, staring at him.

  Kozo scanned the horizon again. No land in sight.

  “Nihongo o hanashimasu?” Kozo asked in Japanese out of frustration. He knew already the answer was no: his language was rare, forgotten, and absurd. His mother and grandmother taught him the language of his island because they knew no other language and because it distressed them to see the Japanese people lost to some ancient history. There were others, maybe, somewhere, but he’d only known a few.

  “Hai,” the man on the boat answered. Kozo reeled and moved his head slowly. Yes. The shadow just said yes! The man continued, “Nihongo o gakko de narau no wa, ni-juu-go-nen buri gurai kamoshiremasen.”

  The pure lilt of it, the language of his mother used by the strange white man on the boat in the ocean, sent Kozo into a giddy euphoria of confusion and shock. He’d learned it in school? Twenty-five years ago? The man was referencing the Great Divide. He’d learned it back when people learned things; when there was appreciation for the smallness of the world before it grew big again.

  Kozo had no reference for school as a Western concept as he had only attended school on the Trash Islands and learned survival and English.

  “I’m sorry,” Kozo started, lifting his hand. “I can’t believe this is happening. You speak Japanese? It’s just—wow. I don’t know what to say…”

  The man smirked. “I’d say I could mumble through elementary level communication. You wanna have a philosophical discussion with nuance? Well, then, you gotta come back to English.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” Kozo asked. It seemed in the moment like a valid question although it donned on him after asking that it seemed cruel to keep him alive for mere moments because certainly a bullet to his head would’ve taken him and the boat out quickly.

  The man tossed his head back and craned his neck to see someone invisible on the deck.

  “He asked if I was going to kill him!” the man roared. A second silhouette appeared next to the man. A woman. She had long brown hair and it waved freely in the ocean breeze. In her hand, Kozo was certain she held a coffee cup. Its steam was a complement to the man’s smoke—and it seemed so quaint: a couple on the ocean, with luxuries and laughter. “What’s your name?”

  “Kozo,” he bowed.

  The man bowed back. Kozo’s heart couldn’t take the kindness and the serendipity. He grabbed up the bag left to him and scooted to the middle.

  “Kozo-san, here’s what I need you to do.” The man ashed his cigar into the ocean and then stubbed it out on the railing. He tucked the half-smoked roll of paper and tobacco into a pocket on his shirt and reached down to toss a ladder into the water between them. Kozo understood and began to make his way to the oars, careful to situate himself parallel to the boat. “Before you do that,” the man called down, “leave the bag. Leave the water. Leave it all.”

  “I can’t,” Kozo said with hesitation. “My sister—”

  “Was kidnapped by a white woman who said you’d only see her again if you found your way to those coordinates?”

  Kozo hesitated and paled.

  No. The man knew everything.

  He thought of how easily he’d abandoned his ship and not fought off the drugs and the attack. Had he left his sister to die?

  The man continued, “Look, she was right. You’ll see your sister again if you follow her directions. Blair doesn’t lie outright, she prefers the slippery kind of untruths that will mess you up with meaning, the nitpicking of words over intent. You can see her…right before they kill you.”

  “My sister is all I have,” Kozo said with a growing sob. “If there’s a chance…I can’t…”

  “You’ll die,” the man said. “Sooner or later.”

  “That’s true of everyone.”

  “Sure, I suppose,” the man called down. He put his hands on his waist and waited without any other encouragement. He wasn’t going to beg. “Sooner then if you follow that woman’s instructions.”

  “I have to risk it!” Kozo stammered. This was Megumi—the girl he’d convinced to travel the sea with him. He’d promised her a better life and land, and he knew those promises were lies.

  “I’m serious, Kozo-san,” the man said with greater strength and intensity. The woman beside him left and returned again. There were two or three other people at the railing now, watching him as he held on to the transponder and the coordinates. “Leave the bag. Get in our boat.”

  “Who are you?” Kozo asked. He let the plastic drop to the bottom of the small rescue boat. He dropped the oars. “Just tell me who you are.”

  “Once you’re on the boat,” the man called down. He stepped forward and his hand hovered on the ladder, contemplating bringing it up.

  “Wait,” Kozo stepped and the boat rocked. He grabbed the ladder with one hand while the ocean water helped his own boat drift from under his feet. He pulled on and then crawled rung by rung to the stop. When he deposited himself on to the floor of the boat, he took a big breath and let himself feel the surrender of his sister’s location. His own boat would float away within seconds, and along with it, his chance at rescue.

  He’d been selfish and now he’d lost her.

  “Welcome, Kozo,” the man said. “You’re on my boat. Meet us downstairs when you feel up to hear some stories and to tell some of your own, okay? In the meantime, don’t be alarmed. Old hat for us, you understand. Wakarimaska?” He nodded and the woman brought him his own cup of steaming tea. He took it, bowed, instinct, and watched as she removed a contraption from around her neck and stuck one half in her ears, the other she put to his chest, then his back, nodding.

  “Stethoscope,” the woman said, sensing his confusion. “An Old World tool for listening to your heart.”

  “How does it sound?” Kozo asked. “Broken?” But she didn’t appear to hear him.

  She smiled, “Welcome to our home.”

  “Hello,” Kozo replied and smiled back at her kindness.

  “I know that you may not trust me,” she continued, “But, Kozo, when you’re ready…before we move our boat…I need to do something that will be unpleasant.”

  By the way she tilted his head and him and frowned, he ascerta
ined that whatever was coming would be unpleasant for him. She’d put the stethoscope away, but now dipped the kimono off his shoulder and inspected his skin. She scanned her hands over his shoulder and the tenderness of where the attackers stuck a needle into him. He winced.

  “It wandered a bit,” she mused and pressed her thumb into the achy part of his flesh.

  “What?” Kozo managed to whisper.

  “Your tracking device.”

  “My tracking…”

  The man cut him off, “Time is important here. We gotta drop this transponder in the ocean.”

  “This will pinch,” the woman instructed as Kozo felt a searing sharp pain drawing down his shoulder and under his arm. He wanted to pull away and slap the woman, his instinct was strong, but he didn’t. Instead, like a wounded dog, he let her tear into his back and shoulder as pain pulsated and radiated downward.

  By the time Kozo had the strength and the understanding to pull away, it was done. The woman brought a warm cloth—warmed by what means, he didn’t know—and held it over the gaping hole.

  “This has a gel on it that will numb your pain,” she instructed and brought his own hand to hold the cloth. Then, slowly, she extended her pointer finger and produced a bloody piece of plastic. At least that’s what it looked like to Kozo.

  “May I?” he asked and she nodded.

  He placed his finger on the plastic and picked it up to inspect the foreign object that had been inside his body a few seconds ago. It wasn’t hard but flimsy, bendable, and no bigger than the tip of his pinky finger. Kozo took apart electronics that wound up on his trash islands and he understood the basics of a computer chip enough to recognize the filament as something mechanical.

  “What is it?” he whispered, mesmerized by the chip’s cloudy appearance.

  The woman put a tender and calming hand on the top of his head. “It’s crude and buggy, but it was the best they could do when their top scientist took his life…”

  Kozo’s head snapped up and he saw the man look away.

  “Transmits your location to the satellites. And slowly kills you,” the man answered.