by E L Stricker
ILLYA COULDN'T AVOID his mother forever. In the morning, he went to breakfast with his head down, hoping to attract as little attention as possible before returning to his hut with his food. He had just turned to leave when she caught him by the arm. She jerked her head in the direction of her hut, eyes flaming.
“Who do you think you are?” she burst out, yelling at him as loud as she could once they were behind the closed door. The door would, of course, do nothing to keep the entire village from hearing.
“As if Benja's some kind of criminal! How could you?”
“You weren't there, you didn't see,” Illya said, scrambling for justification. “He was trying to steal the book.”
“And it never occurred to you that he could have a good reason?” It was as if he was a little again and he had just come inside after getting his clean clothes filthy. The knot in his stomach twisted tighter. He could handle her anger, but he was utterly defenseless against disappointment.
“He was with Impiri,” he said then straightened up, grasping for one last strain of righteous anger. “She wants me to fail. She has wanted me to fail since the beginning.”
His mother raised her eyebrows and folded her arms across her chest.
“I caught him with it in his hands!” Illya said, bristling, his voice rising to a frantic note.
“You have to let him go,” she said, now with infuriating calm.
“I don't have to do anything,” Illya yelled. How could she question him like this? Didn't she realize he wasn't a child anymore?
“How can you throw away your family like this?” she asked.
“You think Impiri's right too, don't you? All of you. You all want me to fail!” he yelled. He could feel the beast in his chest stirring, starting to roar. Illya whirled around and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. Not bothering to look where he was going, he nearly ran into Samuel on the path.
He backed up a step.
“What? You agree with Impiri too? Seeds are the work of the devil?” He glared at Samuel's raised eyebrows. A small yellow butterfly flitted through the air between them as if it didn't have a care in the world. Illya scowled at it.
“No,” Samuel said, frowning. “The thing that has driven you from your family; that is the work of the devil.” Illya narrowed his eyes. Samuel was against him too, just like everyone else.
“You are a fool to give in, to let it push you away from your friends and the people who care about you,” Samuel said.
“I have friends,” Illya snapped.
He left Samuel without another word and went back to the Enforcers' camp and retreated into his hut.
His solitude did not last. After a few minutes, there was a knock on the door. Illya had opened the book and was staring at the page but was unable to comprehend a single word. He glared at the door, sure that it would be Samuel or his mother. He wished that he could stay mute and pretend the hut was empty until they went away. But he was supposed to be the Leader. He couldn't hide like a frightened little.
It was Dianthe Morris, a friend of Impiri's. He wondered if she had come to beg for Impiri's release. Was he going to hear about it from every single person in the village? He stood up tall and tried to appear unruffled and wise.
She didn't mention Impiri. Instead, she asked him to read to her from the book. He blinked at her stupidly for a moment. It was hard to believe, after everything that had happened the previous day, that people still thought he was a prophet. Of course, no one but him knew about the real disaster yet.
He invited her in, feeling a moment of dull gratitude that he had taken the time to make the hut presentable when he had moved into it.
He squinted down at the letters on the page, trying to regain his composure, deciphering them one at a time. Dianthe gaped at him.
“What was your question?” he asked.
“Will my son Brant find a strong wife and have sons?” she asked. Illya sighed inwardly and studied the passage he had translated.
Pertinent Possum Points: Its intelligence is on a par with that of a pig. It is similar to many cats in size, weighing 12 to 15 pounds at maturity. It is as fastidious as most cats. It has black eyes that may appear “beady” because they do not have an iris.
“Um.” He cleared his throat.
“Yes?”
“The Almanac is mysterious with this prediction,” he said.
“What does it say?” she asked, her eyes gleaming. Illya pursed his lips and stared at the black letters, stalling for time.
“It mentions good size, intelligence, black eyes,” he said. Dianthe breathed out.
“The book is so wise!” she said. “Does it say anything else?”
Illya frowned with what he hoped was an air of sober wisdom. “She will be clean, I think,” he said finally. Her eyes widened even more.
After she had left, Illya stared down at the book. The letters blurred together. A possum. He had just told Dianthe that her son was going to marry a possum. He supposed that they would have a litter of little black-eyed possum babies. Sons, naturally.
How could he ever have believed it when they had called him a prophet? The book was useless. It lay innocuous before him on the table, the smug rows of letters seeming to mock him with their perfect uniformity, their promise of untold wisdom. This book was the reason he had arrested his best friend.
With a surge of fury, he seized the book and flung it across the room. It hit the opposite wall and fell to the floor in a heap, open to the page that he had read more often than any other. Seed Saving: A Time-Honored Practice for a Bountiful Harvest.
There was another knock at the door. Illya closed his eyes. Why couldn't people just leave him alone?
“Come in,” he said.
This time, it was Conna. His eyes skittered over to the book on the floor before sliding back to Illya. He smiled as if he hadn't seen anything.
“Hey,” he said. Illya returned his smile weakly.
“You should come see some of those guys fight, getting pretty good with drilling every day,” he said. Illya nodded noncommittally. Privately, he thought that if he never saw fighting again for the rest of his life, it would be just fine with him.
“Things are going so well with the plants and everything, I was thinking maybe we should start clearing more land for next year's planting,” Conna said.
“Next year,” Illya murmured. The idea that had once gleamed before him like a beacon now dropped into his stomach like a rock. If his plants got the disease, the villagers wouldn't just be back to where they had started in spring; they would be worse off than ever. A whole summer wasted on a pointless endeavor, and winter was looming closer every day. Next year seemed hopelessly far away. He shook off the feeling, telling himself that there was no disease yet. It was possible that there never would be.
He took a breath.
“I don't know if we are doing all of this right,” he said.
“It's going great,” Conna said, looking closer at Illya.
“A lot of people are mad,” Illya said after a minute, swallowing then meeting Conna's eyes. “They don't like their jobs. They don't like the arrests.”
Conna shook his head.
“They don't have a choice. We don't have a choice. You said it yourself: we have to do whatever it takes to make this work.” His scrutiny sharpened. “They won't be around to complain at all if they've all starved to death.” Illya frowned, trying not to think of the dead plants downriver.
There was no going back now. They had gone so far that the plan had to work. There was no time left to gather enough food in the usual way. If it didn't work, the people would tear them apart, and then they would all starve.
Illya looked at Conna and nodded. “You're right. Of course, you're right,” he said.
***
In the days that followed, Illya returned to the book with renewed vigor. It was very different than the excitement that had fueled his longing to read. Instead, he was driven by a frantic, almost obsess
ive desperation, looking for a cure. He couldn't help but think that the book had betrayed him somehow. Logically, though, he knew that it had no mind of its own. It was and always had been only what it had been made to be. It was just a book.
Always in the back of his mind was the dread that he was running out of options and time. He went back over all of the words about planting, looking for anything he might have missed. He started checking on the plants several times a day, as often as he thought he could without anyone noticing.
Throughout the day his fears would mount as the white spots took a deeper and deeper hold on his imagination. When he couldn't stand it anymore, he would check on the plants again, sometimes returning to the field ten times in a day. The fear could only be held back by the sight of them, whole, healthy and untarnished.
One afternoon, in air thick with baked-in heat, he brushed sweat off his forehead and knelt down among the leaves. He turned over a leaf, examining its top and underside then all down its stem to the ground. There was no white. He sighed, but it was a small relief. The book had not yielded any clues. Either the Olders had never encountered this problem or the book had significant gaps in its overview of their knowledge.
A shadow cut across his palm, and the leaf cradled in it. He looked up.
“Charlie.”
“I was going to ask...” Charlie said, appearing uncomfortable. “'Course you're busy.” He looked curiously down at Illya.
“Oh!” Illya said. “I was just checking the progress of the plants.” He stood and brushed his hand off on his trousers. Charlie smiled. His face seemed strained with worry. Sweat was running off his forehead and past his ears. It had soaked his shirt in the shape of a dagger down the center of his chest.
“How are Ezekiel and Leya?” Illya asked, trying to ignore a surge of guilt that went through him at this sight. He turned away, trying to swallow nausea.
Deep summer should have been the best time of the year, but now he saw how hard it was for the people to be out in the fields in the heat day after day. A short way away, Marieke stood up from where she had been crouching in the dirt, pulling up weeds. She stretched, rubbing her lower back.
“Oh, great,” Charlie said. “Little guy eats a lot. He's already bigger.”
Illya looked down at the plant at his feet.
“The plants look good too,” he said, which was true, at least for the moment. They did look good, for the moment.
“Yea,” Charlie said. He hesitated as if he wanted to add something. Illya kept his eyes fixed on the plant and waited.
“I heard about Molly and Brant. Maybe their baby will be the next.”
Illya blinked at him stupidly, feeling like an owl. “Molly. . . My sister Molly?” he asked. There was no one else called Molly in the village, but he had to have misheard.
“And Brant. They're courting now, right?” Charlie said.
“They're courting,” Illya repeated. His brain felt as if it had been flung into a solid wall and come to an abrupt splat. He seemed to be surrounded by blank space, the air filled with vague buzzing. Somewhere beyond the blankness, Charlie was still talking.
Molly had black eyes.
Molly was only thirteen.
“I just have been wondering... I used to love to hunt in the shade at this time of year or wait until the fish are biting in the evening. With the sun going down and the gnats buzzing over the water,” Charlie said. “I know we have to do it this way, to get everything going, but . . . once it's all set up, couldn't I hunt too? Not just dig?”
Illya closed his eyes then opened them again. He tried to listen to what Charlie was saying but couldn't make his head clear.
“I don't mind hard work,” Charlie said, rushing his words out now. “It makes me happy to come and dig all day, to think that my family will have enough.”
“I'm glad to hear that,” Illya managed.
“I just hoped that, someday, I could do something else too. It does wear a man down to do the same thing every day.” Charlie dropped his eyes to the ground.
Illya's heart pounded in his ears. Everything seemed muffled and far away as he looked across the expanse of waving leaves. He remembered that Charlie was still waiting for an answer, somewhere outside of the hazy periphery of his vision.
“It is honorable to dig the soil, Charlie,” he said. “You are making all of this possible.”
He knew that it wasn't the answer that Charlie wanted. It wasn’t answer at all, really. But there was nothing else he could say. His heart hammered, and his breaths came fast and short, making his vision glaze with bright points of light.
He remembered Molly as a tiny girl, playing by the river. He saw Molly and Brant handfasting then holding a newborn baby, thin and howling with hunger. Then came the white patches on the plants and Charlie with a face like a man who had taken a knife to the gut, realizing that Illya had betrayed them all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE MORNING FOG was thick. It swirled around Illya's legs and coated his feet and ankles with tiny beads of water.
It was nearly opaque. You could almost look at the white patches on the underside of the leaves and tell yourself they were just a bit more fog. Almost.
Despite the fog, the early morning, his tired eyes, the dim light; despite a hundred factors, Illya knew the truth.
The white spots were there. They were small, too small for casual notice, but it would not be long before they spread and coated the surface of every leaf.
He had expected his spirits to crash when this happened, and he braced himself for the impending feeling of despair, but it did not come.
Spots, that's all they were, Illya thought. Tiny spots, no bigger than a freckle.
They didn't seem like they could be real.
He dropped the leaf and pulled in a breath, squaring his shoulders. It didn't matter how small the spots were. He had to tell everyone.
Illya walked back toward his hut, his legs growing heavier with each step.
They would be furious. He wondered what they would do to him. He swallowed.
It wasn't long before he stopped walking altogether.
He was going to die.
Once the thought came to him, he could think of no other way it could end.
His knees turned to liquid. He started breathing so fast that darkness closed in on the sides of his vision. He closed his eyes, trying to force himself to calm down, but he might as well have ordered the river to flow uphill.
He had to tell them, but if he did, they wouldn't bother with throwing him out to the Terrors. They would kill him themselves.
Maybe there was another way. There had to be a better option than just telling everyone and taking what came.
The longer he entertained this thought, the more attractive it grew. The darkness around his vision started to recede, and his breaths slowed. There would be another way. He would think of something.
After all, there was still time. It would take a little while before the white patches spread enough to be noticed. At the very least, there was some time to think about how to say it.
***
Illya studied the book all day until the letters on the page seemed to quiver. His eyes blurred and his head pounded. He looked at every page, and not one of them had a solution.
He thought of burning the fields to the ground and starting again. Of course, it would only work if they could find new seeds and if there was enough time to grow new plants before the first frost.
All too clearly, he remembered the chill that had started to come in the mornings. The days were still hot, but it wouldn't be long before the nights froze.
And there was still the problem of having to face everyone and tell them about it. All day, he had stubbornly cherished a hope that he would find a solution that could be done at night when everyone was asleep. But there was nothing. The book was useless.
Try as he might, Illya could not think through the possible unfolding of events without coming to an abrupt and v
iolent halt right at the point where he stood up on the steps and admitted to them that his plan was a failure.
He paced, embroiled in frustration and regrets.
As night fell, he did not go to the central fires. He hadn't eaten anything all day, and he knew that people would notice he was missing, but there was no way he could sit calmly in the circle and pretend that nothing was wrong.
He needed advice and from someone wiser than him. Talking to his mother was out of the question, Samuel too. He thought briefly of going to his Aunt Ada then shuddered to think what she must think of him at the moment, with her son locked in jail.
He decided to walk, hoping that the air would clear his mind, which was threatening to spiral out of control with fear. He was grateful that it was late; he would be less likely to run into anyone. He walked along the perimeter of the village, following the wall, thinking back to the day he had found the book. He had risked so much to bring it home. He should have seen even then that it was dangerous, bad luck; the Terrors had nearly caught him because of it.
Maybe it would have been better for everyone if they had eaten him that night after all.
After a short while, he reached the fields. The white patches would have spread today. He hesitated, watching the plants from a distance for a while. He didn't want to look, but he had to see how much they had grown to guess how much time he had left.
He had crouched among the leaves to examine them in the moonlight when he heard voices coming from the other end of the field. He caught his breath and his body froze.
Were they looking at the plants? Had they found the mold before he had even had the chance to come forward?
Moving as quietly as he could, Illya advanced, staying crouched low among the leaves.
“But what we do agree on is that we have to do something,” said a woman's voice that he didn't recognize immediately.
“I don't know about all those curses and stuff. I just know when I asked if it was always going to be this way, or if I could hunt again sometimes, I didn't get an answer.” Illya’s heart sank when he recognized the voice as Charlie's. He knew that Charlie had been unhappy, but he hadn't thought the man would actually turn against him.
