by Scott McCord
Jonathan follows Cassandra to her tent, and Mary collects Ben and Jeremy by their ears. She hauls them away under protests of great pain. Rosie pauses to watch the boys squirm before shouldering the sack of berries and disappearing after them. Men and women break away to their nightly chores without a word to me. I’m a ghost, so I lie in my new tent planning to reappear only long enough to grab supper before returning to consider what the hell I’m doing here. I wait as people with faint voices move around outside.
“Mim.” Jonathan is at my door. He hasn’t been Dad since I found out he was…is still alive. “Mim, Cassandra wants to see you.”
“Great,” I mutter, pushing to my feet. I follow Jonathan through shadowy people huddled around low fires. They whisper to one another, occasionally breaking out into laughter that’s quickly hushed by someone nearby. The camp seems weak and insignificant compared to Community at nighttime. A skinny guard stands outside Cassandra’s tent.
“Evening Jonathan,” he says as we approach.
“Good evening,” Johnathan replies. “She’s expecting us.”
The guard pulls the flap open and steps aside. Jonathan enters, and I follow as the door drops closed behind me.
Cassandra’s dwelling is bigger than most, with enough room to stand at full height a few feet in. She sits behind a candle at a meager table. Her old face flickers in and out of shadow until the flame steadies, giving her the appearance of a disembodied head floating in the darkness.
“Thank you for coming,” she says. “Please, sit down.” Jonathan and I pull chairs from the table and take our seats. I’m not sure what Cassandra wants with me, but this whole thing gives me the creeps. “What have you told her?” she asks.
“I...nothing…I’ve been working.”
“And the rest of the camp, what have they said?”
Jonathan shakes his head. “They’ve been waiting on us. I think they’re afraid.”
“Hmm.” Cassandra looks at me. “You must not find us terribly endearing.”
“Some of you are okay,” I say.
“Yes, some of us are okay…maybe a tad better than okay.” She almost smiles. “Johnathan, tell your daughter. Tell her what happened to you.”
My heart jumps to high gear, but I don’t want to seem anxious, so I lean forward on the table, keeping my cool. Whatever Johnathan is about to say, I’m eager to hear. I’ll decide if he’s lying later.
Johnathan takes a deep breath and leans in on the table as well. “Your mother was a great friend to me. We made each other better, and when you were born, you were the best of both of us. But that’s an older story, one I’ll save for another time.”
He swallows and continues. “For years, I was suspected of working the black-market.” My face falls. “I was hauled in front of The Body more than once to refute the charges, but since they couldn’t prove anything, I never hung in the stockades. Community needed me as a surveyor, and it takes more than a casual accusation to convict someone valuable in the Ark.”
“Were you guilty?”
Johnathan nods.
I slam my fist on the table, rattling the candle sideways. “I can’t believe you! I looked up to you, and all the while you were nothing but a criminal, a stinking profiteer.”
Cassandra’s hands emerge from the darkness to straighten her candle. “A criminal, yes. A profiteer, no.” She sniffs. “Those were hard days. Some idiot priest dreamed of famine, so The Body clamped down on every resource, rationing Community to the point of starvation. There was never a real shortage, only one created by the government. Your father and a few others smuggled Utugi supplies in for relief.”
“Wait,” I interrupt, “Utugi supplies?”
She nods. “We may be split by an ideal, but we are still of the same people.” She sighs and leans away from the light. “Your father became something of a hero. People whispered his name in every group. He was doing for them what their government would not.”
“It wasn’t just me, but somehow, I was credited.”
“When The Body couldn’t stamp out the inflow of illegal supplies, they lifted the rationing and ended the artificial famine—thinking the popularity of black-marketeers would die. But it was too late. People loved your father. He held sway.”
“Why don’t I remember any of this?” I ask.
“You were young, the famine was brief, and I kept it from you as best I could.”
“So you knew the Utugi before?”
My father shakes his head. “No. Supplies were put where I could find them. It took a couple days to realize they were for me.”
“But you weren’t declared a cert for smuggling or even collaboration, it was heresy. What does any of this have to do with that?”
“There is a reason for everything,” Cassandra answers from the dark. “After the famine, your father had voice, and when he saw what he shouldn’t have seen, he had to be silenced before people started to listen.”
12
Mim
Johnathan leans back beyond the halo of the candle. Now he and Cassandra are both covered in shadow.
“Your training was all but done. Sure, I had a secret or two left, but nothing to prevent you and Will from taking the reigns as surveyors. I was so proud of you. Anyway, I was making a run to the southern Edge—a short, uneventful trip. You were playing a pickup game of dangerball, so I didn’t bother to take you along. I’d been through the area several times before, and there wasn’t much new to see except a lightning storm rolling along the horizon. They’ve always fascinated me, so I climbed an outcropping of rock to watch.”
He pauses to find his way through the memory, and I fight the urge to hurry him along.
“Thunder rumbled from a hundred miles away, and I remember thinking what a waste it is for so much of the world to be closed off. I looked out where the clouds touched the hills and seeing the flashes of light in the sky, I wondered what it might be like out there beneath the storm. I walked to the very Edge, thinking I might go find out, but knowing I wouldn’t make it a dozen steps before dropping blue. It’s a shame something so beautiful can only be experienced the way a fish sees the sunrise. It’s not very satisfying.” He sighs and shakes his head. “I’ve always believed humankind was winding down, waiting for the Ark to finally rupture and snuff us all out for good, but that day, I found myself hoping the priests weren’t full of crap when they say the earth is healing.”
“Did you see something?” I ask.
“Lightning…a lot of lightning in the distance,” he says.
“So?”
Johnathan puts his elbows back on the table and leans forward into the candlelight. “And smoke.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Smoke, Mim, your father saw smoke on the horizon,” Cassandra says from the dark.
“I guess the lightning struck a dead tree somewhere out there,” Johnathan adds.
“Ookay…” I say, not seeing the point.
Johnathan lifts his eyes, examining me, waiting for the lights to come on. If he’s trying to make me feel stupid, it’s working. “Smoke means fire.”
“I know.”
“And where there’s enough oxygen for fire—” Cassandra starts.
“There’s enough oxygen to breathe,” I finish. “Holy crap, are you kidding? There is air outside the Ark. No way, I don’t believe it.” Johnathan and Cassandra say nothing, only watch as the wheels turn in my head. “This changes everything. It’s what we’ve been waiting for…hoping for. They were right. They were really right. Did you tell The Body? What did they say?”
Johnathan takes a deep breath and rubs his hands together. “I sought an audience and told The Supreme. It was Verick.” A faint smile comes over his face as he stares into the candle. “There wasn’t a single dissenting opinion when The Body declared me a cert. Verick said you would hang on a culling post alongside me if I ever revealed what I had seen.”
“The Utugi have known about air islands for generations, but it has
been kept secret from the people of Community. Their entire religion is founded on the miracle unfolding around them, yet their leaders hide the revelation. Perversion is the only reason they do such a thing to their own.” Cassandra’s chair creaks as she leans forward, dropping her elbows on the table across from me. “You see, my dear, the infamous Johnathan was already dangerous, but armed with the truth, he became an intolerable threat to the way things have always been.”
I’m rattled. “Do you really expect me to believe this from a woman I just met, or the man who abandoned me?” My voice trembles. I despise it for giving my feelings away. “How are you even here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I said, how are you here? The last time I saw you, I was being torn away screaming your name. You were lashed to a culling post and could barely lift your head when the Ark pushed off. So tell me, how are you still alive?”
“The same way most people in this camp are alive. The Ark was moving slow enough for a Utugi rescue party to sneak in among the shepherds and cut me down.”
Shadows flutter and dance, but even the dark tent cannot hide the disbelief scrawled across my face.
“Sheepers are excellent cover. They’ve never minded our comings and goings, and border guards, well, they’re avoidable,” Cassandra adds. “We’ve been reclaiming the culled for years. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes we take children too…if their parents are with us.” She shakes her head. “Kidnapping is bad business. It causes a stir and we can’t afford to provoke Community. There’s barely thirty at our core, and the rest are pilgrims preparing to colonize. We’re not soldiers.”
She pauses as her words swirl in my head like a story too fantastic to be true. “Reprisal, my dear, reprisal is why I could not allow your father to come for you. The Body would have responded to the disappearance of Jonathan’s daughter so shortly after his death…at least, that was my fear. A fight, a real fight, ends us.”
Johnathan slides one hand across the table, almost touching mine. It’s right there if I want to take it. “I’ve stayed close, willing with all my heart that somehow you’d know I was watching. I’ve seen you grow, and I’ve been in the stands for more than a few dangerball matches.”
“Rosie told me.”
“I’ve taken her to a game or two.” He taps softly with his finger. “Will seems like a good friend. I’m sorry Jack and Mary took you from him, but I’m glad you’re here now. I know you didn’t ask for this, I didn’t either, but we need to know if you are going to stay.” He puts his hand on top of mine. “Before we go any further, I need to know if you are going to help.”
“I guess it depends. Help do what?”
“Save the world,” he says.
I laugh and pull my hand away. “Be serious.”
“What do you think we’re doing here, Mim? What do you think we’ve been telling you?” Cassandra snaps. “This isn’t funny, and it’s no game.”
“I don’t know what we’re talking about so stop circling and spit it out.”
She looks to my father, trying to decide if she should continue or call it a night. She pauses to examine my face, and makes her choice. “We’re colonizing air islands with anyone we can get from Community.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” I laugh again. “That’s not possible? How far away are they?”
“Twenty miles.”
“Outside?”
Johnathan nods.
“How do you get there?”
“If you stay,” Johnathan says, “I’ll show you.”
13
Will
I dream of Mim, and even though I can’t hold on to the particulars, when I wake, my brain is awash with her. Maybe she’s out here somewhere hurt and can’t remember who she is. It’s a stretch, I know, but the last legs of hope are collapsing underneath me. Too much time has passed, and if Mim were alive, she’d be home by now. She’s dead…she has to be, and the mark on the tree…I’m probably misremembering what she said. It’s just some random Slitter garbage. I try to shake it off, but her memory lingers as I lie staring up into the trees. If we were together, she’d be poking me with her bow to get me moving. I smile.
We’re supposed to go home today, but Starter decides to take the men to the Edge instead. That’s fine, it gives me one last chance to look for signs, another carving maybe, anything at all to keep me from finally closing the door and letting Mim go for good. Nobody groans louder than Tommy when he finds out where we’re headed.
“Come on Will, talk to him. I don’t mind staying out, but I’m ready to be done with these guys, and Gas is worried the builders are going to finish the bridge without him. He shouldn’t even be here.”
The whining grates on me. Tommy might change his mind if he knew I was looking for Mim, but I don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear she’s dead—not from him. I’m angry. I never used to be this angry in the morning.
“Pull drag,” I snarl.
“What?”
“I said pull drag…and keep those morons on their toes.”
Tommy’s eyes light with an impassive stare, like he doesn’t quite recognize me.
“Do you have a problem?” I growl.
“No, just noticing how good you look in black and crimson,” Tommy says, then snaps around and heads for the rear of the squad. I watch him move through the men readying themselves for one more day as Starter steps up.
“These guys are experienced on the Edge. Every one of them has seen trapper detail, harvesting low oxygen animals.”
I adjust my knife and tighten the quiver on my back. “Are you saying we can forget it and go home?”
“No, but I am saying these guys are a lot better where we’re going than where we came from. I appreciate what you’re doing, but remember the men behind you are Scorpions, and any one of them are as good as three of anybody else.”
“If that’s true, why am I here? Why are you here? You’re the captain. Every last Scorpion answers to you. Why are you slogging around with us instead of sitting home over a plate of hot meat?”
“Watch your tone, Will. I don’t know what’s crawled up your butt this morning, but don’t forget who you’re talking to. Besides, I go where my men go.”
“You have a lot more men in Community.”
“Yeah, one hundred and ten plus thirty in boot camp, but they’re just running routines. Nothing Ven can’t handle.”
“Ven?”
“My new sub-captain, you know him?”
“Only his name,” I lie. “I didn’t know he was a sub-captain. Does that make him second to you?”
“Only to me. I had two senior officers but one had an accident—broke his neck falling down a well right before the Grand Championship…left me without a goalie. That’s why I had that dipshit from Group 10. You know about the other one, a Lopper got him a week ago.”
“I heard the sub-c was taking a leak in the middle of the night, and there wasn’t much left when they found him in the morning.”
Starter nods. “It was a mess. He got the beast that got him though, his knife was still in its throat.”
“Strange nobody heard anything.”
“Isn’t it though?” He pauses to look over his men tightening up the last of their equipment. “Anyway, I’ve been gone a lot, so Ayden promoted Ven to run things while I’m out- of-pocket. He wasn’t my first choice, but Ayden didn’t ask me.”
Of course Ayden didn’t ask, and I know why. The last time I saw Ven, he threatened me with the cost of disobedience—for winning a stupid game and not putting a knife in Starter’s back. I shudder. I’ve stayed obedient ever since, hoping my work with the Scorpions will somehow pay Ven and Ayden’s price—thinking if I prove my value and my loyalty all will be forgiven. They know I haven’t said a word about the coup, and why would I? That’s ordinary business…the way government works—no big deal. But now Ven is taking his due, making his rise on the heels of some very suspicious deaths. I have a terrible feeling Starter needs to go home. Whatever i
s happening, I think we’re all safer if he is where he can keep an eye on Ven.
“It’s been a rough trip, Cap—bears and all. Everybody is pretty dogged out. Why don’t we just hoof it on home?”
He shakes his head. “The men can take one more day, besides there’s something I want you to see. It’s an acquired taste, but you and Gas will learn to like it.” He smiles. “Move ‘em out.”
Usually when you’re tired, you get sloppy, careless in the woods, cracking twigs and shuffling leaves, but this morning, the men behind me are moving like serpents. Even laden with berry bags, the improvement is dramatic. I look back more than once to make sure they’re keeping up. Maybe weeks of training are finally clicking, or maybe our brush with monster-bears has given the troops a healthier respect for where we are and what we’re trying to accomplish. I pick up the pace to test them, and the men quietly match my stride. Even Gas stays silent.
I hunt for signs as I go, but there aren’t any—no Slitters, no bears, no nothing. We’re deep in our own territory, not far from the Edge where Ark animals get scarce. I pray we don’t run into any crazy shit coming in from Outside. A wild dog or a crazed skunk isn’t exactly on my wish-list, so I tune in, carefully listening for any indication of danger. The men trail me in silence—under a fallen tree, over a patch of yellow flowers, and through a curtain of vines before running up against a heavy bank of underbrush.
I raise a fist, giving the signal to halt until I can figure a way around. I sense something and drop to an immediate crouch. The men following behind do the same, making no more noise than shadows on the ground. I squeeze the grip of my bow and listen, but a gentle breeze stirs the forest, masking everything in the rustle of leaves. I wave Starter up.
“What is it?” he whispers.
I shoot a finger to my lips to cut off anything else he might say and shake my head, indicating I don’t know.
Starter points to Knox and motions him to join us.
