Children of Exile

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  I’d never had to make a decision like this back in Fredtown.

  I have to keep Bobo safe . . .

  I didn’t even know where the danger lay. And knowledge was power.

  “Hey, Bobo, how would you like to go out for a walk?” I asked.

  “I’m playing with my boat,” Bobo said. “Boats can’t walk.”

  Seriously? Now I was going to have to argue with Bobo to get him to budge?

  I figured out how to do it.

  “I bet Edwy would love to play with the boat with you,” I said. “I just meant a walk to Edwy’s house.”

  “You’ll let me play with Edwy?” Bobo cried, scrambling out from under the table. “Hurray!”

  Bobo was by my side in an instant, his toy boat bumping along behind him.

  I hoped Bobo didn’t notice that my hands shook as I unlatched the door. I hoped he didn’t notice that I peered around cautiously before stepping outside.

  I looked down, and Bobo was squinting suspiciously up at me.

  “How come you’re letting me play with Edwy?” he asked. “I thought you didn’t like Edwy.”

  “I didn’t like how Edwy acted sometimes back in Fredtown,” I replied, trying to keep my voice even. “It was never that I disliked Edwy.”

  This was exactly something that my Fred-parents might have said.

  “So now that we’re home, Edwy is good?” Bobo asked.

  How was I supposed to answer that? No, but now that I’ve met worse people, Edwy doesn’t seem so bad? Or No, I’m just desperate?

  “Edwy does seem to be behaving better here,” I said. Was that true?

  I realized I didn’t care the same way I used to. I just hoped Edwy was safe.

  Bobo bounced along behind me as we walked down the street. It was dusty and empty and silent, and I wondered if other people knew something we didn’t. Did our neighbors have hiding spaces in their houses like the one the father had revealed to me last night? Were they all cowering under their floors, and should Bobo and I be huddled under our floor right now too?

  I thought about how it would terrify Bobo to be hustled into the darkness under the floorboard. I thought about how difficult it would be to explain the need to hide and be quiet, if it came to that.

  Stop scaring yourself, I thought. Your neighbors are all just . . . out working or shopping at the market. That’s why the street is empty and quiet.

  But I didn’t know our neighbors. I didn’t really know anything about where they were or what they were doing.

  Do they have brown eyes or green eyes? I wondered, and then immediately forced that thought from my mind.

  We reached the place where the street dead-ended by the creek, and I told Bobo, “We’ll walk along the creek until we get to the spot where I saw Edwy yesterday.”

  Then, I thought, we could turn off down the nearest street and hope that that was where Edwy lived. Wouldn’t Edwy have fished in the portion of the creek nearest to his house? Wouldn’t he be that lazy?

  “Water!” Bobo cried delightedly. “Which will sail downstream faster? A leaf or a twig or my boat?”

  The water was so shallow and slow-moving, I thought it would probably be safe to let him try out that little science experiment. Then I realized the problem with that.

  “The water’s flowing the wrong way,” I told Bobo. “We need to turn that way, toward Edwy’s house”—I pointed to the left—“and the water would carry your boat in the other direction.”

  “Oh,” Bobo said, slumping dejectedly against my side. “Maybe when we find Edwy, he’ll come and play with me in the water.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or we could just try that experiment on the way home.”

  “Oh, yes!” Bobo exclaimed, skipping ahead of me now.

  Eventually the creek widened, and I thought that was the spot where I’d seen Edwy the day before. I lured Bobo away from the creek with the promise “It’s not much farther now.”

  We ended up on a street full of mansions, like something out of a fairy tale.

  Back in Fredtown, the houses had all been about the same size. Oh, a family with five kids might have had an extra bedroom or two. And Cana’s Fred-daddy was a chef, so her Fred-family had had the biggest kitchen in town. But the differences were so slight I bet a lot of the younger kids hadn’t even noticed.

  The houses on this street were twenty or thirty times bigger than the house Bobo and I lived in here. I saw windows that were bigger than some of the houses on our street.

  And these houses were all surrounded by fences.

  “Does Edwy climb a fence every time he wants to go in or out of his yard?” Bobo murmured.

  I couldn’t tell if Bobo thought that would be fun or annoying.

  “I guess there are gates,” I muttered back. I noticed what seemed to be hinges in the nearest fence, and I gently pushed against one of the wrought-iron bars.

  It didn’t budge. The gate was locked.

  I’d pictured casually asking someone where Edwy lived, and then casually walking up to his front door. What if Bobo and I had to climb a fence to get to him?

  What if Edwy had needed to climb a fence to get back to his house last night, and that little complication had meant that the scary men had captured him?

  I pushed that thought out of my mind. If Bobo and I needed to climb a fence to find Edwy, we would. I looked at the nearest fence, with its spiked peaks towering a good four or five feet over my head, and I changed my mind: Well, I can climb a fence. But Bobo could fall. I’ll just have to talk him into waiting for a few minutes out in the street. . . .

  “Look—a W!” Bobo exclaimed. “Isn’t that what Edwy’s last name starts with?”

  Bobo pointed to a fancy set of curlicues embedded in the wrought iron of a fence on the opposite side of the street. He was right—it was a shining golden W glowing out from the black fence. The W, I realized, was on a gate.

  And this gate was the only one I could see that hung open.

  “Good job for spotting that, Bobo!” I praised him. “You’re right about Edwy’s last name! Let’s go see if that’s where Edwy lives!”

  We crossed the street and walked through the gate. It led to a vast circular driveway where four sleek black cars were parked in a row.

  “Ooh,” Bobo breathed, staring at the cars. “Why don’t the mother and the father have cars like that? Why didn’t our Fred-mama and Fred-daddy?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered. I thought about how Edwy had said there were streets in our hometown where people didn’t even own shoes. I thought about how the parents thought Edwy’s parents were thieves. I thought about how Edwy had said his parents were thieves.

  Is that how they’d gotten these cars?

  Bobo began bouncing up and down, like he always did when he was excited.

  “Will Edwy take us for a ride in one of his cars?” Bobo asked.

  “Bobo, you know it’s rude to ask for something like that,” I said. My voice came out sounding even sterner than I meant it to. “You can only go for a ride if Edwy offers.”

  “Oh,” Bobo said, deflating a little and bouncing less. “Right.”

  We had to climb five steep steps to get to the front door. I had to pull Bobo up by the elbows.

  There was a shiny brass knocker in the middle of the door. I lifted it and let it fall again, letting it make a heavy thud against the wood.

  The door opened, revealing a woman in a black dress and lacy apron.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Are you Mrs. Watanaboneset? Edwy’s mother?”

  The woman frowned and glanced quickly over her shoulder before looking back at me. Was she afraid of someone or something behind her, out of my sight past the large marble entryway?

  “I’m the maid,” the woman said.

  I thought of the young maids and maidens of fairy tales. Sometimes, in stories, girls had to be rescued by knights or princes, or they got their turn rescuing knights or princes who were in danger themselves. Was that what thi
s woman meant?

  The woman tilted her head, as if she could see I didn’t understand.

  “I work here,” the woman said. “I dust and clean and answer the door. I’m not Mrs. Watanaboneset.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But is this where Edwy Watanaboneset lives? Can he, uh, come out and play?”

  The maid cast another fearful glance over her shoulder.

  “Ed-wy!” Bobo started to call out into the cavern of all that marble ahead of us.

  The maid clamped her hand over Bobo’s mouth, muffling his cry.

  “Shh,” she hissed at us. “Go away and don’t come back. Don’t tell anyone you’re friends with Edwy. Maybe then you’ll be safe.”

  “What?” I said. “Is Edwy safe? Where is he?”

  The maid pushed us away from the door. It took me a minute to realize she was backing us into a huge bush that stood beside the porch.

  She was hiding us.

  “Just go!” she insisted.

  I glanced down at Bobo and felt torn once again. The maid’s strange behavior was frightening, and I didn’t want Bobo to be scared. Already his eyes were wide and confused. I couldn’t let him shift into terror.

  But Edwy and I had promised to look out for each other, and I had to keep my promise.

  After all, he had protected me the night before.

  “We won’t go until we know what happened to Edwy,” I said, stubbornly bracing my feet in a way that kept the maid from shoving me off the porch. I clutched Bobo to my side and squared my shoulders.

  The maid was no taller than me. She didn’t look strong enough to overpower us both.

  “I’m only trying to help you,” the maid whispered. Bobo and I were still on the porch, yes, but the maid had my back pinned against the hard branches of the bush. “Didn’t those Freds teach you to be afraid of anything? Didn’t they teach you that sometimes fear is the only thing that will keep you alive?”

  “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Bobo piped up. I was proud of him for remembering that principle of Fredtown.

  The maid’s eyes darted about like she thought he was crazy.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll tell you, if that gets you to leave. Edwy was kidnapped. Nobody knows where he is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I gasped, and Bobo said, “Kidnapped? That only happens in stories. Stories people make up just to scare themselves for fun. Can’t you stop being so silly?”

  This woman—this maid—wasn’t being silly. She was scared: scared for us and scared for Edwy and scared most of all for herself. That was why she kept looking back over her shoulder.

  She did this one more time, casting a long gaze back through the open door.

  “When did this happen?” I asked. “Was it last night? Because if it was, I should tell the police—” I remembered that I hadn’t seen any evidence that there were police in this town. “Or whoever’s in charge—”

  “Don’t tell anyone anything!” the woman said, her voice high and panicked. “And whatever you do, don’t say you talked to me!”

  She gave me a shove I wasn’t expecting, and Bobo and I both toppled off the side of the porch. The bush mostly held us up—we weren’t in danger of anything worse than a few scrapes and scratches. But none of this made sense.

  The maid stalked back into the house and slammed the door. Because the nearest window was open, I could hear her telling someone, “It was nobody. Just a couple of beggars.”

  A principle of Fredtown was that everybody was somebody. There was no such thing as an unimportant person.

  Did beggars actually exist outside of stories?

  “I didn’t like her,” Bobo said, sticking his lower lip out. He slid down the side of the bush, his feet landing in perfectly trimmed grass. “She was mean. Why does Edwy live with mean people?”

  Was she mean? I wondered. Or . . . did she honestly think she was helping us?

  “Edwy didn’t choose who he lives with,” I said. “Any more than we did.”

  “Everyone has choices,” Bobo said, like he was correcting me, quoting another principle.

  I gingerly lowered myself to the grass beside Bobo and brushed twigs and leaves off his clothes and mine. I looked up at the door again, shut tight. The big brass knocker seemed to taunt me, gleaming so brightly in the afternoon sunlight.

  That isn’t a choice, I told myself. Even if I knock again, that woman won’t let us in. I have to do something else to help Edwy.

  “Come on,” I said, taking Bobo’s hand.

  “But—Edwy!” Bobo protested. “You said I could play with Edwy!”

  “Think of this as . . . we’re playing hide-and-seek with Edwy,” I told him. “Or having a scavenger hunt, and Edwy is the prize.”

  “Ooh, I love scavenger hunts!” Bobo said. “What’s the first clue?”

  Why hadn’t I just stuck with “hide-and-seek”?

  “We have to look for it,” I said.

  Obligingly, Bobo began shoving aside branches of the bush we’d just climbed out of. I looked back at the enormous, forbidding house.

  “It’d be too obvious for there to be clues at Edwy’s house,” I said. “We have to look somewhere else.”

  “Where?” Bobo asked.

  In the place where there are likeliest to be answers, I thought. Which means . . . the place where the most people are clustered together. The place the father didn’t want me to go today.

  I swallowed a lump in my throat.

  “Come on, Bobo,” I said. “Let’s go look for clues at the marketplace.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  We went back to walk along the creek, because that was the only way I knew to get to the marketplace. Bobo whined a little about going in the wrong direction again for sailing his boat, but then I got him to look for scavenger-hunt clues along the creek.

  “Look, this branch is broken off like someone ran into it really, really fast,” he said, pointing first at a bush, then to the ground. “And this grass is all smashed down, like a lot of people were running here.”

  I thought he was just goofing around, making up stories. But the grass was oddly mashed, and a lot of the branches sagged, half broken. Had there been a lot of running here the night before? Had the men chased Edwy past the turnoff for his own street?

  What if he hadn’t actually been kidnapped? What if he had just hidden from the men and was too scared to come out yet?

  That didn’t sound like Edwy. He wasn’t afraid of anything.

  “This is a hard scavenger hunt,” Bobo complained, dragging his feet in the dirt. “Aren’t there supposed to be word clues? Things written down that we can figure out?”

  “I guess whoever set up this scavenger hunt thought you could handle a harder one now,” I told him. “One without words.”

  “I’m not that grown-up,” Bobo said, so serious it was almost comical. “I’m only little. I’m not ready for hard stuff.”

  Me neither, I thought. In my head I saw the mother’s hand slapping my face, the ruins of all the burned houses, the hiding place under the floor. I didn’t want to be ready for any of those things. How could anybody be ready for those things?

  But I told Bobo, “That’s why we’re working on this together. That’s why you have me to help you.”

  I wished I had someone to help me.

  Maybe the father . . . ? I thought. Or if the mother’s still there . . .

  Would they help? Could I count on them to be that much like my Fred-parents?

  I was still trying to formulate a plan when we reached the place where the creek curved like a hairpin and we needed to turn off toward the marketplace. I remembered how Meki, our old neighbor, had wanted to come out and give me a hug the day before, and how her father had yelled at me. I didn’t want anyone yelling at Bobo.

  “Piggyback ride the rest of the way!” I announced to Bobo. “And I’ll gallop!”

  “Hurray!” Bobo cried, clambering up onto my back.

  He left mudd
y footprints on my skirt, but I didn’t bother brushing them away. I took off, bouncing up and down, dodging the broken pieces of sidewalk.

  By the time we got to the marketplace, my back ached and I was out of breath. And my knees were sore from all the times I’d stumbled and half fallen on the uneven pavement. But at least we hadn’t run into anyone who yelled at us.

  “That’s a lot of people,” Bobo whispered in my ear as he stared wide-eyed at the crowded market.

  “No more than at the marketplace back in Fredtown,” I told him, trying to sound soothing. If I’d counted, the numbers might have been the same as in Fredtown. But back in Fredtown the marketplace was always such a bright, cheery, welcoming place. People waited patiently in line; people took turns. People said, “Oh, no, no, you go first. I insist.” Here, there was grabbing and shoving, elbowing and glaring. A bad feeling hung over the marketplace like a cloud.

  You just think that because you’re worried about Edwy, I told myself. The people here just . . . practice different customs than in Fredtown. That’s all.

  Still, I told Bobo, “You can keep riding on my back while we look around here. You don’t have to be down where you can’t see.”

  “Okay,” Bobo said, tightening his grip around my neck. He nuzzled against my back. “And, Rosi? You don’t have to keep pretending that we’re doing a scavenger hunt. You can just look for Edwy.”

  It took my breath away that he’d figured me out.

  Had he also figured out how scared I was?

  I stepped into the swirl of the marketplace crowd, my muddy skirt brushing against tables full of dark clothes and dirty-looking vegetables. Something was different from the day before, something I couldn’t quite identify.

  No, I could—it was that, except for Bobo and me, there were no children here today. We were the only ones.

  This is how the marketplace here would have looked for the past twelve years, before all of us kids came back, I thought. Maybe yesterday everyone discovered how hard it is to shop with little children running around. Maybe they just hadn’t known that before.