The woman doesn’t soothe. I don’t ask her to. She leaves me alone and I close my eyes, imagining Mother here. I want my NAB to send her a message. I need her to come to me.
Mother, come help me. I swallow hard and instead turn to the only One I know is present. God . . . help me.
I’m not angry with Him. I don’t know why. He allowed this to happen. Perhaps the anger will come later. Right now, I am so . . . alone. I need Him.
I need You. I need You. I need You. My breathing adopts the rhythm of my mindless prayer until I fall asleep.
I’m awakened by a new voice—a man’s voice. When my eyes open, the light is dim and candles are lit. The man in the doorway is tall with shadowed features.
“Hawke?” I squirm into a better position. He turns. It’s not Hawke.
“I’m Jude. Sorry I was late.”
Late? I frown at him for a moment then close my eyes. Too late to save me.
A hand touches my cheek and my eyes fly open. Jude is at my bedside. “I truly am sorry. Solomon’s message didn’t give me much time.”
His eyes are a chocolate-raspberry brown, his skin lightly tanned, and a gentle upturn of his lips soothes my anxiety. He’s the one Hawke asked to help me—the one who shouted for Alder to stop.
“Who . . . ?” I lick my lips. “Who are you? You’re not albino.” With the question comes a pinch of insecurity. Is this man an Independent or is he from my side?
Jude’s hand slides from my face. “Hawke sent me to help you.”
I squirm, relieving my limbs of stiffness. “He knows about this side? He knew what would be here and let the Enforcers send me anyway?”
“No, he’s never been here. He didn’t know. He sent me to help you.” Jude bows his head. “I hoped Alder would stop.”
“He didn’t.”
“My voice holds little power here.” We sit in silence, looking at each other. My mental discomfort fades with exhaustion.
“Why should it, Jude?”
I look up to find Alder has stepped into the hut.
“You’re not one of us.”
Jude stands. “You say ‘all are equal’, yet belittle those of us from other cities. Don’t get too used to leading, you’re starting to contradict yourself.”
“Don’t get too used to speaking,” Alder responds, coolly.
I recoil. Is that a threat? Do the albinos cut out people’s tongues, too?
Alder sets a small cloth bag on a table by the bucket of water then kneels by my bed. I look away. How dare he come to me when he severed my hand?
“Parvin Blackwater.” His hoarse voice cracks. This display of emotion draws my gaze to his face. Red lines the rims of his pale blue eyes. A tear slips down his white cheek. “Your pain grieves my heart.” He takes my right hand in his and lowers his forehead to it. His tear wets my skin. “I hope that, over time, you will see the purpose behind this.” A small sob escapes his choked voice.
I’ve never seen a man cry. Father’s tears were silent at the train stop. I’ve never seen raw vulnerability like this, especially over me. Is he truly grieved? Maybe this is fake, but why would Alder feign such a thing? He’s a leader.
I stare at his bent body. Tears from his grief drip off my hand onto the blanket. My own eyes burn. In this moment, I could forgive him. I want to comfort him. I reach over to place a comforting hand on his bald head, but see a stump. I can’t place my hand on him. I don’t have a hand.
The urge to forgive dissipates. “You’ll be hoping for a long time.” The hardness in my voice startles me.
He says nothing more, but remains bent over for another few seconds. Then he rises and leaves the hut. My body relaxes. I didn’t realize I’d tensed. My eyes droop and I’m surprised by the sudden fatigue. Jude stands on my left. Candlelight flickers against his skin. I’m ashamed to look at him.
I tuck my aching stump under the covers despite the woman’s instructions to let it breathe and close my eyes. I register pain in my arm, the sounds of my own breathing, and the movement of clothing as Jude walks out.
Morning wakes me next. Instead of an animal-skin roof overhead, my eyes open to the bending branches of a white dogwood tree. Flecks of blue sky flicker through the swaying blossoms. I am still in the same hut, but the windows and door are covered by leather squares. The roof is rolled back.
Something soft and wet pats my bare legs. I lift my head. The ever-present pregnant woman wipes my calves with a damp cloth. I realize I’m uncovered and still without clothes. I snatch the covers, but only my right hand catches hold. Angry tears burn my eyes at the uselessness of my stump. It tinges with pain from the sudden movement.
“What are you doing?”
She straightens at my barked question. Her face is both gentle and sorrowful. “Keeping you clean.”
A full bedpan rests on the floor. My face reddens and, in childish fashion, I slump back against the pillow and pull the blanket over my head.
“This is common.” The woman inches the blanket off my face. I hold tight with my right hand. “You are more alert every time you wake. You had many wounds and much tetanus sickness from the bites. Soon you will be able to walk around.”
At these words, I notice my injuries from the wolves and my dive down the cliff side don’t hurt. I feel my neck. The burn marks are smoother. I lift the cover and look at my leg. My stitches have been removed and resewn with thin fishing line.
“How long have I been here?”
“Today is your fifth day.”
My heart hiccups and I lift my left arm. The blue watch is gone. “Where’s my watch?”
“In your bag.” The woman hands me a stone mug of hot broth. “Drink this.”
Five precious days, gone. Stolen by these albino people who wanted my hand. What would they do to me if they knew Father is a carpenter?
I take the mug by the handle. Her other hand holds out three small white pills.
“What are those?” I reach out to take them, but jerk my left arm away with a start, surprised yet again by the stitched stump. I clutch the mug.
“Pain medication.” She squeezes the hand around the soup mug. “The medicine in your system will wear off soon. These will help for the next several hours.”
My throat is too tight to ask how she has something so out of place in a forest village, to ask why they were so rash to take my hand, to ask why they hurt me and now spend days healing me.
The woman touches my cheek. I look into her face. Her lower lip quivers. “How are you?”
Seeing her on the verge of tears pushes me over the edge. I shake my head and thrust the mug of soup at her. She takes it from me as my face scrunches. I hide it in my hand. Breath seems to have left me, replaced by angry, incessant sobs.
She pulls my hand down. “Do not hide.” Her voice is choked. “Allow yourself to mourn.”
“Why are you crying?” I demand with my first solid breath. “You have two hands.”
“We are grieving with you.”
I don’t want to grieve. I want to rewind time and have my hand back. I don’t want to cry—crying means I’m weak. Mother never cried.
The woman sets the soup down and climbs onto my bed. Startled, I scoot over. I lean away as she reaches for me, but she slips her arms around my shoulders and pulls me close. I tense. I hate her. I hate them.
I’m alone. Broken.
“Shhh.” She says this though I made no sound. Her mother-like action, despite her young age, shatters my brittle composure. I bury my face into the crook of her shoulder. She moves the stray hairs from my cheek with the tips of her fingers.
I mourn the injustice done to me. Though she remains mute, her own tears drop onto her pregnant belly. I no longer feel alone.
Two days later, I’m as far away from crying as a butterfly is from the moon. My clothes are patched, cleaned, and
returned to me, I’ve healed enough to leave the hut, and learned the pregnant albino woman’s name: Ash. I think of ashes from a fire, but she says Ash is a tree. I’m not surprised. Everyone’s name here comes from some sort of plant or tree except for Jude . . . and Black.
The most dramatic change is the dissipation of my sorrow. It’s been replaced by something much stronger that screams for action: anger. I’ve had a long time to think about Alder’s reasoning behind chopping off my arm. I clutch my Bible. We need to have a talk.
Jude meets me when I step from Ash’s hut. “Good sunrise, Miss Blackwater.” He wears a black wool coat with missing buttons and the collar turned up. His thick straight eyebrows catch every twinge of emotion as he surveys me. A small frown, a masked smirk, narrowed eyes, alert.
“Good morning, Jude. Where is Alder?”
Jude steps back. “Uh . . .” He looks around. “I can find him for you. It’s a cool morning and it’s your first time up and walking—”
“I’ll find him, thanks.” I leave Jude behind. I don’t want anyone telling me to stay in the hut and rest. Nobody needs to be over-protective. I’m capable of walking for a few minutes.
I’m not weak. I survived having my hand chopped off and I’m done crying for the rest of my life. I’m not weak.
I weave through huts, ignoring the presence of other albinos tending small gardens in beds of moss. What’s the punishment for uprooting a carrot, having a tooth pulled? Almost every house has rolled back the animal-skinned roofs to let the sun, breeze, and dogwood flowers into their homes.
I round a corner. Alder stands at a taut clothesline strung between huts, though instead of clothes he ties the feet of a headless pheasant to the thick length of twine. I stare at his two hands for a moment. Heat rises to my face. I can’t even tie a knot anymore.
“What about animals?” I blurt. “You’ll sacrifice my hand for the sake of a tree with no brain, blood, or breath, yet you kill and eat animals?”
Alder turns from the pile of dead pheasants on the ground. “Animals are not helpless—they have defense mechanisms and can fight for their own lives. Plants cannot.”
I try to fold my arms, but bump the stitches on my left arm and cringe. “This forest is huge, what about the portions you can’t take care of that other people chop down?”
“We do what we can with the people we have.” Alder picks up another dead pheasant. “During the building of the Wall, my ancestors wanted to start over with a new perspective. They realized there is a link between the ground and humans we need to respect.” He chops the pheasant’s limp head off. The axe sticks in the log.
“Do all albino people think this way?”
“No, just as all black people don’t think the same, nor all white people, nor anyone in between.” He yanks the axe from the log.
“You’re using wood for a chopping block.” I gesture toward the block with my Bible in my hand. “Why is that accepted?”
“Because the tree from which this block came fell of its own accord. Its lifetime was over—ended by the wind or age, we don’t know. It died. Now can we use it as we wish.”
Blood drips from the severed necks of the pheasants. At a loss for words, I watch it splatter on the ground. Alder hangs a third pheasant to drain.
I look down at my Bible. God, it’d be great if You could speak for me right now.
Alder wipes his hands on the feathered body of a dead bird and gestures at my Bible. “From the stories I’ve heard, God destroyed the men on the Earth because they were corrupting it. One hundred and eleven years ago, people corrupted it again—turning it into concrete and stone. Your God used a single woman to destroy their creation.”
“She was a terrorist. Her actions were her own and no one knows why she did what she did.”
“Still, supernatural power didn’t stop this space expert from directing meteorites into the Pacific and China. It brought tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanoes . . . your God didn’t stop them. He seems more on my side than yours.”
I roll my eyes. “God gave us Earth to live on, not just to die with forests of healthy trees. You had no right to cut off my hand.” My chest tightens and I hide my stump behind my back. When I speak again, my voice cracks. “This is not how things are supposed to be.”
I turn and leave him alone with his pheasants.
Jude sits by the door of Ash’s hut when I return, bobbing his head and tapping his foot, though not humming. His hands whittle a small length of wood into what looks like a short whistle.
He stands when I reach him and rubs his ear. “How are you feeling?”
“Aren’t they going to peel off your skin if they see you doing that?” I gesture to the whistle. Ash steps out of the hut as I finish my question. She walks past without a word.
Jude shrugs. “I was working on this before they knew me. It was a dead stick when I found it. You can’t properly whittle anything alive.”
“How do you know the albinos? Where are you from?”
“This is a conversation for another time, Miss Blackwater.”
I step closer. “No it’s not. I need to know.” My heartbeat quickens. Hawke—an Enforcer—sent Jude to me. How many others are at Hawke’s command? Is there an army on this side that he could send after me? Did Skelley Chase know? And if Hawke has people here, how many others have minions on this side? “Are you an Enforcer?”
Jude allows half a smile. “No.”
So, he knows what an Enforcer is. “Then what are you?” My muscles quiver and I want to sit, but I need answers. “I don’t trust you.”
His smile disintegrates and his fist tightens around his whittling knife. “I tried to save you and now you don’t trust me?”
I stumble backward, eyeing his knife. “I-I just don’t understand.”
He lets out a sigh and holds up the whittling tools. “Can we talk after I finish this? I need to think.” His gaze darts around the clump of huts. “I’ll answer your questions. Just not here. Not now.”
He sits and returns to his whittling as if I’m not present.
I turn my back on him. “I’ll be back, Mister Jude, and I’ll expect answers.”
20
000.160.04.21.59
I lie under the pink dogwood tree on the knoll. The stone that held me captive during my amputation shines beneath the morning sun. This is the only pink dogwood in the village, as if stained by years of spilled blood. How many other people have been shackled beneath this gorgeous tree? How many screams for mercy have taken place on this knoll and not been heard? It’s like the sacrifice of Radicals, but in a different culture. Why is the sound of a human voice ignored?
I fold my right arm behind my head for support and stare at the tree. Hundreds of blossoms curl out from the branches—white in the center and pinkish-red on the four tips. Even more buds still wait to open. The old joy I used to find when these trees bloomed is too buried to surface now. How can something so beautiful exist when my heart weighs so heavy?
I look over the village. No one seems to mind that I’m up here. This little haven is stunning—dark moss, flawless trees, scattered cottages, and sun that tingles the skin. A small pond rests in an indentation of the earth, reflecting the tall tree trunks and the blue sky. How can such a beautiful village be so dark?
“Are you going to do anything for us?”
I jump at the tiny voice and sit up. Willow stands on the other side of the dogwood, peeking around the bark. Her white skin has lost its bruise. Her lips are parted, allowing small breaths to escape. She’s expectant. Staring with those light, stark purple eyes.
“Why should I? You didn’t do anything for me.” I close my eyes and force myself to tame my tone.
Willow wiggles her splinted fingers. “I took a broke finger for you. So did other people. Well, Elm took some toes, too. We distributed your atonement so you only had
to lose a hand.”
I allow no outward response to this, but my anger squeezes a fist around my emotions. I never asked them to do that. Why couldn’t they distribute enough broken fingers to keep me whole?
“What do you want me to do?”
She shrugs and steps from behind the tree. Green vines from a willow tree are woven into the tiny braids scattered through her long hair. The tiny leaves poke between white strands.
“Why are plant strands in your hair?”
“A willow tree fell two days ago from the wind. Because of my name, I honor its death by attaching its legacy to myself.” Her voice is feathery, like a musical chime heard on the street corners of Unity Village during holidays.
“People just come and go.” She looks at me with a tilt to her head. “Why do they come only to go?”
“Who else has come here, Willow?”
“Lots of people. Last was a lady and a girl, but they didn’t stay long.”
I almost can’t breathe past my hope. “Did they have names?”
“Newton-lady and Newton-girl.”
They survived! At least two of the Newtons survived.
I lie back down to keep the sudden spring of tears under control. My voice comes out hoarse. “Do you know where they are?”
Willow shakes her head and her hair makes a soft swooshing sound through the air. “Gone now. Why did you come here?”
“I’ve been searching for Independents. I thought I’d find guidance from your village. I didn’t know they would punish me for something I didn’t even know was wrong.”
“Alder says that’s how we learn what’s wrong.”
I curb my urge to argue with the little girl. “How old are you?”
“Spring eleven.”
“What’s that mean?”
She wiggles her pale toes in the moss. “I was born in spring and I’m eleven.”
I grin. “I’m spring eighteen.”
A Time to Die Page 19
