Unseen os-3

by Rachel Caine

  I did, in fact, but Laura Rose would not. “That’d be fine,” I said. “Where do I go?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Our meal finished, Will walked me outside. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, and exchanged smiles and pleasantries with people we passed. I didn’t see weapons in evidence anywhere. The children streamed past us, heading toward what looked like a white-painted school. I saw no evidence of Pearl’s presence anywhere, other than the general whispering sense of power in this place.

  “Aren’t there guards?” I asked. “I mean, it was pretty scary getting in. I thought someone would be—”

  “Yeah, the vetting process is extreme, I keep telling them it’s not necessary,” Will said. “We always know when people try to get in who aren’t genuine about it. We’re not violent people. We don’t want to hurt anyone; we just want to live a little differently from the way others do. I don’t like it that they threaten people and try to scare them away. We don’t have guards here. It’s not a prison, Laura. It’s our home.”

  “Are you in charge?” I asked it directly, and it startled a laugh from him—rich, full, and unguarded.

  “Do I seem like a guy who’d be in charge?” he asked, and then sobered. “No, I’m not in charge. We don’t have that kind of relationship here. There’s no dictator; no government, exactly. We have an industry proctor who deals with work schedules, but that’s mostly paperwork. Our food proctor works out farm and husbandry details and does the menus. We have a services proctor for everything else.”

  “How do you pick the proctors?”

  “We all used to take turns,” he said. “But certain people have a talent for administration, so right now Violet’s our industry proctor, because she’s great at scheduling and making sure everyone gets varied work and rest. We’re still looking for someone to want the food and services proctor roles full-time; until then, we all take a week at it. Trust me, it works out. We’re not perfect, and we do have conflicts from time to time, but surprisingly few, really. We don’t need jails. We don’t need courts, or lawyers, or drug rehab.” Will hesitated, then shook his head to get long hair away from his eyes. “On the outside, I was a mess. I had a meth habit. I never fit in. Here, it’s all different, Laura. You can just be yourself here.”

  That was ironic, considering what being myself meant, but at a certain level I actually craved the certainty I heard in his voice. He’d found his paradise. In a sense, I felt that under other circumstances it might have been mine as well.

  But not for the children.

  Pearl was the unseen cancer at the heart of this seemingly healthy community, and I hated her for it with a sudden, breathtaking intensity. Will would be broken in this, and so many others who didn’t deserve to have their dreams shattered.

  It would be as much my fault as hers, or they would see it that way; they would see me as a betrayer of the worst kind.

  Even now I could feel the early echoes of the pain I would cause.

  “Laura?” Will was looking at me in concern. I forced a smile.

  “I don’t know who I am,” I said, again quite honestly. “How can I really be myself?”

  “You’ll find your way,” he said. “We all find our own ways.”

  Chapter 10

  THERE WAS A SURPRISING meditative quality to doing laundry; no mechanized washers and dryers, but there was water heated in the center boiler, and tubs, and I was part of a team of four who filled the tubs, dunked and scrubbed the clothing, rinsed, wrung, and hung it up to dry in the crisp sunlight. The smell of the detergent—homemade—was strong and a little astringent, but the warm water felt soothing on my skin, and so did the sun. I was surprised when the midday meal break came; we’d done almost the entire camp’s laundry in a single morning. Rhona, one of the four working with me, explained that we would leave the drying until twilight, then take in the clothes for folding and redistribution. It seemed a steady, simple system. A few of the clothes had names inked in them, because they were especially sized or tailored for their owners, but most were interchangeable shirts and trousers and skirts. Bandannas of various colors signaled seniority within the groups, though there were only a few in for washing.

  Lunch was spent sitting in the shade with a small picnic delivered from the food hall. Again, I felt that sense of ease, of peace, of a quiet and predictable life.

  No one struggled here. No one felt isolated, afraid, unloved, unwanted.

  Not even me.

  It took three days of laundry service before I was moved to another duty ... animals this time, cleaning up after the chickens, pigs, and horses. The sheep were grazed out on a hill, with two shepherds to guard them; the cows seemed placid and well fed as they grazed downhill.

  There were two horses, both big rawboned beasts who assisted in plowing and cart pulling; neither was young, but they were healthy and well treated, and greeted me with the same placid friendliness as all the other animals. I liked the horses the best, I thought. Karl was right about the chickens, though the pigs charmed me with their bright, inquisitive ways.

  I saw Becca occasionally, but Will was constantly in the periphery as well—not shadowing me, but working his days in the same spaces. It felt comfortable with him, when we had duties in common and chatted together.

  It wasn’t until the third day of animal duty that I realized I had failed to reach out to Luis, or to Agent Rostow. I felt a sense of dread, in fact, in contacting the FBI at all. It brought an unpleasant, gritty sense of reality to the illusion I was truly beginning to enjoy.

  I kept it brief and to the point. Nothing to report yet. Children are not their own in most cases. No evidence yet of weapons or abductions.

  It occurred to me, as I used that minor amount of power to deliver the report, that I had not felt the need to draw power from Luis for several long days, because I hadn’t expended much, except the slight outflow to maintain my current appearance. When I closed my eyes and focused on him, I felt the ghost of his presence, so far away. After hesitating for what seemed an eternity, I tugged just slightly on that anchor between us, and after a moment, felt a slight popping of my eardrums before I heard Luis’s voice echo in my head, Where are you? Everything okay? The reproduction of his voice was flawless, so good I could hear the concern in it.

  Fine, I whispered back. It felt intimate, this contact, but left me wanting more. Aching for it, in fact. And you? Ibby?

  We’re all right.

  Any sign of trouble there?

  Not so far. It’s quiet. If there is a traitor here, I can’t spot him. Cass, what the hell did you get yourself into?

  This has to be done, I said. To safeguard Ibby. And you. And all of them. She’s here. She’s going to be vulnerable. I can do this, Luis. It’s our best chance.

  Luis hesitated, then said, Probably useless to tell you to be careful, right?

  I feel safe here, I said, before I could stop it. This time Luis’s hesitation was much longer.

  Hang on, chica. You need to check yourself. You shouldn’t feel safe. You should be scared out of your mind, because you’re not safe. Don’t forget it, okay? This ain’t like you. You’re not the joiner type.

  I joined the Wardens, I said. I joined you.

  Wardens ain’t there, Cass. I’m not there.

  Will was, but I didn’t want to bring Will up at all, not even obliquely. I’ll be careful, I said. No one here seems dangerous.

  It’s always that way, Luis said grimly, before somebody shoots you in the back. I know we didn’t part ways too well, Cass, but—but I love you. I care, all right? I care what happens to you. Please. Don’t let your guard down.

  I won’t, I promised, but even as I said it, I knew I was lying to him. I already had let my guard down, and I didn’t know how to raise it again. I didn’t want to raise it again.

  I felt too safe here. Too much a part of things.

  I fell asleep soon after, to the soft breathing and snoring of the women around me.

 
And Luis was right ... I should have taken more care.

  * * *

  I had slept deeply, and dreamlessly, for several nights, but that had turned out to be only a prelude to the nightmare—the silence before the start of the play.

  I came out of the restful darkness to realize that I was standing on a rocky shelf on a mountain, with the frozen-cold wind rippling fragile cloth draperies around me, in the shades of storm clouds. My skin was ice-white, and my long hair whipped like a silk banner in the fierce gusts.

  Across from me, on another mountain, stood a beautiful, exotic creature—human, yet somehow no longer holding to that shape, or to any shape. It flowed and flickered, drifted and snapped back to form. In the brief glimpses of a human figure, I saw a tall, slender woman with shining black hair, dressed in night-blue layers of padded silk. Her skin was flawlessly golden, and in her right hand she held a golden spear, with a black silk flag fastened to it. Black on black, a dimly seen darkness in a circular pattern almost hidden in the middle of the fabric.

  It seemed that darkness was alive within the hissing, snapping fabric, and with every wave of the flag, it grew larger, and larger, until it broke free of the spear and flattened itself on the wind like a giant black bat, gliding in defiance of the prevailing currents.

  “Sister,” she said to me, beneath the darkness cast by that growing, oddly sinister silken cover. The circular inky spot in the middle seemed to be turning now, a slow and relentless rotation. “I’ve been waiting for you to come to me. Where are you?”

  “Can’t you find me?” I asked her. Pearl lost her human form, distorting into static, into a snarling beast, into a twisted, spiked tree, before regaining her beauty. “How do you know I haven’t come to you already?”

  She smiled. The banner flapping above her grew and grew, and the wind grew with it, ripping at my frail clothing, pulling my hair with the hands of cruel, invisible children. “O sister, I know you too well. Your arrogance can’t be disguised. You shine like a fire in the night. But fire can be smothered.”

  The banner suddenly snapped on the wind and arrowed toward me, wrapping me in folds of choking blackness, waves of nothing. I felt it pulling at me, like the sucking mouth of a leech, and power poured out of me like blood from a new wound. The banner had felt colder than the wind that had brought it. I could no longer see Pearl, but I could feel her, hear her, and the smothering power of her presence was ripping at the roots that held me to the world ...

  But power rose up through those roots, rich and sweet and hot, burning red holes in the darkness, shredding it into rags. It was an overwhelming force, something I neither called nor commanded, but it saved my life.

  The silky darkness that remained fell away from me and sought escape in the open cold air. I fell on the rocks, my face in my hands, my hair wild as a madwoman’s. The wind had torn away my clothes. My skin was bleached and abraded, and rich red blood flooded from the cuts to puddle on the stone beneath my bruised knees.

  Pearl raised her spear, and the banner flooded in a silk river across the open space between us to wrap itself around the golden shaft, shrink, and become a mere flag again. Pearl stabilized in human form, as perfect and beautiful as when I had known her in our youth, so long ago.

  “You haven’t lost your touch, sister,” she said. “But you will. The Mother isn’t as we knew her in the ancient days, awake and alive. And like her, we are not the same. Corruption can’t be unseen or unfelt; it can’t be healed, only endured.”

  “Pearl,” I said, and raised my head to meet her eyes. “I’ll destroy you. I don’t wish to, but I will. Stop this before we have to raise our true forms.”

  “Dream on, my sister,” Pearl said. “What I do must be done, to make way for what is to come. Only out of destruction can creation be born. Life in this place was an experiment, an accident of chemicals and light. It’s time to cease the struggle, and let darkness have its time. Who knows what new forms can come from that? Because it’s beautiful, my emptiness, the emptiness where you sent me so long ago. And it hungers, as life hungers. And it will feed, very soon.”

  Under my knees, the shelf of rock suddenly broke loose, and my body tumbled out into the endless gulf, falling, spinning, falling ...

  ... until I crashed into my flesh, breathing hard, sweating and shaking.

  All was darkness.

  I no longer felt it was peace.

  I waited for the death blow; surely, I thought, Pearl must have detected my presence so close to her seat of power. The next morning I spent tense and alert, waiting for any hint of an attack. My distracted behavior displeased the horses I was grooming, and I soon was the recipient of shoves and whinnies to remind me of my duties. The horses, at least, seemed to have no worries at all. I was midway through the last grooming when a group of eight children, wearing those four colors I had noted before, came for a barn visit, supervised by a woman in a red bandanna. I instantly sensed the tingle of power in her presence; Weather, I thought. The air seemed to taste of ozone around me. Of a surety, she was not Earth; the horses crowded closer around me, as if for protection. She gave me a close look, dismissed me as unimportant, and began tell the children about horses—a speech they blithely ignored, to pet the huge beasts and offer them apples.

  This woman was far different from the warm comrades working the farm outside. I sensed from her that she held them, and me, in mild contempt. She was a wolf, hiding among the placid sheep, and she despised us even while she needed us.

  This was the enemy I had been waiting for.

  “Hello,” I said, and directed it generally at her and the children. The boys and girls echoed it back. The Weather Warden did not. She gave me another long, level look. I gave it back to her, and held out my hand. “My name is Laura. I’m new.”

  “Clearly,” she said, and cocked a single eyebrow. She must have decided that being overtly rude would risk questions from the children, and so she shook hands with me. “Mariah,” she said. “I’m sorry, but we’re all quite busy. Kids, we need to be moving on. We’ve got lessons this morning.”

  That brought out a general groan from the children. One of the older ones, a girl, was hidden from Mariah by the bulk of the horse between them, and I saw the fear that passed over her expression before she hid her face in the horse’s thick mane for a moment. I wondered why she seemed afraid, and the others didn’t. Possibly because this girl had seen something, or knew something more than she should have.

  I edged up next to her, on the pretext of currying the horse. “What’s your name?” I asked her softly. She was a pretty thing, delicate and dark, with wide black eyes and a pointed elfin face.

  “Zedala,” she whispered back. “Please, miss, can you find my parents? I want to go home.”

  I glanced at her and saw tears in her eyes. Mariah was, for the moment, involved in gathering up the playful younger children, and I took the chance to hug the girl for comfort before saying, “Be brave, Zedala. All will be well.”

  She looked hopelessly at me, and said, “You don’t understand.” I ached to tell her more, to promise her that she’d soon be free, but the risks were too high. Even this lovely child could be a trap, set to make me betray myself.

  I forced myself to smile and pat her shoulder. “We’re all friends here,” I said. “We’ll take care of you. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  “Zedala!” the other woman called, and I saw the shiver that went through the girl. She quickly wiped the tears from her eyes. “Zedala, hurry up!”

  “Yes, miss!” She gave me one more troubled, pleading look, and hurried off. I brushed the horse with absent strokes as I watched Mariah hustle away her eight small charges.

  Zedala knew there was danger; that much was obvious. The others didn’t.

  I needed to understand what she’d seen.

  At lunch, I sat with Will and we split a small block of yellow cheese, some sliced ham, and fresh bread. It was delicious, and sitting so comfortably in the sun it seemed impossib
le to believe there was evil being done here, in the heart of this peaceful place. But the fear in Zedala had been real, and immediate, and I didn’t have the luxury of ignoring the pain of a child.

  “Some of the children came to the barn this morning,” I told Will as I ate a slice of apple. We had no apple trees on the farm; I wondered if they traded for the fruit. “Why do they wear those uniforms?”

  “We all wear uniforms,” he said, and reached for an apple slice as well.

  “I know, but the colors ...”

  “It’s just to identify what their powers are,” he said.

  “Powers?”

  “They’re special,” Will said, very softly. He kept his eyes focused on distant trees, but I thought there was a slight glitter there, a hardness that seemed very alien to what I knew of him. “They have gifts, not like normal kids. We have to protect them and train them for the end.”

  “The end?”

  “The end of civilization,” he said. “It’s coming, Laura. It’s why we’re here. We have to learn how to live without all those things so-called civilization has given us, all the toys and machines and pollution. These children are going to help us survive it, and in turn, we’re going to save them and protect them from those who want to hurt them.”

  “Oh,” I said. It was what I’d expected to hear, but not from Will—not from someone I’d grown to like. “It seemed like they were a little frightened.”

  He shrugged a little. “They have to learn,” he said. “Not all lessons are easy. It’s good for them to be a little frightened.”

  I swallowed a piece of bread that seemed suddenly foul, and reached for the lemonade glass to wash the bad taste from my mouth. “I don’t like to scare kids,” I said. “Even if it’s for a good cause.”

  “They have to be trained. Just leave it alone, Laura. Let the teachers handle them.”