In opstand

by Marieke Veringa

  For a split second, Saul seems unhinged, but then he smirks at them. His guards don’t attempt to protect him – they’re too busy dragging Henry’s body away.

  “Me, a liar?” he says angrily.

  “You’ve been lying to us,” Colin splutters, but it’s not convincing anyone. This is not working.

  Saul laughs scornfully. “Hold on. Do you actually believe what this man was telling us?” he challenges Colin in a threatening voice. “How about we give you the same treatment as him?”

  Our whole plan goes up in flames. Literally. I can hear the muttering of the onlookers around me, see the awkward glances they steal at Colin and Pete. Like they are the liars.

  Colin pales, helplessly looking over at Andy who’s still waiting at the other side of the portico. He hasn’t moved. And then, Colin’s eyes rest on me.

  Saul follows Colin’s gaze and seems to suddenly remember I was the only one who objected to Henry’s summary execution. His eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. His calm tone chills me to the bone when he tells his soldiers: “Seize her.”

  For just a moment, time seems to slow down. I gape at Saul, unable to move.

  “Run!” Colin hollers. “Leia, now!”

  That shakes me out of my stupor. I turn around and run like the wind. I don’t even stop to think where the blazes I’m supposed to go or how I can be so selfish, leaving Colin behind to fend for himself. He’s right in telling me to run. If Saul catches me, he’ll kill me too. He’s gone insane. I have to get off the grounds and disappear into the blackness of the night as fast as possible.

  Branches hit my face when I plunge into the dark forest. The moon is only a small sliver in the night sky and does little to improve my sight. Then again, it also means my pursuers won’t be able to see me.

  It’s only when I reach the Wall that I realize where I was headed all this time. This is the place where I encountered Walt for the first time. Saul’s friends can’t be far off, so I have to be quick. I grope my way up the tree next to the Wall like a squirrel and don’t hesitate when I lower myself and drop down on the other side of the barrier.

  Blindly, I run on. I’m in uncharted territory, in an unknown world where Saul fears to tread. He won’t follow me here.

  I’m in Fool’s Land.

  12

  WHEN I finally see the first houses of Hope Harbor looming in the distance, I’m no longer running. Rather, I’m stumbling on. My feet are bleeding from hitting stones on the path in my frantic flight. Tears are streaming down my face. Even though I didn’t really believe Saul would follow me across the Wall, I still wouldn’t slow down.

  I accost the very first man I encounter. “Walt,” I pant. “Where is… Walt. The Bookkeeper’s nephew.”

  “My heavens, girl, what happened to you?” the elderly man asks with a bewildered face, putting his arm around my shoulders. “Why don’t you take a seat first, love? I’ll go and get Walt out of that meeting he’s in.”

  I sit down on the wooden bench the man steered me toward, standing under a street lantern next to one of the houses. My heart hammers in my chest and my hair is sticky with sweat. If I could make one wish now, it’d be for hours of rest, just sitting here and letting the world go by, but I know I can’t. Walt is in some meeting – well, so much the better. He should ask all the people gathered there to help him. To help me. I have to save Colin, Andy and Pete. If they’re still alive, that is.

  After what seems like an eternity, my savior comes back with Walt in tow. His eyes widen when he catches sight of me. “Leia, what happened? Are you alone? Where are your friends?”

  I start crying desperately, sagging against Walt’s shoulder when he sits down next to me. “He’s dead,” I sniff.

  “Who’s dead?”

  “Henry. They... Saul killed him.”

  Walt stops breathing. Anxious, I look up and see his jaw working. “That does it. We’re going in,” he decides. “Is your friend still there? Is Mara in danger?”

  I shake my head. “Mara left earlier this afternoon. Saul wanted to force her to marry his brother, so she ran away. But my brother Colin’s still there. And Andy, and Pete – our friends. They helped me. We wanted to confront Saul with his lies, but everything got out of hand.”

  “Do you think Colin...” A tell-tale silence follows.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” I whisper.

  He cries out something – sounding kind of gruff, so I’m assuming he’s using a few choice words in his own dialect – and gets up. “I have to drum up some helpers. Tony will want to come too, I bet.”

  “Wait,” I say. “If you want to attack the manor house and capture Saul, I suggest you ask for help in Newexter. Mara has already told my mother about what’s happening at the manor. The… I mean, our parents want to come and help us, I think. And they know their way around the manor grounds.”

  He nods curtly. “We can use all the help we can get. How do we get to your village without being seen?”

  I ponder his question for a moment. “We could go by ship. If you sail around the island, you can go ashore at the eastern beach and reach Newexter quite easily from there. The parents often go fishing on that beach, so there’s a road.”

  “A ship? Consider it done.”

  “Are we leaving now?”

  He smiles reassuringly. “Yes, we are, as soon as possible. But we’ll have to tell one of the captains to prepare a ship that’s capable of carrying a lot of people first. I already have an idea which ship to use.”

  “You mean the Explorer?” the elderly man inquires. He’s still standing next to us.

  Walt nods and grabs my hand, taking me on my way to the salvation he’s promised me. During our walk, I tell him bits and pieces about the situation on our side of the Wall. While I talk, we walk along endless streets lined with houses that look a whole lot sturdier than the houses we tend to build. There are street lights everywhere and almost all roads are paved. And it just goes on and on. Hope Harbor is larger than Newexter… much larger.

  “Just how many people live here?” I ask shyly at some point.

  “About one thousand,” Walt replies.

  “Oh.” All at once, I feel like a bumpkin walking around this city. I come from a village of about two hundred inhabitants, and the group living in the manor only consists of fifty-one youngsters. That’s the biggest crowd I’ve been around in the past six years. Everything here is so overwhelming.

  Silently, I plod on next to the boy I pegged for a Fool only two days ago, who turns out to be much more cultivated than me.

  “How are you holding up?” Walt interrupts my train of thought. “I’m not going too fast, am I?”

  I shake my head. “Can’t go fast enough for me. I’m just thinking,” I reply quietly.

  Walt puts his arm around me. “What about?”

  “About how different everything is over here. How it is that you’re with so many, and why we’ve always lived apart from you, and each other.” I look up at Walt. “I found out I’m part Foolish myself, you know. My grandmother was born here.”

  “Really.” Walt raises an eyebrow. “No wonder you seem a bit bubbleheaded at times.”

  “Look who’s talking,” I throw back.

  “Seems like us Fools are apparently irresistible to your kind,” Walt continues unperturbedly, “because your grandfather went on and married her in secret. Right?”

  I wonder. How had they even managed to do that? Had Toja crossed the Wall one day, bumping into my grandfather like I bumped into Walt? Maybe Grandfather smuggled her into Newexter claiming she was from the manor and her parents were dead. Sometimes, youngsters change so much between the ages of ten and eighteen that nobody recognizes them anymore when they return. As far as I know, no one’s ever told my mother that her mother didn’t belong in Newexter.

  “I wonder why she ran away,” I
mumble.

  Walt slows down. “Well, there are Hope Harborers who can’t stand the wait. They tire of waiting for a lifetime for something to appear at the horizon.”

  “Is that what your people believe in?” I ask dumbfounded.

  “Yes. And hey, turns out we were right all along, because someone actually did appear on the horizon. Two people on a ship from the World across the Waters, bearing great news. But one of them had to pay for it with his life.”

  “I’m sorry.” Somehow, I’m ashamed of what our leader has done, even though it’s obvious he’s crack-brained.

  “Hey.” Walt slows down to a stop, looking at me seriously. “It’s not your fault, okay? At least you tried to stop him.”

  “I still want to,” I say fiercely. “In fact I want to stop everything. All the lies. All the misery. I want to know the truth at last. If Henry really is right and our way of life is based on lies, we should all hear it.”

  “I’m not sure all your people will be ready for a truth like that. An Unbeliever isn’t easily converted.”

  “So I guess it’s up to Tony to convince them. He has his work cut out for him. I mean, isn’t he supposed to be the Bearer of Great News?” My sarcasm turns my words into poison. Screw Walt and his stupid prejudices.

  His eyes turn dark and his warm hand lands on my shoulder. “Look, Leia, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, indeed you shouldn’t have,” I snap. “Now, let’s just carry on, shall we?”

  I shake off his apologetic hand and hurry on down the street. It still confuses me when he touches me.

  ***

  When we finally get to the harbor this place is named after, I stop in my tracks. The incoming seawater is hugged by the rocky walls of a sheltered bay. I can make out a gigantic quay. The entire harbor is lit up by lamps and fires kept burning in stone towers erected on opposite sides of the bay.

  “What are those towers?” I ask curiously.

  “Watchtowers,” Walt replies. “Lookouts. So we can keep an eye on the sea at all times. They’re always manned, and the fires never die out.”

  Waiting for salvation from the outside world. Forever staring out at sea, hoping that one day, something or someone will come. I suddenly get why my grandmother wanted out. The air in this city breathes inertia, a sense of futility, of people biding their time. I understand why our forefathers called them Foolish for it.

  “And what’s that ship over there?” I point out a three-master completely made of natural wood, anchored next to the dock. I’ve seen a ship like this out at sea once, but of a more modest size, carrying one mast only. But this… this is a ship to sail away on, never to return.

  “That’s the Explorer,” Walt explains with a broad smile on his face. “The ship my dad helped build. We were going to sail it soon.”

  I stare at him. “Going where?”

  He vaguely gestures at the endless sea and keeps quiet for a long time. “Past the horizon. To see what was promised to us with our own eyes,” he finally says.

  13

  WE GO aboard using a wobbly gangplank. Walt talked to the Bookkeeper at the harbor, who promised to gather men for our noble cause – at least one hundred of them. Saul and his small army won’t stand a chance against us now, but will we win the race against time?

  Will Colin, Andy, and Pete still be alive when we get there?

  At the steering wheel, I can see the captain talking to a very tall, black-haired man with dark skin. Walt doesn’t even need to tell me who he is. This must be Tony. He looks different from all the other people I have ever seen. His skin isn’t dark from working under the sun, but has the natural color of wet sand on the beach.

  “I didn’t think you’d be so impressed by him,” Walt quips. I’m probably gaping at Tony unabashedly.

  “He just looks so… otherworldly,” I say with a blush. “So handsome.”

  “Hmm.”

  I glance sideways at Walt. He sounds almost jealous. “But I thought you looked really striking too, the first time I met you. With your white-blonde hair and all,” I indulge him.

  “You didn’t look at me this mesmerized.”

  “Hah. How would you know? It was way too dark to see my face.”

  “Oh, so you did feel a bit enthralled by my obvious beauty?” Walt grins at me, and suddenly, I hate the fact that his grin looks so good on him. It’s the typical grin of a boy who’s used to people liking and admiring him – Walt, the Bookkeeper’s arrogant nephew.

  “No, I wasn’t enthralled,” I reply defiantly. “I was scared out of my wits. Okay? I’m still scared out of my wits. Most likely my twin brother’s injured or even dead, and here you are, flirting with me like there’s no tomorrow. Because you find yourself so desirable, and… and I bet you think an Unbeliever girl would look good on your long list of conquests.” I spit out the last few words viciously.

  “And here you are, trying to pretend so hard it leaves you cold,” Walt mutters in a huff. He gives me a soul-searching look, and to my utter annoyance, I can’t meet his gaze head-on without blushing.

  “I’m going to talk to Tony.” I break off the conversation abruptly and stalk off to join the captain of the Explorer and the man from across the waters at the wheel. I patiently wait until they have time for me.

  When the captain leaves to attend to some of his sailors, Tony turns around to face me. “You must be the young lady with the Star Wars notebook.”

  I blink, staring at him uncomprehendingly. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “The booklet with Luke and Leia on the cover,” he elaborates.

  “Yes.” I nod hesitantly. “Yeah, that’s me.” A booklet? Surely it’s not that small?

  He leans against the railing of the ship and looks at me thoughtfully. “Well, what would you like to know?”

  I have to think long and hard. This man said he knew our ancestors, but Henry claimed our life philosophy is based on an untruth. Frankly, I don’t know where to start.

  “Tell me about the World across the Waters,” I finally say. “What it looks like. How the people live there. Why we never knew anything about your existence.”

  “That world was destroyed for a long time,” Tony starts slowly. “It used to crawl with people, you know. Seven billion of them. All of them clamoring for a spot in the light. Some of them had a lot of worldly possessions while others were starving. This caused much mutual jealousy. In fact, it made them so jealous that large groups of people fought each other in big wars.”

  “Wars with so many people?” I don’t really know how much a billion is, but Tony’s face tells me that it’s more than I can even imagine.

  “Well, not all of them were involved. The leaders of those areas of land – countries – decided when and how they went to war, even if the majority of people in their country didn’t agree.”

  “Kind of like our leader,” I mutter.

  Tony nods solemnly. “Yes, just like him. Murderous, power-hungry, and always, always afraid of losing that power. This went on until one hundred fifty years ago, the leader of a large country unleashed a mutated virus onto the earth. They used to call it biological warfare. He didn’t use weapons to kill people, but germs.”

  “Why?” I look at him in utter shock. “Wouldn’t that kill all people indiscriminately, even his own people?”

  “No, because he thought he’d tweaked the virus in such a way that it wouldn’t attack people of his own race. That was the plan, anyway. The ultimate effect of the disease was that adults were mostly killed by the infection, but children were hardly affected by it.”

  “Children…” I gulp down the lump in my throat. “Up to what age?”

  “The information passed on by my family through the generations mentions the age of ten, eleven.”

  The age at which we become adults. Is that just a coincidence?
I take a deep breath. “Then what happened?”

  Tony stares into the distance. “People tried everything to fight the infection – special clothes that would keep the virus out, airtight spaces with special ventilation. I’m sorry if you don’t know what I’m talking about; I’m sure your world doesn’t know these things. Suffice it to say humanity fought bravely, but to no avail. The only way to escape from the virus was by leaving the mainland. People fled to the coast. They wanted to take boats and sail out to sea, hoping the virus wouldn’t be able to cross the water if only healthy people were allowed on board. This is one of the reasons some people survived. But many still died after that because of the bombs.”

  “What are bombs?” I whisper.

  “Big weapons powerful enough to blow up entire cities or countries. The leader of another country dropped them on all large cities in the country that developed the virus. After that, the war continued on both sides until they ran out of bombs or there was no one left to press the button. And then, the poisonous rains came.”

  I shudder. So this is the truth. The island is a paradise world compared to what’s on the other side of the sea.

  “But that’s all over now,” Tony assures me when he sees the disillusionment on my face. “One hundred and fifty years have passed, and the survivors and their offspring have managed to build a better world. We live scattered, and we leave each other alone. We only gather to share our knowledge, but that’s all. This is how we prevent conflicts.”

  We’ve only talked for a short while, but in my mind I’m ten years older. We may not be alone, but I sure feel like we are. Our island is nothing more than an insignificant dot on the map of an enormous world we don’t know at all – a small star next to a bright, full moon in the night sky.

  Which raises a new question. “How did you and Henry ever manage to find our island?”

  “Because your ancestors left a message that wouldn’t be lost,” Tony says mysteriously.