“Uprisings? I don’t want to be part of an uprising. Is that why you brought me here?” Mara asked Cyrus, but he had already been pulled back into conversation with the rest of the chaotic group.
“We had to know it was really you,” Story said, her voice flat and emotionless. “To make sure you were Dia’s daughter. That you survived. Untainted.”
“Why do you care? No one’s cared about me for twenty years. I’ve been out there, not knowing. Why now?” A man carrying a handful of tablets bumped into Mara’s side as he ran to the doorway, and Story steadied her. But her hand was on Mara’s shoulder, then neck, then a sting. Then a familiar itch. “Again? I thought you said you trusted me.”
“Damnit, Story! You could’ve at least waited so we wouldn’t have to carry her down the stairs.” Cyrus shoved Story roughly, and Mara was surprised to see violence from the man who had been so calm.
“She’s in the way, and we need to get her back before the foreman comes for her.” Story stepped up to Cyrus and shoved him back.
“Why do I even need to go to sleep?” Mara asked, her tongue growing heavy. “I thought you said I was an ally?”
“We said you might be an ally.” Douglas stepped between Cyrus and Story, his presence diffusing their anger.
Confusion flew from every angle. Douglas stepped closer to Mara, his voice hushed; he was much older than Mara originally thought. His features were familiar, but distant. Like when she stepped into an apartment in her building, furnished and shaped identical to her own, but with something different and personal hidden in the shadows.
He was like something Mara had carved as a child, during the days when scraps of wood were forthcoming and carving skills were passed down from parent to child.
A cave in a book. A lost girl. A happiness. A memory just out of reach.
“You’re the old man of the forest.” He wouldn’t destroy it, would he? The fog settled down in front of Mara again. “Why do you want to tear all the trees down?”
Douglas laughed, an old gentle sound. It tucked her in at night. If Mara was the little maple tree, he was the steady oak. He asked, “Is that what they say about us these days?”
“You aren’t going to?” Mara asked. The fog dug deep into her body and lifted her. Fog under her knees and shoulders.
“If we tore the trees down, how would we hide our home?” Story asked, close. Like she had crawled into her head. “How would we watch the city? We are the last ones truly protecting. The last ones truly living.”
“Please, I’ve made a mistake! Listen to me.” How can they hear me through this fog? A mountain grew, separating them. She tore at her wrist, willing them to see the mistake.
“Won’t say I haven’t thought about it,” a voice said. Cyrus? “But all those minds buried… even if it is folklore.”
“Listen!” Mara screamed, or at least she wanted to, but her voice was quiet and slurred.
“Not to mention Dia,” Story said, and Mara fought the heaviness. She willed herself to stay awake, fight the sleeping medicine.
“… never talk to us again…”
Laughter.
“…see her daughter…”
“Cut my wrist!” Mara thrust her hand through the air cutting through the fog.
“We know, Mara,” Cyrus said, grabbing her wrist. Then everything went black.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Two Weeks Earlier
Coffee splashed over the side of the small metal mug, and Mara’s eyes widened. An earthquake?
“Stop bouncing your knee.” Bernice, the front office woman, snapped her fingers at Mara.
Mara looked around the room. Who is she talking - oh. It was just the two of them in the office. She forced her knee to still. My nerves. I can’t even think straight. How am I going to-
“Would you like a sedative? I’m authorized to give you a sedative in this situation.” Bernice had stared at Mara with distrust since she had entered the office. But why? She had come to them after all. She was cooperating. She was not the bad guy here. Tayla was.
Disrupting her life. She liked tan repetitive walls. Thank you very much.
She might have needed a sedative, but Mara shook her head; her mind was already muddled. There was a possibility that she would be mulched, especially if she could not keep her story straight. This was something she did not think of until her bare feet hit the cold office floor. If found guilty… If she was mulched… She would never be planted, never to be reborn and fulfill her soul’s destiny. She would simply be blinked out of existence.
She had allowed a criminal to get away and flushed a note. She had a whistle in her pocket. A whistle.
“Am I going to be mulched?” Mara heard the squeak, the fear in her voice.
Bernice looked up from her tablet, surprise in her eyes, her pasty pale skin a guaranteed gift from life inside an office. Her chestnut hair sat in a frizzy bun; showing signs of the long shift. “How should I know? I’m Tier One. I make phone calls.”
Her words sounded resigned. Resigned in life. Resigned in responsibility. She was at least twenty years older than Mara, and if she was still Tier One at this point in her life…
“Oh.” Mara looked away from the woman and studied a crack in the concrete wall. Was everything on the ground level concrete? How had she not noticed before?
She thought about the moments before this one. The moments that had led her here to this cold room.
Seconds before she ran. Before she changed her mind.
Agreeing. Standing on her bed. Opening the curtains. Reaching to bend the blind, upper right corner to give the signal. I agree! I defect! But before she bent the blind, she saw them. In a bright spotlight from a street lamp.
Mulchers dragged a man and a pregnant woman from the apartment across the street. No telling what their crime had been, not until it was reported on the news the following evening. But even Mara knew the news could not always be trusted. She watched the struggling couple get thrown into the back of the van. A few bystanders looked on, but their presence did nothing.
Doors shut. Mara imagined the blur against the back window was the woman’s face, her fists desperately beating for her escape.
Mara heard screams in her head. Save my baby! My child!
That was when Mara thought of her father. She would not leave her father alone in this world by getting herself mulched over a poor decision.
She grabbed the whistle, threw open the door and ran down the stairs as fast as she could.
A bang on the door and Bernice abruptly stood, hitting the table. Coffee sloshed over the side of the mug again, Mara relieved she was not to blame this time. Bernice stepped toward the door and let two men in.
Mara looked at them from the corner of her eye, afraid to move. Security. Mulchers. She did not know for sure, but recognized the direness of the official uniform. A thin man walked in the door, pushing between the uniformed men. Mara looked up. His dark red hair was comically paired with the green tie around his neck. He reminded Mara of a leprechaun she had seen on the screen, painted over a tall Oak Nymph’s body. He shook Bernice’s hand and indicated for her to step into the hallway with his two companions.
He took the vacated seat across from Mara. “You’ll have to forgive me. I typically like to bring deserters uptown to our offices and move everything as quickly as possible. But we have a unique opportunity here this evening.”
“I’m not a deserter,” Mara said. Beads of sweat slid past her pounding temples. “I came down here. I reported everything.”
“Yes, but you thought about it, didn’t you? You thought about joining the terrorists.”
The word terrorists raised a confusing fear in Mara. She knew they were called that by the city, the news, the screen programs. But little Tayla, a terrorist?
She shook her head, hoping to convey that she would never consider defecting. She would never go with the people from the comics.
“They promised you a colorful and exciting life, didn�
�t they? One where everything is not so black and white? But there is only black and white. Right and wrong. Good and evil. And those who try to convince you that there are gray areas, they are lying.”
Maybe Mara’s chances would be better if she told the entire truth. That was why she came down here, was it not? To tell the truth?
Most of the truth.
“I like my apartment and my job. I look forward to my rebirth.” Mostly truth.
The red haired man picked a tablet off the desk and tapped with a steady hand. He did not glance at Mara when he spoke again, but kept his eyes trained on the screen.
“Mara Strongholder, your mother was our top herbalist when devising the urn system that we still use today.”
Mara nodded. She knew this.
“Your father is still one of the lead technicians for city security.”
Mara nodded again because it seemed like the thing to do. There were no alternate statements that could be made. These were facts.
“Your parents were model citizens, and because of this we extend favor to you. This one time.” The red haired man set down the tablet and folded his fingers together. Mara noticed how long they were. Skin stretched thin over bone. “But favors come with a price. Will you assist your government in the war against the terrorists?”
Again, agreeing seemed like the only thing to do.
Mara nodded.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A sound woke Mara from a confused, short and deep sleep. It came again, before she was fully awake to comprehend the noise. An echo? A whistle? She felt her breast pocket. Her whistle was nestled safe inside. She opened her eyes to the sun settling low in the sky. Twilight would soon be on the forest.
“Sierra!” Not a whistle. Mara’s name.
She was back in the forest, no cave walls in sight. The cool evening breeze on her face, lifting strands of hair and blowing them out of her already loosened ponytail. She rubbed her eyes. She felt an urgency, but why?
Then she remembered the path. She had to be on the path before the foreman returned.
Mara sat up and the world whipped back and forth in front of her. Reaching for the closest object she could grasp, a large white tree, she wrapped her hands around either side of its trunk, working her way to standing. She used the tree’s angry knots to brace herself as she reached full height.
“Sierra!” Her name floated through the trees again. Were the trees calling her name? Sending her on her way?
“I need to get back to the path,” she whispered against the bark. The tree did not answer.
It seemed at least five minutes passed before sanity returned, and the world stopped spinning. Mara could not be far from the gate. She threw her sack across her shoulder, grabbed the empty wooden case, and stumbled quickly through the trees along the fence line.
The toe of her boot snagged on a large root and she dropped the case. She threw herself sideways to avoid hitting her face on the box and bashed her hand against a jagged rock. Blood dripped down her wrist.
Mara did not have time to focus on the pain and blood. She had to get back to the gate before her name was called again. She had to get home and… and…
She had to reach Tayla somehow. Warn her before it was too late.
Mara stood, again using a reborn to steady herself before reaching down for her case. Pulling her hand from the tree, she saw the red splash against the white bark. This perfect, innocent, and newly emptied soul, reaching for the sky, now marked by traitorous blood. The treacherous two-sided coin that teetered on its edge, choosing neither heads or tails.
“Forever damned,” Mara whispered, rubbing her sleeve against the bark, desperate to wipe away the blood. Instead wiping it in. “We’re both damned now.”
Mara could waste no more time. What was done was done. If she got to Tayla fast enough, she could prevent anything else…
Her mother was alive. If Mara kept moving, she could see her. She would save lives. The Crone, the old man of the forest, her uncle, the children. Those who would not leave and integrate back into the city, she needed to warn them.
She hoisted the empty case off the ground, and pushed through the dim early evening light to the gate. Her mother’s face danced in the shadows. Would she be just like Mara remembered her? Would she recognize Mara?
She stayed in thoughts of her mother until she reached the clearing and a view of Tango. He sat against the fence, tablet in hand, earbuds in. Colors from the screen flashed across his face as he looked up at Mara.
“There you are,” he said, pulling a single earbud out. He looked almost jovial. “It isn’t time to work anymore.”
The code. But he had ignored Mara that morning when she said the passphrase to him.
“It always is,” she said, careful to keep eye contact with him as she sat down on the ground, “time to work.”
“Your work is done.” He looked back at his tablet. “For today.”
He subtly finished the code, and she cursed the damn Questioners. Who makes a code using the word ‘work’, during a work detail? Her head was muddled from the day; she could not even be sure if he used the right sequence.
Mara moved the box to her other arm, scraping it against her cut. She had forgotten about the bleeding. She dumped her lunch sack out, removed the rag her sandwich had been wrapped in and draped it over her wrist. The gash was wide, but the blood slowed.
It occurred to Mara for the first time, she hurt the wrong wrist and would be marked twice. But for now, the offending wrist was still free.
“Were you yelling for me?” Mara asked, securing a knot in the rag.
“I was. It’s almost nightfall, and the foreman will be back any minute.” Tango did not look up from his tablet. So many people concerned with the false lives the tablets played. So many more than were concerned with their real lives.
She wanted to take her mind off of each passing minute. Each minute that shortened the clock for the family she had just found. All of my mistakes. Maybe I should just leave my mind in the programs. But she had never been able to.
Desperate to make conversation, Mara asked, “What are you watching?”
“You don’t know what this is? How is that possible?”
“What do you mean?”
“It plays every night.” Tango moved closer, holding his tablet so they could both watch. The characters looked vaguely familiar to Mara. He handed her one of the earbuds. A laugh track played on. The same laugh track had been playing for two hundred years. Long dead humor receivers, used over and over to convince the zombies in front of the screen what they were watching was original and hilarious.
“Why’s it so popular?” Mara said after a few minutes. The jokes fell flat on her ears, the cultural references unimportant and close to being outdated. It did not seem like the kind of thing that would keep people interested night after night.
Tango looked at Mara, and he was so close she thought he might kiss her. She pulled away, the earbud tugging on her ear.
“Because, the actors on this show know a bit about hard work,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “Do you mean-”
“I find the artwork the most interesting of everything. Nothing else draws me in, like what sits in the background. Art is its own kind of work, and open to all sorts of interpretations.”
Mara watched Tango’s profile, chiseled still as he watched, his eyes intent on the screen. He was serious, sure of himself and bold. In all things, unlike the man she had met that morning. The frightened ghost gone.
“Please, I’m not good at all this weird secret spy stuff.” Mara heard the plead in her voice. “If you know something- my mother. They work with her or something. My name is-”
“Shhh,” Tango whispered, putting a hand on her evil wrist, and squeezing once before jumping to his feet. He stuffed his tablet back into his front pocket. “Take the flashlight out of your pack; it’s a rough walk to the bus in the dark.”
Before Mara forced her name upon Tango a
nyway, the foreman walked around a bend in the path, a bobbing group of six lights following behind. Mara glanced at Tango, suddenly that thin, pale, frightened man she had met that morning. Gone was the self-assurance.
But in the seconds before the foreman and the other planters reached the two of them, Tango turned to Mara. His hair fell forward, shielding his face from the foreman. He looked at Mara and winked.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Two Weeks Earlier
“The tech only tells us where you’ve been. Nothing more.” The small machine pinched Mara’s wrist and released. A trickle of blood.
Mara touched her flesh. “I can’t feel anything.”
“It’s minuscule. If it was noticeable, you wouldn’t make it into their camp.”
“What makes you think they’re going to take me to their camp?” Mara’s words were bold, as if the chip had instilled in her some kind of bravery. On the inside, however, she quaked from fear of the unknown. Not sure her chances of being mulched were gone, Mara was sure of one thing. If this man was sending her to the barbarians he said the Citizens of Change were, she needed answers.
“They will have their reasons.”
“What about-”
“All you need to worry about is going about life as normal. When you are out there, blow the whistle. They’ll do the rest.”
Mara did not tell the red haired man about the letter she flushed. She did not tell him about the spoken code. She told him about Tayla, and placed a few extra words in the silver haired girl’s mouth. And subtracted a few words when it came to what Tayla had said about her mother.
He handed Mara a bandage, and she placed it over her tiny pinprick of a wound.
“Their entrance and exact location has been secret from us for years. They’ll take you back to their camp in the forest. Then we can peacefully negotiate with them. They have their options, we all do. We follow the law of the land, we follow the beliefs and walk towards the afterlife, or we mulch and help those around us do the same thing.”
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