Hungry

by H. A. Swain

  Two men peel off from the group and shuffle Basil inside one of the buildings. I settle myself on the ground where I can lurk in the shadows of the vines. I’m exhausted from everything that’s happened, and my feet are sore from tramping around barefoot and my ankle still hurts, so I’m grateful for the rest and a chance to make a plan. Hours pass. People come and go from the buildings and my eyes grow heavy. As the sun passes overhead and begins to descend, I let myself drift off, figuring it will be better to be well rested so when the opportunity presents itself, I can slip inside and find Basil.

  * * *

  A loud, fierce growl startles me awake. I flail in the kudzu, frantically trying to find the snarling beast that must be coming toward me. Images of angry giants and slithering snakes flash through my mind. I hear the growl again and realize that it’s my own stomach making that terrible noise, but by then it’s too late.

  “It’s in here!” someone shouts.

  “What is it?”

  Sharp claws slice through the vines where I’ve gotten myself tangled in a panic. A hand reaches in and grabs me by the back of the neck.

  “I’ve got it!” someone yells.

  “No!” I howl as I’m hauled from my hiding place onto the path. I look up into three faces bent over me. Their blades are raised. “Please don’t!” I scream and cover my head.

  The people gasp.

  “It’s her!” one says.

  “You sure?”

  “Who else could it be?”

  “Gaia will be thrilled.”

  They haul me to my feet. I writhe around and try to break free from their grip, but they have me tight.

  “Hey, calm down,” one of them says.

  I look into her face. She smiles cruelly.

  “Let me go!” I yell.

  “We won’t hurt you,” she says as they drag me toward the building. I hang my head in shame. I should have never fallen asleep because that blew my chance to save Basil and now we’re both in custody.

  When we get inside the building I hear him calling, “Apple! Apple, is it really you?”

  “Basil!” I yell back.

  He careens around a corner and rushes for me.

  The people let me go and I run into Basil’s arms. “I’m sorry,” I wail. “It’s my fault!”

  “You’re here! They found you!” He sounds relieved.

  I look up at him. “I didn’t mean for them to,” I tell him through my tears. “I was going to rescue you. Get us both out of here.” I cling to his shirt, which is brown and scratchy. “But I…”

  Basil holds me at arm’s length and laughs. This stops me cold. “No, don’t you see?” he asks me. “This is it, Apple. This is truly it!”

  “This is what?” I ask, looking around, angry at all the people who’ve gathered to watch our arrest.

  Basil smiles. “The Farm!” Then he hugs me tight. “We’re home. We made it.”

  Just as I’m trying to wrap my mind around what he’s saying, the crowd parts and in walks a woman wearing a pristine white jumpsuit cinched at the waist with a bright green belt under a long flowing blue robe the color of the sky. “Is this the girl?” she asks with her arms wide open.

  “Yes!” one of the women who found me says eagerly.

  Basil wraps his arm around my shoulder and presents me. “Gaia,” he says proudly, “this is Apple, er um, Thalia. This is Thalia.”

  “Oh my dear!” She glides toward me then wraps me in her embrace. She is soft and smells strongly of lavender, like the soap my grandmother uses. She takes my hands and steps back to get a good look at me. After studying me for a moment while I blink and blink, trying to understand what’s going on, she says in nearly a whisper, “You are beautiful.” I think I see a few tears glistening on her eyelashes. “Just lovely exactly as Basil said.” She pulls my hands to her mouth and kisses my knuckles. I feel myself blushing from all the attention, but still, I’m so bewildered that my head begins to throb.

  “We’ve been waiting for you and are so happy that you’re here,” she tells me. Then she hugs me tight again and says, “Welcome, darling. Welcome home!”

  PART 4

  THE FARM

  “A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.”

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  I shower in an outdoor stall with an open roof looking up into kudzu-covered trees. There’s a hand pump that draws icy water up from the ground into a bucket. I hesitate, wishing there was a way to warm it up, but I can’t be too picky. This is the first time in my life I’ve been dirty enough to actually need a shower, and to be honest, I kind of like the feeling. I go ahead and douse half the bracing-cold water over me then scrub with a thick cake of soap the same color as the kudzu leaves. When I’m clean, I find my underwear, damp but freshly washed, hanging on a peg in a little curtained area outside the shower. The shirt I took from Basil’s mom’s house is missing. In its place is a shapeless dress made of scratchy brown fabric that all the women except Gaia wear, plus woven sandals that feel good on my tender feet and help support my sore ankle, which is still a bit swollen and discolored.

  I’ve never cared much about what I wear, but I find it slightly embarrassing to leave the stall dressed in a sack. Yaz would die if she had to wear this. I think of the video she made from PlugIn 42 in her fuzzy purple jumpsuit, declaring herself the chronicler of the revolution. I wonder if she’s broadcast any more political PRCs?

  I search for my pouch but can’t find it anywhere. Hesitantly, I peek out from behind the curtain. The girl who’s been assigned to take care of me is about my age and hugely pregnant. She sits on a bench, swinging her feet, waiting.

  “Hi, um, do you know what happened to my stuff?” I ask her.

  “The shirt?”

  “Actually,”—I step out fully—“I’m looking for a little bag.” She blinks at me. “It’s red. Knit. About this big.” She shakes her head. “It’s really important to me.”

  “Was there something in it?”

  “No,” I admit, since I tossed my Gizmo into the never-ending kudzu. “It’s just that my grandmother made it for me and…”

  “Oh,” she says, completely unsympathetic. “All fabric gets recycled.”

  “But it was mine,” I say. She cocks her head as if that word is foreign and I get it. I’m acting like a privy. There is no mine here.

  Basil saunters up, looking like an old-fashioned mountain man in his earthy brown shirt and pants.

  “We match,” I say, pointing from my clothes to his.

  He smiles. “It’s great, isn’t it? No fashion slaves around here!”

  I can’t tell whether he’s being serious or sarcastic.

  “Ready?” the girl stands, seeming impatient to get on with her day.

  “For what?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer. Basil offers me his elbow since I’m still limping, but I hesitate. “Is that your good arm?”

  “It’s fine now,” he tells me. “How about you?”

  I roll my foot around slowly. “Still stiff and sore,” I admit. “But better than it was.” I take his arm to steady myself so we can follow the girl through the bustling clearing.

  Everyone we pass hauls big baskets of kudzu vines out of the woods or carries the stuff into the strange brown buildings that encircle the open area. Each building is an identical rectangle made of big blocks of dried vines, what my grandmother might call bales, that are stacked eight feet high under peaked roofs made of tightly woven mats. Even the kids, and there are a lot of them, are occupied in small groups. The littlest ones strip leaves from long vines, others sort the vines by size for the oldest kids, who smooth them with small knives then throw them into tubs of water to soak. Looking around, I’m beginning to suspect that everything here is made out of kudzu, including my itchy, ugly dress.

  “Over there are the fields where the farmers grow the crops,” the girl says, motioning vaguely toward the kudzu that grows fifty feet to our left beyond the buildings. “And on the other side is where the g
atherers go out into the woods to catalogue and collect what’s already growing naturally.” She tosses her hand in the general direction of the kudzu growing beyond the other side of the encampment. From the air this place must look like a bald patch with brown tufts in the midst of endless green.

  “Which are you?” I ask. “A farmer or a gatherer?”

  “Neither.” She steals a sideways glance at me. “I do domestic work for Gaia. Cook. Clean. Whatever she needs. Over there is the pump house and the latrines.” She points to three long narrow buildings along the edge of the clearing.

  “What’s a latrine?” I ask.

  “For when you have to relieve yourself,” she says.

  “You mean pee?”

  “Yes,” she says slowly, “and for when you start to, you know … defecate.”

  “Defecate?” I wrack my brain for the meaning of this word. “Ohhhh,” I say when it finally dawns on me. “Really?”

  Basil cracks up. He laughs so hard his cheeks get flushed.

  “Yes, really,” is all the girl says. She keeps walking, pointing at more identical buildings every ten feet. “That’s where the builders work. The seamstresses are in there. Weavers work in here.”

  “What’s that?” I hesitate near a larger, airier structure with big open windows beneath the roof.

  “Dining hall!” Basil grins at me. “It’s where everyone eats together.”

  “You mean meals?” I try to imagine sitting at a table passing food like Grandma Apple has described so many times. Basil nods. “And where’s the school?” I ask eagerly.

  The girl shakes her head. “Gaia says, ‘We learn through working.’”

  “What about the kids?” I ask. “How do they learn to read?”

  She half glances over her shoulder at me. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Well,” I tell her, “there’s a lot to learn, don’t you think?”

  She looks straight ahead again. “Gaia says, ‘Learn by doing not by asking.’”

  Her words sting and I get the point so I stop pestering her.

  When we come to a fork where two paths lead out of the clearing, I look back over my shoulder. The whole encampment—from the communal housing on the far end to the work buildings in the center and the dining hall at this end—is no more than a hundred feet wide and a half mile long. “It’s amazing how much is packed into this little area,” I say.

  “There’s more,” the girl says. “Down there are the harvest house and hospital.” She points to the right.

  “That’s an interesting combination,” I whisper to Basil.

  “Maybe they’ll have something for your leg,” he says.

  “And this way?” I point left.

  “That’s where Gaia lives,” she says. “Come.”

  She leads us to a building that’s different than all the others. This place looks like something from the photos of my grandparent’s farm, a proper old-fashioned house made of brick with real glass windows.

  “Does Gaia have a large family?” I ask since this place is bigger than every building but the dining hall.

  The girl considers this then says, “We are her family.”

  “But she gets this whole place to herself?” I get an unfamiliar twinge in my gut. Jealousy perhaps?

  “The dear doctor stays here when he visits.”

  “Who?”

  She hesitates with her hand on the front doorknob, but she doesn’t answer and I get the hint. I’m asking too many questions again.

  Inside, I stare wide-eyed and open-mouthed as we pass through a living room with high ceilings and plush furniture into a sunny room. “You can sit there.” She points to a long wooden table with benches on either side and one large, puffy chair covered in soft yellow fabric. Nothing here is made of kudzu. The girl pushes through swinging double doors at the far end. A puff of warm scented air escapes. The smell makes my stomach growl. I hunch over and cross my arms over my gut.

  Basil reaches out and massages my shoulder. “You don’t have to be embarrassed about that here.” He pulls out the bench for us. “You’re going to like this.”

  I wish I could be as relaxed as he is, but for some reason that I can’t pinpoint, I feel cagey.

  The girl comes through the doors again, this time carrying a tray with two steaming bowls. As she sets a bowl and spoon in front of each of us, I catch her staring sideways at me, but she quickly walks away before I can thank her.

  Just as I’m about to ask what’s in my bowl, Gaia bursts through the swinging doors, her long blue robe swirling behind. “Your first meal ever!” she announces and drapes herself across the puffy yellow chair. “Can you believe it?”

  I stare at the cloudy liquid, unsure what to say.

  “It’s a lovely kudzu broth,” Gaia tells me. “We have to start you with something simple. Let your digestive track learn to work with solid food. Plus, your palate isn’t very sophisticated because your whole life you’ve only known the sweet and slightly salty taste of synthetic nutrition.” She makes a face. “Ugh, horrid stuff, really. The world holds so many more flavors.” She beams at us. “And now that you’re here with me, I will give them to you! Dig in, before it gets cold.”

  I dunk my spoon in the bowl then slurp some of the broth.

  “What do you think?” Gaia asks.

  “Delicious!” says Basil, spooning more into his mouth.

  It doesn’t have much flavor as far as I can tell. Mostly like slurping warmer, saltier Synthamil, but I suppose if I had to fight for everything I’d ever eaten like Basil has, then having someone hand me a bowl of this stuff might seem amazing.

  “You’re taking to this life quite quickly,” Gaia says, watching us eat. “Many people who come here are scared at first. Most of them have been punished severely for ingesting anything other than Synthamil. It’s deeply engrained in them that real food will somehow hurt them. They resist or try to eat in secret for fear they’ll be breaking the law.”

  “Aren’t we, though?” I ask after taking another bite. “Breaking the law, I mean.”

  Gaia’s face hardens. “What law?”

  “UNPA,” I say. “The Universal Nutrition…”

  “The law of greed?” she says bitterly. “Of corporate oppression dictated by the cult of money? No thank you! Here we follow only the laws of Mother Nature.”

  Basil nods in agreement.

  “And One World doesn’t bother you?” I ask.

  Gaia tosses her head back and laughs long and hard. “One World would love to get their hands on me. I’m public enemy number one. They’ve been after me ever since I left.” She looks at us and raises an eyebrow provocatively. “In another life, I was an executive there, you know. When I left, I caused such an uproar.” She holds our gaze, letting this info sink in.

  Basil is rapt, but I have questions. I wonder if she knows my parents or Ahimsa and why I’ve never heard of her if she was a higher-up at OW, but then I think it might not be in my best interest to point out what a privy I am. “So One World doesn’t know you’re here?” I ask instead.

  Gaia raises her chin and grins knowingly. “Oh, you’re very smart, Dehlia.”

  “Thalia,” I say, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Do they know where I am or”—she smiles slyly—“do they keep their distance?” She holds my gaze long enough for me to feel uncomfortable. I look away and she keeps talking.

  “There was a time when I bought into the whole enterprise in the Loops. Like everyone else, I was sure One World held the answers to saving humankind as they claim. Of course, the mind-numbing drugs they pump you full of make it nearly impossible to break free from those beliefs so deeply entrenched from the time your umbilical cord is replaced with a network connection!” She snorts at her own joke. “Unless you’re very, very strong, like me. I could see through their lies. To me the truth was as transparent as that pane of glass.” She points to the large, deep-set window looking out into the lush kudzu forest. “I know what they�
��re up to,” she says, hunching closer to us. “And if I wanted to … I could destroy them!” She slams her hands on the table, making our spoons jump as she shouts.

  I lean far away, not sure if she’s crazy or kind of awesome.

  “Don’t be frightened, my love.” She says with a gentle chuckle. “I am here to protect you. Like a mother tiger—a large prowling cat—fierce in my devotion to my cubs. But you wouldn’t understand that animal instinct because you are not yet of nature. It will come, though. It will come.” She sits back and studies us. “You two are quite lucky. Do you know that?”

  “So lucky that you found us,” gushes Basil. “We could have been wandering around for weeks.…”

  “Yes, obviously, but beyond that,” Gaia says, waving away his gratitude. “Lucky that you found one another first.” She folds her hands and cocks her head to the right. “I watched the way you reunited. You are very attracted to one another, aren’t you?”

  Blood rushes to my cheeks and I look away.

  “Don’t be embarrassed! It’s perfectly normal to feel that way at your age. You’re supposed to have strong passions.” I peer up at her, cautiously hopeful, and see pity flash across her face then a kind smile. “I can see from your eyes that someone told you it was wrong to feel this way about another person. Or maybe about each other in particular? Someone tried to keep you two apart, didn’t they?”

  Basil and I look at each other, wondering how she could know so much about us.

  Gaia stands up and walks behind our chairs. She lays a hand on each of our shoulders. “But you two, against all odds, found each other. Star-crossed lovers, I think!” She leans between us. “Pyramus and Thisbe! Romeo and Juliet! Tristan and Isolde! Cathy and Heathcliffe!” she whispers these names from long-forgotten novels I’ve plucked off Grandma’s bookshelves. Gaia stands and slowly circles the table. “You two just might be the luckiest people in all the world. Who else could claim to fall in love naturally then run away and end up here where you can live freely, loving whomever you choose, starting a family, being part of the new world that I have created on the Farm? Who else?” She answers her own question in a grave whisper, “No one.”