Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART ONE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
PART TWO
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
PART THREE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
FIFTY-NINE
PART FOUR
SIXTY
SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO
SIXTY-THREE
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Pucker
RAZORBILL
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group
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Copyright 2006 © Melanie Gideon
eISBN : 978-1-440-67850-9
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FOR BENJAMIN H. REWIS
PART ONE
ONE
LET ME SAY THIS RIGHT up front: this is not a story about kissing, or wrinkles, or things that are sour. It’s a story about redemption. I suppose all stories are, and if they’re not, well, then they should be. For what else do we have in the end—but hope?
I walk into my mother’s room and try not to breathe. The air smells stale and musty, like cardboard boxes. She hates it when I assume she needs assistance, so I stand there like some sort of teenage butler with a tray in my hands. Lately she’s been complaining that all her joints ache like somebody reassembled her bones while she slept. I inch forward and she holds up her palm, warding me away. Chronic pain, like undressing or going to the bathroom, is a private matter. Finally she manages to prop herself up. She pats the blanket, signaling that she’s ready for her breakfast, and I slide the tray across her lap.
I know what she’s thinking: eggs again. It’s hard to come up with new ideas when I’ve been preparing my mother breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day since I turned eleven.
“There was another crank call last night,” she says. She carefully separates the white of the egg from the yolk. “They asked for Pucker.”
I shrug. The name isn’t news to me.
“Why do you let them call you that?”
She’s not inquiring; she’s accusing me, as if I have some say in what my classmates have nicknamed me.
“Because it’s true,” I say.
I’m a burn victim. My scars are primarily on my face. My skin is either unnaturally smooth or, yes, puckered. It’s the best the plastic surgeons can do, this face that I have finally arrived at.
“Do you want to know the etymology of Pucker?” I ask. This is a rhetorical question; I’m sure she doesn’t, but I feel a need to dig at her.
Well, first let’s get the obvious out of the way—yes, I know what it rhymes with. It comes from the Old English pouke: variations poake, puckle, and pug. Alternately described as a fairy, a goblin, a brownie, or an elf. I don’t attach myself to any of these. Too effeminate, except for the goblin. What I take from the definition is that I’m a shape-shifter. And it’s true: I shift shapes all the time. Look, here’s me being a parent. And here’s me hiding underneath my Shoei helmet, pretending to be a strapping young man, and here’s me in the mirror, a seventeen-year-old with the face of a wizened geriatric.
Suddenly I realize my mother’s gotten dressed. She’s wearing a red sweater instead of her usual quilted housecoat. She’s also made a crude attempt at fixing herself up, but a sizable chunk of hair juts out from her head like a corkscrew. Her pathetic effort worries me. I flip the light switch so I can see her better.
“No,” she barks, shielding her eyes. I quickly turn it off, but not before I’ve gotten a look at her face. She’s wearing makeup.
“Are you going somewhere?” My mother hasn’t left the house in over seven years.
“No, but I’m hoping you are,” she says.
She picks at her breakfast in silence and I don’t force the conversation. This isn’t unusual. In some homes silence can be a killing thing, a murderous and bloody weapon. In our house silence is a lodger, a permanent guest: well behaved, never eating more than his share, but always lurking nearby.
“I’ll be dead in less than a month,” she says a few minutes later. “If I’m to live, you’ve got to go back to Isaura and find my skin.”
TWO
GO BACK TO ISAURA—SHE might as well have told me to walk to the North Pole and find Santa Claus.
Isaura. It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? A tiny country nestled between Armenia and Turkey? An island in the Caspian Sea? I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that. Isaura is not a country: it’s another world. Well, more like a pocket of a world.
Think of Earth as an old dog. Despite its age, the dog is vibrant and healthy. Yet on its flanks and belly there are all sorts
of lumps and growths that come from being billions of years old. The lumps are benign and cause the dog no pain. In fact, the dog is unaware of their presence, much in the same way it would be unaware if a tick were embedded in the soft flesh behind its ear. But these lumps and growths are much more than fatty deposits. They are, in fact, parallel realities. Isaura, where my mother and I come from, is one of these growths.
A few hundred years ago you might not have been able to tell the two realities apart. Both were on the same trajectory, advancing at similar rates. Back then there were portals between Isaura and Earth—actually, between Isaura and various points on the North American continent—but the traveling was strictly one-way. Isaurians came and went as they pleased. North Americans had no clue that Earth had a doppelganger; a sister world clinging to theirs like a parasite.
Isaurian scholars learned many things from their travels to Earth, the main lesson being that there was little difference between the inhabitants of the two worlds except for one thing: some Isaurians could see into the future.
Before the Great War, this ability to see into the future was nothing special; in fact, it was seen as a disability. Only a small percentage of Isaurians were Seers, and most of them tried never to use their powers because it made them outsiders, privy to things they had no right to know. Unfortunately for them, there was no hiding their identities, because when they were teenagers, all Seers grew second skins, golden-tinged, translucent ones.
It was only a matter of time before somebody realized that there was a profit to be made off the Seers. Soon the wealthiest of Isaurians put the Seers to work and with their help increased the size of their fortunes. Within fifty years’ time a wide chasm had grown between those who could afford the services of the Seers and those who could not, and one night a mob of angry farmers massacred a group of Seers while they were sleeping in their beds. It was the beginning of the Great War.
Casting about for someone to blame for this horrific act, Isaurians pointed the finger at Earth, particularly America. It was easy to believe our host had poisoned us. American society focused solely on the future and measured success by the attainment of material possessions. It was America’s ambition and hunger that swept through the portals and infected us all.
The portals were immediately shut. But even then, the barbarity went on, and, really, we had nobody to blame but ourselves after that. Soon, instead of killing the Seers, a far more sadistic form of torture was concocted. The Seers were flayed of their second skins and the skins were cut up and sold. It was said that whoever got a piece of a stolen Seer skin would be able to see the future. The wretched Seers who were stripped of their skins lost their sight forever—and their lives, too, more often than not.
In response, the Ministry was formed, an agency that dedicated itself to protecting the surviving Seers and distributing knowledge of the future equally to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. Now everything would be predicted and nothing would be left to chance. From weather to crops, from marriages to friendships, illnesses, even talents—it would all be forecast. Crops would never fail, children wouldn’t get caught in the rain, nobody would ever enter into a relationship that wouldn’t stand the test of time, and it was in this way that peace once again came to Isaura.
It was this way for 152 years. Until the day the horror started all over again . . .
THREE
BARKER’S JUVENILE PRIMER NO. 3
Containing pertinent moral and historical lessons
for the edification and improvement
of all Isaurian children
I STARED AT THE BOOK with a mixture of hate and fascination. This was my anchor and my touchstone, this brown leather-bound book that was issued to every Isaurian child at birth. Every hour of every day, if you walked down any street or eavesdropped on any conversation, you would hear mothers and fathers saying to their children, “Look it up in Barker’s.”
Barker’s was the third parent in every Isaurian household. Parents adored it, for it saved them endless hours of explanation. Children hated it, for they disliked nothing more than being told to go look something up when what they expressly wanted was a quick answer. But at eight years old I was well acquainted with Mr. Barker and his juvenile primer.
I snapped open the spine of the book and riffled through it quickly. I already knew some of the pages by heart. Page two was the first thing Isaurian children had to memorize. I could have recited it underwater, standing on one foot, even while doing arithmetic.
THE OBEDIENT CHILD
1. He comes along without being told.
2. He is strong of limb. He has a hearty appetite, but he does not take the last chicken leg left on the platter.
3. He is never without his Barker’s.
4. He does not commune with the Changed.
5. His hands are washed, his teeth brushed, his hair combed, and his clothing clean before he enters the Ministry each morning.
6. He is quiet at all times in the Ministry, especially while his future is being read.
7. He strives at all times to be impartial.
8. He is thrifty in all matters.
9. He is prepared.
I was unprepared when my mother entered the kitchen. It was early Saturday morning and the sun wasn’t even up; the world was mine and mine alone. I wouldn’t have known she was there if it hadn’t been for her lemony smell floating into the room. My mother glanced over my shoulder and gave a disapproving shake of her head when she saw I was reading Barker’s.
“Out—it’s a beautiful day,” she said.
“It’s still dark,” I said.
She had a distracted and faraway look on her face, as if she couldn’t be bothered with things like sunrise.
I tapped the page with my finger to show her what I was studying.
“Obedient children are boring children,” she remarked.
She was holding a bowl full of plums. This afternoon Cook would make a cobbler from those plums, for every Saturday night we had company—a group of my parents’ fellow Seers came to our house. When the Seers came, I was sent to my room. I tried to eavesdrop, but the walls were too thick. I loved Saturday nights because I was allowed to stay up late. As long as I didn’t disrupt their dinner, I could do whatever I wanted.
“You have one hour. You need to wash,” my mother began.
“His hands are washed, his teeth brushed, his hair combed, and his clothing clean before he enters the Ministry each morning,” I recited.
It seemed to displease my mother that I had committed “The Obedient Child” to memory. She frowned and left the room.
I thought my mother, Serena, was the most beautiful Seer in all of Isaura and my father, William, the handsomest. Their Seerskins made them glisten and sparkle, as if there were hundreds of tiny stars sewn into their flesh. I couldn’t keep from touching them, trying to figure out how their skins were attached; was there a seam somewhere? Most of the time they pushed me away. I was too old for this kind of behavior, and in Isaura showing affection in public or in private was frowned on.
I also think my parents didn’t want me to feel bad. They didn’t want me to focus on the fact that I was an ordinary little boy. The children of Seers had better-than-average chances of becoming Seers themselves, but I had displayed none of the early signs of prophesy. I made grand predictions and pronouncements all the time, but more often than not I was wrong. It was becoming clear to everybody that I had inherited none of my parents’ gifts. Still, that did not diminish my fascination with all things related to Seers. If anything, it increased it.
I turned to page 52 in my Barker’s. With my finger I traced the caption under the woodcut: Seer flayed of his skin.
I had spent hours examining this illustration. It was a battleground scene that had taken place during the Great War. Dozens of Seers, newly flayed of their skins, lay sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath, their limbs contorted into grotesque positions. In the background men in ragged clothes were climbing u
p into the hills. From their pitchforks dangled the Seers’ limp skins.
My mother gasped. Once again I had no idea she had come back into the kitchen. She snatched the book away from me. She was weeping.
I had never, not once in my life, seen her cry. Nor had I ever cried myself, at least not since I was an infant. The Obedient Child never emoted. If he did, his parents would have to turn him in to the Ministry, for this would be the end of our civilization. That’s what every schoolchild thought. Emotion, specifically envy, was what had started the Great War. But there was no need for envy any longer because everybody in Isaura got the same thing. Jealousy had no place in a society where everybody was safeguarded from misfortune.
My mother grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me brutally—so hard I began to cry.
“Wake up!” she shouted.
I had no idea what she was talking about. I clawed at her, trying to get her off me.
My father ran into the room. “Serena!”
My mother stared at me like she had no idea who I was and abruptly let go. I ran to my father.
“That’s good, Thomas,” my father said slowly. He looked at my mother, stunned at my show of emotion and hers. “Let it out,” he told me in the same awkward tone of voice he might have used if I were throwing up.
I was bewildered. I had no idea what was going on, but whatever was happening, it was happening to all three of us. It was as if that flayed Seer from my book had jumped out of the pages and into our kitchen and contaminated us all. After the Great War they’d had to build asylums to house the Seers whose skins had been stolen. The Seers couldn’t see the future anymore and it had driven them mad. It was said their madness was contagious.
My mother wiped her tearstained cheeks with her fingers and extended her hand to my father, showing him the wetness. “Look, Will,” she said, her voice trembling.
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