Messenger

by Lowry, Lois

  “Do you want to put a paper down for him?” Leader asked, watching with amusement as the little thing scampered about the room.

  “No, he’s fine. He never has an accident. It was the first thing he learned.”

  Leader leaned back in his chair and stretched. “He’ll be good company for you, Matty, the way Branch was.

  “Do you know,” he went on, “in the place where I was a child, there were no dogs? No animals at all.”

  “No chickens? Or goats?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “What did you eat, then?” Matty asked.

  “We had fish. Lots of fish, from a hatchery. And plenty of vegetables. But no animal meat. And no pets at all. I never knew what it meant to have a pet. Or even to love something and be loved back.”

  His words made Matty think of Jean. He felt his face flush a little. “Did you never love a girl?” he asked.

  He thought Leader would laugh. But instead the young man’s face became reflective.

  “I had a sister,” Leader said, after a moment. “I think of her still, and hope she’s happy.”

  He picked up a pencil from the desk, twirled it in his fingers, and gazed through the window. His clear blue eyes seemed to be able to see great distances, even into the past, or perhaps the future.

  Matty hesitated. Then he explained, “I meant a girl. Not like a sister. But a—well, a girl.”

  Leader put the pencil down and smiled. “I understand what you mean. There was a girl once, long ago. I was younger than you, Matty, but I was at the age when such things begin.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She changed. And I did too.”

  “Sometimes I think I want nothing to change, ever,” Matty said with a sigh. Then he remembered what he had wanted to tell Leader.

  “Leader, I went to Trade Mart,” he said. “I hadn’t been before.”

  Leader shrugged. “I wish they’d vote to end it,” he said. “I never go anymore, but I did in the past. It seemed folly and time-wasting. Now it seems worse.”

  “It’s the only way to get something like a Gaming Machine.”

  Leader made a face. “A Gaming Machine,” he commented with disdain.

  “Well, I’d like one,” Matty grumbled. “But Seer says no.”

  The puppy wandered to a corner of the room, sniffed, made a circle of himself, collapsed, and fell asleep. Matty and Leader, together, watched it and smiled.

  “It isn’t just Gaming Machines and such.” Matty had wondered how to say it, how to describe it. Now, into the silence, as they watched the sleeping puppy, he found himself simply blurting it out. “Something else is happening at Trade Mart. People are changing, Leader. Mentor is.”

  “I’ve seen the changes in him,” Leader acknowledged. “What are you telling me, Matty?”

  “Mentor has traded away his deepest self,” Matty said, “and I think that others are, too.”

  Leader leaned forward and listened intently as Matty described what he had seen, what he suspected, and what he knew.

  ***

  “Leader gave me a name for him, but I don’t know if I like it.”

  Matty was back home by lunchtime, after delivering the last of the messages. The blind man was at the sink, washing some clothes.

  “And what is it?” he asked, turning toward Matty’s voice.

  “Frolic.”

  “Hmmmm. It has a nice sound to it. How does the puppy feel about it?”

  Matty lifted the puppy from where it had been riding, curled up inside his jacket. For most of the morning it had followed him, scampering at his heels, but eventually its short legs had tired, and Matty had carried it the rest of the way.

  The puppy blinked—he had been asleep in the jacket—and Matty set him on the floor.

  “Frolic?” Matty said, and the puppy looked up. His tail churned.

  “Sit, Frolic!” Matty said. The puppy sat instantly. He looked intently at Matty.

  “He did!” Matty told the blind man in delight.

  “Lie down, Frolic!”

  After a flicker of a pause, the puppy reluctantly sank to the floor and touched the rug with his small nose.

  “He knows his true name already!” Matty knelt beside the puppy and stroked the little head. “Good puppy,” he said. The big brown eyes gazed up at him and the spotted body, still sprawled obediently on the floor, quivered with affection.

  “Good Frolic,” Matty said.

  9

  There was much talk in Village about the coming meeting. Matty heard it everywhere, people arguing about the petition.

  By now, some of the latest group of new ones were out and about, their sores clearing up, their clothes clean and hair combed, frightened faces eased, and their haunted, desperate attitudes changing to something more serene. Their children played, now, with other children of Village, racing down the lanes and paths in games of tag and hide-and-seek. Watching them, Matty remembered his own child self, his bravado and the terrible anguish it had concealed. He had not believed anyone would want him, ever, until he came to Village, and even then he had not trusted in its kindness for a long time.

  With Frolic scampering at his heels, Matty made his way toward the marketplace to buy some bread.

  “Good morning!” he called cheerfully to a woman he encountered on the path. She was one of the new ones, and he remembered her from the recent welcome. Her eyes had been wide in her gaunt face that day. She was scarred, as if by untended wounds, and one arm was held crookedly, so that it was awkward for her to do things.

  But today she looked relaxed, and was making her unhurried way along the path. She smiled at Matty’s greeting.

  “Stop it, Frolic! Down!” Matty scolded his puppy, who had jumped to grab and tug at the frayed edge of the woman’s skirt. Grudgingly Frolic obeyed him.

  The woman leaned down to pat Frolic’s head. “It’s all right,” she said softly. “I had a dog once. I had to leave him behind.” She had a slight accent. Like so many of the people in Village, she had brought her way of speaking from her old place.

  “Are you settling in?”

  “Yes,” she told him. “People are kind. They’re patient with me. I’ve been injured, and I have to relearn some things. It will take time.”

  “Patience is important here, because we have so many in Village who have difficulties,” Matty explained. “My father…”

  He paused and corrected himself. “I mean the man I live with. He is called Seer. You’ve probably met him. He’s blind. He strides around everywhere on the paths without a problem. But when he first arrived and had just lost his eyes…”

  “I have a concern,” the woman said suddenly, and he knew it was not a concern about the condition of the paths or directions to the buildings. He could see that she was worried.

  “You can take any concern to Leader.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe you can answer. It’s about the closing of Village. I hear talk of a petition.”

  “But you’re already here!” Matty reassured her. “You needn’t worry! You’re part of us now. They won’t send you away, even if they close Village.”

  “I brought my boy with me. Vladik. He’s about your age. Maybe you’ve noticed him?”

  Matty shook his head. He hadn’t noticed the boy. There had been a large crowd of new ones. He wondered why the woman would be worried for her son. Perhaps he was having trouble adjusting to Village. Some new ones did. Matty himself had.

  “When I came,” he told her, “I was scared. Lonely, too, I think. And I behaved badly. I lied and stole. But look—now I am fine. I’m hoping to get my true name soon.”

  “No, no. My boy’s a good boy,” she said. “He doesn’t lie or steal. And he’s strong and eager. They have him working in the fields already. And soon he’ll go to school.”

  “Well, then, no need to worry about him.”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t worry about him. It’s my others. I brought Vladik but I had to leave my
other children behind. We came first, my boy and I, to find the way. It was such a long, hard trip.

  “The others are to come later. The little ones. My sister will bring them after I have made a place here.”

  Her voice faltered. “But now I hear people saying that the border will close. I don’t know what to do. I think maybe I should go back. Leave Vladik here, to make a life, and go back to my little ones.”

  Matty hesitated. He didn’t know what to say to her. Could she go back? She had been here only briefly, so it was not yet too late. Surely Forest would not entangle the poor woman yet. But if she did, what would she go back to? He didn’t know how the woman had been injured. But he knew that in some places—it had been true, too, in Matty’s old place—people were punished in terrible ways. He glanced at her scars, at her unset broken arm, and wondered if she had been stoned.

  Of course she wanted to bring her children to the safety of Village.

  “They’ll be voting tomorrow,” Matty explained. “You and I can’t vote because we don’t yet have our true names. But we can go and listen to the debate. We can speak if we want. And we can watch the vote.”

  He told her how to find the platform before which the people would gather. Using her good hand, the woman grasped Matty’s hands with a warm gesture of thanks as she turned away.

  At the market stall he bought a loaf of bread from Jean, who tucked a chrysanthemum blossom into the wrapping. She smiled at Frolic and leaned down to let him lick some crumbs from her fingers.

  “Are you going to the meeting tomorrow?” he asked her.

  “I suppose so. It’s all my father talks about.” Jean sighed and began to rearrange her wares on the table.

  “Once it was books and poetry,” she said with sudden and passionate anguish. “I remember when I was small, after my mother died, he would tell me stories and recite poems at dinner. Then, later, he told me about the people who had written them.

  “By the time we studied it in school—you remember, Matty, studying literature?—it was all so familiar to me, because of the way he had taught me when I didn’t even know he was teaching.”

  Matty remembered. “He used different voices. Remember Lady Macbeth? ‘Out, damn’d spot! Out, I say!’” He tried to repeat the lines with the sinister yet regal voice Mentor had used.

  Jean laughed. “And Macduff! I cried when my father recited Macduff’s speech about the deaths of his wife and children.”

  Matty remembered that speech as well. Standing by the bakery stall with Frolic scampering about at their feet, Matty and Jean recited the lines together.

  All my pretty ones?

  Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?

  What! all my pretty chickens and their dam

  At one fell swoop?…

  I cannot but remember such things were,

  That were most precious to me.

  Then Jean turned away. She continued restacking the loaves on her table, but clearly her thoughts were someplace else. Finally she looked up at Matty and said in a puzzled voice, “It was so important to him, and he made it important to me: poetry, and language, and how we use it to remind ourselves of how our lives should be lived…”

  Then her tone changed and became embittered. “Now he talks of nothing but Stocktender’s widow, and of closing Village to new ones. What has happened to my father?”

  Matty shook his head. He did not know the answer.

  The recitation of Macduff’s famous speech had reminded him of the woman he had spoken to on the path, the woman who feared for her lost children’s future. All my pretty ones.

  Suddenly he felt that they were all of them doomed.

  He had forgotten completely about his own power. He had forgotten the frog.

  10

  The meeting to discuss and vote on the petition began in the orderly, careful way such meetings had always been handled. Leader stood on the platform, read the petition in his strong, clear voice, and opened the meeting to debate. One by one the people of Village stood and gave their opinions.

  The new ones had come. Matty could see the woman he had met on the path, standing beside a tall, light-haired boy who must be Vladik. The two were with a group of new ones who had a place apart, since they could not vote.

  Small children, bored, played along the edge of the pine grove. Matty had once been like them, when he was new here and hadn’t liked meetings or debates. But now he stood with Seer and the other adults. He paid attention. He had not even brought Frolic, who usually accompanied Matty everywhere. Today the puppy was left at home, whimpering behind the closed door as they walked away.

  It was frighteningly obvious now, with the population gathered, that something terrible was happening. At Trade Mart it had been evening, dark, and Matty had been so interested in the proceedings that he had not noticed many individuals, only those who went to the platform, like Mentor, and the woman who had been so oddly cruel to her husband as they started home.

  Now, though, it was bright daylight. Matty was able to watch everyone, and to his horror he could see the changes.

  Near him stood his friend Ramon, with his parents and younger sister. It was Ramon’s mother who had asked to trade for a fur jacket and been denied. But they had had a Gaming Machine for quite a while, and so a trade had been made in the past. Matty looked carefully at his friend’s family. He had not seen Ramon since the day recently when he had suggested a fishing expedition and been told that Ramon was not well.

  Ramon glanced at Matty and smiled. But Matty held his breath for a moment, dismayed to see that indeed his friend was ill. Ramon’s face was no longer tanned and rosy-cheeked but instead seemed thin and gray. Beside him, his little sister seemed sick, too; her eyes were sunken and Matty could hear her cough.

  Once, he knew, her mother would have leaned down to tend the little girl at the sound of such a cough. Now, while Matty watched, the woman simply shook the child roughly by a shoulder and said, “Shhhh.”

  One by one the people spoke, and one by one Matty identified those who had traded. Some of those who had been among the most industrious, the kindest, and the most stalwart citizens of Village now went to the platform and shouted out their wish that the border be closed so that “we” (Matty shuddered at the use of “we”) would not have to share the resources anymore.

  We need all the fish for ourselves.

  Our school is not big enough to teach their children, too; only our own.

  They can’t even speak right. We can’t understand them.

  They have too many needs. We don’t want to take care of them.

  And finally: We’ve done it long enough.

  Now and then a lone citizen, untouched by trade, would go to the platform and try to speak. They spoke of the history of Village, how each of them there had fled poverty and cruelty and been welcomed at this new place that had taken them in.

  The blind man spoke eloquently of the day he had been brought here half dead and been tended for months by the people of Village until, though he was still without sight, it had become his true home. Matty had been wondering whether he, too, would go up and speak. He wanted to, for surely Village had also become his true home, and saved him, but he felt a little shy. Then he heard the blind man begin to speak on his behalf:

  “My boy came here six years ago as a child. Many of you remember the Matty he was then. He fought and swore and stole.”

  Matty liked the sound of the phrase “my boy,” which he had never heard the blind man use before. But he was embarrassed to see people turn and look at him.

  “Village changed him and made him what he is now,” the blind man said. “He will receive his true name soon.”

  For a moment Matty hoped that Leader, who was still standing on the platform, would hold up his hand to call for silence, would call Matty, place his hand on Matty’s forehead, then announce the true name. It happened that way, sometimes.

  Messenger. Matty held his breath, hoping for that.

  But instead
he heard another voice, not Leader’s.

  “I remember what he was like! If we close the border, we won’t have to do that anymore! We won’t have to deal with thieves and braggarts and people who have lice in their hair, the way Matty did then, when he came!”

  Matty turned to look. It was a woman. He was stunned, as if someone had slapped him. It was his own neighbor, the very woman who had made clothes for him when he came. He remembered standing there in his rags while she measured him and then put on her thimble to stitch the clothing for him. She had a soft voice then, and talked gently to him while she sewed.

  Now she had a sewing machine, a very fancy one, and bolts of fabric with which she created fine clothing. Now the blind man stitched the simple things that he and Matty needed.

  So she, too, had traded, and was turning not only on him, but on all new ones.

  Her voice incited others, and now large numbers of people were calling out, “Close Village! Close the border!”

  Matty had never seen Leader look so sad.

  ***

  When it was over, and the vote to close Village had been finalized, Matty trudged home beside the blind man. At first they were silent. There was nothing to be said. Their world had changed now.

  After a bit Matty tried to talk, to be cheerful, to make the best of things.

  “I suppose he’ll send me out now to all the other villages and communities with the message. I’ll be doing a lot of traveling. I’m glad it isn’t winter yet. It’s hard in snow.”

  “He came in snow,” the blind man said. “He knows what it’s like.”

  Matty wondered for a moment what he was talking about. Who? Oh yes, he thought. The little sled.

  “Leader knows better than anyone about things,” Matty remarked. “And he’s still younger than many.”

  “He sees beyond,” Seer said.

  “What?”

  “He has a special gift. Some people do. Leader sees beyond.”

  Matty was startled. He had noticed the quality of Leader’s pale blue eyes, how they seemed to have a kind of vision most people didn’t have. But he had not heard it described that way before.