The XY

by Virginia Bergin

  “Code of Honor, this will help” is what I say.

  He snorts, scoffing, like I’m making some kind of joke—but he doesn’t move, so I rub those super-furry legs with the leaf. I can’t even tell whether he’s so scared and tense his legs would always feel like that, or whether that’s what stupid amounts of running do, but his muscles—they’re rigid, rocklike, and the whole of his legs feel unnaturally lean. They feel wrong. Maybe it’s because he’s not eating properly, or maybe this is the way XYs are. Only Kate would know.

  “Better?” I ask him when I’m done rubbing.

  “Little bit,” he says in a strained, anxious, weird voice.

  It really is like dealing with a littler one.

  “Don’t focus on it,” I advise, wondering if there’s calamine lotion at the granmummas, because those reaction bumps on his skin really do look pretty terrible, the worst I’ve ever seen. “And avoid these plants,” I instruct, pointing at a nettle.

  We have just got to get home. I speed up; he yelps at fresh nettle stings, and I ignore it and try to distract him, the same way I would do with a littler one who was bothered by something that will be okay and can’t be helped:

  “That’s Lenny’s farm,” I tell him.

  “A farm!”

  “And this is where we grow vegetables and other things.” I really don’t want to talk about the polytunnel full of marijuana and chilies right now.

  He peers over the hedge at the wrecked field. Pretty much anything edible H&R and their helicopter didn’t mash has been plundered for the harvest supper. “You eat that stuff?”

  “Yes—I mean, no. That’s just what’s left. It’s the end of the season, isn’t it?”

  He shrugs.

  “Over there’s the school,” I tell him as we zigzag, him jumping over nettles behind me like, like…a deer leaping, springy and scared.

  “That’s the church.” I point at the tower.

  He stops leaping for a moment.

  “A house of God,” he says.

  I forgot about him being religious.

  “Yeah, sure. We try to take care of it. I mean, a little. The roof’s falling in. Lenny still uses it for storage and stuff, but there’s a terrible damp problem, and we…just haven’t got the resources. People come first, don’t they?”

  He nods. I am not convinced he’s being anything other than polite, but he doesn’t even know what “polite” means, does he?

  I’ve got no time to dwell on it. In my mind, I’ve calculated and made a decision. We’ll cut back into the village past the granmummas’ house—quicker that way, and even if any of them are up (they might be—even apple brandy doesn’t always knock them out), they’re not going to say a word to anyone but Kate, are they, about me and the XY sneaking home?

  “This is where most of the granmummas live,” I tell him as we hurry past.

  “The old ones?”

  “Mmm-hmm. They…prefer their own company. We sort of speak a different language, I guess. They grew up in the once-was.”

  “The once-was…”

  Never really thought about how to define it. It’s just the past, isn’t it?

  “The time when men and boys were around.”

  “We’re still around.”

  “You know what I mean. Around around. Living outside the Sanctuaries. What do you call that time?”

  “I don’t.”

  “No, come on. You must call it something.”

  “I don’t. We don’t.”

  “But…who do you think… I mean, how do you think… So you’re in your Sanctuary—”

  “Unit.”

  “What did you think was happening in the rest of the world?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ‘think.’ It’s…whatever, isn’t it? No one thinks about that kind of stuff.”

  “But, seriously, what did you think was happening…out here?”

  “I dunno. She-wolves…plotting.”

  “Plotting to what?”

  “Rape us. Kill us.”

  I turn, I stare him straight in his furry face, and I tell him: “Maybe you need to rethink that. On the basis of the evidence. Maybe you also need to think about how come the Sanctuaries even exist. Where do your supplies come from? Your food? Your electricity? Your clothes? Ev-er-y-thing?”

  “We got food factories. My clothes is just from the warehouse. We got supplies. We got everything! And when I run, I make electricity. I make power.”

  “Power? I’ve hooked you up; your running machine is hooked up. Wanna know how much power you’re making?”

  He shakes his head, and I tell him anyway.

  “Not even enough to run a light bulb.”

  “I’ve been lied to about stuff,” he says. “Seems I have.”

  I feel bad immediately. I check my feelings—I’m not scared of him, at least not quite like I was. The little parts I get to know and see, it gets harder and harder to be scared. He is clueless and afraid. All he has over me now is, I suppose, physical strength and speed—and I’m not even sure of that. For all his weird muscles, he’s skinny, he’s been sick, and he hasn’t been eating right. It’s another thing I’ll have to ask Kate about. It’s so hazy in my mind, the community studies lessons I dozed through, dreaming instead about what me and Plat were going to do. How—exactly—did XYs dominate the once-was? Were they all super-fit and scary?

  “This is the Memory Garden,” I tell him.

  It is a mini-arboretum of trees, beautiful, now-dying flowers planted all around. Some trees old, some newer, all hung with cards and messages and bows and yet more flowers (dead and living; real and fake) and chimes and the things the granmummas leave. They hang books—once-was stories about boys stranded on islands, boys who were wizards, magical creatures on great quests. They hang objects: there’s a little, black, flame-painted bike; a skateboard; tiny tennis shoes; bigger tennis shoes; hoodies; T-shirts; jeans; DVDs; and condoms. Oh, and they hang home-grown marijuana joints there too, alongside ancient cans of beer—or sometimes just the plastic that held the cans, the plastic that will take a thousand years to die. And I know now what that black, dangling lump is—a game box.

  He’s looking at it all. He’s not speaking.

  “People plant a tree here when they’ve given birth to a son.”

  He just stares.

  “And then they decorate the trees,” I say to fill the silence of his staring. I am suddenly uneasy. I feel as though I might have made a very terrible mistake, because what would that feel like? To never know who your mumma was? “And, on the boy’s birthday, we bring cake and have a little party.”

  “On January the first…”

  “That’s your birthday, isn’t it?”

  “It’s everyone’s birthday,” he says.

  “It’s not mine. Mine’s November the second.”

  “I was born on January first, same as every boy.”

  “Mason…I don’t think that’s true. I mean, maybe you were born on the first of January, but… Look. That’s Aidan’s tree. He was born in November—a hornbeam for the berries. Nathan, born in December, so…holly. That’s Luke’s—September, evergreen oak. Then there’s Finlay, July—so the horse chestnut, for luxuriant shade. Stanley-Tiger, August—Davidia involucrata, ghost tree.”

  The ghost tree has already lost its leaves, as though it had anticipated this wild-weather autumn. It is pure shape. It is a beautiful shape. And behind it, the tree Kate planted for Jaylen: a silver birch. The first one died, but you can still see the stump; the next one to be planted is very old now too but hanging on.

  “Does my…mumma—would my mumma have a tree like this for me?”

  It was mainly the granmummas who planted trees. The mummas’ generation, they tend not to.

  “She might do, yes. I mean…even if there wasn’t a tree, I know fo
r sure your mumma would remember you.”

  I meant to make things better. I feel as though I have made things worse.

  He is rooted to the spot, staring at those trees.

  “Let’s go home,” I whisper, and he nods, but he doesn’t move, so I take him by the arm and I turn him around. I steer him down the lane and—

  I STOP BEFORE HE DOES. NO. NO. NO.

  It’s like he’s in some kind of dream state, so I actually have to pull him to get him to stop. And he looks around at me like he’s just remembered I’m there, and he looks at where I am looking—and I feel fright surge through him, so I take his hand to hold him still, and I hiss, “RELAX!”

  An apparition is skipping toward us, puddle jumping. Not jumping over puddles, but—SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLASH!—into them. It’s Sweet. It would be Sweet! Of course, my heart groans, It’s Sweet… In self-constructed, garishly painted papier-mâché butterfly wings; her face adorned with autumn leaves stuck on with smears of mud; ancient, way-too-big, red rubber boots on her feet, and she is clutching an enormous bright-yellow chicken-of-the-woods fungus.

  There is no place to run. No place to hide. And no time to speak before—

  “I’ve got a chicken!” she announces, splashing up to us. “You’re hairy. Who are you?”

  “Courtesy!” I try—desperately. “This is…my cousin…the cousin of my cousin. I don’t even know what you’re doing up at this time, but—”

  “It’s not my fault! It’s the storm’s fault! It woke me up!”

  Concern of a new kind rips through my existing troubles like a…like a bolt of lightning. “Sweet! You didn’t go out in the storm, did you? You know you shouldn’t do that! It’s dangerous!”

  She studies me for a second. “That’s why I went into the woods,” she says. “It’s safer! Don’t you know anything about lightning?! When the kz-kz-kz-kaboom happens, it’ll just get the trees because they’re taller. I wasn’t scared! You are very hairy. You’re the hairiest person I ever met.”

  “You’re the weirdest thing I ever met,” the boy growls before I can stop him.

  “Have you got a sore throat?” Sweet asks. “I had a sore throat once. You have to tell the granmummas.”

  “We will. We’ve got to go now,” I hear myself saying. I squeeze the boy’s hand and I feel him squeeze back—not hard, like I did, but a frightened pulse of acknowledgment. And I draw him on, down the lane, Sweet dancing around us, puddle splashing.

  “My throat was SO sore I couldn’t even speak, and when I did it came out ruh-ruh-ruh just like you!”

  “You shouldn’t go out in storms…and you should take the chicken to Willow,” I say over my shoulder, casually and with grimly retrieved normality. “She’s the best at cooking them.”

  “Yes,” says Sweet, puddle splashing past us, “but I want to see the hairy girl.”

  “Well, you can’t,” I snap, “because…she…is poorly. Go. Go on—go.”

  Sweet assesses the situation. She assesses the fierceness in my eyes.

  “You know I said I liked you a little?” she tells me. “It’s not that much.”

  “Go!”

  She shrugs, puddle splashes back down the lane.

  “I’m not allowed outside in my bathrobe!” she cries. “And how come she gets to wear the dead-boy shoes?!”

  I do what I suppose people did for centuries. I cast my eyes up to the sky. It is so much bigger than us and so very amazing. It is no wonder people thought there had to be a God. And it is no wonder people thought God would live right there, in the sky. I look up and I see…

  THE DREAMBIRD.

  Chapter 20

  Dreambird

  Stress makes you deaf. That’s my conclusion.

  It makes you deaf temporarily, but it does not make you blind. The second I clap eyes on that beautiful aircraft sailing in, I hear it too. EASING POWER! DESCENDING! DESCENDING!

  “River?” I vaguely hear Mason say.

  DESCENDING! DREAMBIRD DESCENDING!

  Designed in India. Chinese aluminum. Japanese tech. Revolutionary fuel-economic engines. Lower-speed maneuverability. The first supersonic plane to be built in…OVER A HUNDRED YEARS?!

  I sky-gawp.

  DREAMBIRD. DESCENDING. DESCENDING. DESCENDING.

  Only one place it could be going.

  I sigh at the sky, my heart soaring high as that plane.

  “I don’t like planes,” Mason mutters.

  I tune back in. “What would you know?” I snap. Gotta ditch him. Gotta go.

  I drag him by the hand the rest of the way up the lane. Mumma and Kate, all snaggle-sleepy haired and frantic looking are coming out of our door. Who cares?

  “Sweet saw us,” I say, releasing the boy’s hand, releasing him into their care. “She’ll say something; she’s bound to. Told her she’s my cousin’s cousin, and she’s poorly—sore throat. I’ve got to go—”

  Kate opens her mouth to say whatever. I can’t do this right now.

  “It’s the Dreambird! Did you see it?!”

  My mumma opens her mouth too.

  “Just tell them everything,” I urge Mason. “Tell them. About Sweet, about the lies. Tell them!”

  His face twists in fear and confusion, and I do not have time to make it right.

  I do not. I’m gone. I race back up the lane.

  “Back A-S-A-P!” I shout, already wondering if there’s enough fuel in my bike to get us to the training airport.

  “Pj’s!” Mumma shouts.

  True. Drat. True. Drat. I’m tempted to ignore it, but…

  I race back down the lane, straight into the house and up to MY room. I’m midchange—i.e., naked—when Kate, Mumma and the boy come in.

  “Put some goddamn clothes on!” Kate shrieks, pulling the gawping boy out of the room.

  “I am!”

  I am too. I’m dressed in seconds, ignoring Kate telling me we need to talk and Mumma telling me to just hold on a moment.

  “It’s the Dreambird.” I speak into their faces as I come out of the room. I know Mumma will know how important this is, and not just because I’ve gone on about it in the past, but because it’s such an international BIG DEAL. Kate? She’ll have heard, but it will have bored her. She won’t have cared enough to register: DREAMBIRD. Both cases: whatever they’ve got to say, I don’t want to hear it. And as for the harvest-supper preparation? It’s too bad. There is always a terrible mess afterward anyway, so I’ll work extra hard on the cleanup.

  “Later,” I hear the boy say as I clatter down the stairs to grab my backpack.

  Five minutes later, I crash into Lenny’s barn and grab my scrambler.

  “Given up on the running then?” Lenny shouts with a huge grin on her face as I fire my bike up. Lenny is the one person in my life who will absolutely understand this. We both adore machines.

  “Dreambird!” I shout, and speed on out of there, scattering chickens.

  • • •

  It is so good to be on my bike. I’d forgotten how good it was. You get a certain amount of freedom to ride when you’ve first built your machine. Then, after that, you’re fuel rationed, unless it’s a journey you need to make. And I need to make this journey; Yaz and Yukiko will back me up if it comes to it. This is for my education, and my education is for the good of everyone—a fact I try to not let add to the pressure to do well that already haunts me.

  I take the main road. Through the woods would be quicker, but that route is hardly repaired at all—there’s not enough justification for it. And although it’d probably be fine, and fun, on a normal day, to be dodging road ripples and potholes at speed, I cannot risk a prang. That’s a Kate word that, as far as I can tell, covers anything from a bit of a dent to a total write-off (if she’s driving). So I’m main road all the way. A scrambler’s not built for pure speed, but my bike
is loving the road, and so am I. For the first time since the boy arrived, I feel FREE.

  • • •

  “No admittance.”

  I almost can’t believe I’m hearing the words. Not just because I need to see this aircraft so badly my whole body is burning—flaming!—with feverish, passionate desire, but because, well, I mean, who says that to anyone about anything?

  “No admittance,” says the H&R person inside the gate. We couldn’t shake hands and kiss cheeks as courtesy demands because there is a massive fence between us, so we just touched palms through the chain link as we greeted each other, me saying, in huge excitement, “Hi! I’ve come to see the Dreambird!”

  She saying what she said: “No admittance.”

  Stunned and hurting and longing, I try EVERY plea I can think of:

  “But that’s the Dreambird!”

  “I’m studying aeronautical engineering!”

  “But this is the training airport!”

  “I’ve been here lots of times before!”

  “I’m going to work here!”

  “I just rode 120 miles to get here!”

  “I’m out of fuel! I had to push my bike the last several miles!”

  “But…please, that’s the Dreambird!”

  Each results in the same answer—“No admittance”—until I hit on:

  “My mumma said it would be okay.”

  “No admittance.”

  “My mumma is the southwest rep on the National Council.”

  The H&R person walks away from the fence. I feel wrong in myself for having “played the mumma card” as Kate would say, but my yearning to get close to that incredible machine is too great. I can see it less than a couple of miles away, parked outside a hangar, and already, with every plea, I have looked and seen how that hangar is fenced off from every side. I WILL find a way in…though perhaps I won’t have to. The H&R person makes one radio call after another, with people calling her back.

  The H&R person walks back to the fence.

  My heart is singing!

  “No admittance,” she says.

  My jaw drops.

  “That’s the final word on it,” she says. “It has been Agreed.”