I swear under my breath. Lydia can’t be messing with folks like that. “Get ready to go,” I tell him. “I be right back.”
I walk past the nods of ABs guarding the entrance to the market. These fools got tattoos, too, so you know they all La Bête’s people. Most folks ain’t dumb enough to risk blood poisoning or tetanus by sticking theyselves with a needle. But La Bête’s tribe be big, strong, and crazy. At least today they here to keep the peace.
The market be big, a whole rabbits’ warren of stalls, but I know where to go. Last one on the first row. Ain’t nobody selling nothing nearby, not food, not clothing, not even rope to tie your tent to the trees. Nobody want to set up shop next to the nuns and they hospital tent. You could sell shovels, though, so the folks inside can dig they own graves.
The hospital be made of sheets of wood and rusted metal, like everything else in the Market, but it got a different roof. Instead of blue plastic tarping, it made of clean white canvas. Don’t know where the nuns be getting the stuff, but it let in the light so they can see.
The Ursuline Sisters been taking care of folks in Orleans since before the Civil War. Even before the city been part of the old United States, they been running that old girls’ school out of the same building they shut theyselves up in today. They spend turns nursing them that’s too far gone to be cared for by they own tribes, folks that be nothing but a burden with nowhere to go but in the ground.
I don’t like this place. It smell like death. I stand outside a minute to take my last few good breaths, then I head inside to find the pregnant woman among the dying.
• • •
Inside the tent, row after row of straw pallets covered in bodies line the floor, some living, some not. Nuns and novices be drifting about like ghosts in them white shift dresses they wear. The nuns cover they heads with pieces of cloth, but the girls go bareheaded, young as can be. I’d worry about young ones like that out in the Market, out in the city, but they ain’t my tribe, so I don’t.
A man moan on the pallet next to me. Fool look like he been gored by a wild boar. Just a freesteader by the look of him, no tribe to help him with the hunt. Lady next to him look like she dying from tetanus, the way her jaw be all rigid and she missing a leg. She be wasting away, can’t even open her mouth to eat. One of the nuns look up at me from the lady’s side. I mouth Lydia, and she point me to the back of the tent.
My eyes follow her finger. Lord have mercy. The last row of the hospital, the one closest to the concrete hill beside the Market. That where the Fever victims go, the ones nobody can help. A black curtain hide it from view. I brace myself and make my way to the back.
“Shh,” Lydia hush me when I push the curtain aside. She be sitting in that little room with the walls covered in blue tarps because they easy to throw out: Just roll up the bodies and carry them out back before lining the room again.
Not so many people dying of Fever these days, what with the Rules of Blood telling tribes to keep apart and stay healthy. The Fever ain’t what it used to be. But sometimes there be an outlander, a smuggler from over the Wall, or a freesteader without a tribe, and he get sick and it be as bad as it been fifty years ago when they built the Wall in the first place.
Fever make you weak at first, tired and confused. That be the disease eating up your red blood cells. Then it make it so you can’t sleep and you start seeing things. Crazy things. And skin that be black or brown or white all turn the same color—chalky yellow. That be your blood failing and your liver giving up. Bruises come up on the skin then, like something inside you trying to beat its way out. Then come cramps that knot a body up from the inside out, and the weird shifting walk of somebody whose joints ain’t working right no more. Your lips crack, your mind go, and you start seeing more things that ain’t there, knowing they be coming to get you. At the worst, when pain ain’t doubling them over, folks with Fever be screaming nonsense and scrabbling with they hands, shoveling they mouths full of dirt. My daddy once told me they be looking for iron to replenish they blood. That be why some ABs drink blood when they ain’t satisfied with just injecting it. Either way it goes in, it can cause more trouble, make you even crazier. And when you all used up and ain’t got no more fight in you, you be like this boy in this dark little room.
Lydia be sitting next to this freesteader AB boy, reading a book. She crouch back on her heels even though her belly be eight months big and she should be sitting down for real. She want to show him pictures in the old mildewed thing she reading.
Lydia beautiful, even here in the low light of this death room. She in her own simple dress, made from homespun cotton, hair piled high in black braids on her head. She look like a queen. I be a scarecrow next to her.
She run a long-fingered hand across the boy’s forehead, leaving a trail in his sweat. His skin must’ve been as brown as hers once, but it yellow now and graying from his own bad blood. His eyes be glazed over and his arms and legs don’t bend the right way. He shudder like a puddle in a storm. She lean in to him and whisper the last line of the book. “‘And it was still hot.’”
The boy smile an ugly smile, lips peeling back from his face in a grimace. He nod and I see him try to say the words back to her. Lydia press a finger to his cracked lips. “Rest, Ezekiel. Rest.” The boy nod again and close his eyes. His chest be moving up and down. He ain’t dead yet, but he will be soon.
“Fen, what is it?” she ask me, rising slow, one hand on her back, the other on her round belly.
“Time to go,” I say. No use telling her she a fool for being here when she carrying a new life and her time be so close.
She don’t argue. “Powwow’s tonight,” she say, and I nod. Lydia got peace talks on the table with the O-Negs tonight. Plenty enough to worry over with that. No need to add a dying boy at the Market. She push back the black curtain and wave one of the nuns over. The woman glide up and kneel by the boy.
“The City takes,” the nun say, bowing her head.
“And God receives,” Lydia reply. The nun will stay. Someone to hold the boy’s hand when he do finally cross over. Lydia always make sure of things like that. Shepherd, that’s what she be. It no wonder I follow her out of the hospital tent and back into the light of day.
• • •
“Leaving!” I sing out when Lydia and me reach the gates of the Market. We nod at the guards flanking the entrance, and I signal Harney and his boys. We walk past the row houses with they rusted bits of ironwork. We past the preserved streets now, and it ain’t all picturesque like them old photographs at the library. The pavement be broken here, and I be glad I got me some new boots. That old smuggler be good for something, even if not for what I really need.
“You sure we ain’t got to go to the library?” I ask Lydia. There be a jerry-rigged computer there, run on a foot pedal and who know what else. Electricity be rare in Orleans, so most folks do without. But somebody keep that computer running, and Lydia use it sometimes to send messages over the Wall. She use the old e-mail system left behind back when the Wall first went up. When I been real little, I got to send e-mails, too, at Father John’s mission. But that a long time ago, when it looked like the Wall weren’t gonna be there always, and folks on the other side still cared enough to sponsor kids in Orleans. Now there just be the one machine, and only chieftains use it, contacting smugglers and looking to set up trades. Maybe one day, the old computer be gone, too. Then Orleans be on its own for true.
“With the powwow and the baby, all my concerns are here, Fen,” she tell me. “Orleans has got everything we need.”
A skitter of stones behind me say the boys be running to catch up. Good. They got to learn. Ain’t never a time to be fooling around at the Market. You in, you out. Just ’cause there be guards there don’t mean a problem can’t follow you home. Harney come jogging up all out of breath, but Erik and Matthias, they too young to know they should be tired from messing around in the sun all day. They skip ahead of us like a couple fool puppies. I grunt. See if I
don’t talk to them about that later. We OPs. We got to act dignified, for Lydia’s sake.
“Let them be boys for a little while,” Lydia say to me, laughing. “Once a week is all they ever get; don’t let us be the ones that take it away.”
“All right,” I tell her. She the chieftain, so we do as she say. But if we don’t break them of that foolishness, someone else will. And they’ll keep on breaking them, too.
Even with they jumping and clowning, Harney and the boys keep pace with Lydia and me ’til we out of the Quarter, then out past the old cemeteries, St. Louis Number 1 and Number 2, and into the woods, where we separate like always. This time, I stay with Lydia. That baby got less than a month before it leave her belly. And I won’t let her out my sight ’til it do.
2
THE SKY BE GROWING DARK BY THE TIME WE get back. Around us, camp be swarming like a beehive with folks making last-minute preparations for the powwow. They funnel the smoke from the cook fires so you can’t smell it so easy beyond the encampment, but up close my mouth be watering. They be fixing a feast for the O-Negs to show how good we OPs be living, how they could be living, too. My people risked they lives catching the wild boar they roasting, but it sure be worth a bite or two of that meat.
We pass by our storyteller, Cinnamon Jones, practicing his poems and songs on the edge of camp. He wave at me and smile wide at Lydia, then go back to walking his way through a pantomime.
Our camp be arranged in a circle, with cook fires in the center and houses on the outside. We ain’t living in buildings like them ABs by the Market; we camouflaged. First glance, you see nothing but a bunch of fallen trees. Look closer and you see there be a few small huts and bigger hogans, cozy as fallen logs covered in vines. We use tent poles or young trees bent into arcs and hoops for frames, and cover them with green saw palmettos that ain’t sharp enough yet to cut you with they serrated leaves. The hogans be like low tunnels, tall enough to stand in the middle, with sleeping mats on the sides. On cold nights, most everybody sleep in the hogans. On a night like tonight, when it still a bit warm, most folks stay in simple tents and lean-tos instead, and the hogans only shelter them that needs protecting, like pregnant women and the injured. Hogans take time to build and, being OP, we ain’t always able to stay in one place that long. With the blood hunters other tribes be sending out, a body got to keep on the move fairly regular or risk being trapped in they own home.
“Eh la bas!” my friend Caroline calls to me from across the way. She and her husband, Theo, got a big house, long as a shrimp boat and then some, to house all they kids. She mother to five of her own and two of Theo’s. Little Selene be sleeping in her mama’s arms. She ain’t got the O positive blood, so she’ll be moving on to her new tribe when she a bit older. But for now, Caroline rock her youngest and smile at me. Lydia stop to play with the baby and I wait. We at camp now and I ain’t got to be on guard duty, but I ain’t gonna relax ’til the powwow be done.
“Big night tonight,” Lydia tell Caroline, passing Selene back to her mama. “Maybe we’ll have time to play with both our little ones when there’s a lasting peace.”
Caroline smile and say she hope so, and I walk Lydia all the way to her hogan, checking to see it be clear before I leave her safe inside.
My hut be right next to Lydia’s like it been at every camp since I joined her four years ago. Used to be we shared a hogan. Well, Lydia got tired of me sleeping in the dirt outside her door and made me come inside. I been like a dog then in more ways than one. I been wild, for sure. It took a kind hand and lots of patience to bring me back again. Now I got my own place, not so big or well-made as some, but quick to put up, easy to leave behind. I don’t use tent poles like others do—can’t rely on always finding a full set of aluminum that ain’t rusted through, and I ain’t gonna be risking my life to save them if we got to move real quick.
The ground between our huts be starting to wear clear of grass, like the floors inside the houses. It slap loud beneath my boots. We been getting too comfortable here. Soon it gonna be time to move on.
I duck into my hut, drop my pack, and look around to check it ain’t been messed with while I been gone. I scan my low bed on the right, made of sacks stuffed with cotton and straw, next to a crate I found at the edge of the swamp one day and turned into a cubby for my books. The books be all wrapped in plastic to keep them dry when it rain. I keep a kerosene lamp to read by at night, covered on three sides so the light don’t give the camp away. I squat down and look at the cubby. I got too much crammed inside it to be hiding Lydia’s gifts there, too.
I stand up again and stretch long and hard. My bed be looking real good to me now, especially with that smell of rain on the way, but I got things to do. No matter how early the sun set in October, there still be business to take care of. I look at my backpack on the floor. I got two packs: One I keep ready in case of emergency; it got food, a blanket, a knife, and a change of clothes inside. The other I used today be my everyday pack. It a good pack, waterproof canvas with easy straps. I tie it up tight and step outside to find a place to hide it. I’ll get it tomorrow, give Lydia her presents after the powwow. Like a celebration, if things go well. If not, maybe they make her smile anyway.
Just west of camp, I find a good tree. Easy to climb, but not so easy that every nosy kid in camp be shinnying up in the branches. Trees be where you keep things you don’t want animals to get at. Sure, in camp we got places to store food and all. But how you gonna keep something secret if you put it in the storehouse with everything else? So I climb my tree with a bit of rope and tie my pack high enough so I can see it, but nobody else will unless they know where to look. Then I go get Lydia ready for the powwow.
• • •
“There she is,” Lydia say when I come through the door. She sound like she be laughing at me, but I be the one laughing, looking at her on the ground, belly all big and round as a kettle, trying to reach something under the bed.
“Just in time to help me,” she say. “You always know when I need you.” Lydia rise up and smile all the more. She ain’t got but an inch or so on me height wise, but she clever with her braids, keep them on top her head to make her taller. It work, too, with those high cheeks and slanted eyes, she be looking regal, like a real leader. Maybe one day I’ll tell Lydia our tribe too big to carry on like this and she make me a leader like her. We’ll have two tribes together, side by side, and help each other like she always going on about, ’cause we a big family, but we be safer if we split up. Smaller tribes be easier to move, easier to run.
“What you doing down there?” I ask, shaking my head.
“I think my brush rolled under there. Just trying to reach for it.”
Lydia and her hairbrushes. You’d think they be made of gold, the way she treat them, but they been her mama’s at one point, I guess, so they mean something to her.
“Back away from there,” I say, and when she move, I pick up her bed and slide it out. It ain’t nothing but a frame of bamboo and a woven mattress, but it nicer than mine, with wild cotton stuffing on top of straw to keep it soft and firm at the same time. The brush be as far away as it could get, back against the wall. I dust it off for her. Nothing but a plastic hairbrush made to look like wood faded brown with a swirl at the end that say Goody. A family name, maybe. I seen it before. She even pulled it through my own rough hair once or twice. Lydia be happy when I hand it back to her.
“Now, enough of this foolishness.” She tuck the brush away in a box on her table. I can see she keep all her precious things inside—ballpoint pens and inkwells, clean paper. Lydia be a scholar, more than most folks here. I ain’t seen supplies like that outside the Professors’ and the Ursuline Sisters’ places. But that what I like about Lydia. She do the improbable and she make it special.
“I’m ready,” she say at last. She straighten her dress and touch her hair one last time. She look every bit the chieftain. Outside, I hear a commotion in the camp. The O-Negs be arriving.
&n
bsp; 3
O-NEG DAVIS. HE BEAUTIFUL. EYES LIKE AGATE or river rock, greeny-gray and copper, too. Hair in thick, long dreads, all milky brown, like a lion mane. Hard to take my eyes off him, but I do so I can see what else he brought with him. Ten O-Negs, all decked out for the powwow. They move soft and quick, following Uncle Romulus through our compound, but not so stealthy as they’d be out in the woods. Davis be they chieftain, so he at the front. There be a woman beside him, acting like she own him and the rest of the world, too. Natasha. Lydia done told me about her. Important in the tribe, she older than some, so must be wily. From where I be looking, she seem soft to me, decked out in the same ceremonial vest as Davis—alligator leather and pheasant feathers—over wide homespun pants. She got black and blue beaded bands on her wrist that match Davis, showing they related somehow. The armbands and feathers look regal on Brother Davis, natural even, like he part animal. But not on Natasha. She lean, true enough, but her people be carrying bows (Rom’s got they arrows ’til the powwow be over), while her own hands be empty. They the hands of a fat woman, someone being cared for by others. And she probably think she deserve it.
“Welcome to our place of rest,” Lydia say, clear and strong in her beautiful voice. She could talk the trees into walking if she wanted.
“Greetings, Lydia Moray of the O-Positives,” Davis announce. His voice just as fine as the rest of him, not too deep but not too high, neither. Those gray-green eyes flicker over our group—Lydia, me on her right, Uncle Romulus on her left—so he know we got Lydia’s back, and her ear. Caroline and some of the others fall in behind us. The rest of our tribe be waiting around the cook fires for the feast to begin. “Thank you for inviting us into your place of rest.”
Lydia nod and say some more formal greetings. She introduce us by our skills, and we learn the O-Negs’ in return. “This is Fen de la Guerre, known for her fierceness, and Uncle Romulus, known for his wise council.” In the Outer States, I hear folks be shaking hands when they meet. Not in Orleans. Somebody get a hold of you with one hand, they could have a knife in the other. So we learn about each other instead. Davis say Natasha be the clever one, but he ain’t got no fierce one on his side, like Lydia got me. Maybe Davis fierce enough on his own.
Orleans Page 2
