by Ruth White
“Not the Fathers,” Mom says solemnly. “And not their children.”
We’re quiet for a moment as we absorb the enormity and injustice of it all.
“What about the drabness?” I speak up after a while. “Why didn’t they want bright colors?”
“Color can be stimulating,” Gramps the artiste explains. “It can send the human imagination spinning into daydreams and fits of creativity. Good music inspires us in the same way.”
“And so does a good education,” Mom adds.
“And time?” I ask. “Why did we have no weeks or months or names of days? Only seasons.”
“The Fathers didn’t want us measuring time,” Gramps says. “They encouraged us to live only for the moment—for that’s all we had—to forget we were destined to be soldiers at sixteen, factory drones every day thereafter, and corpses at sixty-five. For the same reason, they wanted us always in a stupor. And the jobs were so monotonous that people learned to perform them even when they were spaced out.”
“We should now observe a moment of silence,” Mom says soberly, “for all those poor souls who are not as lucky as we are and have no means of escaping the Land of the Fathers.”
When the moment passes, Kitty says to me a bit sadly, “Did you know it was my grandpa who turned me in?”
“Yeah, we heard that on The Family Hour,” I say. “But you know what, Kitty? You can borrow my grandpa now.”
She smiles. “Yeah, he already told me to call him Gramps.”
“Everybody does,” I say.
“So we’re really going to the Western Province?” Kitty asks Mom.
“Yes!” Mom replies. “And I promise you they don’t eat rats. But that’s a good example of Fashion City propaganda. We believe the Western Province is a good place, and we hope to settle down there in a home of our own. Do you want to live with us, Kitty?”
“Yeah, I’d like that,” she says, almost in a whisper.
“Now that everybody here knows the truth about the Blues,” Mom says, “I have to ask you to keep our secret, at least until we learn more about the people in the Western Province.”
“Of course,” Gil agrees. “The kids and I have discussed it already.”
“I won’t tell,” Kitty says. “Who would believe me?”
“Well, that’s the last time I’ll go on vacation,” Gramps says. “When I left, the plan was to go to a planet called Tranquility.”
“It’s a long story, Gramps,” David tells him. “And we’ll tell it to you later.”
“What can we do to help the people in Fashion City?” Kitty asks.
“When we’re settled,” Mom says, “we’ll help the Resistance through their contacts in the Western Province.”
“Can’t we use this flying thing to get some of them out of there?” Kitty asks.
“Good idea,” David says, “and I bet you’d fly out your cousin Emma first.”
“You know her?” Kitty says.
“I met your uncle Ethan,” David says. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime.”
“Yeah, I would definitely save Emma and her whole family,” Kitty says.
“I’d rescue Elvis” comes from Gramps.
“Bonnie,” from Colin. “She saved my hide.”
“Lewis Jones,” Gil says, “among other friends and relatives.”
“A kid named Jeremy,” David says.
“I’d save Alison Fink and L. Frank Baum,” I say, “and their families too, of course.”
At that moment we come to a sudden but smooth landing. When the vapor clears, we look out upon the land. We are on a hillside overlooking a valley. Down there we can see a small village—a school, a church steeple, rows of houses and barns, cars in driveways, dogs playing on a green lawn, and blue hills in the distance.
It looks like home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruth White, author of the Newbery Honor Book Belle Prater’s Boy, has written eleven books, most of them set in the Virginia mountains, where she grew up. In high school she watched television shows that took her far away from home, fueling her imagination. Ruth was fascinated with anything mysterious and eerie, such as The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Star Trek.
Ruth says: “One thing I liked about The Twilight Zone was its trick of misleading the viewer into thinking something was a certain way; then you found out through a sudden twist that things were totally different from what you were led to believe. I wanted to use that kind of twist in a story of my own, with young adults as the main characters in an oppressive society where it was a crime to be unique—a place where people were brainwashed through the media. This book is unlike anything else I’ve written.”
While Ruth White’s story takes place in another world, she happily resides on our planet, in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania.
