Exodia (11 page)

This false revelation raises eyes as
well as feet and the four bullies move in sync, back, down the
hill, turning, running.

The protests of the thirsty sheep reach
my ears again as the pounding in my chest and head
recedes.

“
Would you really have shot
them?” Flor asks.

All the girls except Kassandra come up
to me. The questions flow–who am I, where do I live, why did I help
them, did the doctor send me, how did I get that scar on my
neck–and I’m overwhelmed by them. I consider each girl. Katie is
just a bit shorter than Kassandra, with the same long, blond hair,
and her brow set in a similar stubborn scowl. She is dressed in
layers of patched clothing that make her look fat. The twins would
be identical if one had the smoothness of skin that her sister has
instead of clusters of pock marks. It’s rather strange how my mind
works. I’m tired, but I know that something is still wrong. I
counted seven girls when I sat on the rock. Five surround me now.
Kassandra is at the pump. It frightens them quite a lot when I
don’t answer their questions, but instead ask, “Where is
Sana?”

* * *

Because to them I am a hero and
something of a novelty, the sisters, Sana included now, insist on
taking me to their home in the valley a mile’s walk to the east.
After I asked where Sana was, the oldest girls panicked and began
to call out “Sana” or “Susana”, but Flor had simply pointed toward
Usala’s Rock, where my bags lay opened. Sana was quietly repacking
them, munching on something she had helped herself to, and pretty
much ignoring the shouts.

She walks beside me now
carrying my food bag. Her face shines with the same beauty as her
sisters, but her hair is a darker blond, very short. She walks with
a limp and says next to nothing except a few strange and cryptic
things. She rolls her eyes and says, “Dalton Battista.
Bandits total at—” and holds up four fingers. Her
sisters laugh.

I’m accustomed now to the smell of the
sheep and I quickly learn to watch my step. We walk toward our
shadows which are growing longer by the minute as the sun gets
close to setting behind us.

We settle most of the questions they
have about me and I learn one particularly astonishing fact about
them. None of the girls has a tattoo. They confess to using blue or
red dye as needed when troops pass through, but consider themselves
old-fashioned Americans, nothing more and nothing less.

We reach their farm and I see why they
had to take the sheep so far for water. A two acre pond looks more
like a mud bath for pigs than a drinking hole for several dozen
sheep. There is an old windmill from the early part of the century,
a three pronged giant that used to provide the farm with power for
water and electricity, now collapsed and sprawled across an entire
acre. The great metal blades fan out upon the muddy pond bottom;
caked globs of splashed mud speckle the blades as the last rays of
the day find some surface to glint from.

“
Dalton Battista,” Sana says
again and points at some sheep nearing the base of the windmill,
“baa, tilt to stand.” She gives an excited one-foot hop as if she
is telling us the most amazing thing. Her sisters smile, laugh,
praise her, and I’m caught up in the laughter though I’m missing
some inside joke. Or maybe Sana, being one of the youngest in a
large family, employs different ways to garner
attention.

Kassandra lifts her staff to block some
lambs that are reluctant to enter the enclosure. Her sisters form a
barrier, stoop low with hands clasped, and herd the stragglers into
a mostly wooden pen. One side is built of salvaged car doors stuck
in the mud, an impromptu blockade I suspect. The twins close the
gates. I expect to see them congratulate themselves on a job well
done, but there is no elbow bumping or expressions of
satisfaction.

They herd me toward the porch of the
most unusual house I’ve ever seen. It’s a patchwork quilt of a
building, fairly large, built with logs, metal, stone, blocks,
bricks, plastic panels, and materials I can’t identify.

“
Papa is going to be pleased
that you helped us,” Flor says.

“
He’s not going to be
pleased that you lied,” Katie glares at her little sister, moves
ahead and reaches for the doorknob. It’s an ordinary knob, the kind
that’s linked to a foot-pedal near the bottom, like the ones we
have at the capitol. Such ordinariness makes me expect the usual,
but the usual is not what happens. The door doesn’t open out or in,
but slides up and gets stuck half-way. Katie ducks
under.

I’m expected to follow and I do with
Flor closely on my heels; she doesn’t need to duck. For me it’s
especially hard to stoop low enough and my backpack scrapes the
bottom of the door and causes me to stumble forward. I stop inside
a room lit with lamps and candles.

“
Hands!” someone hollers
from another room. “Wash your hands!” The voice and the command
remind me of my nanny. I find myself hoping that she’ll appear here
and now, nanny to seven girls.

All the sisters are inside now and the
door is pulled down. We enter directly into a dining room with a
long wooden table set for ten. Sana puts my food bag down in a
corner of the room and I place my other pack next to it. There is a
side table with a large bowl and a pitcher of water. Kassandra
holds her hands over the bowl while Katie pours a small amount of
water over them. Kassandra dries her hands on a towel and takes the
pitcher from Katie.

“
You’re next,” she says, her
first words to me since the question at the well.

I take my turn and am embarrassed when
she pours a second time because my hands are so dirty. All the
girls wash their hands after me, going in order by age it seems.
After Sana’s turn she holds her hands up to me and says, “I washed
my hands.” I’m glad that she has said something normal. She looks
at her six sisters and says, “We shy handmaids.”

They hold back their laughter, seem to
frown, and Flor, who is drying her hands, scolds Sana, “You’ve done
that one before. Try again.”

Sana concentrates on her hands. A few
seconds pass and I wonder why we’re all so focused on this little
girl’s clean hands. Sana brightens and says, “I washed my hands.
Sad, whiny, shamed.” She accentuates the last three words with
overdone facial expressions and I finally get it. She’s a gemfry,
probably all of them are, and her special ability is a tremendous
manipulation of words and letters, manifesting in
anagrams.

I take her by the shoulders and face
her to me. I say, “Dalton Battista is not Lucas Sroka.”

I kneel down in front of her, waiting
to see what she comes up with. She frowns and I spell the name. It
only takes a moment before she says, “Dalton Battista, sit on
Usala’s Rock.”

The sisters chorus a gasp, but I smile.
I rise, but my smile falls when Sana takes my hand and adds,
“Dalton Battista outranks socials. Dalton Battista, actual risks
soon.”

The silence is broken not by nervous
laughter, which would be what I’d expect, but by a woman carrying a
tray of food, greeting me by my full name, and clucking
instructions to the girls to return to the kitchen and bring out
the rest of the banquet.

* * *

The girls sit on either side of the
table, their mother at one end, next to me, and their father at the
other. Flor is on my left and across from me sits Kassandra. Aside
from an awkward introduction to their father, Raul Luna, I’ve been
quite comfortable in this family’s house for a grand total of maybe
fifteen minutes.

“
No, that’s not right,” Mrs.
Luna says, correcting her husband again. “It was after the
Suppression that my parents started this ranch, so then the first
drought had to be after 2071 and we met the following year so
…”

I tune out their argument, gentle as it
is, and steal glances at Kassandra’s face. She catches me and
lowers her eyes. She cuts into the orange vegetable and mashes it
up. I do the same. I hold a forkful up to my lips and sniff before
taking a taste. Just like at Vinn’s cabin the food here is very
different from the canned, preserved, and irradiated supplies I’ve
been raised on. When we first sat down Mrs. Luna served me from
every platter and bowl on the table. I wondered what each dish was,
every one so artfully presented, delicious aromas rising. She began
to name them when she sensed my wonder. Some of the words sounded
Spanish, other names she said with a lilt to her voice or a
guttural sound. I asked if they were ethnic and she laughed and
rattled off her husband’s ancestry and her own: Mexican-African,
German-Swedish. After a lengthy prayer by Mr. Luna the feast began
and quick praise followed with a chorus of flattering words from
the daughters. I had a number of compliments come to the tip of my
tongue, too, but I swallowed them, hoping that Mrs. Luna would see
how much I was enjoying the meal. I hate how hard it is for me to
speak.

“
And our dinner tonight,
Sana? What do you have to say about sweet potatoes, strawberries,
and lamb?” Mr. Luna smiles at his daughter and winks at his
wife.

Sana takes a thoughtful moment and
says, “Sweet potatoes, strawberries, lamb. Two poets tease barber’s
lame wrist.”

The twins clap. The others laugh or
smile or nod. I’m more than impressed. Sana’s ability to see the
letters and rearrange them in her head so quickly is mind-blowing.
I’m curious if her limp is related to her gift. I’ve heard that
many gemfries have a corresponding handicap. I try to remember if
Barrett had something wrong or not. All I can come up with was that
he seemed smaller and younger than he was.

“
I better let old Markus
know to be careful. Either he’s going to hurt his wrist cutting
hair or encounter a couple of poets.” Mr. Luna chuckles.

I think of how Barrett has more than
one gift. Perhaps Sana’s anagrams are prophecies as well. I wonder
what other talents or powers she may have. I think, too, on how she
solved the Usala’s Rock anagram a second and third time. Dalton
Battista outranks socials. Obviously. Nothing to worry about there.
But the third one–actual risks soon–could be a warning.

I come out of my thoughts to realize,
just like in class, someone is asking me a question and I haven’t
heard a thing.

“
Excuse me?” I look toward
the twin with the pock-marked face.

She asks again, “Would you like to hear
Sana’s thoughts on the other foods we’re eating? Or are we boring
you?”

“
Deandra!” Mrs. Luna scolds
her. “He’s our guest and, and, you know …”

There are looks tossed back and forth
around the table, nervousness, blushes, and then Sana points to me
and repeats part of what her mother said, “He’s our guest.” Her
finger wiggles my attention toward her sister, “Outguess
her.”

I am confused until Kassandra’s foot
touches mine underneath the table. It’s as if shocks pass from her
toes to mine, burn up my leg, and spread through my chest, and with
them come unmistakable knowledge. I know that Sana and Deandra have
special gemfry gifts. I assume that Kassandra as well is pretty
special–her talent must be to impart truth with a touch. I look
across the table to confirm. She will not meet my gaze.

“
Okay,” I say, “it sounds
like this is a game. I’m supposed to guess things about all of you
and Deandra guesses things about me. Right?”

“
She’s really good,” Flor
says. “Almost perfect.”

“
Fast completer,” Sana
jumbles Flor’s assessment.

Deandra takes her twin’s hand and
squeezes. She begins to rattle off my secrets and I nod in polite
agreement to every one of her pronouncements. “I guess you’ll be
here a while.” Her mother says that’s fine under her breath.
Deandra continues, “You’re running away. You have done something
bad that some people think is good.” Her father nods as if he
understands. “You have stolen something.” She pauses and though I
feel really exposed I’m not ashamed. Not yet. My hands grow sweaty
and I wipe them on my thighs, thinking that she might guess I’m a
murderer.

The electric tap of Kassandra’s toe on
mine sends a jolt to my usually mute lips. I say, “Pretty good,
Deandra. You’ve stolen, too. You’ve read your sisters’ diaries.
You’ve taken money from a widow and food from a friend and passed
your blame onto someone else.” Another tap and I know. “You let
Flor take your punishment.”

Clearly I’ve upset the whole group. I
have no idea how I could let myself speak so brashly, insult my
hosts, and embarrass myself.

“
Wonderful,” Mr. Luna says.
“It’s been a while since we’ve heard someone match Deandra’s
histories. She has an amazing talent to read the past and future,
but you seem to have an equal aptitude.”

“
It’s nothing,” I say and
pull my feet back under my chair. They’ll think I’m a gemfry, too,
with a gift similar to Deandra’s. But I’d rather have Kassandra’s
ability, only in reverse. Instead of giving information I’d want to
touch someone and know their every thought.

Deandra narrows her eyes at me and
makes a final guess. “I think Dalton Battista is more interested in
our oldest sister.”

Sana quickly chimes in, “More
interested–red enemies trot.” She holds her hand up for us to wait
and adds, “Rioter meets end.”