Freda: Volume III in the New Eden series (9 page)

Dane takes it, and they hold a moment then let go. “We... had to.”

“There are some here that think trying ain’t good enough.”

Dane says with a depth of sincerity that surprises me, “I count myself among them.”

“Just... watch yourself,” the Tawtrukker says. That other bunch’ll leave in the morning, back to wherever they think is better.”

“Good riddance,” mumbles the other man, still sitting.

“But the ones that are staying,” continues the standing man, “can’t trust them all.”

I blurt out, “Is that why you’re out here now instead of asleep?”

The man seems startled at my voice. “Why, yes, young lady. That pile over there is all the firewood we got left, and it needs protecting. We can’t stay here. Even if we cut down all the rest of the trees, there’s maybe a couple weeks’ fuel round here.”

“It’s sad,” I say, “that we have to protect our resources from our own family.”

“Yes ma’am,” he replies. “But that’s the truth of it. Folks is desperate.”

Dane hands the candle to me, then stoops and scoops up the book. “Thank you, gentlemen. Freda and I have a lot of reading to do before morning.”

I cup my hand around our little flame as Dane takes my elbow and leads me away from the fire. We walk up away from the encampment, toward the straggle of trees a hundred yards from the lake’s edge. On the hillside, we sit in the wind shadow of a large rock and open the book between us. I hold the candle over it, careful to make sure the melting wax does not fall on the pages. We take turns reading aloud to each other.

CHAPTER 10

“... and the tribes will be reunited in the embrace of God.”

As the sun winks through the gap in the ridge to the southeast and I blow out the candle’s struggling flame, Dane closes the book and we share a perplexed look. Three hours of reading and discussing, and the only thing that’s clear to either of us is that not only was Darius insane, but he hadn’t read the entire book. His interpretation was based on a poorly remembered half-version.

Dane stares down at the camp waking up as the sun’s light creeps across the valley and begins thawing us out. “We have to go west,” he says with a simple finality.

Although we had all agreed on that some time ago, the words, and the wonder that fills their quiet conviction, still thrill me. Some part of Dane still believes.

The book is surprisingly detailed in its instructions. Some of the words have burned themselves into my mind.

When the twelfth Semper yields, the people must abandon their homes and follow the westward highway to the river, then follow the river to the iron fleet, finally turning south to find the peak of Reunion Mountain.

When Dane read that out loud, I thought perhaps he would show some emotion at the mention of his father, the twelfth Semper. Darius murdered Linkan two decades before his natural Yielding. But instead of showing sadness at the thought of his father, Dane paused and asked me, “What’s an iron fleet?”

I had no answer.

Most of what was written is baffling. Some of the words have been lost to us over three hundred years, technology words like
radio, biology,
and
antenna
. At times, the book sounded like a Subterran instruction manual, describing surprisingly detailed directions with hand-drawn maps.

Upon the peak of Reunion Mountain, find the white stone crossed with black. Dig there, and unearth the box which contains the Radio, the Antenna, and instructions for their use.

At others, it seemed to contradict things we’d learned from Truths.

Do not fear the Radiation, for the westward highway was cleansed not with bombs but with biology.

Neither Dane nor I had any idea what this meant. Indeed, the idea that bombs could be used to “cleanse” anything shocked us so much that we skipped right over any debate about what
biology
might mean.

Dane stands, and I can hear the exhaustion and frustration in his sighs and groans. He reaches down and helps me up, and as I stand fire seems to rip through every inch of my whole body. I’m so tired and worn out that it seems even the ends of my long hair aches. Even my eyelashes and fingernails complain.

“We need to talk to Tom,” Dane says simply.

I know why. Tom has the map that the others brought from Tawtrukk. We can compare the hand drawn maps in Prophecies to the more precise map that Tom carries, with its ancient names and roads. The Founders of Southshaw eliminated all such records three hundred years ago, but Subterra kept copies, hidden deep under the ground. Tom told us of their libraries, how most of the ancient materials were lost when a leak in the walls went undiscovered for decades and thousands of papers molded and decayed. We wouldn’t be able to carry any of that material anyway, even if we could return now to those tunnels and retrieve it. All that information will be lost, just like Micktuk’s astonishing library was lost in the fire in Sikwaa.

If we’d had time, we could have learned so much, could have come to understand what a radio is, and how it will help us reunite with the other tribes.

That was the most shocking part of Prophecies.
Other tribes.

Below us at the edge of the camp, angry yells bark into the twilight of early dawn.

“Kids,” Dane says, looking a little amused through his wilted exhaustion.

But it’s not just kids. A half dozen children are running rag-tag away from the campfire at which we lit our candles just a few hours ago. They stumble and sprint, faster than the two men who have leapt up to pursue them with angry shouts.

“They’ve stolen something,” I say, at the same instant that Dane bounds into a sprint down the hill toward the commotion.

I gather up Prophecies and wrap it in its blanket, then hurry as quickly as I can behind. By the time I’m halfway there, Dane has intercepted the men. As he returns them to their fire, a small crowd begins emerging from their tents into the frigid morning. Dane and the men gesture at each other with enthusiasm, and angry words get lost under the weight of my own huffing and puffing. The morning’s fire burns bright and hot, no longer the struggling embers we saw in the middle of the night.

By the time I reach the crowd, it’s swelled to fifty people, nearly all of them Tawtrukkers. More arrive each second, curious at the commotion.

“...but they took the last of our food,” growls one of the men as he points violently in the direction the children fled.

“If a half dozen children can carry off all our food, then we have bigger problems,” Dane says, acknowledging the growing throng with a wide sweep of his arm.

I slow to a walk, ignoring the sweat forming on my forehead and the ripping pain filling my lungs.

“So we’re just supposed to let them have it?”

“Yes,” Dane replies.

“Then what will our own children eat today?”

The crowd rumbles agreement, and I think of the children that came over the mountain pass with us. What
will
they eat today?

Dane laughs, but it’s mirth and not derision I hear in his laugh. I don’t see anything funny here. “Okay,” he says, “let’s think about that. Two things. First, even if you do run after them, they’ve probably already eaten everything they stole.”

This confuses the men, but everyone around us knows this to be true.

“Second, there was so little for them to steal. You asked what our own children will eat today? Even if we had that food back, the question would still stand.” Dane laughs again, and I can tell the crowd, like me, sees nothing funny in this situation.

“I don’t like your attitude, boy,” growls the man who challenged us last night. “Maybe you can laugh because you’re hiding some food from the rest of us. Is that what it is?” He takes a menacing step toward us.

Dane stops laughing, and I sense him tense beside me, ready to defend himself.

The man springs forward, but he doesn’t go for Dane. Instead, he leaps at me, and my heart stops to see the rage filling his eyes. I gasp and try to step back but stumble, and he’s upon me, tearing the bundle out of my arms.

“Is this your food?” the man yells, and the crowd constricts around us.

Dane jumps in, but too late to stop the man from yanking the book from my grasp and knocking me to the ground. I fall back and land with a painful thump on my bottom.

Dane starts to go for the book, but second man shoves him aside. As Dane is recovering his balance, I shout at him to stop.

“Dane, please!”

This makes him pause and look at me. His eyes are filled with a harsh question, and I see there his need to hit someone. Frustration and anger have built up so thick in all of us that we forget there are other ways to release the tension. Productive ways.

“Help your wife to her feet,” I scold as the first man begins throwing the blanket off the book and the other man menaces from a few feet away.

It takes a moment, but Dane relaxes and understands, extending his hand to me. I take it and am a little surprised at how sturdy his pull is as he lifts me to stand beside him. He turns his back to the two men and makes a good show of dusting off my jacket and surveying me. “Are you all right, dear?”

Good for him. Fighting back now might soothe his rage, but it would just make everything worse. We must not be seen as irrational, violent, fearful. These people have not had a sufficient meal in days, maybe even weeks. Their children might be freezing to death. They have no homes to return to. It’s no wonder they protect the little scraps of food they have with such fervor.

The man behind Dane spits, “What the hell is this?”

He hurls Prophecies at Dane’s back. It slams with a thud then drops to the dirt, spread open with its pages crumpling. Dane doesn’t move, but anger explodes in his eyes before he settles himself.

Slowly, Dane turns to face the two men, one of whom dangles the blanket from his outstretched hand while the other points at Prophecies. Both glare at him.

“It’s a book,” Dane says simply. Everyone nearby can hear in his tone that he could have added something like,
but I’m not surprised you’ve never seen one before, you idiot
.

“I know that,” the man hisses back, but Dane is unmoved. “It’s a damn Southshaw book.”

“That’s right,” Dane says, his patience seeping out with each breath. “I’m from Southshaw. It’s my book. So what?”

“I’ll tell you so what. You and all the rest, you’re responsible. You caused this.”

“You’re wrong—”

“Whose bomb was that!” The man erupts before us, leaping to stand nose to nose with Dane, whose only reaction is to grip his fingers into tight fists. “It was yours! You killed my brother, you killed my cousin and his wife.”

“I didn’t—”

“Your kind destroyed everything! Now you come in here with your... your...
books
, and... what. You tell us to let those thieves steal the little food we have left. They’re probably Southshaw, too, ain’t they?” The man spits on Dane’s chest. “You make me sick. We should have killed you all when we had the chance.”

Dane doesn’t reply, doesn’t move, doesn’t react. He stands as still as a fencepost, watching the man steam just inches from his face. After a few seconds of tense silence, Dane whispers, “Here’s your chance.”

There’s such a calm, detached confidence in his voice that I know he’ll kill this man in seconds, without remorse. But that would undo everything. He might kill this one man, but there are three thousand here. Will he fight them all, kill them all?

“Dane,” I plead. “Let him be.”

The man doesn’t take his eyes off Dane’s as he hisses, “But what if I don’t want him to let me be?”

“Please, sir,” I reply, letting a little quiver from the morning cold into my voice. Maybe he thinks it’s fear, and that’s all right. “Please. We’re all friends here. We fought beside you against Darius. We tried to stop Darius from detonating the Bomb. We—”

“You’re Southshaw!” he screams, his warm spittle flying into our faces.

With sudden swiftness, his arm cocks back and thrusts forward into Dane’s chest. It was a mistake. Dane twists as the man’s fist slides off his chest, and the man stumbles through the spot Dane had been an instant before. Dane shoves the man in his back as he passes, and he falls hard on his face in the frozen dirt.

“Dane! Stop!” I yell, trying to move between him and the fallen man, who is already scrambling to his feet.

But I didn’t need to. Dane hasn’t pressed his attack. Instead, he glances around to see if anyone is coming to the man’s assistance. For now, the people are confused and just watch. Even the other night guard, still holding the blanket, says and does nothing.

The man scrambles to his feet and faces Dane, ready to attack again.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Dane says.

“Please,” I add, “stop! We are all friends here. If we’re to survive, we need to work together, not—”

He leaps at Dane again. This time instead of dodging, Dane meets his rush with a lunge of his own, startling the man with a solid fist to his ribs and dropping him to his knees with a thick grunt. This time, we can all see, the man isn’t getting up right away. He curls forward, gasping and hugging himself in pain.

Dane hops away with a catlike quickness, and his bright eyes survey the crowd, finally landing on the downed man’s companion. The two stare each other down for a few seconds, but it’s clear to everyone watching that the other guard doesn’t want to end up on the ground gasping in pain.

I step forward into the gap between them, into the silence tinted only with the crackling of the bright fire and a low murmur of the other camp carrying across the water.

“Listen, everyone,” I say. “Southshaw, Tawtrukk, or Subterra. None of it matters anymore. An evil man, a troubled man, has destroyed everything we knew. We all have lost our homes, lost our friends and loved ones. Please,” I plead as I look around at the shivering people I do not know, “we need each other if we’re to survive at all.”

With frustration I realize the people around me, the silent crowd, watch and listen without really seeing or hearing. I don’t think they’re broken, not yet. But they’re close.

“I know what you’re feeling now,” I say, hoping they believe me. “We all saw and felt what happened... and not one of us can ever return home again. Not you, not me, not any of us.”

A few of the people have tears in their eyes. Perhaps their struggle just to keep going has kept them from really thinking about what no longer exists. Perhaps they haven’t yet let go of secret hopes of returning home one day. Perhaps they were unable to say goodbye to their old lives as I did when we left Southshaw for the last time. I can’t let the loss overcome me. I won’t let it overwhelm me. But I need them to feel it. Otherwise, they will be unleadable.