Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (19 page)

“Is that the meetings?”

“Yes sirree.”

“What do you talk about?”

“Oh, anything and everything.  We’re a shoulder and an ear.  They have a tough job, you know.”

“What do they do?”

“If we are the record
keepers
, the Sentiners are the record
takers
.  They are the historians of Gothica.” 

“But in that book, he–”

“Delano, dear.  Use his name.”

“…Delano, says that that’s only their secondary purpose – that the sentiners are the conscience of Gothica, the sera… seera.

“Cerebellum.”

“And in chapter four he talks about how nothing ever changes.  But things change all the time.  Even right now, big things are happening, right?”

“Well that’s a story for a whole ‘nother book, but suffice it to say, nothing important has changed since the sentiners first started scribbling stuff down on napkins.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well you see most people never notice this, but everything that has been invented, was invented thousands of years ago.  Does that strike you as a little odd?  Pumpkin, sit!”

“Not really.”

“Well the theory goes that if someone figured out how to make all of these things, buildings, cars, plumbing, televisions, and all, that in all the years since then, someone else would have figured out an improvement, or something new entirely.  You understand?”

He patted that fat little dog who panted happily in the sunlight.

“So the Sentiners wanted to know why things like that don’t change.  Why are people in power content with what they have?  That doesn’t sound right does it?  People always want more power.”

“Says who?”

“Says the sentiners who have been studying people for thousands of years.”

“But how can that be?  How can they study people and say that they all want more power, when nothing ever changes and they never get more power?”

“Well there are a lot of other factors, you see. 
Individual
persons move up and down and always desire more, but people – meaning society – doesn’t change.  For instance, there is a notion called the Gothican Way.  It’s loved by all Gothicans, and it goes something like this: some roads lead to wealth and some to poverty, but if you keep trying you’ll eventually find the right way, and if you give up, then you deserve to stay where you are along the path.  Sounds pretty good right?”

Ezra nodded, but to be fair, I was leading him into it.

“Well unfortunately, it’s false in just about every way measurable.  By a lot.  By
a lot
, a lot.  The truth is that people are ordinary whether they’re born wealthy or poor.  And an ordinary
poor
person will never go as far in life as an ordinary
middle class
person who will never go as far as an ordinary
wealthy
person.  Everyone looks down on the people below them, wondering why they chose to be that way, not understanding the advantages they have enjoyed.  Sure a few exceptional people rise up, but those are the exceptional people, and no one wants to think they’re not exceptional.”

“So where did the Gothican Way come from, if it isn’t true?”

“Well it’s a nice idea, isn’t it?  Wouldn’t it be nice if it were true?  The more cynical answer is that maybe rich people lie and poor people want to believe it.  There’s lots of data on this that you’ll have
plenty
of time to go over.”

I figured that was enough for today and stood up to leave but Ezra stayed sitting.

“So why don’t the sentiner’s do something about it?”

“What?”

“Why don’t they show people?”

My me...  I sat back down and Pumpkin jumped into my lap as if to say,
sit
.

“Well, that’s a whole ‘
nother
story.  Keep asking these questions and we will miss lunch.”  But this didn’t seem to deter him – halfway deterred myself with a rumble in my tummy – but the boy was unmoved.  So I let out a sigh.  “This is gonna be hard for you understand right now, Ezra, and for some time to come, but you just have to accept it.  There’s no changing Gothica.”

“But they don’t even try?”  He was clearly impassioned about this.  I guess I expected it, but it was hard to confront nonetheless.

“They can’t sugar pea.”

“Why?”

“Because then they couldn’t continue to do what they do.”

“So?”

“Now you be careful with that tone or you’re gonna miss suppa too.”

“But that’s not a reason.  They should risk it.”

“You’re awful young to make such a decision.  And they’ve been doing this an awful long time.”

“But why do they do what they do at
all
?”

I wanted to scold him but he was just
usin' his ‘noggin.  “Ezra, when people try to change things, they die, and that is the end of this discussion.”

“People die all the time anyways.  They die in the gutter town.  So why not
try
?”

“Don’t you holler at me,” I warned with pursed lips.

“I don’t believe any of this!  I wish I had never come here!”  And he started to run off.  I felt Pumpkin begin to transform and give chase, but I held him back before he made the metamorphosis.  Pumpkin wouldn’t
ever
hurt the child, but the last thing Ezra needed right now was to be chased down and pinned by a half-ton grizzly bear.  Best to keep that little tidbit a secret for now. 

I knew Ezra was mad, and though it hurt me, I let him run to the other end of the park, where, as I knew he would, he stopped and sank down, hugging his knees.  He was not so very different from my other children.  I strolled over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.  He shrugged it off, but in truth, wanted me to pursue him.  When we run off, we want people to come looking.  If I hadn’t, he would have been completely lost and alone in this world.  And with no one to hold onto him, he might have just floated away into the sky. 
I felt so for him, but too much too quickly and he might run off for good.  Not that he’d get far what with all my kids looking for him, but all the harder it would be to come back if it was against his will.

“Come on inside.  I’ll make you some lunch.”

E
zra was very well behaved after that little outburst in the park.  But he wasn’t any happier.  It was the complacency of an indoor cat waiting for the right time to bolt through an unattended door.  Not that the child had any hopes of “escaping.”  Each day wasn’t one closer to the end but one surer to the beginning.  When I showed him how to use the cataloguing system, one week later, it was already the point of no return.

“Now you see this here book?” I pulled one of the blank hard covers off the shelf, cradling its spine in my palm, and opened the title page.  “A Raisin in the Sun.”  I lowered the book so he could read it, then flipped to a random page to show him.  I squeezed my fingers together and closed the book with a hollow thud, then put my palm on it like I was about give my oath in a court ‘o law and closed my eyes real tight.  When I opened it to the title page again, it read, “Cost of Living by Tax Bracket in Southside.”

Disbelievingly Ezra flipped back to the same page number that I had shown him before, and found that it now contained a graph on rent as a percentage of income over a one-hundred year period in a particular Central Gothican neighborhood. 

“Is that some kind of trick?”

I almost didn’t know how to answer that.  “It’s something you and I can do and no one else.”

“You mean you couldn’t teach someone else?”

“No sirree.”

“Have you tried?”

I laughed.  “Wouldn’t be a point.”

“So when did I get the power to do this?”

“Well you can’t just yet.  I have to
teach
you.”

But he kept up with the questions.  “So when did I become able to learn it?”

“Well, I don’t rightly know.  When you were chosen I suppose.  Maybe even before then.”

“So when the sentiner’s voted, I suddenly got
powers
?”

“Is it so hard to believe?”

You’d think a boy would be excited to learn this but not my Ezra.

“Look hun, if you don’t believe, you won’t be able to learn.  Do you want to learn or not?”

“I’ll try...”

I started to pull another book off the shelf.

“No.” He said, determinedly, and gently took the one from my hand.  He closed his eyes and put his hand over the cover.  I was already preparing my reconciling smile when I felt a rush of kharma and the child did just what he was trying to.  He quickly opened the book but found the title page empty.  He was about to close it in frustration when I said, “Wait a second.”  Without taking it from him, I grabbed the edge of some pages and started to flip through them.  They were all blank, but suddenly a small section revealed print.  Ezra looked eagerly at it.  It was an excerpt from the
Journals of the Anatheas’
, a part on our motherly nature, essential for the job.  He read it for a moment.

“Ezra, sweetie.”  He closed the book and handed it back to me, but his little jowls were already frowning as he fought back tears.  His lip quivered and his chest shuddered.  “They said… I was a girl inside of a boy.  But I’m not…  I’m just me.”

I felt like I shouldn’t cry, but how could I stop myself?  I felt that child’s pain.  He was mine and so was his suffering.  So I knelt down again and I held him as he wailed into my chest and I tried to keep my own tears from smearing my mascara.

“Sweetie, you listen to Miss Lori.  You don’t have to worry one bit.  I don’t give a damn what those nasty sentiners said.  You are a wonderful person.  And you just always be you, you hear?  You always be you,
‘cause there’s no one else you should be.” 

N
ow my job was a tedious one, make no mistake.  For the wrong kind of person, three days would be a life sentence, let alone three-hundred years, but the time did pass for me.  I never realized how fast though, until Ezra. I’ve read enough accounts of parents rearing children to know that the time flies by like an autumn breeze.  But it couldn’t have prepared me.  Ezra taught me that every day.  You can read a lot about something and not know the first darn thing about it.  If it didn’t make what I had spent most of my lifetime doing seem kind of wasteful.  Pointless even.  Least that’s how I felt some days. 

Ezra was a natural at the catalogue.  The books took to him like he was their author, even if he didn’t believe me when I told him that this knowledge couldn’t be shared, or else this place would become a target of the cycle.  The more he read, the more he came to feel protective of every last page. 

My children were still weary of him, but I knew time would heal that.  He was too charming for them hold out much more than another few decades.  All except Delano, however.  But then again he had never been one of my children.  He still insisted on coming to the back door, avoiding the boy completely.

“How are you?” I asked him as I sat on my bed.

“I’m fine.  I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.  Cleaning up after this cult business has been… difficult.”

“It’s okay.”

“None of this is okay.”  He took a seat at my dresser in front of the mirror and stared at one of my brushes.  I stood and walked over to him.  He was slumped over.  Wounded.  Weary.  I put my hands on his shoulders and then down into his shirt which was already unbuttoned.  I felt the scars on him even through his under shirt.  He suddenly stood up to his full height, close to me, looking down into my eyes.  My hands had become tangled in his shirt and had pulled it half off of him.  As he kissed me, they ran up his sides and into his black hair.

Making love was our way of rebelling.  It was a youthful expression of defiance.  About loving when we were so forbidden.  I let out a deep breath and suddenly hushed myself at the thought of Ezra hearing us.  Delano continued to sway against me but he knew why I was suddenly distant.  He began to push harder, looking intently down at me as I stared off to the side, refusing to meet his gaze.  He moved faster and by trying to hold my breath I let out a moan.  Then a groan.  Then a whimper.  I just wanted him to collapse down on top of me, to close the distance between us, and not to stare down from above. 

When I looked up at him, no longer able to take it, pain in my eyes, my affections torn, he stopped, but his gaze was just as intense.  Angry, jealous, and hurt.  He was looking at me like I had all but died already.  We pulled apart.  I stood and put on my nightgown in a hurry.  He sat in the bed, naked as a ghost.

“I have to go check on him.”  Of course I didn’t.  We both knew that.  I just had to be out of there and it was the only reason to give.  He sighed as I left the room, closing the door quietly behind me.  I went down the hall and looked up the stairs at Ezra’s door.  Behind me, Delano exited the room and then he was gone into the night.  He would think of the one before me.  He would think of the loss and he would cry.  But he would continue on.  This wasn’t enough to break him.  I wasn’t enough.  In fact, I didn’t think he could be broken.  There was nothing left to take from him that hadn’t already been ripped away.  He was as constant as the world around him.