Children of Eden (35 page)

And then, from one blink to another, the world changes.

As if by magic all the heat is sucked out of the air. The glaring white light dims to pinkish morning sunshine, rosy and comforting. As the ground shivers and grows still again, I see the merciless desert change to a mere strip of sand. It's cool beneath my hands. I look down at my palms, scorched and blistered from touching the sand just a moment ago. A soft wind begins to blow from out beyond the desert, cooling my skin.

I look around me. The shimmering nanosand is gone.

I smell something, sharp and strange and compelling, carried on the fresh breeze. It reminds me a little bit of the camphor tree, wild and peaceful all at once. I turn toward the
scent, eager. In this sudden calm, the terror of the earthquake, of my escape and pursuit, are forgotten.

On the far horizon, where before I only saw the shimmer of rising desert heat, I see a smudge of green.

I take a step toward it. Another.

Then I'm running, not away from something for the first time in forever, but toward something. Some spark, some nerve hidden deep within me hopes—no, knows—what it is. But my conscious mind doesn't get that far. I only know I have to get to it.

I hear indistinct shouting behind me. The two surviving Greenshirts are coming after me, moving swiftly now that the sand is solid, the heat gone, the land still, and the air gentle. I don't care. I have to get to the horizon. Something primitive and atavistic in me has taken over.

The very sand beneath my feet changes. It's no longer thick, rolling dunes of desert, but a sprinkling of sand over something else. I kick at the sand as I run. Earth! Black, rich dirt, of the kind no one in Eden has ever seen. Wild dirt. Laughing as I run, I want to roll in it, rub it on my arms, taste it.

But ahead of me the green smudge is resolving itself into something wonderful.

How long do I run? A mile, two miles, over land that until recently was desert. But I see now it was a fake desert, false like so many things in Eden. Where the breeze blows sand away I see the grates of what can only be heaters, now cool and dead. They must have been elevating the temperature, creating a desert environment where none existed.

To keep humans from venturing out into the dead, barren land, I would have guessed once. To keep us safe from the poisons we put into our own world.

That was before I saw the forest.

It makes a mockery of the fake beanstalk woods. When
I first saw them, I thought they were glorious, because I had no grounds for comparison. Even the camphor, huge and lovely and unbelievable as it may be, is sad compared to what I'm looking at right now. The camphor is a tree out of place, trapped as I was trapped my whole life. They've done wonders keeping it alive, thriving even, but how can a tree be a proper tree imprisoned underground?

I'm standing in grass, as high as my knees, shot through with flowers and scratchy seed heads. There's a low buzzing sound, and I think another tremor is starting, but no, it is only a bee flying sleepily from flower to flower.

Beyond the little field of grass the forest springs up abruptly, thick and dark. Birds flit through the boughs. There's a movement to one side. An animal, as tall as I am, slenderly made and elegant, steps carefully on small sharp hooves, testing the air with its black nose. Antlers branch from its brow. It smells me, but doesn't seem to see me. I'm perfectly still, and it can't have ever seen my kind in all its lifetime.

Everything I've read about, seen illustrated in datablocks, animated in vids . . . it exists, right before my eyes. This isn't another vision. It's not a trick.

The trick was keeping it from us.

Has the world been healed all this time? Why didn't they tell us? Do they even know?

I want Lachlan to see this, and Lark. And oh, my mother! What I wouldn't give to have her standing beside me gazing at what we all thought was lost. How many times Ash went to the temple to repent, on behalf of mankind, for the terrible things we did to the planet, the animals, the very dirt itself. How guilty we all felt that we'd destroyed our home, killed almost every living thing but us. I want the people I love to be here with me, knowing they can let that guilt blow away in the tender breeze.

Maybe we hurt the world. Maybe we even killed it.

But it's back to life now.

I sigh, and at the sound the deer tosses its magnificent rack, stares at me a long moment with one prancing hoof raised, then turns and, with a bunching of muscles, springs away. I feel a pang of regret when it is gone. But it doesn't matter. The world is here, and it's not dead!

I smile, and the smile turns into a laugh. Giddy, I turn to look for the Greenshirts. They're still far behind me, but they must see it. I wave, laughing like a maniac. Wait until they're close! Wait until they see! Nothing else will matter to them. Wait until the citizens of Eden see. Rich and poor alike. Politics, poverty, second children—it will fade into nothing once people know that the world has been reborn.

“Look!” I cry joyfully to the Greenshirts. “Can you believe it? Look at it!” I run toward them. I want to embrace them, to dance with them. They are sharing this incredible discovery, enemies no more.

I move lightly over the grass, then the sand, back into the artificial desert. “Come see!” I call to them.

Then the air around me smacks me from all angles with a
whoosh
, and I'm enveloped by killing heat, blinded by white light. I can see the heat rising from the almost-hidden grates. Whatever the earthquake broke, it's been reactivated.

It doesn't matter. The Greenshirts will join me out here. We'll manage to get back somehow, to tell everyone the miraculous news. The Center officials will shut down this burning hot wall-without-walls that has kept us clueless about the outside world for so long. We'll start anew in the world.

In this beautiful green world of birds and deer and trees and rich fertile Earth behind me.

I turn . . . and the forest is gone.

All I see is the shimmering silvery wave of heat rising from the desert sand.

The cry that escapes my lips has no words, only raw, wrenching pain.

Gone.

Was it there?

Yes. Yes! I know it. I saw it, smelled it, felt it beneath my feet. It was real.

It
is
real.

I try to run to the place where it was, but I'm hit by a wall of heat so intense I can't cross it. When I try to put my hand through, my fingertips come back blistered.

The Greenshirts know. They've seen it. We can go back to the Center and . . .

They tackle me from behind, putting their combined weight on me, pressing my face into the burning sand so that I can't breathe, can't see. I try to shout at them, beg them for help, tell them that the wonderful wooded living world we found is more important than punishing a second child. But my words are choked in the sand.

One of them hits me in the back of the head, and a second later everything goes black.

But in that second I realize the truth. The Center knows about this. They've been deliberately keeping everyone in Eden from knowing that the Earth healed itself long ago. Maybe it was never even really destroyed in the first place. Now, for reasons unknown, they are keeping every human left on Earth trapped in a giant cage.

I WAKE IN
cool comfort. I'm lying on a bed, dressed in something light and clean. The torturous desert is gone. I open my eyes to gray walls. To a door with a small barred window.

A face looks through the bars. It's a woman, with a cap of dark curling hair and comforting brown eyes. She smiles at me.

“Good. Our friend is awake at last.”

“Where am I?” My voice is hoarse, my throat scratchy and dry.

“Someplace safe,” she says.

Am I in the Underground? I sniff, but detect no sharp, cool camphor smell.

“The forest,” I begin, but she shushes me.

“There's time enough for that later, during your session.” Session? “You should eat something first.” She opens a slit at the base of the door and slides a tray inside.

“Where am I?” I ask again. When she doesn't answer, I pull myself awkwardly to my feet, only now noticing that my ankles are chained together. My wrists, too.

“You're in the Center prison, Rowan. But only for a little while.” Her voice is soft and hypnotically soothing. “We have a place for you. A safe place where you can be made whole again. We know you've had a great many troubles in your life. You've been kept from your proper place as a first child. But now—after a little treatment—you can rejoin society and take your proper place in Eden.”

She tilts her head to the side, the bars slashing her face with diagonal shadows. “We're so happy to have you back, Rowan. Don't worry. We'll make you well in no time. Before you know it, your delusions will be gone.”

“I don't understand,” I say. How long have I been unconscious? My brain feels fuzzy, my eyes blurry with their new lenses.

“We know that you are the firstborn, that your brother took your rightful place. You were lied to all your life. We know you were tortured by members of a dangerous rebel
movement, brainwashed into helping them, drugged, convinced of impossible things. You've been raving for days. Things about underground trees, and worse.”

“Worse?” I ask.

She laughs softly. “Don't be embarrassed. It's not your fault. They gave you some strange psychotropic drug. You must have inhaled it. We could smell it on your skin for days, no matter how much we scrubbed you. You kept talking about a forest out past the desert. Bees and birds and animals. You described it so clearly. The hallucination was totally real to you. Do you remember? But you're much better now. A few more sessions and the horrible memory of your ill treatment will fade away.”

No. It isn't true. The people of the Underground didn't torture me. Well, they did, but it wasn't like that. Was it? My memory feels shaky. Brainwashed? No, Lachlan just talked to me, explained things to me. Drugged? I remember the sharp, sweet smell of the camphor tree. Lachlan said the camphor essence could be turned into poison. Was I drugged?

No! I know what's real, and what isn't. This woman, with her soft, persuasive voice and calming demeanor, is lying.

“The Earth isn't dead,” I say firmly, approaching the barred door.

“Now, Rowan, listen to reason . . .”

“The Earth isn't dead!” I shout as loudly as I can. “I've seen it—the forest, the animals! It's just beyond the desert!” I lunge for the bars, grabbing them, rattling them with all my strength. “The desert is fake. It's all lies—lies!” My voice has risen to a shrill pitch I don't even recognize. The words seem to be ripped from my raw throat. “We have to get out of here!” I rave. “We have to go to the forest! It's alive! The world is alive! It's Eden that's dead!”

The woman shakes her head sadly. “I thought you were closer to being healed.” She shrugs. “That's okay. We have all the time in the world.”

She turns and walks away. Through the bars I can see the prison we rescued Ash from . . . how long ago? Long walls of barred cells.

I put my mouth to the bars. “Do you hear me?” I kick the polished silver food tray aside and pound on the walls until my skin tears and bleeds. “They're lying to you! They're lying to us all!”

But no one answers me. No one at all.

Later—a minute, an hour, I don't know—I fall to my knees, my voice gone. The silver tray is at my side, the food spilled over the bare floor. I bow my head in despair . . . and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the shiny tray. As I bend, the pink quartz necklace slips out of my shirt and dances from its cord.

I pick up the tray and look at my face. At my unfamiliar eyes.

I stare at myself. The eyes are gray and flat, almost the same steely silver of the tray. They're not my eyes. I'm not myself.

But I fight the despondency that washes over me. I won't let them win. I'll escape, I'll tell all of Eden about the forest. Whatever they do to me, whatever these “sessions” entail, I won't let them force me to forget. I'll hold on to the truth, and somehow, someday, share it.

Hold on to yourself
, I tell my reflection as I grasp my precious crystal from the Underground.
Even if your eyes aren't your own, you're still Rowan inside, no matter what they do to you. Hold on to the truth—to Lachlan, and Lark, to the Underground and the camphor tree and the forest.

I make a pact with myself. Every day, I will look at my reflection. I will memorize myself, remember myself, and everything I've learned. The Center can't take that away from me.

I stare at myself now. Aloud, in the barest whisper that's left of my voice, I declare to my reflection, “I see you, Rowan.”

And from somewhere else, not quite inside of me, I hear another voice, cold and tinny and mechanical, say, “And I see you, too, Rowan.”

THANK YOU TO
my readers for always being the best friends I could ever ask for. Thank you, Laura Sullivan, for helping me uncover the world of Eden and making my vision come to life. Thank you, Rakesh Satyal, for challenging me and correcting all of my mistakes. Thank you to everyone at UTA and Addition for always supporting me and helping me achieve my dreams. Thank you, Whitney, for always sparking my imagination. And thank you to my boyfriend, Daniel—I'd be forever lost without your constant love and support. I love you always.