Children of Exile (6 page)

“We'll be safe here,” I told him. “We just have to hide. That's all.”

Who did I want that for the most? Him or me?

I tucked both our knapsacks around him like a blanket. Then I began to sing him a lullaby from when he was really tiny:
“Sleep, little baby, for you are safe / Sleep, little baby, for you are loved . . .”

I couldn't hear my own voice, but the more I sang, the more I could remember how our Fred-parents had always sung that lullaby. Bobo curled against me, his face buried against my chest. He'd stopped shaking with sobs. Maybe he'd even stopped sobbing.

As long as I kept singing, I could tune out the screaming and the pounding feet behind me. But if I stopped to take a
breath, I could hear it all again. The floor quaked beneath us, and I dared to glance around. I could only take in pieces of what I saw: grasping hands, screaming mouths, angry eyes . . .

Someone could get seriously hurt from all that trampling,
I thought. The image of a boot smashing down on Aili's fallen red bow came swimming back into my mind. Children were more fragile than bows. More breakable. I didn't want to think it, but my brain added,
Someone could get killed.

I looked back at the mashed curls on Bobo's head and went back to singing
“Sleep, little baby, sleep, sleep, sleep . . .”

Then someone grabbed my shoulder.

I whirled around
and found myself staring into a ruined face. I say “ruined” because that was how I saw it first: like a burned-down house, like a wrecked car. Something that couldn't be repaired. The eyelids sagged and the bags under the eyes sagged; the skin of the cheeks seemed to have melted and then, oddly, frozen into rivulets and channels. The left side of the mouth drooped. This was a face that could never smile, only frown. A face whose owner must have been sad forever.

“I found you,” a voice croaked, and it took that for me to realize: This was a woman's face.

I saw that the woman was wearing a dress, or what had once been a dress. Perhaps the sporadic gray blobs down the front of it had originally been sprigs of flowers many washings ago. Or maybe it was just dirty.

“Bobo, Rosi—is there something wrong with you that you were left behind?” the woman asked. “Is there something wrong with my children?”

“My” children,
I thought.
“My.”

Could this be our mother?

And her first thought was that there might be something wrong with us?

I straightened my back.

“I was protecting Bobo,” I said. “Keeping him safe. And calm. He's only five. This is scary for him.”

I sounded like Edwy claiming that some rule he'd broken was unfair anyway. I sounded cowardly.

My Fred-parents would want me to protect Bobo. Wouldn't my real mother want the same thing?

The woman grunted.

“Five is old enough to . . .” She shook her head and glared, as if it was my fault she'd started to say something she didn't want to. “I thought maybe you hadn't even come. I thought the plane was empty. . . . Stand up, both of you.”

I glanced past the woman, toward the aisle. Surprisingly, I couldn't see anyone running or screaming or grabbing just then. Were Bobo and I the last ones left on the plane? Had all the other children of Fredtown been taken away?

Had I failed them all, trying to protect Bobo?

I obeyed the woman's orders and unfolded my legs. I shoved our knapsacks to the side and pulled Bobo up with me. We both stood up straight, in the tiny space between the airplane seats.

I towered over the woman, and she took a step back. Surprise registered in her gaze so strongly that even the sagging eyelids couldn't hide it.

“Why, you're already full growed,” she said.

Grown,
I wanted so badly to correct her. Even more, though, I wanted her to catch her mistake and correct herself. And then maybe she'd laugh, and it would turn out that that face could smile after all, and she'd explain,
I'm sorry! I'm just so giddy about seeing you, I can't think straight. My children! I love you!

But the frown stayed on her face. Her hooded eyes stayed cold.

I decided that if she kept speaking with bad grammar, I wouldn't let myself hear it. I'd translate it to proper grammar in my head.

“You're older than the pictures they sent,” she said. “Those were only black-and-white, and we couldn't tell. . . . I missed everything. All your growing-up years. Those . . . those other people . . . they raised you complete.”

Like it was all my fault. Like I had kept her from seeing newer pictures of me. Like I had run away from home as a newborn, just to spite her.

“I'm only twelve,” I said, defensive again. “And, like I said, Bobo's only five, so . . .”

The woman knelt down and reached out her hand to
touch Bobo's face. Bobo looked up at me, checking for what he should do. I gave the barest of shrugs. I should have said,
It's all right. You're safe now,
or
Be a good boy and hug your mama.
But I couldn't squeeze any words past the sudden lump in my throat. Especially not those.

“We still get to raise Bobo,” the woman murmured. She twisted so she seemed to be speaking only to Bobo. “Oh, your father's going to be so proud of you. So happy to meet you.”

Wouldn't he be happy to meet me, too?

Bobo's gaze darted back and forth between the woman and me, his eyes asking,
Shouldn't the scary part be over? Should I still be afraid? Aren't you going to protect me from her?

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

“Everything's okay, Bobo,” I said gently, even though it felt like a lie on my tongue. “This is our real mother. We're going home with her.”

The woman harrumphed, as if she could hear the doubt in my voice. But then she took Bobo by the hand, pulling him out into the aisle. I stuck close beside him, which meant that I blocked the way for the woman to walk toward the back door of the plane. She started toward the front instead, tugging Bobo with her. I snatched up Bobo's and my knapsacks and followed along. No way was I letting him out of my sight.

But the woman had a slow, halting gait, and Bobo
dawdled, glancing back after every other step to make sure I was still there. This meant I had too much time to think between my longer-legged strides.

What if I refuse to go with this woman? What if I say I don't think it is safe for me or Bobo? What would I say that was based on? Her appearance?

It was wrong to judge people based on how they looked.

Or would I say it's because she didn't know the right past participle form of “grow”? Or because she was nicer to Bobo than she was to me?

That made it seem like I was just jealous and petty and mean.

Anyhow, what else could Bobo and I do besides going home with this woman? Who could I appeal to? It was always parents who were supposed to protect their kids, parents you were supposed to tell if you were afraid. Or some other trustworthy adult. But no Freds had come with us. The mean whiskery man and his friends didn't even care if we had food. And anyway, I hadn't seen a single one of them since we landed. If they'd cared at all, they would have stopped the stampede of adults grabbing kids.

Bobo hesitated and glanced back at me beside the row of seats Edwy had sat in. I nodded reassuringly at Bobo, and he faced forward again and kept walking. I had to turn my head to the side to try to collect myself.

That's when I saw a paper crumpled on the floor in front of Edwy's seat.

It figures Edwy would leave trash behind,
I thought.
It figures he wouldn't care about littering.

I wanted to think of him that way. I didn't want to think that even Edwy might been overcome and snatched up like Aili was. I didn't want to think that this paper could be something he'd intended to hold on to that he'd lost, like Aili lost her red bow.

I leaned over to pick up the paper, and it wasn't a napkin or a sandwich wrapper. This paper felt stiff and official, and when I flattened it out, it held a long row of stern words in dark ink on the white paper:

Be It Known:

Under the terms of Addendum 468 to Agreement 5062, none of the people commonly known as “Freds” shall be allowed to return with the children. Their presence has been judged to be too provocative, and therefore dangerous. Instead, only those of the neutral third party hired to make the exchange shall be allowed to accompany said children. And all people of this neutral third party shall depart within twenty minutes of the last child being reunited with the last
parent. As long as the parents and others of their ilk continue to meet the terms of Agreement 5062, they will then hold total sovereignty and control over . . .

The paper was torn, so I couldn't see what parents had control over. Their children, I guessed. This had to be the decree that had caused such panic back in Fredtown. Edwy being Edwy, he'd somehow managed to swipe a copy in all the chaos.

But who would think
Freds
are dangerous?
I wondered.
And—provocative?

I didn't know what that word meant, but it sounded like “provoke.” The Freds always scolded Edwy for provoking trouble.
They
would never provoke anyone. They were always trying to stop trouble and resolve every problem in a peaceful way.

Does Edwy understand what this means?
I wondered.
Did he see the rest of the decree, the part that was torn off?

I remembered Edwy scratching graffiti into his airplane seat. It could have just been Edwy being Edwy, provoking trouble as usual.

But what if it's something important?
I asked myself.
Something about the part of this decree that's missing?

Quickly, before I could change my mind, I darted toward the seat Edwy had sat in. I pulled back the cloth covering and the padding beneath, to find words carved crookedly into the metal frame.

I made out the first part:
HEY, WORLD
—

It figures Edwy would think the whole world should pay attention to him,
I thought, allowing myself a wry smile.

But my smile faded when I deciphered the rest of the message:

THESE PEOPLE AREN'T REAL EITHER

Had Edwy meant
that our real parents weren't real? That they weren't really ours, any more than the Fred-parents had been? How would he know that?

Or was he talking about somebody else entirely? The mean whiskery-faced man and his friends, maybe?

I felt a jolt of memory, a reminder of the time when Edwy and I stopped being friends. He'd said awful things about his Fred-parents—how could I trust anything he said about our real ones? Or any adult?

Edwy probably knew that I would get curious and eventually look at his graffiti. He was probably just messing with me, the way he always did. He probably didn't know or understand any more than I did about Addendum 468 or Agreement 5062 or any of the weirdness around us.

I decided I couldn't let myself think about what Edwy may or may not have meant. But I did tuck the decree into my knapsack, alongside my book and the leftover food I still had.

We walked past the other rows of seats and down the steps from the airplane: first the woman, then Bobo, then me. We descended into a clump of other parents and kids fleeing the plane—other kids who had hidden, probably; other parents who had maybe waited until the worst of the riot had stomped past before wading into the crowd.

But all the commotion around us was like something happening in a dream, out of focus. I could barely get my eyes to scan properly to make sure it was safe to take the next step across the cracked tarmac.

Sometimes when you're scared, it's because you're making up things to be scared of in your own head.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
I needed to focus on that principle of Fredtown. I needed to accept that Bobo and I were supposed to be here in our real hometown, with our real parents. I needed to make my brain stop thinking of the woman on the other side of Bobo as “the woman” and think of her as my mother instead.

The Freds would want you to ask her what she wants to be called,
I told myself.
Mama? Mommy? Mother?

How could I say any of those names to this woman?

My brain rebelled. My mouth did too. I stayed silent.

Behind me on the runway, I heard a roar—the airplane engine rumbling to life again.

All people of this neutral third party shall depart within
twenty minutes . . . ,
I thought. I looked back, catching a glimpse of smirking faces in the windows as the plane sped past. Within seconds it took off. The mean whiskered man and the others like him had followed the rule.

Good riddance,
I told myself. Those men hadn't been any help anyway. But I really wanted to scream,
No, wait! Take Bobo and me with you! Take us back to Fredtown!

Bobo's hand crept into mine. I knew he'd done it to comfort himself, but it steadied me, too. Bobo's hand was so plump and warm and solid, so familiar in this unfamiliar place. As much as he could drive me crazy sometimes, he really was a sweet little boy. Maybe he
was
trying to comfort me.

The woman looked at Bobo's hand in mine.

“You baby him,” she said, frowning.

Anger like I'd never felt before surged through me. She didn't even know Bobo; she didn't know me. We were in a strange place, even if it was supposed to be home now. She was a stranger, even if she was supposed to be our mother.

Did she expect me to yank my hand away from my own brother? To shove him away?