Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series (13 page)

She shakes her head “no” but says nothing. Just like the others. They’re so backwards. They’d rather die for sure at the hands of evil people than face a fear they don’t understand. And which doesn’t even exist except in their minds. It drives me crazy. I want to grab her and shake her.

Garrett keeps on. “In Sikwaa, there are lots of families now. Twelve or thirteen already, and more coming in.”

She keeps shaking her head. Her little girls gather round her and grab onto her legs. They stare up at me with big, beautiful, eyes the color of the lake on a gray winter’s day. I can’t let them face the terror of Darius’ wrath after what we’ve done here.

“There’s no danger in Sikwaa. It’s not haunted. There’s no such thing as spirits.”

He says it like he’s trying to convince himself it’s true. I look at Shack, who has gone off to the side and busies himself cleaning his hands of the gore from the corpses. Like the other times, it seems he doesn’t want to talk about the Sikwaa legends.

The young mother looks to her husband, who stands firm and says nothing. Garrett gives me a shrug. He’s ready to give up on them. Like the others.

No
. We’ve done this before. Let the family stay, let the parents get taken off to work as slaves for Darius’ army, let the children get hacked to death in their own front yards. Not again.

I stomp to the man. He’s nothing much, just a skinny, short thing. I could beat him senseless if I wanted, then cart them all off to Sikwaa.

“You. Idiot,” I say to him with venom in my voice. “Look at your wife. Look at your daughters. Do you love them?”

“What?” He’s insulted. Good.

I grab his shoulder and spin him to face his wife. “Them! Do you love them?”

“What? Yes, course.”

“Then why do you want them to die? Why do you want a dozen Southshaw men to grab them by their hair, drag them screaming from their beds, burn their house down? Why do you want them to see the axes raised, see their sisters chopped in half, then feel the axe themselves?” I yell. I might be shaking him hard, but who cares? Garrett touches my shoulder, and I whack his hand away. “That’s what will happen if you stay here. You—they’ll make you a slave, make you get their army ready to destroy Upper and kill the rest of us. Is that what you want?”

“I’ll protect them.”

Men. So macho. So stupid. “Like you protected them today?” It’s a mean thing to say, but he’s an idiot.

“We’ll move off, into the woods.”

“They’ll find you. You’re lucky it took them this long.”

Shack calls from wherever he is, “Really lucky. You have no idea how lucky.”

“We can go back into the woods. Star. I been to Star once, I know it.”

Idiot. There’s a road, a clear trail that goes back up into the woods, straight to Star. Darius will send someone that way. They’ll clear it out before they go to Upper. This family is going to die, and they have only this stupid man to blame.

“Loop, let them go.” Garrett speaks softly at my side. I can hear the sadness in his words, but why isn’t he angry? These three beautiful little girls, not even given their own choice—

I turn to the young wife. “Do you want your girls to die?”

She shakes her head,
no
, but she says nothing.

“Then come with us. He can go wherever he wants, can go over the mountains to the desolation if he wants, but you can come with us and live.”

She’s white as a sheet—not one of their sheets, of course, but a clean one—and trembling so much her wispy hair quivers at its downy, fraying ends.

“Fight,” I say to her. “Fight for your girls. If you won’t fight for yourself or fight for Tawtrukk, then fight for them. Show them what it means to be a Tawtrukk woman.” I’m right in her face now, talking softly.

Her husband grabs at me to pull me away, shouting, “Tawtrukk woman! You don’t know nothin’ bout that! This here’s what a good Tawtrukk woman is. Obedient. Faithful. St—”

He never finishes the word as my fist slams into his chest and sends him crashing back into the wall of their hovel. I start toward him, but Garrett grabs my elbow, and I allow him to stop me. I may already have killed the fool, but if I did I wouldn’t regret it one second. I forget him and turn back to the girl.

“If you want to stay with him, fine. But let your girls come with us. They don’t deserve to die. Not like that.”

I hear him snuffling in the dirt behind me, but I ignore him. Garrett will stop him if he comes at me from behind. I look into the girl’s eyes. She’s older than I am, but not much, and I terrify her. I hold her gaze. I can see she wants to look away, but she can’t. After a few seconds, she nods, and tears stream down her filthy face in pink-brown tracks. I smile at her, happy. Genuinely happy that she may be foolish enough to marry an idiot, but she’s smart enough to leave him when it matters.

Enough hanging around. “Let’s go,” I call, and within seconds the three little girls are in Shack’s and Garrett’s arms, and we’re all walking away from the fool and his hovel. The young mother’s hand is in mine, her skin rough and calloused but still warm and gentle.

“You’re all gonna die,” the fool calls from behind us. “Your souls will wither and fade to naught!”

I squeeze the girl’s hand, and I’m proud that the rhythm of her steps doesn’t falter.

“You’ll come back, you’ll see!” He calls out. The farther away we get, the tighter the girl’s grip on my hand is and the more screechy his voice gets. “You’ll come lookin’ for me in Star! You’ll see!”

We walk on through the woods. After a few minutes, the girl asks softly, “Is it true, what they say?”

I laugh, partly because I’m so happy she came with us, partly because I like the feel of her warm hand in mine, and partly because of the question. I smile at her and look into her sky blue eyes. “No, not at all. Sikwaa isn’t haunted. There aren’t any spirits there.”

“Well,” she says as she looks down to her feet, “that ain’t what I meant.”

I wait for her to go on. I have no idea what she’s talking about if not the spirits. But she says nothing more and seems to be waiting for me to answer.

Shack and Garrett are farther ahead. Shack carries the two littlest girls, and Garrett has the oldest, who’s probably six years old, on his shoulders. This young mother must have been only fourteen or fifteen when she went through childbirth with that one. Younger than I am now. I’ve heard it’s hard, that it hurts more than anything. How can such a timid, frightened little thing go through that and still be so simple? So ready to give up her life at the demand of a stupid, idiot man? Such courage, and such innocence.

Finally, I can’t stand it anymore. “Is what true? What do they say?”

She turns her face a little toward me, but she keeps her gaze on the ground as she answers. “About you.”

Me? They say things about me? I’m about to ask what she means when she tells me.

“That you’re like a spirit. They say you can just appear and then be gone like nothin’. That you drop from the trees, that you kill Southshawans just by lookin’ at ‘em.” She’s got some pep now, her voice picking up as she glances at me once or twice while she talks. “That when you shout at ‘em, they burst into fire and turn to dust. That Southshawans go mad when you stare at ‘em in the eyes, just go crazy and jump off cliffs and stab themselves and… whatever.”

She’s almost skipping along beside me. We’ve both started walking faster, so we’ve caught up to the twins. Who apparently overheard this last speech of hers.

Garrett shoots first. “And she flies through the sky, riding an eagle!”

Shack laughs. “No, no. She flies like an eagle. She doesn’t need to ride one.”

“And all the woodland creatures bring her berries.”

“The bears bring her honey.”

“She doesn’t even have to ask for it.”

“They just know when she wants it.”

“And the coyotes catch rabbits for her.”

“I heard the rabbits give themselves up willingly.”

“True. They just jump right into the cooking pot.”

“And the birds bring her garlands of daisies for her hair.”

“Shut up!” I shout at them, but I’m laughing through it. “Quiet, cabrones.”

The girl seems intimidated, unsure what to think. We stroll along, and she’s gone back to shy withdrawal.

After a little while, I say, “I don’t even know your name. What is your name?”

“Susannah. I’m Susannah.”

After a little more walking in silence, the girl on Garrett’s shoulders twists back to look at us. I smile at her, but she doesn’t smile back. Her eyes are wide. She suddenly blurts out, “Bears bring you honey! I like honey.” Then she turns forward again, just in time to duck under a low branch.

I laugh out loud, and the morning suddenly seems bright and wonderful. These girls have a life. They have a future. Susannah fought back, and she’ll keep fighting back with us. Who knows? Maybe she’ll help us overthrow Darius and send the Southshawans back where they came from, and maybe she’ll go to Star after all and find that idiot husband of hers, and maybe she’ll tell him to go to hell for almost killing her gorgeous, funny, sweet little daughters.

“No, Susannah,” I say. “None of those things is true. We’ve fought back. That’s all. What we did to those Southshawans today? That’s what we’ve done on other days, for other families.” I try not to think of the families we didn’t convince to come with us. They will visit me in my dreams, when I’m asleep, as they do every night. But now, I keep their memories away. “We’re just regular people, fighting back.”

I squeeze her hand.

“I’m glad you chose to fight back with us.”

She squeezes my hand back. Then she says, softly but without the timid shyness of before, “I can walk fast. You ain’t gotta slow your pace for me.”

We smile at each other, and we speed up toward Sikwaa.

CHAPTER 12

After lunch at Micktuk’s, Shack grabs me to walk with him while Garrett reads a story to Susannah and the girls. I follow Shack along the trails, meandering behind him in the Sikwaa hills.

“Hey Shack, don’t you just adore Susannah’s little girls?” I know he does. Especially Rose with the wide eyes, whom we all call Honey because of what she said after we rescued them from their father. We wouldn’t be out here now if Shack didn’t adore her. He’s the one who insisted we go looking for a beehive.

“Yeah, they’re cute.” Noncommittal. The big softie.

“Cute like their mama?”

“Whatever.”

I laugh at him. Once we got her washed up, brushed her hair, and gave her some decent clothes, Susannah turned out to be quite attractive. In a mousy, quiet sort of way. “I saw you checking her out. Don’t lie to me.”

“Yeah, okay Lupay, you see whatever you want to see.” He tromps through the ferns and brambles, looking off into the trees and down into the roots as he goes. I’m getting under his skin. It’s fun. The late afternoon sun warms us through the leaves of the pines and redwoods.

I have no idea if Shack knows how to find a beehive or not, or what to do if we do find one. But it’s been a good day, and we’re in an area of Sikwaa I’ve never seen. It has an untamed feel of life, a chatter of birds and small creatures and bugs. Even the plants and trees seem to hum.

“Hey Shack,” I twitter at him, “what are we looking for, anyway?”

“Duh. A beehive. Honey doesn’t make itself. Doesn’t grow on a bush.”

“Well, I know that.”

“Yeah.” He sounds irritated. He can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, but mostly only when I’m pestering him.

He pushes a spindly branch out of his way and lets it slap back, and I leap aside before it cuts my face.

“Hey! Hold the branches for a lady. Didn’t your mama teach you manners?”

I regret the words even before they’re out of my mouth. I’m about to apologize when he snaps back.

“No. She never had the chance.”

It stings more than any branch could.

I follow him in silence as he stomps through the trees. It’s too late to apologize now. It’s not easy to hurt him like I did. I know better, and I feel sick for it. How would I feel if my mother had disappeared when I was four, never to be seen again? I wish I could take it back. I wish I could say something to make him not despise me.

He bashes along through the ferns a minute longer. “Besides, there aren’t any ladies around here,” he finally says. “There’s just you and me.”

It’s like he’s slipped the noose off my neck. The warmth and life of the afternoon fill me again, and I laugh. For once I don’t want to swipe back with a barb of my own. I just want to laugh, to chase him down and tackle him with a big hug. But he might take it wrong, so I just skip along behind him and start whistling as I run my fingers through the soft ferns and pine needles.

A minute or two later, Shack asks, “What is that tune? I’ve never heard it before.”

“Huh? Oh. I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking. Why, is there some special bee hunting song I should sing instead?” Now that he mentions it, I’m not sure of the tune myself. I don’t think it has any words, just melody. I know I’ve heard it before, but I can’t place it.

“No, please. Don’t sing. Keep whistling if it’ll keep you from singing.”

“Ha ha. You’re a jerk, William Shiver.”

I can’t see his face, but I just know he’s got a huge grin, and it makes me happy.

With a sudden stop, I recognize where we are. “Hey!”

He stops and looks back at me, his face darkening. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you see a hive?” Boyish excitement fills his voice.

“No. I know where we are.”

“Ah. How unusual. I know that would be a shock for you. Take some deep breaths, and—”

“Shut up, cabron. No, I mean I know where we are. I mean, we’re near the big ruins.”

This does not seem to excite him in the way it excites me.

“C’mon! I think it’s this way, just down the hill!” I turn to go, down to our right. But Shack doesn’t move. I give him a curious smile, but he stands still, like someone nailed his feet to the ground. He doesn’t look happy at all. “I’ve been dying to see it. Don’t you want to go explore?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on, Shack. We don’t have to go inside.”

“No.”

“There might be bees.” There won’t be, of course, but I really want to see the big ruins, especially after what Susannah’s husband said about seeing a spirit in an upper window.

“Lupay, no.” He shakes his head but otherwise remains still. “Look, it’s getting dark. We shouldn’t—we need to keep looking for a hive. What is it your dad says? Keep your mind on your task?”

“Stay on task.” I don’t mean to sound pouty, but I wish he hadn’t mentioned my father. I was having such a good day. The last time my father said
stay on task
was the day before I left for the wilds. He wanted me to pull up all the weeds from the garden. I showed him. I stayed on task. I pulled all the damn weeds.

Lately, I haven’t stayed on task. I’ve let myself get lost in Sikwaa’s safe beauty, in our little victories over the Southshaw patrols. I’ve let everyone else slip into comfort.
Complacency
, my father used to say. It’s different from comfort. While Darius works my friends half to death getting ready to destroy Upper and everything that’s left, I’ve let myself become lazy. Weak. Distracted.

The ruins can wait. It’s not like they’re going to become anything other than ruins. But I’ll let him find his hive and bring some honey to Susannah’s girls. There’s not much else we can do today anyway.

“Loop…” he begins, but I stop him. His frown means he knows what’s in my mind.

“Hey, it’s okay. Let’s find some honey, and let’s go home.” I look at my throwing blades, play with one in my fingers, feel the sharp edge and point. “Maybe I’ll get a squirrel or two for dinner. We have to eat, right?” I offer a smile, but there’s nothing behind it and it probably makes me look sickly.

Shack gives a hint of a laugh and looks at the ground between us. “Interesting word, home,” he says.

“What?”

“You said, ‘Let’s go home.’“

“Oh.”

“You meant, let’s go back to Micktuk’s place.”

“Right.”

“And you can’t really go home. Not right now anyway.”

“Yeah.” What, does he think this is helping somehow? I wish Garrett were here to shut him up.

“Ironically,” Shack says and looks me in the eye without any emotion, “I am home.”

I think about sniping at him that I didn’t think he knew any complicated words like
ironically
, but something in his eyes, in his tone, stops me. Instead, I just wait for him to finish.

“You might think I’ve been wandering around lost. No clue what to look for.”

I nod and shrug. He’s right on that.

“But I remember. My mom kept bees. She loved the bees, like they were her pets. I don’t remember much about her, but I remember when she’d bring in a golden comb dripping with honey, and she’d make us wait until after dinner because, well, a fresh honeycomb needed fresh bread. Then she’d kick us out to play while she started baking.” He’s smiling now, staring through me into his memories.

I don’t know how he remembers this. I can’t remember anything from when I was four. It seems so clear to him, though.

“She never let us near the hives. She was worried we’d get stung. We used to go look at them, watch the bees come and go. I don’t know if they’re still there, but it’s worth a shot.”

I don’t think he’ll know what to do if we do find a hive, but I don’t challenge him. He’s not really looking for honey. He’s looking for his mother, for his memories. But if her hives are around here…

“Shack. You mean your home is nearby?”

He nods.

“Where?” Suddenly I’m excited again. I want to see where he and his brother were born, where they were babies and learned to walk and talk and fight. Where they were little kids, when their mother was alive and their father loved them.

“No. I don’t want to.”

“Come on, Shack. Wait—did you live in the big ruins?” I can’t help it. My eyes go wide with anticipation.

“No. No, it was a little house up here.” He nods over his shoulder, up the hill. “There’s a meadow over the top of this hill, and our house was right on the edge of it. The bees loved the wildflowers. Garrett and I used to sit and watch them in the afternoons sometimes and think about her… when we were, you know, five or six. Before we moved away to Lower.”

I walk softly to him, take both his hands. I look up into his eyes, but he looks away. There aren’t tears. There’s no sadness. At least, not sadness like the sharp anguish of seeing your father chopped down. More like a dull, constant ache from a bruise that’s never really healed, and never will.

“Your hands are cold,” I say, and I wrap his fingers in my palms to warm them. “Please. I want to see your meadow.”

He sighs a deep, long breath. “It doesn’t feel right without Garrett.”

“It won’t feel right, ever,” I whisper. “If it helps, I’ll come back with him later. Or all three of us.”

“It won’t help. But come on.”

He keeps holding one hand and leads me through the woods, picking an easy way through the brambles and underbrush. We move quickly, up over the ridge, to the meadow.

Tall, pale green grass waves in the afternoon breeze, the mountain’s shadow darkening half of it. The green is splashed with yellow, orange, purple, blue—thousands of flowers. Poppies, mustard, lavender, dozens of kinds I don’t even know. In a patch of sunlight all the way across—maybe a quarter mile away—a small group of deer perk up. But they don’t move, and after a moment they go back to grazing. And above it all is a subtle hum of bees. Thousands of bees skipping along the tops of the swaying grass, dipping into the pools of color and zipping out again. I squeeze Shack’s hand and stay silent.

We stand for a long time, and the shadow of the mountain creeps across the meadow. Eventually, Shack clears his throat and says, “Time to go,” and we turn back into the forest.

“Shack, I—”

“Shh,” he says.

I want to see his home, where he grew up. It’s probably all rotted to nothing, but some part of me has to see it. I try to ask again. “No, I want—”

“I know,” he says, and I fall silent. If not now, I’ll come back at some point, maybe with Garrett. I don’t know why my need is so strong. It’s like I have two brothers, but I don’t know anything about them. Not really.

Suddenly he stops, and I realize I’ve been gazing at the ground. I stop with him and look where he’s looking. There, right before us, is what remains of what once was a beautiful little house. The walls seem sturdy enough, but the roof has rotted away and the door is missing.

We stand and stare for a few minutes. This was no stone fortress like that ancient house that Dane and I discovered. This was a family cabin, cut from the forest, pieced together with care and love. The corners are sharp and square, the windows carved to catch the afternoon light, the stone chimney assembled with precision and patience.

What happened to the family that built this home? What went so wrong?

Shack steps forward and releases my hand, and I follow him through the gaping doorway. I watch him pace one way, then the other, resurrecting memories from more than a decade ago. He points to one corner and mumbles something, then shakes his head. He glances to a side door to another room, then back at the front door as if he expects someone, or some thing, to burst through.

His eyes have a wild look to them as he glances back to the other room, then he steps fast to a corner and crouches. His eyes flick back and forth as if he’s watching memories bounce about like angry hornets. He’s so intent that I have to look myself to make sure there’s nothing really there. After a few moments, he frowns and nods.

He stands again and looks at me. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s just like I’ve remembered it all these years.”

“Remembered what?” He’s never told me anything. I feel like we’re in the presence of spirits, that the memories are so thick they’ll come to life before me.

“The night my mom was taken away.”

Chills shiver all through my body at the hollow look in his eyes, the empty tone in his voice.

“Taken away?”

“By an angel.”

“Shack, you’re scaring me.” His father went crazy up here. That’s why he gets drunk all the time. Could this place turn Shack crazy, too? What happened to his mother, anyway?

He shakes his head. “Don’t worry, Loop. It’s okay.”

“No, Shack. I’m not sure it is.” The hair on my neck is standing up, and I have that feeling like I’m being watched. Maybe Susannah’s idiot husband was right after all. “Tell me. You have to tell me what happened. Now.”

He nods. “I was—we were—four years old. Garrett and I were in bed, in the back room.” He points to the side door. “I heard yelling. I think Garrett was asleep. My dad was yelling. He’d been yelling a lot, and my mom cried a lot when he was gone off hunting or something. I didn’t understand then, but knowing him now…”