Galdoni (18 page)

We watched a Galdoni about fifteen years old
be thrown into a cell. His face was bruised and he limped over to
the pallet on the floor that served as a bed. He sat in the corner
with his arms around his knees and stared at the opposite wall, a
blank expression on his battered face.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away. The pallet,
the gray scratched, windowless walls, barred door, low ceiling, and
a floor covered in filth that would never wash away no matter how
hard we were pushed to scrub it. The solitary room, reserved for
Galdoni who acted out, had been my home many nights. The regular
quarters weren’t much better, but at least they had windows, even
though they were barred and tiny. It was amazing how much the light
of day could lift the heart.

The expressionless stare on the Galdoni’s
face tore at my soul. My own face remembered it with an ache, the
wall that kept all emotion in, that felt no pain, and that hid the
only thing the guards could never take away. No matter how they
tried to break us, I never let go of what it was that made me
myself. No matter how many Galdoni let go of themselves and became
mindless beasts, whatever essence that spoke through my bones would
always be my own.

“
How do they keep people
like that?” Disgust filled Jayce’s voice.

“
Not people,” I reminded
him quietly. He opened his mouth to argue and I shook my head.
“It’s how they justify it. It took me a long time to realize that
by treating us like animals, they could believe that’s what we
were. It’s the only way I think they could sleep at night. The few
teachers that acted out for us were never seen again, so the rest
learned to rebel quietly by giving us books and things we could
keep hidden. They taught us about the real world outside the
Academy walls, hoping that one day we could see it.”

“
It’s not right,” Jayce
growled. “How are we supposed to have faith in a justice system
when
people
,” he
stressed the word in a tone that gave no room for argument, “Are
treated like this without just cause?”

I fought back a smile and he glared at me.
“What?”

I couldn’t help the grin that came to my
face. “I might have deserved it once in a while.”

Nikko sat back in his chair, his brows
pulled together. “What did you do?”

I shrugged. “I might have set a couple of
fires on more than a few occasions.” I laughed at their stares.
“The Academy still has to obey fire marshal law. Whenever the fire
alarms go off, all Galdoni are forced to evacuate to the Arena. It
gave us a chance to stretch our wings.” I chuckled, remembering,
“It got to the point that whenever the alarm went off, they came
immediately to my room to see what was burning.” I rubbed a hand on
my chest at the remembered pain.

Brie came in with a plate of ham, cheese,
and egg sandwiches, interrupting our conversation. Allie followed
close behind her. Nikko and Jayce shut their laptops before they
could see what we were watching. Brie eyed them both suspiciously,
then shook her head. “I don’t know what you boys are up to, but you
need a break.” She took a closer look at Nikko. “And some sleep. I
don’t know how you plan to stop anything if your brains can’t even
function properly.”

“
So you admit that I have
one,” Jayce pointed out with a grin.

She swatted at him and he jumped out of the
way. “I never said how big it was.”

“
Bigger than yours,” he
replied.

“
Oh, yeah?” She grabbed a
pillow off the couch and threw it at him. He ducked and it hit her
books off the chair, spilling all her papers onto the ground.
“Hey!”

“
You threw it!” he argued.
Allie giggled and hid behind me.

I bent to help pick up the papers when a
knock sounded at the door. We all froze and looked at each other.
My coat was in the bedroom. I had gotten way too comfortable
without it.

I rushed to my room and threw on the coat
before Jayce opened the door. To my surprise, I came back out to
find Zach standing there with another student I had seen a couple
of times around school.

Zach glanced around quickly and his face lit
up when he saw me. “Kale,” he said, pushing past Nikko. “I figured
it out!”

I glanced at the black bag he carried.
“Figured what out?”

Jayce shoved the door shut behind him with a
grumble as Zach tossed the bag onto the table. “The truth problem.
You said that the way to stop this is to give the people a reason
to question what was happening, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah, so?”

“
So we give them the truth.
You know, a ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free’ sort of thing.”

“
Why is the jock quoting
the Bible?” Jayce mumbled to Brie. She shrugged, her brow
furrowed.

“
I’m surprised you know the
Bible,” Nikko whispered back to him. Jayce elbowed him in the
ribs.

Zach ignored them. “Kale, this is Iggy,
short for Iguana, which is short for whatever other foreign name he
has.”

The other student looked me up and down with
a frank expression. “So you’re the Galdoni, huh?” He said it as
more of a statement than a question, and a not-very-impressed
statement at that.

I saw Jayce bristle and held up a hand.
“Yes, and you’re here why?”

“
He’s the tech guru.” Zach
explained offhandedly. “He’ll be the one making the
movie.”

“
Movie?” Brie
asked.

Zach gave her an impatient look and said in
carefully spaced words, “We’re making a movie about the Galdoni so
that people won’t fear them. That way, they’ll see Galdoni as human
and not as animals.” A slight frown crossed his face. “The only
problem will be getting video from the Academy.”

“
That’s no problem,” Nikko
said. He spun one of the laptops around and opened it.

Zach and Iggy stared at the form of the
young Galdoni in the tiny room. I heard Brie’s intake of breath and
realized we hadn’t prepared her. I gave her a small smile and she
dropped her eyes, her lips tight.

“
Awesome!” Zach
said.

“
Let’s get started,” Iggy
echoed.

***

After hours of running through images from
the monitors and the storage databases Nikko managed to hack, I
finally had to leave. None of them stopped me when I slipped out
the back door and shut it behind me. The closed door felt like a
barrier between me and the images on the screens. I took a deep
breath of the rain-tinged air and fought the urge to fly.

Instead, I stepped down the stairs from the
porch and let the rain fall on my head and shoulders. I lifted my
face to the starless night sky and let the cold drops chase the
thoughts from my head. I wanted to throw off the coat and stretch
my wings, but I fought back the impulse.

A few minutes later, the door opened behind
me and I heard the creak of footsteps down the stairs. “You’ll
catch a cold getting soaked like that.”

I smiled at Brie’s worried expression. “I
like it. We never got to feel the rain at the Academy, but it was
always one of my favorite sounds.”

She nestled under my arm and we stood
quietly for a few minutes listening to the sound of the rain
falling around us. For that single moment, it felt like we were the
only two people left on earth, like the chaos of the world had
disappeared with the rumble of thunder through the trees.

Brie took a breath. “I love the smell of
rain. It’s how I imagine heaven will be like.”

I gave her a small smile.

“
What?” she asked
quietly.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to ruin
this.”

A little frown touched her lips. “You don’t
believe in heaven?”

I gave her a half smile. “Oh, I believe in
heaven.” I turned my face away so she couldn’t see my expression.
“But the views of heaven are a little messed-up at the Academy and
I'm starting to doubt what I used to believe. You have to have a
soul to get there.”

Brie stiffened under my arm. “You have a
soul.”

I frowned slightly and avoided meeting her
gaze. “Where do souls come from?”

“
From God,” she said
without hesitation.

“
Where do Galdoni come
from?”

“
From God,” she said again,
but her voice was less certain.

I shook my head with a sad smile and looked
at her. “Galdoni were created by men playing God.”

She gave a defiant shrug. “You wouldn’t be
alive if you didn’t have a soul. A soul is what makes you who you
are.”

“
I believe I have a soul as
much as a bird or a dog has a soul, but I’m not sure if there’s a
place in heaven for them, either.”

She frowned. “Sure there is.”

“
You’re a
dreamer.”

“
I’m a realist,” she
replied.

“
A realist
dreamer.”

She shook her head with a laugh, the somber
mood broken. “There’s no such thing!”

“
There is now. You’ll have
a heaven all to yourself; of course, you’ll have to share it with
all the dogs and birds.”

She leaned against my chest. “It wouldn’t be
heaven without you.”

I took in the scent of her lavender hair
shampoo and the slight hint of floral perfume that defied the
masking rain; my heart contracted. “I’m already in heaven.”

She hugged me tight and I wrapped my arms
around her. We didn’t let go of each other until Jayce opened the
back door and hollered for us to come see their rough draft.

Chapter Thirteen

Iggy clicked a button and then turned the
laptop so we could watch. My heart slowed at the first picture. A
pair of white-gloved hands held a newborn baby so small that with
its feet tucked up it fit comfortably in the groove the cupped
hands made. Beside the sweet, innocent, peaceful expression on the
sleeping baby’s face, the thing that stood out most was the pair of
delicate white wings folded about its shoulders. Brie’s breath
caught and she leaned against me. I put an arm around her.

The next slide showed a toddler with his
hands out as he took what appeared to be his first steps. Beautiful
tan wings, the color of a mourning dove’s breast, were held open as
he used them for balance. His face practically glowed with
excitement and he looked normal and happy, but it was hard to
ignore the lab equipment around him, the stainless steel tables,
microscopes, and rolling chairs that would be a hazard for any baby
so young. On one chubby wrist he wore a red armband, the kind used
in hospitals to keep mothers and babies together. I could remember
the feel of that band, and the first time I read the numbers and
letters that became my name.

The next slide showed a room full of
toddlers, each with beautiful wings so soft and downy and arms and
legs so chunky and full it looked like a room of cherubs. The
toddlers were sitting in rows on a gray carpet, and one had a smile
on his innocent face.

In the next slide, a guard leaned across to
the smiling toddler with a whip bearing down. Even though Iggy
didn’t show the follow-up image, it was easy to read by the fear on
the face of the toddler and the other children around him what was
about to happen. I closed my eyes briefly but didn’t turn away.

The next slide showed a classroom of winged
children sitting by age group, heads bent as they worked. The scene
seemed innocent enough until one noticed the ankle bands and cords
that secured them to each desk.

Brie gasped at the next image and turned her
head into my shoulder. A young boy about six years old stood in the
middle of a fighting circle. A katana dangled from his fingers, its
tip resting on the ground. Dark blood ran slowly down the blade to
the floor. The boy’s head hung low, and his wings, the tawny shade
of a lion’s mane, drooped in dejected sorrow. At the boy’s feet lay
another boy, his eyes closed tight against the pain of the
life-stealing wound across his stomach. Blood pooled around them
both, reflecting darkly off the bright arena walls.

Iggy had zoomed in on the same picture in
the next image, showing only the bowed face of the boy with the
blade. A tear slid slowly down his cheek, his eyes shut tight as
though to block out what he had done.

The next slide showed two teenage boys in
brutal combat. One held a wickedly spiked mace sideways above him
and slid across the arena floor on his knees while the other leaped
into the air, dark wings open and his back arched as he brought a
sword down toward his opponent.

I stared at him. Time stood still as I
remembered the weight of the sword in my hands, its pommel cold and
smooth in my grasp. “That’s me,” I said quietly.

“
What?” Brie asked, but
Nikko and Iggy nodded their heads.

I pointed needlessly to the boy in the air,
poised for a deadly strike. “I remember that fight.”

Brie touched the screen; her fingers lightly
grazed the bleeding gash down the forearm of the black-haired boy.
She glanced back at me and her gaze lingered on the matching scar.
She shook her head and I saw tears in her eyes. She turned without
a word and left the room.

“
Brie,” I called after
her.

Jayce touched my shoulder. “Let her go.
She’s dealing with some hard stuff.”

I stared after her, my chest tight. “Yeah,
because of me.”

Jayce’s grip tightened and
he turned me to face him. “Because you’re worth it,” he said; his
tone gave no room for argument. “All of this is worth it if it
keeps you out of the Arena and out of
that
again.” He pointed at the
screen.