Green Jack (4 page)

“Get up,” the
girl barked at Aaron. He pushed to his feet, bewildered “Now run,
idiot.”

She vaulted off
the roof of a car and onto a balcony. The thud of her boots on the
metal reverberated. Aaron made a move in the same direction but an
arrow prevented him from following her. The green fletching
quivered an inch from his nose, embedded deep into a tree trunk. He
was fighting to keep his balance and his eyes open at the same
time.

“Other way,”
the man suggested, using the rope to tie the Taggers together.
Aaron stayed where he was, swaying. “Shit, boy,” the man said.
“Don’t you have any sense?”

He grabbed
Aaron under the arm and half-carried, half-dragged him deeper into
the alley. Saffron and Killian followed along the roof border. They
could just see the rebel pushing Aaron into a dumpster. “You’ll be
safe enough there until you wake up.”

He was gone
within seconds, leaving Aaron buried in garbage and Saffron with a
strange feeling in her belly.

Killian was
grinning. Saffron turned away from the rebels. “It must be nice to
think this City is worth saving.”

Chapter 6

Jane

Jane woke up at
dawn to go for a run; even in foul weather she loved the steady
beat of her shoes on the ground, and the burn of air in her lungs.
Even this morning, with the blood throbbing in her bruises. She
stopped for the usual Oracle ritual: a tea made from anise seeds
and the mantra she’d been taught:
I am the earth where seeds of
wisdom grow
.

Afterwards, she
crossed the Collegium grounds, between the sacred star anise
bushes, passed the classrooms, the white student Cella temple, and
the Beekeepers tending to the hives. They wore white, their faces
covered with veils. She circled the snake-crowned Pythia statue,
the matron of oracles. She was over fifteen feet tall, a serpent
coiled around her shoulders and her throat. Jane stopped to touch
her fingertips to her brow in honour. She couldn’t help the feeling
that someone watching her. She tried to act normal.

She continued
past the lighting-struck ash tree the Weather Witches circled for
their rites, and the Seedsinger statue of an entwined Green Jack
and Jill wearing mostly leaves. Jane was never sure if she should
blush, it was such a private moment at which to pray. She preferred
the Pythia and her steady gaze. She went through the front gates,
following her usual route. The Enclave was pale and perfect, like
the inside of a pearl. The light was misty, softening the edges of
the houses she loved, and the tidy streets, the red front doors,
the trees standing guard, branches bare and bright as swords. She
passed Lee’s mansion-of-many-houses, rickshaws painted to look like
candy, and solar lanterns strung like stars. She kept running,
trying to make sense of the night before and of the headaches that
she needed to control, now more than ever. She ran until her breath
was fire in her throat but she was no closer to a solution.

She found
herself back at the old house. No one else had moved in and she
liked the feel of the empty quiet rooms. The parapet loomed over
it, casting constant shadows that had frustrated her mother’s
attempts at growing flowers. Nothing showed prosperity like flowers
you couldn’t eat, beautiful orchids and oleander bushes with no
discernable value beyond their beauty. The garden was weedy
now—dandelions always found a way to thrive.

The paint was
peeling off the walls inside and dust had rolled into the corners
like tumbleweeds. Some of her childhood books were still piled
against the mildewing curtains of her old bedroom. The pages were
damp and tattered, at odds with the delicate and fussy artwork.
Detailed renditions of the Cataclysms and the Lake Wars unfolded
under her fingertips. Even bedtime stories couldn’t escape the
Directorate.

There was the
first Green Jack walking out of the forest in a mask of oak leaves,
awakening green numen in unsuspecting people sleeping in their beds
or drinking their morning tea. None of them looked as though they
thought their heads might explode. He was always named Jack and she
never could decide if he looked happy. She imagined it was a lot of
work cleaning up after decades and centuries of rampant neglect,
from burning oil fields to garbage heaps that never decomposed, to
wars.

The Cataclysms
were painted in reds and browns and gold, more streaks of colours
than intricate details. Smoke and fire burst from giant cracks in
the earth. The seas heaved and boiled. Crops withered, people
starved, the Ferals in the Badlands turned cannibal. Or so the
stories always said. The Ferals weren’t a single people so much as
a cautionary tale of what would happen to you if you disobeyed the
Directorate or left the safety of the Cities: hunger, madness,
savagery. Jane kept turning the weathered pages, finding the maps,
with Elysian City with its glowing Rings full of light and joy, to
the farm domes and the dark Spirit Forest and the suggestions of
other cities in the distance.

When the
droughts followed and desperate thirst set in, the Lake Wars began.
The faded pages showed bodies pressing against the newly built
wall, frantic to reach the lake. The maps lines changed. When the
cities closed, everything changed. There was a very old man who
lived near the cella who still called Elysian City ‘Toronto’. That
was long before the Protectorate was formed, protecting the Green
Jacks and hiding them away. The experiments created feral dryads
who lived in trees and used human body parts as decorations, but no
more Green Jacks.

Lots of
answers, even in these pages, for questions everyone knew better
than to ask. But no answers about the numen growing thorns in her
body. And she wouldn’t find any hiding here with her old
storybooks.
Red dust, a church steeple and a pink moon.

Especially when
the morning bells rang, making her jump. She’d spent too long here
as it was. The bells announced the gates opening for the Elysians
who were vetted to drive the rickshaws and clean houses. It also
meant she was already late for her Oracle duties.

She left the
house, running on the sidewalks. None of her old neighbours spoke
to her. The house with the girl who’d been taken away was still
dark, all these years later. She made her way to the wayfarer cella
in the parapet. The novices gathered there on Blessing Days to be
taken into the City where the Collegium allowed novices to predict
more personal omens for the Elysians. Mostly they asked about food
or love, like everyone else.

“You’ve been
running again,” Kiri wrinkled her nose. Candlelight glinted off her
gold sunflower necklace. There was no electricity in the Cellas, it
interfered too much with numen. It was too ancient, too primal.
Always more questions than answers. “I just don’t think sweating
like that is good for you.”

She changed
into her blue chiton with the silver snake necklace around her
throat. Kiri wore dark brown and the tattoo of the black tree on
her nape reached its roots under the neckline. As a Seedsinger, she
would be surrounded by Elysians today, all begging for fertility
spells for their bellies or their gardens. Usually she sang to the
seeds; learned how to collect them, store them, and plant them. Her
dorm room was like a witch’s cave, full of strange seeds and dried
vegetables.

Jane secured
the leather straps of her sandals around her ankles even though it
was still too wet and cold to be wearing sandals. The Numina were
expected to float gracefully above the mud, both metaphoric and
literal, to dispense the benevolence of the Collegium. There could
be nothing that made them relatable to the others, only the
chitons, the tattoos of their talent, and the numen. They were the
Collegium’s personal Greek chorus, moving and speaking as one.

But in the
Cella antechambers, they were still very much themselves. Asher
shoved her hard, bruising her already-bruised shoulder as he passed
by. Kiri caught her before the stumble turned into an undignified
sprawl. Again. She also shoved Asher back because she liked shoving
people and hated him in equal measure. “You really need to punch
him right in the face, just once. He’ll leave you alone then.”

Jane smiled
uncomfortably. Never mind that she’d been trained not to make a
fuss or embarrass the family name, after last night and her
near-encounter with the Investigator, she needed to keep her head
down even more. “I can’t hit him,” she said for Kiri’s benefit. “He
might like it.”

“Ew. I never
thought of that.” She smiled, showing a lot of teeth. “But I’m sure
you can fix that by hitting him harder.”

When the silver
bell rang, the novices took their positions. The Oracles lined up
on the left, approaching the small shrine. There was a candle, a
bowl of water, and a basket of star anise seeds which they gave out
along with their omens. The Collegium thought it a nice gesture,
something symbolic for the Elysians to hold on to, but they just
used the seeds for stomach tea. Kiri went to the right, digging her
hands in a large wide bowl of earth to awaken her numen. They found
each other again on the train.

Elysium City
was grey and blue today, the light glinting off black water
flooding between some of the buildings. Bridges connected windows
high up above the submerged streets. It made Jane dizzy just to
think about crossing them, swaying in the wind with nothing but
rope to hold you up. She turned back to Kiri who was pouring mint
tea into china cups. There were candied violets and the maple cakes
usually reserved for Festival days. Jane ate three cakes.

The mood inside
the City was dark. Jane felt it like a stain on the skin. She
pulled the veil of her chiton up over her head like a hood. Faces
were never covered outside the cella, there were too many security
restrictions. Still, it helped a little. She held onto the bench of
the wagon as they began the last part of their journey. The
Blessing wagons were different than the ones used for transport in
the Enclave; these were painted azure-blue with elaborate
scrollwork and bells along the edges. They were festive and
cheerful, calling the Elysians to follow them into the bright and
beautiful Rings.

Line-ups had
already formed at the crossroads outside the Cella. A tree grew
around a column and Elysians left behind votive tokens like tin
cans shaped into leaves and torn fabric strips knotted for good
luck. It had its own kind of roughshod beauty. Jane remembered
reading about Clootie trees in Ireland that served a similar
purpose.

Each novice was
assigned a soldier in a metal leaf mask and hers was young enough
to still have pimples. She sat on the stool he set out for her, and
took out the gold slotted spoons shaped like leaves from her pouch,
along with the bone straw. The blue silk smelled like star anise,
that licorice sweetness that clung to all Oracles. She had a glass
jar filled with water and crushed cranberries but inside the cellas
they used real blood or the ashes of dead Oracles.

When the
Elysians approached her for a reading, she stepped out of her
sandals and stood on a mound of earth to awake her numen. She tried
not wonder if the tingle at the back of her neck would build into a
crushing pressure, into burning and pain.

Jane
concentrated on the miniature stories unfolding in her hands. The
spoons were a tool, like tarot cards and tea leaves—simply a way to
find the pattern in the chaos. She fit them together, and used the
straw to blow a spray of liquid through a small hole. When she
pulled the leaves apart again, she deciphered the stain of red left
behind. Otters were for joy, swans for deceit, horses for destiny,
though the Directorate frowned on destiny. True omens were reserved
for the Diretcorate and the farms. This was simple fortune-telling,
a little truth to make a larger truth more palatable.

As long as she
concentrated on the omens, the pain in her head was a low burn,
barely noticeable.

Again and again
the questions came, how will I feed my children if the rains don’t
stop, how will I feed them if the hot months follow, will I find
love, will I ever see my son again? Where was my daughter taken?
Jane swallowed misery and nausea, and answered as she was ordered:
No one is truly lost. The Directorate knows best.

She felt
Cartimandua’s pale eyes on her, felt Asher’s fist in her face.

The last
Elysian hesitated in front of her. He had black hair and a katana
he’d been forced to surrender in order to approach her. He looked
uncomfortable but determined. She smiled encouragingly. “What do
you want to know?”

He just
half-smiled and waited. He didn’t speak. “Whatever I see then?” She
asked after a long moment. He nodded.

Droplets
splattered inside the gold curve of the pressed leaves. Teeth for
hunger, and knives for violence, both fairly common omens for a
City boy. She should have said something about the hunger he was
feeling: how he could find a meal in the Rings, how hunger made you
stronger. But there was also a swan in a circle. “Your secret is
safe,” Jane said.

He jerked as if
she’d slapped him. When backed up, she caught his wrist, holding on
tightly. There was more to see, more he needed to know. “Wait.”

Sometimes there
were messages within the messages, and sometimes she had her own
language to decipher.

An oak
leaf
.

Jane sucked in
a breath. Oak leaves were always for her; a warning to pay
attention.