The White Oak (18 page)

“You mean trespassed,” the gatekeeper growls. “The machine couldn’t process her, but she got in anyway.”

“Why couldn’t the machine process her?”

“Because she is alive,” the gatekeeper says, punching a password into his keyboard and retrieving the X-ray scan he took of me. “See those bones and all those other living parts? Right there is a heart beating. I don’t know how much more proof you need. That girl is as alive as anyone can be, and that machine couldn’t figure out what to do with her. I’ve never seen it more confused.”

The lawyer switches off the gatekeeper video. “As further proof of Cora Alexander’s state of being, I give you this, taken only a few hours ago,” the lawyer says, pressing the remote again. In this video, a tiny one-eyed man carries a tray filled with red fruit into my cell and sets it on the floor while I sleep. The judges and spectators watch as I wake up, examine the fruit, and take the tray over to my bed. When I begin to eat it, the spectators gasp and start talking excitedly. The chief justice bangs his gavel and calls for silence.

“As you know,” the lawyer continues, “the red fruit can only be eaten by living persons.” The video is still running and I’m shocked at how ravenous I look while I’m eating, like a wolf. The bright color of the fruit reawakens my hunger. My mouth waters as I watch the juice dripping from the corners of my mouth like blood.

“I see that she is alive, but can you prove that the defendant has Free Will?” the justice from Region Four asks, without pausing from his work.

“Yes, Your Honor. By proving that she is alive, I’ve also proven that she has Free Will. Article 3, Section 5, of the Constitution outlines the characteristics of Free Will.
All living persons have Free Will. It is the right and possession of living persons only and is yielded in death.
This law has been enforced for millenniums. Life is the sole precondition of Free Will, and the fact that Cora Alexander is alive means that she is in full possession of it.”

The justice from Region Four looks up from his work momentarily and says, “So what? Why is this a problem, and what would you have us do about it?”

“Your Honor,” the lawyer begins again, “Cora Alexander’s presence is unconstitutional. Article 7 specifically states that the Underworld Nation must enforce the Fixed Destiny of every citizen. As you well know, Fixed Destiny is assigned according to the choices an individual made when he or she was in full possession of Free Will. The fate they have chosen for themselves is inescapable—”

“Counsel,” the chief justice interrupts, “we are well aware of Article 7. We do not need a lesson on the Constitution. Proceed with your argument.”

“I apologize, Your Honors. I am arguing that Cora is still alive and that Free Will is characteristic of life. Being alive, she is able to make choices, and is therefore not subject to Fixed Destiny. In fact, it’s possible that the choices she is making now will forever change the destiny she would have had if she had not come to the underworld. She is seeing the consequences of life’s choices, a perspective few are allowed. That must certainly be having an effect on her.”

“It’s an interesting supposition, Counsel, but it’s not something you can prove,” the chief justice says. “Please stick to the facts.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” the lawyer replies. “To explain the present danger that Cora Alexander poses, I’d like to draw your attention to Article 8, which describes the mechanics of Fixed Destiny. The trillions of souls residing in the City are dependent on the perpetuation of its magnetic force. The entire underworld structure could be undermined by the introduction of Free Will and its agent. We have already seen several examples of souls temporarily set adrift by mere proximity to the accused. Your Honor, to illustrate this, I’d like to introduce Exhibit Number 49 at this time.”

The judge nods and the lawyer presses the remote again—a new surveillance video begins to play. The courtroom watches me walk through Asphodel, temporarily releasing some of the blue flames as I pass. They watch me on board the ship of the dead, collaborating with Minotaur to trick a shade out of his coin. They see a blue flame huddled close to me, sheltering from the winds of Asphodel. A hush falls over the courtroom as each ghost remembers his or her own journey on that creaking ship. They think about what it feels like when they are close to my cage in the courtroom, the Free Will radiating out of me—making them imagine something other than their fixed destinies. I look into their faces and see it—the yearning for life wrapped in despair over their lifelessness. I’m starting to understand the shades. They’re just like people, only without hope. The video makes the courtroom restless, and the chief justice touches a key on the bench to make the image disappear.

“Enough,” he says, to both the lawyer and the spectators. I look at the chief justice carefully to see if the video has had any effect on him, but his pale face is inscrutable. “Make your closing argument, Counsel,” he says.

“Your Honors,” the lawyer begins, “as the evidence clearly shows, Cora Alexander is alive, she is destructive, and she cannot be allowed to walk among us. The threat she poses to the Underworld Nation cannot be understated. You must act preemptively to eliminate this threat. The Living One must be executed immediately, before she destroys the very fabric of our society.”

There is a brief silence after the speech. During the pause, everything moves in slow motion for me. The words
executed immediately
fall slowly to the pit of my stomach like cold stones. I gauge the thickness of my cage’s glass and try to figure out a way to escape. But my trap is secure, and now I’m the one sinking into hopelessness. The spectators had curdled with envy, and the suggestion that I be destroyed has restored their sense of power. The courtroom erupts into cheers.

The chief justice bangs his gavel for order and the room quiets. “Thank you, Counsel,” the chief justice says. “You may take your seat.”

The lawyer steps away from the podium and sits down at the table.

“Is Counsel for the respondent ready?” the chief justice asks.

The lawyer switches seats and turns into a woman, becoming
my
representative again. She turns briefly to smile at me, but I can’t tell if her reassurance is ingenuous.

“Yes, thank you,” she says and steps up to the podium. “Your Honor, and may it please the Court, my client
is
the Living One, as the petitioner alleges.” She pauses as a murmur ripples through the courtroom. I can feel the muscles in my body clench as my anger over the unfairness of this trial grows—my own lawyer is arguing that I’m guilty.

The judge from Region Two adjusts her glasses. “Are you also attempting to argue that this girl is the Living One of legend?”

“No, Your Honor. I am not here to argue about a legend, only facts. My client is alive. That is a fact. We heard the testimony of the gatekeeper; we saw her eating the fruit. The evidence cannot be denied. The restrictions against living souls form the very foundation of our legal system. I am not here to argue against these facts or to ask for a different interpretation of the Constitution.”

“What
are
you here to argue, Counsel?” the justice from Region Six asks. She has taken the shape of a pit bull, but I can hear the whirlwind in her voice when she speaks. She seems disappointed, as though she’d been hoping for more of a fight from my attorney. I don’t want to let it show on my face, but I feel the same. Anger is boiling up inside me.
Why are they even bothering with a trial?
I wonder.
Nobody is fighting for me. My own lawyer is arguing that I am guilty—guilty of being alive!

“I am only here to argue about her sentence,” my lawyer continues. “I submit that Cora Alexander should not be executed. She should, instead, be exiled to the red desert without possibility of return.”

A murmur passes among the spectators in the gallery, and from the looks on the judges’ faces I realize that this is an unusual, and somehow disturbing, request. My hands, which had been clenched in fists, relax for a moment. I wish I could see the lawyer’s face, but she doesn’t dare turn around now. Exile would mean I’d be released. Maybe that’s what she’s aiming for. But released into what? How long could I stay alive in a desert?

All eyes are on the chief justice, and when his stony face begins to glow red, the murmuring turns to shouts. The spectators begin to boo my two-faced lawyer. “Kill the Living One!” someone shouts. And the rest of the gallery repeats it. “Kill her, kill her, kill her,” they chant.

The chief justice allows this to go on for a minute or two before he bangs his gavel. “Silence!” he bellows. “Anyone who speaks without my permission will be escorted out and placed in confinement.” The room goes dead quiet. “Counsel,” he says, “tell us why you recommend exile for the prisoner.”

“Thank you, Your Honor, and may it please the Court. The opposing counsel would have us believe that executing Cora Alexander is the safest course of action, but the facts indicate otherwise. I submit to you that eliminating an agent of Free Will, once it has been introduced, may be more complicated than we think.”

“Counsel,” the fat justice says, “is there a precedent? What about the ancestor?”

“Interesting question, Your Honor.” The lawyer’s voice is calm and steady. “Like Cora, the ancestor was alive when he entered the underworld, but that was part of his destiny. It was written in his book that he would enter the land of the dead. He was not exercising Free Will when he came here. His arrival was merely the realization of a prophecy. Cora’s destiny was entirely different before she slipped through our gates.”

“Has her book been analyzed?” the chief justice asks.

I still can’t see my lawyer’s face, but I can tell by the way her shoulders push back slightly that she had been hoping for this question.

“Your Honor, her book was destroyed by Minos’s agent several days ago.” She pauses to let this settle in the judges’ minds. “Our agents raided the library in search of it, but we could not find it. Sybil was detained and questioned and she yielded this.” The lawyer takes something from her manila folder and holds it up for the Court to see. It’s a piece of a book cover, charred at the edges. “This is all that remains of Cora Alexander’s book of life.” The marshal strides over to the podium to take the evidence from the lawyer and hand it to the chief justice. “Our agents learned that Cora broke in to Sybil’s library and burned her own book,” the lawyer says. “She did it deliberately, Your Honors, and now she lives completely liberated from her destiny.” Everyone in the courtroom pauses to stare at me, and I try to hide the way I’m feeling—shocked that Sybil would lie about how the book was destroyed, confused about
why
she would have, and apprehensive about what the justices will make of it.

“Your Honors, Cora is exercising a type of Free Will that we have never seen before,” the lawyer continues. “There is no precedent for this. If Cora is executed now, there is no way to predict what the results will be. If she is different from the others in life, she may be different in death.”

The lawyer pauses. Behind me the gallery buzzes with whispering. The justices hide it well, but I can see that they were unprepared for my lawyer’s revelation. I lean against the glass wall to steady myself. I’m shaking slightly. This new kind of Free Will the lawyer is talking about—I can’t feel it in myself. I close my eyes and try to examine my soul, but it doesn’t seem free. With my forehead pressed against the glass cage and this farce of a trial taking place around me, I feel like what I am—a prisoner.

The judges start asking the lawyer questions, trying to determine what will happen if I am executed.
They
will be the architects of my fate, I think to myself, despite what Sybil said about my being the author of my own destiny.

“Counsel,” the justice from Region Five hisses, “talk to us about the life force. What do we know about how it behaves?”

“Your Honor, life is evidenced by growth, reproduction, and adaptation. It is manifested by change,” the lawyer says. “It is thought that Free Will is the intangible force that infuses organic matter with the
power
to change and grow.”

“What happens to Free Will when an organism dies?” the justice inquires.

“That is not fully known, Your Honor,” the lawyer says, “but most scholars have observed some connection between death and life in the upper world. When a soul dies, its Free Will, or its life force, is released into the upper world atmosphere, perhaps infusing the world around it with new life. The risk of releasing a Will as free and powerful as this one into our world cannot be underestimated.” She pauses, then looks directly at the chief justice. “Your Honor, I humbly suggest that the only safe strategy is exile”—she hesitates for a moment over her recommendation—“to the region of the red desert where the usurper resides.”

At the mention of the usurper, the courtroom seems to draw a deep breath. The chief justice turns bright red. “You mean the usurper
and her son
. Are you aware, Counsel, of the investigation the judge from region seven is conducting? He believes that Orcus has been communicating with Ms. Alexander, and that she did not arrive in the underworld by accident.” The chief justice pauses, and the anxiety in the room is palpable, but for me this is good news. My heart is pounding as I whisper his name,
Orcus
. He is a real person, not just a voice in my head. If the judges are right, he has been drawing me to him deliberately, as Sybil hinted.

The justice from region seven gives my lawyer a hard look. “See me in my chambers after the trial, Counsel. I have questions for you.”

As if to hide from him, my lawyer turns into her doppelgänger—the male lawyer, the opposing counsel. “Your Honor, the petitioner rests,” he says, and I can tell from the tone of his voice that he is pleased with the proceedings.

I watch as his waistline shrinks and he becomes my lawyer once again. “Your Honor, the respondent rests.” She is also pleased.

The chief justice bangs his gavel, bringing the trial to an end.