Unnaturals (19 page)

"Work," she said. There was breakfast to be cooked, lunch to be packed for the woodsmen, tomatoes to be picked and canned, wheat to be harvested. Mel didn't see her dad all day and didn't feel much like singing in the evening.

On the third day, the same—but this time Dad appeared for the songs. He didn't sing. He walked among the singers, nodding here, giving a half-smile there. People were happy to see him, but not Lucastan-happy. Perhaps
happy
wasn't even the word. Some of them weren't even smiling, yet the muscles on their faces were relaxed, and they were leaning over fallen tree trunks and big stones, singing as if they didn't have a care in the world.

Mel had seen this, or similar, caused by pills and injections, but never by a person.

However, when that person finally came to sit beside her, silent, giving her no more than a pat on the shoulder, it didn't make
her
feel like this.

Because I am unnatural,
she thought for the first time in the Village of Life.
I want him to talk to me. I want him to hold my hand, like Mom sometimes does. Like he used to. Why doesn't he ask me about the feeds I've read or the monsters I've killed? What did I do wrong
?

She didn't ask him this. Not in front of the other people.

She didn't ask him later, either, since he didn't return home for the night. Old Codes, coming to check on Mom, told them both that he'd spend the night alone in the temple.

"A chief needs to stay there sometimes," she said, "or in the hunting cabin up on the hill two miles away from here. Julian well knows it."

"But...today? He hasn't even seen Mom today!"

"The gods tell him when," was old Codes' stern reply.

Mom sighed, but soon she went to bed. She even smiled in her sleep.

"I'll go to the temple, too," Mel said. "Or to that cabin."

"You mad or what!? Women don't go out of the village just like this, especially at night! The monsters come out of the Gloomy Wood at night, girl! Why do you think only men hunt?"

"I killed a monster!"

"Yes. You did." Old Codes sighed. "On your way here. Never again. We'll never risk a woman's life like this."

"But you'll risk a man's?"

Old Codes nodded curtly. "To each, his or her own. To each, a responsibility. Yours has nothing to do with going out at night—even to the temple. You'll waste candles, at the very least."

Mel didn't go to the temple but couldn't sleep, either.

On the next day, she harvested jars, potatoes, and onions. It was the season of those, just like it was the season of wheat and tomatoes and pears.

The field was behind a hill, invisible from the village. Lizzy, Belinda, and Mati took her there.

"Unlike most other things, which grow from the ground or on trees," Lizzy told her, "these three, and some others, grow under the ground. We have to dig them out. Careful now, Mel, you don't want to break any of the crops. Especially the jars." She quieted her voice. "They leave very sharp pieces if you do, and not all of those even grow into new jars. Be careful with the lids, too. They don't break easily, but they bend and become useless."

"Thanks, Lizzy, I'll be careful." Mel said in the same quiet voice. It wasn't the polite quietness of Lucasta. In Lucasta, often quietly and politely, you shared your news with the whole world, and the whole world promptly forgot it. This was the new quietness of telling something to a person and wanting to keep it from everyone else. The world remembered too much here. This morning, Mel had learned that Mati and Melanie, another girl who was born here, could not stand each other because of their grandmothers having quarreled once upon a time.

Mel almost...missed Lucasta.

Lucasta can't heal Mom! This village already has—look at her walking, look at the light in her eyes
!

Meliora applied herself to harvesting jars, then in the evening went with Lizzy to the temple, where Lizzy prayed to stop being an abomination.

The singing outside was different when the two exited the building. The song was stronger, happier, and somehow disturbing.

"It's the song of winning," Lizzy whispered. Lizzy didn't seem happy to hear it. "It is very old, written with text and music in the Book of the Gods itself. We can all read the text—at least, those of us who came from the cities can—but only some can read the music."

"I can teach you, if you want." There was no way you could not read music if you worked on the hummie interfaces.

"No!" Lizzy shouted, then clasped her hand to the mouth before the singers could hear her. Mel and Lizzy had almost reached them now. "Oh, Mel, it is enough that I can draw. I was an artist in Sylvanna, I drew advertisements. I was right in the middle of the decay. We don't do such things here, Mel. Drawing and music, and even writing, are
making,
putting things in the world. We don't do this."

"But you want to draw, don't you?" Mel could tell. She was enough of a doctor for that. Besides, she wanted to write computer programs herself. She already missed her own decayed task of putting things into the world.

"Don't talk about that, Mel!"

"But old Codes makes clothes, we make bread."

"The right things," Lizzy said. "We only make the right things."

They reached the singing. It was stronger than before, and not only because of the different song. There were more people than before. There were more men with strong voices, and even a young woman Mel had never seen before.

"Arisa." Lizzy had seen Mel's look. Lizzy's voice was suddenly filled with what Mel knew from the wonderful experiences as
envy
and
longing.
"Arisa is so advanced now," Lizzy said, "that she can no longer come to the fields. She's been unwell for the last few days, so she didn't come to the singing, either. But she's come to meet her husband and the other hunters, of course. It has been a good hunt. The song would tell us, if nothing else."

It had been a good hunt. One didn't need a song to know. The bloody carcasses of animals big and small were eloquent enough. Meliora didn't even know the names of them all. Some were sprawled on the ground by the fire burning in its stone home, in the middle of what old Codes called the Village Green. Others hung from the two big trees nearby, skin already partly flayed.

It was a good hunt. So good that it was almost all right for a girl just out of a city, unused to blood and to what she now recognized in the song as
violence,
to take a step back, press a hand to her mouth, and fight for breath and to keep her food in her stomach.

They never knew it wasn't because of the blood. She'd seen and caused blood already; she'd sealed the feelings that blood used to bring somewhere deep inside her heart, out of reach. It was because of Arisa and because of the few other women, obviously less advanced, that she'd so far considered to be just fat.

Women like sheep, bloated and helpless. "
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
" Doctor Jerome's voice screamed in her head. Women who would bring into the world babies for whom no one had planned and fixed the genes—babies with sickness, and with violence in their songs!

"Oh, Mel, I dream of the day when I will have a husband and a blessing like Arisa's," Lizzy said softly before touching Mel's elbow and urging her forward.

Forward, Meliora came face to face with Nicolas.

Oh, he was older, of course, and taller. His hair, green and spiky before, was now light blond and shorter. Yet, she knew him, just like she'd known her father. He looked at her. His eyes had once been wild, fervent, yellow-colored by the lenses he wore. Now they were lense-free and blue—and cold.

"You should rejoice with the success of the hunt, chief-daughter." His voice was cold, too. "The Village of Life is no place for those who faint at the sight of blood."

He turned his back to her and walked away, as graceful and indifferent as the mountain lion Mel had seen from that boat, after fighting the snake monster.

I didn't faint!
she wanted to shout at him.
What do you, fool, know about me—what do you know about anything!? I went to Annabella to find you. Perhaps I would have even come to find you here if Mom could have lived a long and happy life in Lucasta without me. You have no right to treat me like this! You and my dad, both—you bastards
!

She didn't shout. It was impolite for a Lucastan and not private enough for one of the Village of Life. She wanted to cry, but she didn't do that, either. Once, in a fairytale, there had been a princess who'd sworn that she'd never cry because of a man.

I won't, either. For either of them
.

She was supposed to sing the song of violence with the rest of the people, but she only pretended.

***

That night, Meliora went to the temple. She didn't need a candle. Clouds darkened the moon and stars, but she remembered where the temple was and could walk in the dark.

The chief was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall of the gods. The table with food for the gods and the table for blessings rose on both his sides like fairy-tale guardians. His eyes were closed but snapped open the moment she stepped inside.

"Hello, Dad. Could you really hear me enter? It was such a small noise. You'd never hear it in Lucasta. It would blend with people's humming, with the trains running—with everything."

"Noise pollution," he said. "It's one of the cities' curses. There's light pollution, too—have you noticed how pale the sun and stars and moon are there?"

"Brightlights and softlights," Meliora said. There was a difference.

"The
sun, moon, and stars,
" her father said firmly, "enhanced by the dome to shine brighter, so that people can see them at all. Yet they are not bright enough. Now, what are you doing here?" A moment ago his voice and eyes had been soft. Now they weren't.

"I came so that Mom can be cured from young age." She returned the look and the voice. He'd asked what she was doing in the temple, of course. No one in the village asked why you came to the village, Lizzy had told her. "Don't you want me here, Dad?"

He looked angry now. He looked more like the father she remembered rather than this large, stern stranger she'd met in the Village of Life. He'd been often angry, long ago, when he'd taught her the letters and how to shape them into words through a keyboard. Angry at something, and just a little happy that she was a quick learner.

"Everyone is welcome in the Village of Light," he said and it took him effort to not shout at her. "As long as they don't make waves."

Waves? Like in the river and the big lake she knew wasn't too far. She understood, perhaps. You could drown in waves. Or you could sail.

"Are you here to pray for Mom? Will she be healed by those gods of yours?"

He clenched a fist. Slowly, he took a deep breath. He stared at her. Mel didn't like the way people outside of the cities stared, but this was even worse. For the first time in her life, Meliora the Unnatural thought that perhaps there was a point in healing ACD.

"Those gods of
ours,
" her father said, very quietly. "You shall not blaspheme in the temple. Say it. Say it now!"

"Those gods of
ours,
" Meliora muttered. "Will they help her?"

"Yes." His eyes became just a bit more tender. "They already have."

This is enough for me, then. I don't care that you don't love me and are not happy to see me. I don't care about anything else in this village
!

"Enough talking," her father said, stern again. "You were told not to go out at night. You are new, you don't understand order yet—this is why I am tolerating this.
Today only.
This is not Lucasta, Meliora. This is the real world, and you'd better get used to it quickly. Don't make waves, I said. Obey the rules. Don't ask questions. Now go back to Erika."

"But you taught me to read—you taught me to think!"

"Yes, I taught you to read. You haven't forgotten it in that city of humming and decay, have you? Now read what you
should.
The Book of the Gods. Out of here now."

He came with her, but they didn't talk on the way.

***

He didn't talk much to her in the following week, either. Or to anyone else except Mom. He went to the temple together with everyone to thank the gods for the hunters' success, and he did talk then but only to the crowd, not to any particular person. He stood before the two tables and told them all how blessed they were, and that with the meat, now cut and hung to be dried, and with the new harvest, they would survive yet another winter. He also pointed at Arisa and the other fat women and said that the city was doubly-blessed.

Lizzy looked with longing; Meliora looked away and old Codes frowned at her.

Then the chief pointed at the computers by the other wall. People turned, eyes followed his finger. Suddenly, without even realizing it, they were all standing closer together, and the looks they cast at that faraway wall made Meliora shiver.

"Once upon a time," the chief said quietly, but his voice carried through the heavy silence like a bellow, "there were only the gods. There were many of them, and they walked the world free. They hunted as much as they needed to eat, but otherwise they lived in peace with all animals. They picked fruit to eat, and cut trees to make their houses and feed their fires in winter, but no more than that. Seasons turned. Plants and animals died and were born each year, as was proper and still is. Gods, too, died and other gods were born, the women-gods as fruitful as the trees. Life came and went, and all was good. And then...

"One dark, stormy day a god tasted a fruit and thought it too bitter. The other gods told that god not to be stupid. Many fruit were bitter in those days and just as many were sweet. None were better than the rest. Yet,
What,
the god thought,
if I made a cut in the bitter-fruit tree and put a shoot of the sweet-fruit tree in it?
It was no sooner thought than done. A sweet branch grew on the bitter tree. Soon, the god destroyed all bitter branches. The world had changed, for the devils had come to it."