Alight (37 page)

Simple math, simple drawings. They understand.

I need to tell him I saw the Springer army. I point in the general direction of Uchmal. I start making marks as fast as I can: parallel, short, leaving enough space so I can make ten, twenty, thirty, forty.

I point to the marks. I point to Barkah’s musket. I point to my head.

“Bang,” I say. I slump down and play dead.

The two new Springers jump away, babbling to each other.

Barkah quickly silences them.

He pulls a roll from his bag, flips it open—it’s a map of Uchmal. Rough, but I can spot the river, the waterfall, the big main roads, the mostly round city wall. The mountains to the west, the lake to the north, that crescent-shaped clearing to the northeast. It’s everything I could see from the top of the Observatory—I wonder if that’s where he was when he drew it.

Barkah lays the map on the floor, then chirps a command. Rekis and Tohdohbak scramble to the dirt and rubble. Each of them brings back a handful of small rocks.

Barkah takes a rock, holds it between his finger and thumb. He moves it through the air, makes a strange noise with his mouth—like a little boy’s impression of a rocket engine.

He sets that rock on the map, looks at us.

“The shuttle,” O’Malley says. “That’s where the landing pad is. They know exactly where we are.”

Have they known all along? I think of Aramovsky saying how the Springers could come attack us whenever they like.

Barkah taps my cluster of marks, then he places three rocks outside the city walls, at the edge of the crescent-shaped clearing. He reaches into his bag again, pulls out three small, wooden spiders. He sets them on the other side of the clearing. He looks at me, waits.

“That must be where the Springers want to fight,” I say.

O’Malley leans in. “
Three
spiders. But the Springers got Coyotl’s spider, didn’t they? Shouldn’t there only be two?”

“Maybe Barkah doesn’t know we don’t have it anymore. He’s not marching with that army, so maybe he’s not part of it?”

The prince pushes the three rocks representing the Springer forces into the middle of the clearing. He pushes the three spiders out to meet them.

He pulls out more wooden toys, the ones with the wheels. He sets them on the map, in the jungle behind the clearing, on the Springer side of the battle lines. Then, he starts placing rocks with the carts. Dozens of rocks. He places more on the sides, and even more in the jungle
behind
the spiders.

“A trap,” I say. “They’re only going to show a few of their troops, lure the spiders out into the open. They’ll have our people surrounded from all sides. They’ll destroy us.”

How long have the spiders been slaughtering Springers? How long have the Springers cowered underground, waiting for a chance to fight? And along we come, mastering the spiders, getting them to march to our command. Maybe this is the moment Barkah’s people have been waiting for, a chance to put all the spiders in one place so they can battle it out once and for all.

I don’t know how they will lure Aramovsky to that clearing, but I don’t think it will take much. Even if Bishop recognizes the trap, will anyone listen to him? Aramovsky has total control. He has already said he wants to march to the jungle and bring the war to the Springers—he’s going to get my people slaughtered in the process.

Barkah makes one final drawing: a few lines, a half-circle, and it’s done—a ziggurat with the sun rising behind it.

“Daybreak,” O’Malley says. “They’re going to spring the trap at dawn.”

“How do we stop it?”

O’Malley doesn’t answer.

I take Barkah’s hand. He pulls back at first, surprised, but maybe the look on my face lets him know I mean no harm. His skin is warm, his grip strong.

“We have to stop this battle,” I say. “You are royalty, or whatever—
you
have to get them to stop.”

O’Malley’s eyebrows rise. “Royalty?”

“Something like that,” I say. “The one we think is the leader, he has the same necklace Barkah has. They are the only Springers we’ve seen with that kind of decoration.”

That inexpressive, stone-faced look washes over O’Malley’s face.

“To stop the battle, we need a unified front,” he says. “You ask our people for peace, Barkah asks his.”

“But Aramovsky won the vote. You were there, he’s not going to listen to me. And we don’t know if Barkah’s father—or mother, or whatever—will listen to him.”

O’Malley reaches down to the map, moves the spiders back to the edge, then does the same with the rocks representing the Springers. The two sides are once again poised for battle. He walks to where the floor is dirt, looking for something particular.

“The Springers hate us because of what the Grownups did, what the spiders do,” O’Malley says. He bends, picks something up. “Many of our people hate the Springers because of Visca’s death and Aramovsky fanning the flames.”

He picks up another bit I can’t see. He walks back to the map.

“Those are key reasons, but mostly, I think the sides hate each other because we’re so
different,
” he says. “Different is scary. What we need is a gesture that shows we’re not so different after all. A gesture that sends a clear message—no one has to die, we can talk to each other.”

He has two bits in his palm: a ground-up piece of green glass, and what might have once been a small coin.

O’Malley gestures at Barkah with the coin. “This is you.” He then gestures to me with the piece of glass. “And this is you.”

He places coin and glass next to each other in the center of the clearing, right between the two opposing armies.

“The two of you, together,” he says. “Show both armies it’s possible for us to get along. If our people want to fight, they have to go through you, Em. If Barkah’s people want to fight, they have to go through him.”

I imagine the lines of Springers with their muskets and knives and axes. O’Malley is asking me to stand in the middle of that clearing, face them down as they rush forward, eager to kill us and take their planet back.

I look at Barkah. He’s staring at the map. I wonder if he’s imagining being next to me in that clearing, staring at mechanical monsters pounding toward him, the same machines that killed his sibling, that drove people underground.

Will he be brave enough to stand there?

Will I?

Do we even have a choice?

The sun will rise in a few hours. I could go back to the shuttle, but I already tried talking my people out of war—I failed. Aramovsky is just too powerful. And I get the strong feeling that if Barkah could have stopped this on his own, he already would have.

O’Malley slowly reaches for his belt. I see Rekis and Tohdohbak stiffen, but O’Malley doesn’t draw the knife—he removes the entire sheath, blade still inside. He sets it in front of Barkah. O’Malley raises both hands, palms up, takes a step back.

“Peace,” he says. “Peace.”

It is an impossibly simple association: hands empty, a show of not having weapons. The knife is dangerous; O’Malley could have used it to attack, but he makes a point of giving it to the being that could be his enemy, that could use it against him.

O’Malley is unarmed. Defenseless.

Barkah stares at the sheathed knife. He pulls the hatchet from his belt, the one he used to hack the long-necked monster to bits. He offers it to O’Malley, handle-first.

The combined gestures of trust are unmistakable.

O’Malley takes the hatchet. He bows.

“Thank you,” he says.

Barkah, the Springer that might be a prince, picks up O’Malley’s sheathed knife and slides it into his belt. That’s not what O’Malley intended, I don’t think, but maybe an exchange of weapons means something to the Springers.

Barkah picks up the piece of glass and the coin. He makes a fist around them, turns his body to face me square. There is something ritualistic about the motion, like he wants to make sure I understand how serious he is.

“Peace,”
he says.
“Hem, peace.”

Lahfah lets out a singing sound that makes me jump. Barkah and the other two Springers join in. I look to O’Malley. Wide-eyed, he shrugs.

The singing stops. Each of the Springers reaches into its bag and comes out with different kinds of food: a long vegetable that looks like a white carrot; a handful of berries in a pocket of cloth; a chunk of dried meat; and something that makes me think back to the warehouse and Farrar’s poisoning—alien culture or not, there’s no mistaking the round, bumpy form of a homemade cookie.

I’d pushed my hunger down, forced it to hide away, somehow. Now it rears its head, undeniable and overwhelming.

The Springers tear their bits of food in half, offer the halves to us. I wind up with dried meat and half a cookie; O’Malley holds some berries and part of the carrot.

“This is ceremonial,” he says. “Sharing food, and the singing. It must be part of whatever they think the weapon exchange means.”

I sniff the cookie. The scent sends my hunger soaring.

“Not eating might insult them,” O’Malley says. “But we don’t know if this stuff is poisonous.”

I sniff the cookie again, smell a trace of that purple fruit.

“Only one way to find out,” I say.

I pop the cookie into my mouth. Why not start with dessert? Sure enough, it is sweet—crumbly and chewy at the same time. There is a funny taste to it, but overall it’s delicious. Maybe
anything
would be delicious after two days without eating.

“Oh well,” O’Malley says. “If they can’t give us safe food, we’re going to starve anyway.”

He takes a big bite of the carrot. He chews once, twice, then his eyes close in pleasure.

“So good,” he says. “Actual, real
food
.”

I bite into the meat. It’s so spicy it burns my tongue a little, but I don’t care. I eat it all.

The Springers eat, too, big mouths taking surprisingly dainty bites. They are giving O’Malley and me funny looks. Maybe the way we eat is disgusting to them. I glance at O’Malley—he’s smiling, chewing with his mouth open. Berry juice dribbles down his chin.

Well,
he’s
disgusting, anyway.

I think about Farrar’s horrible experience. If this food does to me what that food did to him, it won’t take long. I close my eyes, wait for the choking to begin.

It doesn’t.

The only bad thing that happens is my stomach grumbles even louder.

It
worked
. We can eat their food. If we can figure out where to get the purple fruit, how to use it, the whole reason for Aramovsky’s war will vanish.

“O’Malley, can you draw?”

“Of course I can.”

I point to the cloth I marked up with lines. “Draw the purple fruit I brought back to the shuttle. Quickly.”

O’Malley starts right in. His lines are soft, delicate and perfect. The shape of the fruit is exactly right. He adds shading—it looks so real I could almost pick it up.

Barkah starts stamping his left foot. Hard to tell for sure, but I think he’s delighted.

I tap my fingertip on the drawing, look at the Springer prince.

“This,” I say. “Where do we find this?”

He gives me an odd look, and I’m pretty sure I understand what it means—he thinks I’m kidding.

I thump the drawing hard.

“
Please
. Where do we find this? Show us!”

Barkah glances at Lahfah. Lahfah hobbles to the double doors, motions for us to follow.

Outside, the rain has stopped. Twin moons shine down, lighting up the jungle with a spooky glow.

Lahfah hobbles to a tree, taps it. I look up, searching for the purple fruits. I don’t see any.

“Where are they?” O’Malley asks. “Oh no, what if they aren’t in season?”

Rekis and Tohdohbak both make that broken-glass noise: they are laughing at us.

The two Springers hop to the tree. Their hands grip a vine that clings tightly to the trunk. Together, they pull once, twice—on the third yank, the vine rips away from the trunk, chunks of bark coming with it. Rekis pulls a knife, slices the vine at eye-level. The severed end dangles there, held aloft by the rest of the vine that snakes through the branches above.

“Maybe they thought we meant something else,” O’Malley says. “Should I go get the drawing?”

I would answer, but I’m holding my breath.

Rekis and Tohdohbak grip the part of the vine that’s growing up from the ground. Together, they count—
“Kayat, jeg, nar”
—and they pull. The wet ground at the base of the vine breaks, lifts up a little.

“It can’t be,” I say. “All this time, it was that easy?”

O’Malley looks at me. “I don’t understand.”

“Kayat, jeg, nar,”
and they pull again. The ground gives way. They stumble back, holding the vine. From the end dangles the purple fruit, thin strands of white fiber sticking off it, clods of dirt clinging to the purple surface and strands alike.

“We were looking in the wrong place,” O’Malley says, astonished. “It’s not fruit at all—it’s a
root
.”

The root of the vines that cover city streets, jungle trees, buildings, ruins…the secret to our survival has been all around us, all this time.

“Vines are everywhere,” O’Malley says. “Aramovsky is taking us to war for something that’s
everywhere
we look.”

War.

I look at the night sky. Off to the east, the first hints of glowing red—maybe an hour until dawn.

“Barkah, we need to leave,” I say. I reach out, tap his fist, the one holding the coin and the piece of glass. “We have to stop the battle.”

He barks out orders. Rekis fast-hops into the building, comes out with the map and O’Malley’s drawing of the fruit. Rekis keeps the map—Barkah takes the fruit drawing, rolls it up and carefully puts it in his bag.

The Springer prince pauses. He looks at the knife in his belt, traces the handle with his fingertips, admiring the weapon by both sight and touch.

Then he barks more orders.

Rekis and Tohdohbak plunge into the jungle, headed for the trail. Barkah follows, gesturing for us to walk with him. Lahfah unslings his musket and lumbers along behind, a hobbling rear guard.