Drought (17 page)

Chapter 22

Only a few more minutes and we’ll be at the birch grove. Ford said the tree was only a bit farther, past that. How many heartbeats before we’re in the tree, across the branches, into freedom?

Will it feel any different?

I pick up the pace into a run. I don’t want to wait another second—and there could be Overseers behind us. I see the birch grove, off to the right, ghostly columns rising atop the hill.

“Keep going,” Jonah whispers from behind me. It spurs me forward, past Ellie’s grave and over the hill.

Now the land slopes down, down; I stumble once, and then again. But then I see it: the fence, long, tall, with curls of sharp wire all along the top. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it … a long time since any of us bothered to go all the way to the fence. It might’ve even been when I was playing with Jonah and the others.

And there, a tree. It’s a sapling, still, with a slender trunk. But it’s tall, and its branches reach even higher than the cruel wires that stop anyone from climbing the barrier.

Ford told me the truth. Joy courses over me. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve found the way out … or because there’s proof, there in a tree, that Ford is truly a good person.

But before I can reach it, I stumble again. This time I cannot catch myself. I sail through the air for a moment, and then land hard. My body is betraying me again and again tonight.

I can’t breathe. I try to pull in air, but my chest is impossibly tight. I close my eyes and pray.

Otto save me
.

Otto protect me
.

Then, hands under me, lifting me. “You can’t fly, you know,” Jonah says. “Not even you.”

And my breath returns to me, hard, like the wind that comes before a storm.

Jonah traces the fence with his stick, looks up at the sharp wires that top it. “This tree of yours is a skinny thing.”

“But look at the branch—there …” I point up. “It’s thicker than the others. And it goes right over the fence.”

“If we move fast …” He studies the tree.

“We’ll make it. And then we’ll be gone from here,” I say.

Jonah lets out a soft whoop and jabs his stick in the air. Then his face sobers. “We got lazy. We should’ve been checking for things like this. Glad
you
found it.”

Guilt, familiar now, stabs me. But I don’t correct him.

Then I think of all the Congregants sleeping in their cabins, the long walk between us and them. We get to leave. They must harvest again tomorrow.

“Should we go back and get them all?” I ask.

“I’m not going back all that way. I’m going up”—Jonah points to the tree, making a long arc with his arm—“and over, and gone.”

“You’re right. We have to go now,” I say. “We’ll find Otto, and then everyone will be saved.”

I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough to leave again. Haven’t I been dreaming of it forever? And I never found the strength, never found the way, before Ford … and my promise to Ellie.

“And Darwin West …” Jonah makes a cutting motion with his finger across his throat.

He catches my revolted look. “Like you haven’t dreamed of doing it yourself?” Jonah says. “Like you haven’t killed him a thousand times in your mind?”

“I—I haven’t,” I stammer.

“After what he’s done to us, Otto better kill him. As long as that man is alive, we’ll never be free.” Jonah spits on the ground—in the dark, it could just as easily be his father standing there.

But I can’t argue with him. For the first time, doubt steals into my heart. Can Otto save us? Is this why he never did come back—he couldn’t find a way to fight Darwin?

“Do you still hear it?” I ask Jonah in a low voice. “Those noises?”

“No. Not for a while. But—” He looks behind him too.

“I know,” I tell him. “We need to hurry.”

“Climb, then,” he says.

When I hesitate, Jonah slips around me and shimmies up the tree trunk. The tree bows under his weight, but not as much as I feared. It’ll hold us. I’m nearly certain.

I follow, fast. It’s easier than I imagined, branches in just the right spots.

Jonah is sitting up high, not on the long branch yet.

“Go,” I urge him. “Crawl over the branch and drop.”

But he shakes his head, just staring at the branch, not moving.

“What if it don’t hold?” he says.

“Move quickly and it’ll be safe,” I tell him.

“How do you know?”

“I … don’t. But this has to work. It just … has to.”

Jonah’s lips move, but no noise comes out.

“Please go,” I tell him.

“What’s out there?” he asks.

Otto. Freedom. Food. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “But we’ll find out together.”

Jonah shakes his head again and wraps his legs tighter around the branch he’s sitting on. “You go around me,” he says.

“You’re the one who just shoved around
me,”
I say.

“Just go around,” he says again.

“I can’t. It’s too narrow. The branches above—”

“They’ll break, I know.” Jonah looks up, then down again. “I’ll move as soon as I can.”

Here we are at the edge of freedom, and now he is too afraid to move?

Then I hear a strange noise. It’s a low, persistent hum, as if a cloud of mosquitoes hovered near us. It doesn’t change, doesn’t get closer or farther away. It only
hums
.

I want to ask Jonah if he hears it. But he’s frozen in fear already. And now fear slides over me too, like ice forming on the top of the Lake—slow, but certain, freezing me. I am as stuck as Jonah.

“Go,” I tell him.

“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” Jonah is rocking now, back and forth, his legs swinging.

“Don’t you want to be free?” I ask.

“Yes,” Jonah says.

“You want food?
Good
food?” I ask. “The kind without mold, as much as you want?”

“Yes.” His voice shakes. He looks down. But he does not jump.

“Hurry,” I say. My voice shakes.

I know we must go now, that this is our chance—our only chance—that somehow the hum means soon we will be caught.

“Hurry,” I say again, louder. Jonah shakes his head again—if I could move myself, get a little closer, I think I would push him with the bottom of my boot.

Panic makes me forget myself. I shout it as loud as I can. “GO!”

And then, sun: sun, coming from above, everywhere, all at once. There is no sunrise, no warning, no birds singing. Only sun, blinding.

Jonah lets out a string of curses, better than anything I’ve ever heard from Asa. And I? I squeeze my eyes shut, like a coward. It hurts too much to keep them open.

“What did you do?” Jonah growls.

“Nothing. I only—” I only shouted. I only did something to make the world change, somehow. I brought him here and now …

How else can the sun rise, all at once?

But then I hear noises—shouts, men’s shouts, coming from below us, and close.

“There’s some of ’em out here!” someone yells.

The voice isn’t familiar, at least from the top of the tree, but I know who it belongs to: an Overseer.

I open my eyes again and see that this is not the same kind of brightness that comes from the sun. Instead the woods are lit in pools of light. We sit in the middle of one.

How did the Overseers do this? It’s as if they lit a hundred lanterns, all at once.

“It’s the poles,” Jonah says. He points, and I squint to follow the line of his finger.

He’s right. Every pole that we Congregants dug a hole for—every pole that we struggled to put up straight—now has a lantern glowing from the top.

Every hiding place in the woods, every shadow I crept through, is gone. All there is now is light.

Away in the woods, there is the familiar squalling sound that came from Ford’s talk box, every night we talked. Someone is close. The light in our faces makes it impossible to see them, though.

“They’re coming,” I tell Jonah. “You have to go, or we’re caught.”

“Kiss me,” he says. “Kiss me or I can’t do it.”

How can I not? I lean close to him, our lips hovering. I expect him to take a kiss like a Pelling takes everything—greedy, fast, wanting more.

But the touch of his lips is so gentle, I almost don’t know he’s touched mine. “You’ll marry me yet,” he says. Then he edges out onto the long branch.

The tree makes a groaning sound. Jonah freezes, but only for a second. Then he slides farther on the branch. It bends low, and then lower.

No. It’s not safe. It won’t hold him.

“Jonah,” I whisper. “Come back.”

He shakes his head and inches out. There. He’s far enough to let go and make it over the fence.

Then he looks back at me and grins. “Freedom!”

Crack. The branch snaps and Jonah is plummeting.

The whole tree shakes and sways; I nearly slip to the ground. But I hold on to the branches and watch the flurry of green and brown and Jonah falling.

He lands over the fence, out of Darwin’s rule at last. But he doesn’t say anything when he hits the ground. There’s the rattle of the leaves, and the terrible heavy thump of his body.

“Jonah?” I whisper. “Jonah?”

He lies crumpled on top of the branch that betrayed him, not moving. His head is turned at an impossible angle. I can’t tell if he’s breathing.

Can I leap over the fence without the branch to take me close? I have to. There’s still a chance. Maybe I can help Jonah if I go now.

But my body is frozen.

There’s something—a breaking branch, an exhalation—something. I look back and see a hand snaking up, reaching for me.

I grasp the trunk of the tree. But the fingers find me and circle my ankle. Then they tug.

Chapter 23

Ford’s fingers are tight around my ankle. His eyes are open wide, shocked—but not for long.

“Get out of this tree
now,”
he growls, and he gives my leg a strong tug.

What will Jonah do if he wakes up and I’m not there? What if he needs healing? Worse—what if he doesn’t? In my heart, I know the answer.

“Hurry,” Ford orders. His voice is still rough. Nobody would believe we’ve shared kisses.

I do what he says: I scramble back down the tree, tugging at my skirt any time it catches on the rough bark or a short branch. The light shining on the tree makes coming down even easier than climbing up was.

“Where’s the boy?” Ford asks.

I point at the fence, and the branch and body behind it.

“Great.” Ford lets out a groan. “Get down on the ground, Ruby. Get on your stomach and cover your head. Whatever you do—”

“Why?” I ask.

“—don’t move until I say,” he finishes, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. Then he reaches into his pocket.

Would he really do it? Would he really hit me? I don’t want to know. I fall to my knees and press my cheek against the cold ground.

They won’t kill me—will they? For this? I’m a good worker. But they’ll whip me. They’ll hurt me.

“Don’t hurt me,” I say. “Not you.”

But Ford doesn’t answer. He only paces. I watch the path of his boots, back and forth.

There are other voices, closer now, more men. More Overseers. All coming this way, and us lying like broken birds in the bright light.

“You could have been hurt,” he whispers. “I would’ve brought ropes. I would’ve made sure you were safe.”

“We thought we could do it.” It’s all I can say. I look at Jonah’s crumpled body again.

“Is that all of you?” Ford asks. “Just you and … him?”

“Just us,” I answer. “But Ford—Jonah, he doesn’t mean what you … used to mean. He just—”

“Why should I believe you?” His voice cracks. Then it quiets. “Stay where you are. Don’t get up when they get here. Just … Just shut up.” When I look up, Ford is looking straight at me, his lips trembling.

I put my cheek back on the ground and mutter a prayer.

“Save us, Otto,” I say. “Spare us from pain.”

I chant it once, twice, three times.

And then more Overseers arrive. I watch their boots rush into the clearing—four, eight, at least ten pairs of boots. They jostle together, as if excited. I think of Jonah touching the cabin wall before we left tonight. It feels as if that was a week ago. How could we have been safe—or at least the same as we’d been for hundreds of years—just a few hours ago?

“What’s this?” Darwin’s voice comes from near my feet, but I don’t turn to look. Ford’s warning is enough to keep me still.

“It’s, um, an experiment,” Ford says.

“Whaddya mean?” Darwin answers. “An experiment?”

“Yeah, well, I had this idea.” Ford sounds too nervous. Too weak. It will make Darwin far too interested in hurting him.

“An idea,” Darwin says.

“The lights—the, um, Toads have never seen anything like them, right?” Ford asks.

“Duh,” Darwin replies, and all the men laugh. They were so quiet up until now, I could have almost forgotten they were there, listening, watching—waiting to do whatever Darwin tells them to do to us.

“So I grabbed a few of them and brought them out here,” he says.

“You grabbed the Queen Toad’s little baby?” Darwin’s voice is full of doubt.

“Her mother’s half dead. It’s not like she could fight me.” Ford lets out a laugh. It sounds forced to me, but some of the other men join him.

“Where’s the others, then?” Darwin asks.

“There’s just one more. He tried to run when the lights came on.” Ford picks up my stick, abandoned on the ground, and pokes it at the fence.

Darwin walks away. I hear him grunt. “Pity. He was a strong one.”

And then he returns to me. His boot nudges my rear end. “Roll over, Toad.”

I obey—but I sit up too, wrapping my arms around my knees. Now I see all the Overseers: eleven of them, in a half circle around me.

“He telling the truth?” Darwin asks me.

I nod. “He came to the cabin and yanked me out.”

Another Overseer speaks. He sounds disappointed. “But nobody’s allowed in the cabins.”

“That’s right.” Darwin pauses for a second, still looking at me. Then he looks over at Ford. “You broke my rules, boy.”

“I wanted to see how bad it would scare them. And it scared them good.” Ford sounds so proud of himself, I almost believe he did the thing he’s saying he did. “Look how that one broke his neck.”

“How about that.” Darwin looks up at the lights. “Never thought about that part.”

“They never seen anything like it,” an Overseer says.

“Probably think the moon exploded or something,” another laughs.

Darwin squats beside me and grabs my chin, hard, so I’m forced to look at him.

“You scared of the lights, Toad?” he says in an overly kind voice.

“Yes,” I say. I’m scared, mostly, of what it means. Will we ever have dark woods to hide us, now?

“Get used to it,” Darwin says. “You’ll be seeing a lot of those pretty, pretty lights.

“You’re the same age as your mother, when I met her.” Darwin gives me a wink. “Or close enough, eh?”

I shiver. “I’m younger,” I say.

“She was the prettiest girl in town. And she wanted me.” A flicker of a smile changes his face, for only a second. “Can you imagine that, Toad?”

I lower my eyes and give him a very small shrug.

“Too bad your pa came round, huh? Too bad for everyone.” Darwin slides his hand in his pocket, and I can’t help it, I flinch—but then he stands and walks to Ford.

His steps are slow and certain.

Save him
, I pray to Otto.
Protect him
.

“These Toads belong to
me
,” Darwin says. One more step and he is so close to Ford, their chins nearly touch.

Ford is taller than Darwin, by almost half a head. Darwin takes off his hat and tilts his head up to meet Ford’s eyes.

“You don’t touch them unless I tell you to.” Darwin’s slices his other hand through the air and deals a hard slap against the side of Ford’s head.

Ford’s head jerks sideways. He doesn’t cry out.

“You don’t
look
at them unless I tell you to.” Another slap.

“My
Toads.
My
operation. Got it?” Darwin asks.

“I got it.”

“You like this job? You
want
this job?” Darwin asks.

Ford squeezes his eyes shut for a second. “Yes, sir. I want this job. I need this job.”

“We’ll see.” Darwin takes a step back and puts his hat back on his head.

He looks at me. “Might as well work, since you’re here,” he says.

Darwin points at one of the Overseers. “You bring any cups with you?”

“There’s some in the truck,” the man says, sounding surprised.

“Go get one, and a spoon,” Darwin orders.

Then he grins and spreads his arms wide, looking up at the lights. “Now you can harvest at night too. Woods are a lot wetter, then. I wonder how long you Toads can go without sleep?”

I try to harden my face and press back the tears that threaten, but it’s no use. They spill down my face and puddle along the neck of my dress.

Darwin
tut-tuts
. “I’d cry too, Little Toad.”

The Overseer is back from the truck. Two men drag me to my feet, and then I’m holding the cup and spoon.

“Half a cup, and then you can go back to bed.” Darwin looks at the thick gold watch on his wrist. “Work quick and you might see your pillow.”

I wait for my directions, but Darwin turns to Ford first. “We’re going to have a good time together, now,” he says. Then he gestures to a man behind him. “Take him to the tool shed. Tie him up real good.”

Ford drops his head and stares at the ground.

The other Overseer has hesitated for too long. “You want to go in there with him?” Darwin asks.

Then two of them step forward, one for each side of Ford, and grab his arms. They treat him as roughly as if he were a Congregant.

Darwin watches them take Ford away, but he doesn’t follow—not yet. First he turns to me and gives me the sort of sick smile that he usually saves for my mother.

“A half cup for you, by sunrise,” he says. “And if you don’t?”

He partly pulls the chain out from his pocket.

Darwin doesn’t tell me where to start my harvest. He only turns and leaves, pointing at a few Overseers to stay behind and watch me.

“Remember—
my
property,” he warns.

All that is left is to do the thing I do best. I obey. I kneel by the fence, and scrape leaves, and put drops of water in the cup.

And I whisper to Jonah.

“Jonah,” I say. “Wake up, Jonah.”

But he never stirs—not even when my cup is half full and I stand.

“I’ll marry you,” I tell him. “I’ll marry you, Jonah Pelling.” And maybe I would, if he woke—if it meant he didn’t die because of my childish attempt to escape.

Still he doesn’t answer, and the sky is tinged with gray at the horizon. Morning is coming.

“Good-bye,” I tell him.

And then I leave Jonah alone, behind the fence—free, and gone.