The Moon Dwellers (4 page)

God
,
how I love
my father.

I love
my mother, too,
but in a different way.
She i
sn’t as playful as my father,
i
s quicker to punish
, and
i
s
less rebellious
toward
the sun dwellers.
She
say
s
t
hat it i
sn’t our place
to tell the wise leaders—who’
d gotten us th
rough Year Zero, she likes to remind
—how
to run the government.
I
try to see her point, but it’
s
been nearly
five
hundred years since Year Zero, and all of the people fro
m back then a
re long dead.

I shake my head and try
to focus on the happy me
mories of my mom.
When we’d
cook radish stew together, play games of chess and checkers, watch the late-night news on our beat
-
up old telebox.

My mothe
r i
s the most compassionate person
I kno
w.
If someone in our neighborhood was sick, she was always the first to deliver a meal to them, using our already scant supplies to help out a friend.
Sometimes I got mad at her, wished she wouldn’t do stuff like that
, wished she wouldn’t give
away our
stuff.
But
I usually felt bad about my thoughts later
on
.
In the d
eepest recesses of my soul I am
always proud of her.

But a
s usual, my thoughts quickly do a one-eighty.
Now I am thinking about all that has
gone wro
ng, all that i
s bad.
About the cruelty of life.

About how I have failed my parents.
I do
n’t dare
to hope that they are still
alive.

I think
about all the waste
in the world.
Although we
live
un
derground now, we still require
many of the s
ame basic necessities humans have
needed for decades.
Toothpaste
,
for example.
Instead of being produced in a f
actory somewhere in
China
, it’s
produced in a cave somewhere.
Certainly not in
China
.
If there is still a
China
, we are
n’t connected to it anymore.
China
’s just a place on an old map from my history class in school.
We a
re on a lone island.

The point is: we use up the toothpaste and then throw out the container.
It i
s sent to th
e lava flow for destruction.
Have human lives become
like a tube of toothpaste?
Something to be
used up and thrown away?
At first the tube seems
so big, so full of life.
But
after just a few uses it becomes
dented and lumpy—alread
y life i
s ebbing away from it—
and it’
s only a matter of
time before the final bit is
squeezed out, rendering it an empty vessel, good for nothing.

I feel
myself being squeezed out every day.

I try
to distract myself, gazing up at the dimly lit cavern ceiling
rising more than twenty stories above me
.
It’
s weird being in the Pen, cut off from the town, and yet being able to see everyth
ing that the non-prisoners can
see.
From the yard, I can
see the same
massive cavern that houses
our town, the Pen, all of us.
If I did
n’t know it so well, the 14
th
subchapter might be
a stunning sight
, with an arcing roof coated by the glossy sheen of the panel lighting that controls our days and nights.
The cavern was
excavated more than
t
wo
hundred
years
ago
, and covers
more than five square miles.
Most o
f the rough and jagged rocks were
smoothed over,
huge stone support columns
built
,
stone roa
ds
laid
, and houses and buildings
erected.

There is
a light commer
cial district, where goods can
be bought, s
old, and traded.
Mostly they’re traded, because the wages are so low that money i
s short.
I remember well the first
money I ever had.
My father
saved for a mon
th so he could give it to me on
my tenth birthday.
A single Nailin, bright and shiny and round.
Printed with the face of the President.
I stared at it for hours, trying to imprint its memory in my mind
,
for I knew it would soon be gon
e, wasted, on a silly dress I’
d coveted for over a year.
Every time I passed by the dress shop in town, I stopped to look at the dress.
It was black and long, and would sweep the floor as I walked.
The sleeves were sheer and translucent, elegant in their simplicity
.
Simple—that’s the way I like
things.
There were no frills, no laces, no bows—simple.
I bought that dress with my first Nailin.

I outgrew it in three months.
Funny the way the world works sometimes.

The p
innacle of the town, however, i
s the min
e.
All things considered, we a
re lucky.
Many of the ot
her subchapters in the Realm have
mines, but none s
o valuable as ours.
For ours i
s full of gemstones, raw and uncut—and worth a fortune t
o the sun dwellers.
So you’
d expect us to
be a rich town.
We should be, but once the taxes a
re
taken out
of
the workers’
wages
,
it’
s a pittance, barely enough to survive on.

When my father complai
ned, they took him away.
M
y mother, too
, guilty by association
.
I was sent to the Pen and
my sister to a
crummy, broken-
down orphanage
.
Yeah, l
ife i
s good
as a moon dweller
.

Given my dark thoughts, I am glad when the two hours pass.
I leave
the yard
, weavin
g my way through the kids who a
re stil
l lounging
about
.
Some a
re clustered in groups, speaking in hush
ed
whispers, trading pages of books for cigarettes, and cigarettes for socks, and socks for
whatever else will
help them
forget they a
re prisoners
, that their lives a
re forfeit
.
Others a
re sprawled out on the rock, sleeping their sentence
s
away.
I wonder if their hearts have
died,
too,
like mine had before it was resurrected by my glimpse of Tristan.

Inside the Pen it is like a cattle call.
Kids a
re pushing against each other like a mob, all trying to get to the cafeteria.
Feeding ti
me i
s about the only time
any of the kids show any kind
of energy.
Also when they are
fighting.
I
nteresting how both instances a
re a matter of survival.

I ease
my way into t
he mash
-
up of bodies and manage to find a human flow that i
s moving
swiftly in the right direction, like a
strong
current in one of the many underground rivers of the Tri-Realms.
Soon—after o
nly a few minor collisions—I am
in the cafeteria.

Given the crowds, o
ne might expect that the food i
s to die for.
Perhaps it
i
s
a trendy n
ew restaurant, one where you have
to make
a reservation
, like
Tawni
suggested earlier.
However, one bite of the lukewarm mashed potatoes o
r a spoon of the mystery stew i
s enough to clinch the notion th
at the executive chef would be
much better suited to some other occupation—
any
othe
r occupation.
Seriously.
It i
s bad.
Tasteless.
Like eating a shoe.
And not a new one.
One that has
been worn f
or years by someone who suffers
from severe foot sweating.

But we have no choice.
It’
s the only show in town, a monopoly—on our st
omachs.
So we add
lots of salt, whi
ch by some miracle they provide
in plenty.

Once in the food line, I order
—by pointing at things and grunting—a gob of something covered in brown
gravy, a noodle dish that looks
like dead worms, and
a
plastic cup of brownish water.
Yum.

I fi
nd
Tawni
right where she
said she’
d be—at one of the cor
ner tables.
Most every table i
s al
ready full, so I’m glad she
arrived
early enough
to get it.
Usually I just take
my food outside, to eat alone in silence.

The
re’
s a guy
sitting across from her.
He’
s
naturally dark-skinned, which i
s the only way to n
ot have pale skin when you live
underground
;
unless
,
of course
,
you reside
in the
Sun Realm, where tanning beds a
re a s
taple in every household.
He’
s wearing a shirt with the sl
eeves cut off, highlighting his muscular
arms.
He’s
tall, but not as
tall as Tristan.
Funny how
I’
m already
comparing other
guys to Tristan, like I even kno
w him.

Tawni
spots me and motions
for me to join them.
I
manage
to squeeze through the throng of
eaters and slide
onto the bench next to
her
.

“Hi!” she says brightly, like we a
re just a bunch of friends going out to eat at our favorite haunt.

“Uh, yeah, hi.”
I still ca
n’t seem to remember how to speak like
a normal human being.
I glance
at the black guy.
He smiles
.

“I’m Cole,” he says
, extending a hand.

When he grasps my hand it disappears, as if it’s
been swallowed
up by his enormous paw.
I shake
his hand firmly, trying to act tough, but to my
surprise he does
n
’t return my iron grip.
Nor does
his hand crumple under the raw power of
my squeeze.
It’s just sort of there.
It’s like his hand absorbs
my strength, simply by the sheer soli
dity of his bones.
His hand is
also somewhat tender and gentle, smooth and well cared for.
Somewhat feminine
,
if I’m being honest.
It
’
s a contradiction, which I’m
always intrigued by.
Like bittersweet chocolate
, which, by the way, I’ve
only tried once in my life when my dad gave me a square for my eighth birthday
.