The Prey (19 page)

Krugman shakes his head. “He wasn’t able to bring it with him, but claimed it would one day surely arrive. He became like a raving prophet, every day prophesying with staff and rod about the coming of the young ones carrying the Origin.
Blessed are the young feet of those who come bearing the Origin,
he kept chanting. When he wasn’t working in the laboratory facility we have here, he was on the fortress wall, keeping watch through the night. Frankly, toward the end, he lost it. He had to be isolated in a cabin about half a day’s hike from here.”

I nod, remembering the cabin from a few days ago. “How long was he there?”

“Not long. A couple of months at the most. We’d check on him every few days. One afternoon, we found him hanging from the crossbeams.” Krugman gazes somberly at us. “You wanted to know. So there you have it, the unvarnished truth. Hurts, doesn’t it, truth?”

“But what drove him to kill himself?” I ask.

Krugman’s glassy eyes flash with sudden clarity. He gazes out the window; when he looks at me again, his face has tightened. “Have you noticed something?”

“What’s that?”

“This conversation. It’s been a little one-sided. Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of hearing the sound of my own voice. I’d like to do a little more listening now. And for you to do a little more talking.”

Sissy and I glance at each other, confused. “About what?” Sissy asks.

“The Origin.” He sniffs. “I’d thought Elder Joseph was completely off his rocker when ranting about it, but then you six suddenly appear quite out of the blue, just as he’d predicted. And then the Civilization apparently not only gets wind of this
Origin
theory but actually seems inclined to believe it. So. Tell me. What is it? And more importantly, where is it? I’d like to see it, please.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “We don’t know what it is. We don’t have it. And that’s the truth.”

Krugman smiles to himself. “I can understand why you’d want to be circumspect about it, even cagey, but I mean, we’re friends now, are we not? Even family, perhaps, no?”

“We don’t have it,” Sissy says. “We’re not being cagey.”

He pulls in his chin; the mole crowns. “Know what I also believe?” Krugman says, a drip of excitement enlivening his voice. “I believe in quid pro quo, in tit for tat. Do you understand what these terms mean?”

I shake my head.

“It means a fair exchange. I give you something, you give me something. I’ve given you information, answers to your questions. Now, in return, quid for my quo, you give me something. Understand? A little tit for my tat. See? I give you hospitality, now you give me the Origin.” His voice, growing more excited as he speaks, shakes with building emotion. “It is only fair—”

“We don’t have it,” Sissy interrupts, and Krugman’s body flinches. “We simply don’t have an inkling what it is, this Origin. We’d never heard of the thing until we arrived here.”

Krugman regards her for a long time. Then he gives the smallest of nods, and the two henchmen behind us move toward the door. “Very well, then. They will escort you back to your cottage.”

We turn to leave, Sissy in front of me. She stops. The door is still closed, the two henchmen standing directly in front of it. They are smiling, arms folded across their barrel chests.

“One more thing,” Krugman says, his voice jangling.

23

“A
FAVOR
I
need to ask you,” Krugman says, inspecting then removing grime from under a fingernail.

“Go ahead,” Sissy says. “What is it?”

“Let me search you.”

Sissy’s arms go taut. “Come again?”

“Listen,” I say. “We already told you we don’t have the Origin.”

“I don’t believe you,” he says with clinical detachment. But his eyes, as they swing up to meet mine, are anything but detached. They are cauldrons of hurt pride and brimming anger. Something too long restrained is unleashing in him.

“Look here,” Sissy says. “Whether you believe us or not doesn’t change the fact that we don’t have the Origin. You could search us from head to toe, and you’d—”

“Really?” Krugman says, a sinister glint reflecting in his eyes. “How funny you should mention that. I was just about to suggest the very idea myself. From head to toe.”

Sissy’s brows knit together in confusion. She throws me a glance.
What’s going on?

Behind us, the floorboards creak. One of the henchmen steps toward Sissy. “Remove your clothes. All of them. We need to examine your skin.”

I stare at the men, then at Krugman again. “Tell them to move away from the door, Krugman.”

“No,” he says softly. His eyes lilt over to Sissy, softly, with sickening tenderness. “We have reason to believe the Origin might be a typographic sort of clue, imprinted on your skin somewhere. Some kind of lettering. Perhaps an equation or a code of sorts. Take off your clothes.”

“I don’t think so,” I say before Sissy can respond. “We’ll be leaving now.”

“And you will,” the other henchman says with a low rumble. “
You
will. But she stays. She’s the only one we still need to search.” A faint smile touches his eyes. “We’ve already examined the four boys. And you, we checked you out while you were sick and out like a light. You’re all clean.” His eyes flick toward Sissy again. He starts reaching up to her.

“Don’t you touch me,” she says.

There’s no sound but the tick-tocking of the grandfather clock, now jarringly loud.

“See, that’s the thing with girls with big man-sized feet,” Krugman says from behind us, his voice a slithering coo. “When their feet haven’t been beautified, when the foot glands haven’t been broken. Left undestroyed, these glands secrete male hormones into a girl. Turn her from a princess into an opinionated ox. One who fails to understand her place in society, who mistakenly thinks she can walk like a male, talk like a male, have opinions like a male. Say no to a male. ‘Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a girl with big feet.’”

“Look at those gargantuan man feet,” one of the henchmen jeers. “Can we even be sure she’s really a girl?”

A protracted pause. Thoughts churning, options weighed, indiscretions considered.

“Sometimes,” the henchman whispers, “you can’t be too sure about these things.”

“Maybe we should find out,” the other says, catching on. His close-set eyes creep down Sissy’s body. “There are ways of”—his mouth droops, an upside-down smile—“ascertaining fact. Of
uncovering
the truth.”

They start to move toward her.

I fly in, without elegance. But with the strength of conviction. I shove the men backward, and their ample backsides slap hard against the door. They bounce off, their fury bringing crimson to their cheeks. One of them is swinging his arm back, readying to piston it out at me, but Sissy leaps at him, driving her elbow into his sternum. He doubles over, spittle and curses flying out.

I don’t know what would have happened next if Krugman didn’t start to laugh. Not just any kind of laughter. This is an uproarious upheaval of his guts, a bellowing that rattles our rib cages. He collapses into his office chair, his laughter soon falling into aftershock mode, a low rumbling from the pit of his stomach.

“You guys,” he says between laughs. “I said tit for tat, not tête-à-tête.” He laughs at his improvised humor. “No more private conversations, okay!” Krugman’s face beams. “Teatime is over!”

The back of Sissy’s hand touches mine. Then we are sliding skin over skin, until we’re holding hands, our cold palms fitting perfectly.

Krugman is smiling, his beard rising and bunching up at the cheeks as if a pair of mice have burrowed themselves in there. “Come,” he finally says, his thumbs crooked behind his belt. “This is not what the Mission is about. We’re about sunshine and smiles and happy faces. Not fracture and violence.”

“Could have fooled me,” Sissy says, her voice low.

“You shrill little harpy,” one of the elders shouts. “You disobedient wench, we ought to feed you to the—”

“Enough,” Krugman says. His voice is soft. His eyes still dance with humor, but the wetness seems acidic now. “I’m afraid this is all my fault. I’ve forgotten how tired you must be, and how on edge, too, after all you’ve been through. Please, pardon my lapse.” He widens the smile on his face. “Shall we let bygones be bygones? Water under the bridge? Let all things past, pass? That sort of thing?”

I nod. Warily. “We’d like to leave now.”

“As you wish,” Krugman says. He motions the other elders to step aside. As we brush between the henchmen, through a parted sea of lard, Krugman mumbles something.

“What’s that?” Sissy says.

“Nothing,” he murmurs.

On the cobblestone path, we walk past smiling groups of girls, their teeth perfectly white, standing off to the side. Black clouds have drifted across the skies, brusque and meaning business. Within minutes, cold, driving rain drums down in slantwise bands. Sissy and I walk quickly, side by side; our hands have never let go, and they form a small cove of warmth against the soaking cold. I don’t tell her what Krugman mumbled as we left. Mostly because I don’t quite know what to make of it, if it really is the veiled threat I suspect it is.
All good things,
he’d whispered as we left,
come to those who wait
.

24

B
Y THE TIME
we reach my cottage, we’re soaked through. Sissy grabs my satchel bag off the sofa and upheaves its contents onto the bed. Scraps of food, Epap’s sketchbook, the Scientist’s journal, and small trinkets fall onto the duvet.

“See anything that might be the Origin?” she asks.

“I’m sure they’ve been through the bag already,” I say. “And besides, aren’t they under the notion that the Origin is something engraved on our skin? That it has to do with lettering or something?”

She picks up the Scientist’s journal, leafs through it, then tosses it onto the bed in frustration. She’s beginning to shiver. We’re both freezing. I walk over to the fireplace; my trembling fingers try to get a fire going.

“L-l-look,” Sissy says, chattering. She’s pointing at the coffee table. A tray of food has been laid atop it and, judging from the steam still rising from the earthenware bowls of soup, it was delivered very recently. “You get your own room with a fireplace and hot shower,
and
room service as well?”

I touch the loaf of bread on the tray. Still warm. “Look, why don’t you have some? It might take a while to get this fire going. The soup will help warm you up.”

She agrees, sitting on the sofa and slurping the soup down. Her nose pinches up.

“Something the matter?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Just really salty. But good. And hot.”

I busy myself at the hearth, picking out a few branches stacked on the side. But the kindling is slightly damp and I’m having a hard go at it. Sissy slurps down the last of the soup but she’s still shivering.

“Sissy, go take a hot shower. It’ll help warm you up.”

She’s too cold to disagree. She gets up and I give her a set of clothes from the dresser. “They’re too big for you, but better dry and big than wet and cold.”

She closes the bathroom door. I take the opportunity to change into dry clothes myself, casting off my cold sodden clothes. A few minutes later, I have a hearty fire blazing away. I sit back on the sofa, easing my cold bones into the soft give of the cushions. The flames lick and dance their light across the room, transforming the walls into a firestorm of red and orange. From the bathroom, I hear the far-off sound of water splashing.

Despite the fire and set of dry clothes, I’m still cold. I gather the duvet from the bed, place it over my legs. I stare into the fire. The meandering flames are like my own disoriented, shifting thoughts. I have some soup, but it’s lukewarm now, and too salty. I set it down after finishing half of it and stare out the window.

A darkness has ripened in the village, dissolving the trails of smoke rising from the chimneys, swallowing whole the thatched roofs. A few minutes later and night has absorbed the winding paths outside our front door. An occasional whistle of wind peals into the village, muffled by thickening clouds that float hidden in the dark skies. Raindrops speckle the window like small gashes.

My thoughts are preoccupied with what Krugman just told us. A different kind of cold—more unsettling, disturbing—seeps into my bones.

Sissy walks in, her face cleansed, her hair damp.

She stands directly in front of the fireplace for a few minutes, running her fingers through her damp hair. Light from the fire gilds the loose strands, setting them ablaze.

“That shower really helped,” she says. “Thanks.” The firelight dances across her freshly scrubbed skin. “But it’s made me really sleepy. I was almost nodding off in there.” She sits next to me. For a few minutes, as the warmth of the fire spreads over us, we sit in silence. She cradles her legs under her hips, pulls the duvet over her lap.

“Pretty crazy past two days,” I say.

“Pretty crazy last hour.” She eases back into the cushioning, cracks her knuckles. “I was just getting used to this village, all these other humans around. And now I learn there’s a whole world of us. My mind’s trying to wrap itself around all this … but it’s like grabbing for purchase in quicksand.”

I nod. “It’s a lot to get used to.”

The fire snaps, kicking up a plume of sparks.

“What is it?” she says. “You’re hiding something from me.”

I shift my body sideways so I’m facing her. “Krugman might be lying, Sissy.”

She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes swim over my face.

“Krugman says the train goes to the Civilization. And maybe it does. But…”

“We don’t know anything about the Civilization,” she finishes.

“Other than what he tells us. He says it’s a paradise, that it’s an incredible place. But what if it’s not? What if there’s…”

“What?”

I take her hands into mine. I feel the warmth of skin, the beat of her pulse on my fingertips. I suddenly don’t want to say what I know I have to; I simply want to stretch this quiet moment into an hour, a day, a year, a decade, to be alone with her without the interference of the world. But she lifts her eyes expectantly to mine, and I speak.