Freakling (13 page)

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Taemon asked.

“Cha,” Amma said.

“Sorry about pushing you,” Taemon said. “I guess I just panicked.”

Amma shrugged. “It was an earthquake, after all.”

They had made it back to the hauler without any problem. No one had chased them. Yens must have thought sending the guards after them would have meant sharing the center of attention. He wouldn’t like that.

“Listen, there’s something I want to tell you.” Taemon took a breath. Was this really a good idea? Probably not, but something made him plunge ahead. “That guy, the True Son? He’s my brother.”

“Your brother?” Amma said. “Seriously?”

Taemon nodded. “Don’t tell anyone in the colony, okay? I don’t want people knowing.”

“Cha. Right. If Vangie knew, she wouldn’t leave you alone for a second. I won’t tell a soul. Skies, he’s really your brother?”

“I’m not exactly proud of it.”

Amma shook her head. “An earthquake. Can you believe that? Like it’s a show or something. Let’s hope no one gets bored anytime soon. Tornadoes might be next.” She blew her hair out of her eyes. “Psi is a nuisance if you ask me.”

“Have you ever had it?” Taemon asked.

Amma turned to him with a shocked expression. “Of course not. I was born in the colony. They tested me for psi when I was little. That’s one test I was happy to fail. They would’ve sent me to the city.”

Taemon remembered how his parents had feared for their children being taken away. He’d never thought about powerless families being in the same situation. “Does that really happen?”

“Not often. They say kids don’t develop psi unless they see it every day, think about it, grow up with the assumption that psi is possible. Then, after you’re old enough to know that psi exists, it’s too late. That part of your brain shuts down or something.” She paused. “Do you ever wish you had it back?”

“No,” Taemon said firmly. He’d nearly destroyed his family when he had it.

“I just meant . . . Do you like living in the colony?” Amma asked. “When I was in school, the city kids sometimes got teased.”

“I didn’t have to go to school in the colony,” Taemon said.

Amma nodded. “Were they nice to you? The people at the farm, and Marka’s family?”

“Cha, nice.” Taemon thought he’d answered Amma’s question, but she looked at him like she expected more. Like what he had to say actually mattered.

“When I first came here, I thought I would live out the rest of my life in some kind of drudgery. Like a labor camp or something. But people were kind. Marka, Enrick. Their kids acted like I was their favorite cousin come to visit. It was almost
too
nice. I was sent here to be punished, but it doesn’t feel like punishment. It feels like . . . like freedom.”

Skies, he sounded like an idiot, even to himself!

“Some people have psi. Some don’t.” Amma shrugged. “It’s not like you make a choice.”

“I know,” Taemon said. “It’s just that . . . I didn’t expect to like it here, that’s all. Tomorrow I’m starting my apprenticeship at the tinker’s shop, and I get to fix up a byrider. I’m actually looking forward to it.”

Amma was quiet for a while. Then she squinted up at the sky. “If you had the choice, would you choose to go back home?”

Taemon frowned. “It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m here to stay, so that’s that.” Taemon looked away, toward the trees slipping by, shrinking into the distance. But despite his response, the question plagued him. If he woke up tomorrow with psi, would he choose to return to the city? He thought about the greedy priests who didn’t help the poor people. Mam and Da afraid of what the neighbors would see, what the healer might report, what the teachers would think. In the colony, things were different. Nothing was locked up. People worked together. Parents held children in their arms. They hugged each other, for Sky’s sake.

Amma spoke up, interrupting his confused thoughts.

“I think it does matter,” she said. “I think what you want is who you are.”

Her words sounded so much like Da. “‘The Heart of the Earth judges everyone by the desire of his or her heart.’ That’s what my da used to say.”

“Exactly,” Amma said. “What is the desire of your heart? It doesn’t matter if you have psi or if you don’t. You still have to know what you want; you have to picture it in your head before you can make it happen.”

A strange idea struck Taemon. Maybe he had done exactly that. Maybe he had
chosen
to be powerless, rather than live with psi and the burden of deciding who should live and who should die. Here in the colony, with no psi, his life felt more peaceful and settled than it ever had before.

“I
have
chosen the colony,” Taemon said.

After that, there was just enough time for one more round of the hay-spitting game, which Taemon lost. Again.

The next morning, Taemon packed his belongings, which amounted to a few clothes plus one of those strange teethbrushes, and moved into the apprentice’s room next to Drigg’s workshop. The first week was a bit of a disappointment because they couldn’t work on the byrider. Some of the parts had to be tweaked a little more, and Drigg had sent them back to the blacksmith.

Instead, Drigg had been showing Taemon how to use all the different tools he had. Screwdriver. Drill press. Wrench. Even the names sounded violent. Today’s tool-of-the-day was pliers.

“Now, I want you to take this”— Drigg handed Taemon a spool of wire —“and use them pliers to make something useful.”

Taemon stared at the odd tool the tinker offered him.

“At lunchtime we’ll see what you came up with.” With a nod, Drigg tucked his cap over his bald spot and crossed the workshop to start on his own work.

Taemon sighed. He hoped his decision to work for Drigg wasn’t a mistake. But going back to Marka’s wasn’t an option. They were expecting another powerless kid from the city today, a five-year-old girl, and they needed his old room. A new place, a new family, a new school. Taemon remembered how frightened he’d been when he came, and he’d been much older than five. He couldn’t imagine being so young and separated from your family and everything you knew.

An idea began brewing in his head. He wanted to make something for Marka and Enrick. Something that would be useful, as Drigg said, but also something that would make the kids smile. Taemon stared at the wire for a second, and when an image came into his mind, he set to work.

Just before noon, Taemon had finished his wire creation. He’d made a row of hooks, the kind you might hang jackets on. He’d twisted and curled the wire to look like a row of whimsical dogs. The hooks were sometimes a tail, sometimes a floppy ear, sometimes a curled tongue.

“Them kids are going to love this,” Drigg said. “Why don’t you take it on over? Then take your lunch break.”

Taemon nodded. If he remembered right, Amma’s house was on the way. He wondered if she was home, and if she’d like to have lunch together. Tucking the hooks inside his jacket, he fumbled with the buttons, then shoved his hands into his pockets as he’d seen the other kids do. The sun was bright for a late winter day, but the air still had a chilly bite.

Marka’s house was on the other side of the colony, so Taemon had to walk through the center square. Last time he’d been here was on barter day with Hannova. Today the square looked quiet and deserted. Even though a few shops, like the bakery and the blacksmith, stayed open all week, today was too cold for most people to be out. Taemon saw only one other person, and that was Challis, bundled in one of her colorful scarves. He crossed to the other side of the street and hoped she wouldn’t see him.

“Thayer! Oh, Thayer!”

Too late. Challis turned and headed straight for him. He waved but kept walking.

“Come inside and have a hot cup of tea with Auntie Challis.”

“Thanks, but another time, maybe. I’m delivering something.” Taemon smiled and picked up his pace.

“Ah, yes. The hooks. The Water girl loved them.”

Taemon stopped. “The Water girl? You mean Amma?”

“Amma. Yes. That’ll be her name.”

Taemon blinked in the sun. “How did you know about the hooks?”

“Delightful design.” Challis chuckled. “Dogs. So appropriate. You’re making friends, aren’t you, dear? Skies know you needed them. Knife and Water. Yes, that will make a strong bond. The Water isn’t afraid of a Knife, you know. Water and Stone sharpen the Knife.”

Even though he knew it was pointless, he couldn’t help but try to make sense of what Challis was saying. Knife and Water were birth signs, but why did she think Taemon was a Knife? “That’s nice, but I’m a Quake. Always have been.”

Challis looked startled for a moment, and Taemon wished he hadn’t bothered to argue. He really should have kept walking.

“Oh, dear. They wouldn’t have told you, would they? They were afraid for you, dear. The midwife was a friend of your mother’s, and . . . well . . . the birth certificate will not be quite correct. You’re a Knife, Thayer. A Knife if I ever saw one.”

How would she know that? She couldn’t know. It wasn’t true. Challis was just a mixed-up klonky scarf lady. Arguing with her was useless. It was time to go.

“Okay. Bye, Challis.” He smiled a smile that he didn’t feel and walked away.

“Good-bye,” she called after him. “And remember to go around the back of the Water girl’s house. That’s the door you’ve been looking for.”

He waved at her without looking back. He was not a Knife. Ridiculous! Yens was a Knife. If Taemon had been born a Knife, both of Mam and Da’s two children would have had the most unlucky of all twenty birth signs. And he would have been Thirteen Knife. Unthinkable! Mam would have had a nervous breakdown. And Da would have done something drastic. He would have . . .

Would have done something clearly illegal like altering the birth certificate?

Surely not.

Still, how had Challis known about the hooks?

Amma’s large stucco house was built up against the side of a craggy hill. In fact, the back part of the house seemed to melt into the hill. A covered porch had been built across the front and wrapped around the side of the house. The porch was filled with shelves and shelves, all crammed with pottery. That’s what her parents did — they made pottery from clay. Vases, mugs, plates, bowls, pitchers, even decorative artwork. They used their hands to make it, he’d been told. He couldn’t help shuddering a bit every time he thought about touching cold, wet clay.

There was a dog on the porch, too. Snoring in a patch of sunlight in front of the door. Taemon hesitated. He wasn’t used to dogs and wondered how a person could tell if a dog was friendly or not. Hadn’t Challis said something about a door around the back? It couldn’t hurt to take a quick look, could it?

He did find a door on the side, near the back. At this point, it was hard to tell where the house ended and the rocky hill began. The door almost looked like it went into the rock itself. But there was something else about this door. Something that wasn’t quite right. He peered at it more closely. Other than being old, it looked the same as all the other doors at the colony. A fat, clunky doorknob on one side, three hinges visible on the other side. Something was out of place even though he couldn’t name it.

“Taemon? What are you doing?”

Amma’s voice pulled him away from his thoughts. He smiled and waved, trying not to look as guilty as he felt. “Just . . . looking for the door.”

“Well, the front door’s over here. In the front.”

He nodded. “Cha, sorry. Remember me? Stupid city kid? I get confused.”

“What, the front doors on city houses are around the back?” Amma cocked her head and gave him a sideways glance.

“Well, no, but . . . anyway, I came over to show you this.” Taemon showed her the hooks. “I’m on my way to Marka and Enrick’s house to give it to them.”

Amma’s face lit up. “They’re adorable!” She gushed over the hooks a bit longer, then her mood became serious. “I have to tell you something.”

“What’s wrong?” Taemon asked.

She hesitated. “Vangie heard some news . . . from the city. People are . . . are disappearing.”

Taemon gripped the hooks tightly. “Disappearing? Who?”

“I’m not sure. Vangie’s cousin didn’t say.” She shrugged. “What do you think it means?”

“I have no idea,” Taemon said.

On Taemon’s way back from Marka and Enrick’s, his head was teeming with uncomfortable thoughts. First Challis had told him he was a Knife, not a Quake, and that his parents had lied about that. He couldn’t bring himself to believe it and yet why would she make up something like that? On the other hand, how could she possibly know?

And what Amma had said about people disappearing. That was definitely not good. What was happening in the city? What was the high priest up to? And what was Yens doing? He thought of how Mam and Da hadn’t been at Yens’s ceremony. Was it an act of protest, or had they been unable to attend?

When he returned to Drigg’s workshop, the parts for the byrider were back from the blacksmith. He helped Drigg lay them out, though his mind was still unsettled.

“Have you heard much about what’s happening in the city?” Taemon didn’t intend to ask the question, but his thoughts spilled out in words.

Drigg glanced up with a puzzled look. “Just rumors. Mostly about the True Son. He’s sixty years old even though he looks sixteen. He can kill people by just looking at them. He has connections in the Republik. Who knows what to believe?”

“Does it worry you?” asked Taemon.

“Nah,” Drigg said. “None of that has anything to do with the colony. They’ve left us alone these two hundred years. Can’t think why it would change.”

Taemon arranged the gears in order of size, lining them up on the sheet Drigg had laid down. “What about the Republik? Has anyone from the colony been there?” Taemon, like everyone in the city, knew nothing of what lay beyond the mountains. He wondered if the same was true of people in the colony. Not only was crossing the mountains treacherous, but the people of Deliverance were strictly forbidden from traveling to the Republik or having contact with Republikites.

“Well, now, there’s a story in that. Years ago, a few brave souls — powerless people, mind you — ventured into the Republik. But the people there never have trusted psi folk, and even when powerless people try to explain that they don’t have psi, those Republikites, see, they don’t believe it. They figure that powerless is pretty easy to fake and impossible to prove. So they don’t allow nobody from this side of the mountains into their lands. Those poor wretches who tried it lost their lives. Save the one they sent back as a message. Nasty tale, that.”