Old Green World (2 page)

Albert stared at his bowl and kept eating. “Maybe it just takes time. Maybe we’ll all eat together again once we’re finished building civilization.”

“When’s that going to happen? When will it be finished?” Mister Ewan said. Albert didn’t say anything. They ate quietly for a while before Mister Ewan said, “It’s all right, though. It’s good for you to eat with them. You’re good for Thomas.”

Albert and Thomas were quiet when they walked back to school, until Thomas began bumping into Albert on purpose and stepping on his feet. Albert bumped him back. Thomas dropped his satchel, grabbed Albert around his shoulders, and started wrestling him.

“You’re going to lose. You know you’re going to lose,” Albert said.

“I’m going to win this time,” Thomas said. He tried to mimic a wolf call.

Albert wrestled him down into the grass, sat on him, held Thomas’s arms down with his hands. “I give up, I give up,” Thomas laughed. Albert let his arms go but stayed straddled on him. Thomas kept his eyes locked with Albert’s and very gradually put his hands onto Albert’s thighs, as if his hands were operating secretly as he held Albert’s attention. They were still for a while, catching their breath.

“Mother and Sister Alice are worried about the Baixans. They talked about it all morning. They wouldn’t tell me much, though.”

“We’ll fight them eventually, right?” Albert said. “It’s what I’ve trained for.”

Thomas turned his head to the side, looked away from Albert, toward his house. “I’m getting married to Cynthia,” Thomas said. “We talked about it at lunch.”

“I know,” Albert said. Thomas was engaged to Cynthia Kelvin, whose father was the mayor of Over-town. They had been engaged since they were babies. When they married, they would unify the north. It was for civilization.

“I mean soon, though,” Thomas said. “In a few weeks. We’re going to Over-town to meet them.”

“Oh.”

“I have to do it. I don’t have a choice.”

“I know.”

+ + +

After school each day, Albert practiced fighting. He shot things with arrows and struck them with swords. Four days a week he practiced with the militia, a group of older boys and men who knew less about fighting than Albert did. The other days, Albert practiced archery at home with Mama Mura. They practiced the bow in a space they had set aside for it. It was a mulched row with a hay target, near where the forest bounded their farmland.

The east side of the farm approached the village. Between them sat the Plancks’ farm and some low trees and clearings. The west side of the farm touched the old forest. It took a full day of travel through ancient trees to reach Over-town. To the north of them was the channel, and to the south it was trees for leagues and leagues, all the way to the Old City of the Island.

Albert drew, fired, and struck the bull’s-eye slightly to the left. “Good,” Mura said.

Albert winced. “I’m pulling to the left and I’m not sure why.” He fired two more in close succession, each of which struck closer to the center. He looked back at Mura and smiled. “I think I got it,” he said, and approached the target to free his arrows.

“Good.” Mura said. The setting sun cast itself right across her face, and Albert could see the variegation in her color that only came out in full light. There were small flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes. Her hair was close to the scalp, but he could still see the reds that mottled the dark brown. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’m fine. I’m just thinking, I guess.” He paused. “I won’t be shooting targets for much longer. I’ll be a soldier, like you were.”

Mura shrugged. “I guess you could call it ‘soldier’? We didn’t have a word like that. It’s different from what we have here. We were just a group of people with weapons and a goal.”

“You met Mama and Papa then,” Albert said. He plucked at the bowstring absently, firing nothing into the ground.

“We fought near the village where Mama and Papa grew up,” Mura said. “There were raiders there, making chaos, and we were trying to stop them. But we failed. Some of us escaped, but the village was razed. I think you already know about that. It was tough. A lot of people were killed.”

“So you saved Mama and Papa when you all escaped,” Albert said.

Mura smiled. “It’s probably truer to say we saved each other. But yes, we escaped. There were others as well. We all got away together.”

“What happened to the rest of the people?”

“The trip was difficult. Some people didn’t make it. Most of us did, though. We found a village in Baixa, and most of the group settled there. You know the rest. Mama and Papa and I kept going. We wanted to get far away. We wanted to make sure we were somewhere peaceful. So we crossed the sea and found this place and made a life, and we had you.”

Albert drew and fired several bull’s-eyes silently before speaking again. “So you and Papa and Mama are married, right? Thomas has to get married to that girl in Over-town. It’s the same thing, right? Just that Administrators have rules and ceremonies for it?”

“I don’t know, really. I don’t understand what their ritual is all about. It has more to do with land than anything else, I think. Papa and Mama are village kin, and Mama and I love each other. We all raise you together. Maybe Thomas can tell you what that would mean for them.” Mura studied Albert for a moment. “Why is this so interesting to you all of a sudden? Is Thomas putting something into your head?”

“No, of course not. It’s not Thomas at all. He doesn’t want any of it,” Albert said. “Maybe he’ll say no. I don’t think he should do it.”

“I see.” Mura sighed. “Of course.”

He said nothing. He was scared of what would come out if he spoke. He did as he first learned from Sister Alice when he was very small: he stood very still, turned to the sound and feeling of his breath, and let the things he held in just wash over him.

Mura stared at Albert for a long time, then gave him a kiss on the cheek. She crossed her arms, hugged herself, turned, and walked toward the house.

Albert took some time to collect himself. He shot a few more arrows: they were all true. He could shoot an arrow, no matter how he felt. When he felt calm enough, he headed toward the house.

Mura tended to the fire. Mama Lini and Papa Arto were making supper. Lini was the tall, stout epicenter: her red hair cascaded from her head in all directions, and the energy of the room danced around her. Piles of chopped soup vegetables sat before her in a frozen orbit. Arto was a compact block of a man, short and sturdy, with a thick black beard the only hair left on his head. He held down the floor with his gravity. He was dropping biscuits for cooking.

The Todorovs spoke a casserole of dialects. The languages of the White Island and Viru made the meat of it, but it was seasoned by everything in between. Arto said to his son, “I need you to help pack the cart before we go to market tomorrow morning, all right? It shouldn’t take too long. But you should sleep early for it.” Albert nodded listlessly.

Lini paused her chopping. She went to Albert and cradled his head in her hands. She felt his forehead. “You look sad. Are you sick?”

“I’m fine, Mama,” Albert said. “I was just practicing a little extra.”

“He does us all proud. He’s ready for whatever Baixans they throw at him,” Mura said. She put new wood on the fire and poked at it.

Lini winced. “Let’s not talk about the Baixans. The Newtons are well? You behaved yourself today?” Albert nodded and worked his way toward Mura and the fire. He stared quietly at the pot. “Really, what’s wrong?” Lini said. “Did you eat enough for lunch?”

“Leave him be,” Mura said, looking intently at Lini. “He’s fine.”

“Oh!
Oh
.” Lini’s eyes snapped wide.

“What? What’s going on?” Arto asked.

“Shush, it’s fine.” Then, in a comical stage whisper: “A crush
.
” She then turned to Mura to confirm. “A crush?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Albert said. “Please stop.”

“Is it a nice girl at school?” Lini asked. “Not the horse-keeper’s daughter, she’s hideous. Is it your teacher? What is the new Adept’s name? Julia?”

“Clare,” Mura said. “She’s been his teacher for a year and you never remember. It’s Clare.”

“Right, Clare. So it’s her?”

“Please, please stop,” Albert said. He had already turned to face the wall.

“He’s right,” Mura said. “Let it rest.”

Arto said to Lini: “There’s no girl at school. You never pay attention.” And then, to Albert: “Thomas is a good boy. You’ll make a good home together.” And then, to Mura: “The family is ruling class, though, is that going to be a problem?”

“Everyone should stop talking,” Mura said with considerably more intensity. Albert was already out the door.

He looked out across the field toward the forest. It was still twilight. The glow of dusk illumined everything and made the familiar seem unfamiliar. He could see details at the point where the woods met their farmland: leaves, needles, and underbrush, and the spaces in between. Vague layers of forest lay beyond that, dark branches that webbed across all his field of vision. Beyond that was the greenish black shadow of the forest dissolving into the enormity of itself, on and on and on forever.

He spent some time staring at it, listening to his own breath and listening to the wind caress the trees, feeling it cool his ears. At one point, when everything was still, he thought he saw something, or a shadow of something, several layers in: an indistinct figure moving in the depth of the forest.

He stood and focused on the woods. He felt the wind grow colder as the sun set, a chill on his neck and in his bones. He had lost the shadow, though, and couldn’t get it back.

There were things out in the forest. Maybe it was Mister Ewan’s father, or the ghost of Mayor Newton, or the Baixans. Maybe it was a crowd of spirits, all those millions of people that died when the world ended, all of them piling on one another in layers and layers of brush. Maybe when he died, he would go and live there, too. He would become just one of those things.

After some time, he turned toward the house and went in to supper.

+ + +

He dreamed he was in the forest, the deepest of all, with every tree spidering out of the ground and into the other trees. He could see the pattern of every tree inside the leaves, and he knew that the pattern of the forest was the same as the pattern of the tree.

He didn’t know the edges of the forest, or how to get out. He was inside a thicket, and it felt like shelter. The shadow came over him. He couldn’t see the shadow, but he could feel that the shadow was warm, and wanted Albert, and Albert wanted him back. And when he buried his face into the shadow, feeling its pulse and skin and warmth, he was the shadow, too, and they were the forest, too. When his father woke him, he had a moment of not knowing where he was.

Arto put out some of last night’s biscuits with a strong cheese and some radishes from the garden. He made some eggs and barley tea while Albert loaded up the cart.

They ate in quiet until Arto said: “You haven’t talked since last night. We didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“I know.”

“And we won’t speak of it. Mama Mura told us that it’s difficult.”

“There’s no
it
. There’s nothing to talk about. Everyone’s made up a story about nothing. I’m fine. I love food and fighting and shooting arrows. That’s all.”

Arto smiled and patted his hand. “Probably it will die down at the market around lunch, and you can go out and hunt a bit.” He took a sip of his tea. “I want you to get some things to read from Harriet today. You haven’t been bringing books home. You didn’t think I would notice, did you? I told Harriet I would trade some vegetables and beer. Get whatever you want.”

“No, don’t do that,” Albert said. “It’s not worth the cost. I’m almost out of school, and I won’t need to read after that.”

“You need to read for the rest of your life, all right? You don’t know how good it is, that you and all the children in Eden-town get to spend years in school. In the rest of the world, you don’t have the Adepts healing everyone and teaching them how to live. When you get away from the Islands, you’re lucky to eat, much less go to school. You aren’t going to waste that.”

“Do they read in wars?” Albert said. “You’ve been in one, and I haven’t, so I don’t know. I didn’t get the impression that there was a lot of reading, though.”

Arto looked away from Albert. He gave more attention to his bite of biscuit and cheese than it needed. “You’re smart, aren’t you? Smarter than your father.”

The Adepts had taught them in school how to identify emotional states in their bodies: they taught it when the children were very little, using games and play. Albert remembered the lesson about shame, about the tightness of breath in the top of his stomach, just beside the ribs. That was where his shame lived, and it sang to him now. “I’m sorry, Papa. I don’t govern myself.”

“Yes,” Arto said. “You are going to war. And I don’t sleep anymore because I know this. But what happens when you get back? This is what I try to think about. I try to think about when you come home. Maybe someday I will think about it enough to sleep.

“And, when I finally sleep, I’ll dream that you come home with honor, and that you move into a nice house. Maybe a farm, or maybe you will live with Thomas . . . or, no, because you don’t love Thomas, do you? But you’ll be home. On the Island, in civilization. You taught me that word. Do you remember that? I don’t need much from civilization. It’s not really my world. Civilization means we have this farm, and no one is trying to kill us. That’s all I need. But you, civilization is your world. You learned everything from the Adepts, and you learned it better than anyone, better even than Thomas, although only his mother is brave enough to say that out loud.

“So I’ll dream of you coming home a gentleman, with strength and honor and the power of your mind. All the riches you will have!” Arto said, with a burst of enthusiasm that took him halfway out of his seat. “I can barely imagine. I told you how it was in Viru, it wasn’t like that at all. Everyone was poor always. Hell, one winter it was so bad somebody tried to eat
me
.”