Pucker (3 page)

“My son wants chicken,” my mother said. “It's his birthday.”

That was a lie.

The man looked at us blankly. “But we were told you wanted lamb.”

He wasn't trying to be insolent. He was following orders. According to his delivery list, which had been compiled by the Ministry seven days ago, the Gale family would be having a lamb dinner tonight.

“Chicken,” my mother challenged him.

“This has never happened before,” he said, addressing me.

“Mom,” I said, but she stared at me emptily.

The man turned to the girl. “Do we have chickens back in the Compound?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I don't want chicken. Lamb is fine,” I said.

The girl was pretty, just a few years older than me. Her skin was the color of toffee. What had she looked like before? Were her hands flippers? Was her body curled up into the shape of a comma?

“Lamb is not fine,” said my mother, gathering up her sweater.

Twenty minutes later we stood on a hill looking down at the bustling Compound.

“What's your name?” my mother asked the man.

“Ethan 434,” he said. 434—his last name: the number of days he'd been in Isaura. Tomorrow his name would change and he'd be Ethan 435.

“Thank you, Ethan 434,” she said.

Ethan led us down the hill and we trailed after him like sheep. We went past the bakery and the laundry. I smelled seared cotton and bleach, tallow, fried onions, and yeast.

Our presence in the Compound was unnerving, and the Changed hurried to fulfill my mother's request. They did a sloppy job. The heads of two chickens were lopped off; they were wrapped in a rag and tied with twine. Within minutes the rag and my mother's shirt were maroon with blood. Ethan 434 made no offer to help. I untied the package and ripped off the rag. We used the twine to harness the chickens' feet together and my mother carried them upside down. By the time we got home, they would be drained of their blood.

“Lead me out, quickly now,” my mother said.

Ethan 434 led us into the central courtyard, where we stumbled on a cartload of immigrants who had just arrived from America. Some were propped up on pillows, their arms and legs twisted in unthinkable ways. There was a small bald girl who was so emaciated you could see every bone, and a young woman with no legs. But this wasn't why I stared, why I couldn't turn away. It was their gaze. It beat out of them like wings. Was this what my mother had been talking about? Was this what living in a world with love did to you? They looked so
alive
. My mother and I walked closer to the cart.

One of the immigrants stuck her fingers out of the cart and wiggled them. “Is somebody there?” she called out.

“I'm here,” my mother said. Their fingers touched.

“I'm scared,” the girl whispered.

I could tell from her voice that she couldn't be more than a teenager.

My mother read her future quickly. “Don't be.”

Forecasting her future was something my mother wouldn't be able to do after the girl was Changed. For some reason, once the Maker had molecularly changed an immigrant's past, his or her future became unreadable.

“Will I see you again?” the girl asked.

“I don't think so,” my mother told her.

Then my mother brought the girl's fingers to her lips and kissed them. A gasp rippled through the crowd. The Changed had never seen an Isaurian show affection.

I looked across the clearing and saw a man leaning against a pillar, smoking a cigar. He nodded at me. I pointed him out to my mother.

“He's what they call a Host,” she explained. “His job is to guide the new recruits through orientation.”

“But he doesn't look Changed,” I said. I was used to the expressionless, subservient Changed who delivered our food and raised our cattle.

“He's Changed. But there's something different about Hosts. Something the Maker does to them, I think,” my mother said. “They're the Ministry's watchdogs,” she added with a frown.

“Can I help you?” the Host called out, exhaling a plume of smoke. My heart began to pound its distress. Even though it would draw even more attention to us, I took my mother's hand and squeezed it.

“No, thank you,” said my mother calmly. “We got the wrong order. We thought it'd be faster to come and exchange it ourselves.”

The Host raised his eyebrows and took a step toward us. “There is no such thing as a wrong order,” he said. The crowd dispersed. He squinted, as if he were trying to memorize our faces.

 

When we got back home, it was late afternoon and Cook was sitting at the kitchen table chopping up the plums into tiny pieces. I could tell by the way she slammed the knife down into the cutting board that something was wrong. My mother handed her the chickens silently and disappeared into her bedroom to change her stained shirt.

“Where have you been?” Cook asked.

“We went to the Compound. She said she wanted chicken for dinner, not lamb.”

Cook peeled the plum and handed me the skin. I loved the tart, almost bitter taste. “Who saw you?” she asked.

I shrugged. I didn't want to tell her about the Host.

“Anyone from the Ministry?”

I shook my head.

Cook put down her knife. “Thomas, you must be very careful.”

“I'm always careful.” I was a cautious boy. I didn't take unnecessary risks.

“That's not what I mean. I know you're careful. But sometimes things can happen that are out of your control. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Cook had a real name, Adalia, but in our household she had always been called Cook. She was much more than a cook. She was a nursemaid, a teacher, a skilled herbalist, and a surrogate grandmother. We knew each other so well that often we didn't even have to speak.

“Tonight, when the Seers come, don't try and eavesdrop.”

“I don't. I never do,” I said.

“I've got no time for lies, Thomas. Just do as I ask. Go to sleep tonight. Leave your parents to their business.”

I gulped. I felt the tears coming again.

“Stop worrying,” she said gruffly, picking up her knife. She turned away from me. She had no desire to see me cry.

 

So I didn't worry. Not that night, when the house was filled with the booming voices of the Seers. Not the next morning, when my parents did not forecast each other's days at the breakfast table. Not even when they told me they would not be bringing me to the Ministry for my morning read.

“It's such a beautiful day, T,” my father said. “Why don't you go pick us some blackberries?”

My mother rummaged around in the cabinet under the sink. “Here,” she said, handing me a wooden pail. “I want to see that halfway filled.” She thought about it a moment and added, “All the way filled would be even better.”

“Can I go to our secret patch?” I asked. It was quite a distance, on the other side of the lake. “Please,” I begged.

My father studied me, his head cocked. I had never seen tenderness on his face before and had no idea what to make of it. To me it looked like he was about to be sick.

“I think that's a fine idea,” he said, ruffling my hair.

Thrilled, I ran out of the house. I had never been allowed to go that far alone.

“I'll be here when you get back,” my father yelled after me. There was a note of desperation in his voice that made me want to get away from him as fast as I could.

 

It was noon when I returned. I was so excited to show my parents my overflowing pail that I nearly tripped over my father, who was sprawled out on the kitchen floor, his limbs rigid, his lips the oddest shade of lavender.

My mother lay near the sink, conscious but barely so. She couldn't speak. She could only watch me from beneath her swollen eyelids.

A butcher knife lay on the table, its blade gleaming with a gelatinous gold speckled substance. While I had been out picking berries, my parents had been flayed of their Seerskins. My father's was balled up on the counter. My mother's was curled up beside her, like a fetus.

I was a small eight-year-old, compact enough to fit in the kitchen sink, and so I crawled into it. I wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked back and forth in that cold bowl. It never occurred to me to get help. I was simply . . .
alone
.

Hours passed. The candles, strangely lit in the middle of the day, flickered wildly on the counter, their flames horizontal, bending as if under some great weight. Greedy fingers of fire danced across my father's Seerskin. If I had just reached out with one hand I could have swept it to the floor, saved it from burning. But I was gripped with fear; I forgot I could move. There was a hideous musicality accompanying all this, a rattling percussive thrum that my father's skin made just before it turned to ash.

When the linen curtains above the sink caught fire, I understood I was next. At first it smelled good, familiar and safe, like buttery pecans or the promise of a barbecue. I looked up, mesmerized by the orange glow.

Then I heard the sound of a buckboard. Cook: she had come back to rescue me. Like many of the ordinary people in Isaura, she had a bit of the gift in her. Enough to make her hunches reality more often than not. I felt her weathered and chapped hands plucking me out of the sink. I reached up, clasping her around the neck like a baby.

It was ironic that my parents' gift showed itself in me at this particular moment. Cook
was
coming, but she'd just started down the dirt road; she wasn't in the kitchen, not yet. When I reached up, I tugged on the curtains and pulled the fire down atop myself.

 

Cook burst through the door just as I was falling to the ground. The top layers of my skin hung from my face like a giant sheet of wax. Cook would tell me later that I had no idea my face was aflame. I was cupping my chin as if I had just vomited and was trying to get to the bathroom before it splattered all over the floor.

Frenzied, she tried to take everything in at once: me on fire, my mother and father on the floor. My mother managed to croak one word, a command, “Thomas,” which set Cook in motion. She ran to my side and put the fire out with a dish towel before it could spread. She applied pressure to my arms, my legs, and my torso—the places where I hadn't been burned.

“Go to sleep; that's a good boy.
Sleep.
”

An accommodating child, cradled in the arms of Cook, I fell away.

 

Days passed. I didn't know how many. I drifted in and out of consciousness. Cook was always at my side, changing the poultices on my face, feeding me a watery broth through a straw. She talked in a comforting, steady stream. She told me now was the time to be brave.

Every hour she gave me two teaspoons of an elixir made of wolfsbane and belladonna that kept me in a woozy, drugged state. A stranger named pain had moved into the house that was my body. It whispered that it had come to live with me forever. Nights were the worst, never ending and dark. I panted and hyperventilated my way through them. I flailed my arms and legs about; often I screamed.

Cook said, “If your body is a house, there must be rooms. Show pain into the parlor and then lock the door so it can't get out.”

 

“Baby,” my mother said when I opened my eyes a week later.

I looked around to see what newborn my mother was addressing. But the only new person in the room was her. A skinless mother, bizarrely dull to my eyes, like an old bolt or a piece of tarnished silver.

“Where have you been?” I asked. It came out like, “Ooo ah oo be?” but she understood what I meant.

She knelt down by my bed. “Right here.”

“No. Cook's been here, not you,” I said.

“I have too,” she said softly.

“Then why haven't I seen you?”

“I've been—” She broke off.

“I thought you were dead,” I said.

Her eyes pooled up with guilt. I could see that she didn't know where to touch me. She awkwardly took my hand, which was swaddled in bandages. It was burned too, but nowhere nearly as badly as my face. Still, I screamed and Cook came running.

“Leave us,” my mother told her.

Cook slowly backed out of the room.

“I'm sorry I haven't come sooner,” my mother said. “It's been hard for me to adjust to life without my Seerskin.”

Her eyes searched my face. She was trying to find some safe place to rest her gaze. Somewhere not charred and seeping.

“Why would somebody do this?” I cried.

I was aware that neither of us was speaking of my father—of the fact that he was gone.

“The Ministry,” she mumbled.

“Did they catch the person?” I interrupted her.

She shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “You don't understand. They're not looking. They're doing nothing. They won't help. There's no place for us here anymore.”

“Because you were skinned? That's not your fault!”

My mother touched my foot tenderly. “You don't belong here. None of us do. Not your father, not me, not you.”

“Serena,” Cook called out from the parlor.

“I said leave us alone, Adalia.”

She turned back to me. “The Ministry,” she continued.

“I don't understand. Why aren't they helping?” I sobbed.

My mother's eyes turned cold. “Listen to me, Thomas. This is their fault. You here. Like this . . .” Her voice faltered, and I was filled with self-loathing. She was repulsed. She couldn't stand the sight of me, her ruined, burned boy.