Shadows of Glass (11 page)

“Watch it,” James says. “It might come for us next.”

“Should we run?” I ask, ready to turn and make a dash after the cats if they say so.
I well recall the terror of running with someone breathing down my neck and last time
I was caught. I am fairly certain I would not survive being caught by this huge beast.

“I think running will only make it madder,” Pace says quietly.

“Beau! Stop!” A voice commands.

We immediately crouch low, hoping to be invisible to whoever it is who comes up from
the ruins after the dog, who drops the body of the dead cat on the ground and nuzzles
it with his nose.

It’s a boy around my age or so. His clothes are ragged and worn, but they are what
we are used to; pants, a shirt, and a jacket that’s seen better days. His shoes look
newer than his clothes. He’s fairly dry and the smell of wood smoke drifts to us as
he leans over to investigate the body on the ground.

“Good boy,” he says. “Looks like you found us some dinner.” The boy stands up with
the cat’s body in his hands and recognition hits me with a joyful blast as I see his
bruised and battered face. His hair is brown and his eyes blue and his body is thin
as if he doesn’t ever get to eat his fill. He fits Pace’s description, or so the filchers
thought when they captured the two of us. He looks right past where we are hidden.
I stand up.

“Wren,” Pace hisses. “What are you doing?”

“It’s Jon,” I say. And then I wave. “Jon!”

7

A
week ago
I never would have thought that I’d be sitting around a scarab’s fire and be grateful
to have it, but circumstances have led me to have different beliefs than the ones
I had a week ago. In our society the scarabs are the lowest of the low. They are the
descendants of those who managed to hide inside the dome when the comet came. No provision
was made for their existence, so they have survived all these years on the cast-offs
of the rest of us. They live on the streets in makeshift hovels and pick the trash
for whatever is usable. It is from their ranks the filchers come, despicable men who
wear masks and do anything for a reward. I will not hate Jon just because he is a
scarab any more than he will hate me because I am a shiner. We were both captured
by filchers for the reward. Me, because my father saw me as the troublemaker, and
Jon because he has dark hair and blue eyes like Pace. The filchers saw us together
and assumed Jon was Pace. I saved his life from the filchers and we were both arrested
by the bluecoats, of which my father is the head. Then we were both taken to the exit
of the dome to be traded to the rovers. That was when James and Adam blew up the fans.
Jon and I shared so much in such a short time. It is a connection between us that
will never be severed, I hope.

The children are settled, finally, and the ponies and goats are corralled into an
area in the woods with tree branches. We still do not have food, but we do have shelter,
which is a welcome relief from the rain.

Jon’s shelter is the basement of a house. If we had not seen Jon come up I don’t think
we ever would have found it because the entrance is hidden so well. Through the basement
is another room, a few steps down and lined with stone. Remarkably it still has a
rotten wooden door. On the opposite side of the room is part of another door and a
tunnel leads off of it. Jon’s fire is in this lower room, and it heats the stone,
which in turn gives heat to the room above it. I am in awe of how quickly he figured
out the most efficient way of staying safe, dry, and warm. There are enough nooks
and crannies in the stones that the smoke trails upward and outside without inconveniencing
anyone sitting around it.

“I haven’t had a chance to explore it much, but I think it leads back beneath the
dome,” Jon say as James peers down the tunnel off the room. The huge beast of a dog
sits beside Jon and eyes James warily. The few cats that stayed close after the loss
of their comrade keep a safe distance, except for Jonah, who sits in complete security
in my lap. Pace sits next to me with Pip on his shoulder, who is busy at work preening
his feathers. James joins Adam, Alcide, and Rosalyn, who make up the rest of our circle
around the fire. Everyone else is asleep above us, except for Peter, who cannot seem
to stop coughing. We can hear him through the warped boards of the door. I am worried
that the rain and the damp have affected him more so than the rest of us, but there
is nothing I can do for him except to pray.

We’ve taken off as many clothes as we can without being scandalous and have things
strung and hanging to dry on every thing we can find. Having a dry place to sleep
and dry clothes to put on gives me a lot of hope for tomorrow. Finding Jon alive gives
me more.

“What happened after you went outside?” I ask.

“It was nearly dark,” Jon replies. “After what you told me about the bluecoats trading
girls and boys to the rovers I expected to find some waiting outside, but there was
no one. I decided the best thing was to get as far away from the door as possible
just in case they were watching, so I just took off running until I ran out of breath.
That’s when I found Beau.” Jon rubs his hand down the big dog’s head. “Or maybe it’s
more like that was when he found me. I was just standing there, bent over, with my
hands on my knees, trying to breathe and he ran up to me. I was terrified at first,
and tried to run, but he knocked me down. I thought I was dead for certain until he
started licking me.”

We all laugh and I stick my hand out for Beau to sniff. He obliges, lets me rub his
head, and continues to look adoringly at Jon. Jon moves his hand to Beau’s neck and
shows up a collar buried in the golden fur. “His name is written on this,” he says
and shows us the letters carved into the leather.

“I wonder where he came from?” Pace asks. “He has to have people somewhere. Someone
who loved him enough to put his name on his collar.”

Jon shrugs. “He’s the only friendly thing I’d met until you showed up.”

We all know Jon means the rovers, so we wait for him to continue. “After that it was
just trying to figure out what this world is all about. It was full dark by then and
the only thing that I knew for certain was the dome. I could not see anything through
it except for some light, occasionally, so I stuck close to it and walked until I
got tired. I found a basement a lot like this to sleep in and Beau stayed right by
my side, which was nice because he kept me warm. The next morning I started walking
again. I could see smoke coming from the dome, so I knew the explosion that happened
when we were in the passageway had to do some damage. I also managed to snare a fat
bird and roasted it. I slept some more and I woke up when Beau started barking. Then
I felt the earth shaking beneath me. I thought for certain the dome was going to cave
in but it didn’t.”

“That was the methane gas going off in the tunnels,” Adam explains.

“They came after us when we blew up the fans,” James adds. “The tunnels caved in and
our village was flooded.”

“We lost a lot of people,” I say and then I ask, “Have you seen anyone else since
you’ve been out?”

“I saw the rovers,” Jon says. “I hid from them.”

“What happened?” Pace asks.

“I saw more smoke after that,” Jon continues. “I couldn’t tell where it came from
and all I could do was keep walking. I walked through a lot of ruins, large buildings
that were probably warehouses before. Then the ruins started getting smaller and trees
started popping up. Beau started growling so I hid and saw a group of about a dozen
men. They carried weapons, like the bluecoats had when they captured us. Their clothes
were a lot like mine, cast-offs and such, and some had hide vests and pants. They
were dirty for the most part, long hair and beards.”

Jon’s observations about the state of the rovers are surprising because we always
considered the scarabs to be dirty. Of course it is hard to stay clean when you live
in a shack on the streets. Jon’s hair is shaggy and badly in need of a trim, but he
does have the look of someone who tries to take care of himself. I am glad to see
he’s recovering from the beating he took when the filchers captured us. His face is
bruised and cut, but healing.

Jon continues. “The worst part was they had a girl with them who I knew. Bess. Her
hands were tied and she had another rope around her neck. One of the men was leading
her by the rope. She went missing about a month ago. From the looks of her, she’s
had a rough time of it.”

“She was traded to them for weapons,” I say. “My father has been doing it for a while.
He has the filchers capture them. Boys, girls, and anything else they ask for.”

“Sick bastards,” James says, and for once I am in agreement with him.

“They looked at the dome for a while then they went in the direction that you came
from. Which is probably where I came out because I haven’t come upon it so far. That
was yesterday. I decided to look for a place that was safe to hide and found this.
I spent today trying to find food and hoping they didn’t come back.”

“Did you find any food?” James asks.

“I found an apple tree, but the fruit isn’t ripe yet. I set out some snares also.”

“Snares?” Alcide asks.

“We made them with string on the inside,” Jon explains. “To catch pigeons and rats.
For food.”

My stomach turns at the thought of sinking to such desperate measures as to eat a
rat, but then again, who knows what I’ll resort to if I go several days without a
meal. We have the goats if we get desperate, but the thought that we’d kill the ponies
for food sickens me so much that I can’t think of it. What will we have to do to stay
alive? Once more I ask myself, Is this freedom from the oppression of the dome worth
the price we’ve paid and might continue to pay?

“Can you show me?” Alcide asks.

“I will in the morning,” Jon agrees.

“The apples will ripen soon,” Pace says. “And we might find other things. Our calendar
says it is the end of April, which is the middle of spring according to the seasons.”

James rolls his eyes. “More book stuff?” he asks.

“More book stuff,” Pace says. “We should be glad it isn’t winter, or we’d be freezing
and the rain would have been snow.”

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A
time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which
is planted,” Adam says. “It is from the Bible. Ecclesiastes, chapter 3.” Time around
us seems to stop as he continues, accompanied by the pop and crackle of the fire.
“A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mo … mourn…” Adam stumbles over the
word, and I want to cry at his grief and his strength, but I also want to know what
comes next and I do not want to risk breaking the spell his words have created for
us. He gathers himself and continues.

… and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace,
and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

His last words seem to echo around us. A time of war and a time of peace. Which will
tomorrow hold for us? “That’s it,” Adam says. “There’s more but I cannot remember
it.” He gets up from his place at the fire and walks over to the doorway that leads
to the tunnel.

“James, the Bible is a book too,” Alcide says. “In case you were wondering.” James
gives Alcide a look that promises he will pay for his sarcasm, and Alcide simply shrugs
in return and goes back to poking at the fire with a piece of wood.

“So you think this leads under the dome?” Adam asks from the tunnel.

“It does,” Jon answers. “Part of it is caved in. I didn’t want to take the chance
of going any deeper because I knew there was no one to find me if something happened.”

Adam and James look at each other and without a word both leave to explore the tunnel.

With Adam’s leaving, the spell that held us captive while he quoted the Bible dissolves
around us and I am able to think once more about practical things. “Now that there
are more of us we can search more, while others look out,” I contribute. The thought
of running into the rovers on the outside is as nerve-wracking as running into the
filchers on the inside. Neither is a safe prospect for any of us.

“I never really thought about how big the dome is,” Alcide says. “Two days of walking
isn’t enough to circle it?”

“I wasn’t walking that fast,” Jon admits. “Mostly I was trying to figure out what
I should do next to stay alive.”

“As you should have,” Rosalyn says. “And with that last bit of wisdom I will bid you
good rest.” She stands and stretches before going into the other room where everyone
is sleeping.

We bid her good sleep and Jon asks me. “What happened after we parted?”

“I went back to the house and everyone was waiting for us.” I tell Jon everything
that happened to us since we’d seen him last.

“I wonder how everyone else has fared,” he asks.

“We have no way of knowing what’s going on inside.”

“It has got to be harder now for the bluecoats to maintain control,” Pace says.

“They have got to be worried about how they will survive without the fans,” Alcide
observes.

“We all saw smoke,” I add. “Wouldn’t that mean that there are cracks or holes in the
glass?”

“It seems likely,” Pace says. “Especially since the ground caved in.”

“That means they can get fresh air, which is a good thing since the fans no longer
work.”

“But if the dome is cracked or broken, that means the people can see the sky,” Alcide
says. “They would know that there is no flame outside. If it were me, I’d want out.”