The Fire Sermon (16 page)

“It’s all right, shhhh, it’s all right,” he murmured.

“It was her. She was here, in my dream. Right here.”

“And you were going to dig to safety?”

Now, in the light of his wry gaze, it seemed absurd. But although I mustered a laugh, my body was still shaking.

“It was only a dream,” he said.

“It’s never
only
a dream,” I pointed out. “Not for me.”

The reality was both better and worse than the dream. Better, because the bank above us was empty, the moss and fallen leaves undisturbed. And worse because her physical absence meant little: here or not, there was no escaping her scrutiny. Not by running, nor hiding, let alone by my foolish scrabbling in the dirt. She was seeking us, and I couldn’t shake her off. She made the whole night sky a searching eye, and beneath it I was helpless, skewered by her gaze just as Zach had skewered my pet beetle on the pin.

We moved with a new urgency the next day. My awareness of her was physical, like a chronic pain. I carried her with me, and every place we passed through was tarnished by her presence. The Omegas were the vessels of contamination from the blast, as the Alphas never tired of telling us. But I felt as if the Confessor was the poison I carried now, the taint of her souring my very blood, and seeping out into the landscape that Kip and I were crossing.

At least, since our conversation about the island, Kip and I had a sense of purpose: I knew the island was hundreds of miles away, but having spoken the destination out loud made it seem somehow closer. Heading more sharply westward, we left the path, and the river. We drank greedily first, not knowing how long it would be before we found water again. The hunger was the main thing, though. Most days we managed to find some berries or mushrooms, but we were more wary of the latter since a cluster of black mushrooms on the second day had made us both cruelly sick. In a small pool, the first day after we left the river, Kip had caught a handful of tiny fish, using my sweater as a net. The fish were tiny shreds of silver, no bigger than my smallest fingernail. We ate them raw, our hunger overcoming our squeamishness. I knew we couldn’t go on like this much longer.

Kip was coping better than I’d feared. In the first days out of the tanks, his body had a formlessness, everything softened by disuse. Even his skin had been dilated and puffy from his submersion in the tanks. Now, despite the scaffolding of his bones that became clearer each day, I could see him taking shape in front of me, his muscles lean and strained beneath his skin, which was now darkened by days of sun and dirt. At first his skin had been tender, easily damaged, the base of each bare foot a network of blisters, and we’d had to stop often. He still moved clumsily, rediscovering his body after the tank. There was a hesitation about his movements that never quite faded. But he stumbled less often now, and had taken to running ahead, scrambling up to vantage points. At times I wanted to tell him to take it easy, to save his energy, but I couldn’t bring myself to suppress his delight in his body, newly his own again. But as the hunger grew, even he had fallen more and more quiet. As for my own body, it felt heavy, yet I knew I was growing lighter each day. At night, when we burrowed into ditches, or the hollows beneath logs, I was kept awake by thoughts of food, and by the insistent sharpness of my bones digging into the earth. Even at my hungriest, though, I could never summon any nostalgia for the regular food trays of the Keeping Rooms.

Three days after leaving the river, we came upon the first village. It looked similar to the village where Zach and I had grown up, though this one was smaller. Not more than fifteen houses were gathered around a central well, with fields and an orchard spreading about them. Close to the large barn we could see figures at work. It must have been past midsummer, as the fields were freshly shorn, but the orchard provided enough cover for us to approach unseen. Occasional apples lay buried in the grass; they were shrunken and brown, skins puckered with age. We ate three each, in silence except for the staccato spitting out of pips.

“Alpha or Omega?” Kip asked, peering through the trees to the village beyond.

I gestured around us to the fields, the rows of apple trees. “The land’s good. Alpha’s my guess.”

“And look—at the back of the big house.” He pointed at a long, narrow barn, divided into sections, each with a half door.

“What about it?”

“It’s a stable, for horses.”

“How can you recognize a stable but not know your own name?”

He shrugged, irritated. “The same way I can remember how to talk, or swim. It’s just there. It’s only the personal stuff that’s gone, somehow. Anyway, at least we know this is Alpha territory.”

“So we take as many apples as we can carry and keep going.”

He nodded but didn’t move. In the village, a door opened, a woman’s voice carried across the afternoon air.

I tugged at his arm. “Kip? We need to keep moving.”

He turned to me. “Can you ride a horse?”

I rolled my eyes. “Omegas aren’t allowed to ride.”

“What about before you and Zach were split?”

“There weren’t horses in our village. There were some donkeys, but the others wouldn’t let us ride.”

“But you’ve seen it done. Those men, by the river.”

“I know which end is forward, if that’s what you mean. I was carried on horseback, when Zach’s men took me from the settlement, though that hardly counts. And you can’t do it, either, can you?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.” He smiled at me. “But I wouldn’t mind having a go.”

We waited until well after dark. From a perch in one of the apple trees at the farthest edge of the orchard, we watched as the children came out of the schoolhouse, perhaps ten of them, and played on the green around the well.

“Does it make you nostalgic?”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t like that for us. Not after we were very young. We weren’t split; we couldn’t go to school. The other kids kept their distance, mainly. So it was just Zach and me, together.”

“It’s a wonder you didn’t turn out odd. Apart from the whole fugitive seer thing, I mean.”

I smiled. “And you—nostalgic?”

“By definition, you can’t be nostalgic if you can’t remember anything,” he said. “I suppose amnesia has its advantages.” From across the orchard we could hear the children’s shouts and laughter. “Look at them: not a missing limb or flaw among them. Perfect little Alphas with their perfect little lives.”

“It’s not their fault. They’re just children.”

“I know. But it’s a different world that they live in.”

“You sound like Zach.”

“I don’t think he and I have much in common.”

“Maybe not. But what you said about a different world—that’s his sort of talk. All that stuff about separation that the Alphas go on about.”

“It’s a fact. Look down there—do you see any deformities, any brands? Each of those children has a twin, and their parents sent them away. And your Alpha family didn’t have much time for you in their world, as I recall.”

I looked away. “There’s only one world.”

Kip gestured toward the village. “You want to walk over there, introduce yourself, and try to explain that to them, be my guest.”

The men and women trailed back from the barn as the darkness mounted. A woman and a boy were hanging out clothes and sheets on a line by the well. Later a cart loaded with logs, pulled by two brown horses, approached from a road that led off to the east. Kip nudged me. A man sat at the front of the cart, and as it neared the village he jumped down and led the horses. A girl ran to greet him, and together they unhitched the wagon. I watched carefully, struck by how calmly they handled the huge animals. It was the girl, alone, who led both horses into the stable, the man giving the larger beast a gentle smack on the haunch as it was led away.

Some time later, the girl emerged and went into the house nearest the stable. The other children had dispersed, too, now, and the noises of the village were muffled as the people retreated indoors. I felt vaguely guilty watching them, oblivious, go about their lives. Smoke began to unfurl from one or two chimneys.

Kip was impatient, but I made him wait until the dark was fully settled, the lamplights in the windows extinguished. Since we escaped we’d been grateful for the fine weather, but as we finally emerged from the shelter of the trees, I wished we had the cover of rain or fog.

On the way past the well we had to bend beneath the washing line, loaded with sheets and clothes. I felt a tug on my shirt and turned to see Kip gesturing at the clothes.

“Steal them?” I mouthed.

“We’re taking their horses. I don’t think a pair of trousers is going to make a difference.” In the sleeping village, his whisper sounded loud to me.

I grimaced. “We
need
the horses.”

“You’re not the one who’s been wearing a makeshift skirt for the last two weeks. I’ll stick out, wherever we go.”

“Fine. But be quick.” I jerked my head toward the stables. “Meet me in there.”

In the stable, it took time for my eyes to get used to the darkness, and when they did I was struck again by the sheer size of the horses, black masses in the dark. They were standing in two separate stalls, making noises that were alien to me: a snorting and shifting of weight. Bridles hung on the wall, and saddles were mounted on a low beam by the door, but the straps and buckles looked unfathomable, so instead I grabbed two decent lengths of rope that were looped on a nail by the door. I approached the smaller horse first. It moved backward as I reached the front of its enclosure, and I winced at the clunk of its hoof on the back wall. Then it stepped forward, and I was pushed to the left by its head, lowered over the stall door, rubbing against my side. I stifled a shout when the horse nipped at my hip, but when I stumbled back, my hand to where I’d been bitten, I felt the apples crammed in my pocket. I breathed out slowly. When I stepped forward again, a shriveled apple in my outstretched hand, the horse took it with no hint of teeth. The softness of its lips on my palm was unexpected. While the horse chewed, I reached the rope slowly around its neck, looped it, and then, recalling the man with the cart, gave a firm pat on its shoulder, hoping to communicate an authority I didn’t feel.

With the second horse, it was easier. By the time I’d got a second apple out of my pocket he was eager for it, and he submitted to having his neck stroked while he chewed noisily.

It took me a few seconds to work out how to open the stall doors, and to manage it while keeping hold of both ropes. I’d thought the horses might dash forward, but they seemed unenthusiastic, and followed me only after much tugging, and another apple brandished beyond their reach. The larger horse sighed in a way that reminded me of Kip whenever I woke him at the start of a day.

Leading them from their stalls, I remembered the sound of hooves clattering on the shale of the cave when Kip and I escaped, and braced myself for noise, but the ground was soft and thickly scattered with hay, subduing the hoof falls.

When I led the horses outside, the figure waiting in the darkness startled me for an instant, before I recognized Kip under unfamiliar clothes. He watched as both horses followed me obediently.

“Is that one of your seer things?” he asked. “Can you communicate with them?”

“Don’t be daft,” I snorted. “I gave them each an apple.” I handed him the rope of the larger horse.

“Shouldn’t we have saddles and things?”

I raised my eyebrows. “There’s no pleasing some people. Come on.”

“I even scored shoes,” he said, holding out a leg for me to admire his mud-encrusted boots. “Left outside the door of the big house. Not the best fit, but I didn’t feel like knocking on the door to ask if they had a bigger size.”

We were in the small green between the stables and the well. A low wall ran along one side, so I led my horse near it and stepped up onto the wall.

“You said you know which way is forward, right?” said Kip, watching me as his own horse busied itself happily with the grass.

“Shut up,” I said, hoisting myself up. I got my arms more or less around the horse’s warm neck, and after a few ungainly swings managed to get my leg over the back. The horse gave a sulky whinny. The other horse snatched its head up and echoed the sound. Kip tried to tug it closer to the wall, but it wrenched the rope from his hand, only to stop three feet away and resume its feast of grass.

Kip seemed a long way below me now. I watched him slowly approach his horse again, pick up the rope, tug more gently this time. The horse grunted, stamped a hoof, but wouldn’t budge within reach of the wall. Kip tried to jump, but without the benefit of the wall’s height he only clawed at the horse’s back and slipped heavily down. The horse started backward, bumping my mount, which started its own frantic dance, neighing loudly. In the house behind us a voice shouted, and a lamp was lit. A man rushed from the front door, his swinging lamp a slash of light in the darkness. From behind him, another man followed, with a flaming torch.

I’d been wondering how to get the horse moving, but the torch at least solved that problem, startling my horse off in a diagonal skitter across the green. I had to duck low, clinging to the horse’s neck, as it charged under the washing line to take shelter on the far side of the well. But Kip, unmounted and clinging to the rope, was only a dozen feet from the men, now between him and the wall. His horse, like mine, started away from the flaming torch, and Kip was half running, half dragged, to keep up. He was hidden from me now by a huge white sheet on the line, through which the whole scene played out like a shadow play, lit by the torches behind. I saw the two men close in on Kip, heard the shouts of other people from the cottages. “Thieves,” a woman yelled, and then, as more torches lit the scene and Kip became more visible, “Omegas.” Even in silhouette, I could see that the growing crowd was armed: those without torches carried billhooks or sickles. One carried a long rope, looped at the end, and moved purposefully toward Kip. I tried to urge my horse back toward Kip but it only jittered on the spot. The man tossed the noose toward Kip’s horse, but it darted backward as the rope fell just short. As the horse passed close to the well, Kip jumped onto the circular surrounding wall, and from there made a dive at the horse’s back. I heard a clatter from the well as some loosened stones tumbled into the deep. But there was no matching clatter of Kip hitting the ground, and through the white sheet I saw his silhouette, somehow astride the horse. Then the sheet itself was torn from the line and hurtling toward me as Kip raced forward, shrouded in fabric and bent low over the horse’s neck.