Truancy Origins (45 page)

Crunchcrunchcrunch—swoosh!

He knew the chain was coming, but this time Umasi did not dodge, but struck with his wooden sword, knocking the ring aside and to the ground. As the chain was noisily dragged back, Umasi lunged forward at the source, swinging his sword sideways just as the end of the chain returned to its mistress' hand. In a split second the albino drew a length of chain taut, barely managing to block the blow. Umasi felt elated at finally having been able to strike at his foe, but then she spun and kicked him in the chest, sending him staggering back a few paces.

Recovering quickly, Umasi swiftly brought his sword to bear again, but this time she hurled the chain so that it caught on his weapon, wrapping around it several times before coming to a rest, the metal ring dangling, weighing it down. Umasi feebly tried to swing his trapped sword, but in one graceful motion his foe stepped forward and elbowed him in the stomach. The pain was crippling, and Umasi knew that he didn't stand a chance with one of his hands busy clutching a useless weapon.

Without hesitation Umasi cast aside his sword and blocked the girl's next punch with his arm. The move had clearly been unexpected, for he was able to lash out and land a glancing blow, granting him an opportunity to slip something into her pocket unnoticed. Grunting in surprise, the girl leapt backwards and spun around, swirling like the snow, and then she was gone, vanished again into the blizzard. For a moment Umasi thought that he would be annoyed, but to his surprise he realized that being thwarted had not bothered him at all the entire fight. Understanding came crashing down upon him harder than the blizzard. He had achieved the same peace as she without even realizing it.

Her pacifism was not naïveté, as his had been before when he was a student, but rather the opposite. They had now seen enough of the City to know how cruel it could be, yet had come to terms with it. He did not seek defeat, but rather knew how to accept it and its consequences, if it came. He could not be moved, he could not be fazed; he had learned the nature of her strength, and it did not come from aggression.

He heard her long before she struck, stepping out from the blizzard as
though she'd been part of the snow herself. Umasi ducked her chain, and then threw a fierce pair of punches. This time, however, in a blurrily fast motion she let the chain slip over his first wrist, looped it around the second, and then pulled the chain taut to trap them together. His hands now hopelessly entangled, she threw him easily over her shoulder. Umasi attempted to struggle as he hit the ground, but then he felt the sole of a shoe pressing lightly on his throat, and he knew he had lost.

But he smiled anyway, because for the first time he was wholly untroubled by defeat. He raised his hands in submission, the pressure on his throat was removed, and he stood up to give the victor a deep bow. She curtsied back, drew her chain around her arm, and then leaned forward to kiss him on the lips. It was just a peck, nothing more, but suddenly the howling wind and icy cold seemed very, very distant to Umasi.

“Does that mean you love me after all?”

He instantly wished that he could inhale those words right back into his throat, for he knew what her answer would be—but at the same time, he was deeply relieved that he had said them. The girl, for her part, cocked her head and smiled.

“Is there a correct answer to this question?”

“I may have been a good student, but I never studied that subject,” Umasi confessed. “I don't know.”

She laughed—a gentle sound like the tinkling of glass that drowned out the fierce roaring of the wind. Closing the gap between herself and Umasi, she traced a slow circle around his heart with her finger.

“Let's not make this complicated,” she whispered into his ear. “I imagine that to love someone you have to care about them more than you do yourself.”

“That makes sense,” Umasi murmured, suddenly feeling as though he were in a trance.

“If it's true”—her voice was now serious—“then no, I don't love you, Umasi. I've never loved anyone in my life, and I don't think I can learn how to now.”

“That's not true.” Umasi shook himself out of his stupor. “You helped me, even when you had nothing to gain. And I can see it in the way you fight. You haven't been selfish—you're the most selfless person I know.”

“I suppose that you could be right,” the girl said before turning to look straight at Umasi. “But what about you, Umasi? Do you love me?”

Umasi froze for a long, hard second under her gaze, and then, struggling to rationalize what was utterly irrational, he forced himself to think. No, as infatuated with her as he was, he didn't believe that he cared for her more than he did himself. And so he spoke the first thing to come from his mind, and not from his heart.

“No, I don't love you either.”

“Mmm . . .” the girl mused, only the slightest trace of disappointment in her voice. “It's probably best that way.”

“At least you know that you're not the only selfish one,” Umasi teased.

It felt as though an intense pressure had been lifted from his head. The burning, obsessive longing whose existence he had never acknowledged dissipated, leaving both clarity and loneliness in its wake. He felt clearheaded and lucid once more, but cold and empty at the same time.

Then the albino laughed pleasantly, and for the briefest instant Umasi felt emotion grip him again, though it faded swiftly with her laughter.

“I will miss you, you know,” she said as she drew away.

“And I you.”

The girl curtsied one last time, and then spun around and briskly walked away into the snow. She paused only once, having remembered to utter the simplest, yet perhaps the most important, thing that she had to say.

“Good-bye, Umasi!” she called.

“Farewell, milady,” Umasi whispered, his words lost to the wind as he bowed with deepest respect.

At that, the girl vanished into the blizzard for good. Instead of turning away, Umasi remained firmly rooted to that spot until the snow buried him up to his ankles. Darkness fell swiftly in the middle of winter, and as the shadowy snow swirled all around, Umasi realized that it was as if she had never even been there at all. The girl had left behind no evidence of her presence, not even a name to be remembered by . . . and yet Umasi knew that he would never forget her.

 

C
ursing the weather, Rothenberg drew the hood of his warm jacket lower as the blizzard howled all around him. Each step through the increasingly deep snow of District 18 felt like hard labor, and after a long day of work Rothenberg felt exhausted. Still, he was in good spirits. His new campaign of attrition was producing results, his Enforcers steadily securing more districts each day, though casualties were mounting. What's more, the task force he had dispatched to District 19 had turned up emptyhanded after a thorough search. Even surveillance cameras had caught nothing but some dumb kid, and Rothenberg had now convinced himself that he might have imagined the ghostly encounter. For the first time in a long time, Rothenberg was looking forward to a good night's sleep. Yawning, Rothenberg looked up to check what street he was on, and then his blood turned cold.

He was again staring at a pure white girl, the very same apparition he
had encountered before, the one whose existence he had just begun to allow himself to deny. Her clothes were different now, new, clean. She no longer looked like a vagrant, but seemed whiter than the snow that swirled around her. Terrified, Rothenberg reached for his gun with a shaking hand, but by the time he'd drawn it the ghost had vanished, swallowed up by the endless white.

Rothenberg shook his head and plunged forward. He had to know, he had to, and this was his one chance. Reaching the spot where the ghost had stood, Rothenberg stared down at the snow-covered ground, marred by fresh footprints. What kind of ghost left footprints? Rothenberg began following the tracks as fast as his legs could carry him through the deep snow. Ghost or monster, it didn't matter; what he had seen had not been natural, and he was determined to discover its secret.

The footprints led on through the night, until they finally turned and vanished into a narrow alley. Rothenberg swore as he looked into it; the snow had not accumulated in this tight space, and the footprints had simply disappeared. Adrenaline now thundering in his veins, Rothenberg began backtracking, breathing hard through his nose like a bull. He could not know where the girl had gone, but he intended to do his damnedest to find out where she had come from.

The snow was now falling so heavily that the trail was growing harder to track, but Rothenberg was able to follow the increasingly faint footsteps to the fence that divided Districts 18 and 19. With a jolt of horror, Rothenberg saw a clear depression by the fence where the girl had fallen after crossing over. Rothenberg's shiver had nothing to do with the cold. His task force had searched District 19, searched it thoroughly. There was supposed to be nothing, nothing, how could they have missed . . . ?

Rothenberg shook his head again. There was no use contemplating the ineptitude of his subordinates. If they refused to find anything, then he would do it himself. Seizing footholds in the wooden fence, Rothenberg scrambled over it, muttering an oath as he fell on the other side. His displeasure vanished, however, as soon as he realized that the tracks were still visible for some distance. Scrambling to his feet, Rothenberg continued following the footsteps until they faded into complete obscurity. Surrounded by the silhouettes of massive, dark buildings, and with endless curtains of snow falling all around him, Rothenberg suddenly felt very small (a rare occurrence indeed) as he stumbled farther into the district. And then he saw it, rubbing his eyes for fear that he was hallucinating or that he had stumbled into some sort of dream. Directly under a single orange streetlamp, covered by the newly fallen snow, was a stand with a cardboard sign still visible above the snowline. It read “Lemonade: 1 Bill.”

Rothenberg staggered forward and reached out to touch the stand, brushing snow aside to reveal paper cups and a jug of frozen lemonade. It was all real, weird, and more than a little eerie. Rothenberg looked around again. There were depressions in the snow that might have been more footprints, but so much had fallen since that it was impossible to be sure. His task force had definitely not found this stand when they searched the district, so where had it come from? Had someone come and set it up for no reason after the Enforcers had left? Who could have done it? A vagrant could never afford it, a student would never have dared it . . . could it then possibly have been one of the Mayor's sons? No, that was absurd; one of them was playing soldier, and Rothenberg was sure that the other was dead by now, though he was smart enough to keep that opinion to himself.

That ghost or whatever it was had something to do with the stand, Rothenberg decided. Something sinister and unnatural was at work in this district, he was convinced of it. Suddenly the wind began an eerie wail, and Rothenberg glanced around frantically. The swirling, shadowed snow seemed to Rothenberg like dozens of white monsters dancing in the darkness, beckoning him to join them. Seized by an irrational panic, Rothenberg spun around and ran for the fence as fast as he could, the haunting wind pursuing him every step of the way.

 

E
dward awoke just after dawn and retrieved his knife from under the floorboard, hiding it in his belt; his gun would have been too big to conceal. After stealing some breakfast from the kitchen, he slipped out of the orphanage. He knew that his presence would not be missed; the staff was well aware of all the extra courses he took, and they never begrudged him an unannounced trip to the library. Or at least that was where he always told them he was going. To be fair, it was occasionally true. Occasionally. Most of his real destinations would have landed him in deep trouble with the staff and even the Enforcers, and today's second attempt to search District 19 counted as one of them.

Edward was pleased to see that most of the roads in District 18 had already been cleared; the City's snowplows were as efficient as ever. With hardly anyone walking the streets so early, Edward had little trouble reaching a safe part of the fence that divided the two districts. This time he climbed right over the wooden fence, dropping easily onto the soft and unplowed snow on the other side.

Edward stood up, brushed flakes from his uniform, and looked around. Snow blanketed everything in sight, sparkling faintly in the pale morning sun. There were no visible footprints, indicating that Edward was the first to walk this part of the district since the blizzard ended. That suited him fine. He wasn't sure how much truth there was to the rumors about murderous vagrant packs, but he wasn't eager to confirm them.

Edward began making his way through the district, but was slowed down by the deep snow. Still unsure of what exactly to look for, Edward glanced around as he went, though he was fairly certain that anything worth finding would stand out the moment he saw it. It had occurred to him that the odds of finding anything were slim, because if the Enforcers hadn't already found it, Edward stood little chance of doing so alone. Still, he was prepared to return as many times as need be to confirm that District 19 had nothing of interest to offer.

Despite his frequent wanderings, this was Edward's first time in an abandoned district, and it seemed almost eerie to him, an urban landscape devoid of life. Eyeing the ramshackle buildings all around, Edward hoped that he wouldn't have to enter them, as some of them seemed unstable. Just then, Edward's foot crunched into the snow again and he froze. This step
had felt different. Stooping down, Edward inspected the ground. There was a sort of depression in the snow. Looking up, Edward saw a number of similar depressions riddling the street ahead. It was difficult to tell, but they seemed to be grouped together in pairs, almost as if some massive man had come running through during the night, and the blizzard had since covered the tracks.