Children of Exile (22 page)

“Here. The lightbulbs you asked for,” a voice said behind me. “Now I'm back to patrol.”

“Oh, stay and have a drink with me.” This was the voice of the whiskered man back at the desk. “This is a town of rabbits. Did you see how they scattered when we showed up this afternoon? No one's going to break our new curfew tonight.”

A new light appeared, menacingly bright. The lamp on the whiskery man's desk was working again. Was the glow strong enough to expose me?

I directed my thoughts at the guard and the patroller:
Don't look this way. Don't come over and walk along this building. . . .

By craning my neck, I could see the shadows of the guard and the patroller, stretching across the cobblestones. The shadows were so long, they looked like monsters.

“Oh, but if I do catch anyone breaking curfew, remember, I'm allowed to shoot them,” the patroller said. “Gotta love Agreement 5062!”

Agreement 5062?
I thought. My brain ached. My heart did too. The paper I'd found by Edwy's seat on the plane had mentioned Agreement 5062. But it hadn't said anything about shooting people. I would have remembered that.

Unless . . . was that in the section of the page that was torn off?
I wondered in horror.

“You
wanted
these people to mess up?” the guard asked the patroller. “You wanted to have to come back here?”

“Oh, you know,” the patroller said, chuckling. “I do love hunting rabbits.”

I heard a clicking sound, and the patroller's shadow held something long and thin up to his shoulder. He grunted: “Pow!”

Is that a gun?
I wondered. I told myself he was just showing off.
But when he talks about hunting rabbits, does he really mean people? Would he really shoot them? Actual people? He'd hurt someone just for being out at night?

I couldn't stay here. And I couldn't leave Bobo in this horrible town for an instant longer than necessary.

Now my legs wanted to run and run and run—to never stop running. But I didn't. It took all the self-control the
Freds had ever taught me to make my next movements slow and steady, an easing away from the guard and the patroller, rather than a frantic fleeing.

Go, go, go, go!
sounded in my brain, even as my feet slid forward one
sloooowww
step at a time.

I reached the edge of the building and crawled to the edge of the next.

It was like this all the way to the creek, and then I had to creep from tree to tree to tree.

This was the longest night of my life, and it had barely even begun.

Peeking down along streets I passed, I saw three more patrollers, guns cocked at their shoulders as they turned and aimed at every noise. Three times I had to freeze behind trees and wait until the patrollers passed by.

I reached the turnoff for Edwy's street and wondered where he was. Had his family somehow gotten him back, even without my help? Which would be worse, being trapped by kidnappers or being out here in the darkness, cowering like a rabbit, just waiting for one of those patrollers to find me?

I told myself that being held by kidnappers was worse. Because I had choices and control—at least for now—and Edwy didn't.

I kept going.

I reached the turnoff for my own street, and I told myself
the rest of the route would be no different than it had been the night before.

But the night before, I'd been afraid only of the men chasing after Edwy. There hadn't been patrollers out with guns, planning to shoot anyone they saw.

And the night before, I'd left the door unlocked. And, even then I'd accidentally awakened the father.

I'll go in through a window this time,
I told myself.
I'll be so quiet, nobody will hear me. I'll just scoop up Bobo in my arms and sneak back out. . . .

The street seemed endless as I darted from house to house, hiding in shadows. My muscles ached from tiptoeing—or maybe it was from being beaten earlier in the day. The pain blended together. Every step hurt.

The missionary believed I could get away,
I told myself.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have taken a chance on giving me a key. Or annoying the guard.

Somehow this helped. I spared a thought—or maybe it was a prayer—for him. I hoped he made it home safely too.

I didn't quite understand why he had risked his life to rescue me.

He almost acted like a Fred,
I thought.
Better than a Fred, even.

Did the Freds understand what they were sending us back to? They'd stopped a war a dozen years ago—didn't
they understand that one could start again? That having us children back could
make
these townspeople start it again?

There were rules,
I thought.
Agreements. They didn't want to send us home, but they thought they had to. Freds believe in following rules.

I wasn't sure I did anymore. Not every time. Not if rules put children in harm's way.

Was this what Edwy meant back on the plane when he wouldn't help me settle the other children down?
I wondered.
Is that all Edwy ever believed? Did he think the rules keeping us ignorant were dangerous too?

My mind was carrying me farther than my feet. I made myself concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, inching from one shadow to the next. All I could think about was getting to Bobo.

Finally I reached the front of the parents' house and slipped around the side. I was in luck—the window to the room where Bobo slept was open. I couldn't see inside, but it was late now—it felt like it had taken me hours to walk from the marketplace. Of course, Bobo would already be in bed.

I eased the screen away from the window and slid one leg over the windowsill, then the other.

Immediately, hands grabbed me.

“Let me go!”
I tried to scream. But one of the hands that held me in place wrapped itself over my mouth, muffling my words.

“No, no, Rosi, it's us!” a voice hissed in my ear.

It was the mother's voice. It was her and the father holding me.

They began dragging me out of the room, and I let them. We had to have awakened Bobo, and I didn't want him to see when they started slapping and scolding me. But as we reached the other room, they didn't do any of that.

Instead, they hugged me.

“You're safe! Thank God you're safe!” the mother moaned.

“We thought we'd never see you again,” the father wailed.

I pulled back. I peered into their tear-stained faces.

“You never acted like you cared this much about me before,” I muttered, too stunned to hold back the truth.

“You weren't what we expected,” the mother said. Maybe she'd been stunned into speaking the truth too. “You seemed so much like a Fred. Not anything like us. But today we understood. . . .”

Had my fighting back made them think I was more like them than like the Freds?

The father shook his head, as if he knew what I was thinking.

“Before, we kept thinking about how we'd lost your childhood,” the father said. “Today, we could have lost
you.
”

I wasn't buying it. I narrowed my eyes at the mother.

“You
slapped
me,” I said.

“Just as my mother used to slap me when I was a smart-mouthed teen,” the mother said. “When I didn't show her proper respect.”

And how does that make it right?
I wanted to protest.
Just because you got hurt, I have to be hurt too?

But the mother was already lowering her eyes, already admitting, “Maybe she shouldn't have done that. Maybe I shouldn't have either. I didn't know how else to be a mother.”

Did that make sense? Was that another reason the Freds had taken us away?

The father still had his arm around my shoulder, hugging me against his warped barrel of a chest as though I was his most precious possession.

“My eyes are actually green,” I told him, because I couldn't let myself relax into the hug if it wasn't meant for the real me, the real green-eyed Rosi. The one who started people fighting. The one who fought back.

The father kept hugging me.

“I know,” he said. “I figured that out on the first day. Dark eyes usually don't go with your nose shape. And I could tell your mother was lying.”

“But—why?” I asked. “Why would she do that? I thought that meant you hated people like me!”

“
He's
not like that,” the mother whispered. “I have green eyes too. Why would he have married me if he hated my eyes?” There was almost pride in her voice. Then it turned sad again. “But . . . I didn't want him to worry. In the last war, most of the people who died looked like you and me.”

I winced, thinking again of the fists beating me in the marketplace. Would I ever be able to forget the horror of that moment?

To my surprise, I thought of something good about the parents and their differing eye color.

“He protected you, didn't he?” I asked the mother, remembering what the missionary had told me. “In the last war, the father was one of the dark-eyed people who tried to keep a green-eyed person safe. . . . He tried to keep
you
safe.”

I was just guessing, but somehow I felt almost certain about this.

The mother lifted her head high and nodded.

“He did,” she said, and she definitely sounded proud now. “And he'll protect you. . . .”

The father's face stayed dark and forbidding.

“Now that you understand the danger, we can work together to keep you safe,” the father said. “We can hide you.”

“And you'll stay where you're supposed to,” the mother added sternly. Her shoulders slumped again.

I looked down at the rug that hid the hollowed-out space under the floor. Was that what they meant? What was the difference between being locked in a prison cell the rest of my life and hiding there?

The prison cell had actually had more space.

Just pretend to go along with this,
I told myself.
Wait until they go to bed, then grab Bobo and leave.

But I remembered the tone in my father's voice when he'd shown me the hiding place. He'd trusted me. I remembered the way the mother had held Bobo, how she'd buried her face in his hair. She loved him. Maybe she even loved me.

“No,” I said, and I was surprised by the ringing authority in my voice. “I can't just hide. I have to go away. With Bobo. I'll take him someplace safe. Someplace we can grow up without fear or fighting.”

“Don't you see—the world just isn't like that!” the mother said.

“But shouldn't it be?” I asked. “Where's the next town? Where's the nearest safe place? I mean, really—you two could come too!”

Tears began rolling down the mother's face.

“No, we couldn't,” the father said gruffly.

“You might as well tell her,” the mother said, her voice choked.

“In the war twelve years ago . . . the way we fought back . . . ,” the father began. “We weren't just victims.”

“We had to defend ourselves!” the mother interrupted. “We didn't want to die!”

The father let out a heavy sigh and shook his head.

“We were branded war criminals,” he said. “We aren't allowed to leave.”

Even a day ago, I wouldn't have been able to understand what they were talking about. But now I just kept staring into my parents' eyes.

“I—I fought back today too,” I whispered. “I . . . hit, and I punched and I kicked. . . .”

“We did worse,” the father said simply.

Did he mean that they'd maimed other people like they were maimed?

Did he mean that they'd
killed
them?

Just then, several loud booms sounded outside, then a
rat-a-tat-tat
that sent chills down my spine.

“Gunfire,” the mother whispered, stiffening. “It's starting all over again.”

“Oh no,” I moaned. “What if the missionary's still out there? Pastor Dan? The patrols . . . I heard they were going to shoot anyone out after curfew. . . .”

“Those shots are coming from a different part of town,” the father assured me. “But . . .”

Footsteps sounded from Bobo's room, and a second later he appeared in the doorway.

“I'm scared,” he wailed, his fists held tight and terrified against his face. “Make that noise stop!”

And then he launched himself at me and clutched my legs for dear life.

I reached down and swept him up into my arms. I patted his back.

“There, there,” I murmured as he wept onto my shoulder. “Someone must have forgotten . . . forgotten that nobody should play such loud games at night.”

I shot a defiant look over Bobo's shoulder at the mother, because I was sure she would reach for him, sure she would try to take him from my arms and hug and comfort him herself.

But she didn't. She took a step back, giving me room. She
and the father both had tears streaming down their faces.

“We can't . . . ,” the father began in a choked voice. His face twisted. “We can't make our children live like this.”

“You . . . you do have to take Bobo someplace safe, Rosi,” the mother whispered. “Even if it means we never see you again. Even if . . .”

She broke off, because the father clutched her arm and shook his head, as if he'd just heard something we all needed to pay attention to. And then I heard it too: footsteps. Outside.

Then someone knocked at the door.

Still clutching
Bobo, I scrambled for the rug hiding the hole in the floor. The father began helping me pull the rug aside and lift the floorboard. The mother raced for the door, calling, in a voice that trembled, “Wait, just wait, this latch is so tricky. . . .”