Donor 23 (30 page)

They decided Joan would enter the canyon, staying at the edge of the camp, where she could talk to Kaleb. The others would remain hidden among the rocks, covering her and keeping the few officers at bay.

Bash and Isabel pulled Joan aside.

“We should assume it’s a trap. What makes you think you can trust Nox?” Bash asked.

“I don’t,” Joan sighed, “but I don’t have a choice.” She began to turn away, then added, “Bash, promise me something?”

“If I’m able,” he eyed her suspiciously.

“If …” she paused for what seemed an eternity, her words suspended in the dry heat of the day. “If I stay there, if I do the exchange, don’t let anyone stop me. Don’t try to get me out. Don’t let Reck try. Just get everyone out. I told you, I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“Joan, I told you the other night. Don’t do anything out of guilt.”

She shook her head, “It’s my fault. My parents…Just promise me, will you?”

He didn’t reply.

“You told me it was my decision. That you’d do what I wanted.”

“Indeed, I did. I just don’t want your decision based on—”

“
My decision,
you said!” she exclaimed with determination.

Bash took a deep breath and said with resignation, “I promise.”

“Thank you.” She turned to Isabel, “You heard him.”

Old Owl arrived and motioned to Joan. “Come with me,” he ordered, holding his rifle.

As Joan walked off with him, Isabel looked at Bash questioningly, “What was that about her parents and guilt? Is this going to be some sort of suicide mission?”

“Arrow Comes Back and I’ll make sure it doesn’t turn into that.”

“But you promised her.”

“I have to go with her Isabel. I don’t know why…I want to help her. Have to,” Bash said.

Isabel nodded in understanding. She hugged him.

“I’ll be there with you,” she vowed.

Bash slipped his arm around Isabel’s shoulders, and they watched Joan and Old Owl disappear into the trees. “She’s thinking for herself. That’s a beginning at least.”

Isabel questioned, “Beginning of what?”

He took a breath. “Wisdom? Freedom?” His voice trailed off. “I can’t tell her to be free and then tell her what to do.”

Joan and the old man walked for twenty minutes or so, when Old Owl stopped. “This is good for shooting. Here, take this.”

He handed her the gun and the bag of bullets.

“Let’s see how you do. I’ll hang this up on a tree. You try to hit it.”

He walked about twenty-five yards away and fastened a small tin cup to a tree. As he walked away, Joan placed a cartridge in the bolt. She waited until he was a safe distance, off to the side, and raised the gun. Hitting a target at twenty-five yards was child’s play for Joan, especially with this long-barreled rifle.

“Wait!” he yelled, excitedly waving his hands, “Not yet! Let me get farther.”

Joan smiled. After a minute, Old Owl, way off to the side cried, “Now.”

She brought up the rifle, nestled the butt into her shoulder and regulated her breathing. She aimed and fired. A small explosion erupted inside the barrel of the gun, immediately followed by the ding of the bullet hitting the cup.

“Back up and try it again,” he called.

She did, and a booming report again rang through the heretofore-quiet meadow..

“Go back, farther.”

This time Joan backed up much farther, to about seventy yards.

“What are you doing?
Ah
, that’s too far,” Old Owl called. “Crazy girl.”

The ding rang out again.

Old Owl shrugged and walked back to her. “Not bad.”

Joan laughed, “Not bad?”

She handed the rifle back to him, but he pushed it back to her.

“It’s yours.”

“I can’t—”

“Take it with you, Lionheart. Use it, if you must.”

He handed her the bag of shells, and they spilled onto the ground. Joan bent to pick them up, while Old Owl turned to walk off into the thick part of the woods.

“Where’re you going?” Joan asked.

“To visit my ancestors.”

Joan finished picking up the shotgun shells and watched as the old man disappeared from sight into the trees.
What did he mean?
She decided to follow him.

She slinked behind him for fifteen minutes, staying at a distance and walking quietly, like Arrow Comes Back did when he stalked the deer. At one point Old Owl stopped and sat on the ground, cross-legged. Joan stopped, too. She waited. He didn’t move. His eyes closed. He almost seemed to not be breathing.
Would ghosts appear?

Suddenly he said loudly, “Following me, Lionheart?”

She sighed and approached him, “Sorry.”

“You’re a better shooter than stalker.”

She smiled, “I was just curious. I…Sorry to disturb you. I’ll head back.”

She turned to leave.

“Did you settle your curiosity?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t understand what you meant. The ‘visiting’ and all.”

“My relatives speak to me here.”

“Speak to you? You really hear them?”

A small smile crossed his face, “Not with my ears. With my heart.”

Joan didn’t understand, and he sensed her questioning.

“We are creatures of this world—creatures of our physical bodies. We see with eyes. We feel with our hands. You have a picture of your parents to remind you—a picture to hold with your hands, to look at with your eyes. I don’t. But these trees…” he pondered a minute. “This thin sapling here.” He motioned to a seedling of a tree, still bright green, the bark not yet turned brown and rough. “It reminds me of my little sister. She died when she was young. And see that big tree there.” It was an old tree, a thick trunk, with weathered bark. “That makes me think of my father. I sit here with them—with all of them. They speak to me, to my heart. You have a strong heart, Lionheart. You’ll hear your parents, your family. Hunyewat will help you.”

     
Hunyewat.
Joan was familiar with the name. It was the Great Spirit of the Children of the Fallen Star. During her time in the camp, she had learned that the Children and many others believed in some sort of Great Spirit. They called it by different names. Isabel called it God.

One Who Sees had explained to Joan that Hunyewat gives them all they have—the warmth of the sun, the camp, the plants, the food. Joan had looked at her skeptically, while she explained. It was not that Joan did not believe in any Great Spirit or that all the difficulties she had experienced caused her to lose such beliefs. It was simply that such a concept did not exist for her, did not exist in the ghetto, and did not exist in the Alliance. It was alien to her.

Being a donor, One Who Sees had understood Joan’s puzzlement and told her, “I know. It’s strange to understand, coming from the Walled Nation. Old Owl says that even if we don’t know of Hunyewat, it doesn’t matter. He knows us.”

Now Joan remained standing there in the forest next to Old Owl. Finally, he uttered with his usual irritation, “Go now, woman. I want to be alone.”

Joan started back along the same path she had just walked.

Over his shoulder, Old Owl added with kindness, “Lionheart, don’t go back along the path I just walked. Make your own path.”

Carrying the rifle, Joan walked back through the thick woods. At one point she stopped and sat down, cross-legged, leaning against a tree. She didn’t know what she was doing and wasn’t sure what would happen. But she sat there silently for a while.
Did Hunyewat really know her?

She looked at the trees and concentrated on them. Touching a tree, she thought of her parents.
Her parents
.
They were warm and gentle. The trees are warm. They burst and grow with life, change with the seasons. They breathe. They give us the very oxygen we breathe, so in a sense they give us life. She wished she could hear her parents’ voices. Were they with her, as Old Owl told her? Would they help her do what she must do? She wished they were here. To give her strength. To forgive her. Perhaps she had to forgive herself.

Two birds abruptly flew near, and one landed on a branch. The second bird flew in circles, singing and tweeting musically. It chirped without end, as if its life depended on it. The melody was tragic and sad—a lament—but at the same time it was inexplicably lively and hopeful. Listening to it, Joan thought the music symbolized what was within her—her thoughts put to melody, her life in song.

She was Joan Lion. Like Bash explained to her, she had to know her own self. Old Owl was right. She would have to make her own path. She didn’t realize it yet, but it would be a dark, emotional path. The trees along it would be scarred and marked from her sins, but it would be her own path.

The Alliance flashed in front of her—the System, and what it had done to her. What it had made her do.
No more,
she vowed.
No more
. She would forge her own path now. Joan stayed there like that longer than she expected. She didn’t even realize how long.

32

D
uncan looked at the canyon walls, squinting into the sun. Their camp in the canyon consisted of three tents, one inhabited by Nox and the other two by Duncan and three soldiers. Soon an entire platoon would be joining them. But Duncan wouldn’t be there. He had decided on a plan to escape.

He poked his head into Nox’s tent. “Sir, have a minute?”

Nox was reading
The Life Of Our Heroic First Governor
, but he put down the book and nodded.

“I’m concerned about the army. They’re bringing 42 back here, but he’s our prisoner, a TEO prisoner. Our responsibility.”

“Your point?”

“I just thought a TEO officer should be there.”

Nox gazed at Duncan. Duncan swallowed under his glare.

“I mean,” Duncan performed it as he had rehearsed it, “I’m worried about ceding our power—our responsibility—to
the army. This is our mission. The TEO. You know how the army sticks its nose into everything. Then they’ll take credit for it when we get 23.”

Nox raised his eyebrows, thinking.

“I could drive back to the fort. They’re probably just leaving it now. Then I’d be in charge of the prisoner—the TEO would be in charge, that is.”

Duncan paused to let Nox think.

Nox nodded. “That may be a good idea. Do it.”

Duncan packed his belongings and started off in the durable. First he slowly navigated his way to the mouth of the canyon. After that, when no one in the canyon could see him, he turned north instead of south and headed for the camp of the Children.

He drove as fast as possible through the rough terrain. He experienced difficulty navigating because the durable had no compass. The army car had been cannibalized from others, just to ensure it drove. Duncan had almost laughed when he first saw the durables driven by the army out here. Although he drove a new car at home, he was used to seeing the jerry-rigged cars back in the Alliance.

Out here in the wilderness, the situation was even worse. The durable he drove had no windows or mirrors. The seats were planks from what looked like a boat. The steering wheel was an old, round silver platter. As he drove he thought of its history—of the pre-Impact people who would have used the serving platter, offering food to their friends and family on it.

There were no roads, and it was slow going. After bumping hard over a large rock he hadn’t seen, the durable broke down. Spying three men on horseback in the distance, he hesitated to wave them over, but it was too late. They headed his way. He hoped they were Nomads and could take him to the camp. He wasn’t armed. Since he wasn’t an army soldier, regulations did not allow him to carry weapons.

The three men rode up, dressed in unkempt clothes. As if in some sort of uniform, all were shaved bald. Scraggily beards hung from their faces. Interwoven in their beards dangled beads of different sizes, shapes, and colors. Tattoos covered the visible parts of their necks. Duncan recognized them from one time at the fort. They had gambled, bought liquor, and gone on their way.

In an authoritative manner, Duncan coolly informed them of his need to get to the Nomad camp, Pax City. He did not mention anything about Joan. They kept looking around, wondering if he were really alone.

“What’re you doing out here alone for, anyway?” one asked.

“Official business.”

They glanced at each other, “Deserter?”

“No. I told you official business. I’ll buy one of your horses. I have money. It’s the paper Alliance money, but it’s good at the fort. You know that. I’ve seen you there.”

“Yeah, we go there cause we don’t mind taking your money in cards and trading a little with you people. But we don’t care much for your type. Don’t like ya out here in our part of the country.”

With that one pulled out his gun, “Nobody’s going to find one soldier, a deserter, way out here.”

The other two got off their horses and approached Duncan.

Pulling out a knife one of the men remarked, “Don’t let’s waste a bullet on him.”

The other held a stout, short, heavy baton.

“He’s a little guy. You can take him easy.”

Duncan acted swiftly. A kick to the head knocked the man with the knife to the ground. The other one lifted the baton in the air, but Duncan rushed him before he had a chance to swing it and wrestled him. They both fell. Duncan banged the man’s hand on the ground, causing him to drop the baton. He jumped up.