Raging Star (15 page)

Luckily, there’s more than jest junk at Starlight Lanes. There’s a little coldwater washpond too. Round the back, through a woodland garden patch, an a nut glade an a stand of cottonwood. We find Moses an Hermes an Bean there, nibblin at the bark. Hermes would put up with anybody fer cottonbark. Even a foul tempered camel.

I’m amazed Peg could give us direction to the pond. From that ripe smell she trails, I took her to be a stranger to water.

Now with a ring of pale skin where her slave collar was—Peg had it off in a jiff, like Slim said she would—Mercy strips off her ragged hemp tunic. A shawl of thin whip scars shrouds her shoulders. She folds the tunic with care.

I’d of thought you’d wanna burn that thing, I says.

The day there ain’t no slaves in New Eden, she says, I’ll build a pyre an watch it burn.

She wades in fer a swim an a wash. I toss her my soap-bundle. I don’t look at her direct. I cain’t bear to. That Mercy
should be brought so low. The sight of her naked body, so scarred an gaunt, stabs my gut with red anger. This is DeMalo. I gotta remember that behind his clever words this is who he is. Mercy, jest one slave among many such as her. Like Slim’s friend, Billy Six. His hard-worked land stolen an him spiked through the throat, nailed to a post like a trophy rat. Maev, dead. Bram, dead. The Free Hawks an Raiders, all dead.

You kill people to git what you want
.

So do you. You’ve just done it again. Any violence is regrettable, but it’s a means to an end. Did you weep when you destroyed Hopetown? Did you lose sleep over any scum that might have burned in its flames? No. We are so alike, Saba
.

Me, like DeMalo. I gotta shut out his voice. It’s runnin through my head all the time. Confusin me. Twistin my thoughts. I can feel the heat rise to my cheeks. Mercy sees—not much escapes her notice—but she don’t remark on it.

You comin in? she says.

I bathe on my own, no offence, I says.

She takes that in, too, without comment. While she scrubs the dirt of slavery from her skin, I splash my hot face. Try to cool my hot mind. Drink down handfuls of water to calm the sick anger that roils my belly.

Once she’s outta the water an rubbin herself dry with a clean sack, Mercy says, So, what is it you want to talk about?

Would you say love makes you weak? I says. That’s what
Lugh believes. Becuz of Pa, how he went after Ma died.

Mercy don’t answer right away. Then she says, That’s Lugh. What about you? Tell me what you believe.

I stare at my boots as I speak. As I think my way through each word. I seen both sides, I says. Not jest other people, I know it in myself too. I know how strong it made me when I was searchin fer Lugh. I couldn’t of done what I did, I couldn’t of endured if my tie to him hadn’t of bin so strong. But I bin made weak by it too. I made some bad choices. On the whole, though? I’d say I’m stronger fer love, not weaker.

I couldn’t of said it better myself, says Mercy. She sits down beside me, wrapped in the sack.

I raise my head to meet her eyes. I remember somethin you told me at Crosscreek, I says. You said my pa looked to the stars fer answers, but you look at what’s here, in front of you, around you. I need you to tell me what you see, Mercy. Whaddya make of this place? Of New Eden?

Huh! She gives a little laugh. You sure do got big questions on your mind these days, she says. What do I make of New Eden. She thinks fer a bit, then she says, Things ain’t always what they seem to be. People neether.

That ain’t new, I says.

She says, Somehow … New Eden don’t seem entirely real.

Them scars of yers look real enough, I says.

Of course, but, for instance, she says, them girls I tended at the babyhouse. Imagine that’s you. Your family’s driven away
or killed—maybe right in front of you—but you’re not. You get to live becuz you’re one of the Pathfinder’s Chosen ones. You’re a Steward of the Earth now. You’re dazzled by him. Convinced by him. The power, the violence, they keep you in fear.

Yes, I says.

Mercy goes on. You’re paired with a boy you don’t know. Sent off with this stranger to work the land an make healthy babies for New Eden. Before you know it, if you’re lucky, you’re pregnant to him. Maybe you cain’t abide him, but you got no say in it. What do you think? How do you feel about it all?

My remembrance goes to the Stewards we killed. Buried in a shallow grave on the road to the Lost Cause. Eli an RiverLee. His dislike of her. Her fear of him. Her desperation to have a child. Knowin if she didn’t, she’d be slaved. I think of RiverLee’s precious silver necklace. Family reminders forbidden in New Eden, but she kept it, hidden, a secret. To remind her who she was, where she’d come from.

How do you feel? You tell me, says Mercy.

I feel awful about my family, I says. Why choose me above them? An I’m grievin them, I miss them, but I gotta hide how I feel. I cain’t talk to nobody. I hate the boy they paired me with. I hate him touchin me. He’s mean. But if I don’t have a baby, he’ll turn me in an I’ll be slaved. I feel afeared. I feel alone.

That sounds about right, says Mercy. An I’ll tell you somethin. Girls givin birth, they always call for their mother. Your mother did. So do them Stewards. Not one wants her baby to be took from her. They try to hide what they feel—after all, the Pathfinder knows best, it’s for the good of New Eden an Mother Earth—but I seen it in their eyes, their faces, every time. They cry in the night. An the ones who birth weak babies? They know ezzackly what’s gonna happen. They know the child of their flesh, that they carried in their body, will be left out of doors to die. If the cold don’t take it, some animal will. Maybe to feed its own young. Them poor girls, it just about kills ’em. One took her own life while I was there.

She killed herself, I says.

They don’t let that get out, says Mercy. Not good for morale. Them Steward girls, they’re breeders. Their wombs belong to New Eden. Natural feelins an inclinations don’t come into it. Did you know they’re expected to produce a child every two years?

Two years, I says. I didn’t, no.

If they fail, they’re slaved. An the boy ain’t never to blame, she says.

What about them? I says. The boys?

They pretend to be men, she says. I can only imagine how they feel about never seein their own child. The Chosen of New Eden, they’re all tryin to be who DeMalo says they are.

Pretend. That trigger in my head clicks agin. Things ain’t always what they seem. People ain’t who they seem. They’re all tryin to be who he says they are.

So that’s the Stewards an the babyhouse, Mercy’s sayin. I cain’t say about Edenhome, I don’t know it. Only, babies go there once they bin weaned.

Edenhome. Where they raise children to serve New Eden. Kids who was stolen from their folks. Weaned babies. When they turn fourteen, they become a Steward of the Earth an they’re paired by the Pathfinder to breed an work.

Then there’s slaves, says Mercy. Most like me, shanghaied. Some who used to be Chosen ones. Them that fell from grace with the Pathfinder.

One moment they’re a Chosen one, the next they ain’t, I says. That must give ’em food fer thought.

It don’t go unnoticed, let’s put it that way, she says.

An there’s the Tonton, I says. Don’t fergit them.

I ain’t likely to, she says.

When you start to pick it apart, I says, when you start to look close, New Eden ain’t what it looks like. But it’s workin, isn’t it? The Pathfinder’s plan to make a new world.

In some ways, maybe, she says. The Stewards are well fed all the time now. That means more of the girls carry to full term. Word is that crop yields are up.

DeMalo’s voice runs through my head.

I’m making difficult decisions every day. Allocating what scarce
resources there are to those who can make best use of them. I’m behaving morally, responsibly
.

Mercy an me sit silent fer a time, there by the coldwater pond. The sun on my skin feels softly, rarely kind. The same words churn in me, over an over. Mothers an children. Fathers. Brothers. Sisters. Family. People ain’t who they seem to be. On the whole, we’re stronger fer love. DeMalo’s weakness. Our strength.

I realize that Mercy’s watchin me, her eyes sharply curious. I take her neatly folded tunic an hand it to her.

You’ll be buildin that pyre one day soon, I says.

There she is, by the twisted tree. Allis, my sunlight mother. We’re alone, her an me, on the wide flat plain. In the grey at the edge of the world. The clouds hang low. The wind wails high. The tree gleams, bare an white
.

At the foot of the tree is the gravepit. Rough an narrow an deep. Then we’re standin beside it, my mother an me. I know what lies within. The body in rusted armour. Laid out in the pit full length. The head wrapped around with a blood red shawl
.

Golden Allis. Gone fer so long. Sun hair, sky eyes, bright soul.
But the dark-past-the-edge has vanquished her light. She drifts. She shifts. She fades
.

Her feet of air step into the grave. She beckons, come with me. It’s empty now. I follow her down. Into the down-dark earth
.

Then water. On the rise. Up my bare legs. No, not water. Blood. It rises quickly. Blackly. Thickly. To my thighs, my waist, my chest. It grips me, I cain’t git away. I slip an I’m chokin, I’m drownin, I’m chokin, cain’t breathe, I’m—

With a jolt, I’m awake. Scrabblin at my throat. Pullin frantic at what’s chokin me—

Saba, wake up! It’s Molly’s voice, urgent.

I cain’t breathe! I gasp.

It’s off, okay, I’m takin it off. Saba, c’mon honey, open yer eyes. Sit up.

She pats my hand gently. I blink. Made stupid by the sudden glare of sunlight. Blasted to life while lost in the darklands of dream. Molly kneels beside me. She holds the red shawl.

Uh! I shrink back. Take it away!

Okay, calm down, okay, it’s gone. She pushes it behind her skirts, outta sight. You got yerself tangled in it, that’s all.

My rattleheart slows to a rackety gallop. That was in the bottom of my pack, I says. How’d you git it?

Emmi gave it to me, she says. When Mercy told me she left you fast to sleep, I came to cover you, make sure you didn’t die of sunstroke.

I stare at her dully. I didn’t mean to drop off, I says.

I’m bone weary. My head feels thick. My body’s heavy, like I’m weighed down by stones.

I’m sorry, says Molly. I didn’t mean to disturb you.

No, no, I says. It’s good that you did. I got thinkin to do. A lot to work out.

You hardly sleep at all these days, she says. You bein tired won’t be good fer none of us. Here, lie down. Cover yerself with this. She slips the knot on her headscarf an hands it to me. It smells richly of the rose oil that softens her skin, that scents her hair. As she shakes out her curls, I make a point of not lookin at the W brand on her forehead. She sees me not lookin. She says, It ain’t often I git a chance to air the war wound these days.

How can you make light of it? I says.

What should I do? she says. Cry fer the rest of my life? Molly of the Many Sorrows?

No, but—after everythin else … Gracie an Ike an then—I dunno how you bear it.

You got battle scars. This is mine, she says. You know what it tells me? I’m a survivor. An if I ever need remindin why I’m here right now, why I’m doin this? One look in the glass does it. Not that I don’t got plenty of other reasons. Ike, of course. An Jack. She hesitates a moment, then she says, You never talk about him. Since he died, you ain’t so much as mentioned his name, not even in passin. I know
you gotta guard what you say with the others, but you know you don’t need to with me. The hurt puzzlement in her eyes makes my colour rise. I know Jack’s impossible, she says. Was … impossible. I know it was complicated between him an you. An maybe yer feelins warn’t as strong fer him as his was fer you—I dunno, yer heart ain’t none of my business an love ain’t easy, I sure know that. What I mean to say is … what I’d really like, what I really need, is to talk about him. With you. That’s all.

I’m silent. I sit starin at my boots while heat flags my cheeks. That was a sidewise reminder that Molly knows one secret of mine. She knows that the first man I lay with warn’t Jack. But she don’t know who. She’d never dream it was DeMalo.

The thing is? she says. The thought of Jack dyin never once occurred to me. Not once. Fer all the trouble he found or that found him. An the other thing is, besides me, Jack’s th’only one who ever knew Gracie.

Her voice falters. Fat tears spill down her cheeks. Damn, she says. Sorry. She fumbles in her pocket.

I hate this. That I lie to everybody. Most of all, I hate lyin to Molly about Jack. She’s our greatest guilt, him an me. Our biggest regret in this necessary deception. She, his dearest friend, who mourns him so deep. But she has to believe that he’s dead. The more people who know a secret, the more likely it is to slip out. Jest a glance from her to me at the wrong time
could git someone thinkin. I’d trust my little Free Hawk gang with my own life. But not Jack’s.

An the fact is, I hardly dare mention his name myself fer fear I let somethin slip that I shouldn’t. How I ache to unburden myself to her. To tell her everythin. About Jack, yes, of course. But, if I’m honest, about DeMalo too. Of anybody in the world, I think Molly’s the one person who might unnerstand, who could help me make sense of it. Make sense of him an me. I want her to be my friend. I wanna be a friend to her. But it cain’t be. Not now. Not yet.