11 - REMY

Spring 4, Sector Annum 106, 07h51

Gregorian Calendar: March 23

 

 

The skyline of another old city emerges in the creeping sunlight. The map says this one is Syracuse, a town once known for its ROR industry: robotic organism replication. Bacteria, viruses, parasites, parasitoids—Syracuse built an industry around churning out these artificial microorganisms for medicinal and technological purposes. It’s a technology that’s been mostly lost to us, and robotic organisms represent a level of complexity OAC scientists haven’t been able to replicate.

As I drive, I take in the contour lines, shadows, and negative space fading into points against the horizon. Morning sun dapples early spring growth in a light shimmer. The chaos of reclaimed nature against the ruins of human structures. Every time I come into a new landscape, my hand itches to draw it.

“Are we there yet?” Bear yawns next to me, not a little bit of whining in his voice. I laugh.

“Are you trying to sound like a child?”

“Hey, I’m tired. You were the one who dragged me out of bed at that forsaken hour of the morning.”

He’s right. I woke up him up this morning at 1:45 AM, just as we had planned. I hadn’t slept a lick all night, kept on edge by wild images running through my head, the excitement, and anxiety, of a mission I finally believe in. A mission that feels my own. A mission I am going to tackle without Eli, Jahnu, Kenzie, and Soren by my side.

The night after the Director announced that Vale was going to lead the mission to Seed Bank Flora, I approached Bear with an alternate proposal.

“We need to start a revolution,” I told him. “It’s time to get the Farm and factory workers involved.” Bear just stared at me blankly for a minute, while I cornered him in a darkened hallway as far away from any meeting room as I could get.

“Tu parles du quoi?” he demanded, as usual sinking back into Old French when he’s on edge. I couldn’t translate directly, but I got the gist of it. What the hell are you talking about?

“We need to go to the Farms. We have to talk to the people directly—we have to take this battle to them. There’s no point waging the Director’s ‘slow but steady’ war when the Sector could find out where we are at any time and drop the entire Black Ops squadron on us. We’ll be dead in our sleep. You and me, Bear—if we go together, with your connections on the Farms and my art, we can take the revolution to them.”

They dont want a revolution.” He almost laughed. “They’re perfectly happy to keep doing what they’re doing. Not many people think to ask questions. Not many can. You believe we can walk in there and change their minds when they don't even know their own minds?”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you and me. Think about it. At your Farm, the people will know you, they’ll listen to you. They’ll remember Sam. They’ll remember what the Sector did to him. How the Bosses forced him into the silos for asking too many questions. They know that can happen to anyone. They’ll listen to us when they know what the danger is.”

Bear shook his head, staring at the floor, refusing to meet my eyes.

“I don’t know, Remy. I don’t think it’s that easy. We can’t just walk in there and tell them to think something different and expect them to listen.” He took a deep breath. “It took Sam almost two years after your sister died to convince me to listen to him. You think they’re going to believe us because we have good stories and pretty pictures?”

I knew then that he’d been watching me draw, that he’d seen the drawings I’d been working on in the last few weeks. A portrait of Tai done entirely out of tiny flowers; a poem my father wrote where the verses were growing up out of the ground like seedlings; and the most violent, a man biting into a skull like an apple, red blood dripping down his chin instead of juice, the skull illustrated using the elegant twisting double helix of DNA.

“I don’t know if they’ll listen to us,” I said quietly. “But if they do, we’ve got a hell of a better shot at changing things than if we don’t go at all.”

He thought about that for a second, staring down at me hesitantly.

“I don’t know, Remy,” he said, finally.

I sighed.

“Just think about it. Okay? Just think about it.”

He nodded and slipped away, while I paced back and forth in the now-empty hall and wondered how in the hell I would be able to carry on my mother’s mission without his help, without his insight and experience at the Farms.

What’s left for me here? I asked myself over and over again. I’m a good shot and a fast runner, but that’s it. LOTUS is Eli’s project. The Seed Bank mission is now Vale’s. What can I offer that no one else can?

The answer always comes back to my parents’ mission to the Farms. Carry the message of the Resistance, spread awareness, help where possible. Spread the message to the people through your art, my father said. What can I offer the Resistance? Over and over again, I came back to that one thing: I can be the messenger.

Just when I'd given up hope, Bear approached me and told me he was reconsidering. I was ecstatic. But he still wasn't an easy convert.

“You think it's going to be easy, Remy, but it's not,” he warned. “You're going to have to be patient. We’re not just going to walk in there, show them your drawings, and make them think differently about things they’ve been taught since they were enfants. That's not gonna happen.”

I nodded, but I felt nothing but excitement roiling inside.

“We’ll be patient, Bear. As patient as we can.”

He shook his head. “I want to do this with you, but I don't think you have any idea what we're going to be walking into.”

“I'll have you to help me navigate the Farm culture.”

“And you'll listen to me? Go slow when I say?" I nod, and he shakes his head like he doesn't believe me, but then a smile tugs at his lips. “So who else is coming?”

“No one,” I said. “Just us.”

“What?” he asked. “Why not?”

I shrugged, looking off at the wall behind us. How to explain? How to tell him that this is something I can’t do with Eli, Soren, Vale, or my father watching over my shoulder? How to tell him that this is something I have to do for my mother’s sake, for Tai’s sake, for myself? How to tell him that this has to be my mission, unswayed by any of my friends and family, however close they may be?

“They have their own goals and their own tasks,” I said, finally. “They have their projects. But you and I—we can be a part of their projects, or we can create our own, and have a chance at making real progress.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“You still want to do it?”

“Yes,” he said. “I thought about it last night. I think you’re right. Someone has to tell them the truth. And it might as well be us. No one else in the Resistance is making an effort to include them.”

I smiled as he looked down at me, his body still slightly too big for him, uncertain but eager.

“So,” he asked, energy seeping into his voice, “when do we leave?”

“As soon as we’re ready. We’ve got a lot of packing and planning to do and we have to do it without drawing attention. If they know what we're up to, they'll stop us.”

And so, two weeks later, we find ourselves out in the middle of the Wilds again, this time far better equipped than we were when we were tromping in the cold weeks ago. Spring shows its face in blooming daffodils and green-tipped grass as we pass through this crumbling ruin of a forgotten city. We’re headed toward Round Barn where Bear’s from, and this is the quickest route accessible in the hovercar we borrowed—okay, stole—from Normandy. It's decrepit and tops out at sixty kilometers per hour, but at least it’s got decent cloaking, so we’re hoping we won’t run into the same disaster we did with our hovercar outside of our safehouse. So we drive through these overgrown streets, lined with sky-high trees growing where the city once sprouted. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. The city is now reborn, verdant with second-growth forest, populated with buzzing insects, scurrying squirrels, and singing birds. Out of the ruins, new life is born.

Bear nods off in the seat next to me. I pull out my grandfather’s compass, click the tiny button and the burnished gold opens in my hand. I check our direction and confirm that we are heading northeast, and then I click the compass open and closed again several times, relishing the pressure against my fingers and palm. It’s comforting to have it with me, like a protective talisman. It feels as though a piece of each member of my family is tied up somehow into the little spinning needle, as though the compass holds fragments of their lost souls. I run my fingers along my grandfather’s initials engraved at the bottom. If I follow the compass, I might one day find him, my mom, and Tai.

I pocket it and turn my attention back to the map, returning my focus to the drive. I wish this hovercar had a programmable route I could punch in like we used to do in Okaria. Then I could curl up and sleep. But there are no comprehensive 3-D map systems out here, no nav drones, no remote air traffic control to make sure I get safely from place to place. I can’t deny that I miss that security and comfort. But the skies of Okaria weren’t the only thing being controlled and manipulated. Our bodies and identities were, too.

As tired as I am, the slow pace of the drive is calming, freeing even. Whatever is over the next hill, beyond the next bend in the road, is a revelation. Best of all, there are no more underground tunnels. I remember lying on the couch in the Chancellor’s mansion as Vale told me about reading a book from the Old World. He said people used to drive their old-fashioned wheeled cars—with a steering wheel, how primitive—from one side of the American continent to the other, just to feel the “freedom of the open road.” That’s how I feel now, winding through this abandoned city, free, finally, of the expectations of those back at base. The freedom to reclaim my destiny, just as nature is reclaiming this city.

 

 

Three hours later, we’re deep in the Wilds, following the barest remnants of an old highway as we arc down around the southern border of the Sector. My v-scroll map tells me we’re almost there. Bear is stirring awake as I struggle to keep from nodding off myself.

“You okay, Remy?” Bear asks, rubbing his eyes. “You want me to drive for a while?” He’s been asking me that since we first started even though he's never driven a hovercar, I’m reluctant to let him behind the gauges.

“It’s okay. We’re almost there. You can help me look for a good campsite. Keep your eyes out.”

“I don’t know how you’re not tired.”

“I am tired. I just want to get out, set up camp, and get my sleep horizontally.”

“Remember we’ll be in more danger the closer we get to the Farm, right?” he points out. “Security at Round Barn—” he means Farm Ten, but they’ve all got idyllic, agrarian nicknames “—was lax when I left. But who knows now. Might be drones and Boss men around the perimeter. Won’t be safer there than it is here.”

May be more dangerous, but at least I won’t be in danger of getting run off the road by an inexperienced driver,” I tease.

“How hard can it be?” he asks, gesturing to the control board. “There’s three dials and a steerstick. Farm equipment's more complicated than that.”

“It takes practice to keep the hovers balanced over rough ground so you don’t veer off into a tree.” I change the subject. “Let's go over the security again.”

He shrugs, his face clouded, as though facing an unhappy memory.

“It's not as tight as at other Farms, from what we ever heard. There’s a fence and a few gates big enough for hovercars and trucks, but none of it’s real well maintained, and the fences aren’t hard to climb or dig under. Aside from what I mentioned before, drones patrol the perimeter and Bosses keeping watch on the inside. Heard a story from a transfer that they got high fences and guard towers at Two Lakes, by Okaria proper. Said it was for the wild animals. Sam couldn’t figure how they’d have dangerous animals so close to the city and none near Round Barn.”

Suddenly I’m not even tired. Imagining what Round Barn will be like captivates me. When I was younger, we toured of a few of the Farms after my father was named Poet Laureate. He did poetry readings and sometimes he'd show off my artwork. The workers seemed to like seeing me at his side. The Sector always brags about how it supports the arts as well as the sciences. They like to promote the idea that anyone from the Farms could become like any of us in the capital, could rise up and become a celebrated artist. Of course, what none of the laborers on the Farms knew was that they were being fed chemicals designed to suppress their creative abilities, their spatial imaging, their imaginations. If my father had been born on a Farm, he would never have had a chance at becoming a famous poet.

When I visited, the Farms seemed like havens of tranquility where everyone was fed plenty and clothed well. It was an egalitarian dream. Peaceful, happy people glad to be doing their part to keep the Sector strong. Maybe they were that way once, naturally, of their own accord. But what I didn’t realize, until my family joined the Resistance, is however idyllic it was in the past, now the workers don’t have a choice now. They can’t even think about doing anything any differently. And if a glimmer of individual thought shines through, like it did with Sam, that's easily taken care of.

Bear points out the window to a hill in the distance. “Good flat spot up there along that ridge, maybe. High ground and far enough off this stretch of old road to avoid anyone coming or going. And plenty of tree cover to stay hidden.”

I nod, surveying the ridge.

“The hovercar won’t make it up there, though. The angle’s too steep. We’ll have to leave the car down here and carry our gear up.”

We survey the area until we find a gulley suitable for hiding the hovercar. I lower it to the ground and shut it off. We empty the car of our gear—mostly lightweight camping gear, food provisions, some radio equipment, light firearms, and the hand grenades I stole from Normandy’s armory. I throw a shimmer blanket over the car for camouflage. Bear and I shoulder our equipment bags and trudge up the steep ridge line to flatter ground.

After we set up camp, Bear munches on oat bars and venison jerky while I lay out our bedrolls.

“We should both get some sleep today,” I say, checking the thin wristwatch I brought from Normandy. “It’s one in the afternoon, plenty of time to rest before night sets in. Then, I think we should go exploring. I want you to show me the Farm while it’s dark and quiet. You can show me your old home.”

Bear shudders, looking pale.

“Wouldn’t hardly call it home anymore,” he says.

“Are you anxious to see your friends? The ones you’ve told me about?”

He nods. “Won’t be too easy finding them on the inside, though, but we’ll get through to them somehow.”

“You figured out how we should start the conversation?”

Bear stares at me a second before responding, as if trying to put his words together in his head.

“The people I’m thinking of, they’ll listen if I tell ’em something. Not the brightest of folk, but then, neither am I. But the rest of ’em—they’ll be harder to get through to. But you made all them notes and drew those pictures. We’ve got plenty of good speeches. And when the time comes, we’ll tell the truth, I guess.”

Tell the truth, I guess. I nod. Words to live by.

 

 

“See there? That’s where the Dieticians’ lab is. All the little cabins are where we live.”

The moon isn’t full tonight, but it’s not far off, and I brought two weeks worth of our infrared contacts for both of us. I showed him how to put them in, and how to blink rapidly three times to shift between the infrared and the visible light spectrums. It took him an hour, but I think he’s got the hang of it.

“So the little buildings are where the workers live. And there’s a compound—that, there—where the Boss men and women stay at night.”

He points out a few other buildings until I feel comfortable with the general layout.

“Who do you want to try to talk to first? We should try to contact them as soon as possible. Tomorrow morning, maybe.”

“One of Sam’s old friends, name’s Luis. And a girl I used to talk to. Another one of the ones who asked questions. Fierce, she was. Rose, is her name. Rose and Luis are good friends.”

“What do you think is the best way to get a message to them?”

Bear stares at the plain below us, his eyes narrowing as he considers my question.

“Been thinking about that, and I got an idea. Used to be an old Boss we all liked, Joral. Real nice, he was the one who let me take Sam to your parents when he got hurt. He won’t like it if I talk to him—just cause he’s nice don’t mean he doesn’t support the Sector, he’ll probably turn me in—but you can go. You can find him and ask him to get a message to Rose and Luis.” Bear grins at me in the moonlight. “‘Specially if you give him some of that chocolate you brought along with us, he always liked that stuff.”

I consider this idea.

“How will I know it’s him?”

“He’s real striking. Sharp grey hair always sticking up no matter what he does, and a big, huge, honker. You see that nose, you know it’s him.”

“Should I pretend to be a Farm worker?”

“No,” he says. “He’ll know you aren’t. Sometimes people who aren’t with the Farm come and go ’round about here. So long as they aren’t Outsiders, some Bosses let ’em alone. That’s what your parents did. If you pretend you’re one of them, or maybe tell him you met Luis or Rose on a market day.”

“What’s a market day?”

“Once a season, we have a gathering, hear some music, and socialize for a time. Of course, it’s all organized by the Farm Boss, but, sometimes folk from around join in. Tell Joral that you’re passin’ through and just want to see how they’re doin’. Maybe he’ll pass a message to them.”

“Okay,” I nod. “What should the message be?”

“How about one of your drawings? That one of Sam you did. That’ll get their attention.”

I watch Bear, his mouth set in a sad little frown, staring out over the place he once called home.

“We’ll use that one, then. I’ll go in the morning, at first light, before work starts. I’ll tell them we want to meet them tomorrow at twilight.” I clasp Bear’s hand and smile at him. “We’re going to do this, Bear. We’ll avenge Sam, my mother, Tai. We’ll do it together.”

 

 

Bear smudges dirt on my face and charcoal around my eyes, trying to disguise my features. I wrap a woolen shawl over my head to cover my hair. It’ll be hot come midday, but I’m not planning on having this excursion last more than an hour.

“Try not to talk like you usually do,” Bear is saying, coaching me on how to blend in. “You sound like you’re from Okaria, not one of the peasant folk who wander the Wilds. And Joral’ll try to convince you to stay on the Farm. Sometimes people who pass by end up joining a Farm just ’cause it seems nice to have a warm bed, hot water, and plenty of food. He’ll try to talk you into staying. Just tell him you got a husband or something waiting for you out in the woods and he shouldn’t bother you after that.”

“But I shouldn’t say I’m in a group, right?”

“No. Then he’ll think you’re an Outsider, and he might send you off or call in some more Boss men to find out where the rest of the group is.”

It shouldn’t surprise me how suspicious the Bosses are of the Outsiders. The massacre at the SRI that killed my sister wasn’t the only crime that’s been attributed to the Outsiders over the years; the Sector finds it convenient to blame mysterious and violent incidents on the Outsiders. With so much hatred directed their way through Sector propaganda, it’s easy to see why people are so afraid of them. Yet, from what Bear says, the fear seems even more pronounced on the Farms than it was in the city. Maybe the propaganda against the Outsiders has increased since I’ve been gone.

Bear stops smudging charcoal around the edges of my eyes, and sits back to admire his handiwork.

“You look nice,” he says. “Like the fancy ladies at the Solstice balls.”

I shoot him a wry smile.

“I’ve got dirt all over my face.”

“Well, yes, but....”

“Let’s hope no one else thinks I look like a socialite from Okaria.”

“They won’t,” he says, and cracks a wide smile. “Not with that dirt on your face.”

I push myself to my feet and look one last time at the drawing I did of Sam, as best I could remember him, his face wreathed with spring flowers and autumn leaves. I roll it up and drip a bit of melted wax from one of the few candles we stole from Normandy, and press the scroll closed. A seal, like from the ancient world. But unlike the ancients who used signet rings or cylinder seals, neither one of us want our identification known until the scroll is opened. So instead of pressing one of our fingers in the wax, we press it closed with a leaf. Once it’s unrolled, Rose will see the message Bear scrawled in the corner.

Beaver Creek, midnight. A.B. The initials of his real name, Antoine Baier.

“They’ll come,” he says, a hitch in his voice. “They were like family. They’ll come.”

 

 

We walk around the edge of the cleared land, sticking to the shadows and trees. Just because our jackets help hide our thermal signature from drones, doesn’t mean the guards have gone blind. I’ll have to take off my jacket soon enough—of those who wander the Wilds, only Outsiders and Resistance fighters have heat-cloaking clothing, and I don’t want to be associated with either group. By the time the sun is fully up and we can see the stirrings of activity in the camp, we’ve found what looks to be a footpath that leads into the cleared plain of the Farm.

“This is how some people get in and out,” Bear says. “Not many people know about it, though. You get outta le foret, you’ll see there’s a slit cut in the fence. Easy enough to push through.”

“Do the Enforcers know about this?” I ask, wondering at the fact that this glaring oversight has gone uncorrected for so long. At my side, Bear shrugs.

“Joral does. Maybe a few others. Some of them aren’t so bad. Just doing their job.”

“Won’t they know I’m an intruder?”

Bear laughs.

“You aren’t gonna go in that way right now. That’s for tonight, when we go to meet Rose and Luis, if you can get the message through. Right now, you’re gonna go up through the pedestrian gate and ask real nice if you can talk to Joral. Like I said, as long as they don’t think you’re an Outsider, they’ll let you come and go as you please. Might even give you some food if you look desperate enough.”

I stare at Bear, wondering if I’ve gone completely insane. I, Remy Alexander, daughter of Okaria’s Poet Laureate, member of an active “terrorist network”, escaped prisoner of the Sector, am going to walk right up to the gates of a Farm and ask to be let in. They better not recognize me.

Bear leads me a little ways further through the trees. I take off my jacket and hand it to him, my heart pounding.

“Remember, you're the last person they'll be expecting,” he says, a serious expression on his face. “I’ll be waiting.” I smile reassuringly, trying not to show how nervous I am. It feels like walking into the maw of a giant beast.

“If I’m more than two hours—”

“I lay low for twenty-four hours,” he interrupts. “If you’re still not back, I radio Normandy.”

Taking a deep breath, I smile and nod.

“You’ll be fine,” he says.

I turn and walk off, tightening the shawl secured around my frizzy hair, trying not to touch my face for fear of smudging Bear’s makeup job. I jump down out of the undergrowth and onto the cleared path, checking quickly around me to see if guards are watching. I follow the little cleared path, wide enough for two to walk side-by-side, right up to the gate, where an Enforcer with bored eyes and a handheld Bolt greets me.

“Name.”

“Anna Renault.” My heart sounds like drumbeats in my chest. But the guard simply touches a few buttons on a plasma in front of him without looking at me.

“Passing through or visiting?”

“Passing.”

“Okarian citizen?”

“No.”

“Any affiliations?” He wants to know if I’m with the Outsiders, like someone would just announce that.

“Brother working on Farm Eight as of three months ago.”

“Is that who you’re visiting?”

“Non. My mari and I live fifty kilometers on the other side.”

He nods.

“Who are you here to see?”

“I hope to speak with Joral.”

The Enforcer nods and then speaks into his headset. “Some woman from the Wilds named Anna Renault here to speak to Joral.” He keeps looking at me. “Yes. Okay,” he says into the handset. “Stay right on the main path until you reach Outpost One. He’s stationed near there. Go on, and be quick. He hasn’t got all day.” He gestures half-heartedly toward the Farm as the gate opens and I exhale an enormous breath that carries my tense shoulders down with it.

Inside the gate, a female Enforcer presses her hands up and down my sides, checking for weapons. They’ll allow small knives through, he said, but nothing more sophisticated.

“Saw an Outsider shot on sight for carrying a crossbow,” he had said as though it were an everyday occurrence.

“How did you know it was an Outsider?”

“Carried a crossbow. Only Outsiders have crossbows, or bows. Least ways that’s what I was always told.”

I hung a skinning knife on my belt when I was dressing this morning, thinking it would be more suspicious if I didn’t have one, as they’d wonder why a lone woman was traveling the woods unarmed. But it doesn’t make me feel any safer as the female Enforcer lets me through to face the vast, open swath of the Farm.

“Make sure you sign out at the gate when you're done with your business,” she says.

I nod and head into the heart of the Farm. Laid out in red brick, like the garden at my parents’ home in Okaria, the main path is lined with dormant strawberry patches, interwoven with sage, rosemary, parsley, bay, and some varieties of sprouting spring greens. A tiny creek, an irrigation channel, flows alongside the path I walk. A budding orchard peeks up over the hill to my left.

I keep my head up and focus on the task at hand. I try to remember what Bear said about Joral. Stark grey hair, enormous nose. I watch for any sign of someone by that description. But as far as I can see, the land is empty.

Past the strawberries and herbs, I turn right at a fork and come across some workers training growing vines to wooden stakes. I make eye contact with a girl about my size. She straightens, watching me. Her expression is unreadable and unnerving, and I try to ignore her gaze as I pass by.

I marvel at the sheer size and scope of the Farms. It looked big from far away, but it’s positively huge now that I’m walking through it. I’d never quite thought about how big the Farms must be in order to provide food for the entire population of Okaria. The brick path I’m on has branched out several times, and every time I’ve diligently kept along the right-side path. Even though Bear tried to orient me to the layout, it seems much more expansive than I thought. I can see a field of marshy ground that looked like rice paddies, wide-open wheat fields and wildflowers for honeybees, countless nut and fruit trees, an olive grove, and a vineyard, terraced into the side of a steep hill, and at least fifty different types of vegetable plants I couldn’t begin to identify.

Just when I’m beginning to despair of ever finding the first outpost, thinking that I’d somehow missed it or made a wrong turn, I spot a few structures in the distance. As I get closer, they turn into little houses, scattered seemingly at random, interspersed with wild grasses and big trees. And there—I recognize that larger building. That’s the Dietician’s lab that Bear showed me last night. I turn up towards my right, and sure enough, the forest here bends around much closer to the cleared land. I put my hand over my eyes for shade and study the landscape. I can see the ridge where Bear and I were perched, staring around at the terrain below with our binoculars.

One last right turn along the path and see him. Joral, in a green Enforcer’s uniform, standing, arms crossed, in front of a small, nondescript building.

“Tu es Joral, s’il te plait?” Please, are you Joral?

“I am,” he says gruffly, not bothering with French. From Okaria, then, I think, trying to get a sense of him. A fair few Okarians from the capital don’t bother learning the Old French, considering it beneath them. Who needs it anymore? they ask. Everyone in Okaria speaks Modern Sector English. “Are you Anna? What do you want?”

“Do you know Rose?” I ask. Bear told me it would be safer if I asked for the girl—that way no one would suspect any romantic attachment, which would be sure to get me thrown out.

“I do,” he responds. “You passing through?”

“Yes, but I’ve got a mes—something for her,” I say, chiding myself. “A gift. I’d like to give it to her.”

“How do you know Rose?”

“Met her last time I passed through, walking along the perimeter. I'd fallen in a gopher hole, twisted my ankle. She told me about a doctor that comes around sometimes, and I want to thank her.”

“You come here often?”

“No. Sometimes.”

“You looking for a home? You like it here? You’re welcome to stay. We’ll give you a proper bed, and food, and all.” I smile, remembering what Bear said. He’ll try to convince you to stay on the Farm.

“Got a man waiting for me on the other side,” I respond. “Mon mari.” My husband.

“Ah,” he says, chewing at the side of his mouth, eyeing me thoughtfully. His hair sticks up as though he’s been electrocuted. Bear was right, his nose dominates his face. It almost makes him look less threatening, despite the suspicious frown.

“All right,” he says, at length. “What have you got for her?”

“Promise me you’ll give it to her.”

“I’ll promise when I see what it is.”

I hesitate, trying to look afraid and unsure. From the pocket of my sweater I pull out the rolled piece of paper. He gasps audibly.

“Where’d you get paper like that?” he asks.

“An old factory out in the Wilds. Way south.”

“Hmm.” He looks intrigued, but doesn’t say more.

“You'll give it to her?”

“Don't see any harm in it.”

Thank you,” I say, handing the scroll to him. I also take a piece of chocolate and hold it out as an offering. “Please make sure Rose gets this. She was kind to me and it’s very important that I give her something in return. And please take this, for your trouble.”

Still gnawing at the inside of his lip, his eyebrows shoot up when he sees the bite of chocolate. He nods his thanks, takes the paper from my hands, and turns away from me, sauntering off between the little houses. I stare after him, before I turn to leave, releasing the tension in my chest with a slow breath.

Now, all we can do is wait.