Sea trash. Siry Remudi had always been interested in things that rolled in from the sea. Strange things. Unusual things. Things which hinted that outside the comfortable, small village where he lived lay a vast and very different world.
So when the wave boiled in and smashed on the beach, and the odd-shaped thing rolled once and came to rest on the sand, Siry walked toward it.
It was about the size of a man, but it was made of strange, raglike material. He was several hundred feet away, so it was a little hard to tell. Maybe an odd bundle of seaweed? A log covered with algae or kelp? He started walking rapidly toward it. There was something intriguing about it.
Then the next wave crashed and another odd-looking object washed in. And another. And another.
He’d gotten within a hundred feet of it or so when the first object moved. It sat up. That’s no log! Siry thought. That’s a man!
Which was when he realized that the rags were clothes. Which meant—
He turned and began to run.
“Flighters!” he screamed. “Flighters! It’s a raid!”
The Flighters were cut to pieces. There had been nine of them. They’d fought like demons. But they were no match—either in numbers or in skill—for the guards who’d come flocking out of the village of Rayne. One had drowned in the surf, two had fallen under the cudgels of the guards, five had escaped into the sea.
And one was captured.
After it was over, Siry caught a glimpse of the captive. He’d expected the Flighter to be a man. But it wasn’t. It was a woman. Well, not even a woman. A girl.
She had struggled like an animal, scratching and shrieking as the guards dragged her off the beach and up toward the village. She had barely seemed human. Her clothes were wretched and falling apart. Her hair was matted. Her skin was streaked with dirt.
And yet there was something about her. As she was dragged off the beach, she passed within a few feet of Siry. Their eyes met briefly. She had brilliant green eyes, wide set, over a freckled, triangular face. Her hair was an astonishing red color unlike anything he’d ever seen before.
“Ahhhh!” she screamed, lunging at him. When Siry jerked backward in surprise, she spit on the ground and laughed at him.
The guards yanked her off her feet. “We’ll see how funny you think that is after a couple of days in the hole!” one of them shouted. The girl kicked and wriggled, still laughing in a high, wild voice.
As they hauled her around the corner of a small hut, Siry’s father, Jen Remudi, came around the corner. He had a gash on his arm and carried a club.
“There you are!” Siry’s father said. “I was worried. I didn’t see you anywhere.”
“I’m fine,” Siry said. He pointed in the direction that the girl had disappeared. “What are they doing with the prisoner?”
Jen sighed. “We’ll have to put her on trial.”
“For what?”
Jen frowned. “I forgot, you were barely five or six when the last wave of Flighter attacks happened. When we capture a prisoner, they’re tried by the tribunal.”
“And then what?”
Jen looked off toward the sea. “Best not to think of that, Son,” he said.
Siry shrugged off his father’s hand. “I’m not a kid anymore!” he said. He was tired of being treated as if he were five instead of fourteen. “Tell me what will happen to her.”
Siry’s father looked at him soberly. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. Then he sighed sadly. “They’ll put her to death,” he said finally.
“They?” Siry said. “Don’t you mean you? You’re a member of the tribunal.”
Jen Remudi cocked his head. “What’s gotten into you lately, Siry?”
Siry shrugged. He didn’t know what his father was talking about.
Jen clapped his son on the shoulder and smiled. “Anyway, good work today. If you hadn’t spotted those animals, there’s no telling what might have happened. I’m really proud of you.”
Siry looked out at the water. He wondered how they had gotten this far. Had they made a boat? It was common knowledge that Flighters were subhuman. A Flighter couldn’t figure out how to make a boat. Maybe they’d stolen one.
He kept thinking of the strange girl. Only she could tell him the answer. He wanted to talk to her, find out what she knew. Everything she knew. Too bad Flighters couldn’t talk.
“I gotta go, Dad,” Siry said.
“Look, Siry,” Jen said, “there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“I gotta go,” Siry said again.
Siry kicked the sand as he wandered up the beach. Okay, so maybe his dad was right. He felt like he’d been in a bad mood all the time lately. And he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was that was bugging him.
It was just that it seemed as if—well, he remembered when he was younger, there had been times when adults had told him things that he knew weren’t true. And when he confronted them, they’d always say things like, “Siry, you’re too young to understand.” As if he were supposed to be satisfied with that answer.
Back then it had just been little stuff. The time he’d figured out that all those presents that appeared overnight on Simmus Eve weren’t really brought by fairies, for instance.
But now he was starting to feel it was bigger. Like all the sea trash he’d collected over the years—he was starting to be quite sure that some of it was man made. He’d found a piece of something, blue and flexible material that had raised letters on it. The letters didn’t make any sense, but it was easy to see they were letters.
And yet when he showed it to his father, Jen had just said, “Well, I know it looks like letters. But it’s probably just an accident. Some sort of coral maybe.”
An accident? Did Jen really expect him to believe that?
Siry wandered off the beach and began shuffling through the town. Here and there, people called out to him. “Nice work, Siry!”
Siry didn’t even acknowledge them. He just kept walking and thinking. No, there was something else out there. Something his dad wasn’t telling him about. Something the elders were hiding. But what was it?
Without really making any particular decision, he found himself standing in front of the small hut where the occasional prisoner was held. Several guards stood outside. The hut was made from bamboo, topped with thatch. It hadn’t been used much since most people in Rayne behaved themselves, so it was decrepit looking.
Siry knew both the guards pretty well. They were big, solid men, friends of his father.
“Hello, Kemo,” Siry said. Kemo was the leader of Rayne’s guards. “Is she in there?”
“Yes,” Kemo said. He held up his arm, showing off a set of purple teeth marks on his skin. “Look at that, huh? You better believe I gave her a good hit after that, huh?” He grinned. “Nice job, spotting these animals.”
Siry shrugged. “Hey, I was just standing there.” He looked over Kemo’s shoulder. There was a small window, barred with bamboo. “Can I look at her?”
Kemo narrowed her eyes. “Why such an interest in the Flighter?”
“I just want to look at her,” Siry said.
Kemo waved at the barred window. “Just be careful. They’re tricky. Don’t get close or she’s liable to try to attack you.”
Siry walked over to the window and peered in. The Flighter girl was huddled on the floor. Her shoulder was bruised and there was a large cut on her leg.
“Hey,” Siry said. “Can you talk?”
The girl didn’t even look up at him. Siry studied her for a while. Other than being a little skinny, she looked perfectly healthy. If he’d seen her on the street, in different clothing, he’d never have known she was a Flighter.
As he was staring at her, a gaggle of little kids came by and joined him in the window, pointing and laughing at the Flighter. They were all eating juba nuts from a bag. After a minute one of the kids threw a juba nutshell at the girl. It bounced off her forehead and fell on the floor. Another kid threw a whole juba nut. It hit the girl in the face. The girl pounced on it, smashed it on the floor, and began picking the meat out of the broken nut.
Other kids began hurling nuts at the girl.
“Hey!” Siry said. “Stop!”
The kids backed away from him. One of them, a little girl with blond hair, started crying. Kemo gave Siry a nasty look. “Siry, what’s wrong with you?” he said. “They’re just kids having a little fun.”
Siry turned back to the window. Inside, the girl began ravenously swallowing the nuts as if she’d never eaten before. When she was done, she went back to staring blankly at the floor.
After he’d stared at her for a while, he said, “Hey, Kemo. Who’s bringing her food?”
Kemo’s eyebrows went up. “Well—uh—usually when somebody’s in the jail, their families bring them food.”
“You’re saying you don’t have any food for her?”
Kemo shrugged. “I didn’t really think about it.”
“I’ll go talk to my father,” Siry said. “He’ll have some food sent over.”
Siry came back with a steaming bowl of vegetable and meat stew. Kemo let him into the front door. Inside was a small chamber in front of two separate cells. The girl was sitting in the exact same position she’d been in when he left. There was a slot near the floor that was obviously made for pushing food into the cell. Siry slid the bowl through.
“Sorry,” Siry said to the girl, “I know it’s nothing special. My mother died when I was young and my father only knows how to make two things. Vegetable and meat stew…and meat and vegetable stew.” He laughed tentatively.
The girl showed no sign of hearing him, much less of thinking he was funny. She just grabbed the bowl and gobbled up all the stew, scooping it with her hands. He had given her a bamboo spoon, but she ignored it.
When she was finished, the girl threw the empty bowl at him and growled. The bowl clattered off the bamboo bars, splattering him with the remains of the stew.
Siry laughed. “Well, you have some bite, anyway,” he said. He pushed a bucket of hot water and soap through the same slot as the food. “I don’t know if you Flighters understand the concept of washing,” he said. “But just in case…”
He made a motion with his hands, running them over his body as if he were bathing. The girl started drinking the water. Then she took a bite out of the soap, spit it on the ground. Siry laughed again.
The girl glared at him as if he’d tried to trick her.
“No. Soap,” he said. “Soap!”
He reached through the bars, grabbed the soap off the floor. The girl made an attempt to stomp his hand, but he was too quick for her. “Nice try,” he said with a grin. Then he rubbed the soap on his hands. “See? Clean. Like this.” There was a large sink and a shower on the far side of the room. He demonstrated how soap worked. “Look. See? Nice and clean.”
The girl stared uncomprehendingly at him. He tossed the bar of soap into the water. Then he pushed a set of clean clothes through the bars. “They were my mother’s,” he said. “I don’t know if they’ll fit. My father would be upset if he knew I was giving these to you. My mother’s been dead for years. But he’s never thrown out any of her things.” He sat down on the chair opposite her cell. “It’s kind of sad, you know? He still talks about her all the time. I guess he loved her a lot.”
The girl took a piece of juba nutshell and started picking a piece of meat out of her teeth.
“She wasn’t really my mother, though. I was adopted. My dad always says he found me floating on the waves. Isn’t that a strange thing to say to your kid? I suppose it was a nice story when I was young. But now? It seems like an insult to my intelligence.”
The girl finally freed the piece of meat from her teeth, held it out on the juba nutshell, looked at it, then popped it back in her mouth and swallowed.
“I have to say,” Siry said, “your table manners could be better.”
She spit on the floor.
After he left, Kemo put one large hand on Siry’s arm. “Son, look, you probably don’t remember the last time that Rayne had serious problems with the Flighters. We spent three solid years clearing the jungles and pushing those monsters back from Rayne.”
“Okay…,” Siry said.
“What I’m saying is…” Kemo cleared his throat. “That thing in there—it looks as if you cleaned it up, it could be one of us. Don’t be fooled. It can’t be. It’s an animal. It’s sea trash. It’s dangerous.”
“Yes, sir,” Siry said.
Kemo narrowed his eyes. “I’m serious, Siry. That thing in there’ll kill you and rip your throat out. And it won’t blink an eye.”
“Yes, sir,” Siry said.
But as he walked away, he felt sure that Kemo was wrong. The only question in his mind was this: Was Kemo lying? Or did he just not know better?
Later that evening, after they’d eaten supper together, he said to his father, “Where do Flighters come from?”
Jen Remudi broke his gaze from his son’s. “The other end of the island,” he said, staring down at the table.
The explanation didn’t sit right with Siry. Somehow it seemed that these people were from somewhere farther, somewhere that would explain why they had become so different. “But—they look exactly like us. A little dirtier, but otherwise—”
“Appearances can be deceiving. They’re not like us.”
“But how would we know? We never talk to them. We never see them. All we do is fight them.”
Siry’s father looked back up at him, folding his hands together. “Look, Son, Kemo told me that you were talking to the girl we captured.” He paused. “I know if you cleaned her up, she looks like she’d be pretty and sweet. But—”
“What are you talking about, Dad?” Siry said angrily.
“They don’t feel things like we do.”
“Feeling? Who’s talking about feeling?” Siry said. “Every day I see stuff around here that doesn’t seem to add up. Sea trash. What is it? Those bottle-shaped things with writing on them? Those pieces of flexible material that you can see through?”
“Don’t fall in love with a Flighter. Okay?”
Siry stared at his dad. “I’m talking about trying to understand the world. And you’re—I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”
There was a long silence. Finally his father said, “Son, she’s going on trial the day after tomorrow. If the tribunal finds that she’s broken our laws, she’ll be…” He sighed. “She’ll be put to death.”
“Put to death!” Siry felt a strange lump in his stomach.
“It sounds cruel, I know. But you don’t remember what it was like.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve always told you that your mother died of a disease. But it’s not so. Those things, those Flighters, they raided Rayne for food one time. There must have been close to a hundred of them. Breaking in to houses. Smashing things. Dragging children into the jungle. Your mother tried to stop them from taking you. They—”
Jen Remudi’s eyes teared up.
Siry blinked. He felt horrible. But at the same time, he couldn’t help thinking, Another story that turns out not to be true!
“She saved your life. But she gave up hers in the process.” Jen Remudi put his face in his hands. Tears started running out through his fingers. “I couldn’t save her. I should have been at the house. But I was with the guards, trying to protect—” He looked up, his eyes rimmed with red. “I love you so much, Son. But I just wish you had known her. I feel like I could have done so much better if—”
Jen stopped and stared out the window. “Anyway. The trial’s in two days.”
They sat in silence for a long time. Finally Siry stood up and said, “If they’re animals, how come you give them a trial?”
Siry waited for his father to answer. But his father said nothing.
The next morning Siry brought three boiled eggs and some fruit to the Flighter girl.
Kemo was standing at his usual post. “Hey, Siry!” Kemo said. “I can’t believe it.”
“You can’t believe what?”
“That animal. She actually used the soap you brought her. Put on those clothes, too. Amazing. You’d almost think she was human.”
“Maybe she is,” Siry said.
He went inside and pushed the food through the bars. Then he looked up. His eyes widened. The girl was wearing the clothes. And now that she was cleaned up? She was actually really pretty!
The girl ignored him. She just picked up the food and shoveled it in her mouth, dribbling bits of egg all over the floor.
“Still working on those manners, though?” he said.
She finished the food, then flopped down on the little cot in the corner, apparently ignoring him.
“What’s it like out there?” he said. “I wish you could tell me.” He sat down in the chair on the other side of the bars from her. “You can’t imagine how quiet it is here in Rayne. I just can’t help feeling that there’s more to life than this.” He spread his hands. “Nice little town. Nice people. Nice school. Nice food. Nice weather. Everything’s nice. But there’s got to be something more. I bet you could tell me a lot. I mean, if you could just talk.”
The girl belched.
Siry started babbling, talking about all the things that had been going through his head lately. All the questions he had about the world. All the fears and anxieties he had. All the feelings that he’d been keeping bottled up, that he’d tried telling his friends about. But no one had understood. All his friends had stared at him as if he were crazy when he started talking about sea trash, and where it came from.
“Sea trash,” he said. “It just keeps coming back to sea trash. What is it? Where does it come from?” He took out a bag and spread it on the floor, showing her the bits of rusted metal, the hard clear material, the unnaturally flat and regular pieces of wood—and his biggest treasure, the flexible blue fragment with the writing on it.
Finally he put all his treasures back in the bag.
“I guess I must not make any sense to you,” he said. “I talk and talk, and you have no idea what I’m saying.”
He put the bag back on his belt.
“They’re going to put you on trial tomorrow,” he said. “And when they do? They’ll execute you.”
The girl sat up and walked toward him, her green eyes pinned on him. She grabbed the bars, her fingers almost touching his. Yesterday she had smelled horrible. Now she smelled soapy and clean.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but they’re going to kill you.”
Suddenly she reached though the bars and grabbed his arm. For a moment he was sure she was about to bite him or scratch him or stick her fingers in his eyes.
But instead she leaned close to him.
Then she spoke—a hoarse, uncertain whisper.
“Help. Me.”
Siry blinked, then flushed. If she could talk, then had she understood everything he’d said? All his complaining about Rayne must have seemed so childish. His life was far easier than life was for the Flighters, starving away off in the jungles on the far side of the island, or wherever they came from.
“You can talk?” he said.
She glared at him.
“But—everybody says—”
She looked out the window. “Help me.” It seemed as though the words didn’t come easily.
“Well…what do you want?”
“Do not.” She looked at the floor. “Do not let them kill me.”
“The tribunal.”
She shrugged, pointed at the guards.
“Do you understand what’s happening here?” he said. “You’ll be tried in front of the tribunal. It’s a group of important—look, if they find you guilty, they’ll execute you.”
She grabbed his collar and pulled him close to the bars. Her eyes were only inches from his. “Rena!” she hissed.
“Huh?”
“Rena.” She tapped her own chest. “Me. Rena.”
“Oh!” he said. “That’s your name.”
She nodded. “Me. Save.”
Their faces were only inches apart. At first he’d been interested in her because she represented something to him—everything that was…out there. Everything that was not Rayne. But now? Now she seemed different. She wasn’t just an idea. She was a person. Maybe not like everybody in Rayne. But still.
“I’ll try,” he said.
She let go of his collar.
Siry found his father at the building where the tribunal met. “So this trial…,” Siry said. “When does it happen?”
“First thing tomorrow morning,” Jen Remudi said.
“What do you think is going to happen?” Siry asked.
“We’ll present the facts. If the facts indicate that she was a raider who came here to break our laws and do us harm—” Siry’s father shrugged.
“Who’s going to defend her?”
“We’ll pick a former member of the tribunal.”
“Annik Neelow? She hates Flighters.”
“We haven’t decided. There are several other people who used to be on the tribunal.”
“Yeah, and most of them are so old they can barely—”
“Look,” his father interrupted, “we have a process. That’s what separates us from the Flighters. It may not be perfect, but it’s what we have.”
Siry came to a decision on the spot. “I want to represent her.”
Jen Remudi looked at his son for a long time. “Son, you’re fourteen. You have no experience before the tribunal.”
“Yeah, but I actually care if she lives or dies!” Siry said. It came out sounding a little more emotional than he wanted it to.
“Ah…,” Jen said, his eyes softening. He stroked his jaw thoughtfully. “Look, I don’t really know how to say this. But you can’t get your hopes up. You can’t get involved with this girl.”
“Involved?” Siry said angrily. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying—”
“There’s more to her than meets the eye.”
“You’re always saying that, Siry,” his father said. “I’m not saying you’re always wrong. But you’re not always right, either. Sometimes things are exactly what they seem to be.”
Siry fixed his eyes on his father, challenging him. “And sometimes they’re not.”
Jen Remudi looked away. “I’ll think about it,” he said finally. “You’re a smart kid. And I know you’ll do everything you can. But I’m not making any promises.”
After his conversation with his father, Siry went to the beach. Several of his friends—Loque, Twig, and some others—were already there, swimming in the surf.
“Hey!” Twig called. “Heard you’ve been over to see that girl we captured.”
Nellah, a blond girl about a year older than Siry, said, “They’re gonna execute her, you know. I don’t see why you’re wasting your time.”
“We’ll see,” Siry said.
Nellah’s eyes narrowed. “Those animals were here to kill us!” she shouted. “Last week May Lonati was gathering fruit outside the village. One of them hit her with a rock and stole all her fruit. If a guard hadn’t happened to show up, the Flighters would have killed her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Come on! Don’t be stupid.” She turned and looked at Siry’s friends. “I mean we all know what’s going on here, don’t we?”
Everyone nodded.
“Siry,” said Loque, “I know you mean well. But Flighters are not like us. They’d destroy our whole way of life just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And they wouldn’t even care.”
Siry’s jaw worked. “So you don’t even think we should defend them in front of the tribunal.”
Loque looked thoughtful.
Before he could speak, though, one of the other kids said, “Let’s be serious. The tribunal is a formality. We all know what has to be done here.”
Siry looked around the circle. “You’re saying if I go in there and defend her, no matter what I say…”
Everyone looked at him without speaking.
Finally Twig shrugged. “Forget her, Siry.” She kicked something that had just rolled in on a wave, a flash of something white in the sand. The white thing flew through the air and disappeared into the boiling surf. “Sea trash. It rolls in, it rolls out. You can’t be thinking about it all the time.”
Siry shook his head. “This isn’t right.”
Everybody looked at him for a minute. Then Twig splashed Nellah, and Nellah splashed Loque, and the next thing Siry knew, all of the kids were swimming around and laughing.
Siry watched them silently. Sometimes he got the feeling that this group could be more than just a bunch of kids goofing around. There was something they could do—together—that would be important and meaningful. But he just couldn’t get a handle on what it was.
He started to make an argument about why the Flighter girl should be saved. But as he watched his friends splashing aimlessly in the water, he knew it was pointless. Now wasn’t the right time for…whatever it was that was building in his mind.
As he thought about what he could do to save the Flighter girl, it struck him that these were his friends, people who actually listened to him (most of the time anyway!). If his friends were this quick to ignore him and to write off the girl, then he could just imagine what everybody else in Rayne would be like.
When Siry got home that night, his father stood in the front door, his face tight with anger.
“Did you do it?” he said. He didn’t raise his voice. Which was always a bad sign.
“Do what?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Jen Remudi had a piece of bright-colored cloth in his hand, which he shook in Siry’s face.
“I don’t!”
“I found this on the floor next to the box where your mother’s clothes are stored.”
Siry said nothing.
“You gave your mother’s clothes to that…that…that…” He couldn’t seem to find a word bad enough to call the Flighter girl.
“Rena,” Siry said. “Her name is Rena.”
“Her people killed your mother!” Jen said. “I’m ashamed of you.”
Siry faced his father. “Rena was a child when that happened. It’s not her fault!”
His father was literally trembling with anger. “I can’t even talk to you,” he said. “I’m afraid of what I might say.”
He stomped off into the house.
“Can I represent her tomorrow?” Siry shouted after him.
His father turned and looked at him. “Do whatever you want. Obviously, you won’t listen to reason.”
“Reason? What do you think this is all about? It’s all about reason!” He was going to add that he was tired of fairy stories and half-truths.
But his father walked away before he could finish saying all the words that felt as if they were ready to burst from his chest.
“The truth can’t hide forever!” Siry shouted. He noticed that now he was trembling with anger too. He wasn’t even sure what he was talking about though. Was he talking about the Flighter girl? Or something else?
That night Siry lay in his bed staring at the thatch ceiling of his room. For a long time he practiced what he was going to say. She was only a girl. She had a name. Look at her. She was clean. She could speak. How was she any different from any other kid in Rayne? He had a lot of arguments to make. He practiced simple phrases, fancy flights of rhetoric, sharp questions, hard-nosed demands…. But no matter how he phrased things in his head, he kept coming back to the expression on his father’s face.
They hated her. They all did. What were they so scared of?
Almost the entire population of Rayne were present. Seated in the front of the space, behind a large table, were the members of the tribunal. Each of them wore a light green uniform with long sleeves and long pants. Their faces were all stern and expressionless. Siry tried not to look too long at Jen Remudi sitting among them.
Rena was ushered toward the front by two large guards. As she walked forward, people in the crowd shouted at her. Her hands were bound behind her. She muttered to herself and occasionally tried halfheartedly to free her hands. But she seemed oblivious to the crowd.
Finally she stopped and was forced to sit. She snarled at the guards, shook herself like a dog, then was still.
The head of the tribunal stood. “As chief minister I hereby convene this tribunal,” he said. “The purpose of this proceeding is to determine whether the accused has violated the laws of the village of Rayne. If, upon the determination of the tribunal, she has violated our laws, she will be punished in accordance with those laws. Lema, please rise and deliver the charges.”
A slim, middle-aged woman stood and read from a sheet of paper. “The accused, Rena No-Last-Name, has been accused with the following violations of law: Raiding. Theft. Aggravated assault. Attempted murder. Trespass. Resisting arrest. Escape…” She droned on for a while, reading off a litany of charges.
Siry felt his stomach turn. His father had agreed to let him speak for Rena. But he wouldn’t have his chance until after Lema delivered her evidence.
After reading the charges, Lema called a variety of witnesses to the stand, including Kemo and several other guards. There were no surprises in the testimony. They simply described how the handful of Flighters had emerged from the sea, run up into the village, turned over a cart full of fruit, and then fought everyone who got close to them. Rena herself had knocked one guard unconscious with a stick, and scratched another across the face so deeply that he had to be stitched up.
Each time a witness concluded his testimony, the chief minister turned to Siry and said, “Do you have questions for the witness?”
Each time Siry replied, “No.”
All told, the testimony took about an hour.
When they were done, the chief minister said, “Siry, you have been appointed to represent the accused. Do you have any witnesses?”
Siry stood up. His legs felt like water and his hands were shaking. He pointed. “I call—” His voice cracked. A couple of girls in the crowd giggled. He cleared his throat. “I call the Flighter girl to the stand.” He pointed to the witness chair.
There were snickers from the crowd. They obviously thought the idea of a dumb brute testifying was absurd.
“Would you, uh, go sit there please.”
After a moment the Flighter girl shuffled up to the seat, flopped down sullenly, and stared up at the sky.
Siry took a deep breath. His heart was beating wildly. Every single person in the village was staring at him. He willed himself to calm down.
“Could you please say your name,” Siry said.
More laughter from the crowd.
“Your name. Please tell me your name.”
Their laughter died out. Rena surveyed the crowd, her eyes narrowed. Finally she said, “Rena. My name…Rena.”
Someone gasped. The crowd stirred. This was unexpected. Apparently no one had ever heard a Flighter talk. After a moment the noise died down.
“Where do you come from, Rena?”
She pointed at the forest. “There.”
“You are being charged with a crime under the laws of Rayne. Do you understand that?”
Rena looked at him but didn’t answer.
“Rena, please answer.”
“Why?” she said.
“Rena. I explained what laws are, right?”
“Laws nothing. Just talk. You want kill Rena? Nothing stop.” She looked at the crowd, then thumped her chest. “Do it. Kill Rena.”
The crowd murmured. “Good idea!” shouted someone. This provoked a great deal of laughter.
Siry looked furiously at the head of the tribunal. “Make them stop!”
The chief minister scowled, then thumped the table with his gavel. “We’ll have quiet!”
Siry turned back to Rena.
“Rena, why did you come here?”
She looked at him as though he were stupid. “Hungry.” She made a circle over her head with one finger. “Here, food.”
“Rena, how old are you?”
Rena shrugged.
“Do you know what a year is? Do you understand numbers?”
Rena said nothing.
“How many summers have you lived through? Five?” He held up five fingers.
Rena rolled her eyes.
“Ten?” He held up both hands, fingers extended.
Rena looked at him for a moment, then shook her head.
“Fifteen?” he said
She held up ten fingers, then four. “This many.”
There was a mutter from the crowd.
“Thank you. You can sit down.”
Jen Remudi said, “That’s it, Siry?”
“Yes,” Siry said.
Lema rose and said, “If I may, let me summarize the charges and the evidence propounded for each charge, such that—”
Siry raised his hand and interrupted. “Uh, is this necessary?”
“Of course it’s necessary,” his father said.
“Well, what I mean is this,” Siry said. “It’s all true.”
The crowd stirred and muttered.
Rena’s head whipped around. “Lie!” she shouted. “You lie! You say you help!”
“Wait, wait!” Siry held up his hands. “If you’ll bear with me—”
“Lie! Lie! Lie!”
“Have her restrained and gagged!” the chief minister shouted. He waited as the guards grabbed the struggling girl and shoved a piece of cloth into her mouth.
When she finally stopped wrestling with the guards, Siry said. “No one can say the facts here aren’t true. She and her friends swam here through rough surf, came up the beach, and knocked over a table. According to the testimony, they managed to steal one mango.” He held up his index finger. “One.”
The crowd stirred restlessly.
“Rena and her friends were immediately surrounded by a bunch of hostile guards. Who attacked whom? Hard to say. What it comes down to is, they started fighting. In the course of the fight, Rena and her friends beat up a couple of guys. In return, three of them were killed, five were driven into the ocean, and then we put Rena in prison, to be executed.”
The crowd was silent. No one moved. A soft wind rustled the trees.
Siry walked across the entire open area. He was starting to feel more confident now. He could feel the crowd hanging on his every word. This was actually kind of exciting, now that he’d captured everyone’s attention.
On the table where he’d been sitting was a beautiful ripe mango. He picked it up, held it in one hand, high in the air. Then he walked back in the direction he’d come, displaying the mango to the crowd.
“One mango. A fourteen-year-old girl treks through the jungle, swims through a riptide, and undergoes the risk of violent death at the hands of trained fighters like my friend Kemo, just to get one of these.”
The crowd was uncomfortably silent.
He shrugged. “Hey, I know what they say about Flighters. They’re not like us. Brutes. Animals. Monsters.” He pointed at Rena. “Does she really look like a monster to you? She even talks a little.” He paused. “I don’t know. I think maybe those Flighters over there are kind of like us.”
The crowd stirred.
“They’re like us…except they don’t have tools, or decent fields for growing food, or boats, or whatever is up there in that mountain that makes the lights work in our houses.” He pointed up at the mountain looming over the village. “I mean we’ve got all the good land over here. Anybody who’s ever been to the other side of the island knows it’s a rocky jungle with bad soil. Rena’s people have nothing.”
The crowd was utterly and completely silent. The only sound was the wind. That and Rena’s soft weeping. Siry walked over to her, pulled the gag out of her mouth. She was sobbing openly now.
“What do we know about these people?” He pointed at the sobbing girl. “Nothing. So how come we’re so sure that we’re better than they are?”
He pulled out his belt knife and cut the cords that held Rena’s hands. He set the mango in front of Rena. She stared at it morosely.
He took a deep breath. He could feel something rising inside of him. A feeling of triumph. He had them now. “I would say, people of Rayne, that if anything makes us better, it’s that we believe in justice, and compassion. We believe in forgiveness.”
Heads were nodding throughout the crowd. Even his father, the hard-bitten Jen Remudi, nodded once.
Siry pointed at the girl. “She’s fourteen years old. Fourteen! And we’re actually standing here talking about killing her? For this?” He picked up the mango. “Maybe if what we’re trying to do here is get justice, then we should take her in, feed her, give her clothes, treat her like one of us. Maybe she’ll never learn to talk properly or think like we do. But maybe we can show her that there is another way.”
Siry walked over, picked up the mango from in front of Rena, then set it on the table in front of his father. He walked over and sat down next to Rena.
The wind stirred the palm trees for a while. And then the people of Rayne began to applaud.
The chief minister found a family who was willing to take Rena in. But she didn’t seem to be settling in very well. She rarely spoke to anyone. In fact, she made no attempts to make friends. She couldn’t read or write, and showed no interest in school. Siry was the only person she spent any time with. And that was more because of his efforts.
Siry tried to take her aside and teach her the alphabet, teach her more words, but she just sighed and rolled her eyes. He wasn’t completely sure why he felt so drawn to her. She was sort of pretty. But he didn’t think about her the way he thought about other girls. It was more as if she were a puzzle, like something he needed to figure out. But the more time he spent with her, the more frustrated he became.
“Look,” he said finally one day after spending an hour unsuccessfully trying to teach her the alphabet. “If you’re going to stay here, you’re going to have to start trying to understand how we do things.”
“Why?” she said. She held up the book he’d been trying to teach her to read. “Can’t eat book.”
“Come with me,” Siry said.
He led her silently down the path from Rayne, up to the base of Tribunal Mountain, which loomed over the village. As they skirted the top of a small cliff above the sea, they reached a large steel door set into the face of rock.
“I can’t tell you everything that’s back there,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t even know. But I can tell you that the smartest people in Rayne all come up here every day and disappear into this mountain. They keep it locked up tight. I mean, let’s face it, you don’t lock up things that aren’t valuable, do you?”
Rena stared blankly at the door into the mountain.
“They’re not gathering fruit, Rena. They’re not fishing. They’re not doing anything like that. But those wires that come into our houses, the ones that make the light so we can see at night? It all comes out of here.”
She shrugged. He had tried to explain about the way lights worked. But she had just pointed at the lights and said, “Magic.” He tried to think of something that would make more sense to her. “Butter!” he said. “Cheese. All those good foods that you can’t just shake off a tree? They all come from behind that door.”
She cocked her head. But still she said nothing, asked no questions. As long as he could remember, Siry had been fascinated by the mountain. Things happened in there that nobody talked about. But the girl just didn’t seem to understand.
“Maybe it’s because you haven’t been here as long as I have,” he said. “Why do they not talk about what they do in there? Why do they pretend like it’s nothing?”
A large tree stood next to the door, a wild grapevine twining up the trunk. Littered on the grass were hundreds of wild grapes. Many lay spoiling on the ground and a heavy, winy smell hung over the place. As the wind stirred the tree, a few grapes fell down onto the ground. Rena walked over, picked up a grape, sniffed it, popped it in her mouth. She chewed it with her eyes closed and smiled. “Mmmmm!” she said.
Siry pursued her. “You’re really not interested?” he said. Sometimes he wasn’t sure how much she actually understood of what he was saying.
“The door’s locked. But I’ve been inside parts of it with my father. The tribunal meets in this huge room here. One time I saw a room that had thousands and thousands of books. I wasn’t supposed to go in there, but I did. I looked in one of the books and it described machines. Amazing machines. I couldn’t even figure out what they did. But they were like nothing I’ve ever seen here.”
Rena sat on the ground and started picking up wild grapes and popping them in her mouth.
“Don’t you have even a shred of curiosity?” he asked. “Why are we different from you Flighters? The answer’s behind that door.”
“No need answer. Already got.”
“Yeah?” Siry smiled. “So tell me. What’s the difference between you and us?”
Rena’s expression was matter-of-fact. “Food,” she said.
“Food?”
“Food,” she said. “You got food. Lots.”
“Yeah, but why? Because we grow crops, that’s why. Because we raise animals that we can eat. Because we have tools that help us with the crops. Because we know how to fertilize the ground and—”
“Us? Flighters?” Rena slapped her chest. “All day. Look food. Look food. Look food. Always. Hungry. Always. Come far”—she swept her hand out toward the water—“find food.”
Siry’s eyebrows raised. “Come far?” So was it true, then, that the flighters came from somewhere farther than the other side of the island?
He wanted to keep her talking, to learn more. Suddenly it felt as if all the questions he’d always had were more relevant than ever, and the answers even closer. “Yes! Right! That’s what I’m saying! There’s a reason.” He pointed at the door. “I don’t know what’s in there. But there’s something. There’s something that’s hidden. There’s something they’re not telling us. Something that helps us make all the food we can possibly eat.”
Rena’s eyes were scanning the ground, looking for more grapes.
“Don’t you want to know more? Don’t you feel angry that things are being hidden from you?”
Rena hunched over, plucked grapes off the ground, stuffed them in her pockets. The grapes left purple stains on her clothing. But Rena clearly didn’t care.
“Why do you think you’re hungry all the time? Because of knowledge! We have knowledge! All the stuff that gives us here in Rayne better lives than you guys who live on the other side of the island.”
“Food?” She pointed at the door in the side of the mountain.
Siry shook his head. “Yeah. Maybe. But that’s not the point. What’s in there is bigger than food.”
Rena walked to the door, yanked on the handle. The steel door was locked and wouldn’t budge. She kept yanking.
“Food,” she said. “Food.”
Siry sighed and shook his head.
“Food?” she said, grapes spilling out of her pockets.
“Yes!” Siry said, exasperated. He felt as if he were talking to a three-year-old. “Yes, I’m sure there’s probably food in there! But there’s all kinds of stuff, stuff that’s a lot more interesting than food. Books. Machines. Tools.”
She continued to stuff grapes in her pockets.
“There’s also magic in there!” Siry said desperately. “Magic things that fly through the air and control the weather and change rocks into fish. Magic that you can use to create endless supplies of food.”
Rena’s eyes widened. Now she looked up from the grapes. “Magic?”
Siry sighed loudly. This was a total waste of time.
Rena’s eyes took on a cunning look. She approached the door, touched it lightly with her fingertips. “Get in? How?”
“There’s a key,” Siry said. “It’s stored in the administration building in the village.”
Rena looked at the door for a while longer. Then she turned and started walking down the path back toward Rayne.
“There’s no such thing as magic!” Siry shouted after her. “There’s only knowledge! Facts! Reason! Understanding!”
But Rena just kept walking, eating grapes out of her pockets.
The next day after school Siry found Rena sitting on the beach, staring out at the sea. He had brought his little bag of sea trash, thinking it might get her interested in reading.
He dumped a few of the items on the sand in front of her. “Look,” he said, picking up half a bottle made from clear blue material. There were raised letters visible on the surface. “See: a-s-p-i-r-i-n. It’s a word. I don’t know what it means. But it means something. Someday I’ll find out.”
She shrugged.
“You can’t live without dreams!” he said. “This can’t be it!” He waved his arms around, taking in the little village, the little island, the strip of sand, the featureless horizon. “There’s more. There’s something bigger. Someday I’ll find it. You’ll see!”
She looked blankly at the little shard of clear material. After a minute she put it in her mouth. She chewed it for several seconds, then spit it out.
“Trash,” she said.
“But what if some trash isn’t really trash?” he said. “What if it seems like trash, but actually it’s a message? Some kind of information or secret. Some kind of knowledge.”
Rena looked out at the sea. Then she turned and pointed up at Tribunal Mountain. “Magic?” she said finally.
“Joke!” Siry said angrily. “There’s no such thing as magic. That was a joke.”
“Give us magic,” she said. “Everybody happy. Make stones into fish.”
Siry put his face in his hands.
She’s gone.”
“What?” Siry was just finishing his breakfast, a ripe mango, as his father walked into the house.
“She’s gone,” Jen Remudi repeated.
Siry was confused. “Who? Who’s gone?”
“Your sweet little friend Rena. She took off in the middle of the night.” It was rare that Jen Remudi carried a weapon. But today he was clutching a short, heavy club—the kind that was carried by Rayne’s guards.
“She’ll be back,” Siry said morosely. “After all, we have food.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Jen said.
“What do you mean?”
“The key to the tunnels in the mountain. She took it with her.”
Siry had a bad feeling, like he’d been standing on a very high platform…and it had just given way. “There must be some mistake. Maybe they misplaced it.”
“The master key is kept in a locked box in the tribunal administration house. The lock was smashed. The key is gone.”
Siry swallowed.
“Siry, why would she do that?”
Siry took a deep breath. “Look, there’s something in that mountain, isn’t there? Nobody will admit it, but there’s something in there.”
“Siry, I asked you a question. Why would she have taken that key?”
“Tell me what’s in there. I have a right to know!”
Jen Remudi’s face hardened. “Son, you’re fourteen years old. There are things you are not ready to know. Things you may never be ready to know.”
Siry felt a flash of anger. “What do you mean?”
“Tell me why she took that key.”
“No! Not till you tell me what’s in the mountain.”
Siry’s father grabbed his hand. He was a large, strong, imposing man. “Do you think I’m here to bargain with you?” Jen Remudi shouted. “Why did she take the key?”
“Tell me what’s in the mountain and I’ll tell you why.” Siry tried to snatch his hand away from his father’s grip and get up out of his chair.
Jen Remudi slammed his son backward into the seat. Siry felt a burst of anger at his own powerlessness. He struggled and wriggled in his father’s powerful grasp. Suddenly the chair gave way, and both Siry and Jen pitched over, slamming Siry’s head on the floor.
For a moment everything went black. Then, as Siry recovered his senses, he saw his father standing over him.
“Look what you made me do!” Jen Remudi said. “Do you think I want to do this to you?”
Siry sat up slowly. There was a sharp pain in the back of his head.
“Why did she take the key?” Jen Remudi demanded.
Momentarily stunned, Siry didn’t have the strength to resist him. He touched the back of his head. It felt wet.
“I told her there was magic inside the mountain,” Siry said. “Magic that you could use to make food.”
He took his hand away from his head. It was smeared with blood.
Jen Remudi sighed loudly, a look of pain crossing his face. He dropped his club on the ground and picked Siry up like a baby. “Why would you tell her a thing like that?” he said softly.
Siry shrugged. “I was just trying to get her interested in something.”
Jen Remudi carried his son to the sink, washed off the back of his head with a cloth. It was an odd sensation lying there, cradled in his father’s powerful arms. On one hand it was comforting. But on the other, it made him feel helpless. And when Siry felt helpless, he felt angry. He wasn’t a little kid anymore.
Siry pushed his father’s hand away. “I’m fine, Dad.”
“Let me just—”
Siry slipped from his father’s grasp. “I’m fine!” he said.
Jen Remudi put his hand on Siry’s shoulder. “Son, look, you meant well. Everything you did, you did from your heart. You tried to help somebody. I’m proud of you for that.”
Siry hated it when Jen said things like that. He shrugged off his father’s hand, then stooped to the floor to pick up the mango he’d been eating. There was dirt on it now. He threw it angrily in the trash.
“Son,” his father continued, “she doesn’t think like we do. I’m not saying she had some big plan to take advantage of you. But that’s what’s happened. She took advantage of your generosity. And now she’s going to use it against us. Against all of us.”
“Why can’t you just tell me what’s in the mountain, Dad?” Siry shouted. “Why can’t you people just be honest? Why do you have to lie? Why do you have to hide things?”
“All right, forget it.” Jen Remudi threw the bloody washrag in the sink. “I try and I try and I try. And you just refuse to listen to anything I say.”
“Lies!” Siry shouted. His head was throbbing. He felt halfway like crying and halfway like hurling himself at his father. “Lies, lies, lies!”
Jen Remudi stuck his finger in his son’s face. “Son, you need to think really hard before you say another—”
Siry’s father was interrupted by a shout. “Flighters!”
Siry and his father both looked up.
“Flighters!” came the shout again. “They’re attacking!”
“Stay here!” Jen Remudi vaulted to his feet, grabbed the heavy club he’d been carrying.
“Flighters!” came another cry. “Help!”
The calls were coming from the edge of the jungle on the west side of Rayne. “Do not move!” Jen shouted. “If they come, hide in the cellar!”
Siry’s father turned and tore off down the street. Siry watched him go with a strange mix of pride and anger as the big man charged down the street with his smooth athletic gait. It seemed like no matter what Siry did, he would always fall short of the mark his father set.
Siry thought about everything that his father had just said. Had Rena really stolen the key that would give away the secret of whatever was in the mountain? Maybe in some little part of his brain, he’d known all along that this was what would happen. Maybe he had actually hoped she’d break in there and reveal whatever secret was hiding inside.
But another part of him didn’t believe she’d betray him. After all that he’d done for her? He’d saved her life! Could she have wandered off into the jungle and betrayed what he told her to the Flighters?
But the fact that the Flighters were here, just a matter of hours after she’d left? The conclusion was pretty hard to escape. His father was probably right. She’d used him. And now everybody in Rayne was going to pay for his stupidity.
Siry’s face burned with shame.
“Flighters!” another voice yelled—closer this time. “Help! They’re everywhere!”
Siry ran to a cupboard. But not to hide. His father had been teaching him the rudiments of club fighting. And, being perfectly modest, he was getting pretty good.
Siry grabbed the club he’d been training with and ran out of the house. He could hear the sound of a raging battle. Screaming, yelling, confusion—it was obvious from the sounds that this was a major attack.
He sprinted toward the noise. As he rounded the corner, he saw several of his friends standing in the middle of the road, looking wide eyed. “What are you standing there for?” he called. “Grab your clubs and follow me!”
The other kids looked at one another nervously.
Sensing that what his friends needed was firmness and leadership, Siry lifted his club and waved it in a circle. “Hurry!” Siry shouted. “We’ve got to help!”
His outburst shocked them into action. Within seconds he was at the head of a wedge of eight or nine boys and girls, all of them carrying clubs. As they sprinted over the small rise on the west side of Rayne, Siry saw an astonishing sight.
There must have been several dozen Flighters—dirty, ragged, hollow eyed. Individually they didn’t look like much. But there were a lot of them. And more important, they had caught the people of Rayne flat footed. The villagers hadn’t had time to form a decent defensive perimeter. A phalanx of guards was holding their own in the center. But flanking the guards were normal people—less well trained, less organized. They were falling back in panic.
People from the village were still arriving. But many of them hadn’t had time to grab clubs. Some of them were armed with only kitchen knives or even just their bare hands.
The Flighters, on the other hand, clearly had a plan. Maybe not a complex plan. But a plan nevertheless. Their tallest, strongest-looking men were in the center. Siry saw the biggest of them, a dark towering giant, locked in furious combat with Kemo. Siry’s father was among the fighters too, swinging coolly and methodically with his club as he called out encouragement and instructions to the guards.
Siry looked frantically to see if Rena was among the attacking Flighters. She wasn’t. Maybe the attack is a coincidence, he thought hopefully. Maybe she hadn’t betrayed him. Maybe she was wandering around in the woods somewhere, oblivious to all of this.
But he wasn’t sure that he really believed it.
“Over there!” Siry shouted, pointing his club toward the far side of the line of attacking Flighters. “We have to turn them back before that flank gives way!”
He led his friends toward the far flank. As the young people arrived, the villagers were wavering under the onslaught of the Flighters.
“Hold the line! Hold the line!” Siry shouted encouragement to the frightened villagers on the flank. “You can do it!”
“Join the line,” shouted Loque.
“No,” Siry shouted back. “We’ll outflank them and roll them back.”
He didn’t wait for assent; he just sprinted around the ragged line of combatants. His friends all followed his lead and charged, howling, into the ragged group of Flighters.
The Flighters were taken by surprise. Siry pounded one desperate-looking Flighter on the arm. The man screamed in pain, dropped his club and staggered backward. Siry engaged another man, tripped him, and hit him twice in the face. The man sagged to the ground unconscious. Within moments the left flank of the Flighters was in disarray.
Siry felt a burst of excitement. His plan was working! He had never quite seen himself as a leader. But now he realized that some of the same qualities his father had, flowed in his own veins.
“Woooooo!” shouted Twig.
“Yaaaaahh!” shouted Loque.
Fighting was a heady mix of complete panic and complete focus and concentration. Siry bared his teeth and hammered away at an opponent. The man’s stick grazed his face. But he barely even felt it. Another stroke of his club broke the man’s stick. His eyes widened and he dodged backward.
The momentum of the battle had began to shift. The sudden arrival of ten aggressive and fearless kids, attacking in coordinated fashion, had thrown the entire Flighter plan off. There were still more Flighters on the field than there were people from Rayne. And the guards were being driven slowly backward. But the flanks of the Rayne line were no longer looking quite so flimsy, and more villagers were arriving every minute.
Siry kept scanning, looking for Rena. He wanted to believe that these people weren’t here because of her. But it just didn’t stand up to logic. Maybe she hadn’t come here with the specific goal of spying on the town. But that’s how it had worked out. The two weeks she’d spent here had given her a chance to see every vital target and every weak point in the village. And now the Flighters were attacking based on the information she had brought back.
But where was she?
And that’s when he realized what was going on. He turned to Twig. “This is just a diversion!” he shouted, dodging a rock thrown by a young Flighter woman. “We have to get to the mountain.”
“But they need us here!” Twig shouted back. Despite the apparent shift in momentum, the fight was still raging.
“If we leave, they’ll—”
Siry shoved a Flighter backward. “Look, there are more of our people coming all the time. They’re going to be okay here. We need to get over to the mountain. Now!”
“The what?” Twig was dodging and weaving as a larger Flighter tried to hit her with a tree branch.
“The mountain.”
Without another word Siry turned and started running toward the trail that led along the cliff and up to the mountain. His heart was pounding and adrenaline was still shooting through his veins.
Only four of Siry’s friends had joined him. The others had apparently decided to stay.
“What are we doing?” shouted Loque as they ran up the path leading to the mountain.
“It’s Rena!” he said. “She has the key to the mountain tunnels. I think she’s leading a raid.”
They pounded wordlessly up the trail, through a stand of palm trees and out onto the small clearing in front of the entrance to the tunnels that ran through the mountain. The clearing stood at the top of a small cliff that hung over the crashing surf.
In front of the door were two guards. And close to ten Flighters.
“Get ’em!” Siry shouted. He and his friends charged toward the knot of Flighters, shouting at the tops of their lungs.
As they charged, Siry spotted two green eyes surrounded by long red hair. Rena seemed to look right through him, almost as though she had never known him at all. He spotted the large iron key in her hand.
One of the guards was bleeding heavily from a nasty cut on his scalp, and the other was barely managing to keep the attacking Flighters away from the door. These Flighters, Siry noted, looked stronger and better fed than most of the ones in the larger battle over by the village. And other than Rena, they were all older and bigger than Siry and his friends.
Instinctively Siry knew that the only way to beat them would be to remain organized. “Shoulder to shoulder,” he said. “Keep tight! There are more of them than of us. But if we keep a tight formation, they can’t attack us two on one.”
The five kids came to a halt near the door, lifted their clubs, and began marching forward. The knot of young Flighters turned to engage them.
“Get in front of him,” Siry called, pointing at the wounded guard.
The wounded guard fell back with relief. It was obvious he didn’t have much fight left in him. Siry and the others began striking at the larger group of Flighters. Though the Flighters were aggressive and angry, it was clear they had no training whatsoever. They flailed wildly. And their sticks were light, flimsy, made of poorly chosen wood.
“Thanks for the help!” the remaining guard shouted.
“It’s not over yet,” Siry said. “Don’t let Rena get to the door.”
And in fact, she was already edging forward, trying to use the Flighters in front of her as cover so she could reach the door.
“If they get inside, they can bar the door and then destroy everything!” Siry called. That was what was at stake, he realized. If the Flighters disabled or destroyed whatever was inside the mountain…Well, he felt sure it would just be a matter of time before Rayne was in nearly as bad shape as the Flighters. And then the more numerous Flighters would probably be able to overwhelm the village.
Several of the Flighters seemed to be hanging back, not all that interested in risking their lives. But the ones in front were committed. They flailed away with abandon. Siry spotted their leader immediately. He was the biggest Flighter, a tall blond young man with a scar running down the side of his face.
Right now the leader was still engaged with the remaining guard. Siry made up his mind to look for an opportunity to take him out.
But in the meantime one of the Flighters leaped forward. His stick came down with a sickening crack on Twig’s shoulder. Twig screamed and fell to the ground clutching her arm.
But Siry managed to use the Flighter’s leap to counterattack. By jumping away from his compatriots, the Flighter had exposed himself. Siry landed two swift blows to the Flighter’s neck, and the Flighter fell to the ground, gasping horribly.
There was a brief break in the fighting. Siry saw that Rena had almost reached the door. “Stop her!” he shouted.
The guard leaped to his right, trying to stop Rena from reaching the entrance. As he did, though, he opened himself to attack from the scarred young Flighter, who swept the guard’s feet out from under him, then hit him in the head. The guard went down like a puppet with its strings cut.
But Siry saw his moment. The fighters had moved closer to the cliff edge as they struggled. If he could time it right…
He charged forward, grabbing the scarred Flighter by the wrist and spinning. It was like a game his father used to play, where he held Siry by the wrist and spun him in a circle through the air. Siry used the bigger Flighter’s momentum to unbalance him and spin him around. The Flighter had to run to keep from being hurled to the ground. Unfortunately for the Flighter, he couldn’t stop in time. His foot went off the edge of the cliff. He fell, a horrified expression on his face, his other knee bouncing off the lip of the precipice. With a scream he disappeared.
The remaining Flighters stared, shocked at the disappearance of their leader. Siry’s friend Loque took the opportunity to poleax one of them in the head. The Flighters looked at one another, then turned, and began to run.
All of them except Rena. She had reached the door and was slipping the key into the lock.
Siry charged her, slammed her into the door, then dragged her away.
The key fell from her hands as he tripped her, knocking her to the ground.
“Kill her!” shouted Twig, clutching her hurt arm.
“Take her out!” the bloodied guard yelled.
Siry fell onto Rena, his club pressed up against her throat. He could feel her body writhing under him as she struggled to escape.
“You need help?” the guard said.
“I’m fine,” Siry said, shoving her back to the ground.
His face was just inches away from her. He jerked his head toward the retreating Flighters. “Follow those other guys and make sure they don’t come back!”
The bloodied guard nodded. He appeared to have recovered somewhat. “He’s right. Let’s go.” He led Loque and the others in the direction of the fleeing Flighters.
Suddenly Siry and Rena were all alone. He was lying on top of her, eyes only inches from hers.
“What’s wrong with you?” he whispered. “I saved your life. I wanted to help you. And you betrayed me. You betrayed everybody in this town.”
Rena laughed harshly. “Weak,” she said. “Think, think, think. Talk, talk, talk. Weak.”
Siry shook his head. “After all I did for you—”
“Talk?” she said. “Words? Books? No! Words nothing.”
“But if you don’t think, you’ll never know what there is to look forward to, to plan for, to believe in.”
“Eat. Sleep. Live.” She paused. “Fight!” And suddenly she had a knife in her hand.
But Siry was stronger and faster than she was. He grabbed her wrist, twisted it, stripped the knife from her.
She showed no sign of surrender, though, writhing and squirming and scratching and biting. He sat up on top of her chest. He could feel the ground shaking beneath him as the heavy waves slammed the bottom of the cliff. Siry hadn’t noticed until he sat up, but they were just inches from the edge now.
And then suddenly, she stopped moving. Her face went blank. She stared up at his face, her eyes empty.
“Sea trash?” she said softly. She waved her free arm carelessly over the edge of the cliff. “Trash only trash.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “It means something.”
She waved her finger at the blue horizon. “Nothing. Out there,” she said. “Nothing. Sea…only empty water.”
She lay limp as a rag under him. His club was still pressing into her neck.
“Go,” she said. “Press hard. Soon no breathe.”
He stared into her green eyes. She didn’t seem to be afraid at all.
“See?” she said. “Weak. Too much words.”
Siry leaned a little harder on the wood, felt her neck yield. It made him feel sick. All of it. Everything that had happened today. He felt as if he could hear every crunch of bone, every split skull, every scream of pain. When he was in the middle of the fighting, it had been just about the most exciting thing he’d ever done. But now that it was over?
His entire body started to tremble. He stood up. His legs were so weak he could barely stand.
“Go,” he said.
Rena didn’t speak, didn’t look at him, didn’t thank him. She just leaped to her feet and sprinted away. In seconds she had disappeared into the jungle.
Siry’s legs gave out, and he fell to his knees. Even that seemed to take enormous effort. He stopped, hung his head down over the side of the cliff.
Below him the waves boiled and thundered on the black tangle of rocks. There was no trace of the Flighter who’d fallen into them.
After a while Siry got his strength back. He stood and looked around. Noticing the key lying on the ground, he stooped over, picked it up, stared at it.
There was writing on the side of the key, letters stamped into it that he couldn’t quite make out. What did it mean?
He held the key in his hand. Then he turned toward the door. Now was his chance! He could do it. He could finally do it. He walked to the door.
Then he paused and stood in front of the large metal door without moving. This was something he had imagined for a long time. But now that he was finally here, he found himself hesitating. What if there were nothing in there? What if Rena were right? What if it were just a bunch of dark tunnels full of spiderwebs and rats and dust?
Finally, though, he extended the key, slid it into the lock.
Before he could turn it, a voice spoke from behind him.
“No.”
He turned. It was his father, shaking his head.
“No, Son. Not yet. Someday, maybe. But not yet.”
Siry took a breath, then another, then another. This was clearly a battle he couldn’t win. Not right now. He left the key in the lock, turned and began walking back toward the village.
He could hear his father slide the key from the lock. Then they walked side by side in silence, following the path back to town. When they reached Rayne, the Flighters were all gone.
After a minute or two a guard, his shirt torn and his arms bruised, spotted Siry. He pointed. Heads turned to look. Siry wondered if he were about to get blamed for the Flighter attack.
Instead, the people on the street began to cheer.
The next day everything in Rayne seemed to have gone back to normal. No one had been killed in the Flighter attack. There were bruises and concussions and a broken bone or two, but nothing more serious. And the Flighters too had melted back into the woods, dragging away their casualties.
Siry went to school, just like normal. At school no one mentioned the attack. But there was a look on people’s faces. Everyone knew that Siry’s leadership and quick thinking had saved the day for the villagers. But he had also caused the attack. Everyone knew both these things. And nobody knew quite what to make of it.
As Siry walked back home after school, he felt the eyes of the town on him. But no one spoke. Not a word.
And with every step he took, Siry felt as if some kind of distance were opening up between him and the town of Rayne. It was as if he were standing on a cliff, and everyone else was standing on the other side of the chasm. Everyone, maybe, except Loque and Twig and a few of his other friends.
He felt a knot of anger building in the pit of his stomach.
When he reached home, Siry walked straight into his room, picked up his precious bag of clues that he’d found on the beach, and dumped the contents onto the floor. For the first time he saw these things as everybody else he knew must have seen them. Not clues at all. Junk. Debris. Scrap. Flotsam. Bits and pieces of unconnected, worthless, meaningless sea trash.
He gathered up his treasures, put them back in the bag, and walked slowly up the path that led to the mountain. When he reached the top of the cliff, he stood and looked out at the ocean. As far as he could see, there was nothing but the limitless blue ocean. Maybe Rena was right. Maybe life was nothing but eating and sleeping and fighting.
He opened the bag, held it up over the side of the precipice, and dumped out all his precious clues. They whirled and spun for a moment, then disappeared noiselessly into the surf.
He felt yesterday he’d come up here as a kid, and left…Well, not quite a man. But close. All his little childish dreams of discovering lost worlds—it was just a child’s fantasy. Rena was right. The world was a harder, emptier place than he’d imagined.
After he was done, he stood there for a while. Suddenly he had the uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching him. He whirled around.
There, standing about twenty feet away, was his father. Jen Remudi had a strange, sad look on his face.
“What!” Siry said.
“I saw what you did yesterday. With the girl? Letting her go?”
Siry flushed, then shrugged.
Jen Remudi approached his son, stood next to him, and looked out at the blank, featureless horizon. “You’re not wrong, Son,” he said. “There is more out there.”
Siry said nothing. For reasons he couldn’t quite understand, he felt mad at his father.
“You wouldn’t have let her go if you didn’t believe there was something more, Son. Something beyond this.” He pointed at the surf smashing fruitlessly at the black rocks.
“What are you talking about?” Siry said angrily.
“There is a great struggle going on. It takes in everything as far as the eye can see. And farther.”
Siry stared mutely out at the sea.
“Come take a walk with me, Siry,” his father said. “I have some things I need to tell you.”
After the long conversation with his father, Siry felt his head was spinning. Travelers. Flumes. Time travel. Saint Dane. The whole thing was completely, utterly unbelievable. For fourteen years he’d been told nothing. And now all of a sudden, this. It seemed like just another fairy story designed to obscure the truth.
Then, at the end of the whole conversation, Jen Remudi had said to Siry that he was going to be “called away” soon. What did that even mean?
“If even half of this is true,” Siry said, when his father had finally wound up his monologue, “then everybody’s been lying to me for my entire life. Why?”
“No.” His father shook his head. “Almost nobody here knows the big picture.”
“I don’t believe any of it!” Siry shouted. “It’s all lies. You’re just making this up to make me feel like there’s more to life than this boring little village and this tiny little island.”
“Son, listen, please, I’m going to be leaving soon, and I don’t want to leave things between us like this. Someday another traveler might arrive, needing your help. It is your destiny to help him. You have to believe me—”
“I don’t believe anything you say,” Siry said. Then he turned and ran away.
That afternoon, Siry went for a walk on the beach. As he skirted the surf, muttering to himself, he saw something glittering in the water.
Out of habit he bent to pick it up. It was a green tube, hourglass shaped, with words formed right in the clear material that it was made from. They had become so worn and pitted that it was impossible to read them. There were a lot of things he’d found over the years that could have somehow been natural objects. But not this. This was clearly made by humans. And it wasn’t something that could have been made in Rayne. He’d never seen anything like it before.
The top was sealed with a soft, flexible stopper of some sort. And there was something inside, something barely visible through the scarred greenish material.
He pulled the stopper open and pulled out a piece of paper. It was folded into a tight square. He carefully opened it, trying not to tear the fragile paper.
His eyes widened. It was a map. Of Rayne…and much more.
Siry’s hands began to tremble. He looked out to the horizon. There was nothing out there. Nothing at all…was there?
He looked back at the map, read the word at the bottom of the piece of paper. “JAKILL.”
As he stared at the word, a plan began to form in his mind. He couldn’t wait to tell Loque and Twig and the others. But as he thought about it, he realized that Rena was right about one thing. Ideas and books and words weren’t enough. This time he wasn’t just going to talk. This time he was going to do something.
This time, things would be different!