Enu and Kiandra yanked me back into my seat on the couch, but not before I’d managed to scream out, “What caused the war in Cursed Town? Why—”
Enu clapped his hand over my mouth.
“Edwy is . . . working on a project for school,” Kiandra said faintly. “And, you know. He wants to make sure all his facts are . . . accurate.”
I squirmed against Enu’s grasp, but he was much, much stronger than me.
“Your school requires a project about . . . about our town?” our mother moaned.
I bit Enu’s hand, and that made him pull it away for a moment.
“I just want to know the truth!” I cried. “What really happened?”
On the computer screen my father sat up straight.
“That’s my boy,” he said, as if I’d done something to be proud of. “Would that school of yours tell you what really happened to us? Would they tell the story the right way? You are all old enough to know.”
Just past the laptop I’d seen Udans start to lunge for me, but now he pulled back. He started grimly shaking his head. On the computer screen our mother was doing the same thing.
“We are old enough to know the truth,” I agreed with my father. “We’re old enough to know everything.”
Beside me Enu seemed to be imitating our father’s technique of making his face as hard and emotionless as stone. I glanced toward Kiandra to see if she was doing the same thing, but she was reaching for a pad of paper nestled in the food wrappers of the end table. (It was off camera, so none of us had bothered to clean up that mess.)
“I’ll take notes,” Kiandra said. “That way Edwy can just listen.”
On the screen our father leaned forward.
“You have to go back several generations to understand,” he said.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Kiandra murmured.
I glanced at the notepad braced against her lace-covered knees. She was just doodling now, drawing a row of frowning faces with Xs for eyes.
“Once there was a tribe of men too mighty to stay in one place,” our father intoned in a solemn voice. “Those were our ancestors.”
Kiandra seemed to be writing more than our father had said. I glanced down; she’d scrawled, It was a tribe of men and women. The women were important too.
She was still writing: . . . and, really, they were probably just too poor to own any land. So that’s why they became nomads.
“Our people wandered the Earth, learning new customs and skills everywhere they went,” our father continued.
Stealing, pillaging, slinking away in the dark of night . . . appeared on Kiandra’s notepad.
“And our people were admired for their fierceness and beauty everywhere they went,” our father said. “But they were like chameleons. Their appearance as a people changed, depending on where they went. When they went to the north, their skin became lighter and their hair straighter. When they went to the south, their skin got darker and their hair curlier.”
He’s making it sound all mysterious, but that’s what happens when people intermarry with other tribes with different traits. It’s genetics, not magic.
“But always, our people were known for their striking green eyes,” our father said.
Now, that was probably a genetic modification. Green eyes wouldn’t normally have been dominant, Kiandra wrote. But he’s going to act like everyone in our tribe had them, no matter what.
“It was amazing,” our father continued. “Every child of our tribe had those stunning green eyes.”
See? Kiandra wrote. They probably gave away any child without green eyes.
I automatically touched my face, as if I needed to point to my own eyes. I’d never really thought about it—who cared about eye color?—but my eyes were greener than Enu’s or Kiandra’s.
Does that mean my parents think I’m more valuable? I wondered. Because I’m more like our amazing ancestors?
Any Fred would have been horrified that I was thinking that way. In Fredtown they’d said again and again (and again and again and again, until I wanted to puke) that it didn’t matter what anyone looked like. What was important about any human beings was what they thought, how they acted, what they did, how they treated other people. Things that weren’t just skin-deep.
But I’d lived a day and a half in Cursed Town. I’d lived a week and a half in Ref City.
I knew now: Outside Fredtown not everyone thought like a Fred.
“After many a generation, after traveling for centuries and absorbing the wisdom and skills of the rest of the world, our ancestors decided to return to their homeland,” our father went on.
Probably they were kicked out of every other land, Kiandra wrote. Because of the pillaging and stealing wives. Bad ancestors!
My stomach twisted. What was wrong with Kiandra, that she had to make our father’s story into something awful? Maybe our ancestors had been noble and wise. Maybe they’d even been magical, with their extraordinary green eyes.
“When our ancestors got back to their homeland,” our father said, “they found that outsiders had invaded and taken over.”
Kiandra wrote something on her notepad, but I didn’t look at it this time.
“Our ancestors nobly tried to share everything they had learned in their travels,” our father said. “They tried to show the interlopers better ways to grow crops, better ways to build houses, better ways to raise their children.”
“But the intruders, they were stupid and cruel,” our mother said, adding to the story for the very first time. “They, they . . .”
“They killed our people,” our father said. “Just because they were different. They killed my parents and grandparents. And my brothers and sisters.”
I jerked back. It was that word, “killed.” Could people really kill other people? Was that what happened in a war?
And how had my father skipped from talking about ancestors and ancient tribes to the death of his parents and grandparents and siblings? To his generation, just one generation before mine?
I couldn’t look at Kiandra’s notepad. I couldn’t look at Kiandra or Enu. I couldn’t even look at my mother and father, on the computer screen right in front of me.
“O-kay, then,” Enu said. “You answered Edwy’s question. Thanks. I’m sure that’s all he really needed to know. I bet you two have lots of things to do today—we’ll be so happy to talk to you the next time. . . .”
Enu squeezed my arm, as if that could stop me from asking any other questions. He needn’t have bothered. I couldn’t speak. If I’d opened my mouth, I might have thrown up or wailed.
“That was not the end of the story,” our father said sternly. “It was only the beginning. This went on for years, a raid here, a raid there, always ending in bloodshed. And then—”
“Oh dear,” Kiandra interrupted, her voice unnaturally loud. “I think there’s something wrong with our connection. The sound is going in and out. . . .”
The sound wasn’t going in and out. But Kiandra reached for the computer as if she needed to fiddle with the volume control or some other setting.
“If something happens and we get cut off, remember,” Enu said, “just remember, we love—”
Kiandra touched something on the keyboard, and the screen went black. Enu stopped speaking and sagged back against the couch.
“What was I saying?” he asked. “Oh, right—we don’t care about you at all. You’re nothing to us.”
“They’re so awful,” Kiandra said. “Always wanting to prove their side was right in the war . . .”
My parents’ image was gone, so I didn’t have to look at them anymore. I still couldn’t look at Kiandra or Enu. I didn’t want to look at anyone or anything.
But Udans leaned down in front of us, his eyes meeting mine, and I couldn’t look away. His face was as rocklike now as my father’s had ever been. His scars seemed etched into his skin. My stomach heaved. Those scars probably had been etched into his face during the war. With a knife. Or a sword. Or bullets.
“You three are the most selfish, ungrateful children I have ever seen,” he said.
Enu jumped to his feet. For a minute I thought he was going to punch Udans. Instead he just glowered at Udans, practically nose to nose.
“We don’t care about our parents’ stories, Udans,” Enu said. “We don’t care about yours. The past has nothing to do with us.”
Kiandra grabbed my face and jerked it toward her, so she and I were eye to eye.
“Don’t ask questions like that ever again,” she commanded.