She lay very, very still. She’d learned to do this as a seedling—check it was safe before she let anyone know she’d woken up. Too late. He’d seen her stirring.
“So … you’ve decided to return to the land of the living,” he said.
How long had he been kneeling beside her? She smelled weed and Brine’s booze on his breath. He got up and moved a few yards away, sat down, took out a hunting knife, and began sharpening it. The blade glinted in the dim light from a small, battery-powered lamp.
Ji-ji sat up with some difficulty, discovered he’d laid a blanket over her. In the faint light, she could see that they were on some kind of wooden platform with railings and a flight of stairs nearby. She had a tender lump on the right side of her forehead.
She leaned up against the cold stone wall behind her and scanned for an exit. She’d have to slip by him to reach the stairs. Maybe she could trust him? He hadn’t sliced her throat. Hadn’t raped her yet as far as she knew. At least she’d escaped from Brine’s horrifying basement. Had Lua-Dim been real? Was PrettyBlack truly a dead-dead before she’d given him CPR? It had felt so real—realer than real. She pushed it aside. She needed to get her bearings, focus on the here and now.
“Where is this place?” she asked, groggily.
“The shot tower,” he replied. His voice was gruff, unfamiliar. “It’s fairly soundproof, but we can’t take chances so keep your voice down. Greenshirts could be patrolling nearby.”
Weird to hear him refer to the guards as “greenshirts” like he wasn’t one himself. Although it was too dark to discern color, Ji-ji knew he was wearing a planting guard’s olive shirt with the 437th’s crest sewn onto the breast pocket. And she knew the skinny tie he wore was yellow. His accent made her wary again. He’d fooled her before, hadn’t he? Made them all believe he was from someplace in the Territories. Maybe this was another disguise? She found it impossible to merge his face with his foreign accent. It was like talking to the ventriloquist’s dummy the steaders trotted out to entertain seedlings after the Seed Symbol Ceremony. She half expected the old Matty to step out from the darkness and expose the lie.
“But the shot tower’s in a restricted zone. S’been boarded up for—”
“Your head hurt? You feel like throwing up?”
“No. Not much.”
“Good. Probably don’t have a concussion. Your back still sore?”
“No. Not sore like it was before.”
He seemed satisfied with that response. “So … what’s a ‘head of feet’?” he asked.
“What?”
“Kept going on about a ‘head of feet.’ You still seeing ghosts?”
She must have been muttering about a head of wheat. Must’ve been dreaming about Lua-Dim. “No,” she said, more vehemently than she’d intended. “Had a stupid nightmare is all. How long’ve I been out?”
“About an hour, give or take.”
“An hour!”
“Keep your voice down.”
“But that’s way too long!” She attempted to stand but a wave of nausea came over her. “Dawn’s coming,” she said weakly. “We gotta get going.”
“Sit down. Dawn’s always coming. No siren yet, which means they don’t know you’re not tucked up in Brine’s seed box with your little pal.”
Ji-ji didn’t know if he was referring to Lua-Dim or the skeleton.
“How do we escape? You found a way to turn off the fry-fence?”
Instead of responding, Longsby started rummaging through a large duffel bag, checking its contents. She couldn’t identify all the things he pulled out because it was too dark, but she was able to make out a hefty hope-rope coiled up like a snake, some clothes, a flashlight, and something that looked like a screen reader. He’d come prepared.
As she struggled to quell her nausea, Ji-ji rifled through her memory and pulled out things Uncle Dreg had told her about the tower. Hearing his voice in her head calmed her.
Founding Father Bartholemew had transported the seventy-five-foot tower from some place near Austinville and Barren Springs in the Old Commonwealth of Virginia. He’d ordered his followers to reassemble the imposing limestone tower stone by stone. The cropmaster had wanted it to symbolize the steaders’ attachment to history and testify to their forefathers’ ingenuity. According to Uncle Dreg, once upon a time people had made shot by dropping molten lead through a sieve at the top of the tower into cooling water at the bottom. Bartholemew had the tower reassembled near the Lower Creek so the edifice would look like it actually functioned. As time passed, the seeds and steaders had given it different names. Some of the most popular were Big Dick, Middle Finger, and the Pencil. Ji-ji liked the last name best because both pencils and the tower—formerly, at least—used to house lead. Tiro had shot a hole in that theory when he’d told her graphite was used in pencils, not lead. Nevertheless, Ji-ji liked that name. Whenever they spotted the tower, caged inside barbed wire and half submerged by foliage, she liked to imagine botanicals using it as a secret classroom before a progressive successor to Bartholemew founded Planting 437’s legacy school for seeds. She would picture the seedlings sitting in a ring learning about the Cradle, with Uncle Dreg in the middle to guide them. When she was older, Uncle Dreg told her the real story.
After the tower had been resurrected, the seeds who’d labored to build it had been permitted to obtain tower passes and go inside. They could mount the new wooden staircase (the original couldn’t be salvaged) and gaze through the window. From there, they could see over the fry-fence into the wilderness beyond.
“Height is a sorceress,” the Tribal wizard told Ji-ji and Tiro as they sat beside the crackling fireplace in his cabin. “She begets dreams of flight, which is why the steaders fear her. The seeds who were given passes saw the world laid out below them. As they gazed down upon it, a wild yearning to rise put down roots inside their heads. One night, a construction-seed, one of the stonemasons, climbed the stairs to the top of the tower and stood where the window was located. Then, without permission, he leapt. The next year, another tower laborer did the same. Soon afterward, there was a third Unnatural Leaping. For the planting to survive, soaring had to be caged. Cropmaster Bartholemew boarded up the tower and restricted access to the land surrounding it. These days, in the era of Elevation Prohibitions, the only place where seeds can soar is inside the cage. And that is why the shot tower tells a story of deep yearning written in stone. Its long shadow tells time. But one day, that time will be ours again.”
Tonight, Ji-ji felt the truth of that story pulsing around her, as though every seed and every Middle Passenger who had thought about leaping into air or ocean was calling to her to join them. She became one of the seeds compelled to jump, still clutching her tower pass, the slip that would set her Free.
Ji-ji couldn’t see the boarded-up opening when she peered up into the gloom, yet she felt the seeds’ yearning in her throat and lungs. When Matty spoke again, his voice startled her so much she let out a small scream. Matty, as jumpy as she was, leapt up and drew his gun.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You hear something?”
“No. Sorry.… I was thinking.”
“Well don’t.”
“You mad at me?” she asked.
Her question seemed to surprise him. He holstered his weapon and sat down again.
“Not particularly,” he said.
“Who you mad at then?” No response. She tried another tack. “Your voice … it’s different.”
“So you said before you went out like a light.”
“You’re a Cross-Ponder from the Old Country, right? There’s no seeds there, only Freedom.”
“Yeah. The Old Country, as steaders like to call it, is paradise all right. Awash in Freedom and bliss. Sounds as if Zyla taught you all kinds of things. No surprise of course. Zyla gets her jollies from taking risks.”
“Zyla? Miss Clobershay? You knew her?” Ji-ji put two and two together. “Miss Clobershay is a Friend of Freedom! I knew it!”
“Unfortunately, you weren’t the only one who discovered that little nugget. And how many times do I have to tell you? Keep your voice down. Want to let Lotter know you’re hiding out in Middle Finger?” Still angry, he veered back to Zyla. “Zy was a fool. Bitch almost got herself killed.”
“She was good to me—to all of us seeds.”
“And guess who had to pay for Zyla’s goodness? Her Friends, that’s who. Four people died escorting good Miss Clobershay through The Margins.”
The lieutenant reached into his bag, pulled out something wrapped in cloth, and tossed it over to her. “Here. Bread and cheese. Eat. You’ll need your strength. We’ve got a long road ahead.”
“The Salem Outpost is less than thirty miles east, as the crow flies. We can make it in time for the Freedom Race if we—”
“Shut up and eat.”
Matty retrieved some documents from his bag and began rifling through them. When he held them near the lamp, she caught a glimpse of the Territorial seal. Authorization Papers! If he had Papers Proper they could travel through The Margins without fear of Bounty Boys. Was her name on one of them? She was desperate to ask if it was, and if so, how he managed to get hold of the precious documents. But it was clear by now that any inquiry on her part would be greeted with sarcasm or outright hostility. She forced herself to focus on the food instead.
She hadn’t thought she was hungry, but as soon as she bit down on the bread and popped the first hunk of cheese into her mouth she realized how wrong she’d been. Too nervous to eat much of anything at the Last Supper, Ji-ji was ravenous. All she’d had since the bread and honey Afarra had left for her yesterday morning was a few spoonfuls of the Last Supper dishes.
Soon, chewing calmed her; the dreadful feeling of suffocation lessened. Feeling stronger, Ji-ji decided to speak again. If it pissed him off so be it.
“We gotta get going,” she stated. “Meet up with Tiro in Salem in a couple days for the start of the Freedom Race. Won’t get there in time otherwise. Are we heading out soon?”
“We head out when I say so.”
He took a wallet from his back pocket and began counting paper money.
“Are those trade dollars? How many you got?”
“Not nearly enough.”
His reply scared her. Though his irritation grew with every question, she couldn’t be left in the dark again. She’d trained herself to plan everything to the last detail. If she didn’t, she could miss something important—a razor blade left near the pit latrine in the outhouse, or a friend’s C-sectioning need, or where a fly-boy would run to make his Unnatural Leap.… Seeds had to be vigilant, gobble up info and store it for the future. It ambushed you otherwise.
“You think we can make it to Salem in time? It’s not far. I can run most of the way.”
No response. He didn’t even bother to give that callous shrug he’d used around Brine.
She didn’t want to admit to herself how much steaderness there was in his treatment of her. She’d always imagined Friends of Freedom as gentle and kind.
“How come you brought me here?”
Matty glanced over at her. “Shot Tower’s a layover station. An underground tunnel leads here from the Doom Dell.” He couldn’t resist taking another jab. “The entrance to the tunnel’s only a stone’s throw from where you attempted to slit my throat—remember? We came up through a concealed trapdoor in the floor down below. Then I carried you up the stairs to this platform. Don’t fancy doing it again either. You’re heavier than you look. Finish eating that bread and take a swig of this.” He took a long draught from an oversize flask before handing it to her.
“What is it?”
“Nectar. Fruit of the gods. Drink.”
She hesitated for a moment, then raised the flask to her lips. The liquid lit up the back of her throat, then put the fire out. She raised it to her lips and drank again.
“Like mother, like daughter,” he said, and laughed. Mortified, she handed the flask back to him. He rummaged around in his bag, pulled out a bottle, twisted off the cap, and handed her a pill.
“What is it?”
“An analgesic. Extra-strength painkiller.”
“The pain’s not bad right now. I don’t need—”
“Take it. Your back looks like shit.”
How did he know that when he hadn’t removed her clothes for the deep-search? Ji-ji suddenly realized that her tan-and-brown-striped kitchen-seed skirt was gone. Her blouse too. While she was out cold, the fairskin must’ve removed her clothes. She wore a clean seed shift with the customary black-and-white Muleseed symbol. He’d seen everything. Touched everything. And not through her clothes this time. Why not wait till she’d come to and could dress herself?
“You dressed me,” she said softly, meaning, Why did you undress me? You do anything else?
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Trust me, you weren’t tempting. You were a mess—covered in hog’s blood and muck from Brine’s confessional.”
“Hog’s blood? Oh.”
He must’ve faked her bloodletting with hog’s blood. Made sure Brine wouldn’t want to sample her. For a moment, she was grateful. The moment passed as soon as he spoke again.
“Snarlcats’d smell a treat like you a mile off. Stripers too. Don’t worry. I didn’t see anything I haven’t felt before. Now take the bloody pill.”
Ji-ji swallowed the killer down with another swig from the flask because she didn’t want to ask for the water canteen, assuming he had one. Didn’t want to ask him for anything.
Afterward, they sat without speaking. When she couldn’t bear the silence any longer (she kept imagining the whine and stutter of the fugitive siren and the cries of seeds leaping from the window above), she asked him how old he was. She wanted to put him on the defensive, prove he didn’t intimidate her.
“Older than you,” he said.
“You got family back in…” She didn’t want to be ridiculed for calling it the Old Country. “You got family back in England?”
“Nope. But luckily I’ve got thousands of ready-made Friends right here.”
“You mad at me?”
“You asked me that already. No wonder you drove your mam to drink.”
He took another swig from his flask. He had to tilt it way back. Then he took out a weed stick and lit it with a lighter. Greenshirts were notorious for getting high on duty. They had generous weed rations—a way to get them to remain on plantings in the middle of nowhere and do without the company of fairskin women. Matty pulled long and hard on his pacifier as Ji-ji watched the tiny red embers flare. Don’t let him be too high to get me to Salem, she thought. She tried again.
“The fry-fence is livid with volts. I don’t understand how—”
“No point in telling you what’s about to happen if there’s a damn good chance it won’t.”
Ji-ji’s heart fell. “How come you’re helping me?”
“Told you. I’ve got orders.”
“But you don’t seem like—”
“Like what?”
She refused to back down. Steaders had forced her to do that all her life. “Like a Friend.”
“You saying I’m a selfish sonuvabitch? Well, the truth of the matter is, I’m not exactly a Friend. I’m an … associate—what Friends call a Freelancer.”
“What’s that?”
“A private contractor.”
“You mean … fairskins rescue seeds for money?”
“Yeah, shocking, isn’t it? Who knew the world wasn’t all fairy dust and cupcakes?” The liquor and weed had loosened his tongue: “Okay. I can tell you’re not going to let a man smoke in peace, so listen carefully, Jellybean Lottermule, and learn something. Maybe you’ll keep your trap shut after this.” He took another long drag from his weed stick and washed it down with booze.
“The Friends don’t have too many fairskins in their ranks who’ll risk a stint on a planting. It’s a simple transaction. They reward me upon delivery. Just my luck to draw the short straw—twice, if you can believe it—hence the return of the Prodigal Son to his lookalike Lord-Father. Just when I think my bad luck’s about to run out, I was picked to be the backup deliverer of the Friends’ Grand Prize.”
“Grand Prize?”
“You. The Existential.”
Hadn’t he said something earlier, before she fell out, about spying on her and Tiro in the fly-coop? For that reason, and because she knew he would enjoy catching her in a lie, she didn’t bother pretending she’d never heard that word before.
“So that part was true?” she said. “The steaders believe I’m an existential threat. You wrote that in the note you sent to Tiro. You’re not doing any of this cos you believe in Freedom?”
“On the contrary, Jellybean. I believe very much in Freedom. My own, in particular. I’m deeply religious too. I have boundless faith in these.” He grabbed a fistful of dollars and waved them in the air. “I’ll also admit to harboring an antipathy toward steaders. Your father-man’s a case in point. Some of the sick things that bastard’s done don’t bear repeating.… But if you’re asking me whether I’d risk torture and death for no reward whatsoever…” He cocked his head to one side and pretended to ponder the question for a second. “Answer’s no. But I would risk a lot for several thousand SuperState dollars and a one-way ticket to paradise.”
Ji-ji was silent for a while. Her fairskin savior was nothing like she thought he would be. Eventually she said, “Are they right about me? Am I an existential threat to the Territories?”
He shrugged. “Apparently, Dreg thought you were. Christ, he had some weird theories about you.”
“Like what?”
“Sorry, Jellybean. Already got a half-hysterical seed on my hands. Don’t want to exacerbate the situation. Besides, while we’re on the 437th, the less you know the better.”
“But you said in your note—”
“That was Drex Williams said you were an existential threat, not me. Overheard him and Petrus plotting to get rid of you. Had to let my contact know, ’specially as I was charged with angelship over you.”
“Angelship?”
“What the Friends call it. They’re corny as hell. Bloody self-righteous too. Lotter interceded—persuaded Herring not to kill you. By then it was too late. I’d already sent the note to my contact. Assumed it was Dreg. Lo and behold, turns out it’s your fly-boy. Everyone knew the comm was compromised. Absolute moron.”
Ji-ji had forgotten to ask the most important question of all: “Did Tiro escape?” she asked. “Is he safe?” Too late. Matty was done with the conversation.
By now, her eyes had adjusted to the gloom. She studied Matty Longsby to see what she could learn.
He might be two or three years older than she was, but he wasn’t two or three years smarter. Couldn’t control his anger. Smoked and drank too much. Sounded as bitter as her mam. She kept an eye on his knife so she could grab it and slit his throat if he turned traitor. Could she do that? Kill a man who wasn’t exactly a Friend but not exactly a steader either? Seemed like she’d been trying to kill Matty Longsby for months. Maybe the third time would be the charm? But those attempts hadn’t been cold-blooded murder; those had been war. She’d never killed anything except a few chickens and a piglet once for a roast. The poor piglet saw her coming and got scared. Fear and her clumsy killing soured the meat—or so Crabstreet claimed. Dip had volunteered to do the kitchen killing after that. Said strangling a chicken or slicing the neck of a goat relieved her of her murder-thirst.
Matty looked at his watch—her watch. On his wrist it looked ridiculous. He must’ve punched another hole in the braided leather strap Uncle Dreg had made—the only thing she had to remember the wizard by. She doubted Matty would give it back to her. “In fifteen minutes we leave,” he announced.
A noise down below, in the well of the tower!
In spite of the weed and booze, Matty was on his feet before Ji-ji had time to blink, his gun drawn. Another noise, followed by a shuffling! “Shit!” he whispered. “Get under the blanket and stay quiet. If you get the chance, make a run for it. We got someone waiting to switch off the fence.”
Someone was waiting for them. A Friend at the fry-fence. But it was too late! They’d been discovered! If she couldn’t make a run for it, she knew what she had to do. Climb up to the window, rip the boards off with her bare hands, and leap into the night. Better to fly for an instant than endure what Lotter and Brine would do to her. Then she remembered Matty’s hunting knife. She could grab it and help him fight them off. She was Toteppi. She couldn’t leave him to fight alone.
A door creaked open. The trapdoor he talked about? Must be. Doom clambered up through the tower as Ji-ji readied herself to grab the knife from Matty’s bag. The lieutenant cussed under his breath as he gripped his handgun. The steaders would take their time torturing him, burn an F onto his cheek, castrate then hang him. Matty’s fate would be even worse than hers.
He didn’t wait for them to ascend. Keeping his wits about him, he demanded to know who was there: “S’that you, Casper?” he yelled down in his lieutenant’s voice. “Lotter send you?”
He strode to the top of the wooden stairs and peered over into the well of the tower. All movement stopped. Three seconds of silence. Four.… The silence was broken by a female voice.
“Lucky? Lucky Dyce?”
“What the hell…?” he exclaimed.
Ji-ji knew that voice almost as well as she knew her own. Ignoring the pain in her back, she jumped up, tore over to the stairs, and shoved Matty aside. Before he could stop her, she leapt down the narrow wooden stairs two and three at a time till she stood before the parrot.
“You betrayed us!” she cried. She leapt at Silapu, knocking the flashlight from her hand. It clattered to the ground. She grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled.
Two strong hands grasped her from behind and pried her away. While she struggled to Free herself from the lieutenant’s grip, she spotted another intruder, climbing up through the trapdoor. The parrot had brought reinforcements!
Matty saw the figure too. He flung Ji-ji to the floor and reached for his handgun.
“Don’t shoot!” Silapu cried, leaping between the gun and the intruder.
Ji-ji stared into the gloom in amazement. The intruder stared back.
“Dip!” Ji-ji exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Wild Seedin’ it with you an’ Sila.”
“But … I don’t understand…” Ji-ji said.
Matty’s gun was still aimed at Dip’s head. “Keep your voices down! Who’s she?”
“She is with me,” Silapu told him. “She is coming with us.”
“Like hell she is,” Matty said, but he lowered his gun.
Silapu approached her daughter and wiped her wet cheeks with her sleeve. She took Ji-ji’s face in her hands and kissed her on the forehead.
“I am no parrot,” Silapu said. “I am Toteppi. And so are you. And now, we must hurry.”
“Who’s Lucky?” Ji-ji asked.
“He is,” Dip said, nodding over at Matty. “An’ so are we. Sila told me, an’ Uncle Dreg told her she could trust him.”
Silapu turned to Lucky and said, “Dreg told me your name and where to find you and Ji-ji if everything went south. One of the things he decided to tell the truth about, yes? He told me how to find the entrance to the tunnel too. This is my friend Dip. She is coming with us.”
Dip stepped forward. “You don’t remember me, do you, Lieutenant? Dipthong Spareseed. I helped you hold Ji-ji back when she was on a suicide mission in the dining hall. Used to be a kitchen-seed but I just self-promoted to fugitive status.”
The lieutenant said he decided who got promoted and who didn’t. Dip was unfazed.
“Seeing as how we’re baptizing ourselves, you can call me Donna from now on. Sloppy’s picked Delilah for her race name—thinks it’s better suited to a runner rep. I decided to pick one too. Don’t want to embarrass Delilah in Dream City with a Dipthong.”
The lieutenant lit into Silapu: “Dregulahmo told you about this place? The old man wasn’t supposed to disclose my name or the layover station. It’s a breach of protocol.”
“Dreg did not want you to shoot me,” Silapu said simply. “You can punish him later.”
“You know how close I came to blasting your head off?” He holstered his gun, said, “The Tainted stays behind.”
Dip, who was carrying a potato sack filled to bursting, dropped it to the floor. “Well, you gotta shoot me first cos I’m not staying on the 437th, not without Slop. Knew Sila was up to something. Felt it in my bones. Packed my sack an’ went to find her. An’ there she is on her way out the door! It’s destiny.”
“You realize you could’ve been followed?” Matty told Silapu before turning his attention to Dip again. “You’re too fat to run. You’ll never make it.”
“Don’t you worry ’bout me, Mr. Lucky. I can keep up with the best of ’em if I got search hounds on my tail.”
The lieutenant turned his back on them in disgust and bounded back up the stairs.
“Where’s he off to?” Dip asked.
“Probably going to get his bag,” Ji-ji replied.
“Hmm,” Dip continued, speaking softly so he wouldn’t hear her. “Don’t seem like the Friendly type to me. He been drinking? Got that liquor breath. An’ some powerful weed too. You smell it, Sila? Seems jumpy. Let’s hope we don’t got ourselves a dud. Guess we gotta believe the Oz knew what he was doing when he chose him.”
Ji-ji addressed her mam: “You’re not a parrot then?”
Dip, who always spoke a lot when she was nervous, leapt in: “She played parrot all right. But Dreg put her up to it. Told her it was Zaini the steaders was after, only it was Tiro. An’ your mam’s forgiven the wizard, pretty much—right, Sila? Not cussing him out near as much. Sila’s got some shockers to share. Been confidin’ in me along the way.”
“I tried to catch up with you in the dining hall,” Silapu told Ji-ji. “Let you know about Brine and tell you about plan D. Dregulahmo and Billy did not leave anything to chance—is it not so? They anticipated that Billy may be punished after Tiro escaped.”
“Plan D,” Ji-ji repeated, dumbly. “But … how come everyone kept me in the dark?”
The lieutenant was descending the stairs. He paused on the landing to check the contents of his duffel bag again.
“See, I told you,” Dip-now-Donna said, glancing over Ji-ji’s shoulder and nodding up at the lieutenant. “Luck’s perched on your shoulder. Looks like he don’t plan to fly off anytime soon.” She lowered her voice again and added, “Think I’ll ask him about the route. Check he knows what he’s doing. He’s awful young an’ drug-sopped. Don’t want to find ourselves in the fire after we just leapt from the fry pan.” Dip hurried off to speak to him.
Ji-ji began to apologize to her mam, said she would never have attacked her like that if she’d known. Silapu put a finger on her lips and told her to hush. She would need all the strength she could muster to survive in The Margins. Ji-ji began to suspect her mam had taken some of those uppers she’d gotten from Lotter. She had the glazed look she got when she was high. If she came down from it too fast, her fear could take over and things could get dicey. Ji-ji prayed that wouldn’t happen before they made it safely over the fry-fence.
“Think we’ll make it over the fence?” Ji-ji whispered. “He said there was someone waiting. Matty—Lucky, I mean—he’s not a real Friend. Uncle Dreg tell you that?”
Silapu nodded. “Beggars are not choosers, Ji-ji. And he is real enough for our needs, yes? Dreg chose him for this task himself. He knew his father—or was it his grandfather? Yes, I think it was the grandfather he knew many years ago. Dregulahmo said this Lucky Dyce would rise to the challenge. Even so, it is a gamble—excuse the pun.”
Ji-ji nodded. “He doesn’t like seeds much.”
“He does not need to like us,” Silapu said. “Lucky is not for the long haul. All you need him to do is get you to Salem. After that, Dregulahmo said there are Friends among the race monitors.”
“Not me. Us. You can be a Wild Seed too. Uncle Dreg tell you about that?”
“Yes. Dregulahmo explained this Wild Seed business. It sounds risky.”
“You’re coming to Salem, Mam. I can’t lose you again.”
Ji-ji paused, scared to ask the next question. After a moment she said, “Did Tiro escape?”
Silapu smiled, and it seemed to Ji-ji that her mother had never looked so exhausted and so powerful at the same time. “What took you so long to ask about your foolish fly-boy? Yes. He escaped. A little bird saw him go.”
Ji-ji felt a great weight fall from her shoulders. There was so much hope being pumped into her she was scared she’d balloon up and float clean away. “And Afarra?” Ji-ji asked.
Silapu shook her head. Ji-ji sank back down to earth again.
“The Cloth never returned after the Last Supper. Do not worry. If you still want her, you can petition for her after you win. They will let her go for very little. No one cares about a Cloth.”
Ji-ji was about to say she cared very much when the lieutenant interrupted them. He ordered them to stop gossiping and get moving.
“Three gossipy tails. Christ! What did I do to deserve this?”
“You met Dregulahmo,” Dip replied.
“Yeah. And wound up with you lot. Aren’t I the lucky one?”
Dip barreled right through his sarcasm. “Don’t worry. You got me and Sila to help you now. Been thinking ’bout all o’ them D’s. Dreg was the first. Then there’s Delilah, Dip-Donna, Dyce, plan D, Destiny.… Strictly speaking, Destiny was first. An’ last too. Looks to me like D takes the cake as the luckiest letter in the alphabet.”
Ji-ji didn’t remind Dip that she and her mam weren’t D’s. Tiro and Afarra weren’t either.
“Get a move on, for Christ’s sake,” Lucky said. “Unless you want the D to stand for Dead.”
Dip laughed. When he was out of earshot, she whispered to Ji-ji, “He sure does talk funny. Like those missionaries visited the planting last year, remember? Glad I ain’t got a accent like that. It’s a handicap, if you ask me. Sounds like he’s got a mouthful o’ hard-boiled eggs.”
Ji-ji looked around one last time as she descended through the trapdoor and down the ladder. The planting shot tower, disconcerting though it had been at first, had turned out to be a place of miracles. For the first time it occurred to Ji-ji that Tiro might have taken refuge here recently too. She wished she’d thought of it earlier; it would have made things less spooky and depressing. Depressing—another D word. Drol too. She pictured the strange creature they’d seen in the Doom Dell (more D’s). Had he managed to escape?
The four began their journey down the narrow tunnel with only Lucky’s and Silapu’s flashlights showing them the path ahead.
Dip-now-Donna, barely able to contain herself, said, “Approaching Freedom at last! Bet this tunnel runs all the way to the fry-fence—right, Mr. Lucky?”
“Wrong,” he shot back. “Shut up and keep moving. You’ll get us all killed with that blabbing tongue.”
“Guess he plans to circle back,” Ji-ji assured Dip, hoping she was right.
“Hope he knows what he’s doing,” Dip-now-Donna said, “cos he’s the only one in possession of Plan Dreg. If he screws up, it’s lights out for all of us.”
Ji-ji glanced back down the tunnel. She thought she heard something rolling toward them through the dark. A wailing sound.… No, not anymore. It had changed to the sound of paper flapping in the breeze.… Feet pounding the earth.… No. That wasn’t it. At last Ji-ji identified it with certainty. The haunting sound was Sylvie’s purple tears as they collided against each other during a storm. “Ji-ji!… Silapu!” the tears wailed over and over again. She refused to see it as a bad omen. Maybe Sylvie was trying to tell her that Lua-Dim was right, that Ji-ji Silapu was her name?
“Come, Ji-ji,” Silapu said. “Our littlest blackbird is waiting for us to rescue him. Listen! Can you hear him wail for us? We will find him together, is it not so? Come!”
Silapu took her daughter’s hand in hers. When did Mam’s hand become the same size as mine? Ji-ji thought. She had no answer as the Freedom seekers rushed on through the dark.