The gift on her sleeping mat reminds Afarra that death is not everlasting. Her friend Uncle Dreg told her that and he was right.
If Sylvie hadn’t sung to her this morning, Afarra would have wept to see her friend’s head shattered, his one remaining eye staring-staring-staring.… But Sylvie with her pretty purple tongues told her not to cry.… He will rise for certainty, Sylvie said. Look for your friend. He is already on his way.
And here is proof waiting on the sleeping mat in the shed out back near the outhouse where Afarra sleeps most nights when Missy Ji can’t sneak her into her bed—something she does whenever Missy Sila is passed out behind the quilt Missy Z made to tell them the way.
So many lessons from the wizard. She must remember every one, count them off like the forget-me-not treasures she keeps in a wooden box Tiro made for her and Ji-ji painted with forget-me-nots—treasures inside a treasure. Inside the box the red bow.… Not demon-red like Inquisitor’s robe or dead-red like the wizard’s (don’t look!) blood. Pretty-red like tomatoes. Missy Sila ripped off the tomato bow but Missy Ji found it and presented it to her in the beautiful box. Inside the box in a real plastic bag, dried orange peel—Guard Matty’s gift, Freely given. She keeps her forget-me-nots in order so she can remember when wonderful things happen and go back in time by touching each one. The other times she makes herself forget. She can forget anything if she labors at it cos she can turn herself on and off like a light switch when Fear approaches—become Not Here, Not Now.
When Fear calls her a filthy-stinking-Cloth or beats her like a rug, she is someplace else—sitting under Sylvie, or lying with Ji-ji in her warm bed, or bathing in the whisper-sparkle river. It’s a clever trick she’s mastered. It explains why Cloth-33h/437 isn’t there whenever Fear barges in, taking up all the space in the shed as he shoves Not Here, Not Now to the edge of the sleeping mat. Sometimes Fear is a tall skinny seed with sandpaper hands and a dirty mouth; sometimes Fear’s a heavyset steader who wants to sample something not yet bled. That’s how come he’s willing to demean himself, he says, and do it with a Cloth.
Missy Ji who isn’t scared of any damn thing in the world caught that steader and chased him away with a stick. Here is a part of the stick, her next treasure, right there under the orange peel. The steader is giving Missy Ji a black eye for interference but Missy Ji is saying she doesn’t give a rat’s ass cos she’s the chief kitchen-seed and she will be reporting him to her father-man for unauthorized mating without a mating slip if he tries that shit again. And the steader is telling her fairskins don’t need no fuckin matin slip to sample a fuckin cunt Cloth. And Missy Ji is saying tell that to my father-man an’ use those exact same words an’ see what he does to you! An’ don’t come sniffing round here again! (Afarra wants to say the steader wasn’t sniffing and neither was she, but words don’t grow in her mouth like they grow in Missy Ji’s. Not Here, Not Now holding her breath so she wouldn’t smell his spurt on her belly this time. A hard thing to describe so she doesn’t.)
Some important lessons Afarra has learned. On a planting always the plow. Fear may look different but he is always the deep-down same. “Hope is you,” the wizard said. “Remember.”
During the bad times, Afarra does not say to herself I am being plowed. She doesn’t think about it. If she did, her seed canal would be furrows and grooves and ruts and potholes, and she likes things smooth and pretty.… Fly-boy Tiro is pretty. Nice ears … kind. Missy Ji doesn’t know—no one knows—that Tiro stood guard outside the shed for two whole weeks after Missy Ji told him about the steader she chased away. He kept Afarra safe and the steader never bothered her again.
Afarra looks at her gift. She doesn’t know who left it on her sleeping mat, but her suspicion is Sylvie. Or Uncle Dreg the Dimmer. Or Tiro. Or Missy Ji. Or one of the quilt birds. Either way is not a problem because she has never had a gift as wonderful as this in her entire life—a gift that changes everything! She takes a deep breath and reaches for the necklace, slips it over her head.
If Fear comes, he will see the scary wizard staring with his many eyes and run the fuck away like a chicken. She will laugh to see him run. She will grab a stick and beat his ass to pulp. She is Afarra from afar and she is holding in her hands the world’s greatest treasure. A secret. Her secret.
She has never felt so powerful before.
“You do not run tomorrow, you hear me, Jellybean?” Silapu pulled the pick impatiently through Ji-ji’s hair. She hadn’t attempted to domesticate it in years and it wasn’t going well. “You must be presentable for the harvesting,” Silapu added. “You look like a scarecrow.”
“But I gotta practice, Mam. Ratification is less than three weeks away. Ow!”
“You think I am stupid, yes?” Silapu’s Toteppi accent became more pronounced as her irritation grew. “You will ignore the prohibitions and make a beeline for that beat-up fly-coop where that fool fly-boy loops through the air like some buzzbuzz.”
“Buzzbuzz drones don’t loop. I saw one on a hunting trip. They fly in a straight line. More to the point, Brine has hardly any guards. Too miserly to pay them. An’ there’s no way Stinky Brine will catch me. He’s blind as a bat and deaf as a post. Pees every few minutes. Has to be near a bathroom or an outhouse.”
“And if he catches you, he will haul you off to PenPen.”
PenPen. A wave of guilt washed over Ji-ji. Telling her mam why she was late to the Culmination meant admitting she’d been with Afarra on a forbidden. Silapu would hit the roof, beat Afarra bloody if Ji-ji wasn’t there to stop her. Adamantly opposed to the idea of her Last&Only competing in the race, Silapu would intensify her opposition if she discovered that a new class of mutants existed—if that’s what Drol was. Matty hadn’t parroted—not yet anyway. Ji-ji learned from her mam who learned it from Lotter that, in addition to continuing her service as chief kitchen-seed for the planting, she would continue serving as Lotter’s personal cook. Lotter had relocated to Cropmaster Hall, a dour edifice on the top of Bart’s Mount. He scorned the stodgy dishes made by Dumpty Herringseed, the former cropmaster’s eighty-year-old cook, and wanted Ji-ji to continue cooking his meals. It was a lucky break. With so little time till the Race Ratification Ceremony, Ji-ji could keep her ears and eyes open at Cropmaster Hall, make Lotter his favorite meals (assuming she could get hold of the right ingredients) and plead her case if she got the chance.
In anticipation of what lay ahead, and in mourning for what lay behind, Ji-ji could barely sleep and had to force herself to eat. She’d bitten her fingernails to the quick. Had spasms in her back too. She hid the pain from her mam, who was desperate for any excuse to tell Lotter she wasn’t raceworthy. If only she could see Tiro at Lua’s harvesting this morning. The strict prohibitions Lotter had placed on inter-homestead movement meant she hadn’t seen him since Death Day. Unlike the female runners, the male flyers had a special dispensation to practice, so she knew she’d find him in the flying coop practicing with Marcus. He would be there today, unable to attend Lua’s harvesting. The thought of seeing sweet Lua in her coffin without Tiro there for support gutted her. But his recklessness scared her even more. He could be in a downward spiral of vengeance. All seeds knew that vengeance pain was the kind most likely to result in catastrophe. She and Tiro had always planned to race together. They knew they’d be separated most of the time—males in the fly-coops and the sprints, females in the marathons. It didn’t matter. Living the dream inside Dream City meant nothing if they couldn’t do it together. However much Silapu objected, Ji-ji would run the six miles to the flying coop on Brine’s homestead before dawn tomorrow to check on Tiro. If she stuck to the quieter permissible paths she’d be okay.
Ji-ji wished Silapu had chosen a less inconvenient time to reprise the role of Mam. Silapu wasn’t oblivious to a damn thing anymore. Sober for three whole days—the longest period of sobriety since Bonbon’s snatching—she was eerily alert and watched Ji-ji like a hawk. Funny how much Ji-ji had yearned for a sober mam again, prayed for it each night when she wasn’t pissed at God. Now it had happened at last, proving the old adage “Be careful what you wish for.”
Ji-ji took another crack at persuading her mam: “Marcus says Stinky Brine’s too miserly to hire many guards. Says there’s no chance of getting caught if you trespass on—”
“Marcus Shadowbrookseed is a dandified drug-sop! Smokes more weed than a steader guard! Emmeline Shadowbrook spoils him. Juvis like him wind up swinging from Sylvie’s branches.”
Ji-ji moaned aloud. Silapu stopped attacking her hair. “What is wrong?” she asked.
“I see him, Mam. After that bullet tore into his skull.… In my dreams. Lua too. She wanted to call him Silas, after her brother.… So pretty.… Could’ve been Bonbon’s twin almost.”
Silapu listened intently. For Toteppi, dreams weren’t mere fantasy; dreams were windows, guides, mysteries to unravel.
Ji-ji replays the nightmare she’s had three nights in a row, ever since Death Day.
Dead-eyed Lua clutches her deadborn. Not Silas but a miniature version of Uncle Dreg. His skull is open like a lid, brains spilling out—pink oatmeal and cottage cheese. Lua tells her no one in Dimmers Ditch has been able to revive her seedling. At that moment, the deadborn’s eyes spring open, scaring Ji-ji half to death. In his grandfatherly voice, Infant Dreg tells Ji-ji only the living can fix the dead and only the dead can fix the living, after which he asks if she will do him a favor. Can she gather up his blown-out brains and carry them home to the Rememberers before they forget for good? Next thing she knows, Infant Dreg turns into a full-size Uncle Dreg, who turns into Lotter, who commands her to stop fucking around. (Which proves she’s dreaming cos Lotter only swears when he’s drunk or high, and in the nightmare he’s cold sober.) Three seconds later—or is it three days?—she’s swinging back and forth from one of Sylvie’s branches. She turns her head and sees Tiro swinging beside her. Tiro keeps his head, but his body turns into Circus the Pomeranian’s. She looks to her other side and sees Afarra, who is smiling. And dead. She expects the branch to break like it did at the Culmination and save them all. Bettieann is below, waving a tiny pair of shears in the air and singing, “When the bough breaks, the Wild Seeds will fall. Snip! Snip!” Only the bough doesn’t break and the rope cuts into her neck … choking her. Above her, filtering through the leaves, she hears Sylvie whispering. A singer’s voice (her own? Uncle Dreg’s? Lua’s?) orders her to decipher Sylvie’s language. “She’s the key to everything,” the singer says.
At that point in the nightmare, Ji-ji wakes up. She hasn’t included all these grisly details—can’t bring herself to recount them. But she’s conveyed the gist of the dream to her mam, who has taught her dreaming isn’t a pastime, it’s a path outside of time.
Back in the here and now, Silapu laid the pick on the table. She slipped her rough, chapped fingers under Ji-ji’s chin and tilted her offspring’s face up toward her own. Ji-ji caught a glimpse of the ridged scar on her mam’s wrist from the time she slit them. Even after years of abuse, Silapu is still beautiful, with her rich brown skin, high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, and full lips. Lotter, who prizes female beauty, has been careful not to leave any marks on his favorite seedmate’s face.
“Listen to me, Ji-ji. The corpse on that penal platform and the corpse in your dream, those were not Uncle Dreg. Those were evil spirits trying to make you believe death is a locked door.”
“It was him, Mam. I saw what they did to him. It was awful.”
“Exactly. What they did to him. That is not who he was. Your dreams are speaking the steaders’ words—is it not so? Cage him in that butchery and you kill him all over again. Let him live. Free. In here.” She touched Ji-ji’s forehead. “And here.” She tapped the center of Ji-ji’s chest over her black-and-white Muleseed symbol.
Silapu took up the pick again while Ji-ji pondered her mam’s words. Was that why Silapu had been able to resign herself to Uncle Dreg’s death? Had she translated grief into something bearable?
“Jellybean, sit up straight. You know how your father-man feels about a slouching Mule. Vexes him as much as bad grammar and cussing.”
And just like that Silapu switched from a sage Toteppi who had it all figured out to a cowering seed. Her mam was a hodgepodge of contradictions. No point in confronting her about it either. Wouldn’t do any good. Ji-ji settled for a rehash of an old complaint.
“I hate the name Jellybean. You gave your other offspring pretty names.”
“I love Jellybean,” Silapu stated, the same nonanswer she always gave. “Stop wriggling. You show up at his harvesting with uppity hair and Petrus is sure to fine you.”
“It’s not his harvesting. It’s Lua’s an’ her deadborn’s.”
“Everything on this planting belongs to the father-men.” Silapu tugged at a clump of tangled hair. “We play their game and follow their rules. If we don’t we die.”
Ever since Death Day, the steaders had been steeling themselves for a revolt. A failed uprising at a planting in the 500s and two raids on plantings in the 300s by Friends of Freedom in the past couple of months had made them antsy. Herring’s death made them more so, which was why it was a surprise last night when Silapu slapped two inter-homestead roaming passes on the rickety table and announced they were going to Lua’s harvesting, the first harvesting Silapu had attended since Bonbon’s snatching. The wagon would pick them up at 6:30 A.M., she said.
Silapu was reclusive, misanthropic even. Apart from her work at the planting’s textile factory and her visits to Lotter’s father-house, she rarely ventured beyond their vegetable garden. So why the sudden desire to see other people? Silapu hadn’t explained why she’d been absent during Uncle Dreg’s Culmination either, nor had she explained why Lotter appeared to have excused her for it. Didn’t make any sense. Ji-ji hadn’t asked whether Afarra could accompany them, knowing full well Serverseeds couldn’t attend as guests. Besides, Afarra had to pull an extra shift in the fields, even though this was meant to be her one day off from hard labor this week.
Well before dawn this morning, Ji-ji had run out back to the shed to take breakfast to her friend before her long stint in the fields. Fortunately, Afarra’s leg had healed, and the egg-sized lump on her forehead had shrunk considerably. Afarra spoke like someone who expected to run into Uncle Dreg at any moment. Talked in riddles and kept saying they were watching—though who “they” were exactly, Ji-ji couldn’t figure out. Ji-ji had questioned Afarra about the mutant again and received the same impenetrable response: “Drol is not being a killing thing. He is for living. The Drol is for hope. Like Uncle Dreg.” When Ji-ji had asked Afarra if she’d ever seen him before, she’d mumbled through a mouthful of bread and milk, “I am being fond of cow- and pig-talkings. But bird-word and tree-chat is my favorite. You are liking them too, isn’t it? You are having their dreams.” Ji-ji hadn’t asked her to explain. Questions only led you deeper into the bizarre maze of Afarra’s mind. The truth was, Afarra scared her at times. She seemed to be on another planet, as if their lives here on the planting were only a dream or a trick of the light.
Sometimes Ji-ji envied the outcast, who managed to live in harmony with her circumstances, pitiful though they were. Ji-ji didn’t live in harmony with anything. Right now she was as consumed by vengeance as Tiro was. She could barely contain her fury at the steaders for lynch-killing Uncle Dreg and birth-killing Lua. Petrus had plowed Lua like she was dirt.…
Ji-ji gritted her teeth as her mam yanked on her hair. The increasingly aggressive combing told Ji-ji she was in for yet another of her mam’s mood swings. She braced herself. Sure enough, this time, instead of speaking reverentially about Uncle Dreg, Silapu lit into him.
“Hold still!” Silapu scolded. “You want me to gouge you with this pick? And don’t forget, if Petrus discovers you saw Lua’s deadborn he will skin you alive! Your hair is a bird nest! Dreg should never have told you all those foolish things! Filling seeds’ heads with crap. ‘Seeds of midnight’! Nothing but foolishness!”
“Heads of midnight.”
“Foolishness! Telling the Cloth she is special. What kind of nonsense is that?”
“Afarra is special. There are things she knows, things she sees that none of us—”
“I know what the Cloth is. If I catch her in our cabin again without permission I will—”
Ji-ji couldn’t take it any longer. She needed to inflict pain. “Bonbon’s a Serverseed too.”
Silapu slammed the pick down on the table. “You think I do not know what they do to him? You think I do not hear how he purple-wails for us? You have seen Dreg’s face for a few nights! I have seen my Oletto’s face for four hundred and twenty-four!”
Ji-ji looked away, ashamed. Why had she brought up Bonbon? She didn’t want to admit to herself that Silapu hadn’t been able to drink and drug her way into oblivion, that she’d been counting the days all this time. Jesus!
Ji-ji focused on the only thing in the cabin’s main room that didn’t depress her: the blackbird quilt Auntie Zaini had made—three blackbirds nesting, a dozen more flying away. As long as she didn’t think about what went on behind the curtain-quilt, she could live inside the white-turned-yellow squares with the blackbirds, perch with them on the tree—an Immaculate, her mam used to say, like the tree near her village in the Cradle that had never been violated by lynch ropes. But as she stared at it she realized that the quilt was no refuge. “Bye-bye, Blackbird,” Lua had said, before blackness was all there was. Ji-ji decided to risk asking another question—anything to interrupt the silence.
“How come you’re … different?”
Silapu pulled up the chair and plopped down in it. “Do not worry. It will not last. I made a promise to Dregulahmo to stay sober until after the Ratification. That is what I am doing—fulfilling a final promise to the dead.”
At last something made sense. Her mam’s sobriety was temporary, the result of a promise she would feel obliged as a Toteppi to keep. Ji-ji risked another question.
“Did you know Uncle Dreg was a Friend of Freedom?”
Silapu stood up and hurried to the door, tugged it open and peered out. Satisfied, she closed it again. In lieu of a lock—botanicals weren’t entitled to privacy—Silapu stuffed a wooden wedge under the door. She came back to where Ji-ji was sitting, sat down, and spoke softly.
“Lotter’s blasted parrots are everywhere.… Yes, I knew. I have lived with the danger his choice posed to him and those around him. It is a burden I carried. Do not let males choose your burdens, Jellybean. If you do, you will be forced to carry them for the rest of your life. He asked me to promise to … when I saw him the last time … after he was captured.”
“Wait! What are you talking about?”
“I visited him. In PenPen.”
“But … that’s impossible! No penitents get visitors.”
“Normally that is true. But a few nights before his Culmination—after you snuck that stinking Cloth into the cabin when you thought I was sleeping—I rose in the middle of the night. Zaini and I took to him his favorite stew. Zaini made it. Delicious. Gru’nut soup from the Cradle.”
“The PenPen guards let you visit at midnight? That doesn’t make sense.”
“It was later than that when we got there. Diviner Shadowbrook had some of her own guards on duty. Emmeline and Uncle Dreg have always been … close. They let us see him.”
Ji-ji prided herself on how observant she was. How had she missed all this?
“What happened?”
“I gave him the soup.”
“Is that it?”
“I gave him a spoon. What do you expect? A miracle?”
“Was he still predicting he would escape?”
“Yes. That is why he did.”
“Not for long. They caught him.”
“No they did not. Dregulahmo escaped … then he chose to return.”
“But … that’s crazy! Why would anyone choose to come back to a hellhole like this?”
“Because he worried about what Williams would do to Zaini and her offspring if he left. And because he still had things to accomplish—is it not so? And clean up your mouth and watch your grammar too. You know how your father-man feels about—”
“But I don’t understand … how did he escape from PenPen?”
“Better not to know how he did it. Dreg was a fool to enlist in the Friends in the first place. And a bigger fool to get caught.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Ji-ji replied.
“Whose fault was it if not—”
Silapu stopped midsentence and eyed her offspring suspiciously. She stood up, grabbed hold of Ji-ji’s shoulders, and shook them hard.
“It was not Zaini he was covering for! That is what your eyes are saying! Who then? Argh! Your fool fly-boy! Tiro is a Friend of Freedom! Of course! Why did I not see it? Dreg betrayed me after he swore to keep my offspring safe, swore Tiro would never join the rebels! He promised! He and Zaini duped me! I will never forgive her for this! You will never see that fly-boy again!”
“Mam, I can’t live without—”
“Of course you can! You think that foolish, empty-headed fly-boy loves you? If he makes it to Dream City he will be snapped up by the Dreamfleet. You think he will have eyes for a plain-looking dusky like you after he sees those flaunty city whores? His nappy head will spin.”
“Please, Mam,” Ji-ji pleaded. “Please don’t.”
Charra used to say their mam said things like that cos she didn’t want Ji-ji to get her heart broken. Yet Ji-ji had no illusions about how she looked: no cheekbones to speak of, no dimples, an ordinary mouth, average eyes often with dark circles under them, rebellious hair, and a muddy complexion decidedly dark for a Muleseed. Her sisters—beautiful Charra and pretty Luvlydoll—took after their mam and father-man respectively. She didn’t.
Silapu spoke with venomous irritation, spitting out her words and pulling on her fingers like someone who wanted to dislodge them from their sockets. “Tiro’s devil father-man makes Lotter look like a saint! You think a seed from Williams’ loins will exercise self-control? Swinging around in that coop like some brainless bird! Those vulgar wings on his shirt! Using cheap tricks to fly! An illusion—is it not so? A game steaders play to pacify seeds—trick us into forgetting we can never fly from here. They’ve snatched our history like they snatched us! You think that lousy equipment in Brine’s rusty coop—the Douglass Pipes and Marshall Mazes, the Rosa Parks Seats—”
“Perches. They’re called Rosa Parks Perches.”
“What? Seats, perches, who gives a damn! You think the King-spins and that ridiculous crow’s nest are tributes to the likes of us, a recognition of our struggle? You think most steaders—and most seeds for that matter—remember the Passengers and the old stories of flight? You know how many Toteppi are left in the world? A few hundred at the most! Genocided by war and famine and disease and drought and betrayal and more war! You think it is only the fairskins who are evil? The old wizard glorified it, made it sound like paradise. It is not. It is still the Africa of old—the Dark Continent of strife and terror. How do you think so many of us wound up in the Territories? One tribe sells the other to the highest bidder.… Freedom Race! Huh! It is a joke! The males do not even race anymore. Two short sprints, that is all. The coop is for fairskins’ entertainment—and those fly-boys are too dumb to know they are being exploited! Why do you think the only time juvis are called ‘boys’ is when the word is chained to flight? It is smoke and mirrors, mockery! The race is a way to cage Freedom, a trick to distract us. And dumb seeds like you and that fly-boy of yours fall for it every time.”
Ji-ji leapt from her chair. “You’re wrong! When Tiro soars in that coop he’s magnificent!”
Silapu’s disgusted laugh stung more than her words: “Ha-ha! You are a fool, Jellybean. Fly-boys like Tiro live for air and applause, not for some homely-looking seed. How does the rhyme go?
“Love a fly-boy, if you dare.
He’ll fly from you. Beware! Beware!”
“That’s a stupid rhyme. Doesn’t mean a damn thing. Tiro loves me more than—”
“Lotter loves his Mammy Tep too. The sonuvabitch has poured that poison into my ears for twenty years.” Without warning, Silapu shoved the chair behind her farther back from the table. It toppled with a clatter. She high-kicked her right leg up onto the table, which lurched like a rowboat.
“Didn’t know you were still that flexible,” Ji-ji said, instantly concluding it was one of the dumbest comments she’d ever made.
Silapu grabbed hold of the back of Ji-ji’s neck and pushed her face down until her cheek brushed up against her mam’s raised ankle. “See that?” she cried. “Look at it. LOOK!”
Silapu jammed Ji-ji’s nose against the copper seedmate band, which had worn a cracked path around her ankle. Lotter’s name and planting number were engraved on it in bold capitals: ARUNDALE LOTTER, 437. Her planting name, Mammy Tep Lotterseedmate, was written in small font under his. All seedmates were called “Mammy.” Silapu was a Toteppi import, so Lotter called her “Tep” for short. Ji-ji had asked her once if it bothered her that Lotter never called her Silapu. She’d said she was glad. Didn’t want the bastard swilling her Cradle name around in his mouth.
“You want one of these pretty little bands on your ankle for the rest of your life? Well? Neither did I. Got one anyway. I am a Tribalseed, an import. You are a Muleseed. You wear a black-and-white seed symbol and I wear a black one. That is all there is. Nothing but that and purple tears.… Lotter has enemies—that bastard Williams most of all. If your father-man keeps favoritizing you and me they will accuse him of Unnatural Affiliation. Tryton’s already suspicious, itching to summon every inquisitor in the region to investigate Lotter’s unnaturalness.”
“Think I care ’bout what happens to Lotter? I hate him!”
Relinquishing her hold on Ji-ji’s neck, Silapu laughed scornfully again. “Dale Lotter is the only thing standing between you and calamity. I will not wait for you to come back in some box.”
“A box is better than a cage! It’s not me Lotter favoritizes, it’s you. If it weren’t for you he wouldn’t even know I existed.”
Silapu groaned. “Oh, Ji-ji. Why must you always fight?”
The answer flew out of her mouth before Ji-ji could prevent it: “Why did you stop?”
Silapu reached over and took Ji-ji’s hand. “For you. And for the others I seedbirthed.”
It was true. All the sacrifices Silapu had made over the years had been aimed at keeping her five offspring alive and close by. Ji-ji wanted to forget the scalding anger that bubbled from her mam’s mouth, forget the drinking and the drugs and the beatings. She wanted to forget finding her on the cabin floor, wrists slashed … finding her in the seeding bed beside an empty bottle … When you got right down to it, she, Ji-ji, wasn’t enough to persuade her mam to stick around.
Ji-ji clutched at the only thing she had to cling to: “The race is coming up an’—”
Silapu rapped Ji-ji’s forehead with her knuckles as though she were knocking on a door. “Anyone in there? You got to grow up, Jellybean. Most Mules your age have two seedlings by now.”
Silapu’s fury always came in waves. For now, it had subsided a little. She seemed to notice her toppled chair for the first time. She righted it, then grabbed the pick off the table as if it were a weapon. She started in again on Ji-ji’s hair. Whenever Ji-ji squealed in pain, she scoffed at her for being tender-headed, reminded her she was half Toteppi and needed to toughen up. The Cradle was suddenly paradise again: she boasted about how boys in her own village became men by walking on hot coals, while girls endured cutting to become women.
“Cutting is barbaric,” Ji-ji countered. “They cut out the clitoris, the only part that matters.”
“Barbaric, you say? And what is this?” Silapu said, indicating the planting with a wide sweep of her arm. “Now hold still! Your hair is as stubborn as you are.”
Periodically, Silapu jammed her fingers into a jar of coconut oil and smoothed a dollop onto Ji-ji’s head. When she protested, Silapu launched full-tilt into another scolding. “Your head’s as empty as a seed’s pocket! You are lucky Lotter did not punish you for arriving late to the coop. Yes. Ma Mac told me how late you were. You know how many botanicals would kill to make it to chief kitchen-seed? Even with your dusky skin and plainness, Lotter could have seedmated you to a father-man for a decent seed-price. He spared you for my sake.”
“Spared me? How? To labor in planting kitchens fourteen hours a day for a few lousy seedchips? I’d rather be dead than demean myself like…”
The word you hovered between them, a tongue of fire.
Silapu slumped down into the chair again. She looked worn out … old.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I would rather be dead too. But some of us do not run like the wind.… The steaders are spooked by what happened. You better be minding your p and q for the next month or two.”
“P’s and q’s. It’s plural.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know—what’s it matter? Lotter is cropmaster now. He can ratify whoever he likes.”
“Whomever. And have you been asleep while I schooled you? In a million years he will never let you go! Herring wanted the cash reward. For Lotter it is all about power and control. If you are lucky, he will allow you to remain as chief kitchen-seed.”
Silapu stood again and continued her battle with Ji-ji’s hair. “So … Dregulahmo took the fall for his reckless nephew. I was a fool not to guess this. He knew I would help if it was for Zaini.… You know what they do to the kith-n-kin of underage traitors who are found guilty of cultivating an insurgent? They pyre females and lynch males. That fly-boy is as selfish as Charra!”
“Charra was brave. How come you hate her so much?”
Silapu put the pick down, said, “I do not hate her.… I have never hated her.”
“They’re all gone,” Ji-ji said, desolately. “Charra, Clay, Luvlydoll, Bonbon. We lost them all.”
Something seemed to register for Silapu. She tilted her Last&Only’s face up to hers again and looked into her eyes. “Dregulahmo asked me to tell you this. I suppose it is time.” She took a deep breath. “They did not kill your sister. Charra escaped. Made it all the way to Dream City.”
Ji-ji dared not even blink as she waited for her mam to speak again.
“Last we heard she was in a place called North Fork in the Madlands, leading a group of rebels, raiding plantings. Dregulahmo said she is on the Southeast Territories’ Most Wanted list. So much for escaping to the City of Dreams! Your selfish sister chose to live inside a nightmare. Dregulahmo helped her escape. He took her from me … my beautiful, headstrong Charra. That is why I could not speak to him much after that. And then Lotter snatched Bonbon and the feeble old wizard did nothing! Some things are unforgivable.”
Ji-ji stared at her mam in disbelief. The sister she used to follow around everywhere wasn’t dead after all. She was living Free!
“All this time … why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t Uncle Dreg tell me? Does Tiro know?”
“That fool fly-boy knows nothing. Dreg wanted me to tell you, but it is my job to keep my Last&Only safe. Even with help from the Friends, Charra almost died. Shot in the back by Bounty Boys. Would have been mauled to death by snarlcats if Dreg had not found her. He and the Friends ran a secret trailroad.…”
“The Friends’ Trailroad is real? I thought it was just a story.”
Silapu wasn’t listening. “Charra could have stayed in Dream City, been safe, petitioned for us to join her as asylum seekers. They let seeds do that sometimes. The Friends would have made it happen. Lotter would never let me leave, but he would have let you go if I begged hard enough.… Let Oletto go too.… But your sister forgot us. Charra left us here to rot.…”
“An’ now she’s in the Madlands?”
“What? Oh … who knows? Maybe. We heard she was raiding plantings in the Tidewater and down south. The Madlands region is a gator-infested swampland. Malaria is worse there than the Cradle. Dengue fever too.… Charra is like Tiro. Always putting her own needs first.…”
“An’ Uncle Dreg asked you to tell me she’s still alive?”
“Said your fate and hers intertwined. But Dregulahmo said many things. Most were lies.”
“Mam, don’t you see? This changes everything! You gotta help me an’ Tiro get out of here! I can find Charra an’—”
“If you follow in her footsteps you will die! My Last&Only.…”
Silapu broke down and wept. Ji-ji had not seen her cry since she returned from Auntie Zaini’s the day after Lotter had snatched Bonbon. For forty-eight hours, Silapu had purple-wailed for her lastborn. Then Bettieann had stopped by with a bottle of cheap whiskey, and Lotter had brought her whatever he had around the father-house, only some of which was legal—uppers, downers, killers, drifters, flukes.… Silapu hadn’t wept since. Ji-ji attempted to comfort her.
“I’ll send for you, Mam. I promise. We get six petitions each, remember?”
“Only if you make it all the way to the city inside the time limit. He will never let me go.”
“He will if the seedmate price is right.”
“You are not listening! For Lotter, it is not about money. It is about power. And love.”
“That’s not love, Mam.”
“You are wrong. Love is a bludgeon, and a razor too. It beats you up then slices you open. Tiro will do that to you. I have seen the way you look at him. It is not the way he looks at you. I am sorry, Ji-ji, it is not.”
Why did her mam always want to pluck out hope and cast it aside like there was so much of it to spare? Anyway, she was wrong. Tiro cared. She mustn’t let her bitter mam snatch that away.
“You may have more schooling than me, Jellybean, and you can run like the wind and cook like a magician, but beauty is what a female needs to hold on to males like him … and even then.… Tiro is a Wild Seed. And Wild Seeds never belong to anyone.”
“I don’t want him to belong to me. Why can’t we be two Wild Seeds together?” Ji-ji resolved to tell Silapu the truth while she was sober enough to hear it. “I’ll die if I have to stay on this planting, Mam. I swear I’ll walk into Blueglass Lake like Mbeke’s mam. Sometimes it feels like I’m already swinging from Sylvie or burning on a pyre. I can’t live as a seed for the rest of my life. I’d rather be dead. You got to persuade Lotter to let Tiro an’ me compete. You got to let me go!”
When Silapu spoke next she sounded far away.
“Dregulahmo was planning to help you if you were ratified for the race. He had arranged for Friends to guide you along the way. Herring blasted a hole in … Shot the only man who ever…”
“Ever what?”
“Nothing. Without the Friends’ help you will be as vulnerable as the rest of the competitors. The race monitors protect the fly-boys, ferry them from one sprint to another so they are rested enough to battle each other in the coops. It is not the same for female runners. Females are disposable. Only fourteen racers made it last year—out of a hundred and seventy-five! And only four of those were runners. They say steaders are sabotaging the race. Homesteads claim the reward for their female runners who are then snatched by pickers along the way and shipped to the auctionmart. The whole thing is rigged. You enter that race and I will never see you again. No. You stay here. Safe. With me.”
Silapu took a step back to study Ji-ji’s hair. “Well, it is not perfect, but at least it is not a nest for a bird. Come on. We must not be late.”
The thought of burying Lua made Ji-ji want to vomit. She grabbed hold of Silapu’s hand and pleaded with her one last time: “Uncle Dreg said we were destined to fly the coop.”
“Was that before or after Herring blew his brains out?”
Silapu recognized how cruel that was when she saw Ji-ji’s expression. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Too long inside a bottle. I have soured worse than I thought.”
Silapu took hold of Ji-ji’s shoulders and gave her an odd, penetrating look, as if she suddenly understood what her Last&Only had been trying to tell her. To Ji-ji it felt like her mam was looking deep into her soul and arguing with herself about what she saw there.
Suddenly Silapu relinquished her grip on Ji-ji’s shoulders, stood up, and brushed at her skirt like someone cleaning off years of dust. She ran her hands nervously over her braids, worn in a kind of crown on her head the way Lotter liked them.
“All right then, Wayward Daughter Number Two…” (She’d used the word daughter—a word reserved for fairskins.) “My miserable path does not have to be yours. What good has it done me to play by men’s rules all these years? I have nothing left to hold on to but you. Dregulahmo was right. I am holding on too tight. Like a lynch rope. That is what he said. You must get out or this place will kill you as it has killed me. You can fly from here like your sister did. You can live Free.”
Ji-ji wanted to get on her knees and thank her but she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
Silapu added with great solemnity, placing her hand over her heart, “I promise to help you fly from here. You are braver than me, my Ji-ji. You have always been.”
She gathered her daughter in her arms and held her close—something she had not done since Bonbon had been taken. Her embrace lasted for ten whole seconds. Ji-ji counted.