Ji-ji set out before dawn from Lotter’s seed quarters on Homestead 1 to Brine’s quarters, directly south on Homestead 12. She tore along the permissible paths and cut across fields she had permission to traverse. The past few years of desperately needed, steady seasonal rain had ended the latest drought. Though she suspected the mild weather wouldn’t last, she’d take it as a good sign.
Ji-ji wasn’t surprised that she and her mam still resided in their cabin on Homestead 1, in spite of the fact that Lotter was serving as cropmaster. His seeds would likely remain there for weeks while the father-men squabbled over the tricky issue of homestead reassignment. In theory, the so-called Homestead Shuffle that took place after a cropmaster died enabled every father-man to move up into the homestead above his own; in practice, it wasn’t that simple. Lotter could do whatever he wanted—reassign the majority of his seeds, or relocate them onto seed quarters he could construct near his residence. He could keep his homestead, or he could cede it to another father-man for a fat bestowal fee. Herring had surrendered his homestead after he was formally appointed as cropmaster. But Lotter, who never relinquished control of anything easily, had so far opted to retain Homestead 1, which was why the route Ji-ji was taking to the flying coop this morning was the same one she always took.
She had a lot to be thankful for. Mam was still sober and acting like a mother, and the paralyzing grief Ji-ji had felt over the loss of Lua and Uncle Dreg had morphed into an unshakable determination to succeed for their sakes. Yesterday, newly appointed Security Chief Williams’ curt announcement about “the restoration of inter-homestead movement” had played over the loudspeakers. With inter-homestead movement no longer restricted, the Ratification Ceremony scheduled for tomorrow night would go ahead. To Ji-ji’s relief, her back had almost healed. Not a single twinge in a week. After nearly three weeks, the longest time they had been apart in years, she and Tiro would see each other again this morning. She would have a chance to speak with him before Ratification—remind him not to do anything reckless. She had other things to tell him too.
Silapu had lobbied hard for Ji-ji’s ratification and had even put in a good word for Tiro, under a dark cloud as the blood relative of a traitor. Apparently, Herring had let the planting drift into debt. The tithes payable to Armistice to secure the Territories were six months in arrears. You didn’t mess with the Territorial Council, whose members dished out crippling fines to tardy plantings. Lotter had to find extra money fast. Though the recompense for runner reps paled in comparison to what competitors’ home plantings received for fly-boys, the compensation for Ji-ji, particularly if she made it all the way to the city, would offset some of the debt. In light of this auspicious new development, Silapu said she was almost certain Ji-ji would be ratified. The planting trial records Ji-ji had smashed appeared to have made an impression on Lotter after all. Apart from Sloppy—Ji-ji’s fellow kitchen-seed who’d crossed the finish line a few minutes behind her in the trials—no other female seed could come close to Ji-ji’s time or match her endurance. As for Tiro, Silapu figured his chances had improved to, maybe, fifty-fifty. Not good, but considerably better than what they were before. Lotter was a pragmatist, and multiple payments would accrue to the planting at every stage of Tiro’s ascent. The stars were in alignment at last.
Ji-ji poured cold water on her own excitement. She would jinx herself if she wasn’t careful. Remember Mam’s warning, Ji-ji thought. If you’re gazing too far into the future you fall on your ass in the present. The day after the Ratification Ceremony, she and Tiro—it had to be both of them—would be transported to the Salem Outpost, where the first leg of the race would commence. Before then, she and her dozen full-time kitchen-seeds, along with a slew of helper seeds, would prepare the greatest feast of the season. If she served an unappetizing dish to the head table, or failed to take into account the dietary preferences of a VIP guest of honor, or—worse still—offended the taste buds of Planting Taster Lemmaging, she’d be toast.…
Ji-ji shivered—more with nervousness than with the chill. She’d come down from her high. Overconfidence was a seed’s worst enemy. She had to keep it in check.
She reached the small bridge spanning the rock-lined drainage trench Coach B and his fly-boys had dug to reroute rain- and floodwater. Water pooled so badly in Brine’s low-lying homestead that Tiro joked it would be easier to travel to the flying coop by ferry. Brine refused to spend a seedchip on maintenance, complaining that flying incited sedition by encouraging seeds “to de-rung themselves from their natural position on God’s Great Ladder.” The rusty old coop had been losing its battle with the elements ever since Brine had been granted fathership rights to Homestead 12.
Although females were not permitted to fly in the coop, that didn’t prevent Ji-ji from falling in love with flight the first time she’d set foot there as a seedling. The dilapidated coop didn’t look like much from the outside. A grimy canvas tent that had been repeatedly patched and mended covered its metal skeleton; a smell of mold, sweat, and gas fumes from the ancient generators permeated the space. Yet seeds and steaders alike flocked to the battles held there four times a year, spectators shelling out the hefty sum of seven seedchips each for tickets. The funds enabled Coach Billy and his Serverseed assistant Pheebs to make repairs and purchase fuel from the general store to feed the gas-guzzling generators. But each year, the father-men debated whether it was worth the upkeep, especially given the fact that no fly-boy from the 437th had made it to the finals for years. According to Marcus Shadowbrookseed, whose gossip was invariably accurate due to Old Shadowy’s tendency to confide in him when she was high as a kite, Williams, Brine, and others lobbied for the coop to be demolished; Lotter was indifferent—no surprise there; and the other nine father-men, along with Diviner Shadowbrook, usually voted in favor of keeping it. Every seed knew privileges could be snatched away without notice, which was why the fly-boys lived in constant fear that they would wake up one morning to discover their one source of elevation demolished.
Ji-ji pulled back the frayed canvas flap that served as a door to the coop and stepped inside. As usual, a reverence she never felt at the planting pray center—or anywhere else, for that matter—filled her. Coach B’s hollers and the creak of rusty equipment filled the cavernous space. Though one of the repurposed generators chugged away outside as usual, only a handful of lights were on. Almost immediately after he took over as acting cropmaster, Lotter had issued an order mandating frugality, which explained why it wasn’t much brighter inside the tent than it was outside. No one had seen her yet. She paused to take it all in. This place meant so much to her.
Steaders claimed that flying coops had been their invention, but Ji-ji knew they lied. The first coop had been conceived of by seed-laborers at a progressive planting in the 600s, less than a generation after the conclusion of the Civil War Sequel. Risky even then for seeds to speak openly about civil rights, so those early seeds had to be creative. The two coastal SuperStates, reeling from a Sequel that wiped out a third of the population, and battling major disasters on multiple fronts, decided to believe the steaders’ claim that the Territories would usher in a New Era of Civility. According to Swinburne Augustus, Supreme Commander of the Territorial Militia and the first Lord-Father of Lord-Fathers, it was a steader’s duty to “obliterate the unrestrained thinking that brought God’s wrath upon the world.” During his famous Reversal Address to the Territorial Representatives, Augustus pledged to “usher in a glorious system of patronage.” This necessary reversal, he promised, would revive the way of life established by our Founding Fathers.
Ji-ji had seen a photo of Swinburne Augustus in the history text she had strapped to the underside of her bed. She’d read Maeve Exra’s book so many times the pages were falling out. In Armistice’s Rotunda, gray-haired Augustus stood under portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and other father-men, a copy of the Bible in one raised hand, a copy of The One True Text in the other. An antique rifle lay on the podium. (Exra pointed to the odd fusion of elements in the steaders’ One True Text, saying it was as if Margaret Mitchell, Augustus’ favorite author, had wed St. Paul and The One True Text was their offspring.) Ji-ji knew Exra’s description by heart: “To thunderous applause, Swinburne Augustus, bearded and steely-eyed, swore fealty to the Found Cause, to the Fathers and Daughters of the Sacred South, and to America’s Blessed Rural Edens.”
The importation of labor from other parts of the world wasn’t sinister at first—just a logical response to the global labor shortage. Early waves of imported laborers signed bona fide contracts and worked for a wage. When their time was up, the laborers had the right to go wherever they wanted. Many opted to remain in homesteads in the Territories. With each successive wave of workers, however, Territorial laws calcified. Soon there were Liberty Laborers—mostly fairskins—recognized under the Constitution, and Indentures—mostly so-called duskies—who weren’t. Importing laborers from Central and South America had concluded, for the most part, after pickers met with a unified resistance on the southern border. Attempts to recruit laborers from Asia had failed abysmally. As a result, toward the end of Augustus’ tenure, the focus switched entirely to the place steaders called the Dark Continent.
The idea of a flying coop should never have survived an atmosphere as poisonous as that. But not all the early steaders were segregationists; many were just secessionists sick of taxation and centralized government and terrified of a future that looked like it was only going to get worse. The unionists were in as much disarray as the secessionists. As Exra put it, “The SuperStates, struggling for survival themselves, didn’t have the time or the means to excise the cancer in the belly of the country.” Ji-ji had repeated Exra’s phrase over and over the first time she’d read it because it rang true. A cancer in the belly—which meant she and everyone she loved lived inside a tumor.
As the disunited states struggled to emerge as three separate-but-equal power centers, Augustus’ successors pounded the final nails into the coffin in the form of the Necessary Reversal Acts—legislation that reclassified imports from the Cradle as botanicals. The reclassification wasn’t confined to race, a point the Territorial Council emphasized whenever the system was challenged. It also reclassified others. Sexual deviants, occultists (especially witches), historians, librarians, Free thinkers—any of these and more could be reclassified as botanicals and obliged to surrender their rights as individuals. Scientists and clergymen who refused to sign a fealty pledge to the steaders’ One True Text could also be reclassified as botanicals in the Territories, even if they were the fairest of fairskins—though the overwhelming majority of seeds were on the duskier arcs of the Wheel. How could such a system be based on race, steaders asked, if race was only one criterion for classification?
As she paused in the dark just inside the door of the coop, Ji-ji was thrust back into the recent past. She remembered Juan, a certified “Deviant,” who’d been caught with Amadee in one of Williams’ barns. Amadee should be here now, flying with his twin brother. Amadee tractor-pulled, Juan pyred—a female punishment Father-Man Williams insisted upon. The cancer had spread until there were hundreds of plantings throughout the Territories, a dozen homesteads on each.…
She breathed in the musty air, ignoring the staleness of it. Coach Billy had told Tiro, who’d told Ji-ji, that the first flying coop had been built as a response to the Necessary Reversal—the seeds’ way of memorializing their own history. They believed, Coach B said, that if they didn’t write their own story in canvas, metal, and wood, it would be lost. The seeds constructed the coop (or flying birdcage, as it was called back then) out of scraps they’d salvaged, working at night and in secret—though how they managed to do this, Ji-ji couldn’t imagine, unless the early steaders were blind and deaf. The seeds devised the rules and named the equipment after figures they admired.
Legend had it (and so did Coach B) that a tornado leveled the first flying birdcage two years after it was built, but not before a few enterprising steaders discovered it and recognized its potential as a revenue-generating source of entertainment. The flying birdcage withstood the test of time, morphing into bigger and grander things but always—in Coach B’s opinion, at least—adhering to its role as a memorial to not-to-be-forgotten stories.
Uncle Dreg used to tell Ji-ji that the coop was equally symbolic to seeds and steaders. To seeds it was a reminder that flight was possible; to steaders it emphasized the inescapable supremacy of the cage. When a symbol has two faces, Uncle Dreg said, it is potent and dangerous—liable to shift on you if you don’t keep your eye on it. What mattered to Ji-ji was that the planting flying coop was the one place where her dreams were more powerful than her yearning.
Under the tent, the giant, domed flying cage took up the entire middle section of the coop. Like a circus ring, the sawdust-lined ground ring in the center was where Planting Coopmaster Mack-Jack Ferguson stood, calling out play-by-play commentary as the flyer-battlers fought overhead. In spite of what Mack-Jack would have you believe, the magic didn’t happen at ground level where he stood; it happened when you saw caged birds fly.
As your eye traveled upward it encountered spiral staircases, trapezes, staging rings and platforms, sycamore copters, a rickety hamster wheel, Jacob’s Ladders, Harriet’s Stairs, Douglass Pipes, the Marshall Maze, X Boxes, Parks Perches, Colvin Coils, Lincoln Logs, Plessy Pulleys, King-spins, hope-ropes, zip lines, and trampolines—all of them culminating in the Jimmy Crow’s Nest, a woven basket modeled after the legendary lookout baskets on sailing ships. Located inside the dome at the pinnacle of the coop, the nest was roomy enough to hold four flyers. According to Uncle Dreg, the nest was a tribute to the Middle Passengers imported centuries before.
Ji-ji looked up. Tiro was perched on the edge of the Jimmy Crow. She waved excitedly, grinning from ear to ear and raising herself on her tiptoes as if she could reach him if she tried hard enough.
Tiro saw her, but the nod he returned was hesitant and he didn’t smile. Ji-ji tried not to let it deflate her. He had to concentrate. If he didn’t, he could plunge to his death.
The flying cage sat in the center of the coop and took up most of its volume. Encircling the cage were rows of bleachers where, two months before, hundreds of spectators—steaders in the fairskin sections and seeds in the dusky sections—had watched Tiro and the other fly-boys vie for the championship.
Ji-ji looked around cautiously, then walked to the main door of the metal flying cage. Her hands were shaking—god, she was nervous! If they caught her here, the day before Ratification, she’d be screwed. But she had to see him.… Her trembling fingers fumbled with the latch. The sound of metal against metal echoed through the coop as Ji-ji stepped inside. She closed the gate and sat down on one of the benches near the ground ring’s low wall.
To prevent herself from obsessing about all the news she was desperate to share with Tiro, and to calm her fear that Brine’s guards could enter at any time, Ji-ji tried to dwell inside the moment and take it all in. It would probably be the last time she would ever see Planting 437’s flying coop. The thought made her happy and sad at the same time. Her eyes fell on the safety net directly in front of her. Raised twelve feet off the ground, it spanned the diameter of the ground ring but offered no protection should a flyer fall from somewhere other than the safe zone in the center of the coop. Fly-boys were supposed to wear safety harnesses, but these slowed them down, which explained why Tiro was notoriously irresponsible about wearing his. It also explained why Billy and his assistant Pheebs spent their nights strengthening the harnesses to ensure the old mechanical pulley system was functioning correctly.
Coach Billy stood beside the net, yelling instructions at his fly-boys. Four seeds flew in the coop this morning: Tiro, Marcus, Orlie, and Georgie-Porge, Billy’s strongest flyer-battlers.
Like Tiro and Marcus, Orlie and Georgie-Porge partnered up during battles, though their aversion to each other resulted in constant bickering. Georgie-Porge had been known to drop Orlie into the net “by accident” instead of catching him on the high trapeze; Orlie had been known to grease Georgie-Porge’s favorite staging platform. As usual, Ji-ji couldn’t help but notice how odd Orlie and Georgie-Porge looked together.
Whereas Tiro and Marcus could easily have been mistaken for brothers, Georgie-Porge and Orlie couldn’t have looked more different. In spite of the fattening-up process juvis underwent in readiness for the Propitious Gleaning, Orlie Mallorymule remained as skinny as a rake and almost as pale as his begetter, Father-Man Harold Mallory of Homestead 9. In fact, Orlie was so light-skinned he could pass for a True Hybrid or even a fairskin. Georgie-Porge Snellingseed, on the other hand, a Commonseed, was one of the darkest juvis on the planting, and one of the biggest too. Tom Snelling, the fairskin Liberty Laborer who begat Georgie, had mated with a Tribalseed import. His seed’s ebony skin hadn’t alarmed him, or made him suspect infidelity on the part of Issa, his mate. In fact, Snelling took enormous pride in his offspring—the only offspring from a union that had endured for more than twenty-five years, and one so full of obvious affection on the part of both Tom and Issa it would have resulted in a charge of Unnatural Affiliation had Snelling been a father-man. Fortunately for the couple, Inquisitor Tryton had better things to do than trouble himself with the love life of a lowly laborer.
Boasting about Georgie-Porge’s prodigious strength and appetite delighted Tom Snelling (fined on several occasions for holding Issa’s hand in public). Tiro had overheard Snelling confess to Zaini he was saving up to make a Patronage Claim for Issa. Planned to take her to live up in the Eastern SuperState near Buffalo. Figured it would take him a while to do it, so his fingers were crossed that Georgie-Porge would be on Tiro’s petition list and reach the city before they did. (Ji-ji figured it would take Snelling a while too, given how regularly he gambled away his salary.) Like everyone else, Tom knew that Georgie didn’t have anywhere near Orlie’s quickness, but what his offspring lacked in agility he made up for in strength. Built more like a sumo wrestler than a flyer, Tom Snelling’s pride and joy could bench-press all three of the other fly-boys at once.
When disputes broke out among the four, Marcus invariably sided with Georgie-Porge, but Tiro had taken Orlie under his wing and often spoke up for him. Ji-ji puzzled over Tiro’s friendship with Orlie, a notorious whiner and a sulker. Marcus—the only seed on the planting who had more access to books and learning than Ji-ji—claimed Tiro didn’t have to be fake-happy around Orlie. That was the glue, Marcus said, which made their unlikely friendship stick. “T. can grieve nonstop in the company of that pathetic crybaby. Doesn’t need to get his shit together so there’s no pressure.” Marcus was right about most things. Could be he was right about that too.
Veteran coach Billy Brineseed stood in the center of the ground ring where Mack-Jack stood during battles in his multicolored coopmaster’s outfit and jaunty top hat. Unlike the flamboyant coopmaster, Coach B wore dung-colored overalls. Even in the dim light, his bald head gleamed. He tramped over to Ji-ji and eased himself down on the bench beside her. He didn’t greet her; small talk wasn’t his forte. They sat in silence for a while.
In his mid-seventies, Billy was still as lean as a racehorse and as strong as an ox. Though he had a full head of gray hair, each year he shaved it off before the Big Race and oiled his head to keep it slick, claiming baldness made him slippery as an eel and harder for juvis to catch hold of. Though Billy no longer battled on the high platforms or upper ring of the coop, he routinely bested juvis in hand-to-hand combat.
Ji-ji almost gasped when Coach B dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, withdrew one, then rummaged in his pocket for a box of matches. He struck a match. Ji-ji got a whiff of sulfur as it flared. In the flying coop, smoking was banned. Time and again, Coach B had ordered his fly-boys not to light up, warning them that the tent and the wooden pillars erected to help support the coop’s corroding framework would go up like kindling.
Much of what Ji-Ji had learned about the veteran coach she’d gotten first from her mam and, later, from Tiro. Billy Brineseed’s mother had been an import from the Cradle. His father was a Freeman, an African-American Indigenous with Proof of Ancestry documentation, which should have allowed his descendants to live with Indigenous rights and privileges in perpetuity. However, after his parents died from cholera just before Billy became a juvi at thirteen, he became a Ward of the Planting. Not long afterward, the planting “lost” his father’s A-I documents. Being on one of the duskiest arcs of the Color Wheel meant he was vulnerable to reclassification not simply as a botanical Commonseed but as a Serverseed, an outcast. Billy’s exceptional talent in the coop, along with his uncanny ability as an arborist, saved him. Eventually, he was traded to the 437th and assigned to care for Sylvie and other trees on the planting, and serve as flying coach.
There was another story about Billy too—one fewer seeds knew. Decades ago, Billy had appealed to have his A-I status reinstated. After years of tireless petitioning, he was reinstated to Indigenous by Saul Nickelback, Planting 437’s eighth cropmaster. Billy had left the planting to live Free in the City of Dreams. But there was a problem: he was in love with a female seed back on the planting. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to petition for his beloved’s Freedom, Billy couldn’t stand it anymore. He returned to the planting to be with her. Cropmaster Nickelback was so offended by Billy’s ingratitude he refused to allow him to pass through the perimeter gate. Undaunted, Billy had tunneled under the fry-fence, prompting Uncle Dreg to claim he was the only seed in history who had tunneled into rather than out of a planting.
Nickelback, impressed by Billy’s determination, had permitted him to remain as long as he surrendered his claim to A-I status. Billy did so. Tragically, only two years later, Billy’s beloved died.
“So,” Coach Billy said, inhaling deeply and blowing out enough smoke to fill a slop bucket, “what do you think?”
Ji-ji had no idea what he was referring to. She did what she always did when growns asked a question she didn’t have a clue about—repeated it. “What do I think?”
The tactic irritated the veteran coach. “You some kind of parrot, Lottermule?” Fortunately, before Ji-ji was obliged to respond again, Coach B explained himself: “Your fly-boy’s acting like a moron. Careening round the cage then perching himself up there in that Jiminy Nest like he’s got all the time in the world. We been on a restricted schedule. Still got four or five moves to refine. The Jefferson Coop in Monticello and the fancy new Dream Coop in the city are high tech. They got equipment in those coops like you never seen. Makes this place look like the scrap heap it is. Even the Salem Coop puts this one to shame. He’s forgotten he’s got to compete in all three and run the sprints too. You better knock some sense into him cos I’ve had it up to here.” Coach B indicated a place near the top of his forehead to demonstrate his level of frustration.
“Bet you didn’t know I smoked, did you?” Ji-ji shook her head. “April’s a crappy time of year. I’m sick of watching juvis get fattened up for the auction. Only lucky one is Marcus. Wouldn’t be surprised if Emmeline adopted him one day if he don’t expire first from weed overdosing.”
The coach blew a smoke ring. It held its shape for a few seconds in the nippy morning air before it faded into the gloom of the coop. Ji-ji decided that now, while Billy was getting solace from his death stick, would be as good a time as any to ask for advice about her back.
Billy Brineseed listened in silence, nodding a few times as he pulled on his cigarette. Dawn was breaking; daylight had started to filter in through the dome flaps at the top of the cage. To open them, Pheebs had to shimmy up the main hope-rope hung from the center of the dome, clamber onto a Parks Perch, and with the help of a hooked staff and fearlessness, roll back the unwieldy canvas flaps. No one could shimmy up a hope-rope faster than Pheebs, whose diminutive size (she was only four foot six) and extraordinary agility had earned her a permanent spot as Billy’s assistant. Even some of the steaders referred to her by her proper name rather than Cloth-34b. Billy spoke of Pheebs with a reverence he reserved for only four others: Dregulahmo, his best friend; Silapu, whom he called a Toteppi princess; Zaini, especially after Amadee’s death; and Amadee.
After Williams murdered Amadee, the old coach had been inconsolable for a while. There were rumors that he’d begun drinking again and that Pheebs had ferreted out his store of booze and poured the contents of every bottle into the flood drain. Tiro said Billy blamed himself, said he should have warned Amadee never to act on his impulses. It was common knowledge that Amadee wasn’t “regular,” as Billy put it, adding, “But if he was a Deviant, I’m King Tut. He wanted to love Free, that’s all.” Ever since Amadee’s death, Billy was always reminding Tiro to look out for Zaini and his little brothers. “Zaini kept on living,” Billy told him. “That’s courage. An’ that’s why you don’t do nothing dumb with some stupid butchery knife. That’s why you fly your heart out up there. Not just for Amadee but for Zaini too. Cos she’s the one held your tore-up brother in her arms and kissed his mashed-up remains. An’ she’s the one who birthed an’ buried him, an’ she’s the one left behind. An’ that’s the goddam painfullest place of all. Sure, I know what you’re thinking cos I’m thinking it too—Marcus can never be Amadee. Don’t be fooled. When he’s not high as a kite Marcus is one hell of a flyer. Same build as you an’ Amadee, same recklessness. So be grateful he’s willing to step up an’ serve as your practice partner. From now on, you fly like you mean it. For Zaini. For Amadee. For all of us. Fly like you’re heading home.”
Having sufficiently pondered what Ji-ji had shared with him about her injury, Billy said, “Sounds to me like you got a pulled muscle. You say it feels okay now?”
“Haven’t had a problem in days. The pain has disappeared. Ran all the way here from Lotter’s seed quarters in record time.”
“Don’t overdo it. You don’t want to reinjure it or get tuckered out either.”
“I never get tuckered out.”
Coach B looked over at her. “I don’t s’pose you do,” he said. “Guess there are advantages to being young an’ dumb. Speaking of which…” Coach B shot up from the bench and yelled up at Marcus, Orlie, and Georgie-Porge, who were attempting to use their long staffs to bat each other off the lower staging platform. Tiro was still perched on the edge of the nest, staring down at them. “Damn FOOLS!” the coach bellowed. “I could do better with my eyes closed!”
Marcus, Orlie, and Georgie-Porge glanced down at their irate coach and proceeded to put more energy into their attack.
“An’ what the HELL you think you’re doing perched on that damn nest, Williamsmule? You think you got ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD? You think the race monitors’ll give you points for loungin’ up there on your bony butt? Think they’ll take one look at your pretty face an’ say, give Williamsmule the prize jus’ cos he’s jus’ so damn cute? What the hell is he thinking? Well?”
Ji-ji realized the coach’s last comment had been addressed to her. She offered the first thing that came into her head: “Could be … he’s tired?”
“Tired my ass! Juvi’s been flying around like some demented hornet this morning ’fore you got here. Battled the other three one after the other. Tossed each of ’em into the net like they was seedlings. Tiro’s always been a crazy sonuvabitch—no offense meant to Zaini. But this morning that fly-boy’s acting ridiculous. An’ now look at him! Sitting there like some comatose Buddha! I mean it, Williamsmule! GET YOUR SKINNY ASS OFF THAT NEST AN’ FIGHT!”
The anger in Billy’s voice seemed to register at last. Tiro grabbed hold of a hope-rope. In a risky maneuver, he swung down from the Jimmy Crow to the midlevel staging ring.
“What’s that juvi up to now?” Coach B wondered aloud. “Mule’s just showing off.” He yelled up at Tiro again, “You a battler or a clown? You deliberately kamikaze-in’ your way to oblivion?”
Billy turned to address Ji-ji: “Your fly-boy needs to learn the coop’s a battlefield not a circus. His antics’ll score him a few points, but it’s battles earn you a win.”
Coach Billy Brineseed knew more about flying than everyone else on the planting combined. He was right about the scoring, but Ji-ji would much rather watch Tiro fly than battle. Tiro was swinging from trapezes to hope-ropes, to trampolines, to King-spins, to staging platforms, slashing at his flying buddies with his wooden practice sword. He had removed his shirt, but round his head he’d tied the purple bandana he wore in honor of Amadee. He liked to fly shirtless, said he loved the feel of the air on his bare skin. Ji-ji understood. It was the same feeling she got when she ran barefoot, when all she heard was the sound of her heart pumping and her feet pounding the earth. At those times, the earth was the skin of a drum and she was its rhythm.
It didn’t take long for Tiro to defeat Orlie. The Muleseed cried out in fury when Tiro flung him off the Parks Perch and left him flailing in his safety harness. (Orlie had only defeated Tiro twice—once when Tiro had a stomach bug, and once when Tiro had been drunk.) As he always did in defeat, Orlie stomped over to a bench on the other side of the ground ring to begin his moping ritual. A few seconds later, Georgie-Porge bit the dust when Tiro smacked the back of the Tribal’s knees with his sword. Georgie’s big knees buckled. He toppled from the platform to land safely in the net. Georgie-Porge—all six-nine, 285 pounds of him—took it in stride, laughing as he fell.
Billy Brineseed scratched his oiled head. In spite of their rebelliousness, the juvis heeded Coach B because they knew he could provide them with their one shot at Freedom. Over the years, five of his trainees had made it to the finals, which made him one of the winningest fly-coaches in the Territories. But his wins had petered out eight years ago, to coincide with Brine’s procurement of Homestead 12. As the coop sank into disrepair, Billy’s lucky streak went with it. Worse still, because all his fly-boys had won before their coaches were automatically granted Freedom, Billy was still trapped on Planting 437. There were rumors that he’d made it all the way to the finals when he’d been entered in the Freedom Race as a juvi but was robbed when the Third Territorial Offensive was launched on the outskirts of Dream City on the exact same day the finalists arrived at the city border. Pickers had snatched or slaughtered all the finalists that year—male flyers and female runners both. The competitors who survived had been hauled back to the Territories. Billy hadn’t returned to captivity empty-handed. He’d brought his new nickname with him: Bad Luck Billy. Even through his lucky streak, the name had stuck.
Tiro did another crazyass stunt. Coach B roared up to him to practice his goddam battle moves with goddam Marcus. Tiro acknowledged his coach’s cuss-laden command with a cursory nod and proceeded to ignore it. The coach flung another bouquet of cuss words up at Tiro.
“Guess he’s trying to fly the rage out,” Billy said, planting himself back down on the bench.
“Rage?” Ji-ji asked, as Tiro leapt from the midlevel staging platform, grabbed the center hope-rope, and swung himself back into the nest.
“Guess you ain’t heard,” Coach continued. “Tiro an’ Zaini learned last night what those bastards did with Dreg’s body. The day after D-Day the steaders threw him over the fry-fence. Let the mutants an’ whatever else is out there tear him to pieces. There’s rumors that Chaff Man, on the other hand, got off scot-Free with that pooch o’ his. It’s hard on Zaini—hard on Tiro too. Toteppi value their burial rites. Harder to make the journey back to the Cradle ’less you been afforded the right protocols. Guess the steaders thought the wizard would rise up if they buried him, bring a goddam Dimmer army with him too.… You ever run into a Dimmer?”
Ji-ji was still trying to recover from the news about Uncle Dreg. Seeing him killed was bad enough. Imagining him being torn to shreds by stripers and snarlcats appalled her.
“No,” she murmured. “I never seen one.”
“Your mam has, I bet. Pure Toteppi like Dregulahmo. Got better antenna than the rest of us. Dimmers’re tricksters. Can fool you into thinking they’re a tree or a river. My Salome came back as a boulder. But then Sal always was stout around the middle.…”
Uncle Dreg was to Billy what Lua was to Ji-ji, but it surprised her to hear the ornery coach speak so fondly and sentimentally of Dimmers. Passed from one father-man to another on the planting because fly-coaches came with their coops, Billy had learned to keep his thoughts to himself. When he wasn’t training juvis to fly, he served as a garden-seed like Uncle Dreg. Whereas Uncle Dreg tended the father-men’s gardens and grew magnificent roses, orchids, medicinal herbs, and other exotic flora in his greenhouse, Billy Brineseed served as Planting 437’s chief arborist, overseeing the care of all the trees on the planting. Sylvie was his special charge. Seeds claimed that he spoke her ancient language and that it was like taking an axe to him every time Herring ordered him to hang another purple tear from her branches. For the first time, Ji-ji imagined him hanging Uncle Dreg’s purple tear from one of Sylvie’s branches. Unbearable.
Silapu used to say that Billy could hear Sylvie weeping in his dreams. Uncle Dreg told her that suffering as deep as the kind Bad Luck Billy and her mam had endured was a knife that whittled you away. Afterward, the wizard would remind them that the most blessed among the botanicals found a way to grow themselves back. Growing back what’s been lost was the secret. Ji-ji would be inspired when he said that. But then she’d return to her cabin to find Lotter making a lustful seeding call behind the blackbird quilt while her mam tried not to plunge a knife in his back, and she couldn’t believe in regrowth anymore. She’d rush out into the dark and run like something on fire. She would force herself to breathe—in, out, in, out—because the air was thin as tissue paper, and all she had was a pair of tired-out lungs, while despair gnawed at her insides like rats on a hope-rope.
Ji-ji asked the question she’d been reluctant to ask before now: “You think Uncle Dreg will come back? You think he’s dead for sure?”
“Dead as a dodo,” Coach B replied, grimly. “But could be he’ll still come back.”
“What’s a dodo?”
“A hefty bird with stumpy wings. Been extinct for a long time. Looked like a goddam cartoon. You seen a cartoon, Lottermule?” She nodded, having snuck a peek at Lotter’s homescreen many a time and seen things she wasn’t authorized to view. “Well, that’s what the goddam dodo looked like. A cartoon with a strong resemblance to Inquisitor Tryton—heavy round the middle with a limited IQ and a preference for sedentariness.” Coach B looked up at Tiro. “Seeds gotta fly to live. Guess dodos did too. Stay too long in the wrong place and it’s sayonara. Dregulahmo’s dead but it don’t necessarily mean he won’t come back is what I’m saying. Think our kind could’ve gotten this far if a whole army of Middle Passenger Dimmers hadn’t come to our aid?”
Ji-ji studied the coach’s profile. Was he pulling her leg? It was hard to tell with Coach B, but she was pretty certain the Middle Passengers were as dead as dodos.
Coach B pulled harder on his cigarette, like someone in the desert sucking water through a straw. “You look after that fly-boy o’ yours, y’hear?” Ji-ji promised she would.
As if to emphasize how necessary this was, Tiro leapt off the high platform and rode the zip line. Above the small trampoline he let go and dropped twenty feet to land plumb in its center. In a single bounce he landed on the hamster wheel, the twenty-four-foot fly-wheel Coach B and Pheebs had constructed from an old-timey Ferris wheel. Billy shook his head. “Mule’s a suicider,” he muttered.
A chill shot down Ji-ji’s spine. She thought about the scars on her mam’s wrists, and Mbeke’s mam wading into Blueglass Lake. Meanwhile, Bad Luck Billy had moved on. He was going over the rules of the race, worried that Ji-ji could slip up on the oral qualification test.
“… So if it’s an inquisitor from the Territories, give him an answer suggests the whole goddam Civil War Sequel an’ what came after was inevitable. Frame it so it sounds like the secessionists had a point. If it’s a monitor from the city, be honest an’ say the Sequel blew apart the greatest union in history and turned the nation into a bunch of small-minded principalities. If you’re tested by both an inquisitor and a monitor, slice it down the middle an’ be diplomatic. An’ keep it clean. Don’t go saying ‘goddam’ or any other cuss word cos inquisitors are pious bastards. An’ for god’s sake don’t use too many o’ them fancyass words you an’ Marcus is prone to using. An’ make a few grammar screwups to be on the safe side. Inquisitors can’t stomach an overschooled Mule. Till you get inside the city walls you’re classified as botanical. Forget that an’ you’re screwed.”
Coach B looked up at Tiro, who had climbed back into the crow’s nest at the apex of the coop. “An’ don’t forget. What’s the prohibition you can’t break as a female?”
“Prohibition 168. It prohibits female seeds from flying in the coop. But I don’t fly in the—”
“Cut the crap, Lottermule. I seen you up there in the nest. Twice. Calm down. Haven’t told anyone ’cept Sylvie. But if those race inquisitors catch you flying in one o’ them race coops you’ll be dragged back here so fast your little head’ll spin.”
“They got female flyer-battlers in Dream City,” Ji-ji contended.
“Yeah, they got a few. An’ are you in Dream City, Lottermule?” Ji-ji shook her head. “Correct. You’re on Planting 437 in the Homestead Territories. You’re a Muleseed like your fly-boy up there, an’ his easygoing pal Marcus is an orphaned Mule who got lucky. Then there’s Georgie-Porge, a Commonseed who’s laughed his way through suffering, an’ Orlie, a Muleseed who’s moped his way through, cos reminding himself how hard done by he is keeps him from killing something—himself, most likely. When you reach the city don’t assume what you see is what you get, or that folks there say what they mean an’ mean what they say. The City of Dreams is screwed up too, in its own way. Calls itself ‘the Nexus of Freedom,’ the place where Abraham sits on his stone throne and oversees justice, the place where a King preached a people out of bondage. The city sees itself as the guardian of democracy. Could be it is. But it’s also the last of the Independents to shake itself from Territorial rule, an’ that makes it a goddam wishy-washy teeterer in my book.”
“You saying we won’t be safe in Dream City, Coach?”
Perhaps Billy saw how worried she looked because he put his muscled arm round her and gave her a fatherly squeeze—something he’d never done before in all the years she’d known him, not being predisposed to showing affection to anything other than trees.
“It’s a lot safer than the 437th,” Billy said, drawing back from her to watch his flyers. “But the City of Dreams is still deciding whose dreams it wants to invest in, an’ that makes it prone to treachery. Keep your eyes peeled an’ stay under the radar. Likely be a whole flock of parrots there ready to squawk on you to steader sympathizers. Be careful what you say an’ who you say it to.”
“But why would anyone be watching me? I don’t understand—”
Just then, Tiro performed a risky move. Coach B swore up at him before turning to Ji-ji. “An’ stop that jackass from killing himself … or killing those around him either.”
Ji-ji shot Coach B a look. Did he know that Uncle Dreg had sacrificed himself for his great-nephew? Billy was Uncle Dreg’s best friend. Could Bad Luck Billy be a Friend of Freedom too?
Because Uncle Dreg and Lua were gone and there was no one else she trusted enough to confide in (apart from Tiro, who had problems enough of his own), Ji-ji told Billy about the mutant they had encountered on the forbidden. She expected him to accuse her of lying, or at least scold her for being reckless. To her surprise he did neither. Instead, he squinted his eyes into slits and looked at her—looked into her almost, like someone trying to figure something out.
“The little server may’ve communicated with it, you say? Damn! Guess it’s true then. Sounds like Afarra may be one o’ them ant whisperers. One o’ them seeds that speaks Mutant. They say some ant whisperers can talk to regular animals too. Dregulahmo suspected as much. Pheebs too.”
“You saying you believe me? You think it happened for real?”
“Sure. Why not? You lying?”
“No!” After a few moments she added, “You ever seen a bear-ape mutant thing like that, Coach B? One that looked … like a person.”
“Listen up, Ji-ji. If you want that little server to keep breathing, don’t mention what you seen to anyone else. Not till you’re safe in the city. Not even then, ’less you can trust the listener.”
“Is Afarra in danger?”
“She’s an outcast. Poor kid flirts with danger every second. Know how many times seeds an’ steaders both took advantage of Pheebs over there? Ask Afarra what she’s been through when you can stomach hearing ’bout the evil men do. Establishing a group lower’n us on their Great Ladder was masterful. Everyone gets a punching bag. Everyone ’cept those on the lowest rung.”
Something else had been gnawing at Ji-ji. “Coach, you remember what Chaff Man said about the arsenal at the Culmination? That a secret could bring down the Territories? Seems like Herring couldn’t shut him up quick enough when—”
Billy’s voice eviscerated her. “Hush your mouth, Lottermule! Think I want to hang another purple tear from Sylvie?” He saw how startled she was and softened his tone a little. “Some things it’s better not to query. Not till you’re miles from here. Even then—may not be safe.” Billy looked around warily, then lowered his voice.
“Silapu stayed for you, y’know that? Had an opportunity to run with her lastborn. But she couldn’t get to you in time to take you with her. Couldn’t leave you behind neither. My theory is Lotter found out—some parrot squawked. You ever wondered why your father-man snatched her lastborn long after the probationary period was up? Figure it was his sick way of warning her never to try an’ escape again.”
Ji-ji stuttered out a protest: “But Mam never said anything about—”
“You think most people say important things out loud? That’s not the way the world works, on or off a planting. That pretty father-man of yours can’t decide if he wants to love Sila to death or kill her outright an’ rid himself of his misery. Becoming cropmaster is a potent antidote to compassion. Cropmastery could prompt the bastard to end his pain for good. You petition for your mam soon as you reach the city, Lottermule, y’hear? Your mam may not make it otherwise.”
“I will. I promise.… I’ll petition for Afarra too.… Think Afarra will be okay till then without me or Tiro here to protect her?”
Coach B considered this for a moment, then said, “You sure you’re the ones doing the protecting? Okay, tell you what. How ’bout Pheebs an’ me take Afarra under our wing till your petition’s granted—keep an eye on her for you?”
The offer was so unexpected that Ji-ji flung her arms around him. “Thank you, Coach B!”
The veteran coach laughed—a deep vibration in his broad chest. “Don’t go thanking me till your kith-n-kin’s granted an’ she meets up with you the city.” He pulled away from her embrace, but he was still smiling, so she felt reasonably certain she hadn’t offended him.
Billy reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Here. A map.”
“The monitors give us an official race map at the start of the—”
“I know. This one’s from Dregulahmo. Covers more than the race route. If you stray from the official route, you need to find your way to Dimmers Wood. See? It’s directly southeast, on the far side of the New River.” Billy pointed to a place called Slim Pickins.
“But I’m not straying from the route. It’s dangerous to—”
“Yeah, that’s what your fly-boy told me when I gave him his copy. But sometimes things happen we don’t plan for. If they do, you meet up with him at Dimmers, understand?”
The name of the place sounded ominous, but Coach B didn’t take kindly to arguing, so she nodded her head and slipped the map into her pocket.
“An’ another thing,” Coach Billy continued. “Afarra wasn’t the only special one. Dreg called you the Triumvirate—you, her, an’ that goddam blockhead up there. But Tiro’s a blood relative so the old wizard could’ve been mistaken ’bout him. Sure looks like it this morning.… GET BACK IN THAT GODDAM HARNESS ’FORE I COME UP AND STUFF YOU INTO IT MYSELF!”
To Ji-ji’s relief, Tiro obeyed. Coach B continued as though he’d never been interrupted.
“The Necessaries was another name Dregulahmo used for you, Afarra, an’ that moron up there. Said there were wonders in store for you.”
“Did you believe Uncle Dreg when he said all that stuff?”
“I’m a skeptic. But could be you an’ Tiro got a special part to play. An’ if it’s true the server’s an ant whisperer, who knows? Always been something different ’bout that one. Not just the funny way she talks either. Something otherworldly about her, something not quite in the here-an’-now.”
Coach B threw down his cigarette and stomped it out with his foot as though he had a grudge against it. “Tell Birdbrain I’ll see him at tonight’s practice, soon as his shift in the fields is over and Zaini’s fed him—assuming he hasn’t broken every goddam bone in his body before then.”
With that, Bad Luck Billy strode over to Georgie-Porge and Orlie, grasped Orlie by his drooping shoulders, and ordered him to suck it up. Pheebs ran up and joined the group. The four left together, Orlie trailing gloomily behind the other three. Ji-ji remembered too late that she’d wanted to ask Coach B about the strange things Lua had told her before she died. Maybe Tiro could figure out what Lua had been talking about?
Marcus plopped into the net soon afterward, unhitched himself from his harness, and strutted over to Ji-ji. It wasn’t clear if Tiro had defeated him or if he’d simply called it quits.
As muscular as Tiro, Marcus was a year older than he was. Old Shadowy spoiled him. Apart from the slight swagger in his walk, however, he didn’t rub it in your face. You’d never suspect he could get mating permission slips whenever he wanted, go on errander trips to nearby plantings, and watch any show he fancied on Old Shadowy’s homescreen. He was tutored by Old Shadowy herself, which was why he was the most educated juvi on the planting. Marcus had always been kind to Ji-ji. Sometimes he reminded her of Clay, her older brother. Marcus knew how unlikely it was he would be selected for the Freedom Race ahead of Tiro. Like Georgie-Porge and Orlie, he was betting Tiro would keep his word and file a kith-n-kin for him.
“The Pterodactyl’s in a foul mood this morning,” Marcus complained, rubbing his shoulder and using the nickname he’d given Tiro the first time he saw him fly. “Can’t be ratified soon enough far as I’m concerned. If he messes up this gorgeous face, my future as a stud is shot.”
Marcus turned to head out, took a few strides, then turned back. He swept Ji-ji up in his arms and gave her a brotherly bear hug. “You’re too good for that crazy fly-boy—y’know that?” he said.
“How come you’re saying goodbye now?” she asked. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You’ll be rushed off your feet. Won’t have time for a humble little fly-boy like me. You take care of yourself in The Margins, okay?”
“Could be Lotter won’t ratify me.”
“Sure he will. Emmeline says it’s a done deal. She’s warned Lotter if he doesn’t ratify you both, calamity will fall on the planting. They listen to Old Shadowy—most of the time anyway. Some of the steaders think if they’d listened to her warnings about Dregulahmo they wouldn’t have lost Herring. ’Sides, no one’s faster’n you. Remember—don’t stray from the race route. It’s guarded from Salem to Monticello—most of the final leg too. But pickers have the right to harvest any stray seeds they find. Pickers’re sly bastards. Hunt in packs. Worse than Bounty Boys. If it’s anything like last year, they’ll try to lure runners off the race route. Don’t be fooled. Oh—almost forgot. Tell your fly-boy up there not to forget the little people—though if Orlie’s kith-n-kin is mislaid, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
Ji-ji laughed. Marcus gave her a wistful smile and sauntered off.
Ji-ji sat for a moment in an effort to gather her thoughts after Billy’s revelation about Silapu. Like Coach B, her mam had chosen captivity over Freedom—chosen it for her sake. Whatever it cost, she would find Bonbon and reunite the two. She owed her that.
She was about to shout up to Tiro and ask him to come down from the nest when she got an unsettling sense of déjà vu. He sat perched on the edge of the Jimmy Crow way up at the very top of the cage, just like he did after Amadee was killed. He was in pain, she knew that, but there was something crazed in the way he tore around the cage. For once in her life she hadn’t been worried enough—chatting with Coach B like they had all the time in the world! She had to climb up the Jacob’s Ladders and go to him—now! She rushed to a ladder and began to climb.
Ji-ji scanned the coop to make sure no one had entered. The planting’s Elevation Prohibitions against female botanicals were rigorously enforced: no climbing above twelve feet unless it was to clean something; no venturing up mountains (not that there were any to speak of on the planting, all of them being beyond the fry-fence); no ascending into the toll-bell turret; no looking out of windows on the upper floors of father-houses; no heels even.… She devised a plan. If anyone caught her she would claim Tiro’s harness was caught and she’d climbed up to give him a hand. Was he still wearing a harness? She glanced over at him as she climbed, but he was sitting in shadow and she couldn’t tell for sure.
Afraid of startling him, she called out his name as she crossed the narrow walkway leading to the nest. Without turning around he said, “Climbing up here is way too risky.” It was fairly bright by now, with light streaming through the sky flaps above them. Tiro’s eyes looked bloodshot when he swiveled round to face her. He swiped his forearm across his face and Ji-ji realized he’d been crying. At least he was wearing a safety harness. She relaxed a little.
Quickly, she clambered into the nest and stood inside it. Without a harness of her own she didn’t dare join him on the rim. She told him what she had been burning to tell him for weeks.
“That’s great,” he said, after she’d finished. “Can’t believe Charra’s alive.”
The way he said it emphasized how far away he was. Maybe he was anxious about ratification? Ji-ji explained that her mam had decided to help them.
“You hear me? Mam is sure Lotter’s gonna ratify—”
“Ji, I got something real bad to tell you.” He joined her inside the basket. “Last night, Mother an’ me…” He stood there searching for words.
“It’s okay. Coach B told me what they did to Uncle Dreg. They should never have—”
“No, not that,” he said, looking away. “Something worse. Been sitting up here trying to figure out how to tell you.”
“You’re scaring me. What is it?”
“There’s a parrot among us … someone we know. This parrot betrayed Uncle Dreg to the steaders. S’why Uncle Dreg got lynched.…”
Parrots received no mercy on a planting. They were usually found dead—dragged up from Blueglass Lake, a necklace of bloody feathers looped around their necks.
“Who is he? It’s not one of your fly-buddies, is it?”
“It’s not a he.” Tiro paused. His eyes were so sad she was scared they would slice her in two. His mouth did it instead.
“Ji … the parrot.… It’s your mam.”