16

Sabrina was fed oatmeal again. The woman who’d smashed Sabrina’s nose with a flashlight only a few hours earlier now watched her eat with a smile.

“I need something to call you,” Sabrina said.

“No, you don’t.”

“That’s not true. You’ve already given me Eli’s name. I know Garland’s. And you told me that I need to learn to be happy here, and to listen. That’s hard to do if I’m scared of you, and everything is more terrifying if you’re all strangers. Don’t you understand that?”

The woman hesitated, then said, “Violet.”

“Violet. Any last name?”

“No, dear. Just Violet. Eli has a presentation for you. Are you able to go outside without the trouble we had last time?”

Sabrina’s face ached and she could breathe comfortably only through her mouth. She had no desire to repeat the last time.

At least not until she had a plan for the fence.

“I’ll be good,” she said. “I know the rules now.”

“I hope so.”

Violet uncuffed her and they went to the door. Both interior and exterior locks required keys. When they stepped out into daylight, Sabrina got her first sense of the scope of her surroundings.

They were on a high plateau rimmed by mountains, peaks looming in all directions. The slopes fell away from every side of the cabin, and fir trees screened it from view. Beneath the tree line was a ring of boulders; some of them seemed natural to the terrain, but others were too carefully aligned, as if they’d been excavated and moved into place to form a perimeter fence. Far below, down a steep slope of loose sandstone and scree, a stream cut through a valley basin. Where the stream fell out of sight, tumbling down to a lower elevation, another tree line blocked visibility. Traces of old snow lingered, but nothing fresh, and most of it had melted. They were somewhere well south of Red Lodge, and maybe east. There were no roads that she could see, no homes, no cars.

They were entirely alone.

“Good morning,” a voice from behind her said, and she turned to see the man named Eli, the first look she’d gotten at him in daylight. Average height, average build, with long hair tied back. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about him except for his eyes. They were inkwell dark, and forceful.

“Where is my husband?” Sabrina said.

He smiled. It was a smile that would have charmed anyone, she thought, or at least anyone he had not chained to a wall first.

“Your husband is fine and well. He’s doing important work. You should be very proud of him.”

A gust of wind rattled the fence. Eli faced it and breathed deeply, contented.

“Here’s something you should consider,” he said. “A quote that inspired me. Perhaps it will inspire you.” He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was deeper, with a powerful timbre. Violet nodded at the sound.

“‘For your people, the land was not alive,’” he said. “‘It was something that was like a stage, where you could build things and make things happen. You were supposed to make the land bear fruit. That is what your God told you.…There were more of you, so your way won out. You took the land and you turned it into property. Now our mother is silent. But we still listen for her voice.

“‘And here is what I wonder: If she sent diseases and harsh winters when she was angry with us, and we were good to her, what will she send when she speaks back to you?

“‘You had better hope your God is right.’”

He stopped speaking and smiled.

“What do you think of that?”

“It’s a powerful question.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It also sounds like it belongs to the Indians. And that isn’t you.”

The smile widened. “Ah, Sabrina, but you’re wrong. We’re too far gone in this world to worry about heritage, about ethnicity. There are only two relevant parties now—people and power. Who has power, and who deserves it.”

“I guess you think that’s for you to determine.”

“Oh, I won’t determine a thing, Sabrina. Your nation is laced with the fuses of fear. All I’m going to do is provide the match. I’m fascinated to see how it turns out.” He looked out over the mountains again, took another deep breath, and whispered, “‘You had better hope your God is right.’”

When he finally turned back to her, the smile was gone.

“I understand that last night you made a mistake that led to two injuries.”

Sabrina waited.

“Are you familiar with the work of Nikola Tesla?” Eli Pate said.

The name was vaguely familiar. “Electrical genius,” she said, and he seemed pleased until she added, “like Edison.”

His eyes tightened immediately. “Tesla’s understanding was far ahead of Edison’s—ahead of the entirety of mankind—and it still took years for the money-obsessed pigs who ran the world to recognize it. And while the battle raged, Edison engaged in a campaign designed to destroy Tesla’s reputation, to obscure the truth with lies, to promote his own ideas even though he knew they were inferior, and to line his pockets rather than help the world. Highlights of this campaign included the slaughter of innocent animals that he claimed were dying by the droves due to Tesla’s alternating-current system. Our dear hero Thomas Alva Edison reached his zenith when he electrocuted an elephant in an attempt to discredit Tesla’s system. This is true.”

He glanced away then and Sabrina followed his eyes and saw, for the first time, a small cage near the fence. There were soft sounds coming from inside.

“Last night you were reckless, thankless, and dangerous. Two people were injured. I blame myself.”

He walked to the cage.

“This man who is celebrated in every schoolroom in the nation once electrocuted animals in the interest of his own commerce. We have neglected to teach the children that lesson. His team made movies of these atrocities, designed to prove one thing and one thing only: that his baby, direct current, was safer than the alternating current of Tesla. But guess what, Sabrina. It was not safer. It was not better. It was in all ways inferior, and Edison, if we are to believe anything of his genius, should have understood this. I suspect he did, down in his bones, where whatever remained of his engineering instincts hid, concealed by the instincts of the business tycoon. I suspect that he had slipped past the point of being concerned with what was right and wandered into the territory of what was righteous. It was all about fury then, about ego. Do you understand the difference in this?”

It was clear he wanted an answer, so she said, “Yes.”

He regarded her with disdain, shook his head, and then leaned down and fumbled with a latch on the cage. Three chickens emerged. A rooster and two hens, clucking and pecking; they approached Eli with immediate trust. He smiled at them and reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew some feed, which he shook out at his feet. The birds ate happily.

“Alternating current,” he said, “is indeed a dangerous thing.”

Sabrina said, “You don’t need to do this.”

“I’d hoped not. But you proved me wrong. I’m afraid you’ll have to watch the effects of your choices, Sabrina.”

He walked backward down the hill and toward the humming fence, spreading more feed. The birds scurried after him, using their wings for balance in their awkward runs. They swarmed over his boots and against his legs, and when he reached down and stroked one large hen, she showed no fear. Only trust. Sabrina tasted bile in the back of her throat and turned away.

“Sabrina? I’ll need your attention. If you turn away, I’ll have to find new methods of teaching. And I assure you that I will.”

Reluctantly, she looked back at him. Satisfied, he sidestepped and tossed a final handful of food at the base of the fence, near the lowest of the humming copper wires.

The first bird, a bantam rooster, made contact almost immediately, and there was a blink-fast bang and a small cloud of feathers blew into the air and the smell of charred flesh followed behind it. The rooster, blown five feet back, lay motionless and steaming.

The remaining hens, spooked by the bang, made frantic attempts to flee. Eli kicked the first one, catching her sideways and driving her into the fence, where a squawk of fear died abruptly in a shower of sparks. The final bird, the large hen who had let Eli stroke her just seconds earlier, was faster. She escaped the kick, ducking her tail as she scurried off, peeling her head back and uttering a high, warbling sound of terror. She sensed Eli’s pursuit and angled away with uncanny instincts and surprising speed, eluding him in a wobbling run up the hill and toward Sabrina. She was only a few feet from her when Pate finally caught her. He grabbed the hen by the neck and lifted it as she squawked and flapped, twisting in midair. One of her claws caught his forearm and opened a bright red gash, but he didn’t react, just marched down the hill, turned, and slung the hen at the fence. She had time to flap her wings twice in a desperate attempt to regain control before she made contact.

It wasn’t enough.

The once-fastest of the birds slid down the fence, sparking and smoking, to join her dead companions. He kicked the dead bird away from the fence, one blackened wing flapping against the white body, and then turned back.

“Violet, take Sabrina inside and secure her, please. Leave her enough mobility to pluck feathers, though. Sometimes sensory cues are necessary for a lesson to take hold.”

Violet hurried down to collect the birds. She shoved the fastest hen, the last one to die, into Sabrina’s hands. The body was still warm, and Sabrina could see that one eye had ruptured. Blood ran from the eye and over the beak. The smell of burned flesh and feathers was heavy.

Eli watched with a smile.

“Good news,” he said. “You’ll have a break from the oatmeal now.”