It was growing dark outside by the time the people in white were done with their strange rituals. The pale man turned on lanterns which shone without fire; each contained a miniature sun held in a round glass bottle. But these suns gave no warmth, and it was getting colder. Poliniana began to shiver, and Macsofo opened his bundle to get out a winter shawl for her. The pale man, the first one they had met, who had now been with them all afternoon, smiled at Macsofo, but his smile quickly changed into a frown.
Brows knitted, he stared at the bundle. He held up his hand and strode over to the bundle, and pointed.
Zamatryna craned her head to see. There were some little insects coming out of the bundle, aphids from the garden. She saw the top of a carrot sticking up among folded clothing: Macsofo must have picked carrots from the garden that morning, and some aphids had come along too.
The pale man shook his head. He looked very unhappy. He scooped up Macsofo's entire bundle and then, to the horror of the family, he stepped on two of the aphids that had begun to crawl across the ground. After he had killed them, he bent and picked up their bodies, and then he left the building, carrying Macsofo's bundle with him.
“How could he do that?” Harani asked. Aliniana was whimpering. “How could he just kill them? They might have been the souls of the dead!”
“Our dead mean nothing to them,” Darroti said, his voice toneless. It was the first time he'd spoken since arriving here; he had gone through all the rituals without saying a word, and refused the sweets the people in white offered him.
The pale man came back without Macsofo's bundle. A new woman in white came with him, wearing the stretchy gloves, and looked at everyone's head and skin. When she was done, she smiled and said something to the pale man, but he shook his head and gestured for each bundle to be opened.
“Are they going to steal our things?” Jamfret said. “All of them?”
“We must do as they say,” Timbor said, although he looked drained and gray. “They have given us food and drink and shelter. We must have faith that they do not wish to rob us.”
And so Zamatryna bent, her back to the pale people, and undid her little bundle. Here were two winter tunics and two summer ones, two pairs of leggings for each season, a warm shawl, some soft leather boots. Here, tucked inside one boot, was the wooden doll Uncle Darroti had carved for her, with its dried-berry eyes and fuzzy woolen hair. Hereâwhat was this?
Crawling out of the top of the other boot came a beetle, dazzling yellow and orange. It glowed like a jewel in the dim light. Zamatryna's heart leaped. It was Mim-Bim, her best, her biggest beetle, the one she had taught to jump through paper hoops for treats of sugar-water and rose petals. She had let it go; she had watched it fly away. But it had come back. Mim-Bim had come back and hid among her things, to come with her into exile.
And the pale people would kill the beetle if they saw it, as they had killed the aphids.
She had to hide it. But how? She gently picked it up and concealed it among the folds of her tunic. “Don't let them see you,” she whispered,
although not even the brightest beetle could understand speech. “Stay where you are, Mim-Bim. Don't come out!”
She heard footsteps behind her, and turned to find the pale man smiling down at her. He took her thingsâalthough he patted her arm as he did soâand divided them as he had divided everyone else's. The small store of food they had brought was in one pile, along with the seeds; clothing and prayer carpets and other soft things were in another, and tools and cooking potsâanything with a hard surfaceâin a third. Poliniana's slippers were in the second pile; he hesitated over Zamatryna's doll, but put it there too. Then he pantomimed scrubbing and washing the clothing, folding it, and giving it back to them.
“It's already clean,” Aliniana said. “We washed everything before we left! It still smells of soap. Don't these people have noses?”
“Peace,” Macsofo said wearily. “Do as they say.” Now the woman in white showed them a pile of clothing she had brought, ugly green pants and shirts. She gave each of them a set; she pointed to their own clothing, and then pointed to the pile. She held up a sheet and shut her eyes, and the pale man mimed getting undressed behind it.
They did as they were told. Behind the sheet, Zamatryna managed to transfer Mim-Bim from her tunic to the pocket of the new pants, which were far too large for her and dragged comically on the ground.
The pale woman put all their clothing, and the carpets and the slippers and the doll, into a shiny green bag made of very thin stuff. She put all the food into another. She left the hard things where they were, and left the tent. The pale man motioned for them to sit down, and then someone brought them more rice, with stringy meat and tasteless vegetables in it, and more of the fruit drink they had been given after being stuck with the needles.
When they were done eating, the pale man turned down the lanterns so that the room was only very dimly lit, and pantomimed sleeping. And indeed, Zamatryna found suddenly that she was wearier than she had ever been. Still wearing the ridiculous clothing they had been given, they all crawled into their narrow cots, and Timbor murmured evening benedictions to bless them all. But Zamatryna, though she was so tired, could not sleep. She felt for Mim-Bim in her pocket, and let the beetle crawl out to explore the world under the rough sheet and scratchy blanket. In the dimness, she could see the pale man sitting by the door. When he saw her looking at him, he smiled and gave her a little wave, and pantomimed sleeping again. She turned her back on him, flipping over to face the other way, and pulled the covers over her head.
There was Mim-Bim, shining like a little lantern. Pretty thing! It wouldn't live much longer, but Zamatryna could at least try to save it from the boots of the pale people.
As she watched, the beetle began walking in an odd pattern: up a few inches, a diagonal down, up a few inches, a diagonal back to where it had started. Zamatryna stared. She had never seen a beetle do that before. But Mim-Bim repeated the pattern, over and over. X. The beetle was tracing an X.
X for silence. “I won't tell the pale people about you,” Zamatryna whispered, nearly soundlessly lest anyone hear. “I won't let them crush you.”
Still Mim-Bim continued the dance. X. Up, down and across, up, down and across. X. Did that mean that Zamatryna couldn't tell anyone about the beetle, that she had to keep it completely secret? X. But why? And how had the insect learned human gestures? X. Had going through the door into exile changed it that much? But Zamatryna herself didn't feel so very different.
X. She fell asleep watching the beetle, watching and wondering. When she woke up, after no dreams she could remember, her head was above the covers and her body ached from the strange bed. She blinked, remembered where she was, remembered everything that had happened, and ducked under the covers again. Here was Mim-Bim, tracing the same pattern. Zamatryna picked the beetle up and put it back in her pocket. Since it knew gestures now, she hoped it would have the sense to stay hidden.
The pale man from the night before no longer sat at the door; someone else was there, a man equally pale but with brown hair and darker eyes, who smiled at them. Someone brought them breakfast, a bitter hot drink and more of the orange juice, and dry granules to soak in milk. Someone else brought their clothing and the carpets back. “Oh, thank goodness,” Harani said, and hurried over to the neat piles. Aliniana followed with more energy than she'd yet shown here.
“This soap smells terrible,” Aliniana grumbled, holding one of Jamfret's tunics to her nose. “And the color's faded! Did they ruin everything?”
“Never mind. At least we can get out of these ridiculous garments and back into our own.”
“Some of it,” Aliniana said grimly. “This is too small for Jamfret now! They shrunk it! And where's our food, and the seeds? Did they bring that pile back too?”
The food and seeds were gone, and only some of the clothing they had so carefully chosen to bring with them was still wearable. Some of it was faded, some shrunk. Some had developed holes where none had been before.
The prayer carpets had kept their colors, for they were costly things, but Poliniana's beautiful slippers were oddly bent, missing some of their jewels and beads. Zamatryna's wooden doll had been robbed of its eyes and hair; her mother handed it back to her with a sigh. “I'm sorry, sweet one. I'll fix it for you when I can.”
“It's all right,” Zamatryna said. She felt very grown up suddenly, and she knew what to do. She carried the wooden doll to her Uncle Darroti, who sat hugging himself on his bed, his face working, and placed it on his lap. “She lost her hair and eyes, Uncle. Will you make new ones for her?”
He didn't look at her. He stared into the air above her head and said tonelessly, “I don't know how.”
“Yes you do, Uncle. Of course you do! You made them the first time.”
“That was at home. I don't know how anymore.”
She touched his hand. It was very cold. “You'll learn,” she said. She began to climb into his lap, because once he had liked it when she did that, but he didn't respond, didn't unfold his arms, still didn't look at her. It was like climbing a tree, except that tree branches bent when you climbed them, and Uncle Darroti didn't bend.
“Zamatryna,” her father said quietly. “Don't. He doesn't want it.”
She got down again, feeling scolded. “I wanted to help. I thoughtâ”
“I know. Come here.” She went to Erolorit, and he bent and picked her up and held her for a long time, as he had not done since she was much smaller. “I know you were trying to help,” he said into her hair. “You are a sweet, kind child, and your uncle loves you, but he cannot show it right now. He cannot show it to anyone. You must not be angry at him or upset with yourself. He is sick, and we will all try to make him better, but I think it will take a long time. Do not be upset. Can you go play with your cousins?”
But she didn't get the chance, because new pale people came and gestured for the family to follow with their things. This time they were taken deep into the ugly city and brought to another of the cloth buildings, much smaller than the one where they had been before. It had ten cots crammed into it, so close together that they had to crawl over each other if someone wanted to get up in the middle of the night. Their building was surrounded by others, each of which also held too many people, none of whom spoke any language they could understand. Little white houses stood between the buildings; they were the places of relief, made of hard shiny white stuff. They stank, but at least the ground was mostly clean.
A short distance away was a much larger building filled with tables, where three times a day they ate their food: plain, dull stuff, plentiful enough but tasteless, good only for keeping life in the body. Grandfather Timbor
blessed it before each meal, his voice nearly inaudible over the uproar of voices around them. Zamatryna had never seen so many people in such a little space, and she never grew used to the smell. Babies could be bathed every two days, but anyone who could walk was only permitted to take a very short shower once a week, because water was too precious here to waste. The stink of bodies was everywhere.
That stink never faded. They spent fifteen long, strange months in the ugly city. If indeed it was a city of Mendicants, as Erolorit had claimed, it never felt sacred. The pale people in green were kind enough, but would not let them leave. They spent most of their time at school, studying English.
The children learned it most easily, and Zamatryna was the quickest of all. Nearly fluent after a yearâa feat the Americans considered remarkableâshe became the interpreter for the family. What a relief it was to be able to communicate with something other than gestures!
They learned that they were in the desert to the north of Reno, Nevada, in a camp built to accommodate refugees from other places, places torn by warfare or decimated by plague. Their neighbors in the camp had fled persecution, famine, and chaos to seek asylum in the United States, the wealthiest country in this world. These were the lucky ones, who had been able to leave their countries at all. Most of them had friends and family they had left behind, whom they would try to bring here once they became established in America. Once they would have been able to come here more easily, but the United States had been attacked on its own soil, ten years before Timbor's family arrived, and no longer trusted people who were not already Americans. Even getting to the camp was difficult: many people were turned away at airports, sent back to their own countries. And sometimes people in the camp were sent back, when their pleas for asylum were rej ected.
The Army, the people in green, guarded the camp to make sure no one escaped to live illegally in the United States. That was why the camp was in the middle of a desert, for even if someone escaped, there were miles of harsh landscape between the gates and the nearest town, or even the nearest reliable source of water. But people from outside came into the camp: teachers, doctors, social workers, linguists and lawyers, ministers and church volunteers, all the people who wanted to help the refugees stay in the United States, even though they weren't Americans yet. Zamatryna liked the teachers, who told her how smart she was. She didn't like the doctors, who stuck needles into her, or the linguists, who kept trying to find out what language her family spoke. Some of the church people were very kind, but others told her that her family's blessings were no good, that everyone had to
use the same blessings their church did. It was very strange, because the different churches had different blessings, too. But at least all of these people, the ones she liked and the one she didn't, wanted to help the refugees stay in the United States.