Children of Exile (23 page)

Faintly, I heard a woman's voice call back from outside, “No, please, be quick. . . .”

The mother opened the door a crack, and then all the way.

“What are you doing?” I cried. We didn't even have the floorboard fully off the hiding place yet; there was no time to slip down out of sight.

“It's okay, it's okay,” the mother called over her shoulder, even as someone in a hooded cape stepped into the house.

The mother shut the door behind her, and the intruder dropped the hood of her cape.

It was the maid from Edwy's house.

“Our neighbor, Drusa,” the mother said, a helpless tone in her voice. I wasn't sure if she was telling the father or telling me. “From across the street.”

I started to say,
Oh, we've met.
I might have even added the polite Fred-approved
How nice to see you again.
But the maid, Drusa, wasn't waiting for pleasantries. She gripped the mother's arm.

“I saw your daughter come back,” she said. “I was watching. You're going to have to send her away before anyone finds her here. I'm just asking . . . take my daughter too.”

And then, from the folds of her cape, she eased out a little girl who'd been hiding there.

It was Cana.

Cana's mother has only had her home for three days and she already wants to get rid of her?
I thought.
Cana? The sweetest child ever?

Drusa placed her hands on Cana's shoulders, and I understood.

No, it's killing this woman to send Cana away,
I thought.
But she thinks she has to do this for Cana's sake.

“That's fine,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “Cana and I are friends, aren't we, Cana?”

Cana's knowing eyes seemed to take in the tears still streaming down Bobo's cheeks, the dark, gaping hole in our floor, the tense expressions on all the grown-ups' faces. But she nodded.

“It's too much to ask,” the father said. “Adding another child to take care of puts Rosi in more danger. And Bobo, too.”

I glanced quickly at Bobo and then Cana—what if they understood that the father was calling Cana dangerous?

Cana's expression hardened; Bobo's lower lip trembled. But it had already been trembling.

“In exchange, I'll tell you the best place for your daughter to go,” Drusa said. “I'll tell you where the Watanabonesets probably sent their son to be safe.”

“What?” I exploded. “You mean Edwy? You told me Edwy was kidnapped! Were you lying? If I hadn't thought Edwy was in danger, I wouldn't have stood up in the marketplace, I wouldn't have—”

Drusa just gave me an even stare.

“I don't know
what
happened to Edwy,” she said. “The Watanabonesets told me to say he was kidnapped. And they were listening from behind the door, so I couldn't say anything else without being fired. They were acting upset, but everybody's been upset and worried ever since all of you children got home.”

“We forgot how much worse it is to be in danger when our children are in danger too,” the mother said softly. “Our innocent children.”

She was gazing down at Bobo. The innocent one. The favorite. Then her eyes met mine, and they seemed to go a
little dead. But I saw this differently now—now that I'd faced danger myself and failed to protect Bobo. My memories of all her scowling shifted. All those times she seemed so mad at me, had she really just been scared? And she couldn't hide it from me the same way she hid it from Bobo?

I couldn't think about any of that right now.

“How can you not even know if Edwy was kidnapped or sent to safety?” I fumed at Drusa, “Why would his parents lie? Why—?”

“You don't know what it's like in this town,” Drusa snapped back at me. “Nobody ever knows what's true and what's false. It's too dangerous. Lies are the only protection
anyone
has. And lies don't work against bullets when madmen roam the streets with guns.”

I thought about the gunfire we'd heard, off in the distance. I thought about how I was going to have to go back out into the dark night, into that danger.

“My daughter asks questions,” Drusa said. She'd evidently given up on trying to explain this town to me. “Cana
thinks.
She expects the world to be nice to her. And . . . I want her to grow up like that. Not like I did, trusting no one. Scared of everything. Believing nothing.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a thin sheet of paper. “I have a map. I copied it from one I found on Mr. Watanaboneset's desk. Regardless of what actually happened to Edwy, if Mr.
Watanaboneset thought he should send his son away to keep him safe, I want that for my daughter, too.”

She handed me the map and I took it with numb fingers. I tucked it into my pocket, beside the key I'd found in the missionary's Bible.

“We'll bundle up food for you to take,” the mother said, wringing her hands. “And maybe a change of clothes . . . You won't be able to carry much. It won't take any time at all to pack.”

She'd barely said the word “pack” when the door smashed open, not even swinging on its hinges but falling flat to the floor. If any of us had been standing in front of it, we would have been crushed. I couldn't make sense of the motion—there'd been so much noise. Had the hinges just exploded? On their own?

In the next instant, a man with a gun appeared in the doorway.

An Enforcer.

Did he just
shoot
the door open?
I wondered numbly.
Kick it down?

Either way, he had so much power.

“You're hiding a fugitive!” he screamed.

He meant me. There was no avoiding it: He was going to recapture me. And he was going to punish my parents because he'd found me here. Maybe he'd even punish Drusa and Cana and Bobo.

“No!” I said. “None of them are responsible for me being here! I came on my own. Arrest me, but don't—”

“Arrest you?” the Enforcer cried in a horrible, mocking voice. “You're an escapee! I can do anything I want!”

And then he aimed his gun at me.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I couldn't see anything but that gun.

That's why I missed seeing my mother and Drusa fling themselves at the Enforcer. I only saw them smash into him,
knocking the gun to the side. It went off, a bullet tearing through the roof.

These women aren't rabbits,
I thought.
This is how mothers protect their young.

“What's happening? Who's hit?” my father wailed, and my heart ached for him that he couldn't see, he didn't know.

“We're all fine,” I tried to tell him, but at the same time my mother cried “Help us hold him down!”

My father leaped toward them. Bobo and Cana clutched my legs, making it impossible for me to move. Were the children screaming? Were the adults? Was I? All the noise jumbled together. Then I could make out Bobo's voice.

“I don't like this game!” he protested. “I don't want to play! Make it stop!”

He still thought this was make-believe. He thought none of this was real. It was like his mind was protecting him from understanding what he'd seen.

Just then my parents and Drusa pulled back from the Enforcer. My mother moaned, “Ohhhh . . . ,” and Drusa began repeating, “So it's true. So it's true. It was true all along. . . .”

I couldn't see what they were talking about, but I could tell that the Enforcer had stopped moving. Bobo and Cana were still clutching my legs, and Bobo had his face buried in my skirt. But it was unbearable not to know what the women
were looking at, unbearable not to know what my father had touched before his hands jerked away from the Enforcer's face. It was unbearable not to know what had happened. I inched forward, ready to push Bobo and Cana back if I saw anything that they shouldn't.

But Bobo got ahead of me. He thought the game was over; he thought the danger had been imaginary all along. He tiptoed close to the Enforcer, his mouth agape. He wore his fascinated expression, his “I'm about to ask questions” look. He stared at the place where the Enforcer's face had been. Now it seemed to be covered by glossy black scales. And antennae. And a horned forehead.

“Wow,” Bobo breathed. In awe. “Is that what everyone looks like under their skin? Does everyone have a face like a beetle underneath their regular face? I want to see
my
beetle face. Can you get a mirror?”

He began tugging at the skin on his jaw, practically grunting with the effort.

Our father put his hand against Bobo's face, stopping him.

“You don't have a face like that,” our father said. “Humans just have one face. The only people with beetle faces underneath are . . .”

Our mother finished for him in a whisper: “People from another planet.”

“What?”
I said.
“What?”

My mind was so jumbled.

This can't be
echoed in my brain, swirling around every thought.
I'm just imagining this. Because of the trauma of this whole day, the trauma of every day since we came home . . . This can't be true, because I've never encountered anything like this before, never even thought it was possible. . . .

Except maybe I had.

My mind jumped to the words I'd seen carved into Edwy's airplane seat: “These people aren't real either.” I'd forgotten about those words, dismissed them entirely once Edwy said he wasn't talking about our real parents. I'd pretty much forgotten about the Enforcers too after I left the plane, before they became my jailers. But I should have been paying more attention. There were lots of things I should have noticed before it was too late.

These people aren't real either.

Either.

My mind couldn't seem to grasp anything. The three adults—the three
human
adults—acted just as befuddled. My parents were sprawled sideways, motionless, as if they'd slipped into shock. Drusa kept murmuring, “So it's true. It's true. I always thought those were just rumors. Made-up stories. Lies . . .”

Cana and Bobo were still young enough that they believed in the tooth fairy. Unicorns. Magic. Things that adults and kids my age considered impossible.

So somehow they didn't seem as surprised.

“Oh, he's a spaceman,” Bobo said, nodding as if everything made sense to him now. “Or a spacewoman. Whatever. He's from a planet where people looks like beetles. So the fake human face—is that kind of like his space helmet?”

“Space people can't breathe without their space helmets on,” Cana said in her wise little voice.

She darted toward the Enforcer and began tugging on the part of his face that had fallen away. Maybe she hit some kind of latch or lever, because suddenly the man's human face closed up again, hiding everything that resembled a beetle—the antennae, the horns, the shiny scales. His face seemed to be made of normal human skin again, but he was scowling, with ridges in his forehead, frown lines around his mouth. Now he looked human again. Human, but no less terrifying.

His whole body convulsed. I saw what Cana had figured out: The man had stopped breathing when his human face was off.

Was he still alive? Was the convulsing a sign that he was able to breathe again? Or a sign that he was dying?

The Enforcer's motion seemed to shake my parents out of their shock.

“Oh! We have to make sure—,” my mother began.

“That he gets back to his friends for help,” I said quickly, shooting a glance at Cana and Bobo. I couldn't let them understand. I wasn't even sure that I understood. But I was pretty sure my mother meant that this Enforcer had to die. Before he killed all of us. Or told someone else to.

“I'll take care of him,” my father said heavily. “I'll—” He turned his head toward Bobo and softened his voice. “I'll take him to friends.”

Numbly, I watched my father pull the spaceman/Enforcer out into the street. I watched my mother and Drusa start to lift the broken door and place it back over the empty, gaping doorway, hiding our living room from the outside world once again. Just before they fit the splintered wood into the frame, I slid away from Cana's grip and darted after my father. I barely managed to squeeze past the door and out into the darkness.

“Wait!” I called after my father. “It's not safe! The
Enforcers who are out on patrol—they're shooting people on sight—”

“I'm not going far,” my father whispered to me. He hesitated, crouched down, his hands under the spaceman/Enforcer's armpits. “There are people who would pay good money to have one of these Enforcers as a prisoner. So they can find out his secrets.”

“But it's
dangerous
out here,” I whispered. “You can't see—”

“Which means I'm safer in the dark than you are,” he whispered back. “It's what I'm used to, anyway.”

He began tugging on the spaceman's unconscious body, dragging it away from me and our house.

“Go back and take care of Bobo,” my father said. “He needs you.”

It was true: Bobo did need me. Bobo could easily be traumatized by what he'd just witnessed if he didn't get the right debriefing.

But so could I. I
had
been traumatized. My mind was still reeling.

These people aren't real either . . . either . . . either . . .

The words that Edwy had carved into the airplane seat still echoed in my brain. Now that I understood how unreal—or surreal—the Enforcers really were, Edwy's words sent me back to another disturbing memory: the moment when Edwy and I had stopped being friends back
in Fredtown. It was after Edwy had started lying, constantly coming up with mischievous little stories that made me distrust anything he told me. I'd been stung too many times by his pranks—he dyed the tips of my hair orange with Kool-Aid once; another time he threw a shaving-cream pie in my face.