I didn’t think that was the reason.
How could I find out anything?
Listen, I told myself—the word that Edwy had kept hissing at me yesterday.
People around me were talking about the price of cassava root. They were grimly bargaining for packets, for extra portions of manioc flour. There was none of the cheery chatter I remembered from the Fredtown marketplace: Oh, did you hear? Our little Nelly started walking yesterday! And now we’re crawling around behind her, trying to keep her out of trouble! And You know what my little Lotu started calling his brother? Big Guy. It’s so funny how he runs around the house calling, “Where Big Guy? Big Guy home from school yet?”
Had all of the happy chatter in Fredtown been about us kids? And had the people in my hometown just lost the habit of happy chatter because they’d been without their kids for so long?
I got a little lost in the crowd, a little lost in my plans and fears. Was Bobo really safe on my back? Would he stay safe, even if I took a few risks to find Edwy?
I turned a corner, dodging the sharp edge of a table. I slammed into somebody’s bony arm.
“Oh, sorry,” I murmured. “Next time I’ll watch where I’m going. I’ll—”
Then I saw who I’d run into. I recognized the dress, the purse, the hat.
It was the mother.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Rosi?” she said, whirling on me, her eyes wide with horror. “And Bobo? Why are you here? Why did you disobey me? I told you to stay home!”
“I—,” I began.
She wasn’t listening. She grabbed my arm and dragged me away from the worst of the crowd. She dragged us to the edge of the marketplace, where the father was packing up apples.
Packing up early, just like yesterday, when I got scared.
What were the mother and the father afraid of?
“Look!” the mother exclaimed, shoving Bobo and me toward the father. Even though looking would do him no good. “Look who showed up! Our children! What are we going to do?”
She was trembling. Her voice shook too.
“Take them home immediately,” the father said. “Don’t wait for me. Hurry!”
“No,” I said, pulling away from the mother. “I came here for a reason. I’m sorry I disobeyed, but I had to. Edwy . . . Edwy’s missing, and I have to find him. He and I promised we’d look out for each other.”
“Edwy Watanaboneset,” Bobo chirped helpfully from my back.
The mother looked like we’d slapped her. She looked like she was going to slap us.
“Don’t say that name here!” she said, frantically glancing around.
“Why not?” I asked. “Everybody should hear it. Everybody should know he’s missing. Everybody should be looking for him right now!”
I felt sure that was what would have happened in Fredtown if anyone had ever gone missing—even without that scary word “kidnapping” attached to the disappearance. There would have been search parties assigned and precise search areas mapped out. Every possible hiding place would have been examined in no time flat.
That was what needed to happen here. That was how I could help Edwy.
If the adults weren’t organizing anything like that, then the responsibility fell to me.
The mother was still staring at me in stunned horror. I edged away from her. With Bobo still on my back, I scrambled onto the nearest table. It was just boards laid across a pair of sawhorses, so it buckled beneath my feet. But the boards held and I dared to stand up, rising to my full height. Now Bobo and I towered above the crowd. I could see the tops of everyone’s head. I could see everyone staring at me.
Good, I told myself. That’s what I wanted.
“Everybody!” I cried out. “Listen! A boy has gone missing. Maybe he’s even been kidnapped.” I thought that was keeping the maid’s confidence. I wasn’t giving away that I’d talked to her. “It’s Edwy Watanaboneset. He’s twelve, the same age as me. Please help. Please, we’ve got to organize a search. . . .”
And that was when the first person punched me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The punch knocked me backward. It landed in my gut, right at the edge of my ribs, and I doubled over, the weight of Bobo on my back throwing me off-balance.
Stay upright! My brain screamed at me. Keep Bobo from falling! Keep him higher than the crowd, away from anyone who might hit him. . . .
“Bobo, close your eyes!” I screamed. “Think about happy things and ignore . . .”
I didn’t think he could hear me, because he was already screaming in my ear, a drawn-out howl of terror.
I’d failed. I hadn’t protected him well enough. He was already traumatized.
Was there any way to protect him from whatever was going to happen next?
“Stop!” I wailed blindly to the crowd around me. “Stop! Hitting people isn’t the way to solve anything! Let’s just talk. . . .”
But my voice—my words—were useless. Hands grabbed at Bobo and me, pulling us down from the table, down into the dirt.
“Don’t hurt Bobo!” I cried. “Be careful with Bobo!”
People surrounded us, pressing close, blocking out the sun overhead. A man screamed, “Did you hear her? Acting like she can tell us what to do? For one of them?”
It reminded me of what Edwy and I had overheard the night before, in the wasteland. Maybe this was even the very same man who’d complained, Have you seen how those kids look at you? Or the one who said, They’ve got no respect.
But I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. Was it standing on the table? Was it speaking Edwy’s name aloud? Was it being a child, but already too old and too tall? Was it having green eyes? Something had unleashed a fury in all the grown-ups around me. Something had turned them into monsters who glared angrily at me.
“I’m just trying to help!” I protested, trying to rise up from the dirt while shielding Bobo. “Edwy needs—”
A shove knocked me down again. It was followed by somebody kicking me. And then I couldn’t separate out who was hitting me. Fists pounded against my body.
“Stop!” I screamed again. “For Bobo’s sake—”
Someone yanked Bobo away from me. One second he still had his hands clenched around my neck, his fingers intertwined as he held on for dear life. The next second he was gone, and I couldn’t see who had him. I could only catch glimpses of the hands hitting me and the faces leering at me.
“Don’t take Bobo!” I screamed. “Give him back!”
I didn’t think. I couldn’t. I waved my arms—shoving hands off me, struggling against the crowd. I’d balled up my hands into fists, and they connected with a jaw here, a gut there.
I was fighting back.
Turn the other cheek! screamed in my brain. A gentle answer turneth away wrath! Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind!
And yet my fists pounded against the bodies around me just as hard as fists pounded against mine.
“I want my brother back!” I screamed.
Nobody listened. A fist landed in my face, and it was such a big fist that I felt the pain all the way from my lower lip to the top of my nose. I felt something wet gushing down my cheek.
Blood.
They could kill me, I thought, stunned.
That couldn’t happen, because I needed to be there for Bobo, needed to find Edwy. . . .
I swung my fists harder and faster. I struggled against the fists pounding me and managed to half sit up.
“Help!” I screamed. “Help! Somebody! Please . . .”
Why weren’t the mother and the father coming to rescue me? Why hadn’t the Freds known this might happen? How could they have sent me to a place like this?
I jerked my head back and forth, frantically looking for Bobo. He was nowhere in sight. All I could see were fists and hands and leering faces. There were so many of them. Had the fighting somehow extended to the entire marketplace? Were lots of people being beaten, not just me?
&nbs
p; Everywhere I looked, I saw swinging arms, pounding fists.
And—over there—was that the glint of a knife?
Just then a blow landed against the side of my head. I felt my neck jarring from side to side, the pain reverberating.
I collapsed to the ground and everything went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I woke to darkness.
Is this how it happened for the father? I wondered. When all the light in the world turned off for him?
I found myself feeling for my arms, each hand grasping for the opposite elbow, the opposite forearm and hand. I flexed my leg muscles and feet. All my limbs were still there, but moving them shot pain through my entire body. I felt rips in my sleeves, gashes in my skin, dried blood everywhere.
I had never before had such serious wounds. I had never before had so much as a scratch that wasn’t instantly tended to, that wasn’t immediately dabbed with antiseptic and lovingly bandaged.
My heart ached with longing for the love and care of my Fred-parents, for the simplicity of life in Fredtown. Tears stung my eyes, but I couldn’t blink them away. When I tried harder, I finally saw a hint of light.
It wasn’t that my eyes had stopped working. It was that my eyelids were so painfully swollen that I could open them to only the barest of slits. And the light around me was so dim that at first it had seemed like darkness.
I forced myself to sit up. I forced my eyes open wider.
I was alone, on a cot. And I was in . . . a cage.
There were bars on three sides of me. The fourth side was a solid stone wall. The only section of the bars that looked like it might be a door was held firmly in place by a thick padlock.
I remembered Bobo looking at the caged-in, locked-down stores and thinking their bars were masks.
I remembered Bobo. I remembered that I’d lost him.
“Bobo!” I screamed. “Bobo!”
Nobody answered. Nobody came.
I remembered that we’d been trying to find Edwy. I remembered the maid saying that he’d been kidnapped.
“Edwy?” I called hopefully. Maybe he was being held nearby. Maybe he was just waiting for me to yell for him. That was the kind of thing he’d do. Maybe he’d figured out how to pick the lock on his cage. Maybe he was just hiding in the shadows to see if I would figure it out, too.
There was still no answer.
Even Edwy wouldn’t be so cruel as to not answer when I sounded so desperate.
I stood up on trembling legs and struggled over to the nearest wall of bars. I wrapped my hands around two of the bars and tried to shake them loose.
The bars held firm, their ends embedded in the stone ceiling above me and the stone floor beneath my feet. I yanked at the padlock on the door, but it held fast. Clutching the bars or trying to open the door was as useless as clenching my hands into fists and hitting the people who hit me.
I fought just as hard as they did, I remembered, everything about the fight coming back to me.
Shame and guilt flooded over me. I had violated one of the most sacred principles the Freds had taught me: You must never, ever, ever fight. Even if someone hits you, you don’t hit back. You use your words and your wits and you settle disputes peaceably.
I had had neither the words nor the wits to settle anything. I had fought, and I had lost Bobo. And now I was in a cage.
I collapsed to the floor and wept.
I was still weeping when I heard a voice: “Rosi? Rosi—is that you?”
I raised my head, forced my swollen eyes to open as wide as possible. I knew the voice didn’t belong to Bobo or Edwy. It didn’t belong to any child. It didn’t belong to the mother or the father either.
But it was still a little familiar.
I heard footsteps and saw a figure approaching in the near-darkness. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of slightly tilted eyes that I understood who had called my name:
It was the missionary from the mother’s church.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“I’m here,” I whispered. I raised my voice for what I really wanted to say. “Do you know—is Bobo all right? What happened to him?”
The missionary rushed toward my cage. He reached out and touched the padlock holding the door in place. Maybe he couldn’t quite believe it was real either.
“Bobo is fine,” he said in a cautious, soothing voice. “You don’t have to worry about him or your parents. They all escaped safely. Without injury. I just saw them—in fact, your parents were the ones who sent me here. I got special permission. . . . Oh, I am so sorry.”
I squinted up at him in confusion. The motion made my eyes and eyelids ache even more, the swollen skin bunching painfully together.
“They put me here?” I asked, heartbreak in my voice, no matter how hard I tried to hide it. “The parents? They think I belong in a . . . a cage?”
I thought of the mother slapping me, of the way she’d been mean to me from the very first. I thought of how she’d lied to the father about what color my eyes were. Had he found out the truth, and this was the result?
I thought again of how I’d hit and punched and kicked the people attacking me in the marketplace. How I’d fought. How I’d lost Bobo anyway.
Maybe I did belong in a cage.
“No, no, it was—” The missionary broke off. He ran his hand through his hair, which made it ripple like black silk. I let myself be distracted by that for an instant. His hair was completely different from mine.
It was easier to think about hair than about anything else right now.
And when I’d broken so many other important rules, what did it matter if I focused on someone’s appearance?
The missionary sank down to the floor to sit beside me, just on the other side of the bars.
“A prisoner has the right to know why she is being imprisoned,” he said. “So you can hear things now that you weren’t allowed to know before.”
Imprisoned? I thought.
I wanted to say that I already knew what I’d done wrong. But the words stuck in my throat. Nothing came out.
“First of all, I owe you an apology,” the missionary said.
I raised my head and looked at him.
“This could get lost after you hear the rest, but I’m sorry for the way things went on Sunday,” he said.
“Sunday?” I repeated, because after everything else that had happened, Sunday seemed a million years ago. But, depending on how long I’d been unconscious, it might have only been the day before.
“Yes. Yesterday,” the missionary said, so at least I knew that much. “Yesterday morning at the church service . . . You have to understand. I minister to broken people who have known great sorrow and pain. For twelve years I’d hoped and prayed alongside them. Year after year, I had to comfort weeping couples who had tiny newborn babies ripped from their arms. After all that sorrow, can’t you understand why, when God finally granted our prayers and you children returned, all we wanted to do was savor our joy? Rejoice in our miracle?”
I could almost see this, almost understand. But something perverse made me object.
“The mother, the father—the parents Bobo and I were sent back to—they never seemed happy to get me back,” I said. It hurt to say that. To acknowledge that my own parents didn’t seem to want me.
The missionary nodded in a way that accepted my words without agreeing.
“Your parents lost a baby when you were taken away,” he said. “It’s not that they expected you to still be a baby after twelve years, but . . . you and the other older children . . . you’ve already been shaped by the lives you lived apart from your parents. You’ve grown up very differently, into different people. More like . . . the people who raised you.”
He meant the Freds. On Sunday I’d wanted to scream, Freds aren’t evil! Freds are good!
Now I didn’t even feel worthy to speak the name, Freds.
The missionary grimaced, but in a sympathetic way. It was almost a Fred expression.
> “Jesus Himself would have been able to walk into that church and rejoice with the parents, but also comfort you children who felt bewildered and lost,” he said. “I failed to do that. Until you stood up, I didn’t even understand that I needed to. It had been so long since I’d been around children. . . . I’m sorry. I thought there would be time to explain that to you . . . before it came to this.”
He glanced around, his gaze taking in the bars of my cage. Or prison. Maybe that’s what it really was.
Somehow his apology—or confession—jarred loose one of my own.
“I know why I’m here,” I admitted. “For fighting. It’s understandable when little kids bite or hit or scratch, because they don’t know any better. But I know it’s wrong. I deserve . . .”
My throat closed again, and I couldn’t finish. I might have managed to say, to be in a cage. A prison. But what if this man thought I’d deserved to lose Bobo? To never see him again?
I also wanted to say, The mother slapped me—is she in a cage somewhere too? But her slapping me hadn’t caused my fighting. I was responsible for my own actions.
“Your Jesus is the one who said, Turn the other cheek, right?” I asked. “He’d hate me for what I did!”
“He would forgive you for what you did,” the missionary said gently. “And that’s if he thought what you did was wrong. Under the circumstances . . . Did you ever hear that Jesus also said, I bring not peace, but a sword?”
“He did?” I said. That had never once been mentioned in Fredtown.
“It’s caused a lot of problems over the years,” the missionary admitted. “I personally don’t view it as a call to war. Just that sometimes God wants us to stir things up. And we’re supposed to be wise enough to figure out when we need to be peaceable and abiding, and when we need to stand up and shout for change.”
I latched onto the strange word he’d said.
“War?” I asked. “Why would you worry about that? There hasn’t been a war in ages!”