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“Stop!” I cried, scrambling off the horse, my eyes fixed on the wounds in her neck and side. “She’s in pain. ”
Caleb approached her, his steps unhurried. “It’s okay,” he said softly to the doe. He took the animal’s neck in his hands and unsheathed his knife. “It’s going to be all right. ” Then he whispered something to her, over and again, which seemed to ease the panic. He brought his knife to her neck. In one swift motion he slit her throat, and the blood spilled out onto the pebbled shore, clouding the lake water red.
The tears came hot and fast, my body shaking as I watched life leave the animal’s eyes.
I had grown up with death. I’d seen it all around me in the faces of neighbors, hauling sleeping bags into their backyards for burial. I’d seen it beyond the car window, in the lines of people rioting outside the pharmacies, their skin mottled and red. I’d seen it in my own mother, standing on the front porch, blood dripping from her nose.
But for twelve years, inside that School, I had been safe. The walls protected me, the doctors were there to cure us, I wore the warning whistle around my neck. As Caleb cradled the deer’s head in his hands I wept harder than I ever had. For here it was, waiting for me all along: death, inescapable death, everywhere. Always.
Chapter Fourteen
THE NEXT MORNING, THE MEMORY OF THE KILL RUSHED into my thoughts before I could raise my head from the mattress. The boys had been waiting for the deer to arrive, and had carried it into the dugout, roping its limbs to a broken branch. I retreated to the cavern quickly, back to a sleeping Arden. I couldn’t stand to see it opened up and the skin peeled back, the tender meat exposed.
I turned on the lantern by our bedside, filling the room with a soft white glow. Caleb had brought us a pile of clothes, freshly washed in the lake. I stood and pulled on a button-down shirt. I still didn’t know where the owner of the children’s books was, or why he’d abandoned his room. On the side of the desk sat a notepad. I pulled it out, taking in the four simple words: My name is Paul. The handwriting was wobbly, the letters unevenly spaced. I thought of what Caleb had said about the boys, how in some ways they’d had it worse than the girls. I closed my eyes and imagined Ruby being herded into that room with the narrow beds. I heard her question the doctors, in the innocent way only she could. Where are our books? When is our first trip to the City of Sand? Why are we being strapped down? They had taken so much from us, but we’d been given one thing at least. I would always know how to read, to write, to spell my own name.
Behind me, bare feet smacked against the mud floor. I turned just in time to see a tiny person dart toward me and yank the notepad right out of my hand. The boy had matted, light brown hair and wore mud-caked overalls with no T-shirt underneath.
“Where did you come from?” I asked softly, not wanting to scare him. “Who are you?”
“This is my brother’s. ” He held up the pad like a prize.
“I wasn’t trying to pry,” I said slowly, not taking my gaze off his small body. I remembered the little girls who were in School—a year behind us, then two years after, then three, the classes shrinking down to nothing as the King organized people in the City, sorting the orphans out. Some children were occasionally found in the woods, born to Strays in the wake of the plague, but it was rare. I hadn’t seen a child this young in so long. And I couldn’t remember ever having seen a male child. “I just—”
“He was learning to read,” the boy said. His toe touched down on the floor, punting a pebble across the dirt. He looked no more than six and had the expression of someone who rarely smiled. “He was going to teach me, but then he died. ”
I glanced in the corner, where Arden lay motionless on the mattress, her skin gleaming with sweat. A full plate of vegetables sat at her side from the night before. “What was wrong with him? Was he sick?” The words caught in my throat as I watched her face.
“He’d just started hunting. Caleb said it was a flash flood. ” He flipped through the notepad as he spoke, revealing pages and pages of shaky scribbles. “Paul took care of me when our parents disappeared. He was the one who brought me here. ”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I don’t get why everyone says that. ” When he looked up at me his eyes caught the light. “It’s not like it’s your fault. ”
“I guess . . . ” I thought of the visions that came to me every time I was pulled into sleep. Pip in a thin white bed, her stomach protruding over her legs. Sometimes she was wriggling from the restraints’ leather grip, screaming out to the others who lay beside her, reaching for hands she could not hold. Other times she’d be as I remembered her, at her desk doing math problems, her pencil banging out a familiar, steady beat on the wood. She’d turn suddenly, her face flooded with anger as she exposed the pregnant mound of her profile. Why is this happening? she’d ask, taking a step toward me, then another. Why? I’d keep saying the same words—I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry—until she lunged at me and I’d wake up.
I cleared my throat and met the boy’s eyes. “. . . Sometimes it’s like saying I’m sad. Or I’m hurting for you. Maybe it’s silly. Maybe it’s just what people say. ”
The boy studied me, taking in the hair that fell past my shoulders, the ends frayed. I’d combed it with my fingers to keep it from tangling into knots. “They told me you’re a girl,” he said.
I nodded.
“Are you my mother?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not. ”
Silence followed. He picked at the chapped skin on his lips for a moment.
“I’m Benny,” he finally said as he shuffled to the door. “Want to see my room? You can meet my bunkmate, Silas. ”
I hesitated. My gaze moved to Arden. She was curled up, her eyes squeezed shut as they had been since yesterday evening. “All right,” I said to the little boy, glad to have someone to talk to. “Let’s go. ”
I followed him down the winding corridors to a small, narrow room. Two mattresses sat on the floor and mud-covered trucks and cans were scattered across the dirt. Another boy with chestnut skin was drawing in the hard ground with a stick. His black hair was all different lengths, revealing patches of scalp, and he wore a long T-shirt tucked into a familiar accessory—a purple tutu.
So this was Silas. The little girl I’d chased through the forest was in fact a little boy.
“I know you,” I said, stepping toward him. “You frightened me that night. Why wouldn’t you stop running when I called?”
Silas froze in my gaze. “I was running,” he said, dropping the stick on the floor, “because you were chasing me. ” His feet were folded beneath him, making him look even smaller than he was.
“Are there more of you?” I asked. Silas picked up his stick and carved more circles in the dirt. He ignored me, instead focusing on his drawings. “You’re the youngest?”
Benny plopped down beside him. He turned and for the first time I noticed a long, pink scar stretching from the back of his neck to his ear, half hidden by his matted hair. “Yup. Then there’s Huxley. He’s eleven. He plays with us sometimes, but everybody else is always doing chores or in training. ”