Meg hurried back to the office and reached the Private doorway in time to watch Jake pick up a pen with his beak and offer it to the deliveryman. The man nodded to Meg, took the pen from Jake, and made a notation on the paper attached to her clipboard.
A deliveryman dropping off packages. Familiar. Jake playing the pen game. Familiar.
She looked at the postcards in her hands, fascinated by the photographs of Talulah Falls. All that water pouring over the edge of the world, creating mist and rainbows.
Something new. A confined experience.
Meg dashed to the table in the sorting room and laid out the five postcards, picture side up. Three of them were of Talulah Falls. One was a deer half shrouded by a mist rising from the ground. And the last one . . . Big red rocks rising out of the ground, their tops flat.
Plateaus.
A fizz of excitement filled her. Plateau. Resting place. Stable place where things could stay the same for a while, giving the mind a chance to catch up.
Was that why, after doing so much and absorbing so much, she was struggling now? Living in the Courtyard, she absorbed more images and information in a day than she would have seen in a week at the compound. And even in the compound, although no one would have told the girls why it was done that way, there would be one week of new images, and then the next week they would look at things they had seen before.
Plateau. Resting place. She had done some of that instinctively, reaching for a magazine she’d perused before instead of looking at the new issue. But she hadn’t done enough of it because she hadn’t considered how important it was to stop before she reached overload. From now on, she would give herself more resting places.
And if she needed those resting places, so did the other girls—especially the girls who hadn’t chosen to live in the outside world.
Meg picked up the phone in the sorting room and called Merri Lee. “Merri? I figured out another bit we need to put in the Guide.”
CHAPTER 12
Firesday, Maius 11
Steve Ferryman drove out to the Gardner farm. The Simple Life folk didn’t have telephones in their houses, and they sure didn’t own digital cameras. Or any kind of camera, for that matter.
Would a drawing work as a reference for a blood prophet? Something he needed to ask.
After talking with Simon Wolfgard yesterday, he had taken his personal camera to the B and B where the five young cassandra sangue were staying and took pictures of each of the bedrooms—after he and several other men helped Margaret and Lara, the B and B’s owners, clear the rooms of everything that wasn’t considered essential or part of the room itself. He even took pictures of rooms the girls wouldn’t normally see, like the laundry room. Then he took pictures of the outside of the building and the surrounding land—parking lot, grass, gardens, anything he could think of. While he did that, Roger Czerneda, armed with the village’s new digital crime scene camera, took pictures of the village shops and public buildings, including the medical center, inside and out.
No one in Ferryman’s Landing understood why looking at images instead of the real thing made such a difference to the girls, but it did. And understanding that no change was a small change for these girls helped the adults cope with helping the girls.
“Seeing life secondhand so it doesn’t interfere with some damn prophecy,” he muttered. Of course, anyone who hadn’t seen Meg Corbyn not only functioning but thriving in the tsunami of sensory input that came with being the Human Liaison for the Lakeside Courtyard could understandably conclude that these girls needed a restricted, almost sterile environment in order to stay sane.
But they didn’t need sterile. They just needed help adjusting to a world full of sensation. And they needed that help because they’d been trained to see the world as images.
Gods, he hoped that was true.
The B and B was a stopgap solution to housing the cassandra sangue. He had people working as hard and fast as possible to design and build a home for these girls that would give them a chance to thrive.
And the urgency wasn’t just to save the five girls who were here. The girls who were cassandra sangue originally came from his own people, the Intuits—people who had such a finely honed sense of the world around them that they knew when something around them might turn good or bad. Some of them could sense a change in the weather before there was any discernible indication. Other Intuits had a sense for animals, knowing when to buy an animal overlooked by everyone else and when to walk away from a deal. Discriminated against and persecuted by humans who didn’t want to deal with people who had such a sharp internal gauge, the Intuits had fled into the wild country and made their own bargains with the Others.
Now some Intuits worked as consultants for the terra indigene, listening as humans made a proposal to acquire more land, more minerals, more water, more of whatever they wanted that day. Some proposals were honest and sound and would benefit at least some of the terra indigene as well as humans. But other proposals offered nothing that the terra indigene would want.
Even with that sharp internal gauge, his people had made some bad mistakes in their dealings with other kinds of humans. Generations ago, they had handed over daughters who saw visions and made prophecies when their skin was cut in any way—girls who were driven insane by the things they saw and cut themselves for the euphoria that clouded their minds and made them feel good.
Having discovered what had been done to those girls during all the years since then, Intuit settlements throughout Thaisia were offering to take in the cassandra sangue and care for them as best they could.
They needed to learn because the gift, or curse, of prophecy was starting to reappear in Intuit families. Last year, the Sledgeman family here on Great Island had lost a teenage girl who had begun cutting—and threw herself in the Talulah River to escape from visions no one had understood until it was too late.
Yesterday he had typed up the things Simon had told him and e-mailed the information to the network of Intuit settlements in the Northeast Region. Some of them must have been connected to settlements in other parts of Thaisia. By the time he’d returned to download the photos and print out copies for Margaret and Lara to use as a reference, he’d received so many e-mail messages and calls begging for more information and help, he hadn’t known what to do. He’d called his mother, Rachel, and Penny Sledgeman, his friend Jerry’s wife, to help reply to the e-mail and return phone calls. As the mayor of Ferryman’s Landing, he requested a meeting with Simon Wolfgard—and wasn’t surprised to learn that Wolfgard wasn’t returning calls.
But all those things were the reason he was driving out to the Gardners’ farm a day later to talk with them and the one other cassandra sangue who had been brought out of the Midwest compound that had been run by the Controller: Jean, the blood prophet who had helped Meg Corbyn escape.
Parking near the house, Steve picked up the digital camera and got out just as Lorna Gardner walked around the side of the house, followed by her two children. He hadn’t expected to see James. Every family had their own allotment of land, but the Simple Life farmers worked together for the sowing and harvesting, and it was the growing season.
Lorna took him to the guest cottage, a smaller version of the main house.
“Jean?” Lorna called, opening the door just enough to be heard. “Steve Ferryman would like to talk to you. Can you do that?”
She took a step back and lowered her voice. “If you have answers . . .”
“I have some,” Steve replied. “But it will mean allowing some technology into your home. Not equipment you’ll have to use, but you’ll need the results.”
After a thoughtful moment, Lorna nodded. “If it will help her.”
“Come in,” Jean said.
“Come to the house when you’re done,” Lorna said, stepping aside.
Steve entered the cottage, standing in the doorway while
his eyes adjusted to the dark room. All the curtains were closed. All the windows were closed. No light. No fresh air.
“Close the door,” Jean snapped.
He closed the door and leaned against it.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I wanted this,” she said. “From the day I was brought to that compound and given a designation, I wanted to live outside; I wanted to be a person again instead of property. But I didn’t realize it would be this hard.” She hesitated. “How is Meg?”
“Meg is fine. She and her friends in the Lakeside Courtyard have found some answers that, hopefully, will make things easier for all the blood prophets who have left the compounds.”
“She sent me a letter. I haven’t opened it yet.”
“Why not?”
“Just receiving a letter was one new thing too many that day.”
“Maybe you should read it soon.”
The curtains didn’t block all the light. Now that his eyes had adjusted, he could see her sitting at a simple wood table, turning her silver razor over and over in her hands.
His heart gave one hard bump, then seemed to freeze in his chest for a long moment before it started beating again.
“What I’d like to do is open the curtains and get enough light in here to take pictures of the rooms,” he said. “Then I’ll take pictures of the Gardners’ house and the barn and other buildings. I’ll take pictures of the animals.”
“So I can stay in here and see outside through images?”
He heard bitter, weary resignation in her voice.
“It’s reference so that going outside and seeing the real thing isn’t as much of a shock. Meg and the women working with her to create a guide for blood prophets suggested this. We did this for the girls staying at the B and B, and it helped them. Today I’m here to do the same for you, if you’ll let me.”
“Meg, the Pathfinder,” Jean said softly. “Meg, the Trailblazer. All right, Steve Ferryman. Show me the first trail marker.” She gave him a strange smile. “I don’t know what such a thing is or what it does, but it was one of the training images.”
“You never saw it in context?”
Her smile chilled him. “That would have provided too much information.”
In the compound, she had been battered and abused in almost every way one person could abuse another. He’d heard, in confidence from one of the island’s doctors, that she had a crosshatching of scars over several parts of her body and, in some places, layers of scar tissue.
Was she sane? No one wanted to make a diagnosis one way or the other. As long as she wasn’t a threat to the Gardners, the doctors and the terra indigene were willing to let her stay in the guest cottage.
Steve held up the camera. “Start of a new life, Jean, and a way to live outside again. Ready to try?”
She pushed away from the table. “I’m ready.” She paused. “And while you take the pictures out there, I will write a short note to Meg.”
CHAPTER 13
Firesday, Maius 11
“The two apartment buildings are in pretty good shape,” Pete Denby said, sitting at one of the tables in A Little Bite. “Eve says all the apartments need sprucing up—fresh paint and wallpaper, that sort of thing.”
“Nothing the new tenants couldn’t do for themselves,” Eve said. “You might want to hire a professional to check out the buildings, but we didn’t see any structural problems.”
“Then why sell the buildings?” Simon asked. Elliot, Tess, Henry, and Vlad had joined him in the coffee shop to hear the Denbys’ report. Since she was a member of the Business Association, he’d told Jenni Crowgard about this meeting, but she’d expressed no interest in joining them. That troubled him a little, but hearing about something wasn’t the same as having the opportunity to poke around someplace new, so maybe it was all the blah, blah that wasn’t of interest to the Crows.
“Lack of tenants,” Pete said. “The current owner of the buildings is behind on the mortgage payments because he’s not getting the rental income he needs. Each building has four two-bedroom apartments. Only half those units are occupied now, and all the tenants will be out by the end of the month, with no new ones moving in.”
“The owner and the real estate representative didn’t put it in quite those terms,” Eve said. “They talked about potential and a clean sweep—new landlord, new tenants. They were very careful not to say why tenants didn’t stay. Like I said, Pete and I didn’t see any sign of insect infestation or water damage or any structural reason why people wouldn’t want to live in those apartments.”
“Mayor Rogers told me the other day that there was a housing shortage in Lakeside,” Elliot said. “If that’s true, why are acceptable dens still empty?”
Pete looked uncomfortable. “Location.”
“Meaning the humans suddenly object to living so close to the Courtyard?” Vlad asked with chilling politeness.
“The real estate representative didn’t say that,” Eve said. She glanced at Pete. “But we both had the impression that was the reason the apartments hadn’t been filled when the previous tenants moved out at the end of last year—and why the existing tenants are leaving.”
Pete removed a piece of paper from his inner jacket pocket. “This is the asking price for each building. We did inquire about property taxes and the average cost of utilities. I think we were being told optimistic numbers.”
“More like numbers based on having two apartments in use in each building, and none of the tenants having children,” Eve said. “I’d double the figures for utilities for each building, minimum.”
“When asked, I told the owner that I was the attorney representing a business association that was looking at the buildings for an investment and income property,” Pete said. “One question I couldn’t answer was how my client intended to pay for the property.”
Simon frowned. “We give them money. They give us the papers that say we own the buildings. How else would we pay for it?” Did Pete think they would just take what wasn’t theirs? The Others in the Courtyard weren’t that human, no matter how well they could assume the form.
Then again, even animals fought among themselves to hold on to, or acquire more, territory.
“They were asking how you were going to finance the purchase,” Pete said. “Can the terra indigene get a mortgage from a bank?”
“Why would we want this mortgage when we have money?” Henry asked.
“Cash? You’re thinking of paying cash for both buildings?” Pete blinked. “Do you understand the asking price?”
Simon studied Pete and decided the man wasn’t trying to insult his education. “The city of Lakeside and all the farms that support it stand on land that is leased from the terra indigene through the Lakeside Courtyard. A quarter of the rent is due each season. We don’t need this mortgage thing. We have money.”
Eve stared at him.
Pete gave him an odd smile. “The land for a small town, like the one Eve and I lived in before coming here, is leased as a whole. The boundaries are set before the population grows to fill it, and the lease on all that land expires at the same time. But a city like Lakeside would have grown by parcels. Whether you call it willful optimism or a desire not to call attention to a basic truth, I don’t think the government ever negotiated with the terra indigene to consolidate those leases. Which means the land leases for different parts of Lakeside come up for renewal at different times.”
“Yes, they do,” Simon agreed.
Eve looked at Pete, then at Simon. “So what would happen if you didn’t renew the lease?”
“Humans would have to move off the reclaimed land,” Simon replied. “Just like the humans who had to leave the village of Jerzy when it was reclaimed by the terra indigene who take care of the West Coast Region.”
“Then all you have to do is wait for the lease to expir
e on the lots across the street. Once you reclaim the land, no one could live in those buildings without your permission,” Pete said.
“What you say is true,” Henry agreed. “But the land lease that includes those lots doesn’t expire for a few more years, and Ruthie and Kowalski need a place to live now. Since the buildings are for sale, we have decided to do this the human way and purchase them.”
“In that case, you should know that the woman who lives in the double between the other two buildings asked if my client would be interested in buying her house too,” Pete said. “Eve took a quick look while I kept the apartment owner occupied.”
“It’s a two-family wood house, with one flat above the other,” Eve said. “The upper flat had been occupied by the woman’s son and his family, but the son recently took a job in a place called Hubbney. Is that really a town name? Anyway, the flats have three bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, and bath. There is off-street parking behind each of the buildings, as well as on-street parking on Crowfield Avenue. Not much land for gardens and such.”
“That wouldn’t be a problem,” Simon said.
“Tenants might appreciate being able to grow a few vegetables. Anyone trying to feed a family will want to grow a bit of food in order to pay for things like bread, which doubled in price in the past week and is becoming a luxury item.”
Bread was a luxury item? That didn’t sound right. Then again, he ate bread only when it was part of a meal served at Meat-n-Greens or when he picked up a sandwich at A Little Bite.
Simon looked at Tess, but she was studying Eve.
he asked Tess.
she replied.