I run out of the house and take the route to Father’s shop. I glance over my shoulder. Mother’s running full sprint with a shoulder pack flapping against her back.
“Parvin, wait.”
I slow.
She reaches me and rests a hand on each shoulder. “We could stay here, hidden. The Enforcers might not send us.”
I squeeze her elbow. “I can’t, Mother. I’m all they have. I can’t abandon them.”
She gives a harsh nod and we continue into Father’s shop. He’s there, alone. No customers and very little product, thanks to the havoc of the past three days.
I throw myself into his arms, ignoring the poke of chisels sticking out of his apron. “Father, we have to go.” I choke and release him. “I will come back for you. I’ll be at the Wall for you on New Year’s Eve. No matter what.”
“Sweetheart—”
“No matter what, Father. I’ll be there.” That’s two months from now. I’ll come back for him. We need the hope. We need to be together.
His face is all crumples and tears. Surprise and sorrow. I snatch a few of his chisels and pocket them. Weapons are good in the West.
Mother steps up, but doesn’t hug him yet.
My heart is screaming, Let’s go! Go! Go! But I cannot rush them. Father smooths back the strands of her hair that stick to her cheek in the autumn wetness.
She covers her mouth with a hand and shakes her head.
I’ve never seen Mother cry and I turn away before it happens. I step out the door of the store, but not before I hear the rustle of their clothing meet in an embrace and Father’s harsh, whiskery whisper. “I love you. I love you. I love you . . .”
The sound of these words will echo in my heart forever.
We reach the train station and the battle is over.
Blood covers the wood like an unfinished paint job. Enforcers and villagers alike lay in two heaps in the mud. Some people in the heaps groan, but the rest are dead or unconscious.
Does no one care that they’re stacking bodies of living people?
“Close ’em up!” Sachem yells from the train platform.
The train looks old with lines of boxcars—some stacked two-high. Three Enforcers start sliding the boxcar door closed. The boxcar is a rusty red color and inside the dark, shadowed interior are lumps of people.
“Wait.” I step forward, but the door closes with a heavy clang and the Enforcers lower a metal latch with a screech. I approach Sachem. “I’m going with them.”
He looks at me and laughs. It’s so out of place among the dying bodies surrounding us that I slap him.
My hand leaves a bloody print on his cheek and his laugh comes to a fierce halt.
Mother yanks my arm. “Parvin!”
I shouldn’t have done that.
Sachem stares at me for a long time. There was a moment when I thought he could be a good man—a Lead Enforcer with a heart. But I don’t see that now. He buried his potential for goodness.
He gestures to the Enforcers by the door. They unlatch it and crack it open. “You think you’re going to save these people, Miss Blackwater? Such lofty heroism. Climb in.”
I don’t want to step into the boxcar graveyard.
But I do it anyway.
I don’t want to weave my way around the ragdoll bodies bleeding into the thin straw covering the floor.
But I do it anyway.
I don’t want Mother to have to sit in this black space that smells of blood and trauma.
But she does it anyway, and I sit beside her . . . because strength is a choice.
The door closes with a screech. A sliver of light comes from a barred window and a hole the size of a dessert plate in the back corner of the car.
Here we are. Mother and daughter . . . the only two with packs of supplies to take care of this mob of beaten humans. My bandages aren’t enough for more than a single person. It’s too dark to see who’s here or what injuries they have.
All we have are our ears.
And all our ears have are the raspy breaths of people choking on blood or spit. The slow breathing of those sleeping from bashed skulls. The air of pain and defeat breathed out for us to take in.
We wait. The train doesn’t move. Some breathing turns into groans. I rub my hand over the forehead of whoever lies beside me. Judging from the length of hair, it’s a girl.
“How can we help them?” I try to see mother’s face.
“Pray. And wait for them to wake.”
I shake my head. “Can’t we treat their wounds?”
“Not in the dark.”
An hour later, the stench of drying blood, sweat, and rebreathed air is filling my lungs and I want to hold my breath until it clears. But it never will.
I must do something to distract me from the tragedy scourging my people. Even with the several bodies in here, Mother and I are alone. We’ll be traveling together, surviving together. I have things I want to ask her—things I must know. Perhaps now, as we’re locked away like cattle, she’ll tell me things.
“Did you read my biography?”
She breathes out through her nose. “Yes. And . . . I’ve learned a lot. I’m . . . sorry, Parvin.”
She knows me. She knows my story. That’s all I wanted. “Mother . . . remember when Skelley Chase first turned me in to the Enforcers?”
“Of course.”
I adjust Tawny’s sweater around my waist. “You said you didn’t come to my hearing because you were doing . . . other things.” The memory of her eyes flicking to Skelley burns in my mind. “What were you doing?”
I hate the idea that she and Skelley might have had secret communication.
Her voice comes out low, as if trying to keep her words from the ears of the conscious. “I can’t tell you that, Parvin.”
“Because you don’t trust me?”
“No, I just . . . can’t.” Her voice breaks. “I can’t bear for you to know.”
My stomach plummets. What was she doing? What were they doing? “Please tell me. You can trust me. Nothing can be worse than what my imagination dreams up.”
She gives me nothing. Not a word. Perhaps sitting in a black boxcar having bid farewell to Father isn’t the time, but at least now she knows that she can tell me. She must tell me. Someday.
More hours pass and the wounded stir.
“Where am I?”
I turn my head toward the voice. “Inside a boxcar,”
The question is repeated with every awakening, sometimes more than once from those who have head wounds. Those with mobility scoot away from those bleeding out. I hear their fabric rub against the straw. I hear their weight rest against the walls of the boxcar.
“In a boxcar?” one man repeats my answer. “But I have a new Clock. I spent a hundred specie on this! They can’t send me across the Wall!”
“What if they’re not going to send us across the Wall?” A woman’s voice quakes into the darkness. “What if . . . they’re going to leave us in here until we die?”
I hadn’t thought of that. By the silence, no one else had either.
“Or,” a man adds, “what if they’re about to shoot us all? We’re fish in a barrel here!”
The cries start. Some people shouting about their Clocks and the safety of their Numbers, others shouting for freedom, some just crying.
I say nothing.
I was so sure the government would send us across the Wall. Now . . .
I don’t know what they will do to us.
Another hour passes and the door opens a crack. That’s when I see our companions again, clearer than when I first entered. Men and women I’ve grown up seeing but never meeting look up at the beam of light.
The milkman sits by the door, awake, but with a neck wound and glazed eyes. He pushes himself to his knees, maybe to get
out of the boxcar, but instead more people come in. A line of them, some bleeding, supported by friends. Others look healthy and reel back when they enter.
“Hurry it up!” A black rifle butt knocks the knees out of the older man trying to enter. He falls, but crawls over an unconscious person and sits against the narrow wall of the boxcar.
More enter. More. Too many to fit. They squeeze around the ones on the floor. The milkman remains by the door, as if waiting for the line to stop so he can jump out. The line doesn’t stop. “We can’t fit any more!”
But new Radicals keep coming—Harman, the master gardener . . . the town seamstress . . . Frenchie. We scoot limp bodies out of the way, into a tight line. Dusten Grunt is one of them and I pull him toward Mother and me. I place his head in my lap under the pretense of making more room for the others, but in reality I need to feel as if I’m helping someone.
He’s unconscious and, thanks to the darkness, may never know it’s my lap in which he rests. Two giant lumps interrupt the smooth flow of his hairline when I brush my hand over it.
The boxcar door closes before the milkman can get out. He pounds the door and screams, but it doesn’t open again.
“Mommy, I have to go potty,” a little girl says from the other side.
“Hold it,” the milkman snaps. “We don’t want to smell your waste.”
“There’s a hole in the back corner of the boxcar,” I say. “I think it’s for restroom use.”
The little girl and her mother crawl across the boxcar, inciting grunts–and a growl from the milkman. They must reach the corner because the little girl starts crying. “I don’t want to go! They’re watching!”
“Shhh, it’s fine,” the mother says. “It’s too dark for anyone to see. Here, I’ll help you with your pants.”
“No! No!”
“Just go already!” the milkman shouts.
She cries again and then the mother lets out a huff. “Now look what you’ve done.” The girl’s cries turn into a wail. “We don’t have a change of clothes, honey.” The smell of urine reaches my nose.
I lean my head back and close my eyes. How long will we sit here like this? Is this punishment for the mob?
Mother searches for my hand with hers, but finds my stump. Her fingers hesitate for a moment, then squeeze my wrist. “Parvin, you have to be a leader.” Her words are a whispered foghorn to my emotions.
“What do you mean?” Does she expect me to do something about this?
“You have to prepare yourself. When everyone calms down, they will look to you. Are you ready for that?”
Who could possibly be ready for that? “I’m only eighteen, Mother. They hate me.”
“Even those hating you will look to you. You are all we have.”
I would have preferred her to combat my statement with, “No one hates you, Parvin.” But the fact that she doesn’t deny this shows me again Mother’s fearlessness in addressing truth.
“How do you expect me to prepare myself?”
The murmuring and crying in the dark is almost too loud to hear Mother’s reply. “They will be angry. You must be calm. They will have questions. You must be honest. They will all watch you. You must be confident.”
It sounds like a motto. Maybe it’s Mother’s motto. She’s always calm, confident, and honest—brutally so. But I can’t be Mother. We are too different and ever since I crossed the Wall we’ve become near-strangers. But . . .
I can be me, I guess. And, in my heart, I know she’s right. But how . . . how can I prepare myself to be such a different version of Parvin? A confident, leader version? Are those qualities even in me?
I AM IN YOU.
Even better.
Sounds outside with metal screeches and more wails imply that they’re putting more people in the boxcars next to ours. How many citizens of Unity are they sending across the Wall? Are Father and Tawny being forced into one, despite their Clocks?
Tawny . . . I didn’t say good-bye. Even though we don’t get along, this still feels like I’m abandoning her.
The next time our door opens, it’s dark outside, but the darkness is like a bright light to us. I see stars over the heads of people as they’re shoved inside. The stars . . . they’re stunning. I want to memorize their patterns so when the door closes again I will still have them in my mind to look at.
“Let me out!” The milkman pounds on the door. “I have specie to pay for a Clock.”
An Enforcer angles a look at him. “Let me see it.”
The milkman pulls out a pouch of coins before I can shout a warning. The Enforcer snatches it from his hands. “Don’t got no specie anymore now, do ya?”
“Hey!” The milkman reaches for the pouch again, but the Enforcer pulls his gun out. The milkman stills.
Enforcers push so many new villagers inside our boxcar that those of us without injuries have to stand to make room. I try not to move because of Dusten, but I eventually slide his head out of my lap and stand next to Mother. Bodies squish against mine. My pack is sideways and my shoulders rub into the metal ridges of the boxcar.
“Please!” The milkman keeps shouting. “I have goats I need to take care of.”
The Enforcer nearest the door gives a malicious grin. “Then I know what I’m having for dinner, don’t I?”
The door closes, but I barely hear it over the milkman’s pleading. Others wail. The train starts moving.
Thank you, God.
After this long day in the boxcar, the West will seem like a luxury to everyone. That will make everything easier for me.
Only three or four hours and we’ll be at Opening Three. We can manage that. Then I’ll be in my element.
I lurch against the sway of the train, but I don’t mind standing. I’m going home. And this time . . .
I’m going as a leader.
17
It’s been too long.
We should be there, but the train is still going full speed. I’ve fallen asleep on my feet at least twice. My lower back aches and my pack pulls on my shoulder. I try to squat, but my knees hit someone and they shove me away. No one wants to touch, but we’re all smashed against each other, breathing one another’s air, sweat, and fear.
Another hour passes. The stench of urine and feces join the mix of suffocation. It grows harder and harder to breathe, though I don’t know if it’s from our cramped space or the hysteria rising beneath my sternum.
Why aren’t we at Opening Three?
Finally, the train screeches to a halt. This is the fourth time it’s stopped and no one loses balance anymore. We’re stopped long enough to hear the creak of other boxcar doors open, then the cries of people outside muffled by metal. More Low-City Radicals joining our journey.
When I decided to lead people across the Wall, I imagined villagers from Unity, not Radicals from all Low Cities. No matter how I work it in my mind, I can’t figure out a way to get everyone on the cliff safely. If there’s even a whisper of panic, people might shove others off the edge, down to the wolves.
We start moving again and my knees threaten to buckle. I allow a tendril of black fear to enter my mind . . .
What if we’re not going to Opening Three?
The Enforcers could have lied. Besides, the Council said they’d fill in the passageway at Opening Three. Have they done this already?
I lose track of the hours and finally collapse to the boxcar floor. I land on someone’s leg. They try to shove me off, but I don’t move. I have to sit. People squeeze together and we make it work.
Mother sits, too.
“Mommy, I’m hungry.” The little girl’s quiet plea barely makes it over the rhythmic clack-clack of the train.
My pack is in my lap. I could give her some of the small food ration I have, but something holds me back. This is only the beginning. The early twinges of hunger are not
hing compared to when we cross the ridge into starvation. All I have to do is remember when Jude, Willow, and I ate plant bark.
Oh Jude, did he know giving his Clock-matching information to the Council would lead to a string of boxcars transporting Radicals to an unknown doom? Did he know it would land me among them?
What is Solomon thinking as he watches this happen? Does he even know it’s happening? Is he alive? Is Willow in a boxcar somewhere? If Solomon returns to Unity Village he’ll find my note. Then he will rescue Willow and get her back across the Wall. But if I’m not going to Opening Three . . . I missed my chance with him. I felt too guilty over Jude to let myself consider more than a friendship with Solomon—not that it would have done me any good.
Still . . . I feel as though I lost a friend.
Will the church people in Prime—Fight, Idris, Evarado, everyone else—continue praying for me? Are the High Cities aware of what’s happening in the Low Cities?
I close my eyes and rest my head on the shoulder next to me. It smells like oatmeal and cinnamon. Mother. I nestle close, trying to block out the stench and clear my thoughts. Pure exhaustion ushers me into the arms of slumber.
Dreams of darkness and cliff edges dent my mind. Bloodied bodies fall around me, beaten by the Enforcers and thrown down to the wolves.
I wake to a scream, but not my own.
I’m tilted sideways, outside the control of balance. Outer light sneaks through the barred window and the waste hole. A swooping motion makes my stomach lurch. I grip the person closest to me and another hand snags my ankle.
More screams.
The little bit of sky through the barred window tilts and swirls. Our boxcar is in the air.
Deafening grinding precedes another swoop. Then we drop a couple feet. I scream now. Mother is silent beside me. The jerky drops meld into a smooth descent like the elevator in the county building, creeping down and testing my stomach’s durability.
We land hard—metal scraping metal. From the outside of our boxcar I hear clips and belts being pulled off the outer edges. A brief breeze makes it through the window. The air is heavy, brackish.