He shrugged and whispered, "Nothing. I'm okay."
"He's far from okay," Bankole told me later. But because Marcus wasn't in serious physical pain, we could keep him with us. We gave him a space behind screens—room dividers—in our kitchen. It was warm there, and we had set up a bed, a dresser, a pitcher and basin, and a lamp. Like every other household in the community, we sometimes had to take people in—strangers who were visiting, new people joining us, or neighbors within the community who weren't getting along with others in their own households.
I worried that Marcus, in his present state of mind, might get up in the night and run away. How long must he have dreamed of running away from Cougar and his friends?
Now, waking up in a strange place, and not quite remembering how he had gotten there………….Just to be sure even after he had taken his sleeping pill, I went out and told our night watch—Beth Faircloth and Lucio Figueroa—to be careful. I told them Marcus might awake confused, and try to run away, and that they should be careful about shooting at a lone figure trying to get away from Acorn. Under normal circumstances such a figure would be thought a thief, and might be shot. We'd had great trouble with thieves during our first year, and we learned that if we were to survive, we couldn't afford to have much sympathy for them.
But Marcus must not be shot.
"You told me Zahra Balter saw your stepmother and your brothers shot down back in Robledo," Bankole said to me as we lay in bed together. "Well, he's been beaten, shot, and burned. I can't imagine how he survived. Someone must have taken care of him, and it wouldn't have been your friend Cougar."
"No, it wouldn't have been Cougar," I agreed. "I want to know what happened. I hope he'll tell us. How was he with you when I left you two alone together?"
"Silent. Responsive and unembarrassed, but not speaking one unnecessary word."
"You're sure you can cure his infections?"
"They shouldn't be a problem. Let alone, any one of them would have killed him sooner or later. But with treatment, he should be all right—physically, anyway."
"He was 14 when I saw him last. He liked playing soccer and reading about the past and about foreign places. He was always taking things apart and sometimes getting them back together again, and he had a huge crush on Robin Balter, Harry's youngest sister. I don't know anything about him now. I don't know who he is."
"You'll have plenty of time to find out. I've told him he's going to be an uncle, by the way."
"Reaction?"
"None at all. At the moment, I don't think that even he knows who he is. He seems willing enough to be looked after; but I get the feeling he doesn't much care what happens to him. I think... I hope that that will change. You may be his best medicine."
"He was my favorite brother—and always the best-looking person in the family. He's still one of the best-looking people I've ever seen."
"Yes," Bankole said. "In spite of his scars, he's a good-looking boy. I wonder whether his looks have saved him or destroyed him. Or both."
************************************
It seems that things can never go well for long.
Dan Noyer has run away. He slipped past the watch and out of Acorn at least in part because of the instructions I gave to the night watch. Beth Faircloth says she saw someone—a man or boy, she thought.
"I thought the figure was too tall to be Marcus," she said when she phoned me. "But I wasn't sure—so I didn't shoot" The running figure had been dressed in dark clothing with something dark over the head and face.
Not until I had verified that Marcus was still there did I think of Dan.
To tell the truth, I had forgotten about Dan. My mind had been filled with Marcus—getting him back, keeping him, wondering what had happened to him. I had paid no attention to Dan. Yet Dan had suffered a terrible disappointment. He was in real pain. I knew that, and I left him to the Balters, who, after all, have two energetic little kids of their own to deal with.
I got Zahra out of bed and asked her to check on Dan. He had been staying with them for four months now. Of course, he was gone. His note said, "I know you'll think I'm wrong, but I have to find them. I can't let them be with someone like that Cougar. They're my sisters!" And after his signature, a postscript: "Take care of Kassi and Mercy until I come back. I'll work for you and pay you. I'll bring Paula and Nina back and they'll work too."
He's only 15. He saw Cougar and his crew. He saw my brother. He saw Georgetown. And seeing all that, he learned nothing!
No, that's not true. He's learned—or finally realized—all the wrong things. I had assumed he knew what his sisters' fate might be if they were alive—that they might be prostitutes, might wind up in some rich man's harem or working as slave farm or factory laborers. Or, I suppose, they might wind up with some pervert who likes cutting out female tongues. They might even wind up as the property of someone who cares for them and looks after them even as he makes sexual use of them. That would be the best possibility. The worst, perhaps, is that they might survive for a while as "specialists"—prostitutes used to serve crazies and sadists. These don't live long, and that's a mercy. Theirs is a fate that could also befall a big, baby-faced, well-built boy like Dan. I wonder how much of this Dan understands. He is a good, brave, stupid boy, and I suspect he'll pay for it.
He might come back, of course. He might come to his senses and come home to help take care of Kassia and Mercy. Or we night find him through our outside contacts. I'll have to make sure that the word is out on him as well as on Nina and Paula. Problem is, finding him won't help if he's still intent on hunting for his sisters. We can't chain him here. Or rather, we won't If he insists on dying, he will die, damn him. Damn!
Chapter 7
□ □ □
From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
The child in each of us
Knows paradise.
Paradise is home.
Home as it was
Or home as it should have been.
Paradise is one's own place,
One's own people,
One's own world,
Knowing and known,
Perhaps even
Loving and loved.
Yet every child
Is cast from paradise—
Into growth and destruction,
Into solitude and new community,
Into vast, ongoing
Change.
from Warrior by marcos duran
When I was a kid, I never let anyone know how much the future scared me. In fact, I couldn't see any future. I was born into a world that was no bigger than the walled neighborhood enclave where my family lived. My father had lived there as a boy and inherited the house from his father.
My world was a cage. When one of my brothers dared to leave the cage, to run away from home, someone outside caught him and cut and burned all the flesh from his living body. Sometimes I catch myself wondering how long it took him to die.
I admit, my brother was no angel. He was mean and not very bright He loved our mother, and he was her favorite, but I don't think he ever gave a damn about anyone else. Still, even though he was as tall as our father, he was only 14 when he was killed. To me, that makes the men who killed him worse than he ever was. How could they be human and do a thing like that to somebody? I used to imagine them— the killers—waiting for me whenever neighborhood adults with guns risked taking us out of the cage for a little while. The world outside was like my brother at his worst multiplied by about a thousand: stupid, mean, so out of control that it might do anything. It was like a dog with rabies, tearing itself to pieces, and wanting to do the same to me.