He considered it could be the last time he walked through his door or any door at all. He shook the thought away.
Don’t think about that. Place your right foot in front of your left. Reach the path outside the hut. Let your feet take over. Pick up one and then the other.
The dread was growing; it couldn’t be swallowed back. He thought it might paralyze him, stop him in his tracks. He wiped away the sweat again.
Face the dread.
What is the worst thing that could happen? he asked himself.
They could riot.
Will you survive?
Maybe. Probably not.
But they all might survive, in the end.
Face it down. Keep going.
He hesitated again at the edge of the mosaic by the fires, cold in the early pre-dawn light. The irony of the cornucopia, spilling over with food, struck him as particularly cruel in the middle of this starving village. He thought of the maker of the mosaic and the people who had first settled here. What would they think of it now?
The square was still empty, and he breathed for a moment, feeling the stillness of what was undoubtedly nothing but the pause before the storm. In a way, he was just like that mosaic maker; a man who dreamed too large. It was not such an awful crime, to dream.
He came to the rusted metal can beside the fires. It was there in case the villagers ever needed to be called together urgently. Illya could only remember it beaten a handful of times in his lifetime. Once for a fire that had consumed half the huts in the time before they had begun building them farther apart.
To beat it now would be to admit that it was an emergency; that his directions had steered them all down a path so dangerous they may not reach safety. But the only choice left was honesty. He would tell them everything, present himself for their justice and hope that it counted for something.
He picked up the thick branch that lay on the can.
It was like jumping off a cliff. You couldn’t think about it, especially not about the splat at the end. Jerking and spastic, he beat the branch against the round of metal with cacophonous urgency.
Minutes later, they were all there. Conna was the first; he stood beside Illya with a supportive smile that Illya barely registered. Sleepily, they trickled in straight from their beds, and Illya faked it a little more. He smiled, unwilling to betray anything as they gathered.
Then they were all there, watching him.
He stepped up onto the stairs. Conna watched him sideways. Illya wondered if he saw the shake behind his smile, how he was swallowing too many times, the way he wiped his hand too casually down his thigh. Like jumping off a cliff.
Suddenly, Conna pushed past him and jumped onto the stairs.
Conna would introduce him then, Illya thought, a little relieved. Someone would stand beside him.
“I have called you here this morning to tell you of a traitor in our midst and to give you the chance to judge him!” Conna’s voice rose. Illya was stunned; grumbling rose in the crowd. Before he could react, Conna pushed on.
“I have heard a confession from this man,” he yelled, pointing at Illya, “who you have called your Leader, who you have trusted with the village, your lives, your future!
“Who you allowed to change your whole world, to dictate the future of your children!” Conna’s voice rose to a frantic pitch and cracked.
“This man has lied to you! His crops will never be harvested. They’re infected with a disease and soon they will all die. He told me that he found the father plants dead. He has known about this and said nothing.
“He is leading you into starvation. He did all of this to keep his power over you, knowing full well that in a short time it will be winter and we will have nothing to eat!”
The crowd stared.
“Traitor!” someone yelled.
It was like a spark to a field of dry grass. Suddenly, all of them were calling, “Traitor, traitor, traitor!” The cries blended into a roar. They pushed at each other to grab at him.
Illya stumbled backward and jumped off the side of the stairs, putting them between him and most of the mob. He was too stunned to pull his thoughts together. All around was a blur of angry faces, advancing. Then Conna struck him across the jaw with his fist and he reeled, nearly falling.
“You!” Conna bellowed. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“It’s true,” Illya stuttered. “But I didn’t…” He froze, unable to find the right words.
“I mean I came this morning to tell you, it wasn’t him that called you at all!” He was shaking, his jaw throbbed, and he tasted blood. He couldn’t remember what he had been planning to say.
“I hoped we could find a way to save the plants, but it’s no use, it’s true, they will die.”
“We are going to starve!” Dianthe howled. Then Conna spoke, calm over the angry crowd, his voice full of conviction.
“We have to push this traitor out of the village. We have been taken in by his poisonous ideas, his book, and his lies!” The crowd whooped and screamed in support.
“The only way we can survive the winter will be by working together to gather as much as we can, we need a strong Leader!” Conna continued.
“I nominate Conna!” Dianthe yelled, somehow abruptly in control of her hysterics. The crowd was a chorus of “Yea!” and “Conna for Leader!” then “Down with the traitor!” “Throw him out!” and then, “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”
Illya jumped onto the stairs and ran, leaping off the far side. He pushed past the people there before they could make up their minds to organize. He broke free from the crowd in seconds and ran.
The village went past him in a blur. All the spots he had lingered over that morning were far behind him before he registered their passing. He flew past the huts, the field with its doomed plants, and the gates. He leaped over the bank outside the walls at the same spot he had fled from the Terrors with the book just a few months ago; before any of this mess: before the seeds, before Ezekiel Soil-Digger, before he had doomed the village, before the Almanac. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since then.
He thought that he had never run so fast, not even when the Terrors had been at his heels. Terrors had teeth and claws and hunger, but people had bows and arrows and rage.
Randomly, he weaved from tree to tree, trying to make himself a difficult target. He had a small head start. It took a few moments for the mob to realize that he had run and that they wanted to follow him.
He glanced back over his shoulders, remembered the Enforcers with their weeks of training, and decided it would be better to go for as much distance as possible. He cut through the brush, heading for the broad path, crashing through bushes, his arms pumping. His heartbeat pounded through his whole body, and he burst out onto the path in an all-out sprint.
His bicycle tracks from the day with Benja had long since washed away, but he could not help remembering that day, flying over the smooth surface, so carefree.
The bicycle was back in the village, still behind his mother’s hut in the magpie nest. He could have escaped the villagers easily on it, but there was no way he could turn back for it. No doubt it would be destroyed now, along with everything else.
He ran forever.
There was nothing left for him in the world but running. No feelings existed but fear and exhaustion. He breathed in and out: his lungs were bellows that drove him on as they pumped. His legs grew heavier and heavier, and he ignored it. On and on he went until he drifted into thought and realized that he hadn’t heard anyone behind him for a very long time.