Luz was no longer listening to what the two men were saying. She stepped away from the house wall, standing straight, as if indifferent to any eye that saw her. She walked on around the house to the back entrance, went in through the peaceful, dirty kitchens of siesta time, and to the room that had been given to Vera Adelson.
Vera had been taking siesta too, and received her sleepily.
“I’ve been eavesdropping on my father and Herman Macmilan,” Luz said, standing in the middle of the room, while Vera, sitting on the bed, blinked at her. “They’re planning a raid on the Town. They’re going to take Lev and all the other leaders prisoner, and then try to make your people get angry and fight, so they can beat them up and send a lot of them to work on the new farms as punishment. They already sent some of them down there, but they all ran away, or the guards ran away—I didn’t hear that part clearly. So now Macmilan is going with his ‘little army’ and my father tells him to force the people to fight back, then they’ll betray their ideas and then he can use them as he likes.”
Vera sat staring. She said nothing.
“You know what he means. If you don’t, Herman does. He means let Herman’s men go for the women.” Luz’ voice was cold, though she spoke very quickly. “You should go warn them.”
Vera still said nothing. She gazed at her own bare feet with a remote stare, either dazed or thinking as fast as Luz had been talking.
“Do you still refuse to go? Does your promise still hold you? After that?”
“Yes,” the older woman said, faintly, as if absentmindedly, then more strongly, “yes.”
“Then I’m going to go.”
“Go where?”
She knew; she asked merely to gain time.
“To warn them,” Luz said.
“When is this attack to be?”
“Tomorrow night, I think. In the night, but I wasn’t sure which night they meant.”
There was a pause.
“Maybe it’s tonight. They said, ‘It’s better if they’re in bed.’” It was her father who had said that, it was Herman Macmilan who had laughed.
“And if you go … then what will you do?”
Vera still spoke as if sleepy, in a low voice, pausing often.
“I’ll tell them, and then come back.”
“Here?”
“No one will know. I’ll leave word I’m visiting with Eva. That doesn’t matter.—If I tell the Town people what I heard, what will they do?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it would help if they knew, and could plan ahead? You told me how you have to plan what you’re going to do, get everybody ready—”
“Yes. It would help. But—”
“Then I’ll go. Now.”
“Luz. Listen. Think what you’re doing. Can you go in broad daylight, and nobody notice you leaving the City? Can you come back? Think—”
“I don’t care if I can’t come back. This house is full of lies,” the girl said in the same cold, quick voice; and she went.
Going was easy. Keeping on going was hard.
To take up an old black shawl as she went out, and wrap herself in it as a raincoat and a disguise; to slip out the back door and up the back street, trotting along like a servant in a hurry to be home; to leave Casa Falco, to leave the City, that was easy. That was exciting. She was not afraid of being stopped; she was not afraid of anybody. If they stopped her all she need say was, “I am the daughter of Councillor Falco!” and they wouldn’t dare say a word. No one stopped her. She was quite sure that no one recognized her, for she went by back alleys, the shortest way out of the City, up past the school; the black shawl was over her head, and the rainy sea wind that seemed to blow her on her way blew in the eyes of anyone coming against her. Within a few minutes she was out of the streets, cutting across the back of the Macmilans’ lumberyards, among the stacks of logs and planks; then up the bluffs, and she was on the road to Shanty Town.
That was when it began to be hard, when she set her feet on that road. She had only been on it once in her life, when she had gone with a group of her friends, suitably escorted by aunts, duennas, and guards from Casa Marquez, to see the dancing at the Meeting House. It had been summer, they had chattered and laughed all the way, Eva’s Aunt Caterina’s pedicab had lost a wheel and plumped her down in the dust and all afternoon Aunt Caterina had watched the dancing with a great circle of white dust on the rear of her black dress, so that they couldn’t stop giggling … . But they had not even gone through the Town. What was it like there? Whom should she ask for, in Shanty Town, and what should she say to them? She should have talked it over with Vera first, instead of rushing out in such a hurry. What would they say to her? Would they even let her in, coming from the City? Would they stare at her, jeer at her, try to hurt her? They were not supposed to hurt anybody. Probably they simply would not talk to her. The wind at her back felt cold now. Rain had soaked through shawl and dress down her back, and the hem of her skirt was heavy with mud and moisture. The fields were empty, gray with autumn. When she looked back there was nothing to be seen but the Monument Tower, pallid and derelict, pointing meaninglessly at the sky; everything she knew now lay hidden behind that marking point. To the left sometimes she glimpsed the river, wide and gray, rain blowing across it in vague gusts.
She would give her message to the first person she met, let them do what they liked about it; she would turn straight round and come back home. She would be back within an hour at most, long before suppertime.
She saw a small farmhouse off to the left of the road among orchard trees, and a woman out in the yard. Luz checked her rapid walk. She would turn aside to the farm, give the woman her message, then the woman could go on and tell the people in Shanty Town, and she could turn back right here and go home. She hesitated, started toward the farm, then turned and strode back through the rain-soaked grasses onto the road again. “I’ll just go on and get it done and come back,” she whispered to herself. “Go on, get it done, come back.” She walked faster than ever, almost running. Her cheeks were burning; she was out of breath. She had not walked far or fast for months, years. She must not come in among strangers all red and gasping. She forced herself to slow her pace, to walk steadily, erect. Her mouth and throat were dry. She would have liked to stop and drink the rain off the leaves of roadside bushes, curling her tongue to get at the cool drops that beaded every blade of wild grass. But that would be like a child. It was a longer road than she had thought. Was she on the Shanty Town road at all? Had she mistaken the way and got on some loggers’ road, some track with no end, leading out into the wilderness?
At the word—the wilderness—a cold jolt of terror went right through her body, stopping her in mid-step.
She looked back to see the City, the dear narrow warm crowded beautiful City of walls and roofs and streets and faces and voices, her house, her home, her life, but there was nothing, even the Tower had dropped behind the long rise of the road and was gone. The fields and hills were empty. The vast, soft wind blew from the empty sea.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, Luz told herself. Why are you such a coward? You can’t get lost, you’re on a road, if it’s not the Town Road all you have to do is turn back and you’ll get home. You won’t be climbing so you won’t come on a rock scorpion, you won’t be in the woods so you won’t get into poison rose, what are you so afraid of, there’s nothing to hurt you, you’re perfectly safe, on the road.