“We’re not safe here,” a man with ash-blond hair shouted, brandishing his fist in the air.
“Calm down, everyone. I’ll admit that what happened was a horrible tragedy, but we all know not to go out at night. Feliks knew that too.”
A woman piped up, “Maybe we should go ahead with the plans, you know, the ones we’ve been talking about for years. Maybe this is the motivation we need.” She glanced sideways at me. I shrunk away. What did they want with me?
“Let’s think about this logically. We have few weapons and no choppers. Our numbers are small. It’s not the right time,” a man on the stage said calmly.
“What about the Spiders?” a woman yelled. I noticed it was Gwen. Her eyes fierce, she seemed ready to storm the concrete walls of the Woodlands right then and there.
I was lost. I turned to Cal to ask but then felt an arm link with mine. My first reaction was to shake it off. It was too familiar, that was Clara’s place. The arm felt like crinkled paper and I knew it was Addy.
People obviously knew what Gwen was talking about because the emotions in the room raised higher, voices and heated breath pushing the roof off the place.
“What’s a Spider?” I whispered to Addy.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. I felt like saying, Get on with it, old woman. Every time she spoke it was an ordeal, like it took too much energy to open her mouth at all. “Spiders are our people on the inside. They live in the Rings and feed us information about what’s going on in there.”
The name dawned on me… like the spider that had nearly killed Joseph. These people would have to be invisible, part of the rings, unnoticeable. Clever.
One of the leaders spoke again, trying to regain some order. “Look! The Spiders have reported unease amongst the people. They have now announced that no children will be born after a certain date. They have provided contraception and have already started their usual pattern of selecting out examples to punish. The Superiors do seem to be plotting something. They are pulling more children into the Classes and training most of them as soldiers. Of course, this doesn’t sound good. But they seem to have a timeframe in mind. They are waiting for winter to end before they move. As far as we know, they are still unaware of our location. We have time. We need to keep gathering intel and find out what else the Superiors know.”
The room swayed and swirled with hundreds of voices. Some angry, some scared. Most just trying to understand what she had just said—me especially.
A man on the panel coughed and said finitely, “We’ll step up patrols of the wall border but no more talk of takeovers. We’re not ready.”
Takeovers? The idea filled me with equal measures of hope and fear. They couldn’t possibly, could they? If they could free the people… my mind started wandering. I could see my mother, Rash, Henri. But what if the people didn’t want to be freed? My thoughts turned to Paulo. Someone I hadn’t really allowed into my head since I’d left. Freedom was a hot coal in his hands; he’d sooner fling it back over the wall. I couldn’t imagine the people in Pau staging an uprising. They were too beaten down, too scared. I had an idea where the Survivors could start, though, to get those numbers they needed—Clara’s hometown, Palma.
The idea of a Woodlands without the dark shadow of the Superiors hovering over it was an attractive idea, dangerous, but deliciously enticing. I knew if they wanted to do it, I wanted to be part of it. I needed to be.
Someone yelled out, “Has no one thought about the nursery? All those innocent children, those teenage mothers. We have to help them.” At this statement, I nearly fell over. So it was nurseries they had decided upon. When Alexei had first brought it up, when I escaped the Woodlands, he’d said they hadn’t decided whether they would raise the babies in big nurseries or billet them out to childless couples. My stomach turned. That could have been Orry and Hessa.
“We will help them. These things take time and planning. Let’s vote and then get on to what we are really here for,” a man with dark hair pulled into a plait at the nape of his neck said as he found us in the crowd and smiled. I started. Was this an ambush?
“All in favor of holding off on the plans for the Woodlands, raise your hand.”
The crowd shuffled then two thirds of them raised their hands. Did I get a vote?
Joseph raised his hand with the majority. The same man with the plait looked down at us and said, “Not yet, young man. You are not pledged.”
I knew very quickly, and so certainly, that I was surprised at myself. I was ready to take the pledge. I wanted a say. I wanted to be part of this community, to protect it and perhaps help it spread to my old home.
“So it is decided. Now, will the young couple who so bravely and kindly helped Feliks in his final hours please step onto the stage.”
I found myself leading Joseph, eagerly wanting that charm around my neck.
It wasn’t really a ceremony. It was too casual for that but it had weight to it. I felt the sense of history I was being welcomed into. This would be our home, our people, and I was pleased with that.
The man placed the necklaces in each of our palms.
“Do you know the pledge?”
We nodded.
We spoke separately. I went first. I let the words roll around in my mouth, making sure I really believed them. Realizing, of course, I did.
I am a survivor. I live beyond the wall. I give shelter to those that need it. I am n ot chosen but I choose to live.
It was done. And as I scanned the crowd, I saw Deshi, Apella, and Alexei smiling at us from the back of the crowd, their new necklaces shining under the warm theater lights. I needed to talk to them, find out what they thought about this idea of storming the Woodlands. Without a very thorough plan, it would be suicide.
The weeks had rolled by like the rolling hills I saw when I looked out my window. The white was less than the green, the scales tipping. Winter was receding and I could see the changes, in the land and in the people. My people. I never thought I would belong anywhere. In fact, I was sure of it. But now I belonged to a place, a person, and a family.
The sense I got from these people was that they were independent but chose to be around each other. No one was forced. They were encouraged. I probably needed more encouragement than most. Trust was hard for me. It always would be.
Now that we had made our choices and our pledge, we were left to our own devices. Our home was taking shape slowly as I started receiving payment for my work. A small pile of salvaged toys had accumulated in the corner. Toys were another fairly foreign thing to us. Joseph said I should make a box to put them in until Orry was old enough to play with them.
They had tracked the pack of tigers past the city and set up surveillance at the known entry points to make sure we were never caught unawares again. Things had settled and I felt safe and comfortable. There was still talk about approaching the Woodlands but until winter was over, it wasn’t practical.
Alexei said it was fascinating that the tigers now hunted in groups. Prior to the Woodlands, they were a solitary, shy species. Prior to the Woodlands, when people had consumed most of the planet, they were nearly extinct. I guess our near extinction had been a blessing to the wildlife.
“It’s a fast forward in evolution,” he said excitedly. He had decided to do what he was best at, categorizing and organizing the Survivors’ history and what they’d found in the city. Apella had been asked several times to assist in helping them with their reproduction problems but she couldn’t. She said she didn’t trust that she would get it right this time and it brought back too many bad memories. She was content to return to doctoring.