Pixie shares things in passing about how the old people died in the winter, and the new people aren’t smart. Her mama thinks everyone will be dead by the end of the year. Pixie doesn’t seem scared when she says those things. She never acts bothered except when she speaks of her papa.
Yet, I hate her living at the Village. I’m also concerned about keeping her a secret from Bronco. I spend every waking minute worrying about one thing or the other.
Sooner or later, something will have to change.
PIXIE YABO
No one’s journey is easy. I’ve been blessed, though. I enjoyed a charmed life on a commune in Indiana. Our people—the Dandelion Collective—were my garden. My family lived there since both of my grandmamas were babies. I rarely had a bad day with the Dandelions. Every morning, I woke in our one-room house, next to my family and knew I had a full day of activities ahead of me. There was the Dandelion school and then free learning when I got older—reading, writing, herbal medicine, agriculture, and humanity’s struggles. Everyone in the commune was my friend. Any discord was dealt with in festive ways.
That’s not how the rest of the world works. Out here, people are angry and violent. We have to fight for food and shelter. I can’t turn my back on anyone. Everyone separates themselves by superficial categories.
Back during the attack on the Collective, I hadn’t understood why those government men were so angry or why one of them shot Papa. They attacked our home, yelling at everyone and waving around their big, black guns. I thought they were monsters.
I understand now. People in the outside world are often angry and cruel. The ones with the big guns do what they want, and the ones with no guns have to tiptoe around to avoid getting hurt. That’s how it is now in the Village.
When we moved to Ohio, I didn’t like the new commune. However, back then, there weren’t so many guns.
The Volkshalberd are hard people. They lack the sunshine in their hearts like at the Collective. My sister, Dove, misses the warmth of the old community. The Village is surrounded by woods except for the area with the crops. Where we sleep and eat is always shaded. Dove needs light to bloom. The Village offers little.
Leaving the new commune isn’t an option, though. Where can we go in a cruel world with angry people who want to hurt us? We don’t know where the other Dandelions went after the government made us leave the Collective. Mama said we couldn’t go back. The government tried to make us live in an apartment and wouldn’t tell us what happened to our friends. They told Mama that she would go to jail if she complained about Papa dying. Everything was very confusing.
All we had left was each other. Panicked at our situation, Mama took Dove and me to the Village after a man said we would be safe there. He promised the Volkshalberd were good people. Daniel was his name, but he died last winter from the flu. So many of the elders coughed themselves to death. With so many dead, a new Volkshalberd torch bearer took control.
“That man has the dead eyes of a squirrel,” Mama whispers to me when we first meet John Marks. The outsider looks weird with overcooked skin and a shiny bald head with stringy white hair that starts growing at his ears. Somehow, the odd stranger becomes the torch bearer for the Village. His ascension makes no sense. He’s only been in the Village for a few months. Plus, Marks doesn’t work, and he isn’t smart. He also smells like beets and can’t poop right.
“People who can’t poop,” Mama told me, “are filled with negative energy. Be wary of them.”
And I was very wary of John Marks. Even before he became our new torch bearer, he wanted to touch all the women. Mama told Marks that her body belonged to her Volkshalberd helpmate, Perry.
“Only he can know me,” Mama insisted.
Marks backed down. Despite liking to push people around, he’s very weak and cowardly. When she told him no, he claimed Mama was too old to continue his bloodline. Everyone knew he was lying since she gave birth to my brother, Future, two summers ago.
When Marks came for me, I told him I had been blessed with the gift of syphilis.
“Can’t you get that fixed?” he asked in his sloppy way of speaking as if his tongue is too big for his tiny mouth.
“I prayed to the Eye of God, and I am now filled with syphilis,” I said and spun around triumphantly. “Do you want to be blessed, too, John of the Marks?”
My ruse worked, and he decided he didn’t want to be blessed with my disease. Several other women came down with similar cases of syphilis after my triumph.
More recently, Marks noticed Dove, who has a new woman’s body. When he asked to see her alone, Mama screamed. Then I screamed. Then the other women screamed. I don’t think they knew what we were doing. Mama later said that the women don’t like John Marks because his bloodline is tainted.
“The family is weak,” Mama whispered as we cuddled at night in our tabernacle. Perry warned her to be quiet, but she shushed him. Her helpmate isn’t as strong and smart as my papa and mama. That’s why he does what she says. “The Village shouldn’t honor a bloodline so foul.”
I don’t care about bloodlines. When I have a baby, I only want it to have sunshine in its heart. Until Anders, I never consider a helpmate for the baby-making.
After Mama spies on the biker man and
