The Gift

Wisty

WHIT AND I HAVE BEEN TRUDGING through a steady drizzle for many miles now, and it seems as if every single tree trunk along the highway has been stapled with posters of us. They’re recent pictures-my brother and I in our flashy white Brave New World Center couture:

WANTED for TREASON, TREACHERY, TRICKERY, WIZARDRY, WITCHCRAFT, and POLLUTING the ENVIRONMENT with their PERNICIOUS INFLUENCE

“Lord, what a girl has to do to finally get popular,” I say with resignation. “It’s so unfair. At least that mug shot of me is better than my stupid yearbook photo!”

“Even with the bald head? Um, I’m not so sure, Wist…”

“I’ve decided it’s totally fierce,” I tell him. “Resistance chic. I think it’ll catch on.”

Whit snorts. I don’t expect him to get it anyway, given his fondness for curvy chicks with flowing locks. With my prison-pale skin-two shades lighter than its normal “freckled and fair”-and my raw scalp and dirty baggy jumpsuit, I’m so totally the opposite of his type.

But Emmet might like it. I bet he would. I miss him-and everyone else in Freeland-so much right now.

“Are we there yet?” I quip as we make our way through a portion of the woods parallel to the highway in the outskirts of a small city. I can hear raucous cheering in the distance.

“We’re still a few miles off. The border of Freeland is constantly receding,” Whit explains. “I wonder if that’s a New Order rally we’re hearing or a Resistance rally. Hard to tell in these parts.”

“Should we check it out?”

“Let’s,” he says. “Carefully.”

We turn away from the highway and head up a side street that leads into town. After a few blocks, we spot the fringes of the mob, swarming in a park situated in front of a large stone building. We can’t make out their chanting yet.

“It’s all adults. Clearly not Resistance,” observes Whit. “We can’t get any closer without being noticed. We’re the poster kids of the week around here.”

“Well, then,” I muse, “maybe we shouldn’t be kids anymore.”

Whit whistles as he figures out what I mean. “You think you can do it?”

“Maybe together we can,” I say, and take his hand. “I’ve got no plans to enter my geezer years alone.”

I remember a tidbit from a poem Dad used to read to us, and I make Whit recite it with me:

When I was young! ah woeful When!

Ah for the Change twixt now and then!

And then… it’s the strangest morphing experience I’ve had by far. Usually it’s swift and smooth, as if I’m as soft and moldable as a chunk of cookie dough being squeezed through some higher power’s fingers. This time, it’s slow and… painful. Creaky. As if my spine is being crunched down, and the rest of me aches in response, right down to the soles of my feet.

Whit groans, equally unexcited about his new body. “Don’t tell me this is how years of playing contact sports is going to wreck me in old age.” He moans. “My back is killing me. And both my knees. Ouch, ouch, ouch.”

I try taking a deep breath, and it’s just not the same. “My lungs feel… weird… smaller. Cramped up or something.” Suddenly all of Mom’s griping about me not standing up straight enough somehow seems to make sense.

The odd sensation of something tickling my neck makes me jump, and I smack what I think must be a spider but what turns out to be-hair! I take a coarse strand in my newly veiny hand and check it out. It’s whiter than an ash heap!

“Bye-bye, Resistance chic!” I sing woefully.

“Well, I guess you don’t need to worry about growing your hair back,” Whit comments.

“And I guess you do,” I retort, eyeing his very oblong balding head.

“Or else I’m just going to have to shave my head like you.” My brother strokes his shiny scalp and patchy hair with a knuckly, liver-spotted hand.

“I highly recommend waxing instead,” I joke. Whit responds with a chuckle that morphs into a more penetrating look of alarm.

“Wisty, I will so kill you if you can’t change us back.”

“Lighten up. We’ve always been able to revert, right? Not always at the most convenient moment, of course, but the spells never last forever.”

At least I hope not.

Chapter 73

Whit

WISTY AND I ARE CLOSE enough now to hear what these citizens are chanting about, and it’s pretty vile.

“Books equal chaos! We want order! Books equal chaos!”

We wander/hobble into the crowd and gradually nudge our way forward to a spot where we can see what’s going on.

“Books equal chaos! We want order! Books equal chaos!”

Who are these people who’ve been utterly convinced that books lead only to chaos, fear, evil?

The scary thing is, they look normal. I suppose they are normal. At least, in their own minds. They probably wake up and have a cup of coffee and feed their whiny kids and hug their families. I spot a couple of the grown-ups here with a toddler on their shoulders; there with a baby in a backpack.

But there’s something different and creepy about them, too. There’s something missing from their eyes. They’re alive, they’re living, but there’s not much spark of life or real passion.

The imposing stone building behind the park has a set of stairs leading up to its colonnaded entryway and is flanked on either side by two stone lions. The inscribed name over the enormous filigreed doors has been blasted away, but it’s plain that this was at some point a big city library.

Judging from the pile of books out front, it’s currently empty enough for a soccer match or a mega-rock concert. The pile is taller than the top of a goalpost.

And right now it’s being doused with kerosene by a bunch of jackbooted New Order officials. A boiler-bellied man at the top of the steps is speaking into a megaphone and holding a torch above his head.

I don’t know what it is about the New Order and their policy of hiring the most obscene-looking adults they can find, but they don’t seem to be at risk of being understaffed. Take the meanest vice principal you’ve ever met, cross him with a praying mantis, and add in a tendency to bark like a German shepherd, and maybe you’ll start to get close to what this N.O. guy is like.

“In the name of The One Who Is The One!” he yells. The crowd goes wild at this gibberish.

“In reparation for all those who have been lost forever to the wandering of the imagination! Lost to the obscene lust for dreams… and to knowledge for knowledge’s sake!”

My “elderly” ears are about ready to shatter with the roar of the crowd, and I have to plug them.

“As punishment against those who have squandered their duty to Order and Society by indulging in the wastefulness, inefficiency, and lack of productivity that these cursed volumes engender!”