“That’s right,” I replied, not sure if my notoriety was a plus or a minus.
“We heard about what your people did during the earthquake relief. Well done.”
I stumbled on my words, taken aback by the praise. “I . . . thank you.”
“Landon,” Artie said, his voice as creased and aged as his face, “does this have something to do with the man your Bethany came in with last night?”
Last night. Ethan was here somewhere. I glanced around, as if he were standing right behind me waiting to be noticed.
“It does,” Landon replied.
“And they’re both Meta?”
I bit back a snide remark. My Meta status might be obvious to the world, but Thatcher could pass for perfectly normal.
“Yes, they are,” Landon said.
“Then they are welcome here,” Artie said. He grinned at us and showed off a mouthful of small, yellowed teeth. “Landon and Bethany have been a blessing to this community, and any friends of theirs are friends of ours.”
“Thank you,” Thatcher said. The tightness in his voice told me he was thinking about just how we’d been dragged into this little community.
“So the man Bethany came in with,” I said to Artie. “Do you know where he is?”
“I’ll take you to him,” Landon said. I didn’t miss the furious look he flashed my way.
“Will you both be staying for the evening meal?” Darlene asked. “If so, you may dine with my family. I’ll request guest rations.”
“I’m not sure how long we’ll be staying,” I replied. “But thank you for the offer.”
“It’s an open offer, Ms. Duvall.”
Thatcher and I followed Landon across the quiet park, to the far side (west, guessing from the position of the sun) where a handful of barnlike buildings stood. The doors were pulled shut, so I hadn’t a clue what was stored inside. Past the barns we picked up the road again. It twisted up into the trees and the mountainside, and a weathered road sign said, in simple black letters, MINE AHEAD.
Between the barns and the road, however, was a wooden platform in the center of an open patch of grass. The platform was raised about five feet off the ground, reminding me a bit of hanging gallows in an old western movie. This one didn’t have a gallows, but it did have a single thick post of wood right in the center, about three feet high, with a steel ring on top like something you would attach a chain to. We passed close enough to see dark stains on the unfinished wood and the center post. A set of wooden stairs led up to the platform.
“What is this?” I stopped walking and stared, aware of an encroaching sense of horror.
Landon turned long enough to give the platform a dismissive glance. “It’s where the council performs punishments.”
“What?”
“In public?” Thatcher asked.
“Of course in public,” Landon said. “How is it a deterrent if it’s done in private?”
Ice water surged in my veins, and my vision tunneled in on the platform. I saw it as clearly as if it were happening all over again: a jeering crowd spewing profanities and urging the leaders on; a girl helpless to defend herself, crying for her parents to save her; the stone-cold faces of her torturers, uncaring of the agony they were inflicting on a child.
I felt the sun on my face. I felt the wood at my back and ropes against my naked skin. Smoke rose up and choked me, leached into my nose and mouth and skin. Flames licked higher, closer, searing heat eager to taste my newly blue flesh. Flesh that ached to bend and twist, to help me escape, only they’d tied me too tight, bound me too well. Fear and despair and hatred held me captive as securely as the priest’s ropes. As securely as the revulsion in my parents’ eyes as they watched from the crowd.
I was shaking and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop the barrage of memories, either. Memories of events I’d shoved down and blocked out a long time ago, things I’d only ever shared with three people in my entire life: my foster parents and William Hill. William found out the broad strokes when we were still kids. His father had been in the Ranger Unit that rescued me that day, and William and I became reluctant friends. We’d talked about it again as adults, not long before he died in a gas explosion.
Another fucking fire immolating another piece of my life.
“Renee?”
I think it was Thatcher’s voice, coming from far away, on the other side of my descent into the pain of my past. My eyes stung and my cheeks were wet, and on the tail end of my fear came humiliation. I didn’t cry in front of others. I did it in private—always.
Someone touched my arm. I jerked away and kept going. I didn’t mean to run, not really, and I had no idea where I was going. I bolted across the road, half blind, and into the thick forest of trees and underbrush and fallen debris. No crash of pursuit. No shouts for me to stop. I kept going, strangely freed by the burn in my legs and lungs, urged onward by spiking adrenaline.
Away from that damned platform, I tried to put the ghosts of my past back into that dark, protected place in my mind. But this time they wouldn’t let me close them off completely. My brain echoed with the phantom taunts and my nose stayed full of the odor of charred wood and smoke. I ran until I stumbled, crashing to my hands and knees in a pile of wet leaves and dirt.
Gasping for breath turned into choking sobs. I hugged my knees to my chest and cried in the privacy of the mountains, with only holly trees and a few squirrels to see me. I didn’t have to be quiet, didn’t have to pretend it hurt less than it did. I cried for myself, for the girl who stole the bread, and for everyone this community council had publicly punished in the name of law and order. I hated them for their cruelty, and I hated myself for my weakness.
Eventually my sobs quieted. I lay in the leaves, curled tight in a ball, head throbbing, exhausted. I blew my nose and wiped it on some semi-dry maple leaves (you use what you’ve got). I had to go back at some point, but staying put seemed so much easier. It didn’t require getting up. I was also pretty sure that I was lost.
“Today just keeps getting better and better,” I said to a nearby holly tree.
The only way I was getting out of here was by getting up off my emotional ass. Easier said than done, though. Getting out of here at all required going back to town (which I had no idea how to find). I didn’t hate the town. Part of me admired their tenacity for sticking it out when the government had pretty much abandoned them. They kept their community alive despite all odds, even if they had to steal to feed themselves. I didn’t fault them for wanting their children not to starve.
I did fault them for that platform. Punishment for a crime was one thing. Public punishment and humiliation, especially brought against a child, was wrong. I couldn’t forgive that.
I managed to sit up, only slightly dizzy. I had a few small cuts on my hands I hadn’t noticed before, probably from running blindly into tree branches on my psychotic race into the woods. Those marks made me aware of a slight sting above my left eye, and I found another oozing cut there.
“Fabulous.”
Wood snapped in the distance, from the direction I was pretty sure I’d come. The sound repeated a few times, moving closer. Had Landon chased after me? Or sent Thatcher to bring me back? I stood up and waited, scanning the thick underbrush for any sign of movement.
“Renee!”
My ears perked up. “Here! I’m over here!”
The rustle and crash increased, growing steadily louder, until Ethan burst through the brush. He barreled right at me and swept me up into a tight hug. I threw my arms around his neck, never so glad to see him in my life. And it wasn’t until my cheek collided with cold metal that I realized he wasn’t exactly as he’d been
