The ancients stood in full light
And we in shadow.
Late to the world we come,
Seeing little and hearing less,
The edges and ends and the echoes of song.
The words danced in Nell’s head, shadows and light, edges and ends. This was the text Mistress Meva brought the next afternoon for lessons. The morning had been full of hours spent on calculations and with a curious talk on the makeup of plants and soil concentrations, followed by another long recitation of the chant of seeds, which Nell thought she’d never learn. But that had all been washed away by the words that hummed in Nell’s head. She wondered what book they were from.
What did it mean, the edges and echoes? Nell was thinking a thousand things, not one of them having to do with purity, which was the Shepherdess’s emphatic explanation. When Nell asked her if this was the same kind of purity they had in the city patrols, she scoffed and said that was an altogether false kind. “A twisted shadow” is what she called it, going on to say that true purity had gone from the world, lost with the freshness of youth and the goodness of the early days. “We are left, as the ancients would say, ‘nearsighted and half blind by the dirt in our eyes.’”
Nell was busy trying to piece together what she meant by that when a thundering gong made her jump. Once, twice, it reverberated through the classroom and outside, in the gardens. Nell swiveled in her seat. Was it a fire alarm? She looked to Mistress Meva for answers and was surprised to see the expression on the woman’s face. The Shepherdess had gone pale, her face contorted in a tight-lipped grimace. As Nell watched, tears sprang to the woman’s eyes.
Five clangs of the gong, and then silence. But the noise of life did not resume.
“Girls,” the Shepherdess whispered, “stand now, to mark the punishment and mourn the soul lost.”
The girls rose to their feet. Nell stole a look at Wista, in the seat near hers, and saw the girl’s hands trembling. She clutched her copper pendant so tightly, her fingers were red.
When they’d resumed their places, she looked to the Shepherdess for explanation, but the woman seemed undone. “Keep quiet as you return to your rooms” was all she said. Her voice caught.
The girls filed out silently. In the hall, beneath the weaving of an ivory sky over a dark land, full of the silhouettes of people moving through a river of shimmering blue thread, Nell caught up with Minna. “What was that all about?” she asked her. “Did somebody die?”
The redheaded girl looked sweaty and a little green. “They’d be better off if they did,” she said, her voice low. “That was the signal of banishment. When the elders decide someone’s broken the rules, they push him back through the mist. It’s exile.” She wiped a damp hand across her dress, then suddenly clenched the fabric into a tight ball.
“So they have to go back to the city?” Nell asked her, not understanding the look on the girl’s face. At the other end of the corridor, the rest of the class was already dispersing, moving quietly toward the library to cross to their rooms.
“I don’t know where they go,” Minna said, casting a glance their way. “But that’s not what’s awful about it. When you’re pushed out that way — when the mist takes you, it takes you. Understand?”
Nell shook her head. Down the hall, doors shut with small clicks and quiet puffs of air.
“It takes you. Your soul. Your mind. Everything. The banished ones change back, to the way they were before they came. But on the inside, they’re not like they were. They go mad. They don’t know their own names, or how to speak, or anything. They’re like animals that once were human.”
Nell didn’t move. Into her mind had jumped the image of a wild creature the size of a man, baring its teeth at Susan. She could feel the hot breath of the slashers in the cave, the stench of them as they pressed her to the ground, tearing at the bag of food.
“The — the ones in the city, then? The wild men that attack the sleepers? Those come from here?”
Minna nodded, lips pressed tight together. “We don’t speak of it,” she whispered. “But I saw one when I first came. Some of the others did, too. Mistress Meva told me that it’s the punishment for rebellion. If they’d known to do it in the ancient times, we would have been spared the Genius.”
Minna took a half step away, looking again up the hall.
“What? How?” Nell asked.
“I can’t explain it,” Minna said, taking another step toward the door. Nervously, she rubbed her sunburned nose, shedding small flecks of dead skin onto the hallway floor. “We’re not supposed to talk of the banished ones! Forget it, Nell! Pretend it didn’t happen. It’s better that way.”
Minna turned and hurried down the hall; Nell watched her go. When the door had closed behind her, Nell ran down the stairs into the gardens. They were suddenly empty of people. A breeze cascaded through the curtain of the great willow, and the grass bent softly beneath it; all the doors were shut. Nell moved quickly to the first passageway, the great tunnel that had taken them into the sanctuary, and emerged into the valley as the breeze died. The stillness held her for a moment, made her stand and look at the orchards and the fields, desolate in the settling heat. Then, far to her left, along the outer wall, she saw a group of men clustered, standing at attention, faces turned toward the hills.
Nell squinted at them, trying to see what they were looking at. Suddenly, from up the slope, a wail shattered the afternoon. It was an animal cry,
