They spoke of the Minister. Their voices trembled with fear. And hatred.
“He can’t have her,” the junk man said, his voice dangerous—the rusty edge of an old tin can. “I’d die first.”
“Yup,” the Constable said, rubbing his face. “She does seem to have that effect. Did when she was a baby too. Or a dead baby. In any case, I pretty much feel the same way. The exact same way. The Minister takes too much. And enough is enough.”
The girl listened intently. The mother bird flew away to find food, and the babies had been replaced in the nest. They cried out—not for their mother, but for the junk man’s daughter. She frowned.
She didn’t understand everything that the adults said. She did not fear as they feared; she did not hate as they hated. But she knew this: She had something inside her. Something special. And a bad man wanted it.
(Or a good man; or a bad man who could change; a human being deserving of love, and oh! How she loved! How she loved everyone.)
She looked up at the sky. The sun hovered over the horizon, fat and lurid. A delight of color. And it was for everyone. It shone equally on Minister and junk man, on soldier and egg woman, on dogs and hens and bugs. It could not be claimed by a single individual—it shone for all.
Well, she thought. What if I did what the sun does? What if the Minister came and the magic was gone? What if I gave it to everyone else instead?
And, as she drifted to sleep, she dreamed of a wave, swelling up beneath her feet. She smelled foam and wind and salt. Yellow coins. Red flowers. A dead child. A child that lived. A particularly fine hen. And she felt herself lift, bubble, dissolve. She felt the wave cover the world.
And she disappeared.
25. Now.
The Inquisitor, in the end, did not make the customary stop in the baker’s shop, and he did not purchase a pie for his wife. (And more’s the pity. One slice would have saved his marriage, cured his gout, straightened his back, ended his impotence, ensured his raise, and set his career on a more prosperous track; the apples, after all, came from Marla’s farm. They were not to be trifled with.) Despite the dark that night, despite the jittering fear that chokes the town every time someone from the capital comes calling, everyone living along that dark street peeked through drawn curtains and watched that black car as it slid to the Constable’s office. They held their breath as it slid away.
The Inquisitor, people whispered. Here? They wondered and fussed, but they did not look up. They shut their curtains and counted their children and looked around their houses for anything incriminating.
Not a soul in town slept a wink that night.
And now, the next day, everyone continues to whisper. They continue to fuss. They confer and collect and collude. A crowd forms in the square. They speak of nothing else. First the Inquisitor. Now what?
It’s not so much the visit, they think but do not say, but what comes after. Soldiers, maybe. Re-Educators. Overseers. There were rumors of labor camps. And family splitting.
There’s no concrete proof of that, people whisper. You’re being ridiculous.
They have heard of whole towns simply wiped from the map in earlier generations. Well. No one can be sure. It’s not as though a thing like that would be included in a book.
Inquisitors don’t just visit towns for their health. And the Minister’s eye doesn’t stray on communities by accident.
That thing that no one talks about.
That thing that no one says.
Well. Someone blabbed.
But who? Who is the blabbermouth? The mayor? Surely not. Not the Constable, neither. Constable’s got everyone’s back—that’s well known. Maybe the tax collector? Or the orphan matron. Or the junk man.
Yes, the preacher nods. The junk man. That’s who told. Must have been.
“Heard it from his own lips,” the preacher says. “Junk man told me just before he sold me this here watch. I mean Bible.”
He clears his throat, gives his fist a quick shake, and the gold watch in his palm vanishes. In its place is a Bible—dusty, well worn, lovingly thumbed. The preacher smiles. If he decides to shake it again, it will become a glass tumbler of good whiskey, served neat. Beautiful thing. God bless the junk man. Despite the unpleasant aroma, the gentleman knows his business, that’s for sure—links the right product to the right customer, always. And this little beauty, thinks the preacher, is the rightest of them all. He licks his lips and grips his Bible tight. Soon, he tells himself. Once he has left his insufferable flock for a blessed minute alone. He gazes out at his community with what he hopes is a beatific and forgiving expression. “But the junk man only reports rumors, and does not participate in vice. Remember this, my friends. Let us not judge—”
“Nah,” a neighbor interrupts. “The junk man never knows nuthin’. It was the egg woman. The egg woman knew it first. Heard it from her last week, and that’s a fact.”
“You never did,” Marla, the egg woman, says. She had been standing in the shadows, listening. How strange that no one noticed her. Very strange. She gives the man a swat on the backside of his head. The man rubs the injury, mutters something that sounds like didn’t see you there, and stares at the ground. Marla gives him a hard look. (She is also agitated, some notice. She scans the crowd, and beyond the crowd. She searches the sky. She is looking for something.) “I only heard it just now. Just like you.” She says it like she means it.
And it’s true enough. They all know just know. That’s why they’re talking in the first place. But who knew first? This is important. Lives might be at stake. And the crowd is divided.
“The schoolteacher,” says another neighbor. “Musta been. She has
