Icons. Margaret Stohl

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      “So lucky.” Ro snorts. “I think that every day, right before dawn when I get up to feed the pigs.”

      The Padre drops the string of lights like a snake. “You realize, of course, that a Sympa patrol could have seen the lights on this mountain all the way down to the Tracks?”

      “Don’t you ever get tired of hiding?” Ro glowers.

      “That depends. Do you ever get tired of living?” The Padre glares back. Ro says nothing.

      The Padre has the look he gets when he’s doing the Mission accounting, hunched over the ledgers he fills with rows of tiny numbers. This time, he is calculating punishments, and multiplying them times two. I tug on his sleeve, looking repentant—a skill I mastered when I was little. “Ro didn’t mean it, Padre. Don’t be angry. He did it for me.”

      He cups my chin with one hand, and I feel his fingers on my face. In a flash, I sense him. What comes to me first is worry and fear—not for himself, but for us. He wants to be a wall around us, and he can’t, and it makes him crazy. Mostly, he is patience and caution; he is a globe spinning and a finger tracing roads on a worn map. His heart beats more clearly than most. The Padre remembers everything—he was a grown man when the first Carriers came—and most of what he remembers are the children he has helped. Ro, and me, and all the others who lived at the Mission until they were placed with families.

      Then, in my mind’s eye, I see something new.

      The image of a book takes shape.

      The Padre is wrapping it, with his careful hands. My present.

      He smiles at me, and I pretend not to know where his mind is.

      “Tomorrow we will speak of bigger things. Not today. It’s not your fault, Dolly. It’s your birthday eve.”

      And with that, he winks at Ro and draws his robed arm around me, and we both know all is forgiven.

      “Now, come to dinner. Bigger and Biggest are waiting, and if we make them wait much longer, Ramona Jamona will no longer be a guest at our table but the main dish.”

      As we slide our way back down the hillside, the Padre curses the bushes that tug at his robes, and Ro and I laugh like the children we were when he first found us. We race, stumbling in the darkness toward the warm yellow glow of the Mission kitchen. I can see the homemade beeswax candles flickering, the hand-cut paper streamers hanging from the rafters.

      My birthday eve dinner is a success. Everyone on the Mission is there—almost a dozen people, counting the farmhands and the church workers—all crammed around our long wooden table. Bigger and Biggest have used every cracked plate in the shed. I get to sit in the Padre’s seat, a birthday tradition, and we eat my favorite potato-cheese stew and Bigger’s famous sugar cake and sing old songs by the fire until the moon is high and our eyes are heavy and I fall asleep in my usual warm spot in front of the oven.

      When the old nightmare comes—my mother and me and the radio going silent—Ro is there next to me on the floor, asleep with crumbs still on his face and twigs still in his hair.

      My thief of junk. Climber of mountains. Builder of worlds.

      I rest my head on his back and listen to him breathe. I wonder what tomorrow will bring. What the Padre wants to tell me.

      Bigger things, that’s what he said.

      I think about bigger things until I am too small and too tired to care.

      EMBASSY CITY TRIBUNAL AUTOPSY

      CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET

      Performed by Dr. O. Brad Huxley-Clarke, VPHD

      Note: Conducted at the private request of Amb. Amare

      Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B

      Also see adjoining DPPT in addendum file.

      Deceased Personal Possessions Transcript

      Deceased classified as victim of Grass Rebellion uprising. Known to be Person of Interest to Ambassador Amare.

      Gender: Female.

      Ethnicity: Indeterminate.

      Age: Estimate mid-to-late teens. Postadolescent.

       Physical Characteristics:

      Slightly underweight. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Skin characterized by some discoloration indicative of elemental exposure. Exhibits human protein markers and low body weight indicative of predominantly agrarian diet. Staining patterns on teeth consistent with consumption habits of local Grass cultures.

       Distinguishing Physical Markings:

      A recognizable

marking appears inside the specimen’s right wrist. At the Ambassador’s request, a specimen of the has been removed, in observance of security protocols. .

      Cause of Death:

.

      Survivors: No identified family.

      Note: Body will be cremated following lab processing.

      Embassy City Waste Facility Assignment: Landfill

.

       3

       THE PIETÀ OF LA PURÍSIMA

      Feelings are memories.

      That’s what I’m thinking as I stand there in the Mission chapel, the morning of my birthday. It’s what the Padre says. He also says that chapels turn regular people into philosophers.

      I’m not a regular person, but I’m still no philosopher. And either way, what I remember and how I feel are the only two things I can’t escape, no matter how much I want to.

      No matter how hard I try.

      For the moment, I tell myself not to think. I focus on trying to see. The chapel is dark but the doorway to outside is blindingly bright. That’s what morning always looks like in the chapel. The little light there prickles and stings my eyes.

СКАЧАТЬ