The Freedom Race, page 7
The bellicose notes from the planting’s brass band hijacked the breeze. Cropmaster Herring was fond of playing military marches at Culminations. Ji-ji saw the segregated band in her mind’s eye. To the right of the massive tree, Rightcause Fansom, the band’s official leader and Herring’s first cousin, would be waving his baton in the air while Jeremicah Williamsseed (the band’s real leader and a far more talented musician) would be leading the band discreetly from behind. But it wasn’t the band that made Execution Circle the most dreaded place on the planting for seeds. It was the enormous tree at its hub.
Sylvie sat in the lowest part of the Circle, but Ji-ji could see her hefty crown already. Ji-ji often wished the steaders had never baptized her. The name made Culminations more vengeful, as if Nature herself enjoyed conspiring with steaders to make seeds’ lives hell. As wide as she was high, Sylvie served as the planting’s most potent symbol. According to Uncle Dreg, who made the claim with a wink and a nod, the great tree was a hybrid—the offspring of a live oak from the Deep South and a kapok tree from the Cradle, an example of the “unadulterated magnificence produced by unauthorized miscegenation.” Ji-ji was never sure whether Uncle Dreg was pulling their leg, but she liked the idea that the steaders worshipped an entity that mocked them. Coach Billy Brineseed—Uncle Dreg’s best friend and the planting’s chief arborist and volunteer fly-coach—had a simpler explanation. Coach B said Sylvie was a species unique unto herself. There was not another like her in the entire world. You couldn’t pin a fine specimen like Sylvie down to type without doing her a grave injustice, he’d tell them. In the face of two conflicting assertions, Ji-ji had done what Miss Clobershay had taught her to do—accept nothing on one person’s say-so and go on a quest for truth. Her research on the Grubby Pipe, the seeds’ ruthlessly censored network, was inconclusive. Sylvie did indeed look like she was the giant offspring of a live oak and a kapok tree, but she couldn’t find anything like Sylvie anywhere. The penal tree was a mystery that would certainly have been awe-inspiring if the steaders hadn’t co-opted her. As it was, they’d turned her into a freak.
Ji-ji couldn’t make out Sylvie’s hateful adornments yet, but she pictured them dangling from Sylvie’s branches. The names of executed seeds were etched onto brick-sized metal expiration tags that functioned as grisly wind chimes. Steaders referred to the tags as Sylvie’s purple earrings because the metal reflected the penal tree’s pinkish-purple blossoms in the spring. Among themselves, seeds never called them earrings; instead, they called them purple tears.
Nowhere on the planting was more sacrosanct to steaders than the Circle. When Founding Cropmaster Bartholemew had come upon the natural amphitheater and freakishly large tree, he decreed them to be signs from God and informed his coastal flock that their exodus up from Inner Tampa had ended. The sea would not rise in wrath in this place, he assured them. The Endless Strife and Long Drought would be over. By the grace of God, extended growing seasons would make the land bountiful. (The strife and droughts continued, as did flooding and fallout, but he’d gotten the last part right: the growing season in this part of the country was surprisingly long.) Bartholemew’s god was as merciful to steaders as he was merciless to seeds. When Ji-ji had questioned Miss Clobershay about him, her teacher paraphrased a poem by a feminist poet—a fairskin from way back when. If you were to ask the spider what god is, the spider would tell you, “God is a spider.” In other words, Miss Clobershay told her, the steaders’ god was a steader through and through. It was a comfort to Ji-ji to know that God might not be a vicious bastard after all.
Closer and closer they came to the place where Uncle Dreg would not be lynched today. Among seeds—and some steaders too—Execution Circle was known as Dimmers Ditch because it was rumored to contain so many vengeful ghosts. Even when there were no executions going on, an oppressive sensation hit as you descended into the natural amphitheater, with its large wooden platform encircling Sylvie like a stage and its terraced viewing coops. The steaders sat on white bleachers flanking the penal platform. All those not on essential duty would be in the bleachers this morning, and all of them would be fuming over Uncle Dreg’s escape. Ji-ji sized things up as fast as she could.
They had entered from the southwest, about fifty yards behind the coops reserved for the six lower-ranked homesteads. To reach Viewing Coop 1, Lotter’s coop, they had to work their way round to the other side of the Circle, where the coops for Homesteads 1 through 6 were located. The Outcast Coop was way off to the east, at the crest of the hill. In other words, the odds were lousy they could sneak in unnoticed. They would need Matty’s help. Yet she still didn’t know if he planned to parrot to Lotter. Panic fluttered in her chest as martial music blared across the Circle. However loudly the band played, they couldn’t outdo the shouting, laughing, and carrying-on in the viewing coops. Ji-ji had never seen anything like it. Granted, it wasn’t mutiny, but it was close. For once, the seeds weren’t cowed and the steaders weren’t crowing. The world had been upended by a funny-looking, nappy-headed, necklace-wearing wizard from the Cradle.
Matty ordered Ji-ji and Afarra to halt. To Ji-ji’s relief, no guards patrolled the upper tiers, which explained why they hadn’t been spotted yet. Eager to get a good view of the penal platform, the seeds had surged forward to the front of their coops. The guards must have taken up positions farther down inside the well of the Circle to monitor them.
Ji-ji looked at Longsby. “You plan to report us? Father-Man’ll beat us or worse if you—”
“Keep your damn mouth shut, Mule, an’ let a man think.”
Ji-ji was desperate. She played a hunch and spoke again: “We didn’t know it was you.”
Longsby looked at her strangely. She’d got his attention. “You tellin’ me it would’ve made a difference if you had?” he asked.
“Yes!” Ji-ji and Afarra insisted in unison.
Ji-ji decided to risk it and tell the truth. “You’re right, Guard Longsby. We weren’t lost. It was me made the Cloth take the forbidden.”
“Missy Ji is a liar of the worst kind. I am the one. It was my idea entirety. I am very ideaful. This is another bad case of it.”
Matton Longsby looked away. For an instant, Ji-ji thought he was smiling. But when he looked back at them, his face was a wall. He addressed Ji-ji.
“Okay, here’s the deal.… I’ll let you into your viewing coop, an’ I won’t tell your father-man what you did.” Before she could thank him, Matty grabbed her arm and pulled her in closer. “But if you don’t stop acting the fool, Uncle Dreg won’t be the only seed dangling from Sylvie this week.”
Matty Longsby’s ice-blue eyes drilled into hers. He squeezed her arm so tight it hurt.
She had to ask him one more favor. “Please, I beg you. Can you take Afarra to her coop?”
The young guard pulled Ji-ji even closer. She smelled weed on his breath. “Call her by that ridiculous name again an’ they’ll accuse you of befriending an outcast. You want Tryton to ship her off to the Rad Region?” Ji-ji shook her head, opting not to remind him that he had called her by a proper name himself. He added too softly for Afarra to hear, “You owe me for this, understand? I expect … gratitude.” He glanced down at her chest. “Yeah. Things sure do grow if you let ’em be.”
She was an idiot. For a few stupid minutes she had almost trusted him.
Not long afterward, Ji-ji was inside Viewing Coop 1, and Matty had marched off with Afarra toward the Outcast Coop. As a guard in Lotter’s security contingent, he would have a plausible excuse for her tardiness. Afarra was safe. Ji-ji tried not to worry.
In Viewing Coop 1, seeds were packed in like sardines. Ji-ji pushed her way to the front and scanned the next-door coop for the top of Tiro’s head. At six-two, Tiro was taller than most seeds on the planting. Seeds’ reaction to the miracle varied greatly. Some were weeping openly, some were laughing, and others looked stupefied. A palpable tension hung in the air. Dozens of guards patrolled the well of the Circle with high-powered rifles, semiautomatic handguns, zapper sticks, and stun staffs. Most wore grenade pouches. Bad kangaroos, the seeds called them, as if the contents of these pouches would be less lethal if they had a harmless midwifery name.
After multiple pleas to let her pass, Ji-ji worked her way to the front of Coop 1. She spotted Tiro, standing near the mesh separating the two coops. As soon as he saw her, his face lit up.
The ordeal had taken its toll on him. He had heavy bags beneath his bloodshot eyes, but he’d taken pains to prepare himself that morning. His Sand-Tan skin and close-cut hair shone with oil. He wore his regulation fly-boy T-shirt—something he’d told Ji-ji he would do if he suspected Uncle Dreg could pull off a miracle. The T-shirt—with the planting crest in orange on the chest, and a pair of wings, the flyer’s symbol, underneath it—was Tiro’s way of saying his great-uncle would fly from this place. On the back of his T-shirt in all caps was the name he despised: T. WILLIAMSMULE. (Tiro had repeatedly threatened to rename himself Tiro Dregulahmo after his uncle. But Auntie Zaini, knowing that Father-Man Williams would hit the roof if he did, wouldn’t hear of it.) Like Longsby, Tiro had grown in the past few months. The Gleaning diet that fattened up the juvis had transformed him from a gangly sixteen-year-old to a muscular seventeen-year-old. Someone—Marcus or one of his other fly-boy buddies probably—had shaved the flyers’ wings symbol onto the left side of Tiro’s head. The wings were barely visible because his hair was so short. Nevertheless, Ji-ji was uneasy when she saw it. As Planting 437’s flying champion, Tiro could get away with a lot. But Inquisitor Tryton enjoyed accusing male seeds of dandification almost as much as he relished accusing female seeds of flauntification. Still, Ji-ji couldn’t worry about that now, not when she saw Tiro rushing toward her, grinning from ear to ear.
“Where you been, Ji? Look like you been rolling with the hogs!”
Before she could answer, he confessed he went crazy when he couldn’t locate her in the coop. Without taking a breath, he launched into an account of the past few hours.
“He did it, Ji! Flew off like he promised! Like those Passengers from the old days! Herring swears he won’t let us out o’ these coops till they find him. Been stuck here going on three hours. But hey, who cares? Uncle Dreg’s magicked himself Free!”
At last Tiro noticed something was wrong. “Hey, you okay? We’d given up on you.”
Haltingly, making sure she kept her voice low, Ji-ji told him about Lua and her deadborn, leaving out how dark he was and the strange things Lua had said.
“Oh Ji, I’m real sorry. Lua never had a bad word to say ’bout anybody. I know what she meant to you. An’ here I am carrying on like—”
“No, don’t be sorry. No one would be happier than Lua. She loved Uncle Dreg.”
Auntie Zaini, Tiro’s mam, came up to the dividing mesh with Bromadu and Eeyatho, Tiro’s two young brothers, in tow. She looked drained, but as always she held her head up proudly. Tall like Tiro, with a soft brown complexion that placed her firmly in the Raw Umber arc of the Wheel, Auntie Z had taken Ji-ji under her wing after Bonbon’s snatching, when Silapu dove headfirst into a depression more purple than any before. Though Silapu and Zaini weren’t related, they’d been as close as sisters at one time.
Ma Merrimac joined the group on Ji-ji’s side of the dividing mesh. One of the matriarchs of the planting, Ma Mac had lived on the 437th even longer than Uncle Dreg. As an elder on Lotter’s homestead, she was responsible for calling roll in Coop 1. She checked Ji-ji off her list and asked where Silapu was.
“You mean Mam’s not here?” Ji-ji asked.
Ma Merrimac shook her head. “An’ you know how nasty Dale Lotter gets when his Mammy Tep goes missing.”
Auntie Z told Ma Merrimac the tragic news about Lua and her seedling. The older woman groaned in sympathy, put her big arm around Ji-ji, and pulled her to her ample chest. Ma Mac worked the night shift in the planting’s furniture factory and smelled strongly of sawdust and glue.
“Poor Marcie,” Ma Merrimac said. “Lua was her Last&Only. Well … least we got one thing to celebrate on this mournful Death Day. No one escapes PenPen, but the Oz found a way. Never underestimate a wizard, that’s my motto.”
Tiro couldn’t contain his excitement: “We always believed he’d find a way to defeat the bastards—right, Mother?”
“Hush, Mule!” Ma Mac scolded. She put her face up close to the dividing mesh and hissed a warning: “Call your mam by that steader name an’ you’ll be flogged! You know how picky they are ’bout their terminology. Parrots got ears, an’ they love nothing better than squawking to steaders. Don’t know what you were thinking shaving those dandified wings onto your head! Good-looking don’t compensate for stupid.”
Ji-ji was about to intervene on Tiro’s behalf when she felt the mood suddenly shift in the coops. Seeds were pointing and yelling. Cries went up from those with a clear view of the platform.
The seeds in Coop 2 fell back to allow Tiro and his kin to move forward. In Coop 1, Ma Merrimac used her impressive bulk to bulldoze a path for Ji-ji so she could squeeze closer to the front and stand beside Tiro on the other side of the mesh.
There, being led up onto the platform by two guards, was the Toteppi wizard who was supposed to have flown away. Only he hadn’t flown anywhere. The wizard had been caught!
Zaini hugged her little ones closer and placed her hand on Tiro’s arm like someone who’d always known they would lose Uncle Dreg to Sylvie in the end. Bromadu and Eeyatho began to wail.
Tiro appealed to Ji-ji: “That’s some imposter, right? Don’t even look like him! He escaped—right, Ji?”
Ji-ji’s expression told the awful truth. Tiro ripped off his T-shirt and ground it into the dirt.
Ji-ji knew now her mam was right after all. There was no escape. Round and round seeds went, lashed to the Wheel of Misfortune. The steaders’ sick rhyme ambushed her again.
The only way for a seed to be Free
Is to swing on high from a penal tree.
Not even a wizard from the Cradle could break a spell as powerful as that.
6 THE WIZARD
When she saw what they had done to him, Ji-ji wanted to weep.
The two guards pushed Uncle Dreg forward. He stumbled to his knees to an outcry from the coops. As an errander, Uncle Dreg had dozens of opportunities to seek asylum in the Independents or the Eastern SuperState, yet he’d chosen to return again and again to Planting 437. He’d spoken Toteppi death rites over seeds’ graves and made them believe their dreams weren’t futile. The old warrior, who didn’t know exactly how old he was, had done the impossible—convinced steaders to trust him while he cultivated hope in his fellow seeds.
Up on the penal platform, however, Uncle Dreg looked defeated. They’d stripped him almost bare and wrapped a filthy loincloth around his privates. He was one of the few male seeds permitted to wear his hair long and uppity. To humiliate him, someone had smeared muck in his wild gray hair and shaved sections off to reveal his scalp. Yet for some reason, his knobbly knees devastated Ji-ji the most. They looked like two ashy, wrinkled faces.
The wizard wasn’t wearing his mystical necklace of colorful wooden beads with a single eye painted on each. The steaders had settled for mockery instead. They’d placed two big round balls around his neck, strung together with thick rope. On them they’d painted two crude, insane-looking eyes. They dangled from his scrawny neck like an obscenity.
Cropmaster Herring marched up to the podium. Under the shadow of Sylvie’s huge limbs, he paused for effect. Outfitted in the heavy black robe and cloak he wore on Death Days, Michael Prinshum Herring looked every inch the cropmaster. His massive chain with its gold and silver links glinted on his chest. The chain was heavy, but he stood upright, shoulders pulled back. Like Father-Man Williams and the four other bald or balding father-men, the cropmaster wore a gray ceremonial wig tied back with a black seizure ribbon. As far as Ji-ji knew, no one had ever seen Herring smile; he didn’t ambush them with it now.
On Herring’s right stood Lotter, disconcertingly handsome in his olive-colored robe, his blond hair corralled by the infamous black ribbon. On Herring’s left stood Father-Man Williams. The tallest and meanest of Herring’s twelve father-men, Williams was even more vicious than Petrus. At his father-house while she was preparing his meal the other day, Ji-ji had overheard Lotter say he was opposed to lynching the Toteppi, warning it could incite a riot like the diviner warned. A pragmatist, Lotter had lobbied instead for expulsion to the Rad Region, saying the Tribal would die slowly—a fitting punishment less likely to cause unrest. But Herring wanted blood.
The other father-men took their designated stations in a half circle around the wide trunk of the penal tree. The group faced Viewing Coops 1 through 6, which gave Coops 7 through 12 a rear view of the ceremony. To enable the lower-ranked coops to get a frontal view of the proceedings, a camera caught the action and displayed it on a giant screen attached to scaffolding. Though steaders were wary of employing technology, Herring, who relished seeing himself enlarged on a big screen, decreed that it could be used “to instill an appropriate reverence for rites and rituals.”
No one observed Territorial rites and rituals more obsessively than Inquisitor Tryton, a bumblebee of a man in a crimson robe, who functioned as chief justice for the planting and reported directly to Armistice. Tryton was buzzing around the wooden platform, fussily checking and rechecking that everything was in order. Pastor Cam Gillyman, Tryton’s toady, who could have passed for a fairskin, stood at the foot of the penal platform. In a nasal whine, the True Hybrid implored the Lord to inflict eternal damnation on those who betrayed the Territories.
