The Owling, page 19
“Please listen to me,” Oriannon went on. “I need your help. I have to get into the camp, so I need your clothes and I need your anklet.”
The young woman only stared at her, wide-eyed, as if startled by the odd request.
“Your anklet,” Oriannon repeated, pointing at the ill-fitting silver glassteel ring, then pointing at her own ankle. “I need you to give it to me, or they won’t let me inside the camp, right?”
Finally the woman opened her mouth, speaking softly and with a thick Owling accent that made it difficult for Oriannon to understand.
“You’re not wanting to go there,” she whispered. “A horrible place.”
“I know, I’ve seen it.” Oriannon reached for the anklet. “But look, can you help me?”
“They’ll be knowing it’s gone.” The woman shook her head and pulled back. “A friend of mine tried to pull it off, and they knew.”
“Not if it’s on me instead.” Oriannon hoped she was right. She knew she had no time to argue the finer technical points. “Please. I need to find my friends, and we need to stop what’s happening with the Owlings. This is the only way I can think of.”
“But where will I be going?”
Oriannon pointed to the back door of the kitchen.
“I’ll give you my ID card, and we’re going to trade clothes. You’ll pretend you’re me, a student here. You’re going to be sick so you can check out from school through the digital nurse, and then you’ll stay with my friends Brinnin and Carrick. They’ll hide you until — well, you’ll be safe. Do you understand?”
“Hide?” The Owling woman glanced at the school building, her eyes still wide in fear. “And how will I be sick?”
“Never mind that. Brinnin’s over there, waiting for you.” Oriannon took hold of the anklet. As she had hoped, it fit only loosely over the slight woman’s ankle. Perhaps the kitchen grease on her wrists and arms would help slip it off a little more quickly. “They’ll make sure nothing bad happens to you. Now, please, before it’s too late.”
Five minutes later, Oriannon had assumed the role of an Owl-ing slave, hiding inside the robe of the Owling woman, pulling the hood up as far as it would go. The rough fabric smelled of Lior, of Shadowside — dark and musky, but full of its own strange life. That, and a bit smoky from all the open fires the woman must have tended.
At the moment, Oriannon had no fires to tend, only gravel paths to rake and weeds to pull in the gardens fronting Jib Ossek Academy. She tried to hold herself like the other Owlings, slump-shouldered and looking down, hoping that no one would look into her face too closely or notice she was slightly taller than the woman she replaced. Once in a while she stooped to rub dirt in her face, hoping to disguise her Coristan features a bit more. She pushed the gravel around with her rake, the way she’d seen the woman do earlier.
Would this work?
Not if the probe got too close, and certainly not if it managed to scan her eyes. Meanwhile she would say nothing, just do her work, follow orders, and follow the others. How strange that all her friends were in class only a few hundred meters away. She could hear shouts from a ragball game in the field on the other side of the building.
Come on, Brinnin. She wished she could see what was going on inside. Get the Owling woman out of here!
Oriannon slouched a little lower and turned away as the probe finally made its rounds, coming closer, hovering for a moment over each Owling worker.
Stay away! Oriannon’s hands shook, and she feared her plan would unravel before it began. She pivoted with her back to the probe as it paused to check on her. As it did, her anklet vibrated distinctly, sending an unpleasant chill up her right leg. Not gentle at all, the jolt shook her to the bone, and she swallowed her scream.
But the vibration ceased, and the probe moved on to check on others, leaving Oriannon to gasp in relief and peek out from the hood that had hidden her so far. But if she had just passed her first test, she knew it was nothing compared to the next one. An hour later she followed the others as they quietly filed toward a waiting lev-platform. She would not be the first in line, and not the last. And no one spoke as they climbed on their waiting transport — to the prison camp.
23
At this point Oriannon’s strategy was simple: Every time she felt a little too close to a curious Owling, she would back them away with her most horrendous-sounding cough and wheeze. The two securities assigned to transport them paid no attention to a potentially sick prisoner as they neared the camp. These Owlings were obviously a cheap commodity.
In fact, she was simply number fifteen of twenty-three. An hour later her anklet buzzed unpleasantly once more as they passed through the main entry and into the dome. She guessed that buzz simply confirmed the anklet wearer had checked back into the camp, almost like an electronic roll call.
This time it took a moment to register that she’d actually made it inside, and not just taken a virtual peek with the stolen probe. Almost like when I saw it before, she thought, forcing herself not to look about like a tourist. But in person and from the inside, this dome appeared much, much larger, with a vaguely burnt odor that seemed to cling to her. It must have come from the force field itself. She sniffed and tried not to sneeze at the way it scratched her nose.
Away from the force field, fearful shouts echoed, and all the smells of living and dying seemed to fester within the dome. Even worse, the despairing cries of unseen Owling children shook her almost immediately, bringing unexpected tears to her eyes. Remembering how they had danced and sang only weeks before, she could not help feeling their aching loss of heart. It weighed on her like the worst poison, so much more than the awful stench of sickness and exhaustion.
Even the Trion’s fierce sunlight only managed to filter through the force field as a feeble glow. It did lend a strange black-and-blue tint to this bruised, captive world along with a pallid cast to her skin. Brinnin would have been mortified. Looking down at her hands, Oriannon wondered if by passing through the entry she had turned more corpse than alive.
The Owlings themselves appeared not far from dead. Some wandered aimlessly through the vast expanse of dome tents, others struggled to walk while carrying heavy plastic buckets of water. Still others simply sat in the dust, staring at their feet or at nothing in particular, muttering to themselves. She’d never seen Owlings act so strangely.
But Oriannon was not on a tour, and she started filing away information to get her bearings. The securities set down the empty transport at a staging area — a simple clearing scratched into the meadows, not far from the main entry and wedged between three simple, green prefab sheds and the first row of tents. Securities hurried in and out of the dull metal sheds, barking instructions at each other as if this might be an administrative center.
At first she mentally filed away the locations and layout of what she saw. Perhaps, she thought, it would come in handy. But as soon as the nearest security grunted and waved for the newly arrived Owlings to step away, she hurried off between two Owling women. Surely it would only be a matter of time before she would be discovered and punished. She would have to find Wist, quickly, and figure a way out.
“Out of the way!” roared a security, and as he jockeyed his craft back into position, a portion of the ion lifter caught her from behind, scorching the hem of Ori’s long tunic and sending her flying headfirst into a well-worn patch of dirt. As dust flew around her head, he ignored her misfortune while she gasped to reclaim her breath. But still she kept her hood pulled tightly around her ears and said nothing as the lev-sled moved away.
So now what? she asked herself, taking small gulps of sultry air.
Before she could rise, she felt herself lifted by the shoulders to her feet, where she wobbled uncertainly.
“You want to be staying out of their way,” a boy told her, and she turned away with a dusty cough to avoid his gaze. But she noticed he stood with another boy about his age, younger than her and studying her curiously. Something looked familiar about them, and she knew in an instant she had seen them before.
“Thanks,” she answered from behind her hand. She did her best to imitate the singsong Owling way of speaking. “I’ll learn — I mean, I’ll be learning.”
Apparently satisfied, the two boys went on their way toward the tents, but the first one stopped short and turned back around.
“You’re talking?” He scratched his head.
Ori remained silent, hoping she’d not already done something wrong.
“Most who are working outside are too scared to be saying much,” he told her. “Maybe because you’re so . . . tall?”
Tall compared the Owling. She stepped into a crowded aisle between two rows of tents, sidestepping young Owling children and mothers with babies, but still the boys followed.
“Wait a minute,” the first one called to her, but she did her best to disappear into the crowd. It would be better not to attract too much attention right away. Perhaps she should have asked them if they knew Wist, but for now she wandered the aisles of this makeshift prison, holding the hood in place and trying not to stare at the refugees.
At first she tried to compare the experience to her time in the Owling city, since many of these Owlings must have come from Lior. She actually did recognize some of the faces. There was a shopkeeper who had once presided over a proud collection of intricate pottery in his store. She remembered the intricate designs he added to his handiwork — stars and swirling clouds, beautiful and brooding, as mysterious as the Owling landscape. Now he sat in the dirt, holding his head and rocking back and forth.
There was a grandmother. Oriannon remembered her smile as she once hung out a long row of laundry from her balcony in the cliffside city. She’d had a charming, clear singing voice and had sung of the beauty of Jesmet’s world. Now she stood staring up into the blue dome, wringing her hands in the air and groaning.
A woodworker? Back in Lior, he’d come to the window of his shop with sweet-smelling sawdust on his brow and a wide smile on his face. Now the sawdust had been replaced with mud, the smile with a long, vacant stare that looked right through her.
Oriannon shivered. Something unspeakably wrong had happened in this prison, and unfamiliar cries filled the air like the humid heaviness of a greenhouse. The hidden darkness of Sola’s Plan had stricken these poor people hard and without mercy.
Even so, not all were affected — yet. Several young children chased each other between the tents, and their calls sounded almost like the old Lior. Somewhere, perhaps far off across the hectares of tents, she thought she heard quiet singing that reminded her of the happy music that once filled the Owling city. Here, though, it sounded painfully out of place. As Oriannon tried to locate it, a little girl brushed up between her and the nearest tent.
“Sorry!” The girl grabbed Oriannon’s arm for balance as she looked up with puzzlement at her face. “Oh! But you’re not Owl-ing, are you?”
Oriannon wasn’t quite ready for the question and stumbled over her tongue for the right answer.
“No, actually, ah . . .”
“That’s okay.” A sparkle in the girl’s eye testified she had not yet been touched by the brooding evil that swept through this place, and she held on to Oriannon’s hand the way little girls do. “You don’t have to be saying anything. A lot of people can’t anymore. But are you knowing Jesmet? My name is Moya. You should be coming with us.”
“Well — ”
Oriannon let herself be tugged by the eager little girl, down one aisle of identical tents and across another, deeper and deeper into the camp. Before it was too late, she should ask about Wist or perhaps if she knew of a Coristan named Margus Leek. But right now something else seemed very important to this little sprite, and so Oriannon followed her toward the sound of singing. At the tent doorflap, a young Owling man with a scarred face nodded quietly as he stepped aside to allow them in.
“Shh!” Moya put a finger to her lips, but Oriannon had already seen enough to know she needed to remain quiet. For the singing had ceased, and she counted some twenty Owlings crammed into the tent, standing silently, eyes closed, while they took turns praying.
“Mama.” Moya slipped to the side of a woman in the group, tugging on her tunic so she opened her eyes and noticed Oriannon standing just inside the door. The woman smiled and nodded her welcome but returned to prayer — for names Oriannon didn’t recognize, for strength to face whatever the Maker allowed, for their Security captors, for the Coristan leaders who persecuted them. Several in the group mentioned Sola by name, but not with the kind of barbs or bitterness Oriannon might have expected. Did they really know who they were praying for?
Oriannon had heard prayer like this only once before, when she had visited the Owling city. Then, as now, it sounded so unlike the lofty petitions she had grown up hearing in the Temple. They hardly resembled the kind her father offered in a strange, otherworldly voice to a very distant and far-off Maker. Here it sounded different, almost as if the Owlings actually knew the Maker, the way they might know someone like Jesmet. It sounded so different, in fact, that she wondered if it actually could be prayer.
The words shook her even as they woke something deep inside her, and after a few minutes her legs shook beneath her so that she could no longer stand. Instead she fell to her knees on the tent floor and hid her face once more beneath the cloak.
If this is really prayer, she told herself, then I’ve never really prayed before.
Perhaps it was just coincidence. But for the first time in days, Oriannon felt the Stone warming once again in her deep pocket, and she almost jumped at the feeling. There it was! She heard once again its distant dream voices, only much louder this time, almost as if they were in the next room.
Or in this case, the next tent. In a way she could not explain, this Stone now sounded very much like the voices of the praying Owlings.
So she did not notice at first when one of the men stopped in mid-sentence, snapped open his wide eyes, and looked directly at Oriannon as if she had interrupted him.
Surely he had not heard the Stone as well?
24
What had she done?
Oriannon wondered how the man had known she was even in the tent, the way he stopped in the middle of his prayer.
“It’s okay, Siric,” Moya’s mother told him in a soft voice, barely audible above the continuing prayer. “Jesmet must have brought her.”
Which Oriannon thought was an odd thing to say, since Jesmet was nowhere near, but it seemed to satisfy the man as he returned to his prayer. A few others joined him, and the soulful words gradually joined as they flew higher and higher, circling until they soared gently into a melody of their own. They needed no musical instruments, no priest in violet robes, and no orchestra leader, but Jesmet might well have been there, leading and directing these musicians from a single sheet of music.
Oriannon listened to the symphony of prayers, though she could not say where the prayers left off and the song began, or if there really was any difference between the two. Perhaps not. But now the music opened its gates so that others in the tent could join in. They did, softly at first, to a tune Oriannon knew in her heart but not by memory.
Oriannon wished she could join in as fully as the others, but knew that she must keep her place at the edge of the group. So she just hummed along quietly, choking back unexpected tears until the music finally came to quiet rest, like a tiny viria songbird alighting on a branch that would not bend beneath its weight. No one announced an end; they just all seemed to know the prayer flight had folded its wings once more. The Owlings lifted their heads to open their eyes, one by one, with a sort of peaceful contentment in their faces that made Oriannon wish she was one of them. Never mind that their homes had been destroyed and they had been dragged away to a prison camp to serve as slaves. She wanted to be able to pray like that.
Once again she felt very much the outsider looking in, and she hoped they might overlook her intrusion. What am I doing here anyway? Without thinking she scrambled to her feet and looked for the way out. Meanwhile, Moya’s mother stepped over to greet her.
“We’re glad you came,” she told Oriannon, her arm around her daughter. Oriannon knew she had seen the woman before, on the street in the Owling city. “You’re always welcome here.”
“I’m seeing Moya brought another one.” The man who had looked up from his prayer chuckled as he joined them. “That’s three more, just in the past two days.”
Moya smiled up at them with a slightly puzzled expression.
“Isn’t that what Jesmet tells us to be doing?”
“It is, Moya.” He patted her head with a smile, and introduced himself as Siric Mil, originally from one of the valley Owling villages but more recently of Lior. Most of the other Owlings at this gathering, he said, came from valley villages, though a few had lived in the cliff city. He waited expectantly for her to respond, and she knew then that she could hide no longer. If the probes found her, they found her.
So Oriannon finally introduced herself as she slowly peeled away her hood. Though she left off her full family name, she heard a small gasp from several of the others.
“Oh my!” Moya’s mother brought her hands to her face in surprise. “You’re the daughter of the Assembly elder — the one who came to Lior! I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you at first.”
“No, don’t apologize.” Oriannon didn’t want to make her feel awkward, but the woman went on.
“It’s just that all Coristans seem to be looking, well, they’re all looking pretty much alike to us. I’m sorry.”
If she hadn’t been so serious, Oriannon would have laughed, since she might have once said the same thing about the Owlings. By this time Moya was tugging at Oriannon’s robe.
