Oculum Read online

  William2 is frozen to the spot, but I rush and open the door. Jake47 stands on the doorstep, and when he sees me, he leaps forward and holds me tight. He looks up at me and whispers, “I knew you would not abandon us.” There’s a noise outside, and more children gather on the sidewalk, standing close to Cranker and Mann. The dogs patiently allow many small hands to stroke them. Ariel appears to be enjoying the attention, while Caliban is merely resigned.

  I take Jake47 by the hand, and William2 follows us out onto his front porch. There are many children gathered now, and when they see me, they cheer. I raise my staff.

  “Children of Oculum! It’s me, Miranda1! We must hurry and leave Oculum. Gather your belongings! Quickly!” A dozen young voices call to me, and hands grab at mine. I must look very strange with my tall staff, standing in Grannie’s boots, with two satchels across my chest and wearing William1’s clothes. Not to mention the two strange boys I have with me and the dogs. I must seem like a wayfarer from afar, which is exactly what I am.

  More doors open, and suddenly children run toward us from every direction.

  “Gather your belongings! Hurry! Meet on the common!” I call again and again. Soon, Mann, Cranker, the dogs, William2, and I lead a growing group of children to every door of Oculum. Children scamper up every step, every front door bangs open, every face sees us and joins the throng. Children rush out of their homes, and every child carries a bulging satchel of clothes and food.

  I rush to my old home. I yank open the purple door with “M1” on it and step back into my old life. Cranker and Mann and the dogs run inside with me, and they’re amazed.

  “This all yours? Just for you?” Mann asks, stilled.

  “Yes, everyone in Oculum has a house,” I say, running to gather supplies. I saw his home in the courtyard with Grannie. I know where he comes from and where we’re all headed. Outside is not like Oculum, but it is the truth, and none of us can stay here.

  I run to my bedroom and grab shoes, a frock, another cloak, and put these in my empty satchels. I hastily take all the food I can find from the pantry, more peaches, more apples, more dried fruit and sealed jugs of water, then we all hurry back out to the enormous crowd filling the street.

  I call out: “Children of Oculum! Our world is not what we think. There is Outside, and sunshine, and starlight, and we must go there! There are good people like these two boys with me. There are strange, wonderful creatures like these dogs. Go now, knock on every door! But hurry, we do not have much time. The Mothers and the Sentries could wake at any moment!”

  The children run to their homes, and Oculum is alive again with children’s calls and slamming doors and breathless exchanges.

  I am about to hurry the crowd toward the Senate when Mann grabs my arm. He looks up.

  “We got a problem,” he says quietly. Cranker and I follow his eyes, and there, across the top of Oculum, runs a deep, heavy crack. It spreads upward from William1’s broken door and across the peak of our world. The crack stops for a moment. Then starts. Then stops again.

  BOOM!

  The shock of the noise stops everyone, and every eye looks up. A small piece of glass falls from above the door into the Seed Park, and the youngest children scream. Suddenly, terrified, screaming children come from every direction at a run. William2 runs up with a group of Williams, Mirandas, Henrys, and Samanthas, the twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys and girls, the oldest in Oculum.

  “What can we do?” William2 yells over the noise of the children.

  I think quickly. “Gather the youngest children in your arms, each of you! We must all go to the Senate …”

  BOOM!

  Another piece of the wall falls, far off, and children scream. Mann says, “The whole thing is coming down!”

  Then Cranker adds, “That’s not the end of it.” He points toward the Senate.

  I turn to look and gasp. The Mothers and Sentries have all fallen still.

  Each metallic face has turned to face us.

  The nearest Mother sees me, and all the children gathered around me, with more running my way. The Mother and I stare at each other for a moment, then William1’s note and the words from the poem on his map click in my head: The Mothers shall rise, at the call.

  If ever we needed our Mother’s to rise, it’s now.

  “MOTHERS! IT’S MIRANDA1! HELP US! PROTECT US!” I shout with everything I have. The nearest Mother doesn’t hesitate. With a shriek, the Mother drives her metallic hand deep into the chest of the Sentry before her. With a vicious yank, she rips out its heart.

  The Sentry slumps forward, dead. The other Mothers watch for a moment, then with a horrifying shriek, all the Mothers fall upon the Sentries.

  “RUN!” I shout, and frightened children race toward me in waves.

  BOOM!

  Another small piece of the wall falls at the edge of Oculum. Cranker, Mann, and the dogs run across the square, dodging Mothers and Sentries, and the rest of us stream behind them. Metallic arms whip past us, crash into metallic chests, wrench out metallic hearts. The sound of shrieking metal and screaming Mothers deafens the wails of the children. I see a Mother fall, her heart crushed in the hands of the Sentry that has just killed her. The Sentry turns toward us, but another Mother falls upon it and tears out its heart. And again and again, all around us, the Mothers and Sentries rip and tear, pull and crush, scream and whir.

  We must make it to the Senate!

  The Williams and Mirandas rush past me, each carry-ing small Andrews and Annas. The Henrys and Saman-thas all run with a young child by the hand or carry them. The rest of the children come too, their satchels bulging with food and water.

  “INTO THE SENATE!” I yell. The children of Oculum follow behind me, Cranker and Mann and the dogs at our head, and we all rush into the Atrium, past more battling Mothers and Sentries. Mechanical arms flail viciously as we duck and dodge at a run. There is one last thing we must do before we leave our crumbling world.

  BOOM! BOOM!

  “Follow me!” I shout. We run toward the Seed Vault, and the children, all of us suddenly know what must be done. With a shock of recognition, I see that it has been my destiny all my life to lead the children of Oculum and our precious cargo in this moment.

  The world Outside has been waiting for us, all along.

  William1

  Grannie says we’ll go to her brother’s house, get men and women to help, and find a way back into Oculum. So that is what we will do. I look behind us constantly for any sign of Cranker, Mann, and Miranda1, but all is quiet. More carts go past us. There are adults, grown people, even old people, animals, and huge machines, and much more here. It’s not like Oculum. There’s the sky above, and the earth beneath, and all these people on the road and living in the ruined city are free to move and go as they please.

  It is not as beautiful as Oculum, perhaps, but it is the real world. I know that now.

  We travel the road in the cart pulled by the horses. I talk to the three children in the cart behind me, and they are polite but they all seem in awe of me.

  Grannie is growing more curious about my domed world, too, although the questions are few and far be-tween, and are most often about the youngest children and who takes care of them.

  “You got Mothers in there?” she asks, surprised, when I tell her. I nod. I hold the book the thieves ruined, For the Children of Oculum, on my lap.

  “Yes, but they’re not like you or me. They’re machines, I know that now. But clever machines. The book explained it all. They were made by the people who left us there long ago. You call them Olden Begones. A Mother’s job is to raise her child, but she must also protect her child from the Sentries when the first of us talks of love. Or when the first of us escapes Oculum through a hidden door.” Grannie looks over at me, the reins loose in her hand as the cart rattles along.

  “That be you, then? Yo
u the first out the door?”

  “Yes, and then Miranda1, but I can’t imagine how she did it.” I really can’t. The door must have been guarded by the Sentries after I walked through it. How did she manage to get near it?

  “The book says that once a child of Oculum talks of love, then the Mothers must prepare for us to leave. Both of these things seem to be inevitable, love and leaving, at least to the writers of the book.”

  “Well, love and leaving is part of growing up,” Grannie says.

  I nod. “Yes, Grannie, but none of us has grown up, at least not until now.” I think about that for a moment. Miranda1 and I have the job of being the oldest, being the first in everything.

  “But the book says something else. When the first child leaves, the Sentries will try to stop everyone else from leaving, since their only purpose is to keep Oculum safe. And to a Sentry, keeping Oculum safe means keeping everyone inside the dome. No one can leave.”

  Grannie strokes her chin, thinking. “Seems like contraries. The Mothers raise healthy children to leave Oculum, as is only natural, but these Sentries protect Oculum by keeping all the children safe inside? Seems like a good reason for a fight.”

  I raise my eyebrows. She’s wise, Grannie. And she’s right. The Mothers and the Sentries are opposites: Mothers protect the children, and Sentries protect Ocu-lum. But the children grow up, and change must come. The book didn’t mention a fight between Mothers and Sentries, but for the thousandth time, I worry about what’s happening back in my domed world. It’s more important than ever for me to find Miranda1 and then for us to get back there.

  Grannie has given me a sheet of paper, which is rare, she tells me. I thank her, and I use my ink pot and feather quill to write down what I can remember from the ruined book. It had only a dozen pages in a beautiful hand before the thieves ruined it, so it’s not that hard. I’ve written down what I can remember about a Mother’s purpose and a Sentry’s purpose. I have copied the poem about the door. The last three lines run in my head …

  Be the brave ones, Then pass beyond it, The Mothers shall rise, at the call.

  I write as the cart rolls along, hour after hour, and we stop for midday meal. I hand Grannie my last peach, and she finally takes it from me, and smells it, and then puts it in her apron pocket.

  “It’s too precious,” she says, but she smiles. Today, though, I think she will taste it.

  The sun beats down. Lisle sleeps, the little boys sleep, and I keep writing upon my paper. Then … I lift my head.

  There is a sound like a wave coming toward us.

  “What’s that?” I say, peering down the road. We’re near the top of a hill. Grannie stops the cart and listens. The noise gets louder; it’s almost a roar. It’s louder again, coming our way. I strain my ears, and it’s the sound of feet. And talking. A lot of people, talking.

  Our cart is almost at the top of a hill, but we can’t see what’s beyond the rise.

  Grannie stands up in the front of the cart and shields her eyes from the sun. She looks surprised, then worried.

  “What the heck? William, you’re taller. Stand up, have a look.” I lean one hand on Grannie’s shoulder and shakily stand in the front the cart. I can just see over the lip of the hill.

  A black dog and a huge gray dog run over the hill and see us, then stop.

  “They were with Cranker and Mann!” I shout.

  Then I see them. My heart almost leaps out of my chest. Over the hill behind the dogs, flows a river of children of all colors. There are one thousand children, rippling down the road, behind two boys and a girl leading them. I strain and see them clearly. It’s Mann and Cranker at their head!

  And Miranda1 with a staff, holding a child’s hand!

  Grannie tries to stop me, but I grab my crutch and leap from the cart. I limp as fast as I can toward the mighty girl who has somehow led the children of Oculum to their freedom, and her dearest of hearts back to me.

  Mannfred

  William1 comes at a run, pretty fast too for a boy with a limp.

  He seems to have forgot about his ankle. He waves, and Miranda1 sees him then drops hands with a child and tears off. The two catch each other in the road, and there’s a lot of hugging, and laughing, and then more hugging again.

  Cranker and me walk up to Grannie, and we say hello. But she’s only got eyes for one thing: the river of children we brought her. Children, Littluns of every size and age imaginable, just keep coming over that hill. They all got leather bags, and some of the older ones carry small green trees in their arms or sticking out of their satchels. Some of the bigger boys and girls have the littlest children on their shoulders. I carried a fair share of Littluns myself today.

  Grannie just stares. Then she gets down out of the cart and comes over to Miranda1. “What you done here, girl?”

  “I have brought the children of Oculum, Grannie,” she says simply.

  “But Miranda, how?” William1 asks.

  “Oh, it’s too much to tell,” she says wearily. “I climbed the Arm and then wandered in the rubble looking for you, then Mann and Cranker found me,” she says. William looks at her, astonished.

  “You climbed the Arm?” He shakes his head. “But how did you get back in to get the children? Then how did you get past the Sentries to get out?”

  I can see Miranda is too tired to answer him, so I pipe up. “Cranker and me busted the door open with a rock and a piece of metal a few days ago, although we didn’t know it ’til we went back. Made a mess of the dome, too, it’s falling to pieces.”

  I see a light turn on in William’s head. “You! You lost the Map of Oculum!” he whispers, and Miranda1 nods. Cranker reaches into his bag and pulls out the map, a little crumpled but still in one piece. William takes it but barely looks at it.

  “How did you all escape? The Sentries were designed to keep you there.”

  “We almost didn’t get past them,” I say. “We had to run, the Mothers took care of the Sentries.”

  William just looks at him. “A battle then?” he says, and Cranker and me nod.

  “Who won?” William1 asks, and we both shrug. “It was still happening when we left through the busted door,” I say. “We made it, though,” Cranker adds, “so I’d say the Mothers done their best.” It must seem unreal to William1. It’s still impossible to me, those Mothers chasing the Sentries and ripping out all those hearts. They were still at it by the time we gathered all the seeds and trees, then ran to the door and back out into the sunlight.

  “’Course your mothers fought for you. That’s no surprise,” Grannie says. She looks like someone who discovered a fountain of sweet water. She walks among the children, placing her hands on their heads, saying hello, cuddling the littlest and asking their names, tell-ing them hers. She’s already got a wave of the smallest ones around her, following her close like they don’t want to take their eyes off her.

  Miranda1 speaks to Grannie. “We need shelter, homes, someone to guide us. This is a strange world, nothing like the one we’ve known before.” And she and Grannie walk among the children and get to talking. The older children hold the little ones on their back or in their arms, but we’re all exhausted. I want to sit down.

  I’m still shy with all the children from Oculum, even though I helped rescue them, and I been walking among them for hours. The boys are pleasant, the girls too, but there’s a lot of them now in the road, all staring at the horses. They never seen horses, and they ask to touch them. Nancy and Nellie aren’t so sure about all these children, though, so I tell them to come one at a time and let them feel a horse’s soft nose for the first time.

  Soon the Williams and the Mirandas organize all the children to sit in the grass beside the road and eat.

  Every single child brings out a piece of fruit. Peaches, apples, and pears. Dried cherries. It’s like some kind of dream I always had, watching an
army of children eating fruit in the field on a beautiful spring day. Our three Littluns stare from the cart like they been struck dumb, so I ask a child if I can have three dried cherries, and I take them to the cart. The Littluns get big eyes, and quiet, when they pop the fruit in their mouths.

  “Keep the seeds!” Miranda1 tells everyone. “We’ll need them when we reach our new home. Put them beside your seed packets,” she says, holding up a small sack.

  “Seed packets?” William1 asks.

  “Yes, from the Seed Vault in the Senate, we each took a packet of seeds from every drawer, all one thousand of them,” she says, then yawns.

  And I laugh. I just start to laugh, and Cranker asks what’s wrong, and I split my sides. I sweep an arm out over the field of children, and their fruit and seeds and tree cuttings, and I feel like I could bust.

  What can I say? Cranker, there’s a whole field of new Littluns, a whole field of lost seeds. And it’s our luck to make friends with them, take care of them, and grow all the food and peach trees we could ever want. I also happen to know that two of the older children carry a sturdy new kind of bees meant for this world, a hive each in a soft sack, all ready to swarm and live.

  It seems impossible.

  After we all eat, Grannie steps into the cart, and William1 and Miranda1 join her. Then she sets the horses off down the road, and all of us walk slow behind her. We’re going to her brother’s house, to his houses and lands, and he’s going to be mighty surprised when we get there.

  After a while, a man on a horse comes by and looks amazed at all the children, then he talks to Grannie for a bit, tips his hat, and rides off hasty. A little while later, another man and a woman ride up, and talk to Grannie, then they ride away fast. Sometime later another man rides up and tells Grannie something and rides away. Grannie calls me over.

  “We’re the talk of the City,” she grins.

  “’Course we are, Grannie. Have you noticed all the children walking behind the cart? Have you forgot that they got peaches, and pears, and apples? And their pockets and satchels are full of seeds and cutting from fruit trees, all of them? Not to mention two hives of bees?”