Oculum Page 6

  I stand clear of the horses — I don’t need a kicking — and bang on the pot hard as I can with the soup ladle.

  CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

  The men whirl around, and I duck down behind Nellie. Grannie wakes, the Littluns set up a howl and a scream, Cranker wakes up with a swear, then bangs his head on the bottom of the cart with another swear.

  The men drop the mules and run off, and I go soothe the animals and tie them up again.

  The other family wakes up too, and a face pops over the side of their cart and smiles at me. It’s a girl. She snaps up her overalls and joins me to say hello. Her pa and ma wake up and thank me, and Grannie comes over and we all shake hands.

  The truth is I never seen a girl my own age before. All we ever had in our tiny village of ten houses is boys, and plenty of them. The pa thanks me for saving the mules, and I’m all of a sudden blushing and shy. I must have shown it, because when we leave the place an hour later, Cranker won’t stop teasing me about the girl.

  “Manny Mann got a girlfriend!” he says, all gleeful and making smooch noises. I take a few swipes at him, but he dances away and goes on teasing until he gets bored and drops it.

  We walk beside the cart now, following the old road through the edge of the City toward the center. It’s a long way to where Grannie’s brother lives. We got to walk three or four days clear to the other side to get there. Grannie drives the cart slow, and Cranker and me keep the Littluns from wandering off, walking them along like a herd of ornery goats. They got so much energy, we have to run them for a least some of the day or they’ll gnaw off their own feet with boredom.

  The buildings around us now are houses, and some bigger ones that Grannie calls “apartments.” People lived together in them in the Olden Begones, but most of them are falling apart slow, tumbling into themselves, or slanting over and crumbling into the street. Some lean on the buildings next to them. Grannie tells us that glass and brick get swept out of the way when a building falls to keep the road open to carts and foot traffic, but most of the buildings aren’t safe to live in now or for as long as anyone can remember.

  There are a few people on the road, families in carts like ours, with mules, or horses, or even great, slow, lumbering oxen. Or most often just a man on a horse, or a woman with a small, fast cart. Some carts go the same way as us, into the City, and some go the other way, back out to wherever they’re from. Trade goes on here in places called “markets,” Grannie says, where people trade farm animals and grain and get what the Shiny Man brings us, like knives, and pots and such. My head spins from side to side, there’s so much to see. I likely seen fifty new people today, more than my whole life.

  There are old piles of junk all along the road, too, big pieces and small. Some of it I understand, most of it I don’t. There are busted wagons like the Shiny Man’s everywhere, but the rubber wheels are gone, and other machines that we can’t imagine what they might be. Huge machines with diggers at the front, or at the back, or with strange round rollers on them, or other things that make no sense, like wagons but giant, with seats for many people. Some of them been busted up and used for shiny, others are just faded and warped, on the side of the road. As we walk along, and the sun rises and the day starts, the wagons and the huge machines rot beside the roads below the tumble-down houses, as far as I can see.

  And there’s more leftovers from the Olden Begones.

  Along the roadside there are careful stacks of strange boxes, what Grannie says is garbage, but not like any I ever seen in our midden back home. This is special gar-bage, collected here for people to scour. It’s boxes in all sizes, in huge numbers. Some of the boxes are flat and open in the middle on a smart hinge. Cranker brought me one, and when I opened it, there was a bunch of letters and numbers about the size of the end of my finger on the bottom part. I picked out an “A” and “S” and “D” on the left side in the middle, and a “Q” and “W” and “E” and “R” and “T” on the left and top. There were strange words, too: “Enter,” and “Insert,” and “Delete,” which made sense, and “PgUp,” “PrtSc,” and “Num Lock,” that didn’t.

  The rest of the letters were busted or missing.

  “What’s ‘qwert?’” I say. I know the letters, but there’s no sense to them. We can’t figure it out. They aren’t boxes for carrying. They aren’t useful for anything that we can see, but in some places they’re piled up against the buildings like water. They meant something important to the Olden Begones.

  Cranker and me pick these flat boxes up and open them, here and there in the careful stacks all along the road, until we get bored since we can see no point to them. Once in a while a person stands in the garbage, stripping out wires or copper from the bigger boxes, so maybe there’s some use to them. Some people even sit and wait beside the road to trade a length of wire they stripped for an egg or a few carrots, to save us the trouble. If a body needed wire to tie up old scissors, or copper for pots or some other shiny, they’d find it in these endless garbage stacks.

  There are smaller, flat boxes that fit in a hand, too. They’re made of shiny, or what must have been glass once upon a time, or something else that’s not quite either. Grannie pays no attention when I hold one up to her in the cart. She stares straight ahead and says it’s nothing useful. Just more Olden Begones junk.

  But I can’t help thinking she knows more than she’s saying, so I ask her again and she spies me with her dark blue eye and says, “It’s an old way of sending messages, Mann. A useless magic from the Olden Begones.”

  They were interested in this magic, I think, it’s everywhere. But it didn’t save them from the Black Rain, the fevers, or the end of fruit trees.

  I find one of the small boxes, not all busted up, that fits perfect in my hand. I heft it, like a stone. It has a flat, smooth side and a glass eye on the other, and a shape I see on lots of the boxes: a kind of circle with a piece missing. I show the small box to Grannie and ask her what the shape is.

  She tries to ignore me but answers after she sees I won’t quit. “It’s the shape of an apple, Mann, with a bite out of it.” I think about this, curious. The Olden Begones people must have thought apples were important, since the shape is everywhere on their garbage. But why didn’t they do more to save them? There’s no answer to this, just another Olden Begones mystery.

  We walk farther than I ever walked. Even the Littluns get tired and whiny, and me and Cranker give shoulder rides to the littlest ones or lift them into the cart to rest. We stop for lunch at the side of the road, then we keep walking. The Littluns rest in the cart, and Cranker and me walk beside it. The sun is pale overhead. There’s not much warmth in it, since it’s still early in the year, but it’s good on our faces.

  At the end of the day, before the sun goes down and the warmth leaves the City, Grannie pulls the horses into another courtyard, and she sets about dinner while me and Cranker play with the Littluns. There’s more carts parked here, another family, and soon our Littluns and the others that are gathered get to playing. Our Littluns are no better or no worse behaved than the others; in fact, they get along with the newcomers. They set to playing rounders, and there’s no shouting or pushing at all. I wonder what has come over them? They do seem a little wondering at the new faces, the other Littluns. Maybe the strangeness is making them polite. For now.

  The buildings are bigger here, and Grannie says it’s since we’re close to the center of the City now. The people in the Olden Begones wanted to live near the center, she says, so the buildings got bigger the closer you got. Some of the buildings aren’t for living, too. They’re just for doing the work of the Olden Begones, whatever that might have been. Those are the tallest. I’m used to them now, so they’re not so terrifying to me.

  Cranker and me ask if we can explore, and Grannie says yes, don’t go far, be back before dark, don’t climb high. We set out and walk and walk through the broken down streets and over
piles of rubble and tumble-down houses.

  After a while, Cranker finds a wide-open doorway and stairs that go down and down into a space that runs off into the dark. There’s a sign in the wall at the bottom of the stairs. It’s busted up but not too busted to read: Subway. We can’t see what this deep, empty space is for, but we look far into the dark. There are shiny bars, at least in some places where they’re not tore out, that run along each other into the darkness. It’s just more Olden Begones magic as far as I can see, but Cranker thinks it must have been for travel. We seen metal bars like this running along the countryside above ground, where people haven’t lifted it. The story goes that in the Olden Begones, huge carts ran upon the metal bars, fast and all across the country.

  I guess it could be, but down here in this place, did the horses pull the carts in the dark?

  We heave a few rocks into the darkness and listen to the sound that comes back to us. “It’s a deep cave,” I say to Cranker. It makes me nervous.

  “Naw, it’s long and narrow, not a cave,” he answers. “More like a FatRat tunnel. Let’s see where it goes.” We’re about to set out, when a noise comes out of the darkness, a moaning shriek and a snarl. We look at each other then whip back up the stairs to the last rays of the sun.

  “Could be a FatRat,” Cranker says, but I just grunt. I don’t want Cranker to hear my shaky voice. Not a FatRat, a dying man, more like, I think.

  We walk past more busted houses until we see another open doorway in a big marble building still standing. The door is long gone, and we wander up the stairs in a stone hall, up and up and up. When we can’t go higher, we step out onto the long, flat roof.

  I never been so high in my life, and I can see far as an eagle. I see all the buildings near and far, to the horizon. The City goes on, and on and on, to the setting sun. Cranker and me stand there, amazed.

  And there’s something else we can see. In the center of the City, a few days’ walk, there’s a huge glass dome that rises out of the rubble like a giant, icy mountain. It soars into the sky and reflects the sunset beating on it. Cranker and me watch, too awed to talk. We just watch, and then we see something I’ll remember the rest of my days.

  The very top of the glass dome starts to move, slow, around and around in a big circle. Even this far, I can hear a gentle hum. The sun sets behind the huge dome, but we can see the top turn, turn, and ever so slow, it rises into the sky.

  We watch for a long time. If the Olden Begones had black boxes and magic, then this glass dome with the rising center must be part of it. It couldn’t be anything but magic that made it so beautiful and mysterious.

  The sun sets behind the dome with the rising top, and the City falls dark.

  “We better get back,” Cranker says, and he’s right, because Grannie told us not to climb the buildings. I don’t need a tongue-lashing from Grannie. It would be the first one in years. We walk back to Grannie and the Littluns, all silent. I think we’re both too awed to speak.

  I keep seeing a black shadow out of the corner of my eye, and I know the one-eyed dog is stalking me, keeping me in sight. I’m getting used to him, my lurking shadow.

  Cranker shoots a few FatRats on the way back, so Grannie’s not too mad with us. She spits them and roasts them for meat along with the soup. I sit and eat, quiet as anything.

  I can’t get the image of that dome shining in the sun-set out of my mind. While me and Cranker watched, the very top unscrewed and lifted into the sky like a giant eye.

  Why was the top open? Who opened it?

  Or was it just more ancient magic from the Olden Begones that wouldn’t quit?

  Me and Cranker agreed: somehow we’ll get a closer look at that dome.

  Miranda1

  The Sentries brought me home, and one is waiting by our front door. Mother let me in with a worried look, but she didn’t ask any questions. She tucked me in with her usual, “Goodnight, Miranda my darling,” then rolled back to her closet. I almost missed her squeaky wheels, but she left silently now that the Toolman has fixed her.

  I spend a long, sleepless night in my bed. I can see the Arm from my window, and I can see that Regulus has set it in motion. It rises into the darkness, and the fresh air flows in. The Arm turns slowly and makes a low, deep churning sound.

  It has always calmed me to hear the Arm working to open the world to the sky.

  But tonight I am nothing but nerves. My William, my best friend and lifelong confidante, is Outside. He is gone! I know now that Fandoms are real and are nothing more than people pushing against the wall of Oculum. Which means that there are people Outside.

  Outside is real.

  I lie in my bed, watching Oculum open to the night, and tears soak my cheeks.

  Why has Regulus lied to us? Why has Mother lied? Why has no one told us that Outside is real, and that Fandoms are real people there? Miserable, I wonder over and over: where is William1 now, and how will I ever find him again? I’m the only person in Oculum with these thoughts, and I have never felt so alone.

  At first light, I wake and dress. At exactly seven o’clock, Mother wheels in to find me fully dressed and seated on my bed. She hands me a note and clucks and whirrs. I don’t need to read it. I know what it is, but I open it anyway.

  A summons. It is from Regulus: “Miranda1 will appear at Oculum Senate before Regulus at nine o’clock. She will come accompanied by the Mother of Miranda1.”

  I show the note to Mother and head downstairs. There is a new, fragrant bowl of last year’s apples and dried cherries beside the front door, but I cannot bring myself to eat anything. I stand on the front step and look at the open sky beyond the Arm, which is now fully extended. Oculum is open. Fresh air fills my lungs, and the sky above is golden and bright, the sun high and clear. There are clouds, a gentle breeze.

  And all of it is Outside.

  Children walk past me toward Teaching Hall or to the Medicus, the common, or the Seed Park, wherever it is that their schedule sends them. It is a market day, so the youngest Annas and Andrews walk with their Mothers laden with baskets for fruit, vegetables, herbs, or to find new shoes and clothes, haircuts, whatever their charges might need. When Oculum is newly opened, we are all freed, happy, excited to breathe the fresh air and see the sky, and the children walk past me with a spring in their step. The opening of Oculum raises everyone’s spirits.

  All but mine.

  There is a Sentry at the foot of my stairs, and the children and Mothers sneak quick looks at me as I stand in my black cloak behind it. Some of the younger children even stop and openly stare until their nervous Mothers hurry them along. I don’t care what I look like. I know a truth that none of them know.

  William1 is gone.

  At 8:45, Mother joins me on the step. She’s wear-ing her best cloak, and her purple armband with “M1” embroidered in silver stands out brightly. She takes my arm and bravely leads me down the ramp and to the street. All the children and Mothers we meet give us a quick nod or avoid us. I can only assume it is because of the Sentry that rolls along behind us.

  We walk with our heads up toward the Senate. I know Mother must have heard whisperings from other Mothers; although I’m not sure exactly how they do it, I know they have a secret communication about their charges. She must have heard that I am in some sort of trouble, reinforced by the appearance of the Sentry and the fact that today is not a day I am normally scheduled to see Regulus.

  I am glad she is with me, Mother. Mine. The only thing I have.

  I wheel her up the ramp to the big Senate doors, which swing wide as we enter, and slide silently closed behind us. Mother and I take the route across the quiet marble floor of the Atrium and enter the Senate. The giant Arm is fully extended, and from here the sight of the open sky far above our heads is awe-inspiring. A patch of sunlight falls across the Atrium from above.

  Regulus sits on his chair and
summons us forward. A Mother waits at his feet, and as we join her, I see it is Mother of William1.

  I must remain calm.

  Her metallic arms are in chains. I have never seen a Mother in chains before. She says hello to us quickly and turns away. If it is possible for a Mother to look unwell, she has managed to do so.

  Regulus sits on his chair above us and looks down at me. “Miranda1. So nice of you to come.”

  “You are welcome, Regulus. Thank you for inviting me.” I try not to look away from his mesmerizing stare.

  “You have a busy day ahead of you,” he says. My normal schedule today would have William1 and I work-ing in the school with the Simons and Isas, the nine-year-olds, this morning, and then helping the Medicus team by learning how to set bones on a wooden human figure this afternoon. They want us all to know how to tend to cuts and scrapes and broken bones. After that, I am scheduled to spend time in the Seed Park, pruning and tending the flowering trees.

  William1 should be with me. I swallow quietly and try to remember to breathe.

  “I’m always busy, Regulus, you know that,” I say. What is he playing at?

  “Yes, you and William1 are always busy, aren’t you?”

  I stare at him. “Since you set the schedules for us, Regulus, yes, you know that we are. We are always busy.” I have my chin set in the air, and I refuse to look away from him. I cannot imagine what is coming next. I simply refuse to raise the issue of what happened last night. I can only assume that since he knows everything, he must know that William1 walked through the door and is miss-ing. Since Mother of William1 is in chains at my side, I think he must know.

  But I will not be the one to raise it.

  The Senate door opens behind us, and we all turn to look.

  A boy walks into the room, accompanied by a Mother. It is William2. He’s second-oldest boy after William1, and a friend to us both. He’s pleasant, taller and slimmer than William1, with dark, curly hair and a quick smile. He enters the room, and Regulus summons him to join us.