But he let it pass, his mind on something else. “Why did you tell that story last night?”
“About the boy and the evil King?”
“About the boy leading the children to the Promised Land. What were you doing?”
“Reminding them of your vision. Candle knew that right away. She told me so afterward. Maybe some of the others knew it, too. What difference does it make?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the way you told it.
You changed things. You made things up. It felt like you were stealing.”
She stared at him, genuinely surprised. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have told it the way I did. But it needs to be told, Hawk, and last night telling it just felt right. I wanted to reassure everyone that we have a goal in our lives and the goal is to find a better, safer place to live. That is your vision, isn’t it? To take us to a better place?”
“You know it is. I’ve said so often enough. I’ve dreamed it.”
She reached out and placed her hand over his. “Your dream is an old one, Hawk. Guiding others to safety, finding the Promised Land. As old as time, I imagine. It has been dreamed and told hundreds of times over the years in one form or another. I don’t pretend to know all the particulars of your vision.
You haven’t shared them with anyone, have you? Not even Tessa. So how can I steal them from you? Besides, I would never do such a thing.”
“I know.” He flushed, embarrassed by his accusation. “But hearing that story made me uneasy. Maybe its because I don’t know enough about what’s supposed to happen. I don’t know how we’ll know when it’s time to leave. I don’t know how we’ll know where we’re supposed to go. I keep waiting to find out, waiting for someone to tell me. But my dreams don’t. They only tell me that it will happen.”
“If your dreams tell you that much, then you have to believe that they will eventually tell you the rest.” She patted his hand. “I won’t tell the story again. Not until you tell me to. Not until you know something more yourself.”
He nodded, realizing he was being petty, but at the same time feeling a need to be protective, too. The dream was all he had. It was the bedrock of his leadership, the reason he was able to hold the Ghosts together.
Without the dream, he was just another street kid, orphaned and abandoned, living out his life in a post apocalyptic world where everything had gone mad.
Without the dream, he had nothing to give to those who relied on him.
“You’ll dream the rest one day soon,” Owl reassured him, as if reading his mind. “You will, Hawk.”
“I know that,” he replied quickly.
But, in truth, he didn’t.
*
IT IS TESSA who brings Owl to him when he is still new to the city and living alone in the underground. He is just fourteen years old, and Owl, who is called Margaret then, is an infinitely older and more mature eighteen.
Hawk has gone to meet Tessa for one of their nighttime assignations, and she surprises him by bringing along a small, plain, quiet girl in a wheelchair.
They are standing in the lee of the last wall of an otherwise collapsed building, not a hundred yards from Safeco, when Tessa tells him what the older girl is doing there.
“Margaret can’t live in the compound any longer,” she says. “She needs a different home.”
Hawk looks at the girl, at the chair, and at the outline of her withered legs beneath a blanket. “It’s safer in the compounds,” he says.
Margaret meets his gaze and holds it. “I’m dying in there.”
“You’re sick?”
“Sick at heart. I need air and space and freedom.”
He understands her right away, but cannot believe she will be better off with him. “What about your parents?”
“Dead nine years. I have no family. Tessa is my only real friend.”
She keeps looking at him. “I can take care of myself. I can help take care of you, too. I know a lot about sickness and medicines. I can teach you.”
“She is the one you are looking for,” Tessa says suddenly.
She cannot walk, Hawk almost says, but keeps the words from slipping out, realizing just in time what son of judgment he will be passing.
“Tell her what it is you want to do,” Tessa presses. “Let her tell you what she thinks.”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“If you don’t, I will.”
Hawk flushes at the rebuke. “All right.” He speaks without looking at Margaret. “I want to start a family. I don’t have a family, and I want one.”
“Tell her the rest.”
She wants him to speak of his dream. She is determined about this, he sees. She is like that, Tessa.
His gaze shifts back to the older girl. “I want to gather together kids like myself, and then I want to take them away from here to a place where they will be safe.” He feels like a small boy as he speaks. The words sound foolish.