On our left is the forest that lines the room. On the other side of the reeds is more grass, then the same thick line of trees.
If I was to walk from one side of this room to the other, I suppose that would take about two hundred steps. That’s how wide it is. I can’t say how long it is, because past the grass beyond the pond’s end, the forest comes in from both sides, meeting in the middle. The trees are thick and tall; I can’t see through them. It looks like the arched ceiling goes on for a long way past the tree line, though. This room might be five hundred steps long, it might be a thousand, it might go on forever.
I see Visca, Farrar and Bishop standing in the grass, facing the tree line. They are the “perimeter” O’Malley was talking about. I’m close enough to them that I can see the scratches on Bishop’s back. They are still red and angry, but the bleeding has stopped. Smith seems to know what she’s doing when it comes to wounds.
The three boys stand in the light, as if they are a wall that will stop the forest from belching out some new evil to attack us. Even though the ceiling above is blindingly bright, the forest’s deep shadows could hide an endless number of threats.
“Bello, has anyone seen any pigs?”
“A few,” she says. She points into the woods beyond Bishop, Farrar and Visca. “In there. But they haven’t come out. There must be too many of us.”
Too many, and we’re not so wounded we can’t defend ourselves.
We won’t stay in the Garden for long, I know that, but maybe long enough to organize hunting parties. We could go into the woods, chase the pigs down. I don’t know how many there are. There could be hundreds. But if we butcher every last pig, then I’ll know for sure we got the ones that ate Latu.
Kill them all…wipe them out.
The thought fills me with a strange kind of joy.
“Em? Are you okay?”
Bello sounds concerned. I didn’t realize that I’d stopped walking. I was staring into the woods. Staring, and thinking of a line of dead pigs, gutted and strung out across the grass. That thought made me happy.
“I’m fine,” I say, but I know thoughts like those—and the fact that I reveled in Aramovsky’s fear—mean I am not fine at all.
“Well, come on then,” Bello says.
We start walking again.
I notice a few dark spots up on the ceiling. Irregular circles of varying sizes, some of them mushed together to form interesting, random shapes. Is it some kind of mold, maybe? I squint against the brightness, look closer—it’s not mold. There’s nothing on the ceiling: those dark areas have simply stopped shining.
More mysteries for Spingate to figure out, I guess.
Most of the ceiling glows bright as day. If only that light actually came from the sun, all we would have to do is punch through and we would be outside. We would be free. I would run so far, so fast, and I would never look back at this horrible place where Grownups kill each other and murder little children.
I turn my attention to the grass. The knee-high green blades sprout up through a thick mat of dead brown. These plants have grown, then died and fallen, over and over again. Maybe the grass was once nice and neat. Maybe Spingate is right and the pond once had open water instead of reeds. If so, that time is long past.
A stinging bit of pressure flares up below my belly.
“Bello, I really have to go.”
She grimaces. “I know, me too.” She points off to our left, into the trees.
“We’ve been going in there,” she says. “It’s inside the perimeter, but away from where people eat. The circle-stars patrol it pretty regular, make sure there’s no pigs. And also the underbrush is thick enough that the boys can’t see us when we make our business.”
The boys…they’re watching the girls? I know that’s supposed to make me angry or concerned, but I wonder if O’Malley wants to look at me. I wonder if he watched me while I slept.
No, he wouldn’t watch me. Maybe he would watch Spingate or D’souza—I think they are the prettiest of us all—but not me. I’m too short. I don’t know what I look like, but there is no way I am as beautiful as they are.
Bello leads me toward the trees. The grass ends abruptly where the tree shadows begin, giving way to vines and some other small plants that grow closer to the ground.
A few steps past the grass line and in the shade beneath the leaves, I see a fallen log. It is brown, rigid, no leaves left on its dry branches. It’s a skeleton, a wooden version of the stripped bones we saw back in the hall. How long has it been here? I see more logs. Some are crumbling, a darker brown that is disintegrating into little pieces. There are scraggly bushes and smaller plants growing from and near the rotting logs. Vines climb over everything, even up the trunks of living trees.