Leif looked around at the class, nearly a dozen of them packed tightly together in the small space. His mouth opened and closed slowly, like a fish washed onshore, struggling to breathe. Then he met eyes with Kevin, the oldest in the room, and nodded.
“You can fill the buckets immediately after your lesson. As for you . . .” He looked at me. Despite his cold gaze I could’ve sworn I noticed a lightness in his expression, a soft give around his lips, the closest thing I’d ever seen to a smile. “If you’re going to stay here and teach these boys then you should know what they’re about. The older ones”—he pointed with his thick finger to Kevin and Aaron, who were cooling their backs on the mud wall—“will be leaving the dugout soon, on hunting and guard duty. The initiation ceremony begins the day after next, at sundown.” He went out the door, stooping so his head didn’t hit the dip in the ceiling.
I looked back at the class, the book still in my hands. I could feel the shifting of power, as real as if the earth beneath me had changed. Energy surged through my body and I spoke the words, the cavern seeming bigger now. “And every day the boy would come and gather her leaves . . .”
Chapter Fifteen
LATER THAT NIGHT, WHEN ARDEN’S CHOKED COUGHS had given way to the rhythmic breaths of sleep, I grabbed the flashlight from its nest in the floor and started back into the tunnels. The camp was quiet. The twisting corridor was empty. After a few days there, I understood the basic underground structure, the five pathways that came out of that circular main room, creating a starlike formation beneath the massive hill. I turned and made my way down the second tunnel, counting the doorways in the dark.
I kept thinking of Benny’s brother, Paul, who had sat at that desk in the corner practicing his letters, who had stretched out on the same mattress as I had, studying the cracks in the mud ceiling. Maybe the day that he’d died, he had sensed it, like an oncoming storm. Or maybe he had slung his bow over his shoulder as he did every morning and taken off for the hunt. Maybe he had passed by Benny’s room, not wanting to wake him, not knowing it was the last time—until he was locked in the tumult of the wave, churning in the white water, pulling the river into his lungs.
The sound of snoring filled the dimly lit hallway as I crept forward, running my hand along the stones in the wall. I still had so many questions. What had happened in the camps beyond the work, the hauling of bricks and stones? How did children as young as Benny and Silas get into camp? It wasn’t enough to have passing details. I was awake with the same desire that had often overtaken me at School. Headmistress once called it “the thirst for knowledge.”
I turned a corner at the sixth doorway and he was before me, in his wrinkled shirt and ripped shorts. His legs were draped over one arm of a deep, cushioned chair, his head draped over the other.
“Caleb?” I asked. “Are you asleep?”
He startled awake, looking around quickly as if to remember where he was. Then he rubbed his face, smoothed back his hair and smiled.
“Welcome to my humble abode.” He gestured to the bare mattress on the floor, covered only with a comforter, its feathers sprouting up from the seams. On the table beside it was a metal radio and handset like the ones I’d seen at School. Maps were tacked up on the wall, their edges curled from the moisture.
“What are you doing with all these books?” I asked, stepping toward a tall stack on the floor. I ran my fingers down the spines, recognizing a few familiar titles from School: Heart of Darkness, The Great Gatsby, and To the Lighthouse.
Caleb came beside me, his warm shoulder brushing against mine. “I do this funny thing sometimes,” he said, shooting me a mischievous grin. “I open a book, and I look at each page. It’s called reading.”
“I know what reading is!” I laughed. Heat crept up my neck and face, settling in my cheeks. I ran my fingers through my hair. I hadn’t seen a mirror since School. “But how? Benny said no one had learned to read here.”
“You met Benny, then?” Caleb asked. His eyes seemed to be searching my face, scanning my lips and brows and cheeks.
I nodded. “Earlier today. And Silas and some of the other boys, too. Silas was the little girl I thought I saw. He was wearing that tutu.”
Caleb laughed. “He found that tutu in boxes we’d raided from a warehouse. Leif and some of the older boys knew what it was, but how can we tell him? He loves it too much.”