“What do you mean?” Arden asked. She dropped her plate to her lap, letting the fork clink against the china. I had told her about the Trail when we were in Paul’s room, but in her fever she must’ve forgotten its name.
Marjorie stood before us, her wrinkled hands laced together. “This is a safe house, just one stop along the way to several different dugouts, and Califia. We help orphans escape the King’s regime.”
Lark stared at the candle in the lantern, the smoke twisting from its black wick. “But the troops. Don’t they know you’re here?” She folded her thin arms across her chest, hugging herself.
“They’re always suspicious,” Otis told her. “They come by with their Jeeps every so often, ask us questions or inspect the house. But without evidence of any wrongdoing, there’s not much they can do. We have permission to live outside the City of Sand.”
“Permission?” I asked. I had heard of Strays before, of course, but they were scavengers, directionless wanderers. I likened them to those who had been called “homeless” in the old books, not people who lived in houses—in homes—like this.
Otis pulled his pant leg down, covering the sliver of wooden leg. “It’s a long process and not many choose to go through with it unless there’s a definitive reason. But we’re old, and there’s not a demand for us in the City of Sand. For the most part they leave us be.”
Lark bit the skin of her finger. The firelight had warmed her cheeks, bringing out the beauty in her round, soft face. “What would they do to you if they knew you were helping us?”
“They’d kill us,” Marjorie said simply. She gazed into the burning logs. They crackled, their charred carcasses shifting in the fire. “The King doesn’t tolerate opposition. There have been so many disappearances in the City. A citizen who was working for the Trail, a man called Wallace, accidentally told an informant about the mission. He was gone within a week. His wife said he was taken right from his bed, only God knows where.”
My tongue curled in my mouth like a shriveled snake. I had dreamed so much of that place, the clean slate streets, the man-made beaches where women sat under umbrellas with their books. How had I believed those lies for so long?
“You’ll stay with us for a few days,” Otis said. “Then we’ll move you to another safe house. You can tell them by the lantern in the window—if it’s on, there’s room for you.”
Lark kept nibbling at her fingers, the skin peeled back until it bled. “But if we get caught, we’ll be killed—you said it yourself.”
Marjorie tucked a strand of thick white hair into her braid. The shadows flickered in the glow of the fire, her expression unchanged. “Almost two hundred years ago, Harriet Tubman led slaves to freedom. And when they told her they didn’t think they could, when they said they were too afraid, she pointed a gun at them and said”—Marjorie mimed a weapon in her grasp—“Go forward or die.”
Otis put his hand over Marjorie’s, bringing the invisible gun down. Then he turned to us, narrowing his eyes. “All she’s saying is there’s no room for fear anymore. That’s what the King’s regime is built on: the assumption that we’re all too afraid to live any other way.”
I remembered that feeling when I was at the edge of the wall. As much as I knew, as much as I’d seen inside that horrid building across the lake, something held me back. I heard a chorus of students whispering about the dogs and the gangs in the wild. I heard the steady beat of Headmistress Burns’s gnarled fingers against a table, as she urged me to take my vitamins. The Teachers added to the melody with their tirades about men, who could manipulate women with a simple smile. My past had come together at once, in a great seductive song, telling me not to go.
“I suppose you’re tired,” Marjorie finally said. “Let me show you to your room.” As Otis collected the empty plates, she stood, leading us down the narrow wood stairs. Beneath the house was a basement filled with stacked chairs and boxes, a beat-up gray machine with a keyboard, and some water-stained newspapers.
I picked up the one on top of the pile—the New York Times. It showed a picture of a woman reaching over a barricade, her mouth open in a wail. Amid Crisis, Barricades Split Up Families, it read. Teacher had described that city, the plague striking whole apartment buildings, their doors padlocked shut to lock people inside.
“Here?” Arden asked, pointing to a tattered couch nestled in the corner.