…I am in a small room in a church where every person I see is a circle, except for the pastor, a woman in red robes with a double-ring on her forehead, who is saying that service is the life the gods planned for us and that if we do it well, if we serve, if we obey, then we will be rewarded after death when we go to the Black Mountain…
…I am outside the church, talking to an older circle-boy while I wait for my owner to finish her own service in a church that is far more beautiful than mine, and the boy looks around carefully before he asks if I’ve ever heard of the god called Tlaloc, the one who can empower the soldiers and doctors and workers to rise up against the rulers…
…the feeling of anger, of humiliation, of hatred at belonging to someone else, at having no rights, the need to do something about it, anything, no matter what the cost…
“Em?”
O’Malley is staring at me.
“Em, are you all right?”
No. I’m not. I finally had that moment I wanted, that flashfire, just like my friends had. Gaston gets to fly, and I get this?
I share my creator’s memories. For the most part, I am those memories. Matilda didn’t wear chains, she didn’t live in squalor, but she was a slave nonetheless. She was property.
“On the Xolotl, it seemed like Matilda was in charge,” I say. “How could a slave be in charge?”
“Because she led a rebellion. The details of it are erased, but I’m pretty sure she started the war on that ship.”
I thought she was a monster, inside and out. Maybe things aren’t so simple, so cut-and-dried. All those mutilated bodies, the butchered babies…only someone who is pure evil could do that. And yet, a part of me—the part of me that is her, perhaps—understands why she would start that war.
“She didn’t want to be a slave,” I say. “She didn’t want anyone to be a slave.”
For the first time, I truly understand my creator.
O’Malley gently grips my shoulders. “Now you know why we can’t tell the others.”
“We have to.” My voice is thin, drained of life. “Everyone wants to know what the symbols mean.”
He cups my face in his hands, doing to me what I did to him only moments ago.
“Em, please. I was trained to counsel leaders, how to know what people are thinking and how to make sure the leaders say the right thing at the right time. If we share the meaning of the symbols now, it will destroy everything we’ve accomplished.”
I know I should tell everyone, but I don’t want to. A slave? That’s all I was? But no, that wasn’t me, it was Matilda. Omeyocan is a new world. It is our world—we can make it whatever we want it to be. My people can handle this news. They can make the right decision and not be ruled by the structures of our history.
“They need to know,” I say. “We have to be honest.”
O’Malley shakes his head in exasperation. “All right, they need to know, fine, but not now. Aramovsky is just waiting for the right opportunity to call a new election. Do you want to take the chance that he’ll win?”
I think of Aramovsky talking about his God of Blood. So many young minds on this shuttle now. If he could say whatever he wanted, he might corrupt them all.
O’Malley is right—Aramovsky can’t be in charge now, it would be a disaster.
“But we will tell them, right?” Now I am the one with the pleading tone in my voice. I have never sounded less like a leader. “We’ll tell them soon?”
O’Malley pulls me in and holds me tight. I let him.
“We will, Em, I promise. We’ll tell everyone about our past, but after we’ve secured our future.”
There is nothing arrogant about him now, nothing expected from this hug—I need him to hold me, so he does.
I will tell everyone. I will.
Just not now.
The sun hangs low in the sky. Bishop has not returned.
I sit alone atop the pile of vines at the landing pad’s edge. The pad is alive with activity, as I have put everyone to work. Under the direction of Opkick, kids are chopping vines and clearing them away from the pad’s metal deck. They toss the cut pieces onto the vine wall, making it thicker and taller. If the spiders stay at street level, they can’t see the shuttle. Maybe they have other ways of detecting us—sound or smell, perhaps—but we’re out of sight, and that’s something.
The kids doing the clearing work are mostly circles. That’s because most of us are circles. Six teenagers have that symbol. Fifty-two of the Xolotl kids. All 168 kids that were stored on the shuttle. In total, circles make up three-quarters of our population. I watch them, and I can’t stop thinking: clearing away unwanted plants is the kind of work a slave would do.
From here I can see so much of the city—not far enough to spot Bishop somewhere off to the east, but if a spider tries to come this way I’ll have plenty of time to call out a warning and get everyone back inside the shuttle.