“Tell me about the people in this camp,” Rose said. “How many are there? Where did they come from?”
Violet took a deep breath. She eyed the water. “There are hundreds,” she said. “Five hundreds? More. Most come from the sunset like Father. Some get there by doing something wrong in the cities. A few of these get let out after so long of working, but more are always let in. Our camp had a big number for a name, which Father said must mean there are lots of them. There are people in our camp who came from the north or the south and are already hungry like us. The ones who come from the sunset don’t get let go. Not ever. They have fences and towers where they watch for them and nets to put them in.”
“How is … your father?” Rose asked. Her voice sounded funny. Violet eyed the jar.
“Is it okay to have more water now? It’s been a while.”
Rose let her take a small sip. It reminded Violet of her father, getting a ration like this, and she started crying. She wiped the tears off her cheek with the back of her wrist and drank them too. “Father said you’d ask how he was and to say that he was okay, but Father doesn’t always tell the truth.”
This made Rose laugh, but then she covered her mouth and was crying, too. The boys were quiet without being snapped at. Violet thought of what she wanted to say, some of what she was told to say with some truth mixed in as well.
“They don’t feed us enough,” she said. “That’s what the adults say. And so people come in with muscles and then it goes away. Sometimes the people go away all at once. That’s when their sheets are pulled up over their heads. I always tucked my chin down like this—” She lowered her chin against her chest and pretended to hold sheets tight up against her neck. “—so it wouldn’t happen to me. Father was stronger than most of the men there. Tall. With dark eyes and dark skin like the men from the sunset and dark hair like yours.” She nodded to Conner. “But I could lay a finger between his ribs while he slept, and his ribs would go out and in, and he gave me too much of his bread.”
Violet thought on what else she needed to say. There was a lot. So much that her thoughts were getting jammed like the trough sometimes did when too much metals came.
“Did he tell us how to get to him?” Conner asked. “What did he say we should do?”
There was no snapping for quiet. Her second mom wiped her cheeks and waited for an answer.
“He wrote a note—” Violet said.
“A note from Father?” Rob asked.
“Where is it?” Conner wanted to know.
“It was in my suit, against my skin. I think I lost it with my pack. Father told me not to read it …” She hesitated.
“It’s okay,” Rose said. Her second mom reminded Violet a lot of her first one.
“I read part of it while he was writing it. He made me promise not to read any more. The part I read said not to come for him, to look west over the mountains, and then a confusing part about the sand in the wind and how it comes from the mining they do, that the wind also comes from something bad … something with the lands. I’m sorry. I’m trying to remember …”
“You’re doing a great job,” Rose said. She smiled, but there was still water in her eyes.
“Father used to tell me that it doesn’t rain where he comes from. He said the dirt the mining men throw up in the air for the magnets makes the clouds release their water into the cavern, and that’s where the river comes from, and that all the rain meant for his people is taken out of the air by the sand.” She licked her lips. Again, the sting of a wolf’s bite. “He used to get really mad and talk about this and watch through the fence as the sun went down. There was always the loud booms out that way that made my ears hurt and blocked the sky up so everything was a haze, but he spent all his time on that side. The sunset people were the only ones who liked it over there. Father wanted me to stay close, but I’d rather pray for candy and not rocks by the other fence.”
“How did you get out?” Conner asked. And Rob nodded. Rose said nothing to quiet the boys, so Violet figured it was okay to answer.