Wizards At War

I dig, Ponch said. I have to put my bones somewhere! Otherwise the dogs down the street might get them. And I carry things. Balls and sticks, mostly. But only when I want to. And as for the killing— He sounded a little wistful. It doesn’t happen that often, and only to the really stupid squirrels. I don’t usually get to catch the smart ones. I think that’s how it’s supposed to be, though. You have to send the stupid ones back so they can get it right the next time.

“But what a wonder to live in a world where there are next times,” Memeki said. “And to do what you want to do, not always what someone else says you must.”

You shouldn’t have to live a life like that, Ponch said. He was indignant. It’s terrible. Why don’t you come home with us! If you like caves, we have a cave under the house where you could stay.

Uh-oh! Kit thought, and his eyes opened wide in the dark as a series of truly terrible images started spreading themselves out in his mind. He could just imagine what his pop would think about Ponch bringing home a pet giant bug. He remembered his Popi’s reaction to all the neighbors’ dogs howling about nothing on the front lawn. Boy, once they got Memeki’s scent, would they have something to howl about then.

He was going to have to defuse Ponch’s idea as quickly as he could. Kit started to get up. Then he paused, for Memeki was saying, “It sounds wonderful—but I can’t leave here.”

Why not? They’re mean to you! Why should you stay?

Some seconds of silence passed. “Because this is my place,” Memeki said. “This is part of realizing that I’m an I. ” There was no more hesitation over the pronoun. “I’m here to do something. I must do it … as soon as I can work out what it is. But you give me a feeling that maybe things are not so terrible, if somewhere the killing doesn’t happen, if somewhere no one listens to every word you say and punishes you for the ones they think are bad. Someone should find a way for that to be the way things are here. Someone should do something!”

But why does it have to be you? Ponch said. He was sounding distressed now. You’re good! What if you do something, and then bad things happen to you? That wouldn’t be fair! In Ponch’s mind, Kit could just catch sensory echoes of things that had lately come to embody this unfairness for Ponch: the flower scent clinging to Kit’s clothes after Nita’s mom’s funeral, the faint cries of pain trapped in young Darryl’s mind during his seemingly endless Ordeal.

“Though it’s not fair, it might be right,” Memeki said. “If no one ever does anything, nothing will ever get better. Sometimes when I was young, I would go outside the City with the other moltlings, and in the forest we would hear the trees crying.” She shivered. “I always thought what the workers did to them was wrong somehow. But the Great One said that the City had to be bigger, so that there could be more warriors to fight the Others, and there was no way for the City to be bigger without the paper that the workers make from the trees. Most Yaldiv didn’t care about the trees one way or another. And though their weeping troubled me, I’d never have dared say what I thought, because the warriors are always looking for anyone who says the wrong word. There’s never enough meat, and they get the first bite of any transgressor.”

Memeki shuddered again, but all the same, a new note started to creep into her voice, a sterner tone. “Yet I grew angry. I said to myself, if ever I could do something to stop the trees’ pain, I will. And later, after the Honor came upon me, I began to wonder: would they dare touch me if I spoke now? For I remembered what I’d said, and I could still hear the weeping in my heart, though a Yaldah who’s been favored by the King can’t leave the City.” Memeki rustled a little, a gesture like a sigh. “I was almost ready to speak. Then I turned around and saw Yaldiv in the tunnel who weren’t Yaldiv, and the world went strange… Now what I said comes back to me. If what the other Voice inside him says is true—” and she glanced over in Ronan’s direction— “if I’m truly one who can do something, if things here can be made different—”