Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series Read online

  “Lupay!”

  I turn around and watch Shack appear from the darkness into the moonlight, running toward me. I should probably go to meet him, but instead I just watch. He looks small against the wide background of dark trees, mountain peaks, and starry sky. Just one boy, running to me. Where is his brother? Where is the girl? Where is Micktuk?

  I am so tired, so hurt, so empty of everything but anger. And here comes my army. Just one boy. Darius has hundreds, thousands. It was so hard, so much work to overcome just these two. How can we ever fight back?

  He keeps running. “Lupay!’

  I should wave or something. Shouldn’t I? But what’s the point?

  A few seconds later, he slows and stops before me, steaming into the night like the horses. He looks me over. I know there’s blood on my hands and probably my face and shirt and whatever. I might have torn my clothes falling off the wagon. There are probably bruises forming all over as I stand here in the dark.

  He stares into my eyes. “Are you okay?”

  No.

  “Yes,” I say.

  He keeps staring at me, then looks down at the man lying twisted just a few feet away.

  “You’re not hurt?”

  “I said I was okay.”

  He kneels next to the body, looks at the man’s mangled face.

  “Good god, Lupay. The poor bastard.”

  “Yeah. I feel sorry for him.”

  Shack glances up at me, then looks back at the body. “Good point.” He pokes around at the pockets for a moment, finds nothing, then stands.

  “We found a letter in the pocket of the other one.” Shack looks at the wagon lying crumpled not too far away. “And a knife in his back.”

  “Hmm. That would be mine.”

  Shack nods. “Yeah, I recognized it.” He pauses, the points at the wagon. “Anything worth looking at there?”

  “No.” There was nothing at all in the wagon but the blankets they stole from Tawtrukk. From us. “The only thing they had fell out back there.” I look back at the road, but Garrett and the girl aren’t coming. Maybe he’s staying with her. “Is she hurt?”

  Shack shakes his head slowly, still staring at the wagon. We both avoid looking at the ashes of Lodgeholm. “No, she’ll be okay. Shaken up. A few bruises and scrapes, but she was lucky to fall out when she did.” He looks down at the corpse in the dirt, then up at me. “You sure you’re good?”

  Knowing the girl is okay helps. Knowing Garrett is with her helps. One of the horses snorts nearby. They seem to be wandering back toward us. Must be our voices, something familiar and calming.

  But something’s still wrong. “Where’s Micktuk?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”

  That moment in the wagon hits me. When it first jumped forward, with Micktuk still in the road. It must have run him over. “Shack, do you think…”

  “Lupay, I didn’t see him. Not anywhere.”

  “Were you looking?”

  “What do you mean, was I looking? Of course. Loop, it’s just a road. He was there, then he wasn’t.”

  “Sometimes you miss things.”

  “Loop—”

  “Like, obvious things.” Suddenly I need to know where Micktuk is. If we have any hope of anything, of being more than just a couple of kids against an army, we need Micktuk.

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Yes you do, cabron. You know you miss things all the time! You do!” Why am I so angry with him? Why am I taking it out on him? He doesn’t miss things. But he missed Micktuk this time. I’m sure of it.

  I take a few steps back toward the trees. “He’s short. And… and quiet.”

  “Loop, he’s not easy to miss.”

  “Maybe easy for you!” I can’t stop myself yelling at him. Micktuk has to be okay. “Maybe you were only looking for me. Maybe you didn’t see him. You’re tall, and he’s short and… and…”

  “And so very, very dark!” Another voice comes from behind me. I spin to see the horses approaching. “Micktuk, he gets lost in de dark sometimes, yeh? Hee hee!”

  It takes a moment, but the deep shadow of Micktuk’s short, round figure appears in front of one of the horses. He’s leading them along, tight in close to their dark brown and blending into the night.

  Shack laughs. I don’t feel like laughing. It doesn’t seem funny to me. But I am filled with relief.

  Shack strides over to him and whacks his shoulder. “Where the heck were you?” He laughs his delight.

  “Well, dat wagon jumped right on me, but I was quicker. I grabbed up in dem horses and swung myself up between ‘em, held on for all I got. Hangin’ off the sides, almost got squished between ‘em, but I held on. It was one wild ride, let me tell you.” He smiles at me, his teeth a bright white in the night. “Girlie, when we’s riding together, you sit back and let Micktuk drive, yeh?”

  “What?”

  Shack laughs and starts unyoking the horses. I don’t see anything funny.

  Micktuk bends over the corpse and pokes a couple of times, prodding it here and there. He stands, reaches his foot out and kicks it over. He looks at me, not smiling this time. “You done good, Lupay.” He holds my gaze a few seconds before waddling off to the wagon.

  Shack lifts the yoke off one of the horses, and it steps away and starts nibbling the grass. As he unhitches the other, he says, “The horses seem fine. To them, it was just a hard run, I guess.” He notices Micktuk kicking around at the wagon’s remains. “Lupay says there’s nothing there,” he calls. “ Empty.”

  Micktuk contemplates the remains and waves us away, saying, “You all go back and get the others. Take ‘em back up to my place. Make the other one safe, yeh?” He kicks at one of the boards, then looks up at Lodgeholm.

  Shack leads one horse to me and hands me its lead. He goes back and grabs the other.

  “You all know de way, yeh?”

  “We know the way,” Shack responds. “Come on, Loop.”

  We start walking, and I look back when I hear the screeching of nails being ripped from wood. Micktuk is pulling apart the wagon, plank by plank. I ask Shack, “What’s he doing?”

  “Dunno. He’s a funny guy like that, though, isn’t he?”

  Another loud creak and crack, but we walk on. A few minutes later we reach the redwood stand, where Garrett is sitting against a tree, with the girl walking around the tree in big circles. When he sees us, he stands. The girl is startled, and she stops circling and runs to hide behind him. He waves but says nothing.

  When we get close, he comes out to the road. “Hi,” he says. “I think this is yours.” He holds my knife out to me, handle first, and I take it.

  I slide the gleaming blade into its sheath, which is still strapped to my thigh. “Thanks for cleaning it.”

  “Thanks for using it.” He looks into my eyes, and I can tell he’s holding back from asking whether I’m okay. He already knows the real answer.

  I try to peek around him to see the girl, but she hides well.

  Shack says, “Southshaw horses, I guess. I don’t recognize them.”

  “Of course,” replies Garrett. “You think Tawtrukk horses would let themselves be harnessed to a contraption like that one?”

  The two grin at each other. It’s good to see them joking around, but I can hear in their voices that it’s not the same as it used to be. Their voices sound a little… I don’t know. Stretched. Like cloth pulled so tight it’s about to tear.

  Garret gets serious for a moment. He looks from Shack to me. “Micktuk?”

  “He’s good,” says Shack. “We’ll tell you on the way back to his place. He’s staying behind for something. Don’t know what.”

  “Okay.”

  “She should ride,” says Shack.

  Garrett nods, and I’m about to protest that I’d rather walk when Garrett quickly steps aside. The girl, startled again, jumps back and squeaks.

  I recognize her. Smart and quiet. She’s—

  “Ginger
,” says Garrett. “Her mom and dad have that little place up the road, right on the river.”

  “I know.” She’s thirteen but looks my age, maybe older. Frizzed out black hair, pale blue eyes and bronze skin. Her parents are quiet but friendly. When I was little, my mom made me play with her because my parents liked to spend time with her parents. But we weren’t alike.

  “Hi, Lupay,” she whispers.

  She had dolls. Lots of dolls. Her mother made them for all the children. Best dolls in all Tawtrukk, even better than that seamstress in Upper. Ginger played with dolls every minute we spent together. I was six and she was three, and I wanted to go run and climb trees. She wanted to sing to her dolls. So she took her dolls outside and sang to them under the branches. But I always thought she might be singing to me in her beautiful, little voice. I liked to think so.

  “Hi.”

  I want to ask her about her parents. But she’s trembling in that thin dress, all stained and torn at the shoulder. It looks like Garrett tied part of the hem back together. The twins did a good job. Shack would have scared her more, probably. They thought it through.

  “Let’s go, okay?” I put out my hand to her. “You know how to ride?”

  She shrugs and nods a little, then comes to me and takes my hand. It’s soft and warm in mine, small and slender and fragile. She asks in her small voice, “Is it okay if we just walk for a bit?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and I hand the horse’s lead to Garrett. “It’s a long way, though. So if you get tired, just say so. Okay?”

  She nods, and we set off across the meadow toward the trees, Shack in front with one horse followed by Garrett with the other, then the two of us. I squeeze her hand as we walk, and her warmth fills me up.

  Three kids against an army? Maybe it’s stupid even to think of it. But I know what those two Southshaw devils had planned for Ginger. She didn’t understand, but I do. And I can’t let that happen anymore.

  We reach the trees, walk in silence along the edge of the woods, start climbing into the hills above Lower. Shack smartly leads us away from where we can see the square and the houses that Darius has turned into prisons.

  When we’re well up into the hills, Ginger says, “Lupay?”

  “Are you tired? Do you want to ride now?” I get ready to call out to Garrett.

  “No. I like walking with you.”

  “Oh. I like walking with you, too.” I surprise myself. Because it’s true.

  CHAPTER 10

  In the afternoon sun three days after our assault on Pep and his wagon, Shack’s body almost glows as he stands at the top of our secret waterfall.

  “Tell me again,” he calls from the top of the cliff, “when your friend Dang’s going to get here?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he leaps out with a whoop, away from the granite waterfall, plummeting thirty feet to splash into the sapphire pool below. I didn’t need to answer him anyway. He just likes calling Dane the wrong name.

  A moment later, Shack erupts through the surface with a sputter and flails his way through the water to the river’s edge like he’s trying to kick up a rainstorm. The shower of cold drops feels good on my skin. I’ve been basking like a lizard here on the rock in the sun long enough to fry. The water sizzles and evaporates almost as fast as it hits me.

  Shack runs his hands through his ragged, brown hair, smoothing it back. Water runs down his arms and chest, and his shorts cling to his thighs. He saunters to my side and stands above me, positioning his shadow across my body so the blinding sun is directly above his head. He leans over me and squeezes the water from his hair on my bare stomach. It’s cold. It’s delicious. But I won’t give him the satisfaction. I say nothing. I close my eyes and pretend to sleep.

  “Lupay. Looo-paaay.” He sings it at me, taunts me with my own name. I won’t give in.

  He squeezes a few more drops from his hair, but I stay silent.

  From a little behind me, Garrett’s voice emerges from the woods. “Shack, will you give it a rest.”

  “But really. When is he coming? And how big is his… um, army?”

  Oh, Shack, you are such a… I don’t even know.

  I sit up slowly, open my eyes with care so I’m looking at some place other than where Shack is. “Dane. His name is Dane. And I don’t know how big his army is.” Or even if he has an army. From what I saw, he had mostly old men and silly women there. But Freda seemed convinced they could get something together.

  Shack snorts. “Well, it better be big.”

  “Oh Shack,” I sing back at him. “Why? Do you need help? I didn’t know you need help. I thought you could take care of everything. All by yourself.”

  “Ha, ha. Yeah, normally I could. But I don’t want to. That would be too easy.”

  “Oh give me a break,” his brother says as he emerges from the shadows. I don’t understand why Garrett never swims. He just hangs back under the trees and watches, or whittles little figures. Today he’s reading one of Micktuk’s books.

  “But seriously, Lupay,” Garrett continues, “are you sure he’s going to get here before Darius attacks Upper?”

  No, I think. But I have to believe.

  I say, “Look, that letter Darius sent to Southshaw—”

  “The one Garrett found in the dead guy’s pocket,” Shack says.

  “Yes, that letter. It said very clearly—”

  “That Darius planned on settling in a month before going on to Upper. We know.”

  “If you already know everything, why are you asking?” These boys drive me crazy.

  “Laying in supplies,” Garrett says.

  “Planning the best attack,” Shack continues.

  “Which gives us time to wait for Dang’s army,” Garrett says.

  “Dane,” Shack corrects.

  “Dane,” confirms Garrett.

  “Need to get that right,” Shack says. “I hear he’s got a very big… army.”

  “Huge.”

  “Enormous.”

  “It will be very satisfactory.”

  “Get the job done.”

  I can’t stand it. “Will you both shut up!” I stand up, feeling the cool rush of air on my baking skin. I don’t need to look at them to know they’re grinning like they have no brains. “You’re both like little children.”

  “Oh, come on, Loop,” says Shack as he flops down onto the warm granite and lies on his back to look up at the empty, blue sky. “We’re just trying to have a little fun. I mean, there’s a lot of terrible stuff going on right now. But it’s a beautiful day, and we can’t do anything about it right now, so let’s just relax, okay?”

  It’s the first sensible thing he’s said all day. But I can’t relax. Not really. Even though we have time. Even though Micktuk has found Sikwaa families to take in the Lodgeholm refugees. Even though we have this beautiful, summer day and a perfect swimming hole.

  “Lupay! Lupay!” The voice of a girl echoes around our little haven. A moment later, Ginger runs through the trees and out onto the stone. She stops and stares at Shack, stunned for a moment to see him in just his shorts.

  She’s breathless, and her normally pale face almost glows red. She pants and gasps, but between breaths she manages to squeak out the words. “Wagon… coming… up from… Lower… looks… filled… with…”

  The last word gets lost in a whoop by Shack, who leaps to his feet and scrambles around trying to remember that he left his clothes at the top of the cliff. “Yes! Loop, this is it. Let’s go!”

  Garrett puts his hand on Ginger’s shoulder. “Have you told Micktuk yet?”

  She shakes her head, still gasping for air. “Came straight here. Trey said to run and get Lupay. You want me to run and get Micktuk?”

  Garrett turns and looks at me. His grimace says he thinks we should get Micktuk, maybe do nothing about this at all. But it’s been four days since Darius took over Lower. And all we’ve done is watch while his army has built and supplied an outpost halfway up the road to Upper. In Dunn�
�s Meadow, right on the river before it crosses under the road and runs along down here to our swimming hole. In two days they had a barracks. In another they had a barn.

  Watch and wait, wait and watch.

  Ginger stands between us, watching us and waiting for an answer.

  I’ve been over this a thousand times in my head since I finished reading about Robin Hood to the twins and the Lodgeholm children. Shack wants to be Little John. He can’t wait to go fight someone. But Micktuk isn’t Robin Hood, and I kind of like being hidden and secret. If we attack, Darius will know we’re out here, somewhere. And he will come looking.

  And if he comes looking, he’ll find us. And Micktuk. and the few Sikwaa families, and the Lodgeholm refugees. And then who’ll be left to fight him?

  I look at Ginger. Her frizzy, black hair is wild and flecked with leaves, and her freckled cheeks look plump with little-girl chubbiness. Her bright blue eyes are wide and unblinking. I can’t tell whether she’s scared or excited.

  I just don’t know.

  “Loop,” Garrett says. “Maybe we should go get him. Just to see what he thinks.”

  Ginger looks at Garrett while he talks, but then she snaps her attention back to me. “You want me to?”

  Poor thing looks like she’ll collapse if she has to run another fifty feet. If anyone goes, it should be me. Or Shack, to keep him out of trouble.

  While I’ve been thinking, he’s rushed to the top of the cliff, dressed, and is already running back down to us. If I don’t say something soon, he’ll be off to do his own thing anyway.

  “Loop, think about it. We’re not ready for something like that.” Garrett speaks softly. “You know what Micktuk would say.”

  “No,” I respond, “I don’t know what Micktuk would say. I didn’t know he would have a thousand books in his house. I didn’t know he could come and go like a ghost. I didn’t know he would lead us to attack Darius that first night. No,” I conclude, “I don’t know what Micktuk would say.”

  “Then we need to go ask him. Don’t we?”