Chapter 4

“Oh, you’re a clever one, you are, Lorus,” Gimlet chuckled. “I bet you been lying there for days, all snuggled up in their blankets, fakin’ a little cough now and then, pulling on their heart strings and laughing in your sleeve as they tripped over themselves to make you feel comfortable.”

We rounded a corner of one of the buildings, out of sight of any casual passer-byers. All this time I stayed silent. Once we were in the shadows, Gimlet roughly yanked the chair on its side and dumped me out of it onto the ground. I tried not to whimper or cry out. That always seemed to rile him up even more.

“Get up, you!” he snarled and grabbed my arm, nearly pulling it out of its socket. “There’ll be no more lying about for you, you worthless tripe!”

I did my best to stand, balancing on my heels, but wobbling terribly like a new fawn.

Gimlet scowled, “Here now, what’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with your legs?”

Suddenly, there was a shout:

“There they are, Captain! That’s the man! Lorus! Are you all right?!”

I let myself collapse to my knees on the ground, glad for once to see my noisy cot mates.

Moron, Beka, and a young, sandy-haired woman with a red sash around her hips rounded the corner. A half dozen more soldiers swooped in behind them. In very little time both Gimlet and I were surrounded. These soldiers all had red trim on their dark green instead of blue, and instead of the bolt guns, they carried funny crook-legged sticks about as long as their arm each.

I could see the gears in Gimlet’s head working. He was plenty brave if he had his pack to back him up or facing down a smaller opponent. This was not one of those scenarios. Immediately, his face went to one of concern.

“Easy there, friend! Can’t you see she’s just had a toss-up?!” Gimlet gently scooped me up, blankets and all. “Help me right her chair, will you, please? Hit a rock and both of us just about took a tumble. Caught her just in time, I did.”

The Captain nodded to one of her men, and one hand on his stick, he walked over and briskly righted the wheeled-chair before immediately returning to his place in the circle. Moron moved as though to run over, but the Captain’s arm shot out as she gave him a stern look. She then sniffed and jerked her chin at Gimlet.

“Right. So who are you to her then?”

Gimlet blinked as though it were the oddest question in the world.

“Me, miss? I’m Jack Gimlet, Lorus’s brother.”

Beka snorted, “Brother by another mother?”

Gimlet pretended to be wounded, “She may take more her mother’s looks, aye, but we’re both children of the same father.”

I twisted the blanket in my hands angrily, knowing that he was referring to tribe law. Technically, upon reaching mating age at 12, I needed a patriarch to hand me over. Since I was tribe property, my ‘father’ was Chief Urtega, a man who’d barely said more than two words to me the five years I was with them. The Captain seemed incredulous, the soldiers looked curious, Moron looked angry, Beka was skeptical. I’d seen this before. If I let Gimlet talk, he would be carrying me out of here unopposed and probably gifted generous rations for both of us, my part which he would promptly sell off to a merchant for a swift profit. There would also be my ‘homecoming’.

“No,” I said softly. It was a risk, but hope is a funny thing. Even if it was the gutters of an unseen city, I had more hope of living my own life here. I tried again more forcibly, “No!”

“What’s that? Speak up, girl,” The Captain said sharply.

Gimlet made a shushing noise, “Ach, it’s all right Lorus dear, ole Gimi’s here for you. Your brother’ll make sure you’re taken care of. See miss! She’s already getting agitated by all this. Let me take her back to my quarters and-“

“No!” I fairly shouted. “Lorus has no brother! Lorus has no father!” I made an effort to push myself out of the chair, much to the concern of everyone. Gimlet made as though he was going to put a hand out to steady me, but I cried out, “Don’t pinch Lorus!”

I had learned that one from bratty Davy as well. Only now could I appreciate his genius for getting me and his siblings in trouble.

“Steady on!” Moron yelled and pushed past the Captain to catch me and help me stand. Beka took my other arm to give me support.

Gimlet gave me a sour look and pulled back, hands in the air to show he wasn’t touching me. The effort took the wind out of me, and even with Moron and Beka I was tiring fast. My muscles shook, and I started sweating, but I could not let there be any ambiguity. Straightening, I looked Gimlet in the eye and said, “Lorus will not go anywhere with that man. Never.”

I expected to see more rage, more fury, but he merely raised an eyebrow, placid smile on his face. My words seem to clinch it for the Captain though.

“Right then. Finnias, Beka. Help Lorus back into her chair and take her back to the hospital. Inform Nurse Jane of activities, just in case she has overexerted herself. Gimlet, you will allow my men to escort you back to you own quarantine quarters-“

“Oh now miss-" he started to protest.

“If,” she continued over him, “If you would like to petition for visiting rights, then you may visit the office of Domestic Facilitations in Quarantine Rules Affairs, the second quarter-block on the right from the east side entrance. Meanwhile, might I suggest that if you choose to have a heartwarming reunion with any other relations you may discover while in quarantine, do so by the proscribed laws and regulations your betters have put in place, and certainly be wiser than to do it behind the camp guards’ bunkers. That will be all. You are dismissed.”

I really did not want to go back into the chair, that insidious seat of vulnerability. It was mostly its fault I’d been lulled into such a sense of comfort. The Captain was watching, however, and anything but meek obedience would have been taken as mutiny. I’d already pushed my luck defying Gimlet. So, with a quivering sigh I collapsed back into the chair and allowed Beka to tuck me back in, Moron apologizing all the while for letting some wank just come up and stroll away with me.

As expected, Nurse Jane flipped her cap and spent the rest of the evening cooing and bustling over me. I nodded or shook my head as need be to answer her questions, vehemently denying several times that Gimlet was any sort of relation to me at all, even if he was perhaps a rather bad or naughty one. I was finally allowed to eat and sleep once the interrogation was over. Lessons would be postponed for another day.

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After my run in with Gimlet, I considered feigning illness or some other malady to avoid going outside again. The more I pondered it though, the more I was sure Gimlet would not just sit idle or give up. He wasn’t the sort to let a rabbit that's gone to ground spite him by holing up. If I didn’t move first, he’d find some way to smoke me out. If I couldn’t figure out a way to be rid of him or out of his hands for good, he’d just hound me until I was finally back in his grasp. I decided it was time to run again.

Of course I’d have to re-learn how to walk first. My first couple of tries were little more than standing, clutching the side of the bed, and trying to get my balance back. I did it quietly at night where I wouldn’t have the concerned, pitying eyes of my fellow patients constantly on me. It was their opinion that I’d never walk normally again without some sort of artificial support in place. Some had even suggested taking up donations. I refused. The wheeled-chair and soft bed had made me lazy in such a short time. That was dangerous. Comfort was dangerous. Pain, however, that was something I understood and could rely on.

It took a couple days more, but soon I could stand without shaking, and if I kept my knees bent and weight mostly on my heels, I could shuffle forward, easily falling to the support of my hands and scrambling forward if I needed. On one of my first tries, the outside of my right foot clipped a bed leg right where my missing toe would’ve been. I still felt it all the way through my bandages. Silently, I fell back on my cot, wordlessly screaming. I think Moron might have heard me thrashing about because he sat up suddenly and looked about. Twitching, I tried to lie still until he shrugged and rolled back over again. I would need to be more careful moving around in the dark.

During the day, lessons were also re-attempted. This time Moron and Beka were accompanied by former wild-child Raikan, Nurse Jane’s volunteer aid, to wheel me to and from classes. Hearing her chatter with Beka and flirt with Moron as we rolled along, I never would have guessed she was a Painted Flower from Tien Hong, the City in the Mist. I asked later what a Painted Flower was, and based on the amount of blushing from Moron and large, scientific words and overly complex explanation from Beka, I took it to be something like a comfort wife the Plainsmen would sometimes hire when they were near cities.

“I was an entertainer,” Raikan explained simply.

“Entertainer?” I shook my head, pondering.

Raikan smiled broadly and squeezed both Beka and Moron in a rib-crushing hug I’m sure she learned from Nurse Jane.

“However my client needed to be entertained, I would!” she laughed and let the two go, both now red-faced and rumple clothed.

Raikan winked at me, “But you know, Lorus, it’s much nicer to be here where I only entertain myself and who I choose. That is nicer, don’t you think?”

I did not disagree.

Lessons, as I came to learn, were a whole lot more of what I’d been doing in the hospital ward to begin with, except there were about ten other children in there with me and Beka. Apparently, adults got their own classes in the evening. During the days those who were able bodied helped around Purgatory or in the fields. Moron decided to stay and attend lessons because he claimed he wanted to make sure I wasn’t bothered by anyone and understood everything the speaker, Professor they called him, was saying. However, it seemed to be Moron spent much more time whispering with Raikan in the back, much to Beka’s annoyance, than keeping watch or explaining things.

By the end of the day my mind and body were exhausted. The evening was coming fast, lilacs and smoldering oranges already taking the sky. A little breeze floated over the silvery winter grass in the yard. All four of us paused for a second, feeling the cool air and looking for stars. Voices were singing somewhere:

Little red canary in a golden house,

Sing when you’re happy,

Sing when you’re lost.

The door is wide open,

But the bird won’t fly.

Along comes a kitty cat and bye bye bye!

Towards the middle Beka, Moron, and Raikan had begun to sing along. At the end ‘bye bye bye’, all three clapped their hands together then held them out palm up. After a pause, apparently they realized what they were doing and began laughing. I had no ideas what they were going on about.

“Oh, you’ve confused Lorus again!” Raikan giggled. “Somehow I don’t think Lorus got to play a lot when she was young.”

“What are you talking about?” Beka grinned, “Lorus is still young. You don’t know Red Canary, Lorus, but would you like to learn?”

Even Moron perked up, “Yeah! Come on! We don’t have to be back until seventh chime. Let’s see if the players are still there. It’ll be good for Lorus to meet more people.”

I don’t know where they all suddenly got this idea that I needed my head filled with more meaningless names and faces, but all in high spirits they wheeled me around the corner to a grassy clearing with a large shade tree growing in it. Five girls, some a bit younger, one probably almost fifteen suns, were all sitting under the tree in a ring, one more person in the middle. Everyone in the ring had their hands out, overlapping, right hand sitting palm up on their neighbor’s left hand palm up and so on. As they chanted the song, one girl took a bright, red stone in her right hand then clapped it to her left, into her neighbor’s hand. She then did the same, so on and so forth, all in time to the chanting. I was so mesmerized by watching the little red stone fly around the circle that it wasn’t until the ‘bye bye bye’ that I realized who the person in the middle was.

“Gimlet!” the name slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. Gimlet stood up, back to me, hands over his eyes as he swayed back and forth while the girls all laughed and giggled.

“Red bird red bird, where have you gone?” he asked, slowly turning. “The birdies are all worried and want you to come home!”

“That’s not part of the rhyme!” one of the girls, a little blond headed thing giggled. “You have to point and guess who took it now! You can’t just ask!”

Gimlets whirled on his heels, finger out.

“Then I’m going to guess, my little bird is…There!”

Of course he was pointing over their heads to where I was sitting. Moron and Beka were caught completely off guard. I’m not sure they even recognized it was Gimlet sitting in the middle of the girls. There was something different about him. It took me a second to realize he’d cut his hair. Gimlet had always kept it fluffy and a little curled in the front, but his pride, the long almost white blond braid he wore down his back was now gone. I could see just a few feathery duck curls at his neck as he leaned over and whispered in the older girl’s ear. Her face pinked a bit, but she nodded and stood up walking over to us.

Meanwhile, at least Raikan still knew what was going on. She put a steadying hand on my shoulder and raised the other one, halting the girl about ten steps away.

“Please, Nariann. No further. That man is not to have contact with my charge until both their quarantine is over. Do not be an enabler.”

Nariann lifted her chin, “You’re not a Second yet, Raikan, and I’m not your charge. Gimi just wanted me to give his sister a message.” She stared hard at me, her dull brown eyes glittering with emotion. I could just guess what ‘Gimi’ had told her. I tried to keep my face neutral.

Raikan shook her head, “This is not from me, Nariann. Tell Nurse Jane if-“

“He says he loves her, and he just wants her to know no matter what, he’ll find her again no matter where she goes.”

At her bold profession, the other little girls in the group shrieked and squealed, giggling and mock hitting Gimlet, who hid his face in fake embarrassment. I wish they really had hit him harder.

I lowered my head and stared at my hands. From under my eye lashes I could see Nariann lift her head even higher, confident that she had shamed an ungrateful little sister. Raikan actually growled in annoyance. Her hand tightened on my shoulder. Gently, I reached up and placed my own, small hand over it. Then I lifted my head and gestured Nariann over. She arched an eyebrow but came.

“You will give Lorus’s message to that man? To Gimi?”

She smiled and shrugged, “Sure, if you don’t mind me repeating it out loud.”

I nodded and gestured her closer. She leaned in, but I gestured her closer still. Finally, when she was in range my other hand swung out and around the back of her head, pulling her face close right next to mine so I could hiss right into her ear:

“Then you tell Gimlet he can go frack himself. You can tell him out loud: Go frack and die!”

I let go and leaned back, face in my hands as though overcome by emotion, as Nariann staggered away. I waited until she got back to Jack, then her face turned red as she tried to make herself say the words. Instead, she got out just one word, “Frack”, then burst into tears and ran away.