Blue Window Read online

  “Genius has but one command:

  Useful hands, useful hands.

  Work the day long, work the land,

  With your two good useful hands.”

  Susan looked for her. The plums hung in great clusters of red and purple, obscuring the view, but after a moment, she caught a flash of red trim, the stained hem of a long-hanging dress. The girl had perched a basket on one of the lower branches, and from above it, fruit rained down, hitting the wicker in a rhythm that punctuated the song.

  “With useful hands come bang the drum!

  With useful hands does progress come!”

  She had a funny accent. For a second, Susan wondered if she was singing in a different language. But she couldn’t have been, since the words were perfectly plain:

  “Clear the old, the worn, the low.

  The new day dawns! The past must go.

  The bounty waits for the brave and sure,

  A prize for the useful and the pure.”

  Susan circled the base of the tree, trying to get a look at the singer.

  “Excuse me?” she called into the leaves. “Hello?”

  The girl stopped singing abruptly. In the sudden hush, the cicadas trilled a small chorus of alarm.

  The silence stretched for a long minute.

  “Hey, there!” Nell called suddenly, smacking the trunk with her hand. “We can see you up there! Could we ask you a question?”

  This time the girl did answer. Her voice came nervously from the green shadows. “Who’s that?” she asked. “Purity?”

  Susan guessed that must be some friend of hers. “No,” she said. “Sorry, we’re lost. You don’t live around here, do you?”

  There was a small release of breath from above, and when she spoke this time, the girl sounded confident and a little surly.

  “Who’s asking?”

  She began to climb down. “And just so you know, this place is spoken for. I’ve got friends in the Domain that . . .”

  Her words died away as she neared the bottom. “By all that’s new!” she gasped. “You’re beautiful! Look at you!”

  Susan flushed and took a step backward. “Well, thanks,” she said awkwardly, not sure how to respond. “I mean, that’s very nice of you.” The girl’s tone had changed so suddenly that Susan didn’t know what to make of it, or of the fact that she gave compliments like an old aunt serving tea.

  But the girl hadn’t finished. She tossed her basket into the grass, rattling the plums, and then leaped down beside it, landing half a foot from Jean. She wore a coarse red jumper with a large pocket across the front. When she stood up straight, she was Susan’s height. She gawked at Jean, then looked from face to face.

  Something was wrong with her.

  Susan tried to focus. The girl’s face put her in mind of those lenticular pictures that shifted between two things depending on which way you held them. For a flicker of an instant, she was a mild-faced girl with small almond eyes, light hair, and a narrow chin. The next second her features slid out of place, jaw wider than it should have been, nose and mouth jutting slightly forward so that her already narrow chin tapered to a point, and her eyes receded into deep sockets. Susan blinked, feeling cross-eyed and slightly dizzy, and the girl’s features settled.

  The mild-faced version was gone.

  Sunlight glazed the plums and leaves and grass. Squirrels chattered in voices that sounded like small gears winding. Susan took it all in and all she could think was — why doesn’t this feel more like a dream? She thought it must be a dream, after all, despite how wide awake she felt, because of the girl’s teeth. The bones of her face, too.

  They were all wrong. Her chin and nose protruded, and her lips stretched over a set of sharp teeth that crowded her pointy mouth. Her wrong-shaped face was flecked with what looked like pencil marks.

  No, Susan corrected herself. That was hair. A light coat of it dusted her cheeks, forehead, and nose.

  For a moment, they all stared at her, struck dumb. Then Jean yelped and scooted behind Max.

  “Jean!” Susan whispered. “That’s not nice!”

  If the girl noticed, she didn’t show it. She was too busy looking from one face to the next, astonished.

  “How’d they do it?” she asked. “Was it bad? Did they have to cut you?”

  Susan had been rehearsing her mother’s people look different sometimes speech, for later, but that question stopped her.

  “Cut us? What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re smooth as plums; look at you!”

  Oh. Susan tried to be diplomatic. “Well . . . people are different,” she began.

  The girl snorted. “Not that different, they’re not!”

  She leaned in, squinting at Susan’s forehead. “I can’t see the seams of it! Are they under your hair?”

  She raised a hand to check, and despite herself, Susan jerked backward. The girl’s fingers were knobby as a troll’s.

  Max edged up beside Susan, and the girl turned to look at him, too. The small hairs on her face glinted where they caught the sun.

  “What do you mean, seams?” Max asked her.

  She tilted her head and began examining Susan’s neck so closely her hot breath lifted Susan’s hair. For her part, Susan stared at the light coat of hair that continued from the girl’s jaw onto her neck and shoulders. The red straps of her jumper were dark with sweat, and Susan guessed she must wear it every day, because the straps had rubbed a strip of each shoulder bald.

  “Scars!” the girl was telling Max. “There ought to be scars when they do that kind of job on you. It’s not just a regular wax and file.”

  As Susan stood half frozen, letting the girl look her up and down and thinking that people with awful illnesses like this one needed patience and an extra dose of politeness, Max flinched suddenly beside her.

  “Ow!” He slapped Jean’s hand away.

  “Will you quit that? We’re awake!”

  Jean’s head poked from beneath his arm and she shook it — no. Max pushed her face back with the palm of his hand.

  “We are! Now, quit it!”

  The girl looked at them curiously. Her eyes tilted strangely toward her sloping nose.

  “So they’re near here, are they?” She still leaned into Susan’s face. Her breath smelled of plums.

  “Who’s near?” Susan asked, taking a step back. She’d meant it to be discreet, and it would have been if she hadn’t bumped into Nell, who was crowding her, trying to get a closer look.

  “Not who — what. The workshops, I mean.”

  A slight breeze lifted the plum leaves, and Susan took a gulp of humid air. It was strange, but she could no longer hear the girl’s accent. Susan wondered if she’d ever had one, or if that had only been a trick her mind played.

  Nell looked from the girl to Susan. “Workshops?”

  “Uh-huh.” She didn’t explain further. The girl wiped her hands down the front of her jumper, the large pocket in it lumpy with coins that clinked when she moved. “How’d you get loose, anyway?” she asked. “They must be near here, right? People say they’re in the center of the Domain, but maybe the Genius is even cleverer than that. Maybe, after all, they’re out here in the ruins.”

  She said the word Domain like it meant something.

  “Well? I’m right, aren’t I?”

  While Max and Nell had moved in to look, Susan had been steadily inching away, and now she’d stepped completely out of the shade of the plum tree. She could feel the sun baking the top of her head. The girl noticed the grassy space between them and frowned.

  “Well?” she said. “Go on and tell me. I figured it out, didn’t I? Ma always says I’m clever.”

  Susan sighed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The strange girl got instantly stranger. She thrust her head forward and drew back her lips, showing them her teeth.

  “If it’s a secret,” she snarled, “you could just say so.”

  This time, Max and Ne
ll stepped back, too. Jean and Kate had retreated as far as the next orchard row and were clinging to the trunk of a plum tree.

  Just outside the girl’s line of sight, Max put a finger to his head and tapped it. Crazy. That was it. Not just different on the outside, then.

  “Nothing’s a secret,” Susan said carefully. “We just haven’t been to any workshops.”

  Max and Nell shook their heads to back this statement up. The girl looked from one to the next of them, and as quickly as she’d gotten angry, she softened.

  “Oh, my lambs,” she said. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

  A squirrel leaped from the plum tree into the grass and edged toward the full basket. The girl stomped at it, growled, then turned back to them, chewing this thought over, as Susan wondered whether it might be better to run now and find some other kind of help that didn’t involve teeth.

  “I think I have it,” the girl said, unaware of the looks they were giving one another on her account. “That’s part of it, too. They emptied you like an old boot!” She shook her head sorrowfully. “Bet you couldn’t even tell me your own names, could you?”

  Susan’s eyebrows shot up, and a wave of irritation threatened to swamp the pity she’d been feeling for this strange girl. “Well, we’re not quite idiots,” she said, landing somewhere in between the two.

  The girl did not look prepared to take her word for it. She pointed at Jean, still clinging to the plum tree. “You, what do they call you?”

  Startled, Jean looked up at her. “Jean,” she said.

  The girl mouthed the name as if tasting it and wrinkled her nose.

  “That’s a strange one. What about you?” She jabbed a finger at Susan, like a little kid pretending to be the teacher in a game of school.

  “I’m Susan,” Susan told her, feeling impatient. “Nice to meet you. And what do they call you?”

  The girl sniffed. “Liyla. And that’s a city name, for your information. Not like . . . what did you say yours was?”

  “Susan.”

  “Like Susan.” She shook her head. “What kind of useless name is that?”

  Susan’s face burned. There was politeness, and charitable thoughts and there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I and all that, and then there was letting some lunatic insult you.

  “Excuse me?” Susan said to her. “What did you say?”

  The girl drew her lips back and looked at Nell. “How about you? You have a useless name, too?”

  “It’s Nell,” she said. “And who are you calling useless?”

  Liyla slouched back against the plum tree and reached over her head to pull a fruit from a low branch.

  “Well, there’s use for you now, of course,” she conceded, taking a bite of plum with her sharp teeth. “Just look at those faces! I only meant how you were before. You know, Ma always said they only take discards for the workshops. She’ll be glad to know she was right.”

  She extracted the pit from her plum and flicked it away. It arced up a few feet and landed in a pile of moldering fruit beneath the next tree in the row. They all watched her. If the girl’s face had been a shock, her talk was worse. She didn’t seem to have the faintest self-consciousness about it, though, which struck Susan as a sure sign of insanity. She remembered reading once that the truly crazy lived in a state of absolute certainty they were right.

  Liyla jabbed her finger at Max and then at Kate, insisting they repeat their names for her once, then a second time, as she finished the fruit and licked plum juice from her fingers with a startlingly long tongue.

  Then she stopped, her brow furrowing.

  “You said you’re lost, right?”

  They nodded.

  “Is that the kind of lost that’s got the red cloaks after you?”

  Susan thought of the dark shape in the woods.

  “What are red cloaks?” she asked.

  The girl shot her a look. “Now, that is an emptying, isn’t it?” She brushed her shoulder, miming a cloak. “Soldiers, remember?”

  Susan shook her head, and the girl sighed. “Well, can you at least recall how you all met up?”

  “Met up?” Max said. “These are my sisters!”

  It took a second for Susan to recognize the strangled snort that followed as laughter.

  “Not only emptied, but filled back with fluff! Sisters! That’s rich.” She laughed some more. “No, you’re discards; that’s a fact. At least you girls are. Don’t know why anyone would put you out,” she said to Max. “But maybe you were sleepy.”

  She reached up and picked another plum, then sliced off half of it with her sharp teeth and chewed vigorously.

  “Riiiight,” Max said in his I-sometimes-have-to-suffer-fools voice. “Sleepy. So they threw me out.”

  “So you do remember!” the girl crowed. She tossed the half-eaten plum in the air and caught it in a rough hand. “Thought so!”

  Susan had had about enough.

  “Look,” she said. “You mentioned a city, and that’s where we need to go. Could you take us there?”

  The girl cocked her head and grinned.

  “I can, pretty-picture girl!” she said. “Just as soon as I know this place is safe from prying eyes.” She went to the outer wall, hooked a foot into the network of vines, and hoisted herself to the top. They watched her scan the forest before she dropped softly back into the mossy ground of the orchard.

  “Looks clear. You sure you weren’t followed?”

  They shook their heads, and she smiled.

  “Well, then you are lost, and I’ve found you. Isn’t that right?”

  She raised her eyebrows with the look of someone who expected applause. Susan only shrugged.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Good!” Liyla gave a great clap with her gnarled, thick-nailed hands. “Very good. You’ll all come home with me, then, and my ma will fix you up. You’ll be back where you belong in no time.”

  Adult intervention. Exactly what Susan had been hoping for. Finally, Liyla was making sense.

  “Great,” Susan said. “How far is it? We really need to get home.”

  “Not far,” the girl said, settling her basket of plums in the crook of her arm. “Not too far at all. You just stick with me, and I’ll take good care of you.”

  For pity’s sake, when the cry came from the valley, the exile set a bundle of food wrapped in a bright-blue cloth beyond the garden wall, hoping the broken would stumble upon it on their wretched journey. Who else would leave a gift for the lost, the vile, the twice discarded?

  But none had ever come. Too bewildered they were, after paying their terrible price. Unknowing, they fled past the last living thing that offered anything with open hands.

  On this day, the heat thickened and the afternoon sun glared through the trees. Another shattered soul moaned and screamed through the wood, and the exile listened as it crashed toward the garden. The horror of the thing sent the deer and fox scrambling, until the underbrush snapped with their flight.

  When silence descended again, the exile went to the garden wall. This time the gift, at least, was gone. Would it help the wretched one? It had been left hungry for more than food. The thought settled bleakly on the silent wood. To banish it, the exile sought the old words, and found among them an orchard vision.

  Let the dark be done.

  Have I not kindled the light?

  Where stands the dawn?

  Why keeps the night?

  In an age of madness

  Such are the questions of one

  Who casts a shroud across the day

  And blots the sun.

  The exile sat over the verse as the day dwindled and the sun slanted through windows and slipped beneath the door, stirring the glittering dust. The age of madness. A blind year. Eyes long closed had yet seen.

  The hot air was full of peaches and plums and the sound of bees as the children followed Liyla out of the orchard. A bumblebee made its drunken way past her, and she bared her teeth at it, then knocke
d it to the ground with a sharp thwack. For a moment, Susan hesitated, wondering again if it was altogether smart to head into the woods with this girl.

  But there were five of them and one of her, and they needed to find the city and somebody who could help them. So they trooped along behind her, past the ruined house and through a break in the vine-smothered wall. The forest had taken whatever road had once been there, and they were instantly enfolded in the deep shade of it again, skipping over thick roots and thorny vines as they tried to keep up. Susan glanced back and couldn’t see the wall at all. The greeny dark had swallowed it so completely she wondered how Liyla had ever found the place.

  Max sped up to walk beside the girl, and Susan watched Nell quickly follow.

  “So what city is this we’re going to?” Max asked.

  Liyla grinned widely. “Oh, you’re in for a treat. It’s the Domain itself you’ve come to. Exciting, right?”

  Max stared at her blankly, and her smile dissolved.

  “Domain of the Genius! Don’t tell me you can’t remember that!”

  He shook his head and she barked a laugh.

  “Well, if you really don’t remember the capital, then I’d wager your flat new eyes will pop from your head when you see it, you being a savage from the ruins.”

  Both Max and Nell looked like they were going to say something extremely unfriendly. Susan quickly cleared her throat.

  “What’s it the capital of?”

  Liyla swung around.

  “They’ll have to work the kinks out before I get my face turned back, that’s certain. I’d hate to be as empty as you! What a thing that is!” She leaped a humped root and dispersed a cloud of gnats hovering in a sunny spot as she trotted along ahead. “Where do you think you’re standing? Ganbihar!”

  Susan blinked at her, trying to be sure she’d heard right. Liyla only shook her head and mumbled to herself.

  “That’s savages for you. Greatest city on the face of Loam, and all they do is blink.”

  She walked on, and Kate looked up at Susan. “Who’s she talking to?”