Scarecrow

Liam was strange for three days.

It took me two of them to notice, which tells you something about how strange Liam was the rest of the time. He talked. He always talked. At breakfast, at laps, on the beam, in the barracks in the dark. That didn’t change. What changed was that every so often, in the middle of talking, he’d stop. Just for a second. And look at me. And then start again, about something completely different, as if he’d lost the thread and picked up somebody else’s.

On the beam, on Monday, he stopped in the middle of a story about Pip and the dog and a pound of butter, and looked at me over the top of the steel for so long that Toby nearly dropped his end.

At lunch, on Tuesday, he watched Seraphina sit down across from me at the Calders’ table, and push the salt toward me without being asked, and he put his fork down, and picked it up again, and put it down.

And on Wednesday night, in the barracks, in the dark, he didn’t talk at all.

That was when I knew.

He found me at the gym on Thursday. At four in the morning.

Liam Calder had never been awake at four in the morning in his life. Not voluntarily. Not once, in five months. Toby had once tried to wake him at half past five for an early drill and been hit in the face with a pillow so hard he’d sat down.

But at four in the morning on Thursday, when I came round the corner into the gym, Liam was already there. Sitting on the stack of mats against the wall, in his sleeping clothes, with his hair standing up on one side and his arms folded and his face a color I’d never seen it go before. Not red. Not white. A sort of determined pink.

”Morning,” he said.

”It’s four.”

”I know what time it is.” He didn’t move. ”I’ve been here since half three. It’s very boring. I don’t know how you do it.” He looked round the gym. At the rubber floor. The heavy bags on their chains. The one lamp. ”Where’s Friese? The girl one.”

”She doesn’t come anymore.”

”Huh.” Liam looked at the empty floor for a moment. Then back at me. ”Sit down.”

I sat down. On the floor. In front of the mats. Liam stayed where he was, above me, with his arms folded.

He didn’t say anything for a while.

That was the second-strangest thing I’d ever seen Liam do. The first was the night he cried in the locker room. This was close.

”Right,” said Liam finally. ”Right. So.” He unfolded his arms. Folded them again. ”There’s a rule.”

”A rule.”

”In our family. A Calder rule. Dad told me it when I was seven. His dad told him. It’s old. It’s from before the war. It’s from before the program.” He looked at the floor. ”It’s not written down. It’s just. Said. Once. To the person who needs to hear it.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Calders burn hot,” said Liam. ”That’s the first part. All of us. Not just the fire. Everything. When we’re angry, we’re very angry. When we’re sad, we’re very sad. When we—” He stopped. Went pinker. ”When we care about something. We burn for it. All the way. Mum walked eleven kilometers through the snow with me on her back, burning, and nearly died of it. Dad works the furnaces fourteen hours a day so Pip can have shoes. Sera—” He stopped again.

”I know.”

”You don’t know. You’ve known her five months. I’ve known her my whole life.” His voice went very serious. ”Sera burns hotter than any of us. That’s why she’s like she is. Cold on the outside. All chin. Because if she let any of it out, she’d set the whole room alight. Cormac was the same. And she watched what happened to Cormac.” He looked at me. ”So she doesn’t let anything out. Not to anyone. Not since she was ten.”

I didn’t say anything.

”And then,” said Liam, ”she comes back from a drain at five in the morning, soaked to the bone, after four hours with you. And she sits down at breakfast. And she puts her hand on the table next to yours.” He breathed in through his nose. ”And it was warm, Lucas. I saw. Her hand. It was warm. She doesn’t do warm. She does cold or she does burning. She doesn’t do warm.”

”That’s the second part,” said Liam.

He uncrossed his arms. And held up one hand, palm up, between us. And above it, small, the air caught. A flame. Not from a lighter. From nothing. The way it had in the locker room, the night of Brock. Small and white-orange and steady, sitting in the middle of his palm like a coin.

”If you hurt her,” said Liam Calder, ”I’ll set you on fire.”

He said it very simply. Not loud. Not angry. The way you’d say it’s raining.

”I’ve never set a person on fire,” he said. ”On purpose. Not once. Except Brock’s sleeve. Not even in the locker room, when I wanted to more than I’ve ever wanted anything.” The flame in his hand didn’t move. ”But I’d make an exception. For that. That’s the rule. Dad said it to Mum’s brother, about Mum. And Mum’s brother said it to Dad, about Mum. And they both meant it. Every word.” He looked at me over the flame. ”I mean it too.”

I looked at the flame. At his face behind it. Pink. Determined. Very, very serious. Seven years old, being told the rule by his father. Fifteen now, telling it to me, in a gym, at four in the morning, in his sleeping clothes.

”I know you do,” I said.

”Good.”

”Liam.”

”What?”

”We’re not—” I didn’t know how to finish it. ”It’s not—”

”I know you’re not,” said Liam. ”Yet. Or ever. Or whatever.” He closed his hand. The flame went out. ”I’m not stupid. Everyone thinks I am, because I talk. I talk so nobody notices me watching.” He looked at me. ”I’ve watched you for five months. You don’t know what you are with anyone. Not with her. Not with Windsor. Not with the Friese girl who’s not allowed to talk to you but leaves cups by the fern.” He shook his head slowly. ”You’re a mess, Dask. You’re the most dangerous person in the program and you’re a complete mess.”

I didn’t argue. I couldn’t.

”That’s fine,” said Liam. ”That’s allowed. You’re seventeen. Everyone’s a mess at seventeen. Mum says so.” He slid down off the mats and stood up. ”But whatever it turns out to be, with her, or with nobody, or with anybody. The rule holds.” He looked down at me. ”If you hurt her. Fire.”

”I won’t hurt her.”

”I know,” said Liam. ”I just had to say it. It’s the rule.”

He was at the door of the gym when he turned round.

”Oh,” he said. ”And Mum wants to know if you’ll come to dinner on Saturday.”

I stared at him.

”She’s asked four times,” said Liam. ”Since the drain. She heard about it. Sera told her. Sera told her, Lucas. Sera doesn’t tell Mum anything.” He shrugged. ”So Mum wants you to come. Toby too, she says, because she liked him on families’ day and he’s too thin. You can use your pass. You’ve got a pass this month. I checked.”

”Liam—”

”There’ll be potatoes,” said Liam. ”And Pip. And the dog. Pip’s been asking about you since the last time. She wants to sit on you again.” He paused. ”Sera’ll be there.”

He waited.

I looked at him. At his hair, standing up on one side. At his pink face. At Liam Calder, who’d just threatened to set me on fire, standing in the doorway of a gym at four in the morning inviting me to dinner.

”I’d like that,” I said.

”Good,” said Liam. ”Great. Brilliant.” He turned to go. Turned back again. ”And Lucas?”

”What?”

”If you don’t hurt her,” said Liam, very seriously, ”you can have seconds.”

He went.

I sat on the rubber floor of the empty gym for a long time after, not watching for anything.

Then I laughed. Out loud. On my own. In the dark.

It was the first time I’d laughed since the corridor.

Hearth Block was the same as before. The narrow corridor on the thirty-first floor with its worn red carpet. The doors close together, with noise behind every one. The third on the left.

”Brace,” said Liam.

He opened it.

The noise came out to meet us. Maura, at a run, from the kitchen, with flour on her arms. Rory, rising from the too-big table like a hill getting up. Pip, a blur of red curls, aimed at Liam’s knees, and then, at the last second, changing course and aiming at mine. The dog, barking at everyone, wagging at everyone, and sitting down on my feet.

”Lucas,” said Pip, from round my knees. ”You came back.”

”I came back.”

”You’ve got glasses.”

”They’re called dusk.”

Pip considered this with the full force of her seven years.

”I like them,” she said. ”You look like an owl.”

”Pip,” said Maura. And then she was in front of me, reaching up, a long way, with both her floury hands, and pulling my face down. And looking. Closely. The way she had the first time. At my chin. At the line through my left eyebrow. At the smoked lenses.

She didn’t say anything about the lenses.

But her hands, on my face, were shaking.

Not much. Just a little. A fine fast tremor, in the fingers, that I could feel on my cheeks. More than last time. And she knew I could feel it, and she let go, quickly, and turned round, and shouted at the kitchen, ”Rory! The potatoes!” in exactly the same voice as before.

But it wasn’t exactly the same. Not quite.

Dinner was loud. It always would be.

Nine of us at a table for six, and Toby, which made ten, which Maura said was a good number, because it meant someone had to sit on someone. Toby sat on nobody. He sat at the corner between Rory and Roan, very straight, and very red, while Rory asked him enormous serious questions about sound and furnaces and whether a wall of noise could be used to shut a flue, and listened to every answer as if Toby were the foreman.

Pip sat on my knee and ate my potatoes.

And Seraphina sat next to me.

Not at the far corner, this time. Not beside her mother. Next to me, on my left, with her elbow almost touching mine, and her chin up, and her face perfectly ordinary, as if that was where she always sat. As if she’d never sat anywhere else.

Nobody at the table said anything about it.

Everybody at the table noticed.

Maura noticed from the kitchen door, with a dish in her hands, and stopped, and looked, and then went on into the room with an expression of tremendous innocence. Rory noticed, and looked at Liam, and Liam looked at the ceiling. Roan and Bree’s mother noticed, and opened her mouth, and Maura stood on her foot.

And Seraphina ate her dinner. And argued with Roan about the heat plant. And said fine when her father asked if the training was too much. And once, when Pip knocked my water over, reached across without looking and set the cup upright again and put her napkin on the spill.

Her hand was warm. I felt it go past.

After dinner, Maura asked me to help her with the dishes.

Nobody else was allowed. Not Liam, who offered. Not Seraphina, who didn’t. The guest helps, said Maura. That’s the rule in this house. The guest helps, and the guest gets the good tea towel. And she gave me a tea towel with a faded picture of a lighthouse on it, and took me into the kitchen you could touch both walls of, and shut the door.

The noise from the big room came through it, muffled. Rory singing. Pip singing worse. Somebody banging the table.

Maura filled the sink. She washed. I dried. For a while she didn’t say anything.

Then she put a plate down in the water, and held her hands out over the sink, and let me see them.

They were shaking. Properly, now. Both of them. Not just the fingers. The whole hand, from the wrist, fast and fine and steady, like a leaf in a wind.

”It’s worse,” she said. ”Sera told you. Last time. She tells me everything she tells you. That’s how I know she likes you, by the way. She never used to tell me anything.” She looked at her hands. ”It’s worse in the evenings now. Not just the mornings.”

”I’m sorry.”

”Don’t be sorry, love. I’ve had worse.” She almost smiled. ”Sera says you’ve been reading. About nerves. Every night. With the Windsor girl.” She held her hands a little closer to me, over the steaming water. ”Will you look?”

I didn’t answer straight away.

”Properly,” said Maura. ”Inside. I’m asking. That’s the difference, isn’t it? Sera said you’re very particular about the asking.”

”Yes.”

”Then I’m asking.”

I looked.

Not all the way down. Just the hands. Just the wires. The way Risa had taught me. Loosely, first. A field at dusk.

And the wires were shaking. Of course they were. The long bright nerves running down her forearms into her fingers, sparking all the time, the way Risa’s had after the lightning. But not ragged. Not damaged, the way Risa’s had been. Regular. Steady. Like a clock ticking too fast.

I went a little closer.

And there, along the outside of every nerve, in the thin pale sheath that wraps round them the way insulation wraps round a wire, there was something that shouldn’t have been there.

Grains.

Tiny. So tiny I’d never have seen them a month ago. Before the headaches. Before I started seeing smaller. But I could see them now. Little hard bright grains, packed into the pale sheath, all along the nerve. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Not cells. Not anything the body made. Something that had come in from outside, and stayed, and built up, the way scale builds up in a kettle.

Silver.

I came up out of her hands.

”What is it?” said Maura. ”Love. You’ve gone white.”

”The stabilizer,” I said. ”What is it? What’s in it?”

Maura looked at me.

”I don’t know,” she said. ”Nobody does. Silver stuff. In a little glass bottle. One spoonful, first of every month. The doctors give it out at the clinic on forty. Have done since the Act.” She was very still. ”Everyone in the Retention families takes it. All thirty-one. Every month. Since the first winter. It keeps the fire down. Keeps us from burning out.” She looked at her hands. ”Why?”

I didn’t know what to say.

I could see it. All along the sheath of every nerve in her hands. Packed in. Built up. Fifteen years of first-of-the-month spoonfuls, that the body didn’t know how to get rid of, sitting in the insulation round the wires.

And the wires shaking.

”I don’t know,” I said. ”I don’t know enough yet. I don’t know if it’s—” I stopped. ”There’s something in the nerves. Little grains. Silver. Along the outside. Lots of them.”

Maura didn’t say anything for a long time. The water steamed in the sink.

”From the stabilizer,” she said.

”I think so. I don’t know. I’d have to—” I didn’t know what I’d have to. ”I don’t know enough.”

Maura looked at her hands, shaking over the water. Then at me. And her face was very calm. Calmer than I’d ever seen it.

”But you will,” she said.

”I’ll try.”

”You will,” said Maura Calder. And put her shaking hands back in the water, and went on washing. ”Dry, love. That plate’s not going to dry itself.”

Seraphina walked me to the lift.

Liam and Toby had gone ahead, down the corridor, Liam talking, Toby laughing at something. The worn red carpet. The doors close together, with noise behind every one. Seraphina walked beside me with her arms folded and her chin up, not saying anything, all the way to the end.

The lift doors opened. She didn’t get in.

”Liam told you,” she said. ”The rule.”

”Yes.”

”He tells everyone.” She paused. ”That’s a lie. He’s never told anyone. He told me he was going to. Last week. He asked me if I minded.” She looked at the lift doors. ”I said I’d set him on fire.”

”What did he say?”

”He said that’s the spirit.” She almost smiled. Almost. ”What did Mum want? In the kitchen.”

I didn’t answer straight away.

”She asked me to look,” I said. ”At her hands.”

Seraphina went very still.

”And?”

I thought about the grains. Silver, packed into the sheaths. Fifteen years of spoonfuls. Thirty-one families, every month. Since the first winter.

I thought about Toby’s father, who’d taken his first dose and gone to sleep.

”I don’t know yet,” I said. ”Something. Something that shouldn’t be there. I don’t know what it means.” I looked at her. ”I’ll know. I’m going to find out.”

Seraphina looked at me for a long time, in the doorway of the lift on the thirty-first floor of Hearth Block, with the furnaces humming somewhere far below us, very faintly, like a house breathing.

Then she put her hand on my arm. Just for a moment. Warm.

”Don’t tell Liam,” she said. ”Not till you know.”

”I won’t.”

”And Dask.”

”What?”

”I’d set him on fire,” said Seraphina Calder, ”if he hurt you.” She took her hand back. ”Just so you know. It goes both ways.”

The doors closed.

Day 156. Hearth Block.

The Calder rule. If you hurt her, fire. It goes both ways. Liam said. Then Sera said.

Maura’s hands. Worse. Evenings now.

Silver grains in the sheath of every nerve. Packed in. Built up.

The stabilizer. One spoon, first of every month, for fifteen years. Thirty-one families.

Toby’s father: first dose.

And at the back, on the list, the newest line:

7. What’s in the stabilizer.

And under it, smaller, because I couldn’t not write it:

What’s in Mother’s vials?