The Scourge Read online

  Yet, I couldn't eat them, so I merely dropped them onto the ground and held up my palm. "Get it over with," I said.

  Gossel's voice was calm. "The rod was never going to be the punishment. The punishment was ending your friendship." He pointed to the wooden cage high in the tree. "You're going to stay in there until tomorrow, high enough that everyone in the Colony can see what happens to those who defy our rules."

  Other men appeared in the yard, not wardens, but Scourge victims. I could tell because of their common clothing and the medicine flasks hanging from their necks. They untied a rope to lower the cage to the ground, and then one man stuck a key into a lock to open the door. It was the only metal piece of the cage, nothing I'd be able to break, even if I were feeling in perfect health.

  I didn't get to my feet, not yet. And it wasn't because I was afraid to go into the cage--I didn't care about that. It's because I had decided for sure to take another sip of medicine. Not much, I knew I had to preserve it, but enough to take the edge off the pain. So I unscrewed the cap and took a swallow. More than I should have swallowed perhaps, but not nearly all I wanted.

  Once I got the cap on, Gossel reached down and snatched it from my hand. "No medicine while you're in the cage."

  "What if I need it?" I asked.

  "Then it will motivate you into better behavior once you're released." He crouched down beside me. "To survive the Colony, you must be broken. You're a grub, so maybe you think you can outlast me. But I've broken your friendship, and now I will break you, just as we do to everyone else here."

  "I'm not like everyone else." Now I stood and squeezed into the cage, which was even smaller up close than it had seemed while dangling in the air. Then, just to make him angry, I said, "It's a lucky thing that nobody will feed me. One meal, and I might not have fit so comfortably."

  He said, "If withholding meals makes you comfortable, I'm sure we can arrange to make your stay in the Colony very comfortable indeed."

  "It's pinchworm food anyway," I said. "No taste to it."

  Then the door shut in my face, and the men began hoisting my cage into the air. Other than being cramped inside, it wasn't the worst punishment. The tree gave me some shade, and the cool breeze was a welcome relief from the heat. It wouldn't be pleasant, but I could endure this.

  Once I was in place, I became aware of the Scourge patients wandering the Colony, turning their eyes to me. Likely, word was already spreading throughout the camp about what I had done to Della. Hopefully, at least a few of those words were the truth about what had happened. If not, being in this cage was probably the best treatment I'd get here.

  "Be good, and you'll be out by tomorrow," Gossel said.

  Of course I'd be good. What other choice did I have? My mind was already swirling with possibilities. The knife was still in my boot, for example. If I cut the rope ...

  No, that was incredibly foolish. If I cut the rope, then the cage would fall.

  "Where's my medicine?" I asked.

  He draped the rope across a low-hanging branch. "Here, waiting for you. Try not to get any sicker."

  Then he and the other men walked away, leaving me suspended in the aerial cage. I leaned my head against a thick wood bar and let the medicine work inside me. I wasn't sure how long it would last, but I figured if I remained calm, that would preserve its effects for a while longer.

  Slowly, the pain eased, leaving me with only regret for what had happened with Weevil. Even after I'd hurt him, he still tried to take my punishment, and I knew his offer had been sincere.

  I scanned the Colony for any sign of him. Had he gone inside the old prison to find a room? Had he gone to the beach to stare at the shoreline of Keldan, regretting his decision to come here with me? Well, of course he'd be regretting that right now. I just wondered where he was while he was regretting it.

  Not here, that was certain. He wasn't here, beside me, making jokes, telling me everything would be all right, assuring me that I could fight this disease, just as I had fought everything else.

  He wasn't here, so I would have to comfort myself. But no matter how I tried, I could never believe my own lies.

  I'd always liked having Weevil for a friend. Indeed, he was one of the few people who seemed to understand me for the person I really was deep down.

  Yes, I'd always liked Weevil for a friend. But now, I realized, I needed his friendship too. Only I realized that one conversation too late.

  For the most part, I didn't mind the afternoon and evening in the cage. Yes, I was cramped and desperately needed to stretch my legs. The gnawing hunger within me was worse than ever, and I had yet to see Weevil anywhere. Thanks to the medicine, I was managing the pain all right, though it didn't take it away as well as it had done in Doctor Cresh's office.

  I didn't care about the stares from the people on the ground, or at least I didn't mind the more sympathetic glances my way. I ignored the rest, and figured this was a rare opportunity to see the Colony from an angle few people ever would.

  Unfortunately, I wasn't high enough to see past what I was calling the Colony's square, the main gathering area in front of the prison. Everyone seemed to pass through the square at one time or another, bustling about at whatever task they had been assigned. As the warden suggested, every Scourge victim did their part for the Colony. Many people worked in a large garden to the east, and several others seemed to be preparing food for the next meal, served under a wide tent. Six or seven men in an upper corner of the Colony were working behind a fence, walking a treadmill while other men fed wheat grains into the grinder below them to be ground into flour.

  The treadmill caught my attention for some time. It was an incredible waste of energy. In the very same area, a river was flowing. Its current looked reasonably strong--I could see that from here. If they widened it enough for the entire treadmill to sit inside the water, the current would do most of the work in rotating the mill. That's how we did things in the river country.

  Instead, they were using the far weaker human strength. The treadmill was a long, round tube with steps on all sides. As the men climbed it, the treadmill turned downward, forcing the men to step up again and again, like a never-ending stairway. Their work ground up the grains that had been fed inside the tube, but there were so many better ways to accomplish that. These were sick men, diseased men. It was wrong to make them do such difficult work, just to grind wheat.

  Before long, I turned away. The wheat reminded me of Weevil.

  As evening fell, I saw something that struck me as interesting. With the sound of a ringing bell from the food tent, most people headed that way. But not everyone. Some people disappeared behind the prison and never returned to eat. That made no sense to me. I probably wouldn't have even noticed their disappearance if I had been on the ground. But here, it was a curious thing. Maybe the Scourge left people without an appetite.

  I frowned at that, wondering exactly how sick Weevil would have to get before he wasn't hungry anymore. As far as I could tell, he didn't go to the food tent either. It bothered me that he had disappeared so completely. Was he already sick too?

  If that wasn't bad enough, I heard a caw to my left and saw a hecklebird headed straight for me. Miserable creatures--they were on this island too? I wanted to reach for my knife, but if I could see so many people, then all those people could see me as well, and this wasn't the moment when I wanted my knife revealed. So I hissed at the bird that pecked back at me, for no reason other than that I was there. If only the wooden bars of this cage were wider apart, I could reach through them and strangle that thing.

  I finally shooed it away and, in doing so, rotated my cage to the opposite direction, with my back toward the Colony. I liked it better this way, where I didn't have to look at the passersby staring up at me. I didn't want either their sympathy or their judgment.

  When I turned, I saw another building to the south that was more curious than anything else. It was only a single story tall but wide and unfriendly looking. Not
hing decorated the building, or softened its sharp, square corners. The river that had meandered around the treadmill came near one corner of the building, though it was narrower there. As I watched, a warden escorted a middle-aged man inside. The man was holding his side as if in pain and didn't look particularly happy about going to the building. Minutes later, only the warden went out. Perhaps the building was a sort of resting place for the sickest ones or those closest to death.

  I was so intent on studying the building that I failed to notice someone had entered the fenced yard beneath me. I might not have noticed, in fact, if the intruder had not tripped in the lower light of evening.

  At first I couldn't see who it was because the cage didn't allow me to change positions enough to look down. But I recognized the voice immediately.

  "This is your own fault, you know." It was Della, come to gloat. "You could have avoided all this trouble."

  "Are you sure of that?" I called to her. "Because I tried my best to avoid you, and it didn't work."

  Her voice rose in pitch. "The problem with grubs is you don't know your place. Well, now you do."

  "Has your father come for you yet?" I asked. "Didn't you say he'd be here to get you? Or what about your friend Jonas? Is he still here? Maybe he heard you were coming and dove into the sea to escape you."

  There was a long pause, so I knew I'd hit a nerve. Finally, she said, "This is only our first day here. I'll find Jonas soon. And my father will probably come tomorrow."

  If her father came, it'd only be after he also tested positive for the Scourge. I had a feeling that the governor would love any excuse to send Sir Willoughby away from Keldan. Besides, if Della had the disease, her father probably did too.

  Which led me to another thought, of whether I should expect to see my family here soon. If Della could spread it to her family, then I could've spread it to mine. And if they pulled in my family, then the wardens would start to look at who my parents had associated with over the last few weeks, and bring them in as well. Della had already warned of this. My name would become known as the girl who destroyed the River People. As the one who did far more damage to them than the governor and her wardens ever could.

  "Did you come here expecting that I would apologize?" I asked. "If so, then I'm glad because I do need to tell you how sorry I am. I'm sorry I tried to help you the other night. I'm sorry you got back in our boat after I dumped you out of it. And I'm sorry you came all this way to see me, because it was for nothing."

  She chuckled. "I wouldn't forgive you, even if you gave me a real apology. Because if I forgave you, then I'd feel bad about getting my revenge."

  "More revenge?" I asked. "I'm already in this cage, so if I deserved any punishment, I'm getting it. And what happened was your fault anyway."

  "As you say, the wardens are already punishing you for dumping me into the water. But you do need to learn some respect for who I am."

  "Really?" I said. "Because I think I understand you far too well."

  "I have a special status in Keldan. My father is--"

  "We're not in Keldan anymore. We're in the Scourge Colony. And here, you are alone, just like me. You have a terrible disease, just like me. And this disease will probably kill you."

  "Just like you?" she asked.

  I smiled down at her. "No, that won't be at all like me. I intend to recover."

  "Nobody recovers from the Scourge."

  "What if it's true, that my people started the Scourge three hundred years ago? We didn't die from it then, and we won't die from it now!"

  "It's a different disease now," Della said. "My father told me that the symptoms are so much worse than what are in the old records. And you have no medicine this time."

  "Yes, I do."

  Or did I? Suddenly, I understood why Della had come.

  I twisted around enough to look down and saw her pouring the medicine out of my flask and into another flask. She must've stolen it, because hers was somewhere in the not-so-shallow part of the Scuttle Sea.

  "Where'd you get that flask, Della?"

  She shrugged indifferently. "An old woman in the room next to mine is getting very sick. It's only a matter of time. I took her flask before someone else did."

  "Was there any medicine in it?"

  "A little, but I need more."

  "There's a shortage! You should save as much as you can."

  "There's no shortage for me, not anymore."

  By then, she had finished emptying my flask and sealed up the container, letting it fall back against the tree. She took a swallow of her flask--filled with my medicine--making sure I saw it.

  "I'll stop the pain before it comes back," she said. "That'll keep my body strong enough to fight off this disease."

  I grabbed the bars of the cage, wishing I had enough strength to break them. "That medicine is mine!"

  "It would've remained yours too, if my medicine wasn't fish food right now." With that, she skipped out of the yard below me. Literally skipped, as if she didn't have a care in the world.

  I wished I could say the same. Because with the knowledge that I no longer had any medicine to fight off this disease, the pain in my gut suddenly returned. Worse than ever.

  The Colonists had long settled in for the night before I fell asleep. I'd learned from watching the people that a curfew was strictly enforced, though the wardens didn't need to be strict. The people worked hard all day--very hard--and seemed almost grateful to be ordered into the prison for a night's rest.

  As I drifted off, I wondered what awaited them inside the old prison. It couldn't be anything that nice, certainly not the place of peace the governor had assured us of in her many speeches.

  In those speeches, she never mentioned that the sick were shoved into the water, without care for who could swim or who was too ill to get themselves into a boat. She never discussed Scourge victims having to labor for their own welfare or being punished by hanging them in a wooden cage for public scorn. When she described the shepherds who offered love to the victims, she might've forgotten that church volunteers didn't carry pistols and wear the cocked hats of the wardens. Somehow, between praising herself for her compassion and expressing love for everyone in Keldan but the River People, she'd left all those things out.

  Those were the last thoughts in my head as I fell asleep that night. It had been too warm in the day, but now, without the sun, the sea breeze sent a chill right through me. I'd even sneezed a couple of times and smiled at the irony that I'd probably catch my death of the cold before the Scourge got me.

  At first, I thought the sounds I heard next were only part of my dreams, so it took a while to pull my senses together. Everything around me had become very dark, though thanks to the stars, it didn't take long for my eyes to adjust. I was glad to see the stars. It meant there'd be no rain tonight, which was a possibility I had dreaded.

  But there--the sounds came again. The groan of a branch beneath someone's weight. I was not alone in this tree!

  That worried me. If anyone released the knot for this cage, I'd go crashing to the ground with no way to slow the fall. Maybe Della had returned, this time with a far deadlier revenge than simply stealing my medicine. I couldn't imagine she was capable of that, but someone had their reasons for coming up here.

  I felt for the knife hidden inside my boot, but was too cramped now to get it out. If I had been smart, I'd have found a way to get it out earlier. Of course, I couldn't have predicted someone would break curfew to climb a tree in total darkness to rob a person who had nothing to her name.

  While I struggled to get the knife out of my boot, I also faced the problem of the sea breeze that, with occasional gusts, rotated my cage. It was doing that now, sending me slowly spinning to my right, and then the rope correcting itself to spin to the left. I was already dizzy and now unable to get a fix on whoever was climbing this tree.

  I closed my eyes to let the dizziness melt away, then opened them and saw a face staring back at me. My first instinct w
as to scream. The face came closer, revealing Weevil's bright eyes, glowing in the starlight.

  "Shh," he said, pressing a finger to his lips.

  Suppressing a squeal of happiness, I clutched at the bars. "What are you doing here?"

  "I just happened to be in the area."

  "But I thought ... the wheat ..."

  He sighed. "You kept my family from starvation, Ani. If that makes you a terrible friend, then you must promise to continue being terrible."

  "What good are any promises after I lied to you? I promised never to share our food with you, and began ignoring that promise the very next night."

  The corner of his mouth turned up. "Well, that's a relief! Had you broken your promise the same night, that would be unforgiveable. It's a good thing you waited a whole day."

  "I'm serious, Weevil!"

  "So am I." Now his eyes met mine. "You said it yourself. Sometimes friendship is doing what's right for a person, even if it's not what they want." He grabbed the bars to keep my cage from rotating away from him. "Earlier today, I began thinking about a time eight or nine months ago when we were fishing. There was something you wanted to tell me. Was this it?"

  I nodded. That day was perfectly clear in my memories. "I started to tell you about the wheat, but then you interrupted with a story about a woman upriver who had brought your mother a meat pie and how that upset you. That was only one meat pie, Weevil, just given as neighborly kindness. I knew how angry you'd be if I finished my story."

  "I would've been angry--that's true."

  "I tried to tell you other times too. I did try."

  "I know, and I'm sorry for being so stupid at times. I owe you more than I can ever repay."

  "You owe me nothing. When you get the Scourge, it'll be my fault. That's much worse."

  "But I don't have it yet, so until then, you're the better friend." His brows pressed together. "I know the warden never used the rod. But how are you feeling?"