Messenger

9

There was much talk in Village about the coming meeting. Matty heard it everywhere, people arguing about the petition.

By now, some of the latest group of new ones were out and about, their sores clearing up, their clothes clean and hair combed, frightened faces eased, and their haunted, desperate attitudes changing to something more serene. Their children played, now, with other children of Village, racing down the lanes and paths in games of tag and hide-and-seek. Watching them, Matty remembered his own child self, his bravado and the terrible anguish it had concealed. He had not believed anyone would want him, ever, until he came to Village, and even then he had not trusted in its kindness for a long time.

With Frolic scampering at his heels, Matty made his way toward the marketplace to buy some bread.

"Good morning!" he called cheerfully to a woman he encountered on the path. She was one of the new ones, and he remembered her from the recent welcome. Her eyes had been wide in her gaunt face that day. She was scarred, as if by untended wounds, and one arm was held crookedly, so that it was awkward for her to do things.

But today she looked relaxed, and was making her unhurried way along the path. She smiled at Matty’s greeting.

"Stop it, Frolic! Down!" Matty scolded his puppy, who had jumped to grab and tug at the frayed edge of the woman’s skirt. Grudgingly Frolic obeyed him.

The woman leaned down to pat Frolic’s head. "It’s all right," she said softly. "I had a dog once. I had to leave him behind." She had a slight accent. Like so many of the people in Village, she had brought her way of speaking from her old place.

"Are you settling in?"

"Yes," she told him. "People are kind. They’re patient with me. I’ve been injured, and I have to relearn some things. It will take time."

"Patience is important here, because we have so many in Village who have difficulties," Matty explained. "My father…"

He paused and corrected himself. "I mean the man I live with. He is called Seer. You’ve probably met him. He’s blind. He strides around everywhere on the paths without a problem. But when he first arrived and had just lost his eyes…"

"I have a concern," the woman said suddenly, and he knew it was not a concern about the condition of the paths or directions to the buildings. He could see that she was worried.

"You can take any concern to Leader."

She shook her head. "Maybe you can answer. It’s about the closing of Village. I hear talk of a petition."

"But you’re already here!" Matty reassured her. "You needn’t worry! You’re part of us now. They won’t send you away, even if they close Village."

"I brought my boy with me. Vladik. He’s about your age. Maybe you’ve noticed him?"

Matty shook his head. He hadn’t noticed the boy. There had been a large crowd of new ones. He wondered why the woman would be worried for her son. Perhaps he was having trouble adjusting to Village. Some new ones did. Matty himself had.

"When I came," he told her, "I was scared. Lonely, too, I think. And I behaved badly. I lied and stole. But look—now I am fine. I’m hoping to get my true name soon."

"No, no. My boy’s a good boy," she said. "He doesn’t lie or steal. And he’s strong and eager. They have him working in the fields already. And soon he’ll go to school."

"Well, then, no need to worry about him."

She shook her head. "No, I don’t worry about him. It’s my others. I brought Vladik but I had to leave my other children behind. We came first, my boy and I, to find the way. It was such a long, hard trip.

"The others are to come later. The little ones. My sister will bring them after I have made a place here."

Her voice faltered. "But now I hear people saying that the border will close. I don’t know what to do. I think maybe I should go back. Leave Vladik here, to make a life, and go back to my little ones."

Matty hesitated. He didn’t know what to say to her. Could she go back? She had been here only briefly, so it was not yet too late. Surely Forest would not entangle the poor woman yet. But if she did, what would she go back to? He didn’t know how the woman had been injured. But he knew that in some places—it had been true, too, in Matty’s old place—people were punished in terrible ways. He glanced at her scars, at her unset broken arm, and wondered if she had been stoned.

Of course she wanted to bring her children to the safety of Village.

"They’ll be voting tomorrow," Matty explained. "You and I can’t vote because we don’t yet have our true names. But we can go and listen to the debate. We can speak if we want. And we can watch the vote."

He told her how to find the platform before which the people would gather. Using her good hand, the woman grasped Matty’s hands with a warm gesture of thanks as she turned away.

At the market stall he bought a loaf of bread from Jean, who tucked a chrysanthemum blossom into the wrapping. She smiled at Frolic and leaned down to let him lick some crumbs from her fingers.

"Are you going to the meeting tomorrow?" he asked her.

"I suppose so. It’s all my father talks about." Jean sighed and began to rearrange her wares on the table.

"Once it was books and poetry," she said with sudden and passionate anguish. "I remember when I was small, after my mother died, he would tell me stories and recite poems at dinner. Then, later, he told me about the people who had written them.

"By the time we studied it in school—you remember, Matty, studying literature?—it was all so familiar to me, because of the way he had taught me when I didn’t even know he was teaching."

Matty remembered. "He used different voices. Remember Lady Macbeth? 'Out, damn’d spot! Out, I say!'" He tried to repeat the lines with the sinister yet regal voice Mentor had used.

Jean laughed. "And Macduff! I cried when my father recited Macduff’s speech about the deaths of his wife and children."

Matty remembered that speech as well. Standing by the bakery stall with Frolic scampering about at their feet, Matty and Jean recited the lines together.

Then Jean turned away. She continued restacking the loaves on her table, but clearly her thoughts were someplace else. Finally she looked up at Matty and said in a puzzled voice, "It was so important to him, and he made it important to me: poetry, and language, and how we use it to remind ourselves of how our lives should be lived…"

Then her tone changed and became embittered. "Now he talks of nothing but Stocktender’s widow, and of closing Village to new ones. What has happened to my father?"

Matty shook his head. He did not know the answer.

The recitation of Macduff’s famous speech had reminded him of the woman he had spoken to on the path, the woman who feared for her lost children’s future. All my pretty ones.

Suddenly he felt that they were all of them doomed.

He had forgotten completely about his own power. He had forgotten the frog.