Book Three of the Travelers (6 page)

T
he next morning Siry brought three boiled eggs and some fruit to the Flighter girl.

Kemo was standing at his usual post. “Hey, Siry!” Kemo said. “I can't believe it.”

“You can't believe what?”

“That animal. She actually used the soap you brought her. Put on those clothes, too. Amazing. You'd almost think she was human.”

“Maybe she is,” Siry said.

He went inside and pushed the food through the bars. Then he looked up. His eyes widened. The girl was wearing the clothes. And now that she was cleaned up? She was actually really pretty!

The girl ignored him. She just picked up the food and shoveled it in her mouth, dribbling bits of egg all over the floor.

“Still working on those manners, though?” he said.

She finished the food, then flopped down on the little cot in the corner, apparently ignoring him.

“What's it like out there?” he said. “I wish you
could tell me.” He sat down in the chair on the other side of the bars from her. “You can't imagine how quiet it is here in Rayne. I just can't help feeling that there's more to life than
this
.” He spread his hands. “Nice little town. Nice people. Nice school. Nice food. Nice weather. Everything's nice. But there's got to be something more. I bet you could tell me a lot. I mean, if you could just talk.”

The girl belched.

Siry started babbling, talking about all the things that had been going through his head lately. All the questions he had about the world. All the fears and anxieties he had. All the feelings that he'd been keeping bottled up, that he'd tried telling his friends about. But no one had understood. All his friends had stared at him as if he were crazy when he started talking about sea trash, and where it came from.

“Sea trash,” he said. “It just keeps coming back to sea trash. What is it? Where does it come from?” He took out a bag and spread it on the floor, showing her the bits of rusted metal, the hard clear material, the unnaturally flat and regular pieces of wood—and his biggest treasure, the flexible blue fragment with the writing on it.

Finally he put all his treasures back in the bag.

“I guess I must not make any sense to you,” he said. “I talk and talk, and you have no idea what I'm saying.”

He put the bag back on his belt.

“They're going to put you on trial tomorrow,” he said. “And when they do? They'll execute you.”

The girl sat up and walked toward him, her green eyes pinned on him. She grabbed the bars, her fingers
almost touching his. Yesterday she had smelled horrible. Now she smelled soapy and clean.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but they're going to kill you.”

Suddenly she reached though the bars and grabbed his arm. For a moment he was sure she was about to bite him or scratch him or stick her fingers in his eyes.

But instead she leaned close to him.

Then she spoke—a hoarse, uncertain whisper.

“Help. Me.”

S
iry blinked, then flushed. If she could talk, then had she understood everything he'd said? All his complaining about Rayne must have seemed so childish. His life was far easier than life was for the Flighters, starving away off in the jungles on the far side of the island, or wherever they came from.

“You can
talk
?” he said.

She glared at him.

“But—everybody says—”

She looked out the window. “Help me.” It seemed as though the words didn't come easily.

“Well…what do you want?”

“Do not.” She looked at the floor. “Do not let them kill me.”

“The tribunal.”

She shrugged, pointed at the guards.

“Do you understand what's happening here?” he said. “You'll be tried in front of the tribunal. It's a group of important—look, if they find you guilty, they'll execute you.”

She grabbed his collar and pulled him close to the bars. Her eyes were only inches from his. “Rena!” she hissed.

“Huh?”

“Rena.” She tapped her own chest. “Me. Rena.”

“Oh!” he said. “That's your name.”

She nodded. “Me. Save.”

Their faces were only inches apart. At first he'd been interested in her because she represented something to him—everything that was…
out there
. Everything that was not Rayne. But now? Now she seemed different. She wasn't just an idea. She was a person. Maybe not like everybody in Rayne. But still.

“I'll try,” he said.

She let go of his collar.

 

Siry found his father at the building where the tribunal met. “So this trial…,” Siry said. “When does it happen?”

“First thing tomorrow morning,” Jen Remudi said.

“What do you think is going to happen?” Siry asked.

“We'll present the facts. If the facts indicate that she was a raider who came here to break our laws and do us harm—” Siry's father shrugged.

“Who's going to defend her?”

“We'll pick a former member of the tribunal.”

“Annik Neelow? She
hates
Flighters.”

“We haven't decided. There are several other people who used to be on the tribunal.”

“Yeah, and most of them are so old they can barely—”

“Look,” his father interrupted, “we have a process. That's what separates us from the Flighters. It may not be perfect, but it's what we have.”

Siry came to a decision on the spot. “I want to represent her.”

Jen Remudi looked at his son for a long time. “Son, you're fourteen. You have no experience before the tribunal.”

“Yeah, but I actually care if she lives or dies!” Siry said. It came out sounding a little more emotional than he wanted it to.

“Ah…,” Jen said, his eyes softening. He stroked his jaw thoughtfully. “Look, I don't really know how to say this. But you can't get your hopes up. You can't get involved with this girl.”

“Involved?” Siry said angrily. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I'm just saying—”

“There's more to her than meets the eye.”

“You're always saying that, Siry,” his father said. “I'm not saying you're always wrong. But you're not always right, either. Sometimes things are
exactly
what they seem to be.”

Siry fixed his eyes on his father, challenging him. “And sometimes they're not.”

Jen Remudi looked away. “I'll think about it,” he said finally. “You're a smart kid. And I know you'll do everything you can. But I'm not making any promises.”

 

After his conversation with his father, Siry went to the beach. Several of his friends—Loque, Twig, and some
others—were already there, swimming in the surf.

“Hey!” Twig called. “Heard you've been over to see that girl we captured.”

Nellah, a blond girl about a year older than Siry, said, “They're gonna execute her, you know. I don't see why you're wasting your time.”

“We'll see,” Siry said.

Nellah's eyes narrowed. “Those animals were here to kill us!” she shouted. “Last week May Lonati was gathering fruit outside the village. One of them hit her with a rock and stole all her fruit. If a guard hadn't happened to show up, the Flighters would have killed her.”

“You don't know that.”

“Come on! Don't be stupid.” She turned and looked at Siry's friends. “I mean we all know what's going on here, don't we?”

Everyone nodded.

“Siry,” said Loque, “I know you mean well. But Flighters are not like us. They'd destroy our whole way of life just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And they wouldn't even care.”

Siry's jaw worked. “So you don't even think we should defend them in front of the tribunal.”

Loque looked thoughtful.

Before he could speak, though, one of the other kids said, “Let's be serious. The tribunal is a formality. We all know what has to be done here.”

Siry looked around the circle. “You're saying if I go in there and defend her, no matter what I say…”

Everyone looked at him without speaking.

Finally Twig shrugged. “Forget her, Siry.” She kicked
something that had just rolled in on a wave, a flash of something white in the sand. The white thing flew through the air and disappeared into the boiling surf. “Sea trash. It rolls in, it rolls out. You can't be thinking about it all the time.”

Siry shook his head. “This isn't right.”

Everybody looked at him for a minute. Then Twig splashed Nellah, and Nellah splashed Loque, and the next thing Siry knew, all of the kids were swimming around and laughing.

Siry watched them silently. Sometimes he got the feeling that this group could be more than just a bunch of kids goofing around. There was something they could do—together—that would be important and meaningful. But he just couldn't get a handle on what it was.

He started to make an argument about why the Flighter girl should be saved. But as he watched his friends splashing aimlessly in the water, he knew it was pointless. Now wasn't the right time for…whatever it was that was building in his mind.

As he thought about what he could do to save the Flighter girl, it struck him that these were his friends, people who actually listened to him (most of the time anyway!). If his friends were this quick to ignore him and to write off the girl, then he could just imagine what everybody else in Rayne would be like.

 

When Siry got home that night, his father stood in the front door, his face tight with anger.

“Did you do it?” he said. He didn't raise his voice. Which was always a bad sign.

“Do what?”

“You know exactly what I'm talking about.” Jen Remudi had a piece of bright-colored cloth in his hand, which he shook in Siry's face.

“I don't!”

“I found this on the floor next to the box where your mother's clothes are stored.”

Siry said nothing.

“You gave your mother's clothes to that…that…that…” He couldn't seem to find a word bad enough to call the Flighter girl.

“Rena,” Siry said. “Her name is Rena.”

“Her people
killed
your mother!” Jen said. “I'm ashamed of you.”

Siry faced his father. “Rena was a child when that happened. It's not her fault!”

His father was literally trembling with anger. “I can't even talk to you,” he said. “I'm afraid of what I might say.”

He stomped off into the house.

“Can I represent her tomorrow?” Siry shouted after him.

His father turned and looked at him. “Do whatever you want. Obviously, you won't listen to reason.”

“Reason? What do you think this is all about? It's
all
about reason!” He was going to add that he was tired of fairy stories and half-truths.

But his father walked away before he could finish saying all the words that felt as if they were ready to burst from his chest.

“The truth can't hide forever!” Siry shouted. He
noticed that now he was trembling with anger too. He wasn't even sure what he was talking about though. Was he talking about the Flighter girl? Or something else?

 

That night Siry lay in his bed staring at the thatch ceiling of his room. For a long time he practiced what he was going to say. She was only a girl. She had a name. Look at her. She was clean. She could speak. How was she any different from any other kid in Rayne? He had a lot of arguments to make. He practiced simple phrases, fancy flights of rhetoric, sharp questions, hard-nosed demands…. But no matter how he phrased things in his head, he kept coming back to the expression on his father's face.

They hated her. They all did. What were they so scared of?

A
lmost the entire population of Rayne were present. Seated in the front of the space, behind a large table, were the members of the tribunal. Each of them wore a light green uniform with long sleeves and long pants. Their faces were all stern and expressionless. Siry tried not to look too long at Jen Remudi sitting among them.

Rena was ushered toward the front by two large guards. As she walked forward, people in the crowd shouted at her. Her hands were bound behind her. She muttered to herself and occasionally tried halfheartedly to free her hands. But she seemed oblivious to the crowd.

Finally she stopped and was forced to sit. She snarled at the guards, shook herself like a dog, then was still.

The head of the tribunal stood. “As chief minister I hereby convene this tribunal,” he said. “The purpose of this proceeding is to determine whether the accused has violated the laws of the village of Rayne. If, upon the determination of the tribunal, she has violated our laws,
she will be punished in accordance with those laws. Lema, please rise and deliver the charges.”

A slim, middle-aged woman stood and read from a sheet of paper. “The accused, Rena No-Last-Name, has been accused with the following violations of law: Raiding. Theft. Aggravated assault. Attempted murder. Trespass. Resisting arrest. Escape…” She droned on for a while, reading off a litany of charges.

Siry felt his stomach turn. His father had agreed to let him speak for Rena. But he wouldn't have his chance until after Lema delivered her evidence.

After reading the charges, Lema called a variety of witnesses to the stand, including Kemo and several other guards. There were no surprises in the testimony. They simply described how the handful of Flighters had emerged from the sea, run up into the village, turned over a cart full of fruit, and then fought everyone who got close to them. Rena herself had knocked one guard unconscious with a stick, and scratched another across the face so deeply that he had to be stitched up.

Each time a witness concluded his testimony, the chief minister turned to Siry and said, “Do you have questions for the witness?”

Each time Siry replied, “No.”

All told, the testimony took about an hour.

When they were done, the chief minister said, “Siry, you have been appointed to represent the accused. Do you have any witnesses?”

Siry stood up. His legs felt like water and his hands were shaking. He pointed. “I call—” His voice cracked. A couple of girls in the crowd giggled. He cleared his
throat. “I call the Flighter girl to the stand.” He pointed to the witness chair.

There were snickers from the crowd. They obviously thought the idea of a dumb brute testifying was absurd.

“Would you, uh, go sit there please.”

After a moment the Flighter girl shuffled up to the seat, flopped down sullenly, and stared up at the sky.

Siry took a deep breath. His heart was beating wildly. Every single person in the village was staring at him. He willed himself to calm down.

“Could you please say your name,” Siry said.

More laughter from the crowd.

“Your name. Please tell me your name.”

Their laughter died out. Rena surveyed the crowd, her eyes narrowed. Finally she said, “Rena. My name…Rena.”

Someone gasped. The crowd stirred. This was unexpected. Apparently no one had ever heard a Flighter talk. After a moment the noise died down.

“Where do you come from, Rena?”

She pointed at the forest. “There.”

“You are being charged with a crime under the laws of Rayne. Do you understand that?”

Rena looked at him but didn't answer.

“Rena, please answer.”

“Why?” she said.

“Rena. I explained what laws are, right?”

“Laws nothing. Just talk. You want kill Rena? Nothing stop.” She looked at the crowd, then thumped her chest. “Do it. Kill Rena.”

The crowd murmured. “Good idea!” shouted someone. This provoked a great deal of laughter.

Siry looked furiously at the head of the tribunal. “Make them stop!”

The chief minister scowled, then thumped the table with his gavel. “We'll have quiet!”

Siry turned back to Rena.

“Rena, why did you come here?”

She looked at him as though he were stupid. “Hungry.” She made a circle over her head with one finger. “Here, food.”

“Rena, how old are you?”

Rena shrugged.

“Do you know what a year is? Do you understand numbers?”

Rena said nothing.

“How many summers have you lived through? Five?” He held up five fingers.

Rena rolled her eyes.

“Ten?” He held up both hands, fingers extended.

Rena looked at him for a moment, then shook her head.

“Fifteen?” he said

She held up ten fingers, then four. “This many.”

There was a mutter from the crowd.

“Thank you. You can sit down.”

Jen Remudi said, “That's it, Siry?”

“Yes,” Siry said.

Lema rose and said, “If I may, let me summarize the charges and the evidence propounded for each charge, such that—”

Siry raised his hand and interrupted. “Uh, is this necessary?”

“Of course it's necessary,” his father said.

“Well, what I mean is this,” Siry said. “It's all true.”

The crowd stirred and muttered.

Rena's head whipped around. “Lie!” she shouted. “You lie! You say you help!”

“Wait, wait!” Siry held up his hands. “If you'll bear with me—”

“Lie! Lie! Lie!”

“Have her restrained and gagged!” the chief minister shouted. He waited as the guards grabbed the struggling girl and shoved a piece of cloth into her mouth.

When she finally stopped wrestling with the guards, Siry said. “No one can say the facts here aren't true. She and her friends swam here through rough surf, came up the beach, and knocked over a table. According to the testimony, they managed to steal one mango.” He held up his index finger. “One.”

The crowd stirred restlessly.

“Rena and her friends were immediately surrounded by a bunch of hostile guards. Who attacked whom? Hard to say. What it comes down to is, they started fighting. In the course of the fight, Rena and her friends beat up a couple of guys. In return, three of them were killed, five were driven into the ocean, and then we put Rena in prison, to be executed.”

The crowd was silent. No one moved. A soft wind rustled the trees.

Siry walked across the entire open area. He was starting to feel more confident now. He could feel the
crowd hanging on his every word. This was actually kind of exciting, now that he'd captured everyone's attention.

On the table where he'd been sitting was a beautiful ripe mango. He picked it up, held it in one hand, high in the air. Then he walked back in the direction he'd come, displaying the mango to the crowd.

“One mango. A fourteen-year-old girl treks through the jungle, swims through a riptide, and undergoes the risk of violent death at the hands of trained fighters like my friend Kemo, just to get one of these.”

The crowd was uncomfortably silent.

He shrugged. “Hey, I know what they say about Flighters. They're not like us. Brutes. Animals. Monsters.” He pointed at Rena. “Does she really look like a monster to you? She even talks a little.” He paused. “I don't know. I think maybe those Flighters over there are kind of like us.”

The crowd stirred.

“They're like us…except they don't have tools, or decent fields for growing food, or boats, or whatever is up there in that mountain that makes the lights work in our houses.” He pointed up at the mountain looming over the village. “I mean we've got all the good land over here. Anybody who's ever been to the other side of the island knows it's a rocky jungle with bad soil. Rena's people have nothing.”

The crowd was utterly and completely silent. The only sound was the wind. That and Rena's soft weeping. Siry walked over to her, pulled the gag out of her mouth. She was sobbing openly now.

“What do we know about these people?” He pointed at the sobbing girl. “Nothing. So how come we're so sure that we're better than they are?”

He pulled out his belt knife and cut the cords that held Rena's hands. He set the mango in front of Rena. She stared at it morosely.

He took a deep breath. He could feel something rising inside of him. A feeling of triumph. He had them now. “I would say, people of Rayne, that if anything makes us better, it's that we believe in justice, and compassion. We believe in forgiveness.”

Heads were nodding throughout the crowd. Even his father, the hard-bitten Jen Remudi, nodded once.

Siry pointed at the girl. “She's fourteen years old. Fourteen! And we're actually standing here talking about killing her? For this?” He picked up the mango. “Maybe if what we're trying to do here is get justice, then we should take her in, feed her, give her clothes, treat her like one of us. Maybe she'll never learn to talk properly or think like we do. But maybe we can show her that there is another way.”

Siry walked over, picked up the mango from in front of Rena, then set it on the table in front of his father. He walked over and sat down next to Rena.

The wind stirred the palm trees for a while. And then the people of Rayne began to applaud.