The Fifth Sacred Thing (59 page)

In the diffused light under the canopies, a small crowd was gathered. In the center, three men and two women were drumming. Others were gathered around them singing. One woman’s voice soared above the others, dipping and flashing in harmony.

It was an old song Madrone had heard Johanna sing, and a little shiver of energy rippled up her spine and made the roots of her hair rise. This was where Johanna came from. Maybe she had walked these same streets; maybe one of these houses had stood in the ghetto where she liked to claim she’d grown up, even though Maya did claim that ghetto was purely mythical. In that case, maybe this had once been the nice middle-class neighborhood where Maya and Johanna lived next door to each other. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that something in Madrone sank down through her feet and claimed the land. This was her land too. This was her fight. A spark of hope within her caught fire and blazed. When she looked around at the singers in the square, they became incandescent, as she herself began to shine. Action fever, Maya used to call it. A type of madness, like falling in love.

When the song ended, the crowd turned to welcome them. The woman who had been singing harmony came over to them. She had brown eyes, a round pregnant belly, and skin the color of dark honey. Her long black hair was pinned up, like the queen of Spain, Madrone thought. She should have combs of tortoiseshell and silver and blood-red roses as adornments instead of hairpins bent out of old wires. But here there were no flowers. The woman smiled at Madrone even as her eyes searched out Hijohn, brightening as she looked at him. A flush crept up her cheeks.

“Welcome,” she said. “My name is Katy. Short for Hecate. Although really it’s short for Katherine, but don’t tell.”

“I’m Madrone.”

“You’re the healer. I’m so glad you’re here. We’ve been waiting and hoping.” Katy started to reach out her hand, then shook her head, laughing, and grabbed Madrone in a hug. Madrone felt her body stiffen and then relax.

Diosa
, she thought, how long has it been since anyone has so spontaneously hugged me? She was as thirsty for that contact as she was for water.

“My turn,” Hijohn said, and embraced Katy. His arms tightened around her, and Madrone saw a look of such tenderness come over his wizened face that she was almost embarrassed. It was an aspect of him she would never have suspected existed, a sweet, moist kernel hidden beneath the dry shell. They kissed for a long moment, and Madrone was suddenly filled with homesickness. Sandy and she had kissed like that, and Bird—she had just begun to feel it with him, that sense of being home and complete. Whatever had possessed her to leave?

Finally they pulled away from each other. Katy smiled at Madrone, a little apologetically. “You must be tired, with all that walking. Come inside.”

They ducked through a doorway into a dark room that smelled of earth and oil and cornmeal. Katy kept one hand lingering on Hijohn’s arm or just grazing his body, as if she needed physical reassurance that he was really there. Madrone shivered, suddenly feeling her hunger and thirst.

“Sit,” Katy said, pointing to a bench by an old plastic table, relic of some earlier world. Madrone sat gratefully, leaning back and closing her eyes. When she opened them, Katy had set a large glass of water before her. Madrone held it in her hands for a moment, their slight tremor her prayer of thanks, and then slowly, gratefully, she drank.

“We’ve got plenty of water here,” Katy said. “We run an illegal tap into a city pipe. So drink all you want.”

Those were words Madrone had given up thinking about together:
plenty
and
water
. She savored every sip, making it last, unable to believe she could truly have more until Katy set a pitcher down in front of her.

“You drink like someone from the hills,” she said.

“She
is
from the hills,” Hijohn said. He had joined her at the table and was savoring his water as she did hers. But his eyes rested on Katy’s belly. “How are you? You doin’ okay?”

“Fine,” Katy said.

“Is that true?”

“Yes.”

Hijohn turned to Madrone. “Maybe you’ll check her out? Just to be sure?”

Madrone smiled. He looked such an unlikely nervous daddy, but why shouldn’t he be? Why shouldn’t he have a sweet side too?

“Of course. Don’t worry, Katy, I’ll take good care of you. And if you need someone for the birth, that’s my area of specialty. I love catching babies.”

A glance passed between Katy and Hijohn, relief and something deeper than relief. They’re both young, Madrone realized. No older than I am, and even though I feel ancient that’s not really very old. They carry so much. Who do either of them have to lean on? No wonder Hijohn brought me here.

“This life must be hard for you,” Katy said. “Not what you’re used to.”

“It’s not an easy life for anyone,” Madrone said.

“No.” Katy’s hand rested a moment on her round belly, a protective gesture that Madrone envied, suddenly, in a physical way. Would she ever be pregnant, feel life moving inside her, smell the milky odor of her own child? Or had she given that up, too, by coming down here? The sense of loss was a hollow, aching emptiness in the air in front of her. Then, as if she had conjured a child, one appeared in her lap and another two were hanging on Katy’s arms and the room was filled with them. She looked down. The child in her lap was small, about five years old and blond, her hair corn-silk yellow, her skin like new kernels of white corn, translucent and smooth, her features delicately carved. Large blue eyes gazed into hers, wide-open and yet at the same time somehow shielded, as if they concealed invisible wounds.

“What’s your name, honey?” she asked.

The child did not answer.

“She doesn’t speak,” Katy said. “She doesn’t have a name, either. The Angels just brought her in yesterday. You can name her if you want.”

“She should have a pretty name,” Madrone said. “Something delicate but strong. Like a wildflower that looks fragile but spreads all over the place. Poppy, maybe.”

“That’s a cute name. Is that a flower?”

“It’s a flower, like a little golden cup, that grows wild on the hills in spring. Used to be the official state flower, before the Stewards took over.”

“I think I remember it,” Katy said. “When I was little, my dad sometimes took us to the ocean, and there were flowers growing by the road. Yellow, and they tasted hot when you bit them.”

“That’s wild mustard. Poppies are more orangey-gold, and they grow low to the ground.”

“It’s a pretty name.”

The room filled with people who crowded around the table and squatted in corners on the floor, and Katy was dishing up beans and tortillas, which they called corn crackers, and saying in a voice that was soft and clear yet somehow penetrated the din, “Tell us about where you come from, Madrone. We need to know. Is it true that water runs through the streets there?”

“It’s true,” Madrone said, and told her tale again, even though with each
telling it sounded less likely, even to her. “There are streams everywhere, and gardens, and everybody has enough to eat and drink. Every child goes to school.”

“Every child?” a young girl asked. “Even the poor ones?”

“There are no poor ones,” Madrone said. “Oh, some people have a little more than others, but everyone has enough.”

“Who does the work if there aren’t any poor ones?” the girl asked.

“We all do. Everybody works, and works hard. But we enjoy it, because we’re working for ourselves, not the Stewards and the Managers. We grow a lot of our own food, we use all our land carefully, and our water, and we share what we have so that everybody has enough.”

“What kind of food do you grow?” a woman asked.

The question sparked a long discussion of organic gardening and aquaculture and the principles of permaculture.

“We don’t just plant a garden, we create an ecosystem that can sustain itself as much as possible with a minimum of outside energy—including our own. Everything serves more than one function. For example, we used to keep a couple of geese, who ate weeds and insects and scared away stray cats. Their wastes fertilized the soil, and we ate their eggs and used their feathers in quilts and jackets. Or take the streams. We brought back the natural streambeds, brought the water up out of drainage pipes and let it flow free. Over time, we hope to restore the salmon runs. But the streams provide habitat for all kinds of insects and birds and small animals. We stock them with fish and freshwater crawdads, and we divert some of the water for irrigation. Kids like to play in them and swim in the ponds.”

As she spoke, she noticed four tall figures standing aloof on the outskirts of the group. They had the same blond, ethereal, almost androgynous beauty as Poppy, and they appeared young, maybe fourteen or fifteen. She couldn’t tell if they were girls or boys. They could have all been brothers and sisters, cousins, twins; not just their coloring and delicate form but something in their stance linked them to each other. An animal wariness. Like cats, they stood aloof from the crowd in the room, observing. They made Madrone nervous. They did not take part in the conversation but simply watched, their blue eyes glittering like carefully polished stones.

She continued talking as dinner was consumed, answering questions, explaining everything from trade agreements in the watershed to the preferred methods of mulch. The children listened in rapt fascination and the adults with skepticism.

“What I want to know,” Hijohn said, “is how you got out from under the Stewards.”

“They never took hold,” Madrone said. “When they grabbed for power in ’28, we didn’t go along with them.”

“That easy, eh?” one of the men said. “You just say, ‘No, thank you,’ and they say, ‘Oh, fine, goodbye’?”

Everybody laughed.

“It wasn’t easy,” Madrone said. “I was just a child, but I remember how hungry we were that winter. People starved—because the Stewards controlled our supply lines for food and seeds and oil. And not everybody agreed with the Uprising. Quite a lot would have been happy to join the Stewards.”

“Did you kill them?” Hijohn asked.

“No. That was one thing we’d learned from history. Any revolution that starts murdering its opposition becomes just as bad as the thing it fights against.”

“What did you do?”

“We talked, we persuaded, or we encouraged them to leave. A lot fled purely out of their own fear. We gathered seeds and shared them and tore up the streets for gardens and we survived without bloodshed. Or without much. They shot a few of us during the changes.”

“I would like it to happen that way here,” Katy said. “Peacefully. Without violence.”

“Well, it won’t,” Hijohn said. “Not here. It’s too entrenched, and those who have power aren’t willing to give any of it up. Not the smallest fragment. Not until we blow it up in their faces or burn it out from under them.”

A silence fell over the room. Poppy pushed away her own plate but snatched food from Madrone’s. Katy ladled her up a second helping of beans, for which Madrone was grateful. In spite of the abundance of water, food seemed to be in meager supply.

“And what happened here?” Madrone asked. “How did the Stewards take over so completely?”

“The Collapse of ’27 began it,” Katy said. “I don’t know what it was like up north, but down here it was grim. I was just a kid, but I remember the quake, how frightened I was when the ground began shaking. It was the worst I’ve ever felt. The epicenter was only a few miles north of here.”

“We felt some tremors all the way up in the City,” Madrone said.

“But the quake wasn’t the real problem,” Hijohn said. “It destroyed a lot, water lines and gas pumps and roads, so it was hard to get food and water into the city. But a lot of the city was already in ruins from decades of riots and fires and bombings. And the Central Valley was almost dead from years of abuse and from climate change. Food was already scarce. What the whiteflies and the redflies hadn’t ruined, the dust storms buried, and the land was salty from irrigation. Still, the worst problem was the fuckers who ran the Corporation. They’d been stockpiling grain and seed and medical supplies, waiting for their opportunity. The quake gave it to them.”

“The Stewards were their political front,” Katy said. “They declared
martial law, and the Corporation backed them. People who supported the Stewards got fed and cared for; those who opposed them were considered traitors and left to starve.”

“And people just gave in to them?” Madrone said. “They didn’t try to fight back?”

“Plenty did,” Hijohn said. “Some of us are fighting still.”

“There were food riots and water riots and armed bands that attacked Corporation warehouses,” Katy said. “In some ways, that made it worse. People got scared. And frankly, a lot of people were happy to see somebody take over and establish order, no matter what kind. We had refugees streaming in from the Central Valley, shootouts night after night in the streets, whole sections of the city burned down. The Stewards were well organized and efficient, and they seemed to stand for the kind of security people longed for.”

“But we were holding our own,” Hijohn said. “We weren’t as well organized as the Stewards, I’ll grant you that, but we were building a strong network among a lot of different groups, even some of the refugees.”

“Until the epidemic,” Katy said. “The refugees brought disease with them, people said.”

“Not all the people,” Hijohn countered. “A lot of us thought the Corporation cooked up some bug in its lab and let it loose to rid the region of undesirables.”

“Well, the Millennialists said it was the wages of sin and immorality,” Katy countered. “And more people believed them than believed our side. There were mass conversions, even though the Corporation developed a drug to treat the disease with suspicious speed. But of course the drugs and the vaccines and the immunoboosters weren’t offered to the undesirables.”

“The Millennialists cut a deal with the Stewards,” Hijohn said. “They gave religious backing to the new order, and in return, once things had calmed down, the Stewards passed laws enforcing the Four Purities.”