Page 58 of The Verdant Cage
Wendy accepts the mug gratefully. He closes the door and takes a seat, pushing his chair away so he can cross his legs at the ankle. I sit across from him. His posture is relaxed, his words anything but. “We haven’t much time,” he says. “When you visited other cottages, how long were you inside asking your questions?”
“Twenty minutes or so in each.” I loop the bag off my shoulder and set it on the table. “I need to know—”
He holds up a weathered hand. “I know what you need to know. I’m fifty-eight and my name’s Augustus Auger. I live here with my father, Hephaestus, who’s seventy-six and who you’ve kept alive with willow bark tablets since his most recent heart attack.”
My stomach leaps into my throat.
He makes a clicking sound, blowing past the statement that could end my life if the wrong person overheard it. “I know you think we don’t know, and I’m content to keep it that way. I live with my wife, Coco, forty-nine, my brother, Alphonse, fifty-four, and his wife, Kate, who’s fifty-six. They have a fifteen-year-old son named Edward who’s at school at the moment. Coco and I have two girls, Wendy, outside, who’s nine, and eight-year-old Lydia. Lydia’s also at school, but I’ll be outside the Wall before I’ll allow her sister to go back before that hand is healed. No one’s calling Wendy a thief.”
He smacks the table. The crack makes me jump.
“Coco and Alphonse are out performing the regular tasks of our House. Mending leaks. Checking water pressure. Unclogging drains. Kate’s been on loan to the Carters for a few weeks now, setting up some quick and dirty irrigation for the new fields. Me too, usually, but I stayed back today with Wendy. Hephaestus is likely upstairs napping. None of us plan to die, marry, or get pregnant anytime soon. You’ve got all that?”
I review everything I’ve feverishly written. I nod.
And then he utters the words sure to get me Harvested: “Good. So you’re part of that group being trained to fight?”
35
I make a thin squeak.
He nods. “That’s what I thought.” He leans forward, drumming his fingers. “That gives us fifteen minutes or so to talk about what’s important. We’re not losing arable land to any creature known to the Valley.”
The charcoal of my pencil snaps. “Pardon?”
“What I’m about to say doesn’t leave this room,” he says, each word weighted, heavy as stones. “Not unless you want us both riding the basket up Eden’s Gate as soon as that tablet is charged.”
A shiver runs through me, cold and quick. I nod, my tongue thick in my mouth.
He glances toward the front of the house, the muscles in his neck straining as he listens. Only when quiet answers does he speak again, softer than before. “The Council’s been saying it’s wild animals hunting us in the fields and near the hives just east of the Gate.”
I nod again. It hadn’t taken long for fear to spread, thick and quiet as smoke, after those areas were closed off. Hunger followed.
“But there’s no animals out there.” Augustus’s voice drops again, now so low I have to strain to hear him. “No scat, no tracks, not a single print. No living creature has risked the abandoned area since the last rainfall, at least.”
My breath catches, and I bite my lip to stifle the sound. I suspected the Council was lying when I saw Peter’s body, but no animals at all? “Jarek said—”
“I know what he said.” Augustus’s response is harsh and quick. He runs his hands through silver-shot hair, his fingers trembling just enough to make my pulse race. “I went out there myself, Rose. I saw it with my own eyes. There’s no animal sign. Not a rabbit, not a deer, not even a damn fox.”
I picture the now-abandoned swath of farmland beside the Wall where two Guardians lost their lives eight months prior. I shudder, and Augustus nods.
“If I didn’t know better,” he says, “I’d say the animals are as scared of that place as we are.” He seems to want to say more but grimaces instead. He shouldn’t have gone to investigate. We both know it. The rules are clear. Only the Guardians are allowed in the closed fields.
I open my mouth, but the words stick, tangle. “What’s out there, then?”
For a moment, I think he won’t answer. His gaze drifts past me, toward the door. Finally, he speaks. “Something terrible. And Jarek wants it that way. You see who he’s been Harvesting, don’t you? The people who push back against the new rules or who might be able to tell us something about what’s really going on.”
Exactly what Meryl and the others have been saying.He disposes of anyone who gets in his way.
“Your mother crossed Jarek, and she and your brother were taken as a lesson to the rest of us,” Augustus says, his voice heavy.
I sit up straight. “Did you see? Did you see what happened to my mother? You were very close to her.”
His face falls. “I didn’t. She was standing, and then she wasn’t, leaving your brother there holding that knife.” His forehead grows heavy. “But I know Jarek has something to do with it. He has an agenda we cannot see. I don’t imagine your gran or my father will be allowed to stay much longer.”
The enormity of it overwhelms me. “You must tell the Record Keeper.”
Augustus adjusts his chair with a screech. “I don’t trust David. He’s not strong enough to stand up to Jarek. And if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll swear you’re lying.” He looks me in the eyes. “And they’d probably Harvest me anyway.”
