Page 60 of The Verdant Cage
I was just in that area myself to examine Peter’s body, and I feel fine. A thought lands heavy, one so terrible I have a hard time believing it: free of hosts for so many weeks, any virus should be non-viable. Antibiotics failed to treat its prior victims, ruling out bacterial infection. And if it isn’t either of those…then the Vex isn’t an illness at all.
“Uncle,” I begin, but he shakes his head, warning me to silence.
Outside, the village bell begins to toll—a warning. Someone has already alerted the Guardians. They’ll be here soon, and if they find me near medicinal herbs…
“Rose,” Uncle Richard whispers urgently. “You need to leave. Now.”
I want to argue, but he’s right. I back toward the door, unable to tear my eyes from Finn’s face. He looks so vulnerable with that terrible stillness and the blisters on his face. I remember him laughing just last week, running through the marketplace with a kite made of oiled parchment and thin wooden dowels that Jonas had helped him make.
That’s when I remember something else: Finn, in the woods hiding with his sister as Wendy was caught with the apples. What had she said to me as I hurried her back, guiding her with one arm and holding her severed finger with the other?
The three of us were playing and found a tree over by the flax field, just inside the woods. We shouldn’t have gone in, but everyone’s been so hungry.
She might be able to give me more answers. I race out of the cottage, desperate to locate her. If what I now suspect is true, then Jarek is terrorizing us beyond our wildest dreams, but I need confirmation. Fortunately, I find the girl right where we left her, standing in front of the Plumber cottage, fists clenched at her sides. Her cheeks are red and wet. She looks like she hasn’t blinked since Finn was carried past her.
I kneel, gently. “Wendy. You’re friends with Finn and his sister, aren’t you?”
She nods. A hiccup. “We played in the woods. Before…”
Before her punishment. “Please, Wendy.” I put my hand on her arm. “Where else did you play?”
Her eyes grow wide, but she shakes her head rather than answer.
“I already know Finn went into the quarantine zone,” I say. “You’re not in trouble, but I need to know if anyone else was with him.”
“It was only Finn!” she says, clapping her hand over her mouth in horror at the confession.
“It’s all right.” I squeeze her arm. “He’s beyond punishment. Where did he go? To his cottage, maybe, to gather a favorite book?”
She shakes her head. “He went to the well. Only to the well, buta lot. He said that was the only water that tasted good to him.” She makes a face. “I think it tastes like rust, but Finn grew up on it. He made it like a game, racing in and out unseen.”
“Tell no one what you’ve told me,” I command, “and please stay where it’s safe.” Then I sweep her into a hug and race to the quarantine zone to confirm what I already fear to be the truth.
.
I hurry down the cobblestone streets, ducking behind the Leatherworkers’ drying racks when a Guardian patrol passes. I think through what I know, trying to fit the awful pieces together.
According to Simon, nine months ago his father discovered a room off the vault full of weapons and supplies. Shortly after that, the Guardians were killed, supposedly by a wild animal, though now I doubt that story completely.
Jarek—who has made himself head of all five Guardian Houses—declared the farmland near the Wall unsafe, and soon after, the rations began. Whipping posts were constructed next, a curfew enacted. All under the guise of “keeping us safe.”
Four months later, the Vex appeared. It had all the hallmarks of a virus, so on my mother’s advice, the Council ordered a quarantine of that section of the village—opposite the area that had been closed off due to supposed animal attacks. That cost us even more resources. People grew hungry and restless.
Some initially spoke out against Jarek and the Council. According to Augustus’s and Meryl’s suspicions, those people were Harvested. If they were correct, what used to be an honor that allowed members of the Valley to care for their community even in death was now a weapon that Jarek controlled. Then, a month ago, Reatha—apparently a close friend of my mother’s—pretended to self-Harvest the Chemists.
Sometime in there, my mother started coding a message in her journal, which I’d found hidden in a trail of charcoal. And only a few days ago, she was murdered in plain sight, possibly with a weapon from the secret room the Record Keeper discovered.
My brother was framed and Harvested, his punishment almost certainly pre-planned given that the basket had already been lowered from its perch among the Heavens. The day after, Peter of the Potter House was discovered in the evacuated industrial zone, far from the site of the other two animal attacks. The state of his body was disturbing, and he appeared to have been dragged from the original site of his death.
Wearebeing hunted, though not by any animal I’ve heard of.
Augustus confirmed as much.
And Jarek knows it. Does he command the killer, or is he simply hiding in its shadow? And more important to my current mission, why is he poisoning us?
For that’s what I now believe the Vex to be: poison.
I stop to catch my breath and sanity, near a section of the Wall covered in purpling vines so thick they almost obscure the ancient stones. This is very near where Peter’s body was found. Around me are a cluster of empty homes: the Wheelwrights, the Leatherworkers, the Potters, the Glassworkers, the Coopers, and the Blacksmiths. The cottages stand eerie, like empty skeletons.
