Becoming Calder Read online

  I mustered the very last shred of my pride and turned away.

  He's waiting for me, by a spring, under the warm sunshine. I'll wait for you. But I hope I'm waiting a long time.

  I got about a block before the tears started to slip down my cheeks. Panic surged inside me. Oh no, oh no. You can't cry. If you cry, you'll lose control. That thought brought the terror of my situation front and center. I needed someone. Anyone. There were plenty of people walking by, but I didn't belong to any of them and none of them belonged to me. They didn't see me. They didn't care. With neediness came overwhelming grief. I sat down on some steps, put my head on my knees, and I cried.

  "Miss?" I jerked my head up and looked through tear-blurred vision at an older man in a suit. I sucked back my tears as much as possible, swiped wetness from my eyes, and attempted a deep, shaky breath, trying to compose myself.

  "I own Grant and Rothford Company," he said quietly, looking uncomfortable.

  Then it clicked. He had been the man behind the glass door whom the saleswoman had spoken with. The owner. Oh no, had he decided I owed more money for the vase? Would he call the police now? I couldn't go to the police. I couldn't.

  I stood up too quickly. I managed two steps before the world tilted and fell away.

  BOOK ONE

  Acadia

  “Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.

  You will never be lovelier than you are now.

  We will never be here again.”

  Homer, The Iliad

  CHAPTER ONE

  Calder – Ten-Years-Old

  It was a Tuesday, the day she showed up. I remember because we were watering the bean crops, and the bean crops only got watered the third day of every week. I heard the white jeep before I saw it, and when I looked up, it was coming around the bend in the road, kicking up dust behind it as it drove toward where we were in the fields. I strained my eyes and could see Hector Bias in the driver's seat and a blonde head in the passenger seat next to him. I put my hand up on my head like a visor and squinted into the bright desert sun, trying to see inside the vehicle better, but the glare of the window glass stopped me from getting a good view and the distance was too great to make out much.

  "Hector's back!" I called out.

  "Shh, Calder," my mom scolded. "Hector will be happy to see you working hard." But a smile crossed her face as she looked at the jeep getting closer, and then turned back to her work. I rolled my eyes and stuck my tongue out at her back, but bent back down next to her and continued giving those beans the inch of water they liked in order to grow big and tall and strong enough to feed all one hundred and twenty of us.

  I didn't see her after that. She lived up at the main lodge with Hector. She was his blessed one—the bride who would stand by his side when we, his people, were welcomed by the gods to the Fields of Elysium, the most glorious paradise within the heavens.

  We all wanted to see her though. Everyone was curious about the woman who it had been foretold, along with Hector, would lead us to the hereafter when those great floods came and the end of the world was upon us. I guessed she was kind of like our ticket in.

  The news that he had found her on one of his pilgrimages had come back to us through Mother Miriam, his first mistress. But Hector himself had lived away from us for a long time, almost two years, only coming back to visit twice a month or so, as he directed his bride's education and made sure she was ready for her position within our family. She had a mighty big job ahead of her.

  And so the day we had been told we would finally be introduced was a pretty big deal. We all quickly shed our dirty linen work clothes, drawstring pants for the boys and men, and long skirts for the girls and women, with loose shirts. Of course, it got so hot in Arizona in the summer I usually took my shirt off and tied a piece of whatever material we had handy around my neck, so I could wipe the sweat off my face as I worked. The handmade material was mostly itchy, but it was better than letting salty sweat drip into my eyes. A few of the other boys did the same thing now and acted like it was their idea, which was fine by me. It wasn't like it was the grandest invention in the world.

  After I was dressed in a clean pair of pants and a clean shirt, I ran out the front door of our small, two-room wood cabin as my mom yelled behind me, "Be on time, Calder!"

  "I will!" I yelled back, clearing my throat as I made my way between the other cabins. I knew my voice had a hoarse, scratchy quality to it and sometimes yelling hurt my throat. My mom had told me, when I was about three years old, I had cried and cried for a long time, and it had messed up my throat a little bit or something like that. She said she couldn't remember what had set off the marathon crying fit, but one day, it was like I just decided I wasn't going to be unhappy anymore and that was that. She said it wasn't in my nature to carry sadness. I guessed it was true, because I sure didn't feel sad anymore.

  I knocked on Xander's back door and his sixteen-year-old sister, Sasha, opened it, her long brown hair flowing loosely down her back. I swept my eyes over her and then looked up into her face. "Hey, Sash," I said, raising my eyebrows, standing up as tall as I could to try to bring myself to her height.

  Sasha rolled her eyes and looked over her shoulder. "Xander," she called. "Your little friend is here."

  "Little?" I demanded, insulted. "I'll have you know, I grew three inches this summer. My dad marked it on the wall."

  Sasha bit her lip, looking as if she was trying not to laugh. That's when Xander breezed by her, grabbing my arm, so I was forced to take off running behind him.

  "What the heck?" I huffed as we raced through the dirt paths, narrowly missing old Mother Willa with her herbs piled high in the wagon she pulled behind her.

  She yelled something at us, but she was always a little hard to understand on account of the fact she was missing so many teeth. I guessed there just wasn't an herb for that.

  Xander came to a stop, and when I caught up to him, I punched him in the shoulder. He laughed, dodging my next punch. "Whoa, you're gonna want to be nice to me." He looked around, then leaned in close and whispered, "Look what I swiped." He opened his hand to show me four, perfect sugar cubes.

  "Ranger station?" I asked, looking around, too, and then reaching out as Xander set two in my palm. I tossed them both back and crunched them in my teeth, closing my eyes and moaning as the sweetness filled my mouth and burst across my tongue.

  Xander pulled me off the walking path and stopped, turned, and glared at me. I looked at him questioningly, my mouth too full of sugar to talk. "What?" I mumbled, shrugging my shoulders.

  "Geez, Calder. What's wrong with you, anyway? Don't you know how to savor something? When's the next time you're gonna get sugar, and you just devour them both so they're gone in an instant? Dimwit." Then he shoved me so I stumbled back, trying not to laugh and lose any of the sugar in my mouth.

  Xander took one cube between his thumb and pointer finger and licked it delicately, and then he moved it away from his mouth so he could talk. "See, Calder, when you have something good, you have to make it last," he instructed, drawing out the final word. And then before he could bring it to his mouth again, two of the wild dogs that ran around our land raced past him, bumping him forward so he stumbled and dropped the sugar in his hand onto the dirt. The dogs ran over them both, grinding them into the earth as they ran away barking.

  For a second I just stared at the crushed sugar ground into the dirt at our feet, and then up at his shocked face, his mouth hanging open.

  I burst out laughing so hard I had to double over so I didn't fall down.

  I looked up at Xander and the look of shock was replaced by a small tilt of one side of his lips, right before he started laughing, too, both of us howling away under the bright, late-afternoon sun.

  That was one thing about my friend, Xander—he knew how to laugh at himself, a trait I had already figured out most adults still needed to work on.

  "Aw, come on, sugar breath," Xander said, taking off toward th
e main lodge where we had planned to sit to get a good look at the new bride everyone wanted to see so badly.

  "I hear she has the face of an angel, and the body of a goddess," Xander said, reverently.

  I nodded my head. "That's what the foretelling said."

  "I bet she looks like one of those ladies from the Academic Awards," Xander guessed, squinting upward as if picturing the People Magazine he'd swiped a couple months ago, the one we'd looked through together, hiding behind his cabin, the one with all the pictures of the painted ladies in long, bright colored dresses holding little, person-shaped, gold statues.

  I shrugged my shoulders. "Nah, Hector wouldn't marry one of them," I said. "They're too," I paused, trying to think about what they were too much of for our family, "colorful," I decided. Although they must be plenty smart to have won such a big academic prize.

  Xander rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know that. I meant, you know, take one of them with their pretty faces, and dress her in something like what Mother Miriam wears."

  We were both silent for a minute. I was picturing drab old Mother Miriam with the frown on her face and the loose, gray dress. When I looked at Xander, he’d squinched his face up and I imagined he'd been picturing her, too, and found her lacking in comparison.

  "Anyway," he said, losing the frown, "we'll know in a minute."

  The sun beat down on our heads as we squatted in the dust against the log siding of the main lodge where the council lived. We figured we'd have the best view of them as they left the building to make their way to our Temple where Hector's blessed one was going to be introduced.

  Xander picked up a stick and started digging in the dust at our sandaled feet. After a minute he glanced at me and whispered, "Bet I could sneak in there and swipe some butterscotch candies. I've looked in the window. They keep dishes of them around like it's nothing."

  I gave him my best disapproving look and said, "It'd be a sin to steal from the council . . . from Hector. He provides for us."

  Xander looked down at the ground where he was still using the stick to draw shapes in the dust. "I just wonder . . . why do they get sugar whenever they want it, but we have to . . . borrow it from the ranger's station?"

  I picked up a stick nearby and started drawing in the dust, too. I didn't really have an answer for Xander's question so I stayed quiet. I also chose not to remind him it wasn't borrowing when you never intended to return it.

  Xander was part of the group of workers who kept our family safe, and whenever he could, he snuck off to the ranger's station that led into the state park a couple miles down the road. He found all sorts of good things there from sugar cubes to magazines, once some Coca-Cola. I still thought about and longed for another can of the sweet, fizzy drink we had taken turns gulping down behind some trees near our crops. I was lucky he shared everything he found with me. I knew it wasn't right. But I didn't think it was enough of a sin that we'd have to stay behind when the gods came down to escort Hector's people to Elysium. I made sure to work just a little bit harder than I had to in order to offset the minor stealing Xander and I often engaged in.

  "When I get chosen to be a member of the council and go into the big community and work, I'm going to keep a whole barrel of butterscotch candies in my office," I said, laughing. "I'll bring some back for you."

  Xander laughed. "That'll be the day. If anyone is smart enough to get chosen for the council, it'll be me."

  I snorted. "If that's the plan, we better both hope we get to Elysium soon and that the gods have butterscotch."

  Xander's face got dreamy and he leaned back against the wood behind us. "I bet Elysium's made of butterscotch."

  I thought about it for a minute and didn't think that sounded so good. It might be good at first, but after a while, you'd probably get sick of butterscotch this and butterscotch that . . . everything sticky, and then you'd be stuck in a place made of butterscotch for eternity and . . .

  Xander's voice, which had been droning on, interrupted my thoughts as I continued to use the stick to sketch in the dirt. ". . . butterscotch clouds, and butterscotch flowers, and butterscotch houses, and butterscotch furniture . . ."

  Suddenly we heard what sounded like a soft childish giggle and swiveled our heads back and upward and caught sight of a blonde head leaning quickly away from the window, likely a council member's kid. I looked back at Xander who had a confused look on his face and suddenly we heard a woman's voice calling, "Who's out there?" and the window above came slamming down.

  Xander and I stared at each other for a second with wide eyes and then we jumped up and ran.

  **********

  The large wooden Temple was already crowded just like we had known it would be. As workers, Xander and I had to sit in the back, and we grumbled about the bad luck of getting caught outside the lodge. Now we wouldn't have the close-up view of the princess before we made our way to the over-stuffed building. In order to see the platform at the front where the council sat and Hector preached from, we’d have to crane our necks.

  For the most part, the worker groups stood together in Temple: the crop and water keepers, the animal tenders, and the watchers (those who looked after our security) on the left side, and the teachers, weavers, sewers, and builders on the right side. Between our groups, we kept our four-hundred-acre community fed, safe, outfitted, educated, and sheltered.

  Hector had named it Acadia, which meant "Place of Plenty." And it was true, because we had everything we needed, well, other than Coca-Cola. But I supposed that wasn't technically a need, and it wasn't like I could talk about that anyway.

  My mom smiled at me when she saw me enter the Temple and waved me over. I nodded at Xander as he went over to where his family stood a little bit to the right of mine. My dad pulled me in front of him and put his arms around my shoulders so his hands were clasped in front of my chest and we took up as little room as possible. I inhaled the smell of soap coming from my dad's skin and leaned back into him, feeling safe. I glanced next to us at my mom, who stood with my sister, Maya, in the same position. Maya had been born with a leg that didn't work quite right, and so even though she was a member of our family and would naturally help with the duties surrounding the watering of the land and making sure our people always had a supply of clean drinking water, because of her birth defect, she couldn't do physical labor. Instead, she helped the women who sewed the clothing and the bedding and, well, I wasn't quite sure what else needed to be sewed. I guessed if I looked around, there were plenty of things, but I didn't give all that a whole lot of thought. Maya was a year older than me, but she was a whole lot smaller and mentally younger because of something called Down syndrome. My parents told me it meant Maya had been born with an extra chromosome. I looked down at her and she grinned up at me, wrinkling her nose. I grinned back down at her and grabbed her hand in mine and squeezed it three times, and her grin grew larger as she squeezed my hand back three times, too.

  A couple months back, after she yelled after me as I was leaving the house, "I love you, Calder!" in front of all my friends, and they started laughing, I had walked back to her and told her I was too old for that, and so was she as a matter of fact. I had told her to give it a rest. She had looked crushed and I immediately felt guilty, so later I'd told her we could still say it, it just needed to be more covert. From then on, we'd squeeze the other's hand three times to mean, "I love you." It was our own secret code.

  The thing about Maya was it was like that extra chromosome was filled to bursting with love. So filled up, it was constantly leaking out of her in some shouty way, and she just couldn't keep it inside her. It had to come out in some way, shape or form. But I guessed when you love someone, you put up with all their faults, even the especially loud ones.

  A hush fell over the crowd as the doors right behind us swung open, and Hector Bias started walking purposefully down the center aisle with the council behind him. Hector was a tall, strong-looking man who held himself like the leader he was. He had a head of
golden hair that he wore long and sometimes put in a ponytail at the back of his neck. His eyes were a bright, crystal blue that seemed to be able to see straight through you. The few times he had spoken directly to me, I had had to force myself to hold eye contact with him. Something about those eyes made you feel unworthy—like you weren't good enough to look too long at something so beautiful.

  The doors behind him swung shut and I frowned in disappointment. Would we not meet his new wife today?

  I looked forward as Hector took his place behind the podium at the front as the council, all four of them, took their seats behind him. He looked around at us with an expression on his face that made me stand up taller in pride. I felt my dad behind me do the same. One day, I was going to sit up on that podium behind Hector and take the place of one of the council members. I felt purpose flowing through me.

  Hector raised his arms, as if in slow motion, and his voice boomed, "Behold the blessed one. My bride and your mother. Eden!"

  Two of the council members stood and walked back up the long center aisle and each opened one of the large wooden doors, stepping to the side as they held them wide open. The crowd seemed to hush even more as we turned in unison, and a feeling I couldn't explain swept through me—something that felt like a mixture of fear and happiness.

  Everything was utterly still.

  Suddenly, a breeze blew in, bringing with it swirling dried leaves that danced down the aisle and came to rest on the floor. At the same time, the wind chimes that hung in front of the Temple started tinkling as if, until that very moment, the entire world had been holding its breath. I craned my neck to see what everyone was looking at and that's when I saw her—a little girl, even smaller than Maya, walking slowly down the aisle, a look of terror on her face. My eyes widened as I took her in. She was wearing a white, lace dress—like a tiny bride—and her pale blonde hair fell over her shoulders and down her back. And her face . . . I felt my heart lurch in my chest at the beauty of that small face. Her lips were full and pink, and I could see they were quivering slightly as her eyes darted around. Suddenly, they fell on me and my breath hitched as our gazes met and held, her blinking and me staring. I couldn't see the color of her eyes from where I was standing, but something in them held me captive. And then she looked away and the spell was broken. I let out a big exhale of breath as she moved farther down the aisle, and I could only see her small back.