Green Jack Page 9

  Chapter 9

  Saffron

  Saffron looked at the protein paste ration she’d just been handed. “Where’s the rest of it?”

  “That’s all you get,” the clerk replied, aiming a blue light at her copper bracelet. He didn’t look concerned with the fact that she was snarling. Weapons were banned on ration days, ever since the Wellwater Riots when desperate people cut each other down for something to drink. Saffron remembered seeing the images on the outdoor screens when she was six years old, and the bones in the gutter a few years later when she started to fetch the water for Oona. The bones were left as a reminder and a warning. Saffron sometimes wondered if some of them belonged to her mother. She’d always fought against the Directorate, the Protectorate, Oona. She fancied herself a resistance fighter. Mostly she was just desperate. Now she was dead.

  “Next.”

  She refused to move. “It’s not enough.”

  The clerk sighed, looking up from his charts. “New rations.” He raised an eyebrow. “Besides, you don’t look that hungry to me. Next.”

  She wanted to bite him, just to show him how hungry people could get.

  A soldier shoved her into the next line leading to the electrified fenced area around the pump. When they were younger, Saffron and Killian used to play tic-tac-toe on the sidewalk or cat’s-cradle with red string, but now they just waited; though both still wore a length of that string knotted around their left wrist. It was their version of a blood pact, since Killian tended to go cross-eyed when he saw actual blood.

  The grinding of machinery echoed from somewhere on the other side of the block. The damage to the buildings on this block were older than the Wellwater riots, mostly rubble left by the bullets and bombs of the Lake Wars. Through the gaps between the buildings, Saffron caught a glimpse of a crane swinging a long piece of metal and clouds of stone dust. They never bothered building much outside of the Rings. Curiosity prickled at her and she glanced at Killian but he just shrugged.

  She moved forward, pausing between the scanners. Blue lights flashed, searching for forbidden weapons or extra containers. Her hands and boots were swiped to test for chemicals before we she was waved through to the Wellkeeper. Posters proclaiming how grateful Saffron must feel for the gift of her rations were tacked to every available surface. Water hit the bottom of the container, filling slowly. She hated his part. She was exposed, nowhere to hide, nowhere to run to, no knives, not even Killian at her back.

  When she felt a frisson of awareness she put it down to her usual irritation with her life. Until she saw it moving through the crowd, barely noticeable at first, a mere rumble. It could have been anything; a lover’s quarrel, a cross child, the average bored and belligerent Elysian.

  Someone shouted. Saffron couldn’t make out what they were saying, only the angry derisive tone. The crowd shifted as one and there was a violent surge towards the enclosure. The gates slammed shut.

  “Down!” A solider clipped Saffron on the back of the neck. She dropped to her knees, pain ringing up her ear, as protocol demanded. Guns readied with various clicks and snaps all around her, like the clacking of Cerebus jaws. Her pulse leapt in her throat, thrashing wildly.

  They knew about the leaf mask. Somehow they knew. She hadn’t hidden it as well as she’d thought.

  “Can’t find your Green Jack without us, can you?”

  “You’ll have to eat the shite we eat now!”

  The missing Green Jack and tightened rations had triggered the unrest, not her leaf mask.

  Saffron wilted slightly as the adrenaline faded, trembling embarrassingly. It wasn’t long before two men and a woman were hauled toward the prison cart always waiting nearby. The girl’s nose dripped blood onto her collar. Disquiet was invisible but powerful, like ocean water reaching a faraway jungle through the veins of a river. Even diluted, a single drop of poison was enough to taint the entire network.

  The Wellkeeper went back to working the pump. He handed Saffron a packet of water purification tablets. The others continued to wait in line, but they were still on their knees. At the end of the street, Saffron and Killian reclaimed their weapons. She’d once asked him if it was a katana handed down from his Japanese ancestors. He just rolled his eyes and pointed to the army surplus store down the street.

  Fair enough, she’d have reacted the same way if someone had made assumptions over her Anishnabee heritage. Oona had told her things like race and gender and sexual orientation used to matter too much. Her great-great grandparents had lived on a reservation; her grandfather had once lived in France. Her Oona had slept in a van and driven across Canada with her parents, when there was a Canada to drive across. She’d been eleven years old. Sometimes she talked about New York and Prince Edward Island and Quebec City. Quebec City was now a closed pioneer community called Le Quartier that allowed no electricity or tablets. The Directorate ignored them because what could they do with candles and blueberry fields and snow? New York had fallen into the ocean and anyway they were too far south to be in the Directorate’s reach, however much they liked to pretend that reach could extend anywhere. Papu threatened to walk to New Orleans several times a week, especially when it was cold outside. Saffron didn’t even know if New Orleans still existed or what it might be called now if it did. They weren’t exactly forthcoming with useful information at the Directorate school she’d been forced to attend until she was fifteen. A crowded room in the Rings, a bored teacher and a dusty chalkboard and flickering television. Paper was too precious to waste and the weakening signals from dying satellites orbiting the earth were reserved for the Directorate. As far as education went, it was decidedly spotty.

  The only thing that mattered now was which side of the Wall you lived on.

  And how well you could feed yourself on nothing.

  “We can’t survive on this,” Saffron said, once they’d made their way back to the apartment. She’d tried to convince her grandmother to join the Woodwives—praying all day and night might be boring but at least they’d feed her. She always refused, even now that Saffron could take care of herself. She shoved her rations at Killian. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

  There were secret gardens all over the City, on rooftops, in alleyways and bedroom windows, but she liked to think hers was the safest, despite her earlier panic. It was out of reach from rats, raccoons, and Killian’s idiot brothers. As she crossed the rope bridge, the wind plucked at her skirt, her braids, her hands. She kept her chin high, just like the tightrope walker at the sideshow. She’d asked Allegra for a few tips last year.

  The balcony was crowded with plants growing in pots, garbage cans, and broken water jugs. She’d painted everything so that it became an art garden. She had thyme, oregano, lettuce, carrots, and a single precious mound of potatoes. When she pulled the leaf mask from the pot, the delicate grape vines curled around her fingers with surprising strength and speed. The garden responded just as quickly, oregano scenting the humid air. Oona apparently used to eat olives rolled in oregano leaves. An impossible luxury now, especially with every leaf saved for medicine.

  What had happened to the Green Jack? He had to have died when he abandoned the leaf mask. The Directorate weren’t really searching for him after all, he was dispensable. It always came back to the leaf masks. Saffron wasn’t even sure how to care for it. It probably needed more water and sunlight than anyone in Elysium City was likely to get. No one could accurately predict when the Hot months were going to hit, or how long they’d stay; though the Oracles did their best. Oona used to tell Saffron stories about four seasons, always in the same order. That was long gone. So was Los Angeles, and Vancouver, thanks to the melting ice caps. Now it was just savage unpredictable weather and Green Jacks. And too little food rations.

  But already this one single mask had grown enough vegetables that Saffron wasn’t even sure how to smuggle them safely into the apartment. She’d have to move it regularly so no one noticed a pattern to her comings and goings, or to her baske
ts of greens brought to the black market. She bit into a pea pod, the tart green juice tingling on her tongue. The mask tightened green ivy tendrils, cutting into her skin like ropes. It needed a host but Saffron had no intention of become one of the Directorate’s dancing green skeletons. She’d have to find a way to make it work. Somehow.

  For now, it was enough that her Oona wouldn’t go hungry tonight.