I’d laugh if it weren’t so sad. To flee from the House, where similar writings snake along the walls, intertwining and twisting themselves into spirals, biting their own tails, each of them a scream or a whisper, a song or an indistinct muttering, making me want to cover my ears as if they were really sounds and not simply words—flee them only to end up here admiring this very small but very scary sentence.
I am a tree. When I am cut down, make a fire with my branches.
Another one. Also cheerful.
Why do they have this effect on me? Maybe because they’re out here, not in there on a wall, lost within the tangled web of other words. Here, unfettered, they sound more sinister.
And I really wanted to get some rest—from the House, from the words. From the exhortations to make merry—“WHILE YOU STILL HAVE TIME!” . . . From the hundred and four questions of the “Know Thyself” test (each one more vapid than the one before it, and don’t even think of skipping subparagraphs). I ran away from it all. Out of the chaos and into the world of silence and of the old tree. But someone came here ahead of me, dragging along his fears and hopes, and mutilated the tree, forcing it to whisper now to anyone who comes close: “Make a fire with my branches.”
The oak spreads those knobby branches majestically toward the sun. Ancient, beautiful, serene, like all its brethren ready to suffer the worst of the indignities inflicted on it by humans, without fear and without reproach. I suddenly get this picture very clearly in my head, of it standing amid the ruins of the demolished House, up to its knees in brick rubble. It stands there, still stretching upward. The letters scored into it still implore not to lose hope.
A cold shiver runs down my spine.
“Do you sometimes experience an irrational fear of the future?” This is question number sixty-one. They told us that all questions on the test were significant. That each added important detail to the psychological profile. In our case they could’ve very well started and ended the test with this one.
The crunch of gravel underfoot. I close one eye.
The sky . . . The branches . . . The legs in black trousers.
“You comfortable?”
Ralph, his jacket unbuttoned, the knot of his tie askew, sits down on the bench and lights a cigarette.
“Very.”
I don’t get up. I’ve already said I was comfortable, so now I have to look up at him from where I’m lying. Ralph is cool with that. He puts the lighter back in his pocket and takes out a folded piece of paper. Unfolds it and puts it under my nose. It’s a list. Six names.
I know three of them well. Squib, Solomon, and Don—the Rats who split from the House, went to the Outsides. The first time they did it was back in the winter, after the Longest, but were caught quickly and brought back. They ran away again almost immediately. Over the next month they got returned twice more. For thirty days the inhabitants of the House gleefully ran a pool on how long they’d manage to hold out. Their names on “Wanted” posters became a fixture on the first floor. It was as if Shark finally cracked, went totally nuts and started to equate the first floor with the street, imploring the imaginary passersby from its walls: “Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of the above-mentioned youths . . .”
Then they brought back Squib, alone. What happened to the other two “above-mentioned” no one had ever found out. Squib couldn’t muster the courage to run away by himself and remained in the Den, a grotesque shadow of his former self, shrinking from even the youngest Ratlings.
“Yes?” I say. “The first three names are Squib, Solomon, and Don, and I’ve never seen the rest. Have they also run away?”
“Not exactly.”
Ralph turns his list over and studies it carefully, apparently trying to make sure he’s got it right.
“The rest are from the First,” he says. “They haven’t run away yet, but are rather keen to try, for some reason.”
I sit up. Warm and toasty from the front, damp and freezing from the back. All covered in sand and ants. I brush them off, trying to get my spinning head under control.
“They call their parents,” R One continues, eyes buried in the list. “They write letters to the principal. They demand to be released from the House immediately. One might assume that, were they not so . . . limited in terms of movement, they already would have followed the example of those first three. Almost like they are being terrorized. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”
“No,” I say. “First I’m hearing of it.”
Ralph puts the list in his pocket and leans back. He is clearly not happy with my answer. But I really have no idea why all of a sudden three Pheasants simultaneously have decided to get as far from the House as possible. In fact, from what I know of the First, the question is what took them so long.
