Virginia Hamilton Read online

  “Come on,” Levi said to her, whispering. She divined by the whisper that Thomas was watching and waiting.

  When she turned to face the field, she saw him standing at the flat of the road, one hand on his hip and the other holding her bike by the seat.

  Slowly, she went over to him. She didn’t want to look at the boys, all watching, and she didn’t want to meet Thomas’ gaze. Never mind Thomas. He wasn’t even looking at her, but at a point on the hill above her. He let his gaze travel up and over the hill and beyond.

  Telling her to go home, she was sure of it, and she lost her courage to be the only girl to keep up with them. Ashamed of herself, she reached for the bike. Thomas let go of it before they would be holding it at the same time.

  So mean!

  She caught the bike as he turned away. He never said a word to her.

  “The dumb car,” she told him, only for him to hear. “I had this trick—”

  It was no use talking. He was headed for the boys. Swaggering away from her, he was smart to ignore her. Smart not to talk and stutter, which would have weakened the effect of him as their commander.

  The boys laid their bikes down in the same formation, next to the fence, as Thomas gestured to them to follow him. They slipped through the fence and on into the high weeds toward the Quinella Trace. Dorian half turned, seeking out Justice, his expression respectful, kind. Justice hung her head and Dorian went on with the rest.

  Levi headed for the fence. He paused, turning to her. “You sure you’re going to be all right?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Well, if you want to come, come on,” he said resignedly. And then: “Nobody else had to do a trick and risk hurting themselves and everybody else, too. Can’t you let him have his day?” Meaning Thomas. “Don’t try so hard. You’re with us, it’s okay. And don’t cause any more trouble.”

  Gingerly, he eased his way through the barbed wire while she stood, huddled and small, holding her bike. She knew so much about Levi. Knew he didn’t care about The Great Snake Race the way Thomas did. Probably if it had been up to him, he would have stayed home. But, for some reason, he had to be around when Thomas commanded the boys. Or maybe—yes—he had to keep an eye on Thomas for some reason.

  Justice’s legs trembled from the exertion. She felt slightly sick to her stomach.

  Even Levi, she thought. He’d rather I stayed home. I always try too hard.

  For an instant, she had a desperate feeling of being abandoned, as though she were lost forever from all that was dear to her.

  From Mom and Dad, too?

  From your mom and dad as well.

  Some part of her mind seemed to answer. It stood separately, in order to survive after she was lost.

  Justice’s eyes welled with tears; a lump ached in her throat. Somewhere inside herself, she was small and deserted, with the day grown strange, and huge with mist around her.

  But the dismal sensation disappeared as mysteriously as it had come. Justice heard sounds of the day again. Trees along the road, some slight sound of branches and leaves in a faint flutter of motion. She heard boys along the Quinella Trace and she could see some of them over there.

  Best to go home, I guess.

  Yet it didn’t surprise her that she calmly took her bike over and put it in formation with the others, right next to Levi’s. She laid the bike on its side, letting it touch Levi’s.

  If you’re staying, get on in the field.

  She went through the fence and into the weeds which felt steamy and smelled of wet rot.

  This is not a good day.

  She stayed away from the boys along the river, whom she saw bending and straightening as they rushed around. Justice stayed on the far side, with the great shade trees between her and the boys at the Trace.

  Means to follow lines, she thought. Trace.

  She followed an invisible line in the lonesome mist on the far side of the trees. The boys would find it difficult to see her there unless they were looking hard. Moving cautiously, she kept her eyes on the ground and gathered herself inward. Justice was certain she left only a slight trace of herself.

  Knowing she must walk among snakes and begin her hunt. She came out of the trees just before the place where the Quinella Trace made a bend to the west. It had been parallel to the Quinella Road and was now perpendicular to it. It flowed away into the distance of land reaches, weeds and thick undergrowth. It definitely became less of a river and more a clogged stream full of crawdaddies and mosquitoes. Justice wouldn’t follow it that far. She came out into the area between the deep shade of the trees and the Trace, just below the river bend.

  Snake beds all around, she felt numbed, less aware of boys close at hand. Snakes quivered and scurried if she moved at all quickly. By standing still for seconds on end, then carefully moving and standing still again, she could come quite near writhing clumps, as she had on her first snake hunt.

  Justice saw thin, young-looking snakes, all intertwined. Boys were grabbing snakes whenever creatures loosed themselves a bit from the clumps. She saw boys, even Levi, stuffing snakes into peanut-butter buckets.

  They’re dumb to race so many. How will they know which belongs to who? Tie colored ribbons on their tails?

  She saw Thomas coming near. His yellow container was full of dark creatures moving within. She headed in the opposite direction so as not to get in his way. Passing the bend in the river, she searched the flat, dry shore and the space in between.

  It dawned on her how unusual, how weird was the Trace. In a rush of feeling, she divined the beginning, the primal urge which caused these ordinary snakes from the surrounding land to return again and again to this home of their ancient past. To mate and bear their young.

  There is this trace of the long gone and dead. Maybe they follow the trails, the scent of awful heat and terrible ice cold. Of living and dying. And changing! she thought. And unable to hear, and no eyelids, no arms or legs. Crawling, slithering, the lowest life of all.

  She felt a sudden sympathy: You creatures.

  She felt joy: Hugging the ground. Finding holes and cracks deep down. You stay warm. You live. And never die out.

  9

  JUSTICE WAS STARING AT a large tree limb where it lay decaying, dark and moist, near the Quinella water. Absently, she scratched at her ankles, where chiggers or mites had found their way to her skin and buried themselves in it. It was only a fallen branch she kept her eye on, perhaps struck by lightning. And it was the contour, the outline of the wood along its upper surface, that had caught her eye. As she stared, the wood separated along its top contour, fairly jumping at her. Lying there was a big, beautiful garter, the fattest and longest she’d seen. Its camouflage of dark lines and lengthwise stripes hadn’t been good enough for Justice’s keen sight.

  She sucked in her breath. At once, she covered her mouth to hush the sound. Of course, she knew snakes couldn’t hear; it had been a natural reaction. She kept herself from rushing forward, knowing that the snake might feel the vibration of her steps.

  Justice saw movement out of the corner of her eye, coming up on her left from the direction of the river bend. Without turning or seeing for certain which one of the boys it would have to be, she held up her hand flat against the air to warn him to stand still. And pointing at the rotting log, she showed him the snake. Then she waited, still as a statue. And the boy, whoever he was, was a solid presence at the edge of her vision.

  Until the natural solitude of river sounds, of branches that reached low, begging for water, settled down on them. Until the dry, caked dust of the bank crawled with water creatures—striders, and huge bugs that seemed ugliest of all to Justice. And there were snakes: sleek, dark water snakes, but no moccasins; and the ribbon snake, small and young, newly born. It looked like a garter except that its stripes were bright yellow on a dark form.

  Justice hadn’t noticed the few boys who spied the scene from a distance. They came forward now, tiptoeing up behind Thomas, who was the
boy she hadn’t quite seen out of the corner of her eye. Thomas rolled his eyes skyward. He pointed at Justice and then at the snake. The boys made exaggerated mouthings of “Wha—?” “You kidding?” “That big snake? What for?”

  Squinting at Justice, Thomas pointed his finger at his own head and made a circle at his temple. Putting a finger to his lips, he next signaled the boys to stay quiet. He waved them bye-bye. They nodded, grinning, and left.

  Silently, one foot in front of the other, Justice moved up on the snake. She hoped it wouldn’t sense her and slither away into the water.

  You go slow enough and it won’t know, she thought.

  She could feel her pulse in her temples. Heat pressed in on her bare arms.

  Just a little coolness is all I want.

  All at once, she felt that the hot air she breathed would smother her.

  Stop it. Stop it. You’d think the clouds would cool it some. Why won’t there be clouds anymore?

  Justice stood still a moment to calm herself. Without her knowing, Thomas entered her mind.

  Ebbing and flowing energy, he scanned her mental field. It felt empty, like a hollow cavity.

  Hey, listen, Thomas traced. You have to know by now that I come and go as I please. What’s the point of pretending with me? You ever think what we could do if we were to join forces? Ticey?

  He studied her mind—all of her thought and will, feeling, judgment—all that was conscious.

  Justice? he traced more formally, thinking that she might not have liked the nickname.

  She seemed not to hear him or to know he was there. If it were possible for him as force and energy to smile grimly, he did so now.

  All right, he traced. Now I’m talking to you, whatever you are. I know it was you watching! Justice’s watch-guard, that’s who you are. What kind of thing are you if you have to control her so hard? Why don’t you let her free to choose her own partner?

  THE WAY YOU ALLOW LEVI FREEDOM TO CHOOSE?

  These words stood out in his own senses quite large. He had no reason to believe he hadn’t thought them himself. They were like something he might tell himself in all honesty. Yet he had a strong suspicion that the words had been planted.

  Thomas probed Justice’s nerve substance. He scanned regions of contact between nerve cells and the impulses which passed across them. He found that her mind was not sick or damaged in any way that he could tell. But the sensation that expanded throughout her nervous system was what he called empty or hollow.

  So, okay, he traced.

  With his telepathic network totally in touch with her senses, he soon knew how she struggled to get the snake inside her knapsack. An awful, foul odor came from the snake. And swiftly Thomas broke contact with Justice.

  Someone should tell her that that big a snake will stink up the joint for twenty-four hours. Garters can give off a smell like that when they feel threatened. This he projected to whatever it was might be watching. He thought this for whatever might be listening in on him.

  There was no response.

  Okay, he traced, to no one in particular. But I know you’re somewhere. And, for all I know, you are Ticey with a lot more going than I ever thought. But why doesn’t she know what the snake race is? Huh? Tell me that. If she had extrasensory, she’d-a known. So. You have to be some kind of control watching after all. Because she does have extrasensory, she has to. And if you don’t show yourself, I’m gonna embarrass her right in front of the boys! He leaped inside Ticey’s brain to scan.

  There was no surge, no radiant energy to show that anything had heard him.

  You gonna let her get all embarrassed and feel like a worm, Thomas traced. You gonna keep her an ordinary kid for a while—why?

  There was no response that he could sense. But he was hot and sweating, standing once again on the ground. He was watching his sister close her knapsack over this oversized garter and he was back in his own head. The contact with Justice had been broken.

  You threw me out! Who are you to throw me out?

  He was stunned by the smoothness with which something, the watch-guard, the control, had thrown him out of Justice’s mind.

  Oh, so you threw me out because I was a threat!

  YOU WERE THROWN OUT TO SHOW YOU ARE NO THREAT.

  What thought that? Thomas wondered. That something might be able to implant words in his own brain made him cringe with fear.

  Nah, I just thought it myself.

  Apprehensively, he glanced all around the shade, at the river water, sluggish and thick with bracken. Taking advantage, throwing me out when I’m busy thinking things over. He sent this message across to Ticey’s mind in the hope it would get through to the control. But he didn’t quite believe that Ticey had anything inside her more than the power he had. So, in order to ease him out, it must have been Ticey herself who had caught him unawares.

  I haven’t yet been tested. In case there was a control: I haven’t tried my hand full force, not yet I haven’t. Keeping it a secret from Mom and Dad. Not to give them a clue. Mom suspects, but she’ll try not to believe what she knows. She and Dad are mostly okay. I don’t have it in for either one of ’em. But that stupid, dumb Levi! Man, what a mess! Thomas traced. And weak-kneed. Why he has to look like me, man? And following me around—he followed me into this world! That’s why I make up monsters and black and screaming places so he’ll have to live in them. Yeow!

  Inwardly, Thomas laughed. And keep him away from Ticey while she caught the snake; so I could watch her without him butting in. Abruptly, he let his telepathy fade.

  Justice had finished her job. It had given her the shivers. She felt clammy all over, but she had done it—the biggest snake anybody could find! She turned away from the Trace and discovered Thomas.

  “It was you I saw come up here—you been here all this time?” she asked him.

  He felt that the obvious needed no answer. “C-c-come on,” he stammered.

  His voice sounded brutal. She was aware that the two of them were completely cut off from the others. Levi. Justice hurried by Thomas with her eyes averted. She was so afraid he would start in about how she had been a fool to try a trick on the dangerous Quinella Road. But he kept his mouth shut, she was glad of that. Around the bend and through clumps of snakes, amidst heat and dust, Thomas never said a word. Up ahead of them, closer to her than the other boys, Justice spied Levi peering out, as though he would see around the bend.

  “You all right?” he said, so relieved to see her.

  “Sure!” she answered, smiling brightly at him.

  You two shouldn’t be allowed on the same planet, Thomas traced to Levi. I swear, when you and Tice get together, you’re sickening.

  You just leave her alone or I’ll …

  You’ll what? Thomas traced. I’m not gonna do anything to her. She’s gonna do it to herself.

  Levi clamped his mouth shut even more tightly, determined not to argue with his brother. Justice thought his eyes seemed afraid for a split second.

  “Levi? I got this snake.”

  He had turned and was walking back toward the other boys. Justice caught up and skipped at his side. She held up her knapsack. Levi stopped in his tracks. The other boys were coming toward them.

  Thomas got between the boys and Levi. His back was to the boys as they came up. He faced Justice and Levi. She was still holding up her knapsack for Levi to see. He was staring at it with his lips slightly parted.

  “What took you so long?” one of the boys said to Thomas, and then looked shocked at his own bravery. They all had bunched around him, gingerly holding peanut-butter pails full of creatures writhing darkly.

  “Get these snakes to the field,” someone else said. “Boy, I hope we don’t have to do this ever again.”

  “Yeah,” Talley Williams said, “I bet you get warts from handling snakes, just like you get them from frogs.”

  “Toads,” Dorian said softly.

  “Sh-sh-shut up, youuu g-guys!” Thomas yelled.

&nb
sp; Suddenly, Levi pulled himself up in rigid attention. He began speaking rapidly:

  “Frogs—or—toads—don’t—cause—warts.” With words spaced evenly: “Warts—are—caused—by—a—virus. A—virus.”

  Thomas grinned an ugly smirk. The boys stared at Levi. Justice wondered why he was sounding like a robot, or had she imagined it? Was he being funny? But Levi hardly ever was funny in that way.

  All at once, Levi’s shoulders slumped and he hung his head.

  “Wh-whaaat’s in-in the bag?” Thomas said to Justice. He swiveled around, turning the boys’ attention away from Levi to her.

  “Huh?” she said. “Oh,” glancing at the sack, holding it higher for them to see.

  The boys shuffled closer. “Is that what I think it is?” Talley Williams said.

  “Bet it’s the biggest snake you ever saw,” she told him. “See?” She jiggled the knapsack and the form slithered in a whipping motion.

  She felt as though she’d won a prize. Now she’d made up for wrecking over there on the road. Boys all standing around watching the biggest creature anybody’d ever seen.

  “See?” she repeated triumphantly.

  “Just only one snake?” asked a boy named Bobby Matthews. Justice had never cared for him.

  The boys turned to one another. There were strange looks, as though something odd had dawned on them. “One snake?” someone else said.

  Tittering back in the group. A loud guffaw.

  She lowered the knapsack. It held an odor, but she was hardly aware of it. She glanced at Levi, who had his head down, turned away from all of them.

  “The bigger the snake,” she said softly, “well, the faster it’ll go when I race it in The Great Snake Race.”

  There was a moment of silence in which each boy seemed to be holding his breath. The next instant, all of the boys burst out laughing, jostling one another and grinning, lightly punching Thomas’ arm. Thomas shrugged and grinned back at them.