You didn't get this view in the city. An ocean of grass spread out
before her, swaying in the wind in odd patterns. As she thought about
it, she had to wonder if she'd ever actually seen the wind
before. She'd felt it, to be sure, though it was usually exhaust from a
cooling unit, or the wake of a glidecar. But to see it; that was
something else entirely.
"Never been outside the city before,
have ya?" asked one of the others. She looked over, one of the boys
giving her a smug look. She knew she didn't need to answer. She looked
back out the door of the train, to the landscape scrolling by, slower in
the back, where the foothills began, and faster up front, that sea of
grass whipping by at an intimidating speed.
"Look at her. Mezzed by fuckin' grass," said the same boy.
"Shut
your face, Fick," said someone else; one of the girls. She didn't look
back to see who. "She didn't choose to grow up in that shithole."
She
was right. Gage hadn't chosen to grow up in Bigpool, surrounded by the
waste of the metroplex. She hadn't chosen to not see the sky until the
age of 9, thanks to all the towering metal behemoths. She hadn't chosen
to be a speck, surrounded by chaos.
She missed it, though. She
hadn't been gone more than three days, but she already missed the
charming anarchy. She missed having a dozen different voices chattering
in her head, the challenge of having to pick out the relevant bits from
each. She missed having the totality of the Belly's knowledge at her
fingertips. She was disconnected, scared, and lonely.
But the
landscape helped, the wind dancing in the grass, and the earth rising in
the distance. And so did the sound of Shorty's odd instrument, the
pluck of a string drawing the attention of all the freight car's
occupants. Bantree, the oldest girl, had called it a dulcimer. It was a
series of metal strings pulled tightly over a warped board, looking both
simple and impossible. Gage suspected she would never understand how
Shorty made the sounds he made with it.
"What'cha got for us this
time, Short-stuff?" asked Bantree. Shorty didn't answer; he never did.
As far as Gage could tell, the only time he ever spoke was when he was
singing. And he could sing.
"I am a pooooooor, wayfarin' stranger,"
he sang with his dusky tenor. Several of the others leaned forward,
pleased smiles on their faces, and Gage found herself joining them.
"Travelin' throoooough, this world of woe
There is no sickneeeeesss, toil or danger
In that fair laaaaaand, to which I go"
Gage
sighed softly, gently resting her head against the wall of the car.
Shorty was going to steal all of the hearts when he got older.
"I'm goin' hooooooome, to see my mother
I'm goin' hooooooome, no more to roam
I'm just-a goin', over Jordan
I'm just-a goin' over home"
Gage
closed her eyes as Shorty played on, only somewhat surprised that a
tear slipped out of her real one. She missed her home. She missed her
friends, and her dad. She missed Blitz. She could only wonder if she'd
ever see any of them again.
The train was taking her somewhere,
with a bunch of backwater hill kids. She just hoped it was more like
Shorty's paradise, and less like all the tales on the net.
