The Other Lands Read Free Page B

weave into younger minds.
    They were marched through the morning and into the afternoon. Around dusk they came down through sea bluffs and got their first view of the great league vessels. Their size was hard to gauge. At first Ravi thought them no large craft, but then he realized they were quite far out. They were, possibly, massive. They lay on a shimmering expanse of azure. The twins walked hand in hand near the front of the column. Ravi felt the swish of the tall, damp grass against his legs and thought he was lucky to be up front instead of behind, where the grass would be trodden down and could notbe felt. Then he thought himself unkind or a fool or both. This is not possible, he thought. Not possible. But they continued to move forward, the world denying his claim without the slightest hesitation.
    Ravi squeezed his sister’s hand tighter and watched the ships.
    They slept on a narrow ribbon of sand that night, hemmed in by crumbly cliffs guarded by watchers. Some of the children feared the ocean and cried. Ravi wanted to shout at them to stop, but he knew that would be unkind. He did not wish to be unkind. That would be making a bad thing worse and doing it to others as innocent as he. He was angry, and he did not want to let that anger fade or be replaced by fear or docility. He wanted to do something with it.
    “Swear to me that you’ll never give in to them,” he said. These were the first words he had spoken in some time. He did not look at his sister but instead gazed unfocused. He raked his hands through the damp sand, feeling the texture in his fingers.
    When Mór did not answer, Ravi faced her and studied her in the yellowish light of the fires that rimmed the encampment. He took her by both wrists and held tightly enough that he knew his grip pained her. “Don’t go quiet. Swear that you won’t!”
    Mór looked miserable. “Ravi, how can I? You see them.”
    He drew close to her face. “Swear it! Don’t give yourself to them. Don’t.”
    She began to protest again, arguing that she would have to obey, alluding to the things they would do to her if she did not. Ravi cut her off.
    “You’re not listening,” he said. “What I mean is don’t ever believe that you are a slave, no matter what they make you do. The red cloaks say that we belong to some others now. They say we’re not our own masters and that we have no parents. But they’re liars. That’s what I’m telling you to remember. You believe that they’re liars?”
    He waited until Mór nodded, then he continued, “Don’t forget that. Don’t let them make their lies into truths. Never forget that you are Mór, sister of Ravi, child of the parents we share. Promise me that.”
    She promised, and he finally let go of her wrists. “Why do you say these things?” Mór asked. “You act as if we are separated, but we’re not. Just be quiet and don’t draw attention and they will leave us with each other.”
    Ravi said nothing, and was glad when she did not ask him to swear, as he had done.
    Sometime in the middle of the night he decided what he would do. And it was the opposite of not drawing attention. Mór would not understand it, but if he managed what he thought he could, she would come tounderstand later. He did not know exactly how he would do it, but he resolved to try. He felt he would know the moment when it showed itself.

    S econd to the league vessels themselves, the barges that approached the shore the next morning to transport the children were the largest human-made structures Ravi had ever seen. Squat rectangular rafts, they stretched wide along the shore, flattening the waves beneath them. They were made of a slate-gray material, dull in a manner that seemed to capture the light of the risen sun. Ravi could not say what made them move, but something did, slowly, inexorably. And there were people aboard them. Not many, and not near enough to make them out clearly. But on one of the closer barges a cluster of five