Marcia slipped out of the cage with a soft rustling sound.
Jamie took out a very old tin lunchbox. Inside were some cold potatoes, bits of cheese, and a few grayish-brown slices of mushrooms.
Under the moonlight, Marcia scooped up one of the slices with her spoon and looked at it carefully.
"This is porcini, right?"
Jamie nodded. "I fried it with a bit of stolen butter."
Marcia was starving. She began to eat greedily, mouthful after mouthful. Jamie handed her an equally old metal flask. "Slow down," he said gently.
While the girl was eating, Jamie pulled out a soft, well-worn roll of newspaper from his trouser leg. The ink along the folds had already rubbed off, revealing the fuzzy fibers of the paper beneath.
Carefully, the boy unfolded the paper and began to read it under the moonlight.
Marcia was used to this sight.
During her four years in the convent, she was often locked up in solitary confinement by Sister Eloise. And each time, Jamie would come like this — bringing her something to eat, sitting beside her, clipping articles from the newspaper.
"How did you know porcini are edible?" Marcia asked, watching Jamie as he read. "Did you read it in the newspaper?"
"No," Jamie said. "An older man taught me."
"Before you came here?"
"Yes… before this, I lived with him out on the wasteland."
As he answered, Jamie carefully cut out a small article from the newspaper. He carried a roll of milky-white medical tape, and with practiced ease, he taped the article into his notebook.
That notebook was Jamie's treasure. He had found a piece of waterproof asbestos cloth from somewhere, and when not in use, he would wrap the notebook in it and hide it beneath the floorboards of the confinement room.
Sister Eloise kept extremely strict control over what the orphans were allowed to read. Apart from a few theology stories she personally approved, the children's only other books were simple picture books — and even those often had missing pages, because Sister Eloise believed that some of the stories contained the impractical fantasies of heathens, which might cast a shadow over the children's pure hearts and make them more vulnerable to the chelating infection.
The orphanage subscribed to only one newspaper, delivered daily to the offices of the Headmistress and Sister Eloise. After they read it, the papers were stored away in a closet.
Jamie secretly took his from there.
To avoid being discovered by the nuns, he only ever took papers more than three months old — the ones bundled and stacked in the corner, waiting for government collectors to recycle every six months. No one ever checked whether any pages were missing.
Just like before, Marcia ate everything Jamie brought, down to the last crumb. Holding his old lunchbox in her hands, she looked a little wistful when it was empty.
"Are you full?" Jamie asked.
"Mm."
"Good. Now, Jane," he said, raising his head, "you really did make a mistake today — though not for the reason Sister Eloise claimed."
Marcia tilted her head.
Jamie spoke gently. "Maybe back when you were in Shortcall Alley, you didn't have a choice. But now that we have access to meat from farm-raised animals, we shouldn't touch wild ones anymore."
"…But that squirrel had just died — it was still fresh. Isn't that different?"
"No." Jamie crossed his arms into an X. "Wild animals are very likely to carry pathogens, parasites, or viruses — and that has nothing to do with how long they've been dead. Understand?"
Marcia nodded thoughtfully.
Jamie bent his head again, continuing to clip his articles. "I think Furasan must've been mistaken — vultures are scavengers. They usually don't attack live creatures."
Marcia frowned slightly. "If it wasn't a vulture, then where did those holes on the squirrel's body come from?"
"Maybe it was some other kind of bird of prey…"
Marcia looked at Jamie. "Was that something the old man you used to live with taught you too?"
"Oh, not that one," Jamie said with a smile. "I read it in the newspaper. Someone once got infected with chelation sickness from eating raw meat, so now all human settlements strictly forbid eating raw food."
"I see…"
"But the main reason I read the papers," Jamie went on, "is to collect information about District Fourteen. Every time I find an article about one of the Fourteen Major Districts, I cut it out."
District Fourteen.
Marcia wasn't unfamiliar with that name. She looked curiously at Jamie. "The book you secretly borrowed from the Headmistress, The Storm Over the Mountains — that was about District Fourteen, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," Jamie nodded. "But the story in that book takes place in a different area. District Fourteen is huge — it's the largest of the sixteen major human regions, and it has many habitable zones."
"Why do you want to go there?"
"Because it might be my homeland," Jamie replied. "My name — 'Jamie' — is a typical Fourteen-District name. 'Jamie' is my given name, and 'Bo' is an old family surname… Maybe my family's still there. I want to go back and see for myself."
Then he suddenly slapped his forehead. "Oh, right! Jane, I saw something a few days ago that might have something to do with you."
Jamie smiled as he flipped through his scrapbook. The papers rustled softly until he stopped on one page and slid the notebook toward Marcia.
"Do you know why the Headmistress chose the surname 'Marcia' for you?"
Marcia was silent for a while before shaking her head.
"It's because of your red hair — that bright, fiery red," Jamie said. "In the northern part of District Fourteen, there's a nomadic tribe called the Marcia Clan. Legend says that all the women of that tribe have red hair like yours. Their totem is the eagle. They've lived for generations hunting across the northern plains… Look, this article is all about them."
Marcia glanced over the clippings, not very interested at first — until she noticed Jamie's handwriting filling the margins and empty spaces of the page.
"So you've been writing in this notebook too," she murmured.
"Ah—don't look at those!" Jamie said, flustered, quickly covering the notes with his hands. "I just wanted you to read about the Marcia Clan—"
"That story's wrong," Marcia said softly. "Their totem isn't the eagle — it's the horse."
"The horse?"
"Mhm." Marcia nodded. "Although eagles are sacred to them — in their legends, the first ancestor of the Marcia people was the spirit of a divine eagle, and they believe the eagle is their guardian god — people often confuse that with their totem. Their true totem is the blood-sweated horse. The Marcia people roam the grasslands on horseback."
Jamie stared for a moment. "Where did you hear those stories?"
Marcia hugged her knees, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face.
"For a while, back in Shortcall Alley, people were paying a high price for red hair — especially bright red hair like mine. So everyone started asking around about the Marcia people."
Shortcall Alley — the place where Marcia had once lived. Jamie had heard of it: a slum on the edge of the wasteland, home to thieves, assassins, black-market traders, and wanderers whose identities were too unclear to be allowed into any official settlement.
Jamie quickly picked up his pen and wrote the detail down.
For a while, the only sound in the confinement room was the soft scratching of his pen across the paper.
Marcia closed the tin lunchbox and set it beside him. "Jamie, when you get to District Fourteen… what do you plan to do?"
"I haven't decided yet," he said quietly. "I'll probably start by visiting the towns where people with my surname live. After that… maybe I won't even stay in the habitable zones. The chelation creatures don't appear as often in District Fourteen — I might live in the wasteland again for a while. Life out there is the only kind of freedom that's real. What about you, Jane? What's your plan for the future?"
"I have one," Marcia said, nodding.
"What is it?"
"I'm going to find someone — someone very, very important to me—"
Before she could finish, the door of the confinement room suddenly swung open from the outside. Marcia's voice froze in her throat as both of them looked up.
Pale moonlight poured through the narrow crack in the door, casting a thin shadow across the floor.
—It was Sister Eloise.
(End of Chapter)