A Time to Speak by Nadine Brandes

Author:Nadine Brandes [Brandes, Nadine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Science Fiction, Young Adult, Dystopian, Christian Sci-Fi, Christian YA
ISBN: 9781621840565
Amazon: B013Z40BIS
Publisher: Gilead Publishing
Published: 2015-10-16T05:00:00+00:00

20

I can’t remember how to walk.

It’s been only a couple weeks—at my best reckoning—since I was on deck, hauling up buckets of water. Why can’t I walk straight?

We step in between the two stacks of shipping containers and a gust of icy wind makes the container seem like a sauna. A hand slips through the window of the blue one to my left. “Parvin.”

Solomon.

I reach for him and our fingers barely touch. His are icy and stiff. Even that movement—lifting my arm away from my body—causes a bone-wracking shiver. I tuck my elbows close to my core again.

The boat tilts and I stumble into an Enforcer. He pushes me away and Frenchie steadies me. “Keep your feet wider”—she demonstrates—“like zees. I came to America on a boat like zees one. Not een a boxcar, of course. I learned to balance.”

I knew she was French, but never imagined she actually sailed to the USE from France. “Thank you.” I look back at the container window, but Solomon’s hand is gone.

My knees threaten to buckle. Two potatoes a day didn’t cut it. The morning light burns my eyes. I squint against the reflection off the ship’s surface. The rest of the Unity Village crew still huddles together. At least eighty of us. No wonder so many died in that cramped container. If the other containers were as full as ours, there must be at least a thousand of us.

Our breath fogs out, forming a mixed cloud of chill. Dusten Grunt’s eyes are sunken and his cheeks seem more hollow. Frenchie—a model to begin with—looks like an emaciated Dead-City Radical. Mother’s face sags as if she’s aged ten years, but she grips my hand tight in a commanding way.

“Follow me.” Monster Voice walks us through the rows. One container freed and doomed at a time, I guess. When will I be reunited with Solomon? How will he look once he steps into sunlight? I almost don’t want to see the change. I like imagining him strong and in control.

A man carries the little girl from our container. She stares at the mountains of snow with a nutcracker jaw. “It’s like a wonderland.”

If only it were.

Several of us stumble, but Monster Voice doesn’t slow. Thankfully, everyone is in pants, boots, and long-sleeved shirts, since the cold had just arrived in Unity Village.

I glance back at the stern-end of the boat. The sea stretches away from us, endless, dotted with enormous flat chunks of ice. But what claims my gaze is the Wall.

It stretches a thousand feet high a mile from the ship’s starboard side. It rests atop the sea, bobbing in sections as if hinges keep it more flexible. It is smooth and grey, polished. It looks so real, but I remember Mother’s degrading laugh: “Stone doesn’t float, Parvin.”

She said all parts of the Wall over water were projected—invented by Solomon’s great-grandfather or something like that. Apparently it’s just as impassable as a stone wall. Well, it looks like a legitimate stone wall from this distance.

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