Kingdom of Cages(12)

At that moment, standing there felt worse than imagining getting into the water did, and, of course, Mom had just made her responsible for bringing Teal.

“Come on.” Chena knotted her fingers around the towel she carried and stepped forward.

Chena steeled herself not to see and not to think. She stripped off her clothes as fast she could, hiding under one of the rough towels that she draped over her shoulders. She got in and out of the noisy shifting bathwater as quickly as Mom would let her. The yellow soap was harsh against her skin and smelled pungent and strange. The smell surrounded her like a cloud as she put on her clean clothes and they accompanied the other bathers back to the sleeping room to return their stuff to their lockers. By the time they closed the locker door, Chena felt like she would have rather stayed aboard Athena and begged for air money.

Mom said nothing. She was probably still mad. She looked mad, with her face all hardened and closed up. She wouldn’t look down at Chena or Teal at all.

The way to the dining room was not hard to find. A steady stream of people headed out one of the double doors into the morning. Outside was brighter and warmer now, and full of people. Gaggles of people strode or slouched along the gravel paths. Villagers filled the lowest catwalk, heading away into the trees toward the river docks. They wore thick dark clothing, and they all seemed to have long hair, either pulled back in ponytails or braids, or rolled up tightly against the backs of their heads. The newcomers were mostly on the ground paths, a strange patchwork bunch in their station blues, reds, and oranges. It didn’t take much looking to see that the tree people were staring down at them.

Back at you, thought Chena toward whatever snide thoughts were being rained down at her and her family. Right back at you. She didn’t dare make the piss-off sign. Mom would see. But she knew those looks. She’d seen looks like them on the station. Up there were the ones who had something you didn’t and thought it was your fault that you weren’t as good.

“Ow!” Teal’s yelp jerked Chena’s thoughts and her gaze out of the trees. Teal stood in the middle of the path, with her right hand jammed under her left armpit and staring with bewildered accusation at the air at the edge of the path.

Around them there were a few small laughs, and Chena heard the word “fence” ripple up and down the river of people.

Chena wrapped one arm around her sister. “Don’t worry about it, Teal,” she said, glaring at the amused bystanders. “I didn’t see them either.”

Mom also gave the bystanders a hard look, which actually got them to stop chuckling and move on. While she checked Teal’s hand to make sure that there were no actual burns or anything, the closed-in feeling returned to cover Chena completely. Even so, she did not miss the frown on her mother’s face as Mom looked at the fence posts. She would have given anything to know what Mom was thinking, but Mom said nothing. She just started walking toward the dining hall again.

The dining hall was a long low building with a thicket for a roof and tangled vines falling down its walls. The inside was dim, and the air smelled of the yellow soap and strange spices. But as Chena got into the food line with Mom and Teal, her stomach grumbled.

Can’t smell all that strange, she thought as she picked up a bowl and shuffled forward. A man who looked so bored he was almost dead slopped a dollop of something beige, steaming, and dotted with bits of black and red into her bowl. Chena sniffed the steam. It smelled bland, but her stomach growled again.

At the end of the line, people were ladling something white into their bowls and drizzling something else brown and goopy on top, so Chena did too. Then she grabbed a big ceramic mug of what smelled like apple juice.

She was not surprised to see that everybody had to sit at long tables and that no one seemed to have their own spot. Fortunately, three men in thick trousers and long-sleeved shirts were just getting up from the end of one of the tables. Chena slid into the place where they’d been sitting and waved for Teal and Mom to come join her.

No one around them seemed interested in talking. They just dug their spoons into their bowls and ate. But they were watching. Chena saw the sidelong glances, as if every stranger in the room were sizing her and her family up. She wanted to yell at them, give them all the piss-off sign. What was the matter? They didn’t think the Trusts were good enough to eat here? These people weren’t so great either. Their clothes were dirty or sewn back together. She could see elbows poking through thin shirts and knees through thin trousers. Everyone’s skin seemed to be wrinkled and callused, even the kids’.

And they have the nerve to stare at us. I’ll show them nerve.