The Collective Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1: Pigeon Spring

  Chapter 2: Whim

  Chapter 3: Bird and Badger

  Chapter 4: Liberty

  Chapter 5: Devotion

  Chapter 6: The Goat Girl

  Chapter 7: Sparks

  Chapter 8: Stirring

  Chapter 9: Hunger

  Chapter 10: Rally!

  Chapter 11: At the Station

  Chapter 12: Destiny

  Chapter 13: Riot

  Chapter 14: Aelred Doesn’t Come Home

  Chapter 15: Death

  Chapter 16: Isolation Is a Fortress

  Chapter 17: Tree Trash

  Chapter 18: A Familiar Face

  Chapter 19: Gumption

  Chapter 20: Trust

  Chapter 21: Legacies

  Chapter 22: The Man in the Cell

  Chapter 23: Choices

  Chapter 24: Campaign

  Chapter 25: Doubt

  Chapter 26: Change

  Chapter 27: Victors

  Chapter 28: The First Blow

  Chapter 29: Insects and Empire

  Chapter 30: The Collective

  Chapter 31: You Can’t Return

  Chapter 32: The Girl and the Drake

  Chapter 33: Gashes

  Chapter 34: What Was Found

  About the Publisher

  Copyright

  ILLINOIS TERRITORY,

  COLLECTIVE HOMESTEADS OF AMERICA

  CHAPTER 1

  Pigeon Spring

  THE YEAR ELWYN left home was a Pigeon Spring in Badfish Creek. Every seven years, the birds would come, darkening the sky like a plague of Egypt. But this was the New World, not the Old. The birds didn’t bring fear or destruction. The birds brought excitement, like a coming storm. The hunting equipment wasn’t the best; everyone used what they had. A lucky few carried shotguns. The rest carried slings, arrows, throwing sticks. Nets stretched from tree to tree. They filled with birds like bugs fill a screen, while children carried baskets around their necks and caught the birds as they fell from the sky. The filled baskets were dumped into a wagon, and the wagon was carried to Kegonsa, where the birds were gutted and bled and shipped by train south-west to St Louis and east along the Laurentian cities as far as Philadelphia.

  They got three dollars for every bird, and the feeling of wealth poured into town before the money did. That summer, people would build homes, pay off debts, get married. For years, the forest floor would be fertile, fertile enough to grow the pumpkins whose vines were trained to climb the cottonwoods where the shade wasn’t strong. That first year, the pumpkins would grow so large, they would need to be held up with ropes.

  It was a Pigeon Spring, and Badfish Creek ignited with excitement as the first shots were fired, and the sky grew darker and darker with fluttering bodies. Elwyn’s arm whirled, his sling hurling stones that felled four passenger pigeons at a time, just like his father had taught him, and his father before him, and his father before that, on and on back seven generations to Samuel Bramble, one of the rebel slaves who fought in the Second American War before settling down in Badfish Creek among French mountain men and misfits. But even though Elwyn’s ears were full of the roar of wings, even though the birds dropped from the sky, even though the thrill of the hunt was pumping through his body, below all that, Elwyn felt a restlessness. The restlessness had been growing all winter, maybe all his life.

  When the last birds were shipped, men and women jumped into the still-icy creek to rinse the sweat, blood and feathers from their bodies. Children were washed in basins of warm well-water and oak bark; brothers and sisters with all shades of pale and dark young skin stood gleaming while they waited to be inspected by their mothers. Everyone was vigorously dried, believing wet ears meant illness, and wet feet drew bad spirits. Then as the sun went down and the bonfires were lit, people gathered close, wrapped in blankets and coats, roasting game as they always did, and singing and playing, flirting, minding babies. On that celebratory day, many bottles were opened and passed. Old Finchy opened a cask of the mead she was famous for as the singing grew louder and more joyful, more boisterous. Children played late into the night while young mothers nursed and got a chance to dream, for once, of the things they would buy.

  While Badfish Creek celebrated its fortune, Elwyn wasn’t with the others. Instead, he was alone in his room – an unusual thing for a boy who normally revelled in festival atmospheres. Like the other Badfishians, his head was full of dreams, but they were dreams of a different quality. In the light of a candle, his pen flew across the page, but no matter how fast Elwyn wrote, his hand couldn’t keep up with words racing through his mind. He kept making mistakes, having to restart. He wanted the letter to be as great as the ambitions rising in him. He wanted it to be perfect. It was possible that this one letter, addressed to an aunt he had never spoken to, in a town he had never visited, could change the course of his whole life. And perhaps it did.

  It was a letter asking his Aunt Piety if he could come and live with her. He sent it first thing the next morning, and for weeks after, Elwyn’s life hinged on visits to the post office, where he checked in once, twice, sometimes three times a day to see if anything had arrived for him; there were no home deliveries in that part of the Collective, and the train that carried mail was unreliable. Elwyn’s mood rose and fell with these visits, with the shake of Postman Wilder’s head. And every day, it seemed more important to Elwyn that the letter arrive, not less. He realised that leaving Badfish Creek – leaving soon, making something of himself – was the pivotal thing, was what his life had been building towards.

  But as often happens, the day the letter arrived was the one day Elwyn neglected his morning visit to the post office – his brother Allun had convinced him the morning would be better spent out fishing; the bass were biting. Later, hungry from the fresh air and industry, Elwyn sat at the kitchen table reading a book and eating acorn bread while his mother swept the floor. When Mirth Bramble cleaned, her arms looked like the legs of a draught horse: strong, deliberate. Crumbs fell down around Elwyn as he read, but for once, Mirth didn’t seem to see them. She glanced at the small stack of mail on the counter and then back at her son. After a few minutes, she stopped sweeping and took an envelope from the pile.

  ‘I stopped in at the post office earlier. This came for you,’ she said, handing it to Elwyn. She went back to sweeping. He saw her glance over at him as he examined the crisp paper and the address written in a practised hand. His fingers shook a little as he unfolded the enclosed letter. As he did, a smile grew on his face. Happiness seemed to spread over his entire body, radiate from him. When he was done reading, he set the letter aside and took another bite of bread, a bite of self-satisfaction.

  ‘So, what did she say?’ Mirth asked in a too-casual voice, not looking up.

  ‘It’s not from Aunt Piety. It’s from her husband. He says I can stay with them.’

  Mirth poked at the dust behind the stove.

  ‘Well, you are nearly sixteen,’ she said. ‘You can make your own decisions.’

  Elwyn nodded, brushing crumbs of bread from the table back onto his plate and tipping them into his mouth.

  ‘Of course I can,’ he said with a wink.

  ‘Elwyn…’ his mother began. ‘I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.’

  ‘I thought you said I was old enough to make my own decisions,’ he teased.

  ‘I grew up in Hill Country, Elwyn. I know there are a lot of advantages to the education you can get in a place like Liberty. I know there are opportunities, and that can seem exciting. But you are still a boy. You are used to being known. Liked. Understood. It won’t be like that living with my sister. It won’t be like th
at with those people. I think you underestimate how difficult the path forward will be for you. It’s very different in Liberty than it is here, Elwyn.’

  ‘That’s why I want to go.’ He put his plate in the wash basin and kissed his mother on her cheek. Her muscles were tense. ‘Oh, don’t worry so much, Mam. I’ll be all right – I always am. I plan on coming back, you know. And coming back rich. And then I’ll buy you a big house. And dozens of brooms,’ he said, laughing as he patted her on the back. She sighed heavily, but her muscles loosened slightly. Elwyn went to the door and put on his hat.

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Mirth.

  ‘Going to tell Whim. She’s got good paper. I’ll write the letter there and take it to the post office on my way back. I’ve got to let the Blackwells know when I’m coming,’ he said before leaving.

  The spring air smelt fresh to him for the first time in years. Later, when he returned home, Elwyn would fold that letter from his uncle carefully back into its envelope and put it with the others he had received from Liberty – all from his aunt, mostly Christmas cards. They had started coming when he was four and stopped by the time he was twelve. He kept them in a small wooden box under his bed, where he kept all the things that were his and only his: a coin, an arrowhead, a few maps clipped from newspapers.

  CHAPTER 2

  Whim

  BADFISH CREEK wasn’t a place used to change. Deep in the Illinois Territory, it had been settled shortly after the Second War by a group of what came to be called Foresters: a mix of fur-hunters, anarchists and a handful of rebel slaves that had abandoned the land they had been bound to. That was 1820, when the Foresters committed to building their houses around trunks of trees, never borrowing money, and never tilling the earth.

  Elwyn’s leaving caused no small stir in the community. Everyone had an opinion, and in the months before he set off, they seemed to talk of nothing else. It’s what comes of marrying outsiders, was a common whisper (Elwyn’s late father had been a handsome, well-liked person, the sort of man a town hates to see marry anyone but their own daughters). The older women, with their lace and superstitions, said it was Elwyn’s mother’s fault for bundling him in too many blankets and keeping the windows closed during his infant naps. But Elwyn had supporters, too. His older brother Allun, who was engaged and feeling the squeeze of responsibility, thought it was prudent to make a little money while young. Teilo, the youngest brother, hoped Elwyn would send back some livestock he could keep as pets. And the distiller, Aelred, was also a surprising ally. His daughter Whim and Elwyn had been friends for most of their childhood. Aelred thought it was time they went their separate ways.

  For his part, Elwyn didn’t pay much attention to other people’s opinions. It was said that he looked like his father’s line, and Elwyn liked to think he also had their free-minded ways. That spring he did what he always did: hunted and read and made mild mischief. If there was any difference, it was only the unquenchable light of possibility he carried inside him. His other brothers and sisters spent what remained of their time together teasing him about going to Hill Country, but this only added to the pleasure of his preparations. He was the fourth of seven children; teasing wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to.

  ‘But, Elwyn, why can’t you just study at home? Why would you want to go to Liberty?’ his sister Enid said as they sat up in a branch of an oak with their slings, waiting for a cottontail. ‘It sounds so boring! Stiff and prim and proper. And Mam says Aunt Piety was always so strange and serious. You want to live with someone like that?’

  Elwyn shrugged. He thought he saw a rabbit behind a nearby tree and stood to get a better look.

  ‘I mean, we all know you like a challenge. But going to Hill Country, Elwyn? It sounds terrible. And leaving us all. Leaving Whim. How can you leave her? The two of you are practically an old married couple already.’

  ‘We’re friends, Enid,’ Elwyn said, slightly annoyed. His sister had spoken too loudly, the rabbit had slipped away. Or maybe it was just staying still, hiding. He moved to another branch to get a better view. ‘This is an opportunity.’

  ‘An opportunity. Ha! I can just see you with those stuffy old Hill people, your collar buttoned high, sipping your tea.’ Enid imitated her image of him, eyes laughing, but Elwyn was standing still, waiting for any movement from under the dogwood bush. Enid scrunched her nose, plucked an old acorn, and shot it at his shoulder.

  ‘Elwyn, you know I can’t stand people who don’t pay attention to me while I make fun of them!’

  Elwyn took another acorn and threw it back at her with a sly grin, jumping down from the tree.

  ‘Hey! That hurt!’ Enid said, but she was grinning and already running after him, another acorn in her hand. Below the trees, green things were pushing up in all the familiar ways. Inside Elwyn, there was nothing but readiness.

  Or so it was until his last night in Badfish Creek. That night, Elwyn had intended to sleep well. The days were lengthening and the air was warm. While the rest of the town was out for a ‘good wrestle with this spring air’, as they used to say, Elwyn was climbing into bed. He shut his eyes, but sleep didn’t find him. Even though he could hear laughter from outside the window – kids playing tip-the-tin and mothers gossiping – the room was still unnaturally quiet without his four brothers breathing and turning in their sleep.

  At first Elwyn thought it was their absence that kept him up. But one by one, the boys found their way to their beds like foxes to their den, and the usual hum of their night-time noises returned to the little room. Elwyn still lay awake in bed. He lay, and he lay. The music and chatter faded. The night grew deeper, quieter. He still couldn’t sleep.

  And then he understood. Long after stillness had settled over Badfish Creek, Elwyn threw off his sheets and crept into the forest, stepping over the wood violets and through the nettles to the creek, a book under his arm.

  Along the bank, a house made of river stones was huddled on the earth. Rabbits nibbled on young lettuce and a few ducks pecked in the yard. Elwyn walked along the path until he arrived at Whim’s house. He knocked on her window.

  ‘Whim? Whim Moone? Are you awake?’

  He waited a moment and knocked again.

  ‘Whi––’

  She was there. She opened the window.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you. You are always so quiet,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the middle of the night.’ Her eyes were bleary with sleep.

  ‘I forgot to return this to you,’ he said, holding out the book. She looked at it blankly for a moment, then back at him. Elwyn felt her reading his face. She seemed to know how to read everything.

  ‘Do you want to talk about something?’ she asked.

  He didn’t have to reply. Whim wrapped herself in a coat and climbed out the window without a sound that could be heard above the pickerel frogs and grey tree frogs singing in the reeds. She sat beside Elwyn on the bank, and they watched the moon on the water, reflecting off her pale face and his dark one. He pulled a little cloth pouch of shelled walnuts from his pocket, and set it between them to share while they talked – a tradition of theirs that neither of them could remember the beginning of. Whim took some, keeping her eyes on Elwyn all the while.

  ‘I leave for the Blackwells’ tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘I know. You’ve talked about it all spring.’

  ‘But I was wrong, Whim.’

  ‘Wrong about what?’

  ‘I was wrong thinking I could go without you.’

  Whim looked at him, reading, again, but Elwyn didn’t want to be distracted.

  ‘You’re my best friend. We haven’t been apart for more than a couple of days since we were six. What am I going to do without you there?’ he said. Whim looked away and half-smiled, but it was an amused sort of smile that irritated Elwyn. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said.

  ‘What did you think would happen when you went away, Elwyn? I can’t magically appear at your side whenever you want some company.’
/>   ‘Oh, I don’t know. You know how I can be sometimes.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Whim. I want you to come with me.’

  ‘To Liberty? Elwyn, you’re going tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ve thought it through—’

  ‘Elwyn.’

  ‘Okay, maybe I haven’t thought it through completely. But just think about it. You don’t need to come now. Take some time. Talk to your father, pack your bags, do whatever needs to be done. Then come. Get on the train. Come find me.’

  Whim was quiet, a bit of the amused smile still standing on her lips. But maybe there was a bit of wistfulness, too. Elwyn thought he saw it around the edges of her eyes, and it encouraged him.

  ‘Come in a week. Or two. Or three. Whenever you can. Just come. There’s a whole world out there for us, Whim. You’re twice as smart as I am. You could do anything. We could do anything, Whim. And then someday we can come back to Badfish Creek, come back together, with some money in our pockets, having actually done something.’

  ‘Elwyn—’

  ‘I know. I know what everyone is saying. But, there’s this whole world out there. It might not be perfect, but it’s ours. Don’t you want to even see it? Run around in it? Don’t you want any of it?’

  The wistful look grew on her face for a moment, like the moon grows.

  ‘Of course I want it, Elwyn. Some of it.’

  ‘You could paint cities. Find new plants. Read all kinds of books, thousands of books. We could do it together. The two of us. Out in the world.’ Elwyn felt young and alive as he smiled at Whim. She called it his ‘impossible smile’ because he made it so impossible not to smile back. But this time she didn’t. She just sighed and looked at the water.

  ‘Elwyn, you’re my best friend—’ she began with the care and intelligence that was so natural to her.

  ‘And you’re mine—’

  ‘But you know that I can’t come with you.’ There was something honest in the way Whim spoke. It was as familiar to Elwyn as the trillium that still grew on the cool side of the creek.