Pam Bachorz - Drought

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First published by Egmont USA, 2011
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New York, NY 10016

Copyright Pam Bachorz, 2011
All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bachorz, Pam
Drought / Pam Bachorz.
p. cm.
Summary: Rubys blood holds the secret to the Water that keeps her and her fellow Congregants alive and enriches Darwin West, who has enslaved them for two centuries, but when her romance with an Overseer, Ford, brings her freedom in the modern world, she faces a terrible choice.
eISBN: 978-1-60684-185-3
[1. Science fiction. 2. Slavery Fiction. 3. WaterFiction. 4. Freedom Fiction. 5. Mothers and daughters Fiction. 6. Immortality Fiction. 7. Droughts Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.B132176Dro 2011

[Fic]
2010039313

CPSIA tracking label information:
Random House Production 1745 Broadway New York, NY 10019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

v3.1

Dedicated to my parents, Paul and Judy,
who read to me every single night.

Contents

Chapter 1

I wish it would rain.

On rainy days, we dont have to work in the woods, gathering water until our backs ache and our fingers tremble around our spoons. The Overseers would still find a reason to prod usmaybe the kitchen needs to be scrubbed, or their dock wants fixing. But there would be no quotas, and no woods.

If it rained, there would be water, dripping from every leaf and stem. Our cups would be full to the brim, work finished early, even. Darwin West would be so happy hed give us dinner.

But it hasnt rained all summer, or most of the spring. For all of these two hundred years, none of us has seen a drought like this. We suffer more every day, each day worse than the last, all of them endured in the dry woods.

I am very tired of the woods. I have been collecting water from them for exactly two hundred yearswe all have, slaves to Darwin West and his Overseers.

Well be lucky to find five drops today, Ruby, Mother grumbles.

There was no breakfast this morning, not even a mouthful of oatmeal. Darwin said we hadnt worked hard enough for it the day before. Mother will be grumbling all day.

Otto will provide. My answer is an automatic one, the same answer she gives me when I worry. But she is right. It is already hot, though its barely past sunrise. Road dust swirls around our skirts with every step. I wonder if theres even five drops of water waiting in all the woods.

Nothing in our lives has been easy this summer.

Half our strong ones gone, Mother says.

Not gone. Theyre just digging, I remind her. Like Darwin told them to.

What good are all those holes? Now were not all harvesting, she says.

I cant answer her. None of us know why some of the Congregants have been digging for nearly two weeks. The holes dot the edges of the woods where we harvest and line the road that connects our cabins and the cisterns. They dont do anything but catch a foot, twist an ankle.

Nobody asks whyasking why means a licking. Darwin gives our men dull shovels each morning and assigns the meanest Overseers to watch them. They dig until they are told to stop.

Maybe he seeks water, I say.

A hundred shallow wells? No, she answers.

Soon we reach the clearing where the cisterns sit: five long tanks, raised on rusted metal legs, with spigots near the bottom of each. Our harvests always start and end here. It is on the edge of miles and miles of woods; they all belong to Darwin Westhe owns every rock, stick, and person on the entire mountain.

Mother says there are cities farther south in New York. They must be grown enormous by now, shes told me. My father said they were beyond imagination, even when I was small.

But I have never seen cities. My entire life has been trees, and leaves, and the tiny lake that our cabins cluster around. It is so tiny that it does not even have a name. Its just the Lake.

Ive dreamed of citieshazy half-imagined worlds that likely dont resemble any true place. When I was small, I built them: streets and buildings made of twigs and mud, jammed with tiny pinecone people. They always had enough to eat, I liked to imagine. Nobody ever beat them.

We join the long line of Congregants waiting to get their pewter cups and spoons.

On days like today, I dream of chopping this off, Mother says. She twists her thick hair up on top of her head and easily secures it with a single pin. The knot of hair looks heavy enough to tip over her short, slight frame. But Mother is far too strong for that. She is made of boldness and sinew.

Will you do mine? I ask. Our hair is the same colorlike oak leaves in Novemberbut mine curls in a thousand different directions. It squirms away every time I try to capture it.

Two hundred years and you still cant tie up your hair, Mother says, but she sounds a little pleased. She does not have to reach up to do my hair; we are the same kind of small, though I am soft where she is hard. I feel a few gentle tugs, a light scrape against my scalp, and then the relief of air on the back of my neck. The sun wont barely touch it; our skin is browner than burned bread from all the days in the woods.

Birds sing from the trees and swoop over our heads, darting from one tree to another. Their song and screeches follow us all day, the only witnesses to our secret existence.

The line is moving now. Once each Congregant gets a cup and a spoon, they stand to the side, waiting for Darwin to decide on the days quota.

The water can be gathered only from living leavesscraped from ferns, or the bottom of flower petalsand it can touch only pewter. As for the people who can do that work? Only those blessed by Otto.

Or at least thats what Darwinand most of the Congregationthinks. Mother and the Congregations Elders know different. They protect my secret.

All know that I am Ottos daughter, and that makes me holy. But only the Elders and Mother know all of it. They know I bring my own gift to the Congregation, a gift that must stay hidden.

Darwin is eating something that smells sweet and full of luscious fat. I can almost taste it, even though I stand twenty people away. Congregants can live a long time without foodonce, they starved us for two weeksbut I think that only makes me love it more.

Long ago, before Otto, Mother fancied Darwin, and he fancied her. What drew her affection? Was it his height and muscles? Or perhaps the ice-blue eyes that are shaded, always, by a battered leather hat with a broad brim? None would be enough to turn my head. Perhaps whatever she loved left this brute long ago.

Still, his love for her, however twisted, hasnt left him.

Four other Overseers stand around the clearing, their long guns ready, eyes always watching. If one of us tries to escape, they will shootand if those bullets miss us, more Overseers wait in the woods.

One last Overseer hands out cups. He is new and younger than the rest of them. Darwin has hired more Overseers this summer, as he works us harder and longer and deals out more beatings. I eye the coppery bristle on the new ones head, so easy and cool. Perhaps Mother is right, and we should crop our hairthough it would be difficult without knives or scissors. Those are forbidden.

The new Overseer holds out the cup, but I fumble, and it falls to the ground. I bend, quickly, to pick it upbut he is there first.