Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

“Do you remember?” I asked. “The soldiers taking you away?”

The girl nodded. “They were kind to me,” she said. “They played games and told me jokes.”

“You were a happy little girl,” I said. “I remember how we used to run to the fields together. I was two years older, so I always outran you, but you never minded. Bobo ran with us. How you loved that dog.”

The girl’s face lit up. “Doggie,” she said. For a moment, I could glimpse the child she had been.

“Then Christian would find us and bring us home,” I continued. “You’d ride piggyback, laughing all the way. Christian was twelve, and we adored him, the way little girls worship their big brothers.”

“The people who took you,” Mama said. “The general and his wife. Did they have other children?”

The girl shook her head.

“With no brothers, no sisters, you must have been lonely,” Mama said. “Did you have playmates at school?”

“It was too dangerous for me to go to school,” the girl said. “Mama taught me piano and embroidery. My governess taught me everything else.”

“Did you have pets to play with?” I asked. “A dog like Bobo, maybe?”

“Papa kept guard dogs,” the girl replied. “But they were for our protection. There were assassins everywhere, and kidnappers and murderers. Once, Mama and Papa and I were walking home from church, and a man sprang out of the bushes. He was too fast, even for our bodyguards, but the dogs lunged at him and tore him to pieces.”

“How terrible for you to have seen such a thing,” Mama said. “I would have covered your eyes to protect you.”

“Children see worse every day,” I said sharply. “The man was a stranger to her, not her father.”

“Pay no attention to Isabella,” Mama said to the girl. “She was always jealous of you. You were far prettier, the prettiest girl in the village. And even though you were two years younger, you were smarter as well. Now you have a fine education, lessons from a governess. Isabella can’t even sign her own name.”

“That wasn’t my choice,” I said, trying to keep my anger under control. “All the village children were forced to work in the fields, seven days a week, from sunrise past nightfall. Sometimes I prayed to be taken to a slave camp. There, I’d heard, the children worked just as hard, but were given food daily to maintain their strength.”

“No one makes you work in the fields now,” Mama said. “But I don’t see you picking up a book.”

This was an argument Mama and I often had. Before The Leader had seized control, every village had had its own school, and Mama and Papa both could read and write and do sums. But I’d come home each night too exhausted to learn, and even if I’d wanted, it was too dark in our house for study.

I turned my attention to the girl. “We’ve asked you questions,” I said. “But you’ve asked us nothing. Surely there’s something you would like to know.”

The girl nodded. “After I was taken,” she said, “did you wonder what had become of me? Did you try to find out?”

“Of course we did!” Mama cried. “All of us who’d had our babies stolen from us. Do you think we were heartless? Do you think it meant nothing to us to lose our children?”

The girl lowered her head. “I was taught that the villagers and the slum dwellers were like animals,” she said. “It was the responsibility of people of the educated classes to see to it rules were followed and order maintained. Animals can’t think for themselves. Animals have no feelings.”

“We had feelings,” Mama said, but her voice was gentle and loving, as it always was with Maria. “There were rules for finding out what had become of our children, and we followed them. All children were kept alive for thirty days after being taken. The mothers from all the local villages went daily to the town hall, hoping we’d be told where our child was. There was no way of knowing which mothers would be let in. Some days, none were admitted.

Other days, one, two, ten mothers, would be shown in by the soldiers. The mothers weren’t supposed to talk to us when they came out, but still you heard things. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, if your child had been sent to a death camp, you could negotiate. If you offered another of your children, that child and the one taken by the soldiers might be sent to a slave camp. We had no illusions about the slave camps. Children there were often worked to death. But there was no hope for a child sent to a death camp.”

“Were you ever admitted to the office?” the girl asked. “Were you told what had become of me?”

“One day, the soldiers selected eight of us to go in,” Mama said. “Over three weeks had passed. The mothers who were selected fell to the floor, weeping in gratitude.”

“I never cry,” the girl said. “People who cry are ungrateful and should be regarded as enemies of The State.”

“I didn’t cry,” Mama said. “Other mothers did, but I didn’t. Did I, Isabella? Have you ever seen me cry?”

“Never, Mama,” I replied. “Not since the day the soldiers took Maria.”

Mama and the girl both stared at me.

“Not that day either,” I corrected myself.

The girl smiled. “You knew The State wanted only what was best for its people,” she said. “The Leader was most kind and loving to the lowest of the low.”

Mama looked at me. It was as dangerous now to agree with such a sentiment as it had been to deny it just weeks before.

The girl must have taken Mama’s silence to mean accord. “What happened next?” she asked. “When you were let into the town hall. Were you told right away what had become of me?”

“A colonel sat at the desk,” Mama said. “All the town officials had been executed, and the colonel was now in charge. He gave us permission to tell him our names. Then he pulled out eight files, one for each of our taken children. We begged him to tell us what was in the files. We swore we would do anything to keep our children alive.”

“These were the animals who had no feelings,” I said to the girl, but she paid me no heed.

“The colonel made each of us swear our gratitude to The State for taking our children, our fealty to The Leader, all wise in his decisions,” Mama continued. “We swore to that. We would have sworn to that and more to keep our children alive.”

“So you swore falsely,” the girl said. “Or did you believe The Leader was all wise, that his decisions were always the right ones?”

“I believed my Maria had been seized from me,” Mama said. “And that I had one chance and one chance only to find out what had become of her, perhaps to save her life. I’m sure the woman who raised you would have sworn what I swore, what the women by my side swore. And the colonel was satisfied. He believed us, he said. We were loyal citizens, worthy of being told where our children had been taken. But there were papers to be signed, protocol to be followed. He could only reveal the contents of the files if we came in the next morning with our entire families, our husbands, our children. Our husbands would be needed to sign the papers, and our children, in case there was any negotiating to be done. We fought among ourselves to be the first to kiss his hand, and then he dismissed us.”

“And the next morning, you all came,” the girl said. “And the colonel told you what was in each file.”

“We all came,” Mama said. “With our husbands and children. We presented ourselves at the town hall, and were escorted to the colonel’s office. There he sat, as he had the day before, flanked by a dozen soldiers who served as his guards.”

“He had no need for dogs,” I said. “His soldiers were fast enough.”