Hugh Howey - Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)

The two circles captivated Juliette. They were like wide open eyes peering out at the world for the first time. She told her father that she could already count that high.

“I know you can,” he said. “It’s because you’re so smart.”

She followed her mother into the bazaar while clutching one of her father’s strong and rough hands with both of her own. There were people everywhere. It was loud, but in a good way. A happy noise filled the air as people lifted their voices to be heard—just like a classroom once the teacher was gone.

Juliette felt afraid of getting lost, and so she clung to her father. They waited while her mom bartered for lunch. It required stopping at what felt like a dozen stalls to get the handful of things she needed. Her dad talked a man into letting her lean through a fence to touch a rabbit. The fur was so soft it was like it wasn’t there. Juliette snapped her hand back in fear when the animal turned its head, but it just chewed something invisible and looked at her like it was bored.

The bazaar seemed to go on forever. It wound around and out of sight, even when all the many-colored adult legs were clear enough for her to see to the end. Off to the sides, narrower passages full of more stalls and tents twisted in a maze of colors and sounds, but Juliette wasn’t allowed to go down any of these. She stuck with her parents until they arrived at the first set of square steps she’d ever seen in her young life.

“Easy now,” her mother told her, helping her up the steps.

“I can do it,” she said stubbornly, but took her mom’s hand anyway.

“Two and one child,” her father said to someone at the top of the steps. She heard the clatter of chits going into a box that sounded full of them. As her father passed through the gate, she saw the man by the box was dressed in all colors, a funny hat on his head that flopped much too big. She tried to get a better look as her mom guided her through the gates, a hand on her back and whispers in her ear to keep up with her father. The gentleman turned his head, bells jangling on his hat, and made a funny face at her, his tongue poking out to the side.

Juliette laughed, but still felt half afraid of the strange man as they found a spot to sit and eat. Her dad dug a thin bed sheet out of his pack and spread it across one of the wide benches. Juliette’s mom made her take her shoes off before she stood on the sheet. She held her father’s shoulder and looked down the slope of benches and seats toward the wide open room below. Her father told her the open room was called a “stage.” Everything in the down deep had different names.

“What’re they doing?” she asked her father. Several men on the stage, dressed as colorful as the gatesman, were throwing balls up into the air—an impossible number of them—keeping them all from hitting the ground.

Her father laughed. “They’re juggling. They’re here to entertain us until the play starts.”

Juliette wasn’t sure she wanted the play to start. This was it, the thing she wanted to see. The jugglers tossed balls and hoops between each other, and Juliette could feel her own arms windmilling as she watched. She tried counting the hoops, but they wouldn’t stay in one place long enough.

“Eat your lunch,” her mother reminded her, passing her bites of a fruit sandwich.

Juliette was mesmerized. When the jugglers put the balls and hoops away and started chasing one another, falling down and acting silly, she laughed as loudly as the other kids. She looked constantly to her mom and dad to see if they were watching. She tugged on their sleeves, but they just nodded and continued to talk, eat, and drink. When another family sat close and a boy older than her laughed at the jugglers as well, Juliette felt suddenly like she had company. She began to squeal even louder. The jugglers were the brightest things she had ever seen. She could’ve watched them forever.

But then the lights were dimmed and the play began, and it was boring by comparison. It started off nice with a rousing sword fight, but then it was a lot of strange words and a man and woman looking at each other the way her parents did, talking in some funny language.

Juliette fell asleep. She dreamed of flying through the silo with one hundred colorful balls and hoops soaring all around her, always out of reach, the hoops round like the numbers at the end of the bazaar’s level—and then she woke up to whistles and applause.

Her parents were standing and yelling while the people on the stage in the funny costumes took several bows. Juliette yawned and looked over at the boy on the bench beside her. He was sleeping with his mouth open, his head in his mom’s lap, his shoulders shaking while she clapped and clapped.

They gathered up the sheet and her father carried her down to the stage where the swordfighters and strange talkers were speaking to the audience and shaking hands. Juliette wanted to meet the jugglers. She wanted to learn how to make the hoops float in the air. But her parents waited instead until they could speak to one of the ladies, the one who had her hair braided and twisted into drooping curves.

“Juliette,” her father told her, lifting her onto the stage. “I want you to meet… Juliette.” He gestured to the woman in the fluffy dress with the strange hair.

“Is that your real name?” the lady asked, kneeling down and reaching for Juliette’s hand.

Juliette pulled it back like it was another rabbit about to bite her, but nodded.

“You were wonderful,” her mom told the lady. They shook hands and introduced themselves.

“Did you like the play?” the lady with the funny hair asked.

Juliette nodded. She could sense that she was supposed to and that this made it okay to lie.

“Her father and I came to this show years ago when we first started dating,” her mother said. She rubbed Juliette’s hair. “We were going to name our first child either Romeus or Juliette.”

“Well, be glad you had a girl, then,” the lady said, smiling.

Her parents laughed, and Juliette was beginning to be less afraid of this woman with the same name as her.

“Do you think we could get your autograph?” Her father let go of her shoulder and rummaged in his pack. “I have a program in here somewhere.”

“Why not a script for this young Juliette?” The lady smiled at her. “Are you learning your letters?”

“I can count to a hundred,” Juliette said proudly.

The woman paused, then smiled. Juliette watched her as she stood and crossed the stage, her dress flowing in a way that coveralls never could. The lady returned from behind a curtain with a tiny book of papers held fast with brass pins. She accepted a charcoal from Juliette’s father and wrote her name large and curly across the cover.

The woman pressed the collection of papers into her small hands. “I want you to have this, Juliette of the silo.”

Her mother protested. “Oh, we couldn’t. That’s too much paper—“

“She’s only five,” her father said.

“I have another,” the lady assured them. “We make our own. I want her to have it.”

She reached out and touched Juliette’s cheek, and this time Juliette didn’t pull away. She was too busy flipping through the papers, looking at all the curly notes handwritten along the sides beside the printed words. One word, she noticed, was circled over and over among all the others. She couldn’t make out many of them, but this one she could read. It was her name. It was at the beginning of so many sentences:

Juliette. Juliette.

This was her. She looked up at the lady, understanding at once why her parents had brought her there, why they had walked so far and for so long.

“Thank you,” she said, remembering her manners.