Lois Lowry: Messenger

"Yes," Mentor said to Leader, "we will see what the meeting decides."

His voice sounded different, Matty noticed.

He saw that Leader, too, was noticing something about Mentor and was puzzled. But everyone was turning away now, the crowd dispersing, people returning to their usual daily tasks. Matty ran to catch up with the blind man, who had started walking the familiar path home.

Behind him he heard an announcement being made. "Don’t forget!" someone was calling out. "Trade Mart tomorrow night!"

Trade Mart. With the other things that had consumed Matty’s thoughts recently, he had almost forgotten about Trade Mart.

Now he decided he would attend.

Trade Mart was a very old custom. No one remembered its beginnings. The blind man said that he had first known of it when he was a newcomer to Village, still an invalid with wounds to be tended. He had lain on a bed in the infirmary, in pain, unseeing, his memory slow to return, and half listened to the conversations of the gentle folk who took care of him.

"Did you go to the last Trade Mart?" he had heard one person ask another.

"No, I have nothing to trade. Did you?"

"Went and watched. It all seems foolishness to me."

He had put it from his mind, then. He had nothing to trade, either. He owned nothing. His torn, bloodstained clothes had been taken from him and replaced. From a cord around his neck dangled an amulet of some sort, and he felt its importance but could not remember why. Certainly he would not trade it for some trinket; it was all he had left of his past.

The blind man had described all of that to Matty.

"Later I went, just to watch," he told him.

Matty laughed at him. They were close, by then, and he could do that. " Watch? " he hooted.

The blind man laughed in reply. "I have my own kind of watching," he said.

"I know you do. That’s why they call you Seer. You see more than most. Can anyone go to Trade Mart and watch?"

"Of course. There are no secrets here. But it was dull stuff, Matty. People called out what they wanted to trade for. Women wanted new bracelets, I remember, and they traded their old bracelets away. Things like that."

"So it’s like Market Day."

"It seemed so to me. I never went back."

Now, speaking of it the evening of the new ones' arrival, the blind man expressed concern. "It’s changed, Matty. I hear people talk of it now, and I feel the changes. Something’s wrong."

"What kind of talk?"

The blind man was sitting with his instrument on his lap. He played one chord. Then he frowned. "I’m not sure. There’s a secrecy to it now."

"I got up my nerve and asked Ramon what his parents traded for the Gaming Machine. But he didn’t know. He said they wouldn’t tell him, and his mother turned away when he asked, as if she had something to hide."

"I don’t like the sound of it." The blind man stroked the strings and played two more chords.

"The sound of your own music?" Matty asked with a laugh, trying to lighten the conversation.

"Something’s happening at Trade Mart," Seer said, ignoring Matty’s attempt at humor.

"Leader said the same."

"He would know. I’d be wary of it, Matty, if I were you."

The next evening, while they prepared supper, he told the blind man he was planning to go.

"I know you said I was too young, Seer. But I’m not. Ramon’s going. And maybe it’s important for me to go. Maybe I can figure out what’s happening."

Seer sighed and nodded. "Promise me one thing," he told Matty.

"I will."

"Make no trade. Watch and listen. But make no trade. Even if you’re tempted."

"I promise." Then Matty laughed. "How could I? I have nothing to trade. What could I give for a Gaming Machine? A puppy too young to leave its mother? Who’d want that?"

The blind man stirred the chicken that simmered in a broth. "Ah, Matty, you have more than you know. And people will want what you have."

Matty thought. Seer was correct, of course. He had the thing that troubled him—the power, he thought of it—and perhaps there were those who would want it. Maybe he should find a way to trade it away. But the thought made him nervous. He turned his thoughts to other, less worrying things.

He had a fishing pole, but he needed that and loved it. He had a kite, stored in the loft, and perhaps one day he would trade it for a better kite.

But not tonight. Tonight he would only watch. He had promised the blind man.

It was early evening, just past supper, and others were hurrying, as Matty was, along the lane to the place where Trade Mart was held. He nodded to neighbors as he passed them, and waved to some he saw farther along. People nodded back or waved in reply, but there was none of the lighthearted banter that was ordinarily part of Village. There was an intentness to everyone, an odd seriousness, and a sense of worry—unusual in Village—pervaded the atmosphere.

No wonder Seer didn’t want me to come, Matty thought as he approached. It doesn’t feel right.

He could hear the noise. A murmur. People whispering to each other. It was not at all like Market Day, with its sounds of laughter, conversation, and commerce: good-natured bargaining, the squealing of pigs, the motherly cluck of hens with their cheeping broods. Tonight it was simply a low hum, a nervous whisper through the crowd.

Matty slipped into a group that had gathered and was standing nearest to the platform, a simple wooden structure like a stage that was used for many occasions when the people came together. The coming meeting to discuss the proposal to close Village would be held here, too, and Leader would stand on the stage to direct things and keep them orderly.

A large wooden roof covered the area so that rain would not prevent a gathering, and in the cold months the enclosing sides would be slid into place. Tonight, though, with the weather still warm, it was open to the evening. A breeze ruffled Matty’s hair. He could smell the scent of the pine grove that bordered the area.

He found a place to stand next to Mentor, hoping that perhaps Jean would join her father, though she was nowhere to be seen. Mentor glanced down and smiled at him. "Matty!" he said. "It’s a surprise to see you here. You’ve never been before."

"No," Matty said. "I have nothing to trade."

The schoolteacher put his arm affectionately over Matty’s shoulders, and Matty noticed for the first time that the teacher had lost weight. "Ah," Mentor said, "you’d be surprised. Everyone has something to trade."

"Jean has her flowers," Matty said, hoping to turn the conversation to Mentor’s daughter. "But she takes them to the market stall. She doesn’t need Trade Mart for that.

"And," he added, "she already promised the puppy to me. She’d better not trade him away."

Mentor laughed. "No, the puppy is yours, Matty. And the sooner the better. He’s full of mischief, and he chewed my shoes just this morning."

For a moment everything seemed as it had always been. The man was warm and cheerful, the same loving teacher and father he had been for years. His arm over Matty’s shoulders was familiar.

But Matty found himself wondering suddenly why Mentor was there. Why, in fact, any of these people were here. None of them had brought any goods to trade. He looked around to confirm what he had noticed. People stood tensely, their arms folded or at their sides. Some of them were murmuring to one another. Matty noticed the young couple who were neighbors down the road from the house he shared with the blind man. They were conversing in low voices, perhaps arguing, and the young wife appeared worried at what her husband was saying. But their arms, too, like Matty’s, like Mentor’s, like everyone’s, were empty. No one had brought anything to trade.