Page 12 of Fable for the End of the World

“Don’t let Caerus think there’s anythingnaturalabout what they’re doing, Nesa,” Dad had said. “They’ve created conditions that allow some organisms to thrive and others to die—all by their design. It’sintentional.We aren’t less-evolved creatures. We’re just land animals in a sinking world, and they’re the sea animals. If the lakes and rivers were drying up and the sea level was falling instead of rising, they’d die like beached fish. Do you see what I mean?”

To tell the truth, Dad drank more than he should have, so when he talked, his eyes turned glassy and far away, and his stories meandered and zigzagged until he was slurring words anddropping syllables. And I didn’t usually understand him, not really.

Most of the time, it was hard to imagine how he and Mom had ever ended up together. But in those moments, I could see it. In their own ways, they both thought they deserved more from the world than it had given them.

Dad coped with it by slipping further and further off Caerus’s grid, and ours, until one day we woke up and he was gone. Mom copes with it the way she does. And Luka and I just try to keep our heads above water.

But Dad leaving ripped a wound in Luka that I don’t think will ever heal. As much as he thinks I’m the softhearted idealist between us, he’s the one who believed the things Dad said about escaping Caerus’s system, about being free. I’m not sure I can believe it the way Luka does.

And anyway, right now I’m up to my elbows in dead deer.

I should’ve started with the rabbits. I didn’t eat anything before I left the house and I feel lightheaded. I salt the deer’s skin and then take a step back, drawing in a shaky breath. I’m suddenly overcome with the desperate desire to do anything but this ugly, bloody,smallwork. I march up to the counter instead and turn on my tablet.

I scroll through my receipts and accounts, my virtual ledger. There’s the City buyer who wanted four mounted stag heads, Arend Meester. I could barely understand his thick Damish accent. Next to him is Floris Dekker, and I flinch at the sales column: seventy-five credits. It should have been ninety at least. And that’s not even accounting for what I risked by helping him.

But Floris hasn’t left his house since the day he spread hisdaughter’s dead body across my counter. I wonder if he’ll ever leave again. Someone—I really wonder who—splashed black paint across the door of his Caerus pod home.Coward.

I shake my head, as if to clear it of the memory, and keep scrolling through the accounts. It’s almost impossible to tell a City resident from an Outlier by name alone, because New Amsterdam’s provincial government offered an incentive program a while back for Outliers to change their names to Damish. Ten thousand credits of debt, erased—we really could have used that, but Mom had refused. She said people had been trying to make us change our family name for centuries, including the officials at the City immigration port where our great-great-great-whatever ancestors first landed. They came from a small village in some old country thousands of miles away, where they ate mostly cabbage and didn’t work on Saturdays, which doesn’t sound too bad.

In the Dominion of New England, just north of us, they offered a similar financial incentive for people to change their names to things like Prudence and Bartholomew. I don’t think I’d ever do that, not even for fifty thousand credits.

I’m so zoned out staring at my tablet that I hardly notice when the door of the shop swings open. I only startle when I hear how heavy the footsteps are on the floor. Thick, weather-resistant boots made of durable rubber. No one in Esopus has boots like that.

Slowly, my gaze rolls upward, from the boots to the pale gray suit, inexplicably dry and entirely featureless, save for the Caerus insignia on the breast.

I can’t make eye contact with the Mask, of course, but I fix mystare about where I think its eyes should be. I can’t see anything in the smooth metal visor except my own reflection, warped and tiny, like a fish trapped in a bowl.

“Hello,” I say. “Welcome to Soulis Taxidermy Shop. How can I help you?”

We’ve had Masks in here before, sent by Caerus to appraise the shop. Sometimes they offer to buy it, but Luka and I always refuse. Even though I didn’t understand everything Dad said, I know when someone is trying to stiff me.

I assume this Mask is here for the same reason. Usually they send us a notification, my tablet screen momentarily blinking red. Not this time, though it doesn’t matter. I’m not selling the shop.

I’m preparing my most polite refusal when the Mask shocks me by saying my full name aloud.

“Inesa Yael Soulis.”

It’s not a question. I cringe at hearing it in the Mask’s staticky, monotone voice. “Yes?”

“Account number 6415506781.”

With its flat, robotic tone, it’s hard to tell ifthisis a question. “Yes?” I try again hesitantly.

“You have been nominated for the Lamb’s Gauntlet beginning March eighth. More information will be forwarded to your tablet.”

“What?” The word comes out strangled. I stare at the smooth metal visor, my mind racing, and I don’t understand.

“The Lamb’s Gauntlet,” the Mask repeats. If there’s a tinge of annoyance to its voice, I can’t suss it out. It just sounds like the buzz of black flies as they hover around a corpse. The memory ofSanne flashes through my mind, the muddied hem of her white dress, her still-open eyes. And, then, worse: the flash of the Angel’s white hair. Her gloved hands, sliding up the barrel of her rifle. The utterly inhuman coldness of her stare.

This all happens to other people, not to me. To people who carelessly let themselves slip so far into the red that they can’t dig themselves out. My thoughts skip around, scattered. We’ve never gone a single credit into debt. Luka and I work so hard to keep our family out of the red. Itcan’tbe me.

“Your Gauntlet will begin in twelve hours. Please refer to your tablet for the countdown.”

There’s a roaring in my ears, my blood pounding like rainwater down a mountainside. It can’t be me. Unless—

“Who?” I manage.

“What?” I imagine some impatience in the Mask’s voice.

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