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Northern Minnesota, the thirty-ninth year of the Kurian Order: He grew up in a pastoral setting a the lakes of upper Minnesota David Stuart Valentine was born during one of the interminable winters in a sturdy brick house on LakeCarver The scattered settlements of that area owed their survival not so much to resistance as to inaccessibility The Kurians dislike cold weather, leaving the periodic sweeps and patrols of this area to their Quislings The Reapers come only in the summer in a macabre imitation of the fishermen and campers who once visited the lakes between May and September

In the first few years after the Overthrow, ees supported themselves amid the abundant lakes and woods of what had been known as the Boundary Waters They exter disease-infested Ravies hotzones, but the settlers refused aid to would-be guerrilla bands, as most of them had already tasted Reaper reprisals elsewhere They wished nothing more than to be left alone The Boundary Waters people were ruled only by the weather A frantic period of food storage marked each fall, and when snow ca for survival, not sport In summer they retreated into the deep woods far fro to their houses after the Reapers were again driven south by the cold

Young David&039;s faion He had a collection of Scandinavian, American Indian, and even Asian ancestors in a family tree whose roots stretched from Quebec to San Francisco His mother was a beautiful and athletic Sioux from Manitoba, his father a former navy pilot

His father&039;s stories er place for David than it was foracross the Pacific Ocean the way so a raft and drifting down the Mississippi

His early life cae of eleven, on a cool September day that saw the first frost of the northern fall The family had just returned fro patrol or two still lingered Judging from the tire tracks that David found later, two trucks- probably the slow, alcohol-burning kind favored by rural patrols-had pulled up to the house Perhaps the occupants were also liquor fueled The patrol emptied the larder and then decided to spend the rest of the afternoon raping David&039;s mother Attracted by the sound of the vehicles, his father had died in a hail of gunfire as he caathering wild corn He hurried ho fear that the shots had come from his house

David explored the too-silent house The s, filled the four-room cabin He found his mother first, her body violated, her throat slit Out of spite or habit, the intruders had also killed his little brother, who had just learned to write his own name, and then his baby sister He did not cry-eleven-year-old men don&039;t cry, his dad said He circled the house to find his father lying dead in the backyard A croas perched on the for at the brains exposed by a baseball-size hole blown out of the back of his skull

He walked to the Padre&039;s Putting one foot in front of the other came hard; for some reason he just wanted to lie down and sleep Then the Padre&039;s familiar lane appeared The priest&039;s home served as school, church, and public library for the locals David appeared out of the chilly night air and told the cleric what he had heard and seen, and then offered to ith the Padre all the way back to his house The saddened priest put the boy to bed in his basement The room became David&039;s home for the rerave received the four victims of old sins loosed by the New Order David threw the first soil onto the burial shrouds that masked the violence of their deaths After the funeral, as little groups of neighbors broke up, David walked aith the Padre&039;s hand resting coly on his shoulder David looked up at the priest and decided to ask the question that had been troubling him

"Father Max, did anyone eat their souls?"

Every day at school they had toOften there was a lot of writing down and notto do with the day&039;s lesson, sometimes not The quotation prescribed for the rainy last day of classes had an extra significance to the older students who stayed on for a week after the grade-schoolers escaped the huht have been called the "Facts of Death" The Padre hoped to correct soend, then fill in the gaps about what had happened since the Overthrohen Homo sapiens lost its position at the top of the food chain The er students, and the parents of others objected, so this final week of class was sparsely attended

The Padre pointed to the quotation again as he began the afternoon&039;s discussion Father Maxiraceful arms and still- miles from the place of his birth in Puerto Rico, the Padre&039;s hair was only now beginning to reflect the salt-and-pepper coloring of age He was the sort of pillar a cos, the residents listened to his rich, melodious, and impeccably enunciated voice as attentively as his students did

The classroom blackboard that day had fourteen words written on it In Father Max&039;s neat, scripted handwriting, the words THE FARTHER BACKWARD YOU CAN LOOK, THE FARTHER FORWARD YOU CAN SEE-WINSTON CHURCHILL Were written with Euclidean levelness on the chalkboard Normally Valentine would have been interested in the lecture, as he liked history But his eye was drawn out the here the rain still showed no sign of letting up He had even used the leaky roof as an excuse to shift his desk to the left so that it pressed right against the wall under the , and the chipped white basin where his desk usually sat was now full enough with rainwater falling fro to add a plop every now and then as punctuation to the Padre&039;s lesson Valentine searched the sky for a lessening of the drizzle Today was the final day of the Field Games, and that ames because of weather, he would finish where he now stood in the ranking: third

The youths caainst others in their age group each spring as part of the general festivities that ended the winter and began the great Hideout This year Valentine had a shot at winning first prize Second and third place got you a hearty handshake and an up-close look at the trophy as whoever caed sixteen to eighteen was a real over-under shotgun, not a hunting unseason The Padre and David needed all the help they could get The Padre taught more or less for free, and Valentine didn&039;t earnendless cords of firewood for the neighbors If Valentine won, he and Father Max would be dining on goose, duck, and pheasant until well after the sno

"Mr Valentine," Father Max said, interrupting David&039;sabout a very ie"

"Funny," whispered Doyle fro about what a stupid son of a bitch you are"

Plop, added the basin to his right

The Padre cracked his knuckles in a callused fist; profane jokes out of Doyle were as natural as water dripping into the classroo his eyes fixed on David

"Sorry, Father," Valentine said with as much contrition as a seventeen-year-old boy could suize to the class by reviehat you know about the Pre-entities"

Another whisper from behind: "This&039;U be short"

The Padre shifted his gaze "Thank you for volunteering two hours of your free tirateful Your summary, Mr Valentine?"

Plop

Valentine could hear Doyle sluo back to before the dinosaurs, Father They made the Gates, those doorways that connect different planets The Interworld Tree It&039;s how the Kurians got here, right?"

Father Max held up his hand, palht hand, and his reers were misshapen They always reminded Valentine of tree roots that could not decide which way to grow "You are getting ahead of yourself, Mr Valentine Just by sixty-five million years or so"

The Padre sat down on his desk, facing the eight older students The classrooers within a long walk attended But education, like survival, depended on initiative in the disorganized Boundary Waters

Valentine settled in for a good listen, as he always did when the Padre parked himself on the desk in that fashion The rest of the class, not having the qualified joys of living with the Padre, did not know as he did that when the Padre perched there, he was i another teacher from his own youth, a deter in the ganja-s the Padre had been His as, the Pre-entities, except that they predate everything else we do know about life on Earth," the Padre began "I was telling you about the Doors yesterday No, Mr Doyle, not the Old World rock-and-roll band I knoe think of these Doors as a terrible curse, the cause of our trouble Everything we knoould be different if they had never been opened But long ago they wereplanet after planet in the Milky Way as easily as that door over there connects us with the library We call the builders of this Interworld Tree the Pre-entities, because we are not even sure if they had bodies-in the sense that you and I have bodies, that is They probably didn&039;t need our little che But if they did have bodies, they were big So as a barn

"We know they existed because they left the Interworld Tree and the Touchstones A Touchstone is like a book that you can readjust by laying your hand on it They don&039;t alork correctly on our human o insane from the experience, which I find easy to believe But a person with the right kind of ht call a revelation Like the downloads I was telling you about ere talking about the Old World&039;s coy"

The Padre looked down and shook his head Valentine knew the Padre had a love-hate relationship with the past; when he was in his cups, he would sometimes rave about the injustices in the Old World, which had the ability to feed and clothe all of its children but had chosen not to Thiscalled McDonald&039;s fries dipped into a chocolate shake, or overpriced souvenir T-shirts

"The Pre-entities existed by absorbing energy; a very special kind of energy, produced by living things Plants make it at a very low level All aniy, which we call a &039;vital aura&039; for lack of a better teranisence The latter predoives off a shter&039; of the two in more ways than one, if you understand"

A student held up her hand, and the Padre stopped

"You talked about this before, but I never got if the aura was your soul or not Is it, I ht she stayed for all the lessons with the older teens

The Padre smiled at her "Good question, Miss Cowell I wish I had an absolute answer My gut feeling is that a vital aura is not your soul I think your soul is sos to you and God, and no one else can interfere with it I know soets fed on, but there is no e can ever know that I think of the vital aura as being another special kind of energy you give off, just as you give off heat and an electroaze at an invisible point sixteen inches in front of her face, and Valentine sympathized She was also an orphan; the Reapers had taken her parents five years ago in Wisconsin She now lived with an aunt who scratched out a living weaving blankets and repairing coats The others sat in; silence Whenever the Padre discussed the Facts of Death with the older students, their normal restlessness vanished

"So why aren&039;t they still around? I thought that energy stuff hat made the Kurians immortal?" another student asked

"Evidently our Creator decided that no race can live forever, no matter how advanced their science When they started to die, we think it caused a terrible panic I wonder if beings who are nearly immortal are more afraid of death, or less? They needed , and they cleaned out whole planets in their final years, trying to stave off the inevitable They probably absorbed all the dinosaurs; the two events seem to have happened at the same time In their last extre They still died With no one to an to shut down over the thousands and thousands of years that followed But pieces of their knowledge, and the Interworld Tree itself, survived for a new intelligence to find later on"

Thunder ru of the rain increased

"So we call the Pre-entities Kurians now?" a young woman asked

"No The Kurians come from a race called the Lifeweavers They found the remnants of the Pre-entity civilization They pieced soether and made use of what they could understand, like the barbarians who et the word Lifeweaver froe; it refers to those of the race who visit other worlds and interpopulate them Just as man takes his livestock, crops, and orchards with hi better is found, so did the Lifeweavers in their colonization of the Interworld Tree Lifeweavers live a long, long time many thousands of years Some believe they were created by the Pre-entities as builders, but it see as theirs would have survived the extinction throes of the Pre-entities

"These Lifeweavers reopened the portals to our Earth about the ti that food tasted better if it was cooked first Our ancestors worshiped them Most of them were content to be teachers, but it seems a feanted to be more A Lifeweaver can appear to us as a man or woman, or an elephant or a turtle if it wants, so they ods to our poor forefathers They can put on a new shape as easily as we can change clothes Maybe they threw thunderbolts for good measure I think they inspired ends

"They adopted us in a way As we grew more and more advanced, they took a few of us to other worlds I&039;ve been told hu on other planets even now If so, I pray their fortune has been better than ours The Lifeweavers could do anything they wanted with DNA They could make useful creatures to suit themselves, orbeautiful birds and fish to decorate their homes; some of these still live on our planet today"

The Padre smiled at them "Ever seen a picture of a parrot? I think they tinkered with theht

Valentine had seen pictures of parrots Right now the only birds in hisin a flutter of wings He could see theht He&039;d heard the Kolchuks&039; lab-pointer pair had had another litter; et a puppy

The Padre droned on

Doyle held up his hand, serious for once "Sir, why tell us all this now? We&039;ve known about vampirism and so on since ere kids Okay,What difference does it ot started? We still have to hike out every summer-and every fall, a couple of families don&039;t come back"

The Padre&039;s face crumbled He looked ten years older to Valentine

"No difference, no difference at all I wish everyday ofcould , you&039;ve lived with it your whole lives, and it is not such a weight for you But I remember a different world People co like Eden Why talk about this now? Look at the quotation on the board Churchill was right By looking back, welasts forever, not even those ill do anything to become immortal They&039;re not The Kurians will eventually die, just like the Pre-entities Once an old king paid to have a piece of knowledge carved deep in the side of athat would always be true The wisest e told him to carve the words "This, too, shall pass" But who shall pass first, us or them?

"We will not live to see it, but one day the Kurians will be gone, and the Earth will be clean again If nothing else, I want you to take that certain knowledge froo"

The rain left shortly after the rest of Valentine&039;s schoolmates did He hurried to e with rainwater from the leaky roof, then headed for the kitchen Father Max sat at the battered table, staring at the botto

"David, telling that story always makes me need a drink But the drink I have alants another to keep it company, and I should not do that At least not too often" He replaced the jug in its familiar spot on the shelf

"That stuff&039;s poison, Father I wouldn&039;t use it to kill rats; it&039;d be too cruel"

The old man looked up at David, who poured hi"Isn&039;t the race today?"

Valentine, now dressed in faded denim shorts and a leather vest, bolted a piece of bread and washed it doith lad the rain stopped In fact, I better getto walk the trail before the race"

"You&039;ve been running that trail since April I&039;d think you&039;d know it by now"

"All the rain is going tohill"

Father Max nodded sagely "David, did I ever tell you that your parents would have been proud of you?"

Valentine paused for a second as he laced his high moccasins "Yes Mostly after you&039;ve had a drink It always makes you soft"

"You&039;re a bit of the best of both of the and dedication, and enough of your es I wish he- they-could see you today We used to call the last day of school graduation, you know that?"

"Yup I&039;ve seen pictures and everything A funny hat and a piece of paper that says you know stuff That would be great, but I want to get us that gun" Heto be in the public tent?"

"Yes, blessing the food and watching you collect first prize Good luck, David"

He opened the patched, squeaky screen door and sao bearded ers to hih they had spent every moment of their adult years in the elements They wore buckskin top to bottom, except for battered, broad-brimmed felt hats on their heads They bore rifles in leather sheaths, but they did not have the shifty, bullying air that the soldiers of the patrols did Unlike the soldiers charged by the Kurians with keeping order in the Boundary Waters, theseto their eyes that suggested ild animals

"Father Max," Valentine called into the house without taking his eyes off thewith tobacco-stained teeth The taller of the two spoke: "Don&039;t let the guns scare you, boy I know your people"

Father Max eed from the house and stepped out into the rain-soaked yard with ar out to ely arms "You haven&039;t come this way in years! Who is this with you?"

"My name&039;s Jess Finner, sir I&039;ve sure heard about you, sir"

The Padre sood or bad, Mr Finner I&039;d like you both to meet my ward, David He&039;s the son of Lee Valentine and Helen Saint Croix"

"I knew your father, David," said the one na in the brown pools beneath his wrinkled brow "Bad business, that day at his place I saw you after the funeral Took us four ot the e up old history," the Padre interrupted

Valentine caught the looks exchanged between the un

The Padre patted his shoulder "We&039;ll talk later, David- that&039;s a prorets to the Council at the public tent, and get back here as soon as you can We&039;re going to crack the seal on one of the bottles from the woodpile, and then you may have to put uffawed

The Padre gave David his "I mean it, now" look, and Valentine headed off down the road He still had time to look over the two-mile course if he hurried Behind hio, then turned and walked into the house

The srounds The public tent, a behes, baptiss at the start of every sulade surrounded by lakes and hills, ht from any patrol in vehicles The Hideout Festival featured sports and contests for the children and teenagers A wedding or tays added to the celebratory at, and archery co Faht their special dishes for all to share, for in a region of dreadful, cold winters and suatherings With the festival&039;s conclusion, the people would scatter into the woods and lakes to wait out the su that the Reapers would comb some other portion of the Boundary Waters in search of prey

The race felt less a sport and more of a chore to Valentine by the tions, and traders&039; stalls norers held his thoughts in a grip that startled hiun in front of an applauding crowd see a ned hi the race anyway The course looped out in a horseshoe shape around BirchLake Usually a mud-rimmed half-swamp by mid-May, BirchLake had swollen with the heavy rains until its fingers reached up alreeted Doyle and a few other acquaintances from school He had many acquaintances but no close friends As the Padre&039;s live-in student, responsibilities in keeping the house and school running prevented hih, his bookish habits made him a natural outsider on the occasions when he did ers He wandered off into the woods along the two-uessed right; the ground on the big hill to the west of BirchLake was slick with clay-colored mud He stood on the hill and looked out across the rippled surface of the lake toward the public tent A thought sprang frorew

Fifteen boys participated in the race, though only a handful had enough points from the other Field Game events to have a chance at the prize They were dressed in everything frole haired and wire muscled

"One to be steady," invoked Council assortment of racers "Two to be ready, and you&039;re off!"

A few of the boys almost stopped a hundred yards into the race when Valentinefor Birch Lake He sprinted out onto a long spit of land and thrashed his way into the water

Valentine sith lusty, powerful strokes, sighting on a tall oak on the other side This neck of the lake was 150 yards or so across, and he figured he would be back on the trail about the time the rest of the boys skidded down thewet fro up the trail before the lead boy, Bobby Royce, could be seen e at the finish line with a muddy chest to a mixture of cheers and boos Most of the boos ca Council defiled and not a piece of ratty twine

The other boys hit the finish line two an A fewwas to race from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and the exact route, land or water, didn&039;t ued that the purpose of the race was a two-mile run cross-country, not a shich would be a different sport altogether Each side increased its volume under the assuument Two old men found the whole fracas hilarious, and they pressed a bottle of beer into David&039;s pal hi Councilman Gaffley so huffy he looked like a hen with her feathers up

A hasty, three-councilmen panel pronounced Valentine disqualified fronition for his "initiative and originality" Valentine watched Bobby Royce receive the shotgun and shells and wandered out of the tent The barbecue srabbed a tin tray and loaded it from the ample spread outside The homemade beer tasted vile Had beer been this bad in the Old World? he wondered But so round under a nearby tree and went to work on the food

One of the backslapping oldsters approached hi two ers

"Hey there, kid Mind if I sit with you a bit?"

Valentine sed

Alainst the trunk of the tree "Don&039;t have ive or take, I could put away half that steer Beer tastes just as good, though," he said, taking a pull fro the other to Valentine

"Listen, son, don&039;t let &039;eood men, in their way; they just don&039;t like the unexpected We&039;ve seen too much unexpected in our days to want any more"

Valentine nodded to the oldon the food, and took a companionable pull from the fresh beer

"My nahbors, once You were a squirt then Your ma used to visit, especially when my Daas in her last illness"

Valentine&039;s tenacious ed, came to his rescue "I remember you, Mr Quincy You had that bicycle You used to letit didn&039;t have any tires I gave it aith everything else when she passed on Moved in with my son-in-law But I remember your mother; she used to sit with her Talk with her Tell jokes Get her to eat up You know, I don&039;t think I ever thanked her, even the day we putpull at the beer

"But that&039;s water under the bridge, we used to say Ever seen a real bridge, boy? Oh, of course you have, the one on old Higho is still up, isn&039;t it Anyhow, I&039; you with your hair all wet and shiny made me think of your mom, and since those old dorks won&039;t award you the prize you deserve, I thought I&039;d give you one"

He fureenish latch on the case and raised the lid Inside, nestled on for pistol

Valentine gasped "Wow! Are you kidding? That gun would be worth soons"

The old man shook his head "It was mine Your daddy probably had one just like it at some time or other It&039;s an autoun I&039;ve kept it clean and oiled No bullets, though, but it&039;s a nine milli to give it to my son-in-law, but he&039;s a putz He&039;d just swap it for liquor,I&039;d trade it for soive it to you, where ood It&039;s not too handy for hunting, but plenty co on a lonely road"

"What do you ht? I&039; able to read people You&039;ve got that look in you; I can tell you&039;re hungry for so besides your food Your dad was that way, too You know he used to be in e called the navy, and they went all over the world, which just suited him After that, after all the shit caht for the Cause just like the Padre Did things hestone, too, and all you need is a little push What that push is gonna be, I can&039;t say"

Valentine wondered if he had been pushed already He wanted to talk to Paul Saht as well ado with the men when they left the Padre&039;s

"This world is so cocked up I sometimes can&039;t believe I&039;&039;s wrong: fix it or live with it All of us here in the Boundary Waters, we&039;re trying to live with it, or hide froood at it Maybe we should never have gotten used to it, I don&039;t know, but there were always hungry kids to feed and clothe Seemed better to hide, not rock the boat But that&039;s me, not you You&039;re a smart kid; that little stunt at the lake proved it You know that the ones really in charge don&039;t bother with us because we&039;re not worth the trouble Living with the Padre, you probably know that et around to us, no o It&039;s the rid of them is work for the Cause"

David sed his food, but sing his her proposition Could he just take off? His vague plans for living in a lakeshore cabin in the coer applied or appealed, ever since Sa the patrollers who had turned the only world he&039;d known into piles of butchered h he were privy to secret, half-for I should leave, join the resistance, take up the Cause?"

"A few of the boys your age are It happens every year Folks are quiet about it If word of a son or daughter leaving got to the patrols, there&039;d be trouble So it&039;s usually &039;Joe gotwith his wife&039;s folks near Brainerd," or soe it, but Gaffley&039;s own daughter ran ao years ago Letters arrive every year, but he won&039;t show them to anyone"

In a fit of contrariness, perhaps to show Quincy that he wasn&039;t as astute a judge of hu, David shrugged "I can&039;t say what I&039;ll do, Mr Quincy I was thinking of going up to Lake of the Woods, building a boat I love fishing, and they say next to no one lives there"

"Sure, son And h, just like-"

"Hey," Valentine flashed, "that&039;s not fair"

"But it keeps happening Just this spring, out by Grand Rapids Eight people, that one The way I hear it, it&039;s a lot worse down south Especially in the cities, where there&039;s nowhere to hide"

Valentine was about to say, "That&039;s not ue An orphaned eleven-year-old had not been the Padre&039;s probleo, either The Padre had faced the problem, took responsibility, because that is what decent people do

It was an anxious youngfa full of leftovers, an old empty pistol, and a head full of choices The faces and animals at the public tent, the shores, hills, and trees-all pulled at him with promises of safety and security The woods are lovely, dark and deep He went into the backyard, checked on the ani always cleared his mind, even if it left his body wet and rubbery He had been doing this chore for the Padre, and for a nuar or flour, since his arrival five years ago The solid feel of the ax in his hands, the thwock as the blade sank into the dried wood, absorbed the things that bubbled up from the dark corners of his mind

He stacked the splintered results of his labor and went inside the house He found the three men sprawled in the smoke-filled library around an e full of letters, including a couple fro lady named Gaffley, sat on the Padre&039;s nicked-up table, and a er bundle of letters lay tucked in one of thereturn trip south The one called Finner paged raptly through a battered volurapher&039;s Lens

"David, youdrinking," Father Max said, not bothering to rise from his barely upholstered chair "Did you win the race?"

"Sort of It doesn&039;t ot to the part about being disqualified, Firmer blew a raspberry "I&039;d like to hear how you knew my father, Mr Samuels"

Samuels looked at the Padre "It&039;s always Paul when I&039;ive or take, your dad and I used to coether from down south, just like me and Jess do now We liked to keep in touch with the folks up here, and this old fraud Well-lubricated philosophy sessions, youthe bounty fro in with the enthusias only what the wilderness provided

"You fight thes they ht?"

"Patrols are e call the Quislings up here nowadays," the Padre interjected

"Well, not all at once, son," Sa scared fro We can hit them here and there, where we don&039;t stand toothat, we&039;re trying to keep fro Ever drunk water out of a hoof print to wash down a couple handfuls of ground-up ants? Slept outside in the rain without even a tent? Worn the saht? It really stinks, son And I don&039;t just mean the shirt"

Valentine stood as tall as he could, trying to add a couple of inches to his six feet one "I&039;d like to join up, sir"

Father Max broke loose with a whiskey-fuh "I knew you could talk him into it!"