The Refuge Song by Francesca Haig Page A

laid the Confessor’s kiss
    On each islander’s throat with a knife.
    Piper stood up. To my left, Zoe dropped quietly from the lookout tree to the ground. She moved closer to where we sat in a circle around the ashes.
    â€œI heard they didn’t kill them all,” Piper said.
    Leonard stopped singing, but his fingers on the guitar never hesitated, the tune continuing to unfurl from his hands.
    â€œIs that what you heard?” he said. The music played on. “Well, songs always exaggerate.”
    He went back to the song.
    They said there was no island
    They said it wasn’t true
    But they came for the island in their dark ships
    And they’re coming next for you.
    â€œYou’d want to be careful who’s listening, when you sing that song,” said Zoe. “You could bring down trouble.”
    Leonard smiled. “And you haven’t got trouble already, the three of you?”
    â€œWho told you about the island?” said Piper.
    â€œThe Council themselves are putting the word out,” Leonard said. “Spreading the news that they found the island, crushed the resistance.”
    â€œThat song you’re singing is hardly the Council’s version, though,” said Piper. “What do you know of what happened there?”
    â€œPeople talk to bards,” he said. “They tell us things.” He strummed a few more chords. “But I’m guessing you didn’t need to be told about the island. I’m guessing you know more than I do about what happened there.”
    Piper was silent. I knew that he was remembering. I’d seen it, too. Not only seen it, but heard the shouts and whimpers. Smelled the butcher’s block scent of the streets.
    â€œNo song can describe it,” said Piper. “Let alone change it.”
    â€œMaybe not,” said Leonard. “But a song can at least tell people about it. Tell them what the Council did to those people. Warn them what the Council’s capable of.”
    â€œAnd scare them away from getting involved with the resistance?” Zoe said.
    â€œPerhaps,” said Leonard. “That’s why the Council’s telling their version. I like to think my version might do something different—perhaps help people to realize why the resistance is so necessary. All I can do is tell the story. What they do with it is up to them.”
    â€œIf we gave you another story to tell,” I said, “you know it could be dangerous for you.”
    â€œThat’s for us to decide,” Eva said.
    Piper and Zoe didn’t say anything, but Zoe stepped forward to stand beside Piper. Piper took a deep breath, and began to talk.
    The bards put down their instruments while they listened. Leonard’s guitar lay on its back across his knees, and as we talked I imagined that it was a box we were filling with our words. We didn’t tell them about my link with Zach, but we told them everything else. We told them about the tanks, each one a glass case filled with terror. The missing children, and the tiny skulls in the grotto beneath the tank room at Wyndham. And the expanding refuges, and the machines that we’d destroyed with the Confessor.
    When we’d finished, there was a long silence.
    â€œThere’s good news in there, too,” Leonard said quietly. “About the Confessor. We passed near the Sunken Shore last week. She was from around there, they say, so there was a lot of talk about the rumor that she’d been killed. But I hadn’t dared to believe it.”
    â€œIt’s true,” I said, looking away from him. I didn’t want to see Leonard’s answering smile. He didn’t know the price Kip had paid for this good news. The price I was still paying.
    â€œAnd the rest of it—about the tanks. Is it really true?” said Eva.
    Leonard answered her before we could.
    â€œIt’s all true. Hell on earth, it’s too far-fetched to make up.” He