Grounded

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Korwin's voice ebbs and flows like a wave, as if he's trying to whisper but the volume keeps getting away from him. I can't hear every word from the dining room where Jeremiah and I wait, but the wood floors and high ceilings do a good job of carrying the general tone of the argument from the kitchen.

"... think you're doing? ...Classified...no choice..." Korwin's smooth voice cuts in and out.

"...Greens will never let her go. Impossible," Maxwell answers.

"You promised..."

"...only way."

"...pacifists...deadly game... Almost killed me!"

"Too late. Can't risk...only way."

I train my ear toward the kitchen but the voices have quieted again. Jeremiah nudges me under the table. "Let me do the talking when they come back," he says.

"What? Why?"

He raises his eyebrows at me as if the answer is obvious. Of course, it's obvious. He's a boy and thinks he's more capable than me. But he doesn't know. He doesn't know what I can do, what I have done.

"No, Jeremiah, listen—"

I'm interrupted as Korwin and Maxwell plod back into the dining room. Neither looks happy.

"I've promised to help you get home, Lydia, and I plan to keep that promise," Maxwell begins. His eyes flash to Korwin's. "But the question is timing."

"We need to go back now," Jeremiah says. Korwin nods.

"It can't happen. It won't happen. You don't understand the stakes." Maxwell straightens his glasses and buries his hands in the pockets of his shawl-collared cardigan. The man looks like a schoolteacher, not the leader of a revolution.

"Then make me understand," Jeremiah says.

At home in Hemlock Hollow, we go to school until eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse. The older kids help the younger kids. We learn math and how to read and write. We also learn about the English world, especially how it relates to our community's history and our needs. Even before Maxwell tells us about the Great Rebellion and the history of the Green Republic, I am aware of most of it.

The pollution that brought about the rebellion reached us too. But the Amish community accepted the resulting hardships with passive rebellion. We didn't try to fight the outside world, except to promote our own independence. The Green Republic claimed to clean up the environment, a change that would have benefited the Amish as well as the Englishers. But the war itself took a horrific toll and did nothing to curb the Englishers' energy addiction. Maxwell claims there could be enough power and food for everyone, but that the Greens use political influence to maintain control of the masses. "The rich stay rich and the poor stay poor."

I shake my head. For the Amish, this history lesson is a warning to keep our focus on God and on simplicity. Our way of life is to stay separate. It's why we don't use electricity, because then we'd be dependent on a sinful world. We've been living more or less the same way since our ancestors arrived during the early eighteenth century in what was then called North America. It's not my place to tell Maxwell what to do, but war is never the answer. The look in Jeremiah's eyes says it all. This is not our fight. We are visitors here, nothing more.

"Max, er, Mr. Stuart," I say. "Jeremiah and I can't become involved. It's against the law of our community."

Jeremiah nods and nudges me under the table again. "We don't believe in using violence to settle our differences."