By the time she was ten, El roamed the streets outside the convent to find fresh food like eggs and fruit. The nuns raised chickens for a while, but with all the children to feed, that didn’t last long. Other kids who’d lived at the garage convent left when they were old enough and never came back, but El always returned.
On one of these foraging trips she passed Niko on a street corner and saw he held a flat box battered around the corners. She figured it could have eggs inside, so she stopped to ask about it.
“Do you have eggs to trade?” she asked him.
“What do you offer in return?”
He looked her over carefully. Certainly nothing threatening there. And she had a lovely oval face with big, greenish-gray eyes, the kind of eyes that pulled you in. Her hair, with glints of red in shiny dark curls, held back with a plain piece of torn red cloth, fell gracefully down beyond her shoulders. What he could see of her legs looked like two slender sticks beneath a skirt that came just below her knees. Only fifteen himself at that time, he could see she would soon be a beauty. She was too young for artifice and was obviously not offering herself. And there was something else about her that attracted him in a way he’d never felt before. He would think about that much later.
“I have this.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a very small rectangular object. She waited to see if he showed any interest before divulging what it was. He looked unlike the others she usually encountered when bartering. He wore a loose, long-sleeved shirt, untucked from worn denims so faded it was impossible to tell what color they had been. His mop of hair curled around his ears, but it was his mouth that she found arresting. His lips curled slightly up at the corners as if he were holding himself back from laughing. No one laughed. Except, every once in a while, the sisters joked with each other and the children, especially when they read books aloud.
She almost smiled at him, but not quite. He reached out for the object, but she pulled it back.
“Are those eggs in the box?”
Then he did smile. A broad smile that crinkled his dark eyes.
“Yes. Fresh this morning. How many do you need?”
“How many are in there?”
“I’m not sure. Suppose we go over there and count them.” He pointed to an old bus stop with a crooked wooden bench.
El looked around. This wasn’t one of the more populated streets, so they were alone. She hesitated since you never knew who might be dangerous or even a spy for the Regime. But she needed eggs, had promised the sisters she would come back with some, and he seemed harmless. She followed him to the bench.
He pushed aside some dust and sticks. “Here, sit down.”
Except for the nuns, El had never been treated kindly. She hesitated.
“Go on, sit down. I won’t bite.”
She sat a little farther away than he had suggested. He placed the box carefully between them on the bench and lifted the sides to reveal a whole batch of eggs.
“Where did you get them?” she asked. Her eyes grew wide with wonder, and she looked up at him as if he’d just shown her a jeweled crown.
He chuckled and said, “They’re only eggs.”
“But so many. I bet they were laid by . . .”—she stopped to calculate in her head—“thirty chickens?” She looked at him and he smiled.
“I suppose so.”
“They’ll have to be kept cold,” she said almost to herself, thinking about where they could be stored at the convent. She still held the small rectangular object in her hands. “Or we could hard-boil them.”
“Well, you’ve seen the eggs. Now what is that?” He pointed to the little thing.
“Oh, no. I don’t think you’ll want it for so many eggs.” El shook her head.
He laughed out loud at that. She jumped up. “Maybe you think I’m not old enough to bargain.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and patted the bench. “Sit back down. I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that no one ever traded in that particular way before, and it made me happy for a minute.”
“Oh,” she said, and sat down again. “Well, here it is.”
She opened her palms to show a tiny picture of Jesus. The frame and the corona around Jesus’s head were both done in gold leaf. The painting was delicate and detailed, showing Jesus washing his disciples’ feet.
Niko studied it carefully, bending over to see it clearly, placing his hand above it to shield it from the sun. “What is it a picture of?”
When she explained it to Niko, he asked, “But why would he do that?”
“To show that he is their servant.”
Niko pondered this. What does this mean that he is their servant? A servant brings rich people their food and cleans their house. A servant? Why would anyone want to be a servant? And why would anyone paint a picture of a servant?
He stared at it for many minutes, mesmerized by its careful brushstrokes and the gold around the subject’s head. This wasn’t just any servant. And the look on the servant’s face . . . why is he looking up at the sky?
Niko wanted to ask these questions, but he didn’t want this girl to think him an idiot, so he just asked, “What’s your name?”
“El. What’s yours?”
He told her and then said, “I’ll trade with you. The eggs for the picture. I think it’s fair.”
Later he would unwrap the tiny picture and stare at it for hours, puzzling over its meaning. This was the first of what would be many encounters with El. They would trade or talk. Sometimes Niko would just gaze at her until she reddened and turned away. El asked him questions about his life but he never told her about how he’d run away. Niko also asked her about her life in the convent and what the nuns had taught her. And so they became close in a way that was rare in that city at that time.
By the time Niko was fifteen he was already running his own street operations. This often involved brawls, which Niko made sure to end quickly before the Watchers showed up. Although it was well known they didn’t care if the Leftovers wanted to kill each other, Niko was careful about protecting his loot and made sure to control every situation.
On that day the fight had begun when someone grabbed the bag of loot Gruen was carrying. He’d just made a score—bruyaha or something else smuggled through The Protections from outside the city. Smuggling went on all the time. There were regular trade routes that illicit go-betweens used, all paid off through the Protectors. They smuggled by underground tunnels the Watchers couldn’t detect from up in The Globe. Burrowers were in high demand and spent their whole lives half-buried in earth, digging new mazes of tunnels so intricate there were stories of people getting lost and dying in far-off dark corners. When the stench of their corpses reached into the main tunnels, the Collectors were called in for extra duty. They hated having to work underground. Still, they were paid underground extra so they did it, but not without much complaining.
The Collectors worked for more than wages. When someone died in a living unit, before hauling the body onto their ghoul wagon, they were entitled to whatever had been left behind with the corpse. Scroungers followed them on their rounds, ready to make deals for old furniture, clothing, jewelry, kitchen appliances, fans, shoes, hats, coats, telephones. They even traded InCom screens if they could yank them off the wall from inside a unit. These were encoded for each person in the city, so once a person died, it was useful only for parts. After everything had been looted, the living unit went into listings for a new resident. Again, there was graft involved through an elaborate system run by the Protectors.