Green Jack Read Online Free PDF

the Lake Wars unfolded
under her fingertips. Even bedtime stories couldn’t escape the
Directorate.
    There was the
first Green Jack walking out of the forest in a mask of oak leaves,
awakening green numen in unsuspecting people sleeping in their beds
or drinking their morning tea. None of them looked as though they
thought their heads might explode. He was always named Jack and she
never could decide if he looked happy. She imagined it was a lot of
work cleaning up after decades and centuries of rampant neglect,
from burning oil fields to garbage heaps that never decomposed, to
wars.
    The Cataclysms
were painted in reds and browns and gold, more streaks of colours
than intricate details. Smoke and fire burst from giant cracks in
the earth. The seas heaved and boiled. Crops withered, people
starved, the Ferals in the Badlands turned cannibal. Or so the
stories always said. The Ferals weren’t a single people so much as
a cautionary tale of what would happen to you if you disobeyed the
Directorate or left the safety of the Cities: hunger, madness,
savagery. Jane kept turning the weathered pages, finding the maps,
with Elysian City with its glowing Rings full of light and joy, to
the farm domes and the dark Spirit Forest and the suggestions of
other cities in the distance.
    When the
droughts followed and desperate thirst set in, the Lake Wars began.
The faded pages showed bodies pressing against the newly built
wall, frantic to reach the lake. The maps lines changed. When the
cities closed, everything changed. There was a very old man who
lived near the cella who still called Elysian City ‘Toronto’. That
was long before the Protectorate was formed, protecting the Green
Jacks and hiding them away. The experiments created feral dryads
who lived in trees and used human body parts as decorations, but no
more Green Jacks.
    Lots of
answers, even in these pages, for questions everyone knew better
than to ask. But no answers about the numen growing thorns in her
body. And she wouldn’t find any hiding here with her old
storybooks. Red dust, a church steeple and a pink moon.
    Especially when
the morning bells rang, making her jump. She’d spent too long here
as it was. The bells announced the gates opening for the Elysians
who were vetted to drive the rickshaws and clean houses. It also
meant she was already late for her Oracle duties.
    She left the
house, running on the sidewalks. None of her old neighbours spoke
to her. The house with the girl who’d been taken away was still
dark, all these years later. She made her way to the wayfarer cella
in the parapet. The novices gathered there on Blessing Days to be
taken into the City where the Collegium allowed novices to predict
more personal omens for the Elysians. Mostly they asked about food
or love, like everyone else.
    “You’ve been
running again,” Kiri wrinkled her nose. Candlelight glinted off her
gold sunflower necklace. There was no electricity in the Cellas, it
interfered too much with numen. It was too ancient, too primal.
Always more questions than answers. “I just don’t think sweating
like that is good for you.”
    She changed
into her blue chiton with the silver snake necklace around her
throat. Kiri wore dark brown and the tattoo of the black tree on
her nape reached its roots under the neckline. As a Seedsinger, she
would be surrounded by Elysians today, all begging for fertility
spells for their bellies or their gardens. Usually she sang to the
seeds; learned how to collect them, store them, and plant them. Her
dorm room was like a witch’s cave, full of strange seeds and dried
vegetables.
    Jane secured
the leather straps of her sandals around her ankles even though it
was still too wet and cold to be wearing sandals. The Numina were
expected to float gracefully above the mud, both metaphoric and
literal, to dispense the benevolence of the Collegium. There could
be nothing that made them relatable to the others, only the
chitons, the tattoos of their