Alex regarded him for a long moment, and Sean’s gaze didn’t waver. Alex held out his hand and Sean took it, shaking it firmly. No further word was needed. With that, Alex turned to the crowd, stood on a chair that Henry had brought from inside, and requested silence by holding up his hands. They shook the slightest bit.
Alex waited for the news to travel that he was about to speak. And without an amphitheater or the magic of Artimé to help his voice carry, he knew he’d have to take it slowly and speak as loudly as possible so everyone could hear.
A wave of emotion rolled through him as he looked over the bruised and battered people. When it was quiet, he set his jaw and began.
His voice didn’t crack. He didn’t break down. He just spoke from the heart, like Mr. Today would have.
“Greetings, warriors,” he said. “You’re all so brave and loyal, just like our fearless leader, Marcus Today, taught us all to be. And, well, just like he was until . . . the end. Let’s all take a minute to remember the moment we first met him.”
The Artiméans bowed their heads, remembering the day they’d been saved by the eccentric magician with that electric shock of white hair, who had come out of the gray shack to greet them and had said those fateful words: “How does it feel to be eliminated?” Year after year he did it the same way, always delighted beyond measure to save the lives of the creative and artistic, and to not only save them, but to make them, mold them, into amazing people. He taught them to think and to live and to create. To fight for what they believed, and stand up for their rights, and not fear the unknown. To feel love and warmth and acceptance after being told so often, so much, that they were useless trash, not even good enough to line the roadway of Quill.
Alex embraced the numbness he felt inside him’he was thankful for it, for once, because it allowed him to do the job he had to do now.
“Friends,” he said, breaking into the memories of hundreds of people. “Mr. Today is gone, and so is our world. We don’t have any other choice except to ask for one another’s help now.” He paused, scanning the crowd. “We’ve lost members of our families at the hands of the people of Quill, and some of our residents are missing. We also can’t forget our Silent visitors who, by chance or by fate or whatever, have joined us under some pretty weird circumstances, and we need to continue to treat them as family, despite our, um, momentary lack of lavish decor.”
A few in the crowd nodded, and Alex caught the eye of Mr. Appleblossom, who touched his fist to his heart and nodded encouragingly. That gave Alex a surge of confidence to go on. He repeated the act back to Mr. Appleblossom, finishing the nonverbal rhyming couplet.
And then he went on. “Friends, my brother, Aaron, has taken control of Quill and has announced his position as associate high priest, supposedly working in tandem with High Priest Haluki.” Alex looked down, not wanting to see the skeptical looks from the crowd that he expected there to be. But then he looked up again, knowing he needed to stand strong. “But I don’t believe he’d ever work side by side with anyone as good as High Priest Haluki. I admit it’s hard to speak badly of my brother. But I have to’I can’t think of any reason why I should protect him anymore. He chose his own way, and it’s the opposite of everything I believe in. And now I’ll just repeat what you already know: Aaron has all this evil junk in his heart, and I know he won’t stop his attacks until he can figure out how to take control of us. It would be his best day ever to finish what Justine thought she’d started with the Purge. And Unwanteds,” Alex said, his voice growing louder, “we can’t let that happen. We’ve got to stick together so we can stay strong.” He pointed at the shocking starkness of their land and said, “This is what Mr. Today saw when he first dreamed of Artimé. Now we have to begin from scratch, just like Mr. Today did’from this plot of land, this little gray shack’only we’re not alone. There are hundreds of us! We have each other, don’t we? Surely we can hold together.”
Alex looked slowly at the silent crowd, from the edge of the water to the wall to the gate and beyond. “Surely we can honor our leader by building up a bigger, stronger Artimé’something just as grand and wonderful as he could ever imagine.”
Alex had no idea how they’d do it. But he was determined to succeed or die trying. He knew he didn’t have much time.
The crowd murmured. Alex felt the ownership of Mr. Today’s vision and of their beloved Artimé emanating from the pores of the Unwanteds that surrounded him. What other choice did they have but to embrace this? For most of them, going back to Quill couldn’t possibly be an option. Alex leaned forward on the chair, a most intense look on his face, fearing rejection, but forging ahead’it was now or never. “People of Artimé,” he shouted at the top of his voice, wanting everyone to hear him. “Are you with me?”
When a rousing chorus of yeses greeted his ears, something surged inside of him, giving him goose bumps. He repeated it, pumping his fist. “People of Artimé! Are! You! With! Me!”
This time the shout rang out, loud and clear, hundreds of voices as one.
Alex grinned and waited for them to quiet down once again. And then he said earnestly, “I really want to hear it from each one of you. When I’m done, I’ll stay standing here. And I’m going to ask you, if you would, to come up here so that we can look one another in the eye and agree to go along together on this. Despite how hard it’s going to be, despite the fact that we don’t have much, despite that we’ve lost our leader and our friends and we’re scared to lose more. So, will you do this for me?”