Messenger (The Giver, #3)

by Lois Lowry

“Were you scared of Forest?” Matty asked him. So many people were, and with good reason. “No. It’s all an illusion.” Matty frowned. He didn’t know what the blind man meant. Was he saying that fear was an illusion? Or that Forest was?

In the schoolhouse, Mentor, the schoolteacher, gently tutored a mischievous eight-year-old named Gabe, who had neglected his studies to play and now needed help.

Baby Gabe!

From a window, the tall young man known as Leader looked down and watched the slow and cheerful pace of Village, of the people he loved, who had chosen him to rule and guard them. He had come here as a boy, finding his way with great difficulty.

Jonas??

The Museum held the remains of a broken sled in a glass case, and the inscription explained that it had been Leader’s arrival vehicle.

JONAS!!

But somehow the small red-painted sled had become a symbol of courage and hope. Leader was young but he represented those things. He had never tried to go back, never wanted to. This was his home now, these his people. As he did every afternoon, he stood at the window and watched. His eyes were a pale, piercing blue.

Jonas must be 20 now

One back leg was oddly stiff but the frog barely noticed.

Foreshadowing

But first he had the other thing to worry about, and the troubling awareness that he had not dared to tell the blind man of it.

Hmm

Leader’s insistence that all of Village’s citizens, even the children, read, learn, participate, and care for one another.

Yessss Receiver!

river barge. Suddenly there it was. Huge wooden crates aboard, and each one filled with books. Until that time I had always been afraid. A year had passed. Then two. But I was still afraid; I thought they would still be looking for me, that I would be recaptured, put to death, because no one had ever fled my community successfully before. “It was only when I saw the books that I knew that things had changed, that I was free, and that back there, where I had come from, they were rebuilding themselves into something better. “The books were a kind of forgiveness, I think.” “So you could have gone back,” Matty said. “Was it too late? Had Forest given you Warnings?” “No. But why would I go back? I had found a home here, the way everyone has.

Did the Giver send the books? Or the community?

“I miss my dog. He wasn’t any trouble.” Matty glanced over to the corner of their homeplace’s plot of land, beyond the garden, to the small grave where they had buried Branch two years before.

Aww Branch

Of course there were other kinds of trades, Matty knew, though he didn’t fully understand. He had heard murmurs about them. There were trades for things you didn’t see. Those were the most dangerous trades.

There’s a secrecy to it now.”

“Make no trade. Watch and listen. But make no trade. Even if you’re tempted.”

you have more than you know. And people will want what you have.”

None of them had brought any goods to trade.

No one had brought anything to trade.

Matty heard a woman begin to weep.

‘He needs a few more trades first.’”

“He said she got a Gaming Machine already. Maybe another time, he said. Keep trying, he told her.”

“But you couldn’t hear any of the answers that people gave, is that right?” “That’s right. They whispered, and he wrote the whispers in his book.”

“Mentor’s birthmark is completely gone,”

“He has traded his deepest self.”

“For Stocktender’s widow,”

“I had a sister,” Leader said, after a moment. “I think of her still, and hope she’s happy.”

The recitation of Macduff’s famous speech had reminded him of the woman he had spoken to on the path, the woman who feared for her lost children’s future. All my pretty ones.

something terrible was happening.

Now, though, it was bright daylight. Matty was able to watch everyone, and to his horror he could see the changes.

Ramon’s face was no longer tanned and rosy-cheeked but instead seemed thin and gray. Beside him, his little sister seemed sick, too; her eyes were sunken and Matty could hear her cough.

Some of those who had been among the most industrious, the kindest, and the most stalwart citizens of Village now went to the platform and shouted out their wish that the border be closed so that “we” (Matty shuddered at the use of “we”) would not have to share the resources anymore.

We need all the fish for ourselves. Our school is not big enough to teach their children, too; only our own. They can’t even speak right. We can’t understand them. They have too many needs. We don’t want to take care of them. And finally: We’ve done it long enough.

So she, too, had traded, and was turning not only on him, but on all new ones.

“He has a special gift. Some people do. Leader sees beyond.” Matty was startled. He had noticed the quality of Leader’s pale blue eyes, how they seemed to have a kind of vision most people didn’t have. But he had not heard it described that way before.

“Forest is thickening,”

Ramon’s very sick. His sister, too.

Always, though, it was familiar. But on this journey, something was different. For the first time, Matty felt hostility from Forest.

And it smelled bad. There was a stench to Forest now, as if it concealed dead, decaying things in the new thick darkness.

He began to have trouble sleeping. Nightmares tormented him. His head ached suddenly, and his throat was sore.

They were preparing to build a wall.

Yikes

“Forest is thickening.

“Did you see a young man with blue eyes? About your age? We call him Leader.” She stood still for a moment, thinking. A strand of dark hair fell across her face, and she brushed it back with her hand. Then she shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I felt him.”

He could see, too, that she was accustomed to her stick and twisted leg. A lifetime of walking in that way had made it, as she had pointed out, part of her. It was who she was. To become a fast-striding Kira with two straight legs would have been to become a different person. This was not a journey Matty could undertake with a stranger.

Forest was shifting, moving, thickening, and preparing to destroy them.

He was surprised that already the foul smell of decay drifted to where they were resting. When finally he slept, his dreams were layered over with an awareness of rot and the imminence of terrible danger.

So they were thirsty now.

Suddenly the path, the same path he had always followed, ended abruptly at a swamp that had never been there before.

exposed muscles and tendons

He gave himself to it willingly, traded himself for all that he loved and valued, and felt free.

He saw Forest and understood what Seer had meant. It was an illusion. It was a tangled knot of fears and deceits and dark struggles for power that had disguised itself and almost destroyed everything.

Beside her, tenderly, Leader picked up what remained of the boy and prepared to carry him home. In the distance, the sound of keening began.