Excerpt from Messenger 93 // Barbara Radecki

This is an excerpt from the new novel Messenger 93 by Barbara Radecki, presented in partnership with moorehype. 

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After receiving a message from a crow, M begins a journey to find and save someone. In this excerpt she is following a stranger—Gray, an 18-year-old Cree boy on the lookout for a missing Cree girl—because M has decided their fates are linked. She finds him at a city march for MMIW2S.

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Placards stabbed the spaces around me. Calls and chants echoed in my ears. Tourists and suits blocked my way as they stopped to watch.

Then I saw him. Standing apart from the crowd, outside the circle of dancers. Tweed cap, black hoodie, over-stuffed backpack strapped to his back. A knife holstered underneath his sleeve. White faceless mask hiding his identity. 

Someone had to stop him from doing what he came here to do. 

He jabbed the Jocelyn-poster over his head in time to the drumbeat. No one seemed to notice him. Even though he looked packaged. Packed with aggression. 

It swarmed me in a cathartic rush: HE IS THE FALL. I was Joan of Arc. Driven by purpose. Protected by armor. Marching into battle. I was doing what I was called to do.

The force of knowing drove me forward. I wound around bystanders, focused only on him. But the boy was moving further and further away from me, sidestepping behind the circle dancers. Soon the crowd was just a blur and he was a flashing signal light.

I charged forwards, gaining on him. And then I was behind him, and his backpack was the only thing between us. 

My hand was twitching to reach out, to yank him away from the others. To make itself known to him. 

I couldn’t take my eyes off the back of his head. The way the tweed cap fit around it. The short, ordered hairs outlining his skull. The sharp rim of the plastic mask against his cheek. The curve of his ear, the ear I could see as I walked on his right side. 

I jerked forward to catch his arm. Jerked back to stop myself. 

Below his ear, there was a tattoo: a hyper-delicate feather inked onto his neck. Each teeny barb along the vane had its own style — stiff or soft or spent. A crow, the old people had said at the station. Dropped a feather on his neck. I had a feather too, found in my room and secured inside the back pocket of my jeans.

The longer I stared at it — the fineness, the sweetness, of that tattoo — the more everything changed. It was as if the feather was threading inside my mouth to latch onto something beating and vital. I didn’t understand what it meant. But I spoke. “Don’t do it.”

His head twitched in my direction and away again, as if he’d heard then dismissed me. 

I moved in closer as we stepped in time behind the circle dancers. I put my mouth as close to his ear as I could without making contact. My heart was beating incredibly fast, my breath tight and shallow enough to almost strangle me. “Don’t do it,” I said as firmly as I could. 

This time he pulled away from the circle and rounded towards me. The hardness of the mask’s plastic features and empty expression was terrifying. I lurched back.

“Who’re you talking to?” His voice was muffled by the mask. 

I didn’t want to cause panic in the crowd — unreasonably polite while defending humanity.

“I’m talking to you,” I said. “Please don’t do it.”

He stepped towards me and I stepped back. 

“Don’t do what?” He took another step towards me and I stepped back again. 

Joan of Arc disappeared. I was myself again — pitiful and pathetic. A target. 

He took another step and another, and so did I. We kept taking more and more steps away from the crowd, somehow avoiding demonstrators, somehow moving further and further into obscurity. I tried to steel myself as we moved, tried to measure where the closest cops were, tested my resolve about getting — or not getting — their attention. 

“I saw you buy the knife.” I made my voice husky with defiance. “It’s strapped to your arm.”

“You’re following me? Why are you following me?” His voice from inside the mask was muffled but audible. “Who are you?”

An answer came out of my mouth before I could stop it. “I’m Messenger 93, and I have to stop you from bringing harm to these people.” Even as I said it, I cringed. Had I stepped out of my brother’s manga?

“Messenger 93?” he repeated.

I didn’t know where to look — the mask was too creepy and lifeless. 

He said, “What harm am I bringing to these people?” 

“The knife. The backpack. I have to stop you. That’s all I know.”

 “My backpack?” 

I felt suddenly sick. I tried to look into the holes that hid his eyes, but I couldn’t see through them. What had I done?

He laid the poster on the ground and pulled off his backpack. Jocelyn stared up at me, her features distilled in black and white on printer paper. Wide eyes, sweet smile, a dimple in one cheek. A better person. 

“I seriously gotta do this for you?” He unzipped the backpack and tugged the sides open, jerking the nylon flaps a couple of times for effect. 

I could’ve run then. There was nothing stopping me. But I looked inside the unzipped parts. Compact bagged tent and sleeping bag, rolled clothes, packs of freeze-dried food. For the first time I noticed water canteens in both side pockets. Camping equipment. 

“But the knife.” At the store, in his hands, it had looked like a weapon.

He was zipping the bag closed again, quietly grunting because too much was in it and the teeth would barely join. A tiny droplet of sweat trickled from under his cap and trailed the edge of the mask. “The knife is for the woods,” he said. “For food.”  

Of course you’d need a knife for camping, for food. 

Shame burned me up. He was just a kid, worried and searching for someone who meant something to him. 

What had I done? What had I done?

And how did I look coming at him? Wound up, aggressive, hiding inside my hood.