by Claire Vale
Which takes us to the other end of the risk scale: the unpaired are picked off first. Picked. That sounds harsh, but I can’t help thinking of it like that. If you’re not paired before the end of the two weeks, you will almost certainly be first in line for the Tithe. That’s how the Alders ensure Ironcross keeps procreating at optimum capacity within the sanctity of marriage.
This is what we live with.
This is how we live.
We don’t know how else to survive.
My gaze settles on Jessie, where she’s snuggled up to Harry. She’s gorgeous, honey-toned hair falling in loose ringlets past her shoulders, hazel eyes, flawless skin the color of milky coffee. She’s vibrant and confident and kind, always up for a laugh and always ready with a shoulder to cry on. She’s my only other proper friend beside Gabe. I can’t lose her.
Night creeps over us, a full moon casting eerie shadows all around. The glow from the fire brightens and the partying grows more raucous. There’s a couple making out up against a tree; a group dancing to some uncoordinated beat in their own heads; an arm wrestling match that’s drawn a cheering crowd, including Gabe, Daniel and Chris. Someone screams, “Skinny dip!” and three girls go streaking into the woods. I hadn’t realized we’re that close to the lake, or maybe they’re going swimming in the leaves—with the amount of questionable alcohol being consumed, that’s entirely possible.
I’m starting to appreciate why the Alders outlawed these pre-Tithe parties. Put this many eighteen-year-olds together beneath the black cloud of our uncertain future, throw in unsupervised alcohol, and there’s bound to be trouble.
I’m feeling it, too. This reckless, restless energy. The next time the beer bottle comes around, I take a large swig. The liquid burns down the back of my throat, causing me to splutter. My eyes sting.
Jessie giggles, untucking herself from Harry to pat my back. “That stuff is lethal.”
“Daniel?” I croak.
“I think he stole the wrong batch from his uncle’s shed.”
What the hell, I try another gulp. It doesn’t go down any better.
Jessie takes the bottle from my hand. “Two sips are your limit.”
I’m about to protest when a dizzy wave hits me. “Wow, okay.”
Emily stretches across me to snatch the bottle. “I need to kill my brain some more,” she slurs.
“Just puke the other way,” Rose says with more tart than necessary. She’s supposed to be Emily’s best friend. Her gaze slides up and over us and her voice sweetens, “Hey, you.”
The sugar is for Chris, who’s approached us from behind.
He gives her a nod but it’s me he’s come for. He offers his hand with a cheesy grin. “You promised me this dance.”
“In your dreams,” I retort.
His grin doesn’t fade. “Dreams still count.”
I take his hand, allowing him to tug me to my feet. “There’s no music.”
Chris pulls me away from the fire, spins me out and then spins me back into a loose embrace and some kind of slow two-step that doesn’t involve much movement. “We’re so perfect together, the stars will sing for us.”
I make a gagging sound. “You did not just say that.”
He looks into my eyes with his puppy dog soul. “You wound me.”
“Nothing that tomorrow’s hangover won’t cure,” I say with a laugh.
Chris has a bit of a crush on me, which neither of us takes too seriously. Personally I think he’s just bored and the game entertains him. He serves me with outlandish flowery sentiment and I bat it back with acerbic remarks. It works for us. Chris is a total charmer, the kind of guy who knows exactly how good looking he is. His self-confidence can take the hits.
His linked hands slip lower down my back.
I raise a brow at him. “I haven’t had nearly as much of Daniel’s moonshine as you seem to think.”
His hands behave themselves. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“You are so full of shit,” I tell him. “What would you do if I actually gave in to your fantastical delusions?”
“Die a thousand happy deaths?” he answers without pause.
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” I snort. “I think you’d go running for the woods, that’s what I think.”
“Hmm, I like your theory,” Chris murmurs, the devil’s charm playing in his eyes. He scoops me closer. “Let’s put it to the test.”
“That’s never going to happen.” I push some space between us. “You’re impossible.”
His gaze softens under the moonlight. “You’re beautiful.”
I roll my eyes skyward. “You are so drunk.”
“You’re absolutely right, I am so, so drunk,” he says with such pompous sincerity, I burst out laughing. A moment later he joins in and we’re still at it when Gabe comes over to rescue me from Chris’ bad influence. Gabe’s words, not mine.
He draws me aside, around the fat, leathery trunk of an ancient pine and suddenly it’s just us even though everyone else is only a stone’s throw away. His head dips, his hair flopping silkily over his forehead.
My breathing slows as I press back against the tree, intensely aware of how my body’s responding to his closeness. Maybe it’s the moonlight. Maybe it’s those two sips of Daniel’s brew. Maybe it’s the reckless energy flowing through me tonight, but there’s this deep, burning ache that feels both exciting and desperate, a voice whispering in my heart to go ahead, do something stupid.
Gabe reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and produces a tiny hemp pouch. “Happy birthday.”
A smile sinks into his eyes as he looks at me, just looks, as if he’s drinking me in and that’s when I know, in this moment right here, where we’re going.
I tug the thread to open the pouch, pull out a delicate Celtic cross on a chain. “Oh, Gabe, it’s beautiful. Thank you.”
“Let me…” Gabe’s fingers brush mine as he takes the chain from me to fasten around my neck.
I turn, lifting my hair to give him access. The chain is short, nearly a choker. The cross rests just below the hollow of my throat. He fastens the catch at my nape and my pulse is all over the place as his touch seems to linger on that sensitive spot.
“Do you want to get out of here?” he says, his breath warm on my skin. “I’m not feeling this party.”
I turn slowly to face him. “What do you have in mind?”
“Something memorable.” He grins, breaking the magical moment, spinning us back into the friendship zone. I don’t really mind and I’m glad I didn’t do anything stupid.
There’s no rush.
I know how we end, Gabe and me. There’s too much of us for it to end any other way. Gabe’s been there through everything, the carefree times, the painful times, the confusing times. The years of scampering about with reckless regard, getting each other into and out of mischief. The years of fun and hurt and fighting and forgiving and everything that comes in between.
3
THE WALL.
Eight feet of smooth, unscalable, polished stone bathed in a blueish tint of moonlight. The sweeping spotlight from a guard tower falls a good ten or so meters short of our location.
I’m not sure this is what I agreed to.
I stand back, arms folded, while Gabe pushes the silent bike out from beneath the clump of trees where we climbed off. I’ve been here before, this very spot five miles east of the Setter farm, I’m pretty sure. We were about thirteen, going through a stage where we were obsessed about the Tithe, the beasts, and the wall that kept them out. Gabe, Daniel and Chris shoved and hauled each other up onto the wall, but I refused to join them. It was a short lived obsession with very little to feed on, but they came back again and again until I begged Gabe not to. On some level, I guess I know he never stopped, he just stopped telling me about.
Gabe notices me hanging back and calls quietly, “It’s safe, I swear.”
“You know I hate the wall.”
“And I won’t try to
talk you around if you really don’t want to,” he says. “But this may be our last chance to share this.”
“Don’t be morbid.”
“I don’t mean the Tithe.” He pauses to look at me. “Well, I do mean the Tithe, but not like that.”
We won’t be kids anymore. That’s what he means. The Tithe isn’t just about claiming ten souls for the wall. We’ll graduate from our apprenticeships. We’ll be paired and married. We’ll return as the next generation of responsible adults upon which the future of Ironcross rests. We’ll be the ones forbidding our kids from going near the wall.
That’s not why I change my mind. I’m seeing things differently tonight. I figure that with all the wall takes from us, it owes me a secret or two.
“What about the guards?” I ask, glancing over at the guard tower as I walk out into the moonlight.
“They don’t patrol much,” Gabe says. “Besides, we’ll see the bobbing flashlights before they reach us.”
“Okay.”
He gives me a searching look. “Okay?”
Nerves pinch my gut. I’m not a natural rebel or risk-taker. “Let’s do it.”
“Cool.” He grins and finishes pushing the bike up alongside the wall, flicks the stand out and tests the sturdiness.
Standing on the bike, my shoulders are level with the top of the wall. I try to haul myself up but clearly don’t have the upper body strength.
“Here.” Gabe slips between the bike and the wall, giving me his shoulder as a stepping stone.
On top, I scrabble on all fours to get out of Gabe’s way. The wall is about five feet thick with a central groove probably meant as a walkway for the guard patrol. I stick to the inside edge, hugging my knees, not breathing right until Gabe is pressed up close beside me. Only then do I allow my gaze to drift out to the beyond.
The ground slopes away into a vast valley of forest that stretches as far as the eye can see. In the distance, there’s a backdrop of shadowy outlines that appear to be a mountain range. There’s nothing particularly alien or foreign or mind-shattering, and yet I’m filled with pure and utter awe.
For the first time in my life, I’m looking outside the wall and it’s not what I see, it’s this feeling building inside me for everything I don’t see.
A world I’ll never get to explore but it’s there, it always has been and it always will be—the world of our long-gone ancestors.
They travelled on airplanes, trains, ships and vehicles of every variety to every corner of the planet.
They lived in bustling cities that towered into the clouds. They lived in small towns not dissimilar to Ironcross.
They lived on ranches spread over thousands of acres. They holidayed to exotic locations, tropical islands surrounded by warm oceans and desserts rolling in barren dunes.
I’ve read this all in books. I’ve seen this all in movie screenings from the library archive cache. I’ve never felt it like this before, this overwhelming connection to the untouchable.
“I get it,” I say quietly to Gabe.
He doesn’t need to ask what I get. He knows. This is why he couldn’t stay away.
And as if following on from that thought, he says, “This is why I won’t come back after the Tithe. It’s a fantasy, an escape that will always be out of reach.”
This takes me by surprise. “You feel trapped in Ironcross?”
His gaze dips to me. “You don’t?”
“Maybe.” I shake my head. “I’ve never really thought about it like that. I mean, I think a lot about the before times. I’m envious of the lives they had, I guess, although I suppose it wasn’t perfect. Look how it ended. I’m grateful to be here, alive and safe.”
“So am I.” His mouth lifts into a smile just before his eyes turn from me to the valley again.
“Have you ever seen them out there?” I ask. “The beasts?”
There’s obvious hesitation before he responds. “Sometimes I think I sense them, movement in the trees. Once, I swear there was a pair of gleaming, golden eyes staring at me. But there’s nothing to fear,” he quickly adds. “If they’re there, the Tithe treaty holds them back, keeps them to the tree line.”
He’s referring to the wide perimeter (on both sides of the wall, I now observe), where nothing grows. I’d always assumed the vegetation was cleared manually, but I doubt anyone would be sent out there to chop down trees and scrape away bush. The ground must be treated somehow, maybe poisoned.
I squint hard into the overgrown forest, don’t see anything. It’s a still, humid night, no breeze to fluster the heavily canopied boughs and trick me. “There’s nothing out there,” I murmur, mostly to reassure myself. “No birds. No animals. Definitely no beasts.”
“You don’t think the beasts are animals?” Gabe turns to me with a chuckle, brings his hands out to spider crawl his fingers. “Oh, right, they’re monsters.”
“I’m not eight anymore.” I slap his creepy fingers away, although I still believe the beasts are monsters, more than your average animal predator. “There must be some form of sentience, else what good would the treaty be?”
“We signed the treaty with the wall, not the beasts that roam out there.”
“But they must be capable of understanding,” I insist.
“Basic primal instinct,” Gabe says. “It’s like tossing a chicken over the fence now and then to keep the foxes at bay. They’re intelligent enough to not risk sneaking inside the fence so long as they’re not starving.”
We used to talk about this all the time, then we ran out of stuff to chew over and no new information is ever forthcoming.
The only position tolerated in Ironcross is oblivious consent. We’re encouraged to whole-heartedly champion the concept of the Tithe but not dwell on the detail—strongly encouraged; the Alders enforce that ruling with punishment if you don’t desist.
‘Sacrifice the few to save the many’ is our reality, not exactly a motto that promotes healthy morale.
My stomach churns at what Gabe just said, making me wonder if the Alders don’t know best after all.
Once I’m done with my Tithe, I’m ready to erase it all from my mind for the next eighteen to twenty years until my firstborn comes of age. “You think that’s what happens to the Tithed? They’re fed to the beasts?”
A wicked smile curves his mouth. “No worse than your theory of virginal sacrifices to the gods of the wall.”
My nose scrunches. “I really did say that, didn’t I?”
“And you were absolutely convinced of it.” He brings a knuckle up to my chin, tipping my face to him. “It was adorable.”
I swallow hard, my gaze sinking into his, aware of the thumb now stroking my jawline. He leans in slowly, and there’s no mistaking his intent…it’s in the softening of his expression, in his hooded eyes.
He leans in slowly, so very slowly. “You’re probably going to shove me off the wall for this,” he’s still murmuring when his lips brush mine, a touch so fleeting it’s barely a kiss, but I feel it to my bones.
He pulls back, not far enough to discharge the static air between us, just far enough to look into my eyes.
My blood is humming with warmth and racing butterflies.
He’s still searching my eyes, looking for something…and it hits me, how vulnerable he just made himself.
Now it’s my turn.
I’m excited and nervous, and scared.
If I do this, everything changes and there’s no going back. If we mess this up, I’m not sure our friendship will recover.
The seconds drag and Gabe starts to lean away. “Senna…”
I reach out, my hand curling around his neck, guiding him back to where he belongs. There’s no hesitation when our lips meet. His mouth slants over mine, again and again. My lower lip catches, drags with his and the kiss deepens, uncoiling months of want and longing inside me like a fire licking at veins. My fingers twine into the front of his t-shirt and his arms go around me and we’re wrapped in the taste and touch and
senses of each other and nothing else exists.
4
I’VE BEEN WALKING ON air all day. My heart is filled with so much more than a first kiss (on the wall, no less) should warrant.
But this is Gabe.
This is me.
That kiss isn’t the beginning of us, it’s just a marker on the road we’ve been travelling for years, one notch closer to a final destination called Happily Ever After.
My life is perfect.
The only blip on the horizon comes near the end of day with the arrival of a council aide on my doorstep.
He introduces himself—Mr. Thomson—as he hands over a hard-shell suitcase on wheels and a fancy envelope stamped with the town crest. The suitcase is a loaner with rickety wheels and an extended handle stuck in the down position, no doubt pulled out of storage only once a year. There’s no place much to travel in Ironcross that requires packed luggage.
The envelope contains my formal invitation to the 122nd Tithe, requesting I present myself at the Town Hall between the hours of 8am and noon.
I’m tempted to ask Mr. Thomson where the RSVP box is so I can decline, but his mouth is pinched and he looks harried, like he’s been harassed enough for one day. The poor man is only a worker bee, after all, running around at the Alders’ bidding.
“Will you be requiring transport into town on the 24th?” he asks.
“Thanks, but no, I’m good,” I tell him quickly. If Dad can’t take me, I’ll catch a ride with Gabe or even walk the long miles, lugging the rickety suitcase. I’d prefer to be in charge of my own timetable on the day, not be waiting around on the council wagon to roll up.
Once Mr. Thomson goes, I drag the suitcase into my bedroom and onto the bed. I’ve never had to pack for a trip before. I fling open my wardrobe to survey the insurmountable task. It’s not the size of the problem (I seriously don’t have that many spare outfits) , it’s the weight pressing down on my shoulders.