Oleja let that sink in for several long minutes. Something about it seemed off to her—besides the horrifying maltreatment—but she couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. She kept thinking of Honn, chasing her into the desert, dragging her corpse back to the village. At least so far, she was doing pretty well—sure she’d had a rough couple of days, but things were looking up now. It was a far cry from “dying in the wilderness.”
And then it dawned on her.
“What happened to the ones that escaped?” she asked. “You said ‘nearly every time.’ What happened when someone succeeded?”
Pahlo looked up from the jackrabbit he worked on. “They beat everyone else. Not to the point of death, but someone had to serve the punishment.”
“That’s it?”
Pahlo looked taken aback. “Uh, yes. Why?”
“Well, because Honn said he is after me and cares less about you. He wants to bring my body back to keep my people from getting unruly or thinking they can also succeed in escaping, but your fate is less important to him. Shouldn’t he bring your body back too and display it to your people?”
Pahlo slowed his work as his mind worked around the question. After a moment of consideration, he spoke again. “I don’t know. Maybe they just aren’t as concerned about keeping us in line. The labor we provide isn’t as valuable I suppose.”
“So, the cost of going out to retrieve one of your people isn’t worth it to them,” said Oleja, starting to piece it together. “It’s easier for your people to escape, so as long as they catch most, they figure it’s as good of a deterrent as they can get. Keeping us in line is easier—it’s rare that anyone escapes, so when it happens, they are willing to maintain a record of catching all. Because there are more of us. And we are armed.”
Pahlo shrugged. It was all a theory, of course. The only one who could explain it to them fully was Honn, and in all honesty Oleja hoped she never got the opportunity to ask him. It was clear why he wanted to capture Oleja and bring her back to the village, dead or alive. She couldn’t lie—part of her liked that she carried so much importance, even if it came with a personal hunter set on catching or killing her. Still, if ever she got the chance, perhaps she would pry a more satisfactory answer from the lips of one of those monsters just before she killed them.
Another question sat on her tongue. “Why are you traveling with me?” she asked Pahlo. “I mean, I’m being hunted, you aren’t. Even still, Honn would kill you just the same as me, or drag you back as a bonus. You could have your freedom simply by turning your path away from mine.”
Pahlo laughed—not exactly the response Oleja expected. She watched him, puzzled.
“Well, first of all, you have the bow, and therefore you can get the food. I may be able to skin the animals, but I can’t catch them. I’d probably die of starvation.” His grin faltered for a second as he looked like he debated saying more. A moment passed, and then he continued. “I’ve also always had this idea… I guess it might be kind of stupid or optimistic or something… I just want to help one person. Or, at least one. Because if everyone helps just one person, then everyone gets help in the end, right? You said there are what, hundreds down in the canyon? Plus my people, that’s definitely more than one. I want to help them… put some good into the world, I guess. I don’t know. But I think sticking with you is the way to do it. I certainly couldn’t do it on my own.”
Oleja listened intently. Pahlo was only the second person ever to open up to her about anything, she didn’t want to ruin it. Now didn’t seem like a good time to tell him she didn’t want his help and that she preferred to do this by herself.
“I see,” was all she said in response. She finished it with a smile, unsure of what else to say. She’d have to break the news to him eventually, but not now. He nodded and refocused his attention on the jackrabbits.
When Pahlo finished with the carcasses, they cooked the meat over the fire—enough for their evening meal, breakfast the next morning, and then more still to take with them as rations. They set up the surplus to be smoked and dried so it would last longer on the road ahead.
By the time their supper finished cooking, Oleja was ready to snatch it from the flames if it took even a minute longer. The meat was tough, but she couldn’t bring herself to care in the slightest. It was food, and far better than the rodent from the night before or the rattlesnake from their afternoon meal—not to mention much more filling. Even better was the endless supply of water with which to wash it down.
Satisfied for the first time since before she left the canyon, Oleja sat by the fire and tinkered with pieces from her bag. She built nothing in particular—it was the action of creating, of using her hands, that she did it for. It grounded her. Brought some familiarity into this world that felt so far beyond everything her mind had ever conjured up about it. Sounds filled the night—insects, the call of some unknown bird. She let herself feel alive with the world as it breathed around her.
But one sound in the night pulled her back into the reality of her situation. A shrill howl echoed off the hills. Oleja and Pahlo looked to each other.
After some deliberation, they agreed to remain at their current campsite for the night but continue west at first light. For one thing, they couldn’t be sure that the coyote they heard belonged to Honn. It was only a single howl, and despite the images it conjured up, it sounded almost peaceful. Honn’s coyotes were angry, their calls guttural and full of malice. Even if the howl came from Honn’s team, it was distant. No amount of running would change the fact that they needed sleep sometime. They decided it best to at least attempt to remain near their source of water.
Oleja agreed to take the first watch. She kept her bow close so that if anything appeared in the darkness, she would be ready to put up a fight. Soon, Pahlo drifted off, leaving Oleja alone in the night.
Chapter Eight
Miraculously, they did not die in the night.
When Pahlo woke Oleja after his watch shift, she still had all her limbs, as did he, and they were both still alive as far as she could tell. Not being coyote food was as good a way to start the day as any, and so they readied to be off.
The sun came up as they ate. After their breakfast, Pahlo set to work wrapping the dried jackrabbit meat in the meager scraps of material they had. Oleja paced about, unsure of what she should do to help. The longer they spent without moving, the more agitated she became, and eventually she grew too eager to move that she could not stand around any longer. It felt as though a pressure built up inside her body, threatening to make her burst.
“I’m going to go out and hunt for a bit,” she said.
Pahlo nodded, more to himself than to her it seemed. “Yeah, good idea. We’ll stock up on food while we can.”
“Exactly. I’ll meet you back here in a bit,” she said, and then set off at a jog. Moving her muscles quickly pared away her agitation.
She followed the stream north for a while. It wound around the outskirts of the ruins, zigzagging back and forth along the bottom the gully carved through the rocky land. She passed the spot where she shot the jackrabbits the night before and continued on, divorcing her path from the riverbank and heading deeper into the field of broken carcasses of long-abandoned buildings. They nestled more tightly together the further she went, right up to the base of a steep, flat-topped hill beyond. After winding through the buildings and arriving at the edge of the ruins, she was confronted by the slope. She looked up to the ledge at the top. Seeing the ruins from above would give her a fresh vantage point that could direct her to the best hunting grounds or give her a better view of the course of the river below. The elevation could be a useful tool for planning the day’s course. And in honesty, she just wanted to move.
Climbing the first half of the hill was easy enough. The slopes were steep, but nothing she couldn’t manage. Halfway up, the slope turned to a sheer vertical cliff, which then leveled off into another steep slope, and then yet another cliff. Walking up and down along the b
ase allowed her to find a place where the cliff rose up only as high as the top of her head. The pocked stone provided plenty of hand and footholds, and she climbed it easily.
At the top, Oleja looked out over the ruins below. The sun rose to her left, now fully emerged over the horizon, casting the world in warm light. For a moment, a feeling struck Oleja, something new to her that she had never in her life experienced. It washed over her and lifted her up. A weightlessness flowed through her limbs. Several moments of staring out at the expanses of rolling hills and cliffs of various reds and oranges passed before she managed to put a name to the sensation: freedom. She was free. She could go anywhere and do anything she pleased.
Except, an eclipser soldier hunted her.
Just as quickly as the feeling came, it evaporated, slipping away like the sand at the edge of the hill that she toed with her boot, sending it in tiny avalanches over the edge. She had to get going, and the sooner the better. No more wasting time.
Movement in the ruins below drew her eye. For a second her heart froze, and then came back to life in full force. She scanned the ruins. Nothing moved. Did she imagine it? A trick of the light?
There it was again—a white blur moving between stone walls and heaps of rubble. Humanoid in shape, but from her distance she had no scale for size. Another followed the first. Likely not Honn in that case—he seemed the type to prefer traveling alone.
More shapes emerged, though not all of them stuck together in one cluster. Oleja counted seven in total, split into loose groups of two or three. They swept through the ruins in haste, stopping occasionally, though Oleja could not see for what. One thing was clear: they moved with a purpose. They were looking for something.
Her immediate instinct told her to turn and leave. Even if they spotted her, watching them from her perch above the ruins, they couldn’t get to her with any great degree of haste. They’d have to cross through a large part of the ruins and climb the hill. By then she could be far away or have found herself a hiding spot. She could pick them all off with her bow as they struggled up the cliff. Relatively speaking, she was in little danger. Whatever went on below, she didn’t need to take part in it, and could be off without a single arrow fired. But while she might not have been in danger, Pahlo was.
She could leave him. She meant to part ways with him eventually to return to her people anyway. Why not now? It would be easy enough. Chances were high that if she left in that moment, she’d never see him again. Cutting ties could be as clean and simple as turning the other way.
But returning to save him would be the right thing to do. He carried no weapons; she held the role of fighter among the pair. Equally, he had skills that she did not, including knowledge of the world beyond the canyon that she had been confined to for nineteen years. She could use that expertise as she planned her next move against the eclipsers. But was it worth putting her life at risk to run back through the ruins to save him?
Her feet made the decision for her as she dropped over the edge and picked her way down the steep hill, bounding down the low cliffs as she reached them. Seven of the figures roamed the ruins. She knew their numbers and had the element of surprise. Twelve arrows still rattled in her quiver. She had to pull this off. She couldn’t die—someone had to return to free her people from the canyon. Death was not an option.
Back on even ground, she set off at a run. She drew an arrow from her quiver and nocked it, ready should she encounter one of the figures, though still she clung to the hope of evading them. Twisting through the ruins, she vaulted low walls of rubble and debris, sticking to what she hoped was the most concealed path—though she prioritized speed even above stealth. The figures were divided. If it came to a fight, she could take three at once as long as surprise remained on her side.
She rounded a bend and came skidding to a stop. Just ahead, two of the figures looked over something with their backs to her. Her feet ground in the dirt as she scrambled to reverse her course. The figures turned in unison.
Oleja drew back her arrow and took aim at one of the two. The opposing figures drew their own weapons with blinding speed. One grabbed a spear from their back; the other unsheathed a sword. But no one moved to make the first attack.
The spear could be thrown. The sword less-so; or rather, it could be, but the gesture would be ineffective. Throwing a spear took more time than loosing an arrow. As long as Oleja shot the spear-wielder first, the one with the sword would be too far off to attack, giving her plenty of time to fire a second arrow. The balance of the fight leaned in her favor. Hopefully her opponents knew that as well. Either way, she could use the moment of pause to figure out exactly what she was about to shoot.
Both figures wore robe-like garments of white with loose, rounded hoods and veils that shrouded their faces from view. Gloves of white wrapped their hands. Not even the slightest speck of skin remained visible anywhere on their bodies. Now that she saw them closer, she could tell that neither stood much taller than her. Humans, most likely—or at least not eclipsers.
The standoff dragged on as neither party lowered their weapons, nor moved to attack. It was her opponents who eventually broke the trance, as both seemed almost to relax after a moment. Odd, considering Oleja kept her bow aimed at the one with the spear, but if they preferred to die without the tension in their bodies that was none of her business. The one with the spear pulled back their hood, revealing their face.
The head of black hair made Oleja guess “human,” but the resemblances stopped there. It looked like a man, but with skin drained of all color—ghastly white with only a dash of pink. The second figure removed their own hood as well, revealing similarly drained skin. But this one, another man, had no color in his hair either. No longer black or dark brown, nor the silver or white of age or akin to that of the eclipsers, his hair was yellow like gold—both that atop his head, pulled into a ponytail, and that of his beard. The yellow-haired man’s face showed a tint more color than his companion’s, though it came from a redness that stained his nose and plump cheeks. Oleja still could not wrap her mind around the colorlessness of their faces. She glanced back to their hands. Now that she saw their skin, she knew she was mistaken in her assumption that they wore gloves—rather, their skin was the same shade of white all across their bodies.
“Easy there, girl. Mind lowering that before you skewer one of us? We won’t hurt you,” said the yellow-haired man. His voice was softer than expected, higher and light. No anger fueled his words, nor fear.
He sheathed his sword and held his hands up, palms out. An elbow in his companion’s side prompted him to do the same, and soon both were unarmed. Oleja did not lower her bow.
“Are you alone?” asked the yellow-haired man.
“No.”
“How many are in your party?”
Oleja paused before answering. “Depends. What number would you like that to be?”
The man chuckled. “Well, I supposed a great number, so long as you all are friendly and looking to join with a group of others. We always like to add new faces to our family.”
Oleja stared at him blankly. She expected the man to hope for a smaller group, one that could be easily bested by his own. But now he talked recruitment, and seemed to do so in earnest.
Oleja lowered her bow and eased her draw, but kept the arrow nocked. “I travel with one other.”
“No great host, but new faces nonetheless,” said the man with a smile and a shrug. “Unless you still wish to put that arrow through me. I wouldn’t blame you. Onet here often wants to put an arrow through me as well, but he hasn’t gotten his hands on any yet.” He gestured to the man by his side as he spoke. “Come on then, where is your friend?”
The dark-haired man—Onet—interrupted before she could answer.
“When have I ever said I wanted to put an arrow through you?”
The first man batted him aside. “You don’t need to say it; I can read it on your face every day.” He looked back to Oleja as if to restate his
question, taking a step towards her.
Oleja stepped back. “First… what is wrong with your skin?”
Both men looked at her in confusion.
“Our…?” started Onet.
“What is wrong with our skin?” asked the other man.
Oleja gestured to her own face. “It’s all… there’s no color left.”
Confusion deepened on both of their faces, but then the yellow-haired man’s expression snapped into understanding. He burst into laughter.
“What is so funny?” asked Oleja, growing agitated with whatever game was unfolding before her. The man’s laughs petered out after a few seconds. He looked to her in amusement.
“Have you never seen a white man before?”
Oleja inched away another step. “What is a whiteman?”
The man looked her up and down, peering at her though eyes narrowed in thought. “Looks like you have some in you yourself, though nothing is so clean-cut anymore. Everyone has a lot of everything mixed up in them—this isn’t the Old World. But don’t worry about that right now. Casmia will be wondering after our whereabouts. Would you care to walk with us?”
Oleja didn’t know what the man was talking about, but neither of the two looked to be entertaining any lasting threats towards her. If they expected her to trust them, however, they either had too high perceptions of themselves or thought her too weak to bother maintaining her guard. Nevertheless, she fell in step with them after a moment’s hesitation.
Each of the men carried a backpack, both equally large and bulging into misshapen dimensions, bearing an odd resemblance to Oleja’s own bag in the way in the way the contents shifted and clanked within as the pair moved. She eyed them curiously as she followed along.
“My name is Wulshe, Wulshe Gleathon,” said the yellow-haired man. “Do you have a name, or is that a foreign concept to you as well?”
Oleja raised an eyebrow. “Of course I have a name. Oleja Raseari.” She straightened her shoulders and held her head high. Wulshe extended a hand in greeting. Oleja paused, again eyeing the strangeness of his skin, but then clasped it in her own.
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