by E L Stricker
Conna turned to the left then to the right, looking at the other Enforcers.
“Well, he might have gone crazy, but the rest of you haven’t,” he said. None of them answered. Instead, they looked away or at Illya speculatively.
“He could be right,” Julian said.
“There never was a plan for the people in there come winter, not that I heard of,” Nico said.
“Julian? Nico? No, come on. Martin?” Conna said, his voice reaching greater levels of desperation as each name was met with silence.
“We have been divided long enough. It’s time to get those people out of the cellar,” Illya said, raising his voice. “It’s time to reconcile, to work together. It’s our last chance.”
He beckoned to Aaro and the other Enforcers to follow him, hoping that they would. He ascended the stairs, pushing past Conna. Conna’s face was flaming red. His mouth gaped open, but a look at the Enforcers behind Illya stopped him from doing anything. Illya went down the stairs to the cellar. Mark, the Enforcer guard, stopped him but soon let them past when faced with Aaro and all the rest of them.
Illya emerged from the front door of the house surrounded by his family, blinking in the sunshine; his heart swelled until it felt like it could burst. Elias came out next, and Sabelle sprinted up the stairs to take her father’s arm. He was pale and shaking. Impiri hung back, looking awkward. Elias had been in the cellar for three months.
Next came Jimmer with Aaro, they stopped briefly at the top of the stairs, and Jimmer turned to face Conna.
Before he could say anything, there was a wild yelling from the direction of the gates.
“What? Terrors? It’s still early for…” Julian said. Illya’s heart froze, and a chill shot up his spine.
“No,” Illya said. “Rovers. It’s a Rover attack!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. The people shuffled around, obviously confused. He had been hoping he could warn them, that they would have time to fortify the walls, maybe even to train a bit, but it was not to be.
Men with wild hair and markings painted all over their bodies streamed through the gates, whooping and yelling. They raised their bows and started firing. A rain of arrows fell on the crowd. Some of them had guns strapped across their backs.
“Take cover!” Illya yelled.
The stunned people surged into action. A few had been hit and were clutching legs and arms. One man lay on the ground, unmoving, an arrow sticking though his chest.
Charlie.
A wave of dizziness washed over Illya.
“Charlie,” he whispered, his voice catching in his throat. But there was no time for sorrow. He pushed his mother and Molly back through the doors of the house then turned back to the fight. The Enforcers had been taken off guard without their bows to hand. While they scrambled for their weapons, dodging arrows, Conna stood on the porch staring at the chaos, not reacting. His bow lay at his feet, unused.
“Conna.” Illya shook his shoulders. Conna blinked and looked at him mutely.
“Shoot, Piri, shoot!” Ada screamed at her sister who was still clutching the ancient gun. Her knuckles were white, and her eyes were wide.
“There’s … there’s only one bullet,” she whispered. “It’s the last one left.”
Ada’s shoulder’s fell slightly. She nodded. “The one Pa saved,” she said.
Impiri nodded. “For just in case,” she said.
“Make it count,” Ada said. The Enforcers had gathered into a little cluster and were returning fire, but many of them were wounded, and they struggled to hold back against the onslaught.
“We should surrender,” Conna muttered. Illya remembered his own pa then and the crossbow that was still in the magpie nest. He bolted for his mother’s hut. Would he even be able to hold it steady without the memories swooping in to steal his mind? Would he be able to face them?
There was no choice. He had to do something. Try or die. He retrieved the bow and a handful of bolts and sprinted back to the fighting. Near the fires, racks of meat were drying, and piles of foraged plants lay, waiting to be stored for winter: everything the villagers had been able to gather since he had left. The food was the thinnest of hope, but it was all they had. Even with the red-stemmed creeper, they would not survive if all they had managed to save was stolen.
Illya nocked a bolt into the center of the crossbow and sighted down his arm, his belly clenching and arms shaking. He breathed, trying to still them. It had been ten years since he had even picked up this weapon, but he knew that his slingshot would not be enough. His target shook in front of him as he took too long to aim. Try as he might, he could not keep the end of the bolt still.
Suddenly, from behind him came a loud bang, followed by another to his right, just after it. Something whistled past his ear, and there was a crack and splintering sound from the oak tree. He turned and saw a Rover drop his gun and clutch his shoulder. There was a trickle of red, and behind him a branch fell from the oak tree to the ground. Illya turned around to see where the other sound had come from and saw Impiri lowering the muzzle of her father’s gun, her face white. She met Illya’s eyes and pressed her lips together.
Her aim had not been perfect, but she had used the last bullet to save Illya’s life. He bit his lip, turned around again. He sighted and pulled the trigger, adding the power of his crossbow to the rain of arrows the Enforcers were sending at the Rovers at the gate. His bolt drove into the leg of their leader—a man with a strip of hair down the center of his shaved head.
The man bellowed, stumbling as he tried to run forward. The Enforcers loaded more arrows in their bows and let them loose. Illya shot as fast as he could. His years of practice aiming the slingshot seemed to cross over to the less-familiar weapon so that he hit a mark with almost every shot. Soon the Rovers were retreating, most nursing wounds to their shooting arms or legs.
They retreated to the gates, and the Enforcers ran forward, chasing them with arrows nocked. Illya slid a fresh bolt into the crossbow and joined them. Just before the Rovers went through the gates, their leader turned and sent an arrow flying back in a high arc over their heads.
“Impiri, look out!” came a yell. Ada raced towards her sister. She shoved Impiri to the ground, and the arrow found its mark in her chest.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
AUNT ADA LAY on the ground, a red stain spreading out under her. There was a clatter as the gun fell from Impiri's fingers. Her hands flew to her face; she dropped to her knees and began to keen, rocking back and forth.
Aunt Ada was lying on her side. The arrow had hit her in the right side of her chest. Not the side with the heart, Illya thought frantically, thankful for it, though it was a small thing. She was still breathing but shallowly. Gently, he removed the arrow, hoping it hadn’t pierced anything vital. He held pressure on the wound.
The injured side was not rising and falling with her breaths in the same way as the undamaged side. It felt sunken, as if it had deflated and could not hold the air. Then it started growing bigger, seeming to suck in air between his fingers and through the hole as she took breaths. Illya took his hand from the hole, watching the trickle of blood. If the air getting sucked in was coming out, the blood in the wound would be bubbling, and it was not. He listened, pressing his ear to her ribcage. He wasn't sure what he was listening for, but it sounded different than any lung he had ever listened to before. She struggled to breathe more with each breath.
“Samuel,” he screamed, “get Samuel!” Her chest sounded like Benja's old drum, he realized. Hollow. Fingers shaking, he felt between her ribs. He was terrified of making her worse, but he knew that something had to be done quickly to let the air out.
Illya took a deep breath and carefully pushed a knife between her ribs. A hissing stream of air came bubbling from the hole he had made. She took a breath, a little easier. He slid his knife back a little bit, now thinking about the lung re-inflating inside. He didn't want to pierce it again, but he knew that he had to keep the hole open somehow.
At that
moment, Samuel came up behind him. He took one look at the scene and slapped a hand tightly over the arrow hole. He took the knife handle from Illya then called for a hollow cattail reed from his bag. The Healer slid the reed into the opening before withdrawing the knife.
Samuel sighed. His shoulders relaxed visibly.
Illya sank to the ground. Soon, his mother and Molly were beside him, embracing him. Uncle Leo knelt beside Ada and stroked her hair off her face.
Guilt clenched his stomach. If he had been faster, if he had warned them sooner, they could have been ready. If he hadn’t tried to lead them, how different could it all be? The Patrollers would have still been out where they needed to be, not guarding a jail of thier own people. Maybe none of this would have happened at all.
But it had taken all of them to reach this point. No one person had made it happen. He wasn't the devil. Impiri, who was now huddled over her sister, sobbing, and being comforted by Sabelle and Elias, was not the devil either. Not even Conna or the Rovers were the devil. The devil was a thing that hid amongst them, preying on differences and anger, wedging itself into those cracks to drive them all apart.
Samuel was right. They were fools to let it do its work.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
IT WAS SPRING. Benja and Illya stood together, looking out over a field of tiny shoots. They made a soft green blanket over the earth, and Illya was reminded of the photograph they had seen once. A square of short, funny grass had sat behind smiling people in the house of the old city.
“You know, it's probably a good thing all those sunchokes kicked it,” Benja said thoughtfully, stroking a scraggly beard that had sprouted on his face over the winter, resembling the sparse little shoots in a certain way. “They make me fart awful. Would have been a bad winter.”
Illya burst out in laughter, unable to hold back a flood of chuckles and hiccups. Finally, he caught his breath enough to gasp.
“Me too, Benj, me too.”
“At least Ma can walk and breathe at the same time now,” Benja said with a new note of seriousness. “There would be no air left in our hut if we had been eating those sunchokes all this time. She wouldn’t have been able to escape.”
It had not been an easy winter. The snows had come far too early and lasted too long. Even with the mass of red-stemmed creeper they had been able to gather, their stores had been too small.
After Illya had told them the truth about the legendary Terrors, the villagers had made hunting excursions beyond their old boundaries. The people had been hesitant to stay out after dark at first. A generations-old habit was not easily broken. But, with enough time and necessity, even the most nervous had ventured out to the area above the waterfall and beyond.
It had not been easy to go so far to get food, but no one had died from starvation. It was an incredible feat to make it through a winter without losing a single person, considering that once it had seemed that the entire village would go that way.
Perhaps the best thing that had come out of it all was the seeds. The field with its moldy plants had been burned. In the frenzy before winter, as the villagers gathered plants, they also collected and saved all of the healthiest seeds they could find. Now there were many kinds of plants sprouting in the freshly-tilled field. There were some new sunchokes, but they were only one of the numerous types of plants that made up the lovely green carpet.
“You are right, this is better,” Illya said.
After the terrible day of the battle, everyone had agreed that they needed big changes. Even with a new plant to eat and the promise of game outside their boundaries, it would not be long before the new resources, too, were depleted. They needed a new system, and, despite the pain of the previous failure, most had agreed to give planting another try. There were no more Enforcers. The Patrollers re-formed under Aaro, but every villager who could lift a bow now trained daily. Everyone needed to be able to defend themselves, and they would not be taken by surprise again.
The village was now led by a council of ten villagers with Elias as chairman. Ban was on it and Illya’s mother. Leya, somber and grief-stricken after the loss of Charlie, but possessed of wisdom and a level head, was too. Aaro was the youngest member. Conna had taken off. Everyone thought he had followed the Rovers after the battle, probably to join them; there was nothing left for him in the village after things hadn’t gone his way. Illya hadn’t noticed; he had been focused on Aunt Ada at the time. Conna hadn’t been seen since then.
Illya had also been offered a place on the council.
“You are the one who reads. We need to hear what you have to say,” Elias had said. Illya had turned him down. He was not a prophet. The Almanac was just a book and nothing more. Instead, he resumed his old place as Samuel's apprentice. The village was going to need a Healer when the old man couldn't work anymore, and Illya knew that he could learn to do it well.
He still read, but now Illya prowled the pages of the book for medicines, remedies, and ways of treating ailments. He devoured this knowledge, along with all that Samuel had to teach him, with the same excitement he had felt when he had first discovered how to read. They had found a few more books in the farther ruins, and Illya was teaching Molly, Benja, and Ban Jonstead how to read from a wonderful book called Robinson Crusoe.
Benja was still chuckling and wiped a tear from his eye. He hitched the thick leather strap of his drum higher on his shoulder.
Illya looked past him to see Sabelle walking by with Martha, looking beautiful, wearing a new blue dress that had been scavenged from one of the farther ruins. They hadn’t ventured to the city yet, but their world was much bigger now that they didn’t fear the night. She looked back over her shoulder and gave him a smile full of shared secrets. His heart thudded, and he returned it. Many things had changed, but some things were the same as they had always been.
He turned back to the plants. Later, he would dance with her beside the central fires. He would twirl her around and make her dress spin and watch her eyes sparkle.
There were new herbs to collect for Samuel now that the shoots were up in the forest.
For now, though, Illya was content just to be, to stand beside his best friend and see the miracle of shoots that had pushed up through the earth to find the sun once again.
Author’s Note. For inquiring minds, please know that The Old Farmer’s Almanac ® has been quoted in this book: Stillman, Janice. Ed. The Old Farmer’s Almanac 2013, no 221 (Dublin, NH: Yankee Publishing Inc. 2012) Kindle edition. Quotation on Pg 50: Location 3201. Pg 54: Location 3384. Pg 102: Location 3239. Pg 186: Location 1486.
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