by K. Makansi
“You see what happens to people who ask the wrong questions. That’s what Aulion said to me when he ‘escorted’ them home. They weren’t the same. Barely recognized me.”
I knew his parents had disappeared from the public eye, but I never knew the extent of it. I feel Soren’s anger and bitterness mirrored in my own. Now I know why he recoiled when Aulion walked into our cell. Aulion as good as killed his parents. Just like Corine killed my sister and my mother.
“Don’t worry,” Vale says quietly. “I left him for you.”
Osprey looks at Soren.
“It’s been a long time coming.”
I close the door behind me and lean against it. Vale lets the window blind drop back into place and turns, his shoulders casting a dim shadow on the wall. A towel is wrapped around his slim hips and he runs a hand through his still-damp hair.
“Figured I needed a shower,” he shrugs. “As you saw, I was filthy. Rode straight through.”
“You must be tired.”
A lopsided smile spreads across his face and he walks around the bed toward me. “Exhausted.”
My pulse begins to pound, a thudding in my ears that echoes down my spine, into my very center.
“Bunqu gave Soren and Osprey the room across the hall,” I manage, “but last I saw them they were crawling into the hammock on the veranda with a pile of blankets so thick, I wonder if they’ll smother.”
“And the general?”
“The general?” Now it’s my turn to smile. “He put your clothes in the wash and went to bed. On the first floor. At the other end of the house.”
I think back to all the moments that led to this. Our first kiss almost four years ago, before my sister and my mother were murdered. Him holding my hand as I left, trembling, to find out why I’d been summoned after the massacre at the SRI. The flowers he gave me before my family fled the Sector, when I slammed the door in his face, the last time I would see him for three years. Then that night outside the seed bank, the night I was captured, when I thought I wanted to kill him, and he extended his hand to me and said, I’m not going to hurt you. Finding out he’d sent Chan-Yu to get Soren and me out of Okaria, watching him try to protect my mother during the attack at Thermopylae. His expression as he handed my grandfather’s compass to me and offered his life in exchange for the ones I’d lost. Listening to him play the guitar at the Outsider’s camp. Knowing he was singing for me. And watching him on the ledge of that building, prepared to sacrifice his life for our safety.
He stands in front of me, a hairsbreadth away, and I put a fingertip at the base of his throat and let it drift down slowly. Goosebumps prickle his skin.
“Cold?” I ask, looking up at him.
“Hardly.”
He cups my face in his hands and leans down, his lips brushing mine. My fingers splay across his chest, mapping the muscles, moving around his back to pull him to me. With one hand he traces the curve of my neck and with the other, he peels the shirt from my shoulders as delicately as if unwrapping a gift, letting his lips follow his fingers. I arch into him, remembering how close we came to hating each other, killing each other, watching the other die.
“I always knew—always dreamed—it would be you. Us. Like this.” I close my eyes as his breath dances across my skin. “It wasn’t ever real until now,” I whisper.
“It’s always been real.”
I reach up and turn out the light.
12 - REMY
Spring 79, Sector Annum 106, 04h12
Gregorian Calendar: June 6
Vale and I were the first ones up, so I made a pot of tea while he made breakfast. I’m sitting out on the veranda in the cool morning, enjoying the smell of blooming lavender from the garden. It’s so early in the morning the sky is just beginning to turn the barest shade of blue. I run my hand over my close-cropped hair as Vale steps out with two plates in hand.
“I miss my curls,” I say, as he drops into the chair next to me. “I’m still not used to it. With the camouflage makeup and short hair, I don’t recognize myself.”
“I miss them, too. The new cut brings out your eyes, though.”
“Well, look who it is.” Soren shuffles in with Osprey close behind. She goes straight to the teapot as he slouches into the chair across from me. “You both look refreshed.”
“Another night of much needed rest.” Vale leans back in his chair, cradling his mug.
“Rest? I doubt it.” Osprey sets two cups on the table and folds herself onto Soren’s lap like some sort of exotic cat. I half expect her to start purring. “Without Onion to wake you up, you might have ‘slept’ right through.”
“You’re the ones running late,” I retort. “We’ve been up, showered, made breakfast, and are ready to get started. You both look like you’ve been run over.”
Osprey cocks a thumb at Soren. “I thought it’d be easier our second night on the veranda. I prefer sleeping outside, but Soren takes up the whole hammock. Last night was like a war zone.”
“I can only imagine.” Vale rolls his eyes.
I glance at the sky. Four in the morning. Soon, pale fingers of light will paint themselves across the horizon, figures will appear out of the morning mist, and at dawn the vigil will begin.
Meera had shown up yesterday morning, reporting that news of the vigil was spreading faster than we’d hoped. She was scrounging something to eat from Bunqu’s larder when Soren and Osprey appeared. Meera knew of Osprey, of course, but had never met her, so the two of them disappeared for a while to talk about whatever Outsiders talk about when the rest of us aren’t around. After a half hour, they reappeared in the kitchen and settled in at the table with Soren and me until Vale sauntered down the stairs with no socks, no shoes, no shirt, just a pair of Bunqu’s oversized lounging pants tied low on his hips. Meera’s eyes went wide. After I made the introductions and told her how Vale came to be at Bunqu’s, she insisted that I didn’t need to do anything more to plan for the vigil, that she and Snake had everything in hand. I could have protested, but for once, I didn’t. I wanted to spend every moment I could with Vale.
After Bunqu knocked this morning, we stayed in bed a few more minutes talking about the day to come. Then we showered and dressed. I stashed my knife in my boot, and stuck the small Bolt Bunqu gave me in a neat little holster at my hip. Vale is similarly prepared. We’re not planning on starting a fight today, but the Watchmen or the SDF could bring the fight to us. Today is about remembrance and renewal. About gathering in peace, not mobilizing for war.
As soon as Soren and Osprey are ready, we start on our disguises. For Vale, it’s red hair and for Soren, it’s dark brown. They can’t very well go around looking like themselves, even if they are going to be wearing mourning tattoos. They’re too recognizable.
Tattoos in Okaria are considered taboo, as are most forms of permanent body alterations. Since parents select traits during the genetic engineering phase of conception, there’s generally no need for cosmetic surgery except in cases where damage from an accident needs to be repaired. So people are who they are and tattoos and other body adornment are discouraged. But painted tattoos for funeral ceremonies and mourning vigils are different. A tradition that arose during the Religious Wars, the practice stuck and has grown even more elaborate over the years.
When it started, most people painted masks on their faces, of demons, ghosts, monsters, or other terrors. The idea, as my father told me, was to scare evil forces away from the dead before they’d been properly mourned or buried, at which point both the living and the dead were safe. When Okaria was incorporated on Jubilation Day, the founders outlawed this practice, condemning it as a vestige of the religions that had torn the world apart. But people kept doing it. A few years later, the law was reversed, and since then the custom has evolved from evil-looking masks into designs and artwork of all forms.
On each of my cheeks, I draw a simplified version of the images I used to spread the word of the vigil: an upside-down skull with a tree growi
ng out of it on one side and a raindrop morphing into a human form on the other. I paint puffy white clouds on my forehead, green vines around my eyes, and use blue paint to turn my lips into a creek. I pause for a moment to admire my work so far. I’ve created a landscape: the raindrop falling from the clouds, then flowing into the blue water on my lips, leading to the skulls on my cheek and the vines around my eyes.
“You’re always beautiful, Remy,” Vale says, making me jump as I turn to see him leaning against the door frame, “but this is something extraordinary.”
There’s a look of hunger in his eyes, in his mouth, slightly upturned at the corners. I want to satisfy that hunger, I think. But not now.
“Your turn,” I say. “What do you want?”
“You’re the artist. I trust you.”
He sits down on a stool and I stare at him for a moment, studying his face, thinking about who he is and why he’s here. Then it comes to me.
Working quickly, I paint a round, green caterpillar on one cheek, a chrysalis on his forehead, and a vivid butterfly on the other. Around his eyes, I paint green-tinted storm clouds with ominous black-grey roiling in the center of his face. Looking at him, it reads from left to right, telling the story of rebirth. The poster child for the Okarian Sector. The golden boy. The symbol of transformation.
Osprey’s just as talented a face-paint artist as I am, although her work tends to the more macabre. She’s done herself in a mess of brown, white, and green that doesn’t resemble anything so much as an overgrown tree trunk. Somehow, she’s still gorgeous, in her own bizarre way. She gets to work on Soren and soon he’s decked out in a black-and-white mask similar to the ones that were popular in the old days. With ghoulish eyes and scar patterns traced across his jawbone, forehead, and lips, he looks gruesome.
“I wish Aulion could see me like this,” he growls. “I want the old man to die with shit in his pants.”
“You’ll just have to be very good at predicting the future,” Vale says.
“Or I could do this for you every day,” Osprey adds. “It’s pretty hot. Fancy a quickie?”
Soren grins, the scar stretching across his jaw. It’s terrifying.
“Later,” he says.
I catch Vale watching me and we lock eyes. Suddenly the room is much warmer and every hair on my body stands at attention.
Then Bunqu appears in the doorway. “You’d best be on your way,” he says. “Do you have your walkie-talkies?” Soren and I both pat the devices clipped to our belts. Soren helped Bunqu rig together two handheld radio devices, similar to the short-range walkie-talkies used in the Old World. Soren managed to boost the signal, so we’ll be able to communicate from far away. “Let’s just hope you don’t have to use them.” Bunqu steps forward and envelops me in his arms. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this vigil. I wish I could be there.”
“I wish you could, too.”
Bunqu puts a hand into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulls out a small canvas bag, tied with a drawstring. He tips the bag up, and several acorns tumble into his palm.
“I know you already have seeds for the ceremony,” he says, passing one to each of us. “But with acorns, you now have my blessing as well.”
“Like the pendants.” Vale’s hand goes to the golden acorn around his neck.
Soren rolls his eyes. “You Outsiders sure have a thing for acorns.”
We carried our supplies to the POD, boarding as a group behind a scrum of workers heading out for their morning shifts. Okarians are used to seeing people adorned for vigils, so we didn’t attract any undue scrutiny. Meera and I had carefully selected the site a few days ago, a little creek under a bridge in one of the city’s many parks. It’s smaller, and a little off the main walking paths, where Watchmen don’t patrol as often. Most of the bypassers are nearby residents doing their daily Dietician-prescribed exercise routines. It’s a beautiful little spot, with grass and wildflowers growing along the banks of the creek, one of the hundreds of grey water recycling canals in Okarian parks. In the growing daylight, as the sky turns from dusky blue to pink and orange, we set down our bags and prepare.
Osprey spreads the seeds on a small blanket. Vale sets two small drums by the creek. Soren clears an area and lays out a circle of stones, then carefully builds a pyramid of small logs for the fire. Meera joins us shortly after, accompanied by Snake and a few others I’ve never seen. When the sun shows her face, the vigil keepers start to arrive.
Soren lights the fire. The first few to arrive are gloriously decked out. One has a phoenix painted across her entire body, red and gold paint that starts at her left ankle and crawls all the way up to a pointed beak on her right shoulder and feather plumage along her collarbone. Her tight shorts and athletic bra reveal the extent of her artwork—it must have taken hours to complete. A man who looks to be in his thirties has his shirt off and an electrical explosion in shocking blue painted across his chest. I can only guess it represents Bolt fire, and wonder if he knew one of the victims of the massacre personally. A group of younger people arrive with straw, twigs, and sticks woven into their hair, their faces painted to depict different animals: a deer, a wolf, a sheep, a badger, and a bird of some sort, maybe a raven or crow. As more and more of them crest the hill and walk toward us, I am amazed by how many there are. I stand to greet them, nodding silently as they filter in and stand next to Osprey and Soren.
As the sun crests the horizon, painting our miniature valley in decadent orange and yellow, seeming to set the wildflowers on fire, I decide it’s time to begin. I catch Vale’s eye and, sitting at the drums, he begins a light, slow rhythm, quiet enough that my voice can be heard over their sound.
“This vigil is for victims of the massacre almost four years ago at the Sector Research Institute, where seven students and their professor were murdered.” I think of Eli, his miraculous escape from death, and wish long and hard that he were here, too. “Their deaths went unavenged. Justice was never sought. But this vigil isn’t only about the victims of the massacre. We wish to honor the many mysterious deaths and disappearances over the years. Today isn’t about revenge or justice. Today we’ll speak the names of the lost and the dead, and remember them.”
I kneel and pick three seeds from the neat piles Osprey’s organized. I pull Bunqu’s acorn out of my pocket and hold it with the others. I throw two of my seeds onto Soren’s fire.
“Tai Alexander. Brinn Alexander. This is for their deaths.”
I walk the few short paces to the creekside and toss the two remaining seeds into the running water.
“Tai Alexander. Brinn Alexander. This is for their lives, and for rebirth in the trees, the water, the earth, the sky.”
Let us practice resurrection.
I turn back to the crowd, where at least a hundred people are sitting, watching. When I loaded my fliers up around town, I was expecting twenty, twenty-five. I would have been happy with that. I sit next to Vale at the drums, the low rhythm resonating in my chest.
Soren stands and collects his seeds. At the fire, he says, “Hana Lyon. Tai Alexander. Sam. Brinn Alexander. This is for their deaths.” He throws his seeds into the fire. I remember a long time ago, not long after he joined the Resistance, when he told Eli, Jahnu, and me about his brief, almost non-existent relationship with Hana Lyon, one of the other murdered students at the Academy. “Hana Lyon. Tai Alexander. Sam. Brinn Alexander. Odin Skaarsgard. Cara Skaarsgard. This is for their lives.” I wonder at Soren’s naming of his parents. They aren’t dead, but it seems he considers their lives worthy of honoring at this funerary vigil. It strikes me how many people Soren has lost to the Sector’s destruction.
Osprey only has one name: “Violet,” she breathes, tossing her seed onto the flame. At the creek, she throws her seed in, but says nothing more.
Another few come forward, take seeds and cast them into the fire, saying names I don’t know and intoning the words, each with their own spin, their own meaning. One man I almost recognize—was he a st
udent at the SRI? A friend of Tai’s?—has claws painted on his hands and a multicolored skull on his face. Soren watches him, too, and then glances at me and nods. He collects a handful of seeds when he stands, more than anyone else who’s come before him except perhaps Soren.
“Aran Hawthorne. Matthew Malthus. Tai Alexander. Joaquin Pero. Dakota Quinn. Fennel Chang. Kell O’Connell. Hana Lyon. I knew them all, and none of them deserved their fate. This is for their deaths.” He throws his seeds in the fire, and then into the water. “The fire will bring them justice, and the water will bring them peace.” He meets my eyes as he turns, a grim expression on his face.
As the sun rises more people file in to watch or participate, and soon I estimate there’s no fewer than two hundred people sitting or standing in our little valley, clustered tightly together, bound by silence. Some bystanders observe from a distance, painted bodies stand up to throw seeds into the fire and the water, and the sky morphs from red to orange to clear blue.
The woman with the phoenix stands, selects her seeds, and tosses them into the flames. “Rachel Sayyid.” I gape. That’s Jeremiah’s mother’s name! Vale, too, is staring slack-jawed at the woman and nearly misses a drumbeat. I turn to Soren, his eyes wide. “Hana Lyon. This is for their deaths.” She turns and walks to the creek empty-handed, staring at the rushing waters for several seconds. No one moves. “There will be no resurrection for them.” I can hear the anguish in her voice, the bitterness, sour like rotten fruit. “The resurrection will be ours.” She raises her hands into the air, clenched into fists, and now I notice the clear red letter painted on the back of both her hands: R.
“The resurrection will be ours,” someone says nearby, echoing her words.
“The resurrection will be ours,” comes another echo. I look for the sound of the voice. It’s the man with the skull and claws, the familiar-looking one, who said the names of everyone who died in the massacre.