Bisecter

by Stephanie Fazio

  I believed what my father said, that I had somehow miscounted the laps. It was the only explanation for why I was so much faster than the other Dwellers, wasn’t it?

  It wasn’t until the other day, when I outran the Halves in the woods, that there was no mistaking my speed.

  Bisecter. One of them. Freak. The Dwellers’ insults echo as if they’re surrounding me. I clamp my hands over my ears, but the motion does nothing to shut out the sound of their voices.

  The campsite comes into focus after more than a quarter of an hour of steady walking. A small figure bounds toward me.

  “You ran faster than anyone I’ve ever seen!” Wokee yells. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself!”

  My smile falters at the sight of Dayne, who leans against the stone wall with his arms crossed over his chest. His mouth is ajar.

  “I saw you run.”

  “I….”

  “That was an incredibly stupid thing to do.” His voice is cold.

  “I know,” I whisper, staring at the ground.

  “Do you have any idea what the Duskers would do to you if they knew?” His glance flicks to Wokee, who is watching our exchange with interest. “They have spies, you know.”

  “I’m sorry.” My cheeks are hot with shame.

  Dayne steps in front of me, waiting until I meet his gaze.

  “They’re terrified of the Halves as it is,” he says. “What do you think they’d do if they found out how powerful you are?”

  “But I’m not,” I protest.

  Dayne slits his eyes. “Let’s just make certain that no one else has any reason to wonder.” Dayne glares from me to Wokee. “Got it?”

  Wokee and I exchange a guilty look as we follow Dayne like scolded children back inside the wall of our camp.

  CHAPTER 13

  A swollen boar’s carcass lies on the ground outside the cave. Dayne barks out orders to us as he prepares the meat. Grateful for something to do besides wilt under Dayne’s scowl, I make trips back and forth to the river to fill our waterskins and gather firewood.

  The travel cave is small, but free of the slimy worms that make their home underground. Dayne finishes smoking the meat while Wokee runs back and forth between us, asking how much longer until it’s ready.

  The meal tastes better than anything I ever ate in the Subterrane. We recline against the cave wall, sucking on the bones. When I pull the stone covering over the mouth of cave, Dayne takes out his lute. The soft melody in the darkness makes my eyelids heavy.

  After Wokee has licked his fingers clean, he curls up in a corner of the cave and begins to snore. If it weren’t high day, I would be concerned the noise would attract every Halve and Dusker from here to Tanguro.

  “We’ll never get any sleep with that racket,” Dayne complains as I ball my cloak into a makeshift pillow and shift it under Wokee’s head.

  When Dayne stops playing, I say, “What you did back there, killing those Halves,” I pause. “Where did you learn how to fight like that?”

  I’m still curious about Dayne. It doesn’t escape me that aside from his name, he hasn’t told me anything about himself.

  Dayne regards me, his eyes pinpricks in the darkness. “It’s not important,” is all he says.

  He goes back to plucking at the strings of his lute, humming softly. My eyes are beginning to close when his voice jars me awake.

  “So, who’d the Halves take from you?”

  His question throws me off guard, and I can’t stop the word before it’s out of my mouth. “Everyone.” The bitterness in my voice is unmistakable.

  “Your parents?”

  I nod before realizing he can’t see the movement. “Yes.”

  “Both of them?”

  I think about my father, surrounded by the Halves, with no one coming to help.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?” Dayne’s voice is soft enough that I can tell he’s lost his family to the Halves, too.

  I surprise myself by telling him about the attack on the Subterrane. Tears roll down my cheeks as I remember clutching Destinel’s lifeless body, and my unfulfilled promise to Henri that I would protect Sirrel. Shame heats my cheeks, but the words pour out as I tell Dayne how I abandoned my father. How I ran.

  Dayne strikes a match and lights a stub of candle. He holds it up until the cave is illuminated in soft light. I hear Dayne’s sharp intake of breath.

  Following the direction of his unblinking stare, I see it’s directed at my necklace, which has come loose from the collar of my shirt. The intensity of his gaze is unsettling.

  “My mother gave it to me,” I say, like I need to defend myself for wearing it.

  My words seem to jolt Dayne out of his thoughts, and he nods slowly. “Your mother…” he swallows. “You said the Halves killed her…?”

  I try to read the expression on Dayne’s face, but he’s busy fiddling with his lute.

  I haven’t told the story to anyone except for Destinel and Brice. They had known me, and so they understood the grief and guilt I carried with me like a second skin. I’ve just met Dayne, but something about the sadness I’ve seen pooled in his eyes makes me think he’ll understand.

  “My father was gone trading jewels to other Subterranes,” I begin. “I was angry because he hadn’t come back in time for my birthday. My mother took me into the woods to pick rupyberries to distract me.”

  I remember the little black kynthia birds perched on her shoulder. The kynthia fly higher than any other bird and are not harmed by the sunlight. She always said they reminded her of me.

  I still remember the way my mother’s blue eyes, the ones I wished I had inherited rather than my monstrous black ones, sparkled in the sunlight.

  I remember the crash in the underbrush…my mother’s command for me to climb the tree.

  Stupid. If I had just stayed by her side….

  Dayne lights another candle, and the glow lights up his face. There is raw emotion in his eyes, and I think again that he must also have lost family to the Halves.

  The terror that gripped me on that day comes back to me in a rush. Breathe, Hemera.

  “What happened?” Dayne asks quietly.

  I can remember watching the beast raise its wooden club over its head like it was yesterday.

  “She tried to fight it.” My voice cracks. “But she never stood a chance.”

  In the silence that follows, I feel the familiar presence of the questions that have clung to me since that day.

  What would have happened if I had made a noise, distracted the Halve, jumped down from the tree? What if we fought it together?

  “That must have been very difficult for you,” Dayne says.

  “Difficult,” I repeat, but my mind is far away, back in the woods with my mother.

  Her silky dark hair, always brushed to gleaming perfection, was strewn across her face. A trickle of blood traced a line to her jaw. The light in my mother’s eyes faded until they were an unfamiliar, milky gray.

  I held her as her skin cooled and stiffened like hot wax in the mold.

  Even then, I knew nothing would ever be the same. Never again would she lull me to sleep with stories about strange and colorful creatures that lived beyond the mountains. Never again would I have her comfort and company when the other Dwellers ignored me. Never again….

  She was gone.

  I had no tools to dig a grave, but I spent hours clawing a shallow hole into the ground. My hands were raw and blistered, but I didn’t care. I rolled my mother into the hole, arranging her arms so she would rest more comfortably. But as I knelt beside the grave, fat tears blurring my vision, I couldn’t bring myself to push the piles of dirt over her beautiful body.

  “My father found me next to her grave, just before high day.”

  Wokee has stopped snoring, and my voice is loud in the cave.

  My father’s face went Dusker pale as he took me in, with my dirt- and tear-streaked face, kneeling by the grave. He stood mo
tionless for several seconds before falling onto his knees beside me. He gathered me into his arms as I sobbed. When I looked up at him, his eyes were red and brimming with his own unshed tears.

  He didn’t say a word to me; there was nothing to say. He just held me until my sobs turned to exhausted, heaving breaths. And then my father lifted me up and carried me away from my mother.

  We never spoke about that day again. But the memory of my father’s arms wrapped around me, holding me while I cried beside my mother’s grave, gave me comfort during the loneliest high days.

  “You must have been very young,” Dayne says, his voice full of sympathy.

  “I was twelve years old.”

  The familiar suffocating feeling is back. I press my head against the wall and grip my mother’s key, forcing myself to breathe.

  When Dayne speaks, the softness in his voice twists my heart.

  “Get some rest now, Hemera.”

  Wokee’s snores have resumed, but rather than irritating me, the sound drives out the screams echoing in my thoughts. I lean against the wall of the cave. With the sound of Dayne’s lute and Wokee’s snores in my ears, my eyes start to close.

  For the first time since Brice was taken, I feel less alone.

  CHAPTER 14

  As soon as it’s low day and we’ve hidden the evidence of our stay, we begin to walk. I pull out Brice’s map, tracing our progress with my finger.

  “That’s where we’re headed.” Dayne taps the upper right-hand corner of the map.

  I measure the distance from our current location to the spot where Dayne is pointing, and groan. It looks like we’ve hardly covered any distance at all. At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we ever make it to Tanguro. But one look at Wokee, who is limping along several paces behind, forces down my impatience.

  As I squeeze the map back into my pack, my fingers brush against the drawing I took from the dead Halve. A chill grips me when I think about the Halve in my cave, rifling through my belongings.

  What was it about the drawing that made the Halve clutch it even as it drew its last breath?

  “What I propose is that we travel through the forest,” Dayne says as I shove the drawing deeper into my pack. “It will take longer than if we stayed near the road, but it’s our best chance of passing undetected.”

  I shake my head. “It will take too long.” Taniel’s words, TNGR, Help, are never far from my mind.

  “We’re better equipped to take on a few thieves than an army of Halves or Duskers,” Dayne says.

  He’s right, of course, but I can’t ignore the fluttering panic that has been growing in me ever since I heard Brice was captured.

  “Now get that sling of yours out and keep it at the ready, just in case,” Dayne says. “Wokee, what can you offer besides a supreme knowledge of bad words?”

  Wokee gives Dayne a sheepish look. Ducking his head, Wokee produces a small, curved dagger from his belt.

  “I’m pretty good with this.” He twirls the knife between his gloved fingers in a practiced motion. “And no one ever notices me because I’m small and quick.” To demonstrate, he darts around a dead tree, wincing at the added pressure on his knee.

  Dayne watches Wokee’s performance. His mouth twitches into a grin, which he masks when Wokee looks back at him for approval.

  “Alright then,” Dayne grumbles. “Both of you stay alert.”

  We trek uphill until lowest day before we break. I didn’t think Wokee would have the strength to keep up with his wounded knee, but his energy seems to be as boundless as his chatter. He grasps fistfuls of rupyberries and throws them up in the air, trying to catch them in his mouth as we walk.

  Wokee distracts us from the heat with stories his mother used to tell him. He’s overcome with a fit of giggles at the end of a tale about a wild pig who turns into a human, only to realize he’s naked. His laughter is infectious. Dayne throws his head back, and for a moment, I catch a glimpse of his face without the deep creases. It makes him look years younger.

  As the sun climbs back up toward high day, we make our way to the nearest travel cave marked on Brice’s map. This one is larger than the last, with tunnels and chambers that go deep underground. It must have once been an outpost for trading between the Subterranes and those in the Banished Lands before the Duskers outlawed travel.

  “Smells like no one’s been here in years,” Wokee wrinkles his nose as I roll up my cloak to make a pillow for him, a practice that is becoming routine.

  Dayne lights a single candle from his pack before settling himself against the wall of the cave. “Lucky we have that map of yours,” he yawns.

  His eyes narrow to slits when he notices me staring at the sun tattoo on his right hand.

  “So, what’s your story?” I ask, forcing my gaze away from the swirling black lines. “Where are you from?”

  And why are you helping me, I want to add.

  “None of your damn business, that’s where.”

  The sting of his words shocks me into silence.

  I move to the other end of the cave, preferring Wokee’s earth-shattering snores to Dayne’s sullenness. I kneel on the ground and mutter my Dark God prayers, which I’ve been neglecting. When I open my eyes, Dayne is watching me.

  “You know the Dark God isn’t real, don’t you?”

  I gape at Dayne. Dwellers are dragged off to Malarusk for crimes much smaller than questioning the Dark God’s existence. “The darkness is coming,” I sputter, repeating the Duskers’ mantra.

  “Don’t quote their rot to me,” Dayne snaps. And then, more softly, “Can you imagine a world in which the sun disappeared for even part of the day?”

  He pauses while I try to picture it. I can’t.

  “The darkness is just another one of the Duskers’ false promises they use to keep the Dwellers complacent.”

  I have no idea what Dayne is talking about. The Duskers are ruthless in their justice, but if they weren’t, the Subterrane territory would turn into another Banished Lands. There would be murder, disease, starvation….

  “Dayne,” I begin. “What have the Duskers done to make you hate them so much?”

  Before he can respond, a rush of fetid air passes through the cave. Dayne’s candle flickers, and then goes out. There is a scuffling noise from somewhere in one of the adjoining tunnels.

  “What was that?”

  In answer, a deep, menacing roar fills the cave.

  Something hot and coarse tears against my face as I’m knocked to the ground. I land on a rock, biting down hard on the side of my cheek.

  I hear a scream, a snarl, and taste blood.

  CHAPTER 15

  With trembling fingers, I fumble around in my pack until I find the matches. It takes several tries for me to strike one. In the few moments before the match flickers out, the cave is illuminated.

  An animal, so big it stretches the entire length of the cave, is sprawled on the ground. The wooden handle of Dayne’s axe sticks out of its muscled back.

  I spit out a mouthful of blood as I explore the raw inside of my cheek with my tongue. As my racing pulse settles, I clutch the wall to support my wobbling legs. My foot catches on something—someone—on the ground. Looking down, I suck in my breath at the sight of Dayne’s body beneath the dead beast.

  “Dayne?”

  My whisper is met with silence.

  Grabbing one of the beast’s forelegs, which is as large as me, I yank the animal off Dayne.

  Please, please, please don’t be dead.

  Dayne gasps, coughs, and mumbles a few curses.

  “You’re alive!” I throw my arms around him.

  “Easy does it,” he says hoarsely. “Where’s the boy?”

  Wokee’s dark outline moves from where it’s pressed against the wall of the cave farthest from the beast.

  “Come on, you big scaredy,” I try to joke, but my words hang hollow in the air.

  Dayne tries to sit up, mumbles something about his head, and falls back to the grou
nd. His head hits the earth with a dull smack before I can break his fall.

  “Dayne?” Wokee whimpers. “Is he—”

  I squat down next to Dayne and press my fingers to his pulse. “Just knocked out.” The words give me more relief than I should feel for someone I hardly know.

  “What is that thing?” I motion toward the body beside us as I try to arrange Dayne in a more comfortable position.

  The beast has two fangs, each the length of my arms, hanging down from its muzzle. It must weigh more than a dozen of the burliest Dwellers together. Its yellow eyes, glazed over in death, stare unseeing through tufts of matted black fur. In spite of its size, the animal has feathered wings folded over its broad back. A giant purple tongue lolls between its jagged fangs.

  “Oh, a hyenair!” I answer my own question as I finish my inspection of the beast. “I thought they were just a legend.”

  “Not a legend.” Wokee’s voice is barely more than a squeak. “They come down from the mountains to hunt humans when they can’t catch anything else.”

  He’s shaking.

  I go to him and put a hand on his bony shoulder. He huddles against me.

  “One of them ate Wodell.” Something between a hiccup and sob escapes from Wokee.

  “Wodell?” I ask.

  “My twin brother.” Wokee’s body begins to quake anew, and I wrap both my arms around him.

  “It just grabbed him with its mouth and flew away.”

  The despair in Wokee’s voice sends an ache through my heart.

  “We tried to throw rocks and chase after it, but….” Wokee pulls away from my embrace and stares up at me. “I should have tried harder to save him.”

  I know that look in Wokee’s eyes all too well. I was around his age when I saw my mother murdered.

  “If you had been there, you could have stopped it,” Wokee looks up at me. “You’re so fast and strong.” His eyes gleam with unshed tears.