by Sara Kincaid
Our final goodbyes to Adem were hurried and hushed and as breathy as a breeze, there and gone again in a matter of moments. We did not linger. We did not delay. We embraced the inevitable.
Aster,
What does it mean to have this power, this ability? Not for earth or humanity’s future, but for me. Maybe this is a selfish question. But, above all else, I am human, which means that I am also selfish; and so I ask this of you and of myself.
I don’t see how society will accept me. I’m slowly growing to understand what this ability is and I’m still shaken by it. Can you imagine what the masses will think? With their fears of Chem Sickness and how they covet strands, those colorful strings of fabric that are symbols of status and apparently worth more than fixing that which mankind has destroyed. I wish I had more confidence in our fellow man, we few who have been lucky enough to survive. But I don’t. Just thinking about the way people use Pop, more artifice used to escape from this world instead of doing something about it - it gives me all the indication that I need.
Will they call me crazy? Imprison me? Or worse?
Society isn’t ready and I think you’ll agree with me. You work with the mayor and have direct access to their corruption. I hate to say it, but we deserve the grave we’ve dug for ourselves.
I’m sorry for my pessimism. It’s not like me to think this way. But Aster, I feel sick and it’s not just the responses my body is having to the use of my abilities. I am sick with fear of my future, of what all of this means. What should I do?
Bram
Chapter 6
Wandering in a desert is bad for morale. When we left East Farm, we left a dream. We were dazzled by the plant and animal life we saw there; so much flora that we thought lost forever, had not only survived, but thrived with a vengeance.
The darkness was filled with a silence that rang in our ears and, for me, in the void. The earth was still, its fervent heartbeat a mere trace in my consciousness. I had grown accustomed to its sound, almost like a baby in the womb. Now that I had lost it again, I felt alone.
The days were hot and sweaty. The earth cried out for rain, for reprieve, but there was none. I wondered, as we walked and rested and walked again, how many Curare lives must be sacrificed to reverse the damage done.
Leo ate little and though he didn’t complain, I knew we couldn’t stay here long. Both of us needed food. Could we make the trip all the way to North Farm?
“I’m fine,” Leo grumbled for the third time in a single day when he caught me looking at him out of the corner of my eye. He tried to control his tone. But the heat was intense and he was growing frustrated. Hunger gnawed at him, though he would never admit to it. The sun burned his skin, leaving painful blisters peppering his face. The stubble on his chin and along his jaw was thick and I hoped that it protected him from further burns.
In spite of everything, I wanted to preserve the feelings that were sprouting between us after our kiss in the velvety night. I thought of that kiss often and each time it came to mind, chills ran through my body despite the intensity of the heat.
Behind us, our dusty path out of East Farm disappeared over the horizon. We were making progress, though I was unaware of much during our trek. My thoughts were slow, thick like the smog above us, and my mind grew numb as I let the memory of that night in East Farm wash over me once again. The thought of his hand on my cheek. His lips against mine. I’d never believed someone would take an interest in me, would want to be near me. Except another Curuare. And even that was questionable. I was different and as long as I was in hiding, I never would have the chance to meet another Curare. And who has time for these things in the CPA prison? Those were the two futures I imagined for myself.
“What’s with you?” Leo asked, not unkindly.
I blinked and looked up. “Huh? Oh, nothing.” I shrugged.
Leo studied me skeptically. “Maybe we should stop for a bit. You’re acting weird.”
“What? I am not!”
“It’s nearly midday. We should stop anyway,” he reasoned.
I sighed and finally nodded. Stopping meant more time to think, more time to worry. What did it all mean? Why did he kiss me? I wanted answers, but the idea of giving voice to my thoughts was terrifying. What would he say?
We chose our resting place carefully, finally settling on a flag of stones beneath some feathery grasses that stood about four feet high and surrounded the thick trunk of a dead tree. They were sharp like razors when I touched them, but they shaded us from the heat of the day and we were mostly hidden from view on three sides thanks to the hull of a long-ago abandoned transport that rested nearby.
Leo collapsed onto the ground with a grunt and closed his eyes in gratitude before pulling a canteen from his pack and sipping carefully. I watched the rise and fall of his throat as he drank. “Is this a good idea?” I asked carefully.
“What?”
“Trying to walk to North Farm. Do you even know how far it is? Are we going the right way?”
Leo ran a hand through his curly hair, limp with sweat. “Well, you picked North Farm, so that’s where we’re going.”
I bit my lip. I wasn’t much of a decision-maker. I had little practice in it. “What do you think?”
Leo’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but his answer was not what I expected. “I think that we’re following Adem’s directions and that we’re right on course. We’re east of the City, heading north. Tomorrow, about midday, we’ll turn a bit west and hopefully we’ll see green again a few days after that. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.” He put a comforting hand on my shoulder and I flushed again, ducking my head. “Just rest.”
It seemed that he was going to say more, but a gut-wrenching cry interrupted and made us both jump. I looked around in a panic. “What was that?”
Leo narrowed his eyes. “Stay here. I’m going to check things out.”
I snatched hold of his sleeve and clutched it tightly. “Don’t leave me!” The thought of losing Leo suddenly filled me with dread. He was my only connection to home, the family I had lost. He was all I had left.
He took my hands and gently pried himself from my grasp. “I won’t,” he promised with feeling. “I’ll be right back.” I gripped his hand, my fingers digging into his flesh. “I won’t be gone long.” He pulled his hands away and kept his eyes locked with mine.
I nodded slowly. “Be careful.” My voice cracked and I sank to the ground.
Satisfied, Leo disappeared quickly around the wall of grasses. Weary and petrified, I sat alone. Fear seeped into my bones, lodging in my chest. With shallow breaths and shaking hands, I waited.
When Leo returned to the shade of the transport, he was not alone. In his arms lay a woman, excruciatingly thin. I knew instantly that she was a Curare. She looked to be in her sixties, which meant she was likely closer to her mid-thirties. The woman’s body had deteriorated from the constant use of her abilities and the abuses she’d endured at the hands of the CPA.
I jumped to my feet and gestured for Leo to bring the woman to lie on his bedroll. “Where did she come from?”
“I don’t know. That scream...”
“Are there soldiers about?” Fear descended once more. They would find us. Surely we were doomed.
“What is her ability?” Leo asked, forcing me to refocus my thoughts.
“I don’t know.” I gently rolled up her sleeve, revealing the tattoo of a pair of bird wings with a leather strap tied in a bow, binding them together. “Venti. The air.” I spoke softly and brushed my hand over the woman’s forehead. Her skin was hot and damp to the touch. Her pulse was weak. I looked up at Leo. “She’s on her way out.”
“I know. Can you heal her? Like you healed your hand?”
I chewed my lip. I’d never tried to heal another person before. Would it work? When I looked up into Leo’s hopeful eyes, I knew that I had to at least
try. “Let’s find out. I don’t have much to give. But... ” I shrugged. When I took the woman’s hand in my own, I could barely feel her life energy. It was so light that it scarcely tugged on my consciousness, fluttering like butterfly wings in the breeze. Her hair was thin and gray, plastered to her head in sweaty streaks. Dirt covered her skin and stuck under her nails. Narrow wrinkles framed her mouth, which puckered slightly in her delirium.
I touched her forehead gently, tracing her wrinkles with a soft finger, imagining all that she had endured at the hands of the CPA. Then, though there was little to be had, I reached down into the ground, seeking out the roots of the stubby trees that wallowed in the heat nearby, or some vein of energy. When I found something to hold on to, I could feel the tug of life like the strong pull of a river. The energy filled me, but I could sense the lagging of life as I stole from the tree. Forgive me.
I focused the essence of the tree on the failing Venti Curare before me, encouraging the energy to funnel between us, to bring the strength of the tree to her, to make her strong and whole, to renew her as the tree itself renews each spring. After a few moments, I began to shake with effort. I was losing my grip on the energy. Both were tainted. It did little to lessen her suffering.
I sat back with a sigh and bowed my head. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
Leo put his hand on my shoulder. His face was a mask of sorrow. “It’s alright, Vea. You did what you could.”
The woman was breathing more deeply, but we could tell that she wouldn’t last much longer, in spite of my efforts. She opened her eyes and focused on my face with a look of confusion as wisps of her gray hair flowed in the breeze. “I felt the trees. How did I feel the trees?”
“It’s alright,” I spoke softly to soothe her. “You are safe.”
“The trees,” she urged again. Her grip of my hand was tight with urgency.
“I tried to heal you. I am Curare.”
“Curare cannot heal. You are a Terrae Curare?” Her eyes sought my left forearm for evidence of my element.
I looked at Leo for encouragement. He sat down beside me. “She’s different.”
The woman seemed to process his words, and then understanding of the reason behind my lack of tattoo came to her. She looked deeply into my eyes and in her gaze, I saw the shape of death. I didn’t look away, though it took all of my effort not to. She then became agitated and tried to push herself up into a sitting position. “You mustn’t let them find you. They will destroy you.”
“We’re safe here,” I tried to remind her though I hardly believed the words myself. Being out in No Man’s Land left me feeling exposed. “What is your name?”
“Trina.” Her face clouded, her dull blue eyes cast downward. I was sitting so close to her I could count her lashes.
“Where do you come from?”
“The CPA compound. They’ve been doing testing.” Trina’s voice was breathy and she spoke slowly, with lengthy pauses after each word. Leo and I exchanged glances but before we could ask more, she continued. “There are fewer Curare. The CPA is getting nervous. They harvest the eggs of the women.” Her voice broke as she described the brutality of the CPA stronghold. I swallowed my thorny anger. It settled in my gut and festered. “I wasn’t going to let them...No offspring of mine will be bred a slave.” Trina closed her eyes and was soon asleep, her ravaged body limp in my arms.
My thoughts immediately turned to the young girl whom the CPA drugged and threw in the back of their transport vehicle the night of my escape from South Farm. They had abandoned protocol, which indicated that any Curare could stay with his or her family until he or she reached their seventeenth birthday. Once they turned seventeen, the CPA came and took them to their new life of servitude.
As Trina slept, I turned to Leo and was not surprised to see him bubbling with rage. I kept a hand softly on Trina’s forehead and felt the deep creases that scarred her face with premature wrinkles. Her skin was leathery from her time in the sun and I tried to envision what she had looked like before the CPA had stolen her from her home.
“This can’t go on,” Leo seethed to himself. He paced around our makeshift campsite.
“There’s nothing to be done. The CPA is too big for anyone to handle.” Inside, I worried that this would be my fate, too. Was my capture by the CPA inevitable? I would suffer as Trina and the hundreds of other Curare had since the passing of Bram. I couldn’t voice this reality aloud and did not want to even admit it to myself. But as I sat watching Trina, I felt a tightness in my chest that was not triggered solely in knowing that we were watching her die. I was afraid of my own fate.
“You don’t know that. There are others.”
“Who?” Leo had mentioned these others before when he revealed to me the devastating origins of my necklace. I blinked at him through unshed tears.
“Those who would fight. Those who follow the phoenix.”
Tears threatened to spill over. Rage unlike any I had ever known burned inside and left me with a dull ache. Hide and let this brutality continue. Fight and destroy the land the Curare had already healed. How could I choose? “At what cost?”
“What price makes it worthwhile? Look at her!” He gestured to Trina, whose face seemed nearly as gray as her hair, whose limbs were thin like reeds and body wiry with malnourishment. How long had she been wandering the desert? When I didn’t answer, Leo stalked off into the darkness.
My heart constricted painfully as he stomped away, but I soon lost myself in an exhausted and dreamless slumber, curled protectively around Trina.
When I opened my eyes, I beheld a sight I could not believe. Leo sat holding Trina close and trying to get her to swallow some of the water from his canteen. I cared little for Leo’s call for revenge and war, but I marveled at his persistence and his odd dedication to the dying Curare. Why did a regular human, a City-dweller at that, care so much for any Curare? Why weren’t there more like him?
City families did not produce Curare. They came from the farms only. Leo came from the farms, at least somewhere in his ancestry, though exactly when his family moved to the City, I couldn’t say.
I did not speak but rose and walked over to Trina. Leo stood but was hesitant to leave the woman’s side. After a moment, he stepped away and went to lie on his bedroll. He was asleep within minutes.
We should have continued to move. Staying in one place so long was dangerous and inevitably led to our second encounter with the CPA soldiers. But I knew that we were watching Trina’s life slowly fade and that soon, the ravaged Curare would die. I didn’t have the heart to drag her around the desert and wanted only to give her some peace.
I placed my hand on Trina’s tiny wrist, seeking the thin pulse of life that was her small tie to the earth. It echoed with a pale blue essence and I could tell that once it had beat strongly, evidence of her strength and her dominion over air.
As I sat with Trina, I wondered at the fact that this was the second time I had ever come into any sort of physical contact with another of my kind. I had never interacted with any of the children in South Farm after they were identified as Curare, for I had been too afraid that others would discover my secret, though I shared in their isolation. In my cowardice, I did nothing to lessen the suffering of my brothers.
I imagined that Trina’s life prior to the CPA was filled with the same sort of sorrows and isolation that I had known in my youth. Her abilities would have come through in testing at school. After it was revealed that she was a Curare, her friends looked askance at her and treated her like a leper. She finished her schooling alone and friendless. The day the CPA came to take her away, not even her family had been there to say goodbye. Perhaps they resented her for leaving them. Or perhaps they simply abandoned her. Either way, she likely never heard from them again.
Stories like this were common among Curare, particularly of the earlier generations when the ripples of fea
r could still be felt emanating from the beginning, Bram’s violent death. Though the CPA built a grand campaign, emphasizing the importance of the Curare, fear still won out and it was easier for them to acquire new specimens if the families feared or despised their powerful kin.
Imagining Trina’s story reminded me of a boy named Trayvor who had been in school with me. He was popular, athletic and charismatic with dozens of friends, and he always traveled in packs with them. The hallways of the school echoed with his loud laugh.
When the truth of his Curare nature came to light, Trayvor found himself alone. None of the children wanted to be friends with him and his classmates stared at him and whispered behind their hands.
I had not come to school the days Curare testing took place and CPA representatives filled the halls. Trayvor was identified as an Aquae Curare. I had not been friends with him, though I hadn’t really been friends with anyone, but he had known my name.
Though my heart cried out to him, I, too, was forced to shun him as the other students did following his failure of the Curare test to protect my secret. I remembered watching him as he changed and folded inward.
Trayvor never finished school. Three months later, it was rumored that he had contacted the CPA, begging them to take him early. He went voluntarily into their services so that he would no longer have to endure that bitter solitude.
Remembering Trayvor brought a pang of guilt to my chest, and for the first time, I wavered in my plans to remain in hiding. Perhaps if I’d been braver or less selfish, I would have reached out to him so that he knew that he was not alone. Instead, I hunched my shoulders and made a quick retreat whenever we came face to face.
Knowing that Curare can sense each other, it’s likely that Trayvor knew me for what I was and at that moment, beneath the hot sun, I felt grateful for those who had endured their curse and kept my secret.
I watched the heat shimmering over the dead grasses, filled with memories and regrets. Trina’s skin stayed cool and felt almost damp to the touch, despite the heat. It was the heat that caused her eyelids to flutter open again. She looked up at me without seeing. “Don’t let them find you.”