Moving on, she endeavored to keep her footing along the slick stones. It wouldn’t do to meet her commander in soaked clothes. Parting the kudzu like a curtain, Gemma spoke into the darkness where she knew someone was listening. “Foxglove reporting. Though my soul may set in darkness . . .”
“. . . it will rise in perfect light,” came the reply. “Welcome, Foxglove. We were just getting started with the meeting. We’ll have to keep it short. There’s a new patrol not far from here.” Commander Oak stood with two other captains in the dim light of the cave, water dripping around them and flowing in tiny rivulets down the walls. “We obviously cannot mount an attack on the Corsairs without adequate supplies. And make no mistake, as soon as the first battle begins, the Triumvirate will shut down the Government Offices, leaving us to fend for ourselves. We all remember what it was like with people fighting over food after the First Revolution. We can’t go back to that. So we must find a way to build up a store of supplies, and quickly.”
“I have an idea about that, Commander,” Gemma offered. “First, I must say that I received word through Cypress from one of our operatives within the work camps. It seems there is no clear reason why the government is cutting back on our rations. We’re told there is plenty of food and supplies, and no indication of there not being enough in the future for the number of people within the borders, even if our numbers grew. So we can only assume the government has other motives for practically starving us.”
“It’s not hard to imagine what those would be,” the commander replied.
“More control. More cruelty. That should be their motto rather than ‘Stay the course,’” came the bitter response of a fellow captain.
“Second, we’ve managed to get our hands on some Corsair uniforms.”
“How?”
“There was a squad bathing in a creek. My men literally picked the uniforms from the trees. It was a good harvest day.” Gemma smiled to herself. “They shredded one and left it nearby, so hopefully they’ll think an animal made off with them.”
“Wonderful. Were they seen?”
“No, sir. And we’ve heard nothing in the speeches at the town meetings, so I assume the ruse worked.”
“Now we must decide how to put these to work for us.”
“That’s where my idea comes in. If we send some of our people in Corsair uniforms to the work camps, we can both bring more people in to help us at the camps, and we can start moving supplies out of the government farms, ranches, and camps. They’ll even be able to drive in wagons. If we send them on multiple missions like this and move them around between camps so their faces aren’t known, we should be able to have enough supplies in a very short time.”
“Excellent plan. What say you, captains?”
Gemma’s fellow captains affirmed their support for her plan.
“And taking it a step further, once we’ve gotten all we need from the camps, we can either take over or destroy them. If we control the army’s flow of supplies, we control the war,” Oak continued.
“We may not even have that much fighting to do if we starve out the Corsair base,” a young captain replied.
“I wouldn’t count on that, Pine. We can’t underestimate them.” Oak marveled at how young his troops and captains were.
Pine continued in his zeal, “Well, I do think we should consider sending some of our people over the Border. There has to be something else out there. I don’t believe for a second the government is trying to protect us. They must be trying to keep us away from something.”
“Right now it’s too risky. We’ll have to wait on that for now. There are just too many soldiers along the borders.”
“I agree with Pine on this one, sir,” Gemma interjected. “We could have allies out there. What if we just sent one or two people in different directions with a message?”
“And what would this message say?”
“That would be up to you, sir. Something along the lines of asking who their leader is and letting them know we need help. They may not even know we’re here.”
“Very well, Foxglove. Choose two people from your team to take the message.”
“I volunteer, sir.”
“Denied. We need you here. And arrange to get the Corsair uniforms to Pine’s troop. We’ll make up a detail from his troop and Jade’s to infiltrate the camps. Jade, you’ll use the horse and wagon you have hidden on your farm for these missions. Let’s begin one week from today.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have your orders, captains. Now go in safety. Live free or die.”
“Live free or die,” they all chorused.
Gemma felt a thrill in her spine every time she heard the Watch’s new motto. It reminded her again of the importance of the work she was doing and seemed to make up for the fear and danger she lived through every day.
Tower kept watch outside the cave while he waited for Foxglove.
“Tower, walk with me,” Gemma whispered to her friend.
“Let’s not talk yet. I just saw a patrol go by on the other side of the fence.”
When they reached the main road, Gemma felt it safe to talk. “I haven’t heard from Aishe in months, have you?”
“No. No one has.”
“I assume she got the message I left. But I need to go to her. If things are worse with her, she may need me. And if not, we need her. I know she’ll want to be involved in our current mission.”
“You’re taking another risk, Foxglove.”
“I’m used to risk.”
“Maybe so, but we need to start being more careful. I’ve just received a message from Cypress. She says the Triumvirate has sent spies into all of the towns within the borders, at least one in every village.”
“Well, there’s no great surprise there. Do we have any idea who they are?”
“No, but her contact says it will most likely be someone who’s returned from the camps. The Triumvirate would try to make them blend in as much as possible and make their arrival seem normal.”
Gemma’s breath stopped. She felt the trees and even the air closing in around her. Sam couldn’t possibly. Not after everything they’d gone through together. No, that was ridiculous. Just because he’d come back from the camps didn’t mean he was a spy. She quickly banished the thought from her mind, wiping it away as she wiped the sweat from her brow.
“Do we have any other information to go on?”
“That’s all so far. Just be careful, Foxglove.”
* * * * *
Sophie floundered in her rare hour alone on the farm. Inside the house, she heard every creak and clatter of the walls and floors. Every tap of a bug on the window unsettled her. She finally took herself to the fields where at least she wouldn’t feel the closeness of the walls of the house, suddenly grown more confining with the space that Sam and Ethan had left behind. Ethan had gone to take pictures, and when he hadn’t returned after several hours, Sam had gone after him. She knew they would return in a short while but felt their absence lengthen the time before her. She wished Ethan was there to distract her from the thoughts and images assaulting her mind ever since Sam had said the name Griffyth Credell.
The midday sun lightened the sky to a translucent blue. A ripple of summer heat flowed over the reaching stalks of corn and beans. With no apparent map for their travels beyond basic instinct, bees and dragonflies jutted and darted through the neat rows of plants in haphazard fashion. Sophie walked slowly among them, feeling the soft dirt beneath her feet, sinking in, at one with the earth and yet a stranger. An eastern breeze swirled around her, through her cotton tunic, and brushed against her skin. She wondered if her presence would disturb the natural order of earth, plant, and insect, bringing chaos into a system that would possibly run more smoothly without her.
Someone had killed Griffyth Credell and now the Corsairs were lashing out at all citizens within the borders. A system, however flawed, had been disturbed, the scales tipped, and order marred. She didn’t have to ask who
had done it. Her nightmares told her all she needed to know. She had hoped it was only her mind’s way of processing through her loss and anger, hoped she wouldn’t be capable of the violence she saw under the mask of darkness every night. She had planned to return to the village on Market Day and find Griffyth still scowling there to allay her fears of her own guilt. But now she knew no such relief would come. She could see her hands around his neck, see the fear in his eyes. The blood pulsed quickly in his veins, throbbing against the skin under her fingers. His muscles contracted, everything in his body fighting against her, and yet she had held on until he froze, then relaxed in death and all was still.
She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten there or back into her house that night. She wasn’t even sure of when it had happened. It had all seemed so far away, like all of her other dreams and nightmares, removed with the distance of time, blurring together with so many other memories from her past. She had never thought of herself as a cold-blooded killer, having only ever acted out of self-defense. But this . . . this was unforgivable. This was murder, and others were suffering for her crime. She had seen the scars left by the Corsair whips and wished she could feel the biting pull of the lash across her own back instead. Before she could stop them, the faces of the whipped citizens changed and distorted into the faces of Sam and Ethan. She knew she was putting them in danger too. Sophie felt sick and ran hard against the wind, away from the pictures in her mind, her hair whipping across her wet face.
At the edge of the field, she stopped, gulping the air to replenish her, holding her throat and willing her breakfast to stay down. The flower Sam had shown her was now in full bloom, its petals open and inviting, a velvet pillow of bright yellow, so bright in the noon sun it almost hurt her eyes to look at it. She reached out to touch it, feeling the warmth and delicacy beneath her fingers. Running her hand down, she approached the thorns of the wild rose, their jagged red spears piercing the air. She couldn’t stop herself from touching them as well. One finger stopped, pressed down, felt the point of the thorn penetrate and draw blood, yet she held it there unflinching until it drew the tears from her eyes. She saw the blood form a bubble of red on her finger then drip down in a rivulet running along her finger, through wrinkles in her palm, and she let it bleed on. She marveled again at the frailty of the human body, so easily it bled, so quickly it stopped breathing. She knew then she had to do something. She couldn’t continue to let others suffer for her. She needed absolution. She needed to turn herself in. She didn’t want to leave Sam and Ethan, but she knew she couldn’t continue to put them in danger, either.
A hand reached through the knitted branches of the forest, touching Sophie’s and frightening her back into her own surroundings.
“Aishe.”
“Foxglove! What the hell are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
“Not out in the open. Come with me.”
Sophie brought her captain to the barn where the only witness to their talk would be Pip. While they walked in silence, she thought of how to tell her the conclusion she’d just come to, how to explain her guilt and her determination to make things right, while damp warmth rose from the ground, encasing her in a circle of heat.
Adjusting their eyes to the dimness in the barn, the two women faced each other. Gemma thought Aishe looked worn and tired. She hadn’t been sleeping, obviously. Gemma had hoped to find her better. She spoke first.
“It’s good to see you, Aishe.” She reached out and embraced her friend in an uncharacteristic gesture of affection. “We’ve been worried about you.”
“I’m alright now, thank you, Foxglove.”
“When I didn’t hear from you, I feared the worst.”
“I was going to send you a message. I only received yours yesterday. I assume you know I’ve been unwell.”
“I know what happened.”
“Everything?”
“I know about your daughter and about Credell.”
“Does everyone else in the Watch know?”
“No. I didn’t tell them. It’s between us.”
“But then, you know I have to turn myself in.”
“I don’t know any such thing.”
“Foxglove, think about it. There are people being punished because of my actions. How can I just sit back and let that continue?”
“You won’t. You’ll rejoin our unit and take up your duties in the Watch to help defeat the Corsairs once and for all.”
“I can’t just live with this, knowing what I’ve done.”
“You have to. How will your execution serve anyone? Your fighting will be much more valuable to the cause.”
“But all those people. The floggings. I’ve seen it, up close. My parents . . .”
Gemma took a deep breath. A shiver ran through her as she thought of the man she’d seen just a few days before, his back ripped to shreds by the lash. She placed her hand on Aishe’s arm. “Aishe, I know. It’s hard to deal with. Horrible. And what they’re doing is despicable, but it won’t stop with you. This isn’t the government meting out justice. Punishing other people for one person’s mistakes is not justice, it’s fear. They’re using this to scare us. Fear is their greatest weapon against us.”
“And what’s our greatest weapon?”
“Hope, I guess. Listen to me, Aishe, if it wasn’t this, it would be something else. Don’t you think they’ll come up with another excuse to punish us? We can’t give in to them. Sacrificing your life in this way won’t serve others.”
“I see his face in my dreams. Griffyth.”
“Tell me. Tell me how it happened.”
“I only have a partial memory of it. It’s all so blurred.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“He was Bridget’s father. When she got sick, I went to the G.O. for medicine, but he wouldn’t give it to me because she was undocumented. His own daughter. My daughter. I’ll never know if I did the right thing bringing her there. Maybe I could have gotten medicine another way. Maybe she would still be here if I had been thinking clearly. I was just so tired and worried.” Sophie’s words came out in a flurry of confusion and pain, hard to follow, but easy to understand.
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching and has taught us to understand what our hearts used to be. We have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape. Someone I once knew used to read those lines to me.”
“No one should ever know what those days were like, what it feels like to watch your own child slip away.”
Sophie walked to the small window looking over the pasture. She took a deep breath but didn’t feel revived. She breathed again, forcing herself to, willing the air into her lungs when her body just wanted to stop. She purposefully stopped her lip from shaking and wiped fiercely at her wet eyes before continuing.
“After she was gone, I was out of my mind with grief. It was like I was in a dream. One of my nightmares come to life. But I couldn’t wake up from it. All I know is I left one night and found him at the G.O. late. I must have strangled him. I can see my hands around his throat. That’s all I know for sure.” She stopped and looked at her hands, the veins forming blue lines through her pale skin. Her hands looked small. Too small to do what they had done.
“You said it yourself, you were out of your mind with grief. You aren’t really to blame for what happened. You weren’t in full control of yourself. It’s like you were sleepwalking. You aren’t to blame, Aishe.”
As she turned swiftly to face her captain, the fire burning in Sophie’s eyes roared, giving life to the anger, fear, and helplessness she was feeling. “Who else is to blame, then? Show me someone I can blame for who I’ve become. How could I have become this animal functioning on pure instinct? It’s unforgivable, killing an unarmed man.” She breathed heavily again, pushing down the lump in her throat.
Gemma thought for a moment before answering. How was she to know the answers to these questions she’d asked herself at times? “We’ve all d
one unforgivable things, I think. That’s what makes mercy, forgiveness, the freedoms we’re fighting for gifts. As long as we hold onto those, we hold onto our humanity.”
“It all just seems so absurd. How can we go on living like this?”
“We can’t. And we’re not going to. The commander has given us new orders. We’re sending several people across the borders to try to find help from the outside. We’re also going to take over the work camps, build up our supplies, and mount an offensive attack on the Corsair base. We will bring an end to all of this, one way or another.”
“I suppose it’s time. We knew it would be soon.”
“Are you ready for another mission?”
“Yes. I’ll do whatever is necessary.”
“Good. Then you are one of the ones I will send across the Border. Here is the message you need to take. Try to find whoever is in charge, a leader. Tell them how desperate our situation is, and try to negotiate for whatever help they can offer us.”
“There’s no way of knowing what to expect out there.”
“I know. I want you to keep yourself safe. You’ll bring a rifle with you. I wish you could ride your horse, but there’s no way to get him past the Border fence without detection.”
A Light From the Ashes Page 18