by Kate L. Mary
“Get up, Mira,” I said, stepping between her and the marsoapian. “Stay back.”
Behind me, her feet shuffled as she scurried back, but I did not look away from the creature in front of me to see where she had gone. My eyes were on the marsoapian in front of me, and it seemed to be focused only on me as well. It opened its mouth and emitted a low hiss, revealing yellow teeth that looked square and unthreatening even though they were razor sharp. I tightened my hold on the knife and readied myself, making sure my feet were planted firmly on the ground. The marsoapian moved closer. It hissed again. My heart thumped harder with each passing second. I was ready when it lunged, but the creature jumped higher than I expected it to. It slammed into my stomach and knocked me to the ground despite my best efforts, and Mira let out a scream that echoed through the dark night as together the marsoapian and I went down.
Before my back had even hit the ground, I brought the knife around. The blade sank into the animal’s side, and the thing hissed again, louder this time. It wiggled on top of me, its mouth open, and I shifted just in time to avoid its jaws from clamping down on my neck. Mira screamed again, but I was already pulling the blade from the creature’s body. I slammed it back in, just as I had done with Lysander, and then did it a third and a fourth time until the creature finally stopped moving.
Its body was heavy against mine, weighing me down with its massive size, and I was covered in blood, but I was alive. Even better, we had dinner. I shoved the thing off me, and it rolled onto its back.
“Help me,” I said, holding my hand out to Mira.
The hand she clamped over mine was trembling, but she did as I asked. Her eyes were wide when she looked me over, but dry. She was holding it together much better than I had expected.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“No.” I jerked my head toward the creature. “And now we have food and a way to keep the desert roaches away.”
I said a quick prayer over the animal, and then knelt next to it. Mira stood over me, watching as I sliced the marsoapian open and pulled out its guts. The darkness covering the wastelands was thick, and despite my now extensive experience with hunting, I had never killed one of these creatures before, so it took me longer than usual to clean the thing and free a decent chunk of meat. When I had, Mira held what would be our dinner while I dragged the rest of the carcass away.
The further I went from the fire, the cooler the air became. The effort it had taken to fight off the creature and butcher it had made my skin moist, and bumps pop up on my skin from the chill in the desert air.
I dragged the body as far as I could, and by the time I stopped I was surrounded by darkness and my arms were aching from the effort of pulling the large creature away. The area around me was black, but the scratch of feet against the sandy earth made the hair on my arms stand up. Already the desert roaches were moving in, anxious to clean the meat from the bones of my kill.
I dropped the marsoapian and hurried back toward the fire. Within two steps, the bugs had descended upon the carcass. The ripping of flesh as they tore into it echoed through the otherwise still night, followed by the click of their legs as more and more scurried out of the darkness.
Mira stood by the fire, her eyes wide as I approached.
“Are you okay?” I asked when I stopped in front of her.
She was looking past me, back to where I had dumped the body, and I glanced over my shoulder to find the darkness alive with black shapes.
When I looked back, her gaze was on me. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am,” I said, taking the meat from her.
I speared it with a stick from one of the skeleton trees and crouched down so I could hold it over the fire.
Mira knelt at my side. “You have killed men?”
“I have,” I told her.
I had expected this conversation and had even thought I was prepared for it, but with my best friend sitting next to me asking about the things I had done in the privacy of the forest, I found I was nervous. Nervous to find out what she would think of me, nervous that her opinion of me might change.
“Who are you, Indra?” she asked again.
I took a deep breath. “I am a Winta woman, an Outlier, but I am also Sovereign.”
Mira gasped, but I did not give her time to speak before launching into the story my mother had told me about my origins. My friend listened in silence as the details came out of me. How I had gone into the woods to hunt animals, but how it had only taken one encounter with a Fortis hunting party for my focus to change. She said nothing when I recounted the dozens of men and women I had killed and how it had made me see myself in a different light.
“The Winta are wrong,” I said when I had finished. “We have been told we are weak and that we need men to protect us, but that is not true. I have killed men much larger than me. I have brought in game and taken care of my family without the help of a husband or father. I love my people, but I do not love that they have worked so hard to make me feel weak when I am not. I am strong, Mira, and so are you. No matter what we find when we return to our village, we must remember that.”
She nodded, but her silence told me that she did not know what to think about the things I had done. Still, there was no disgust in her eyes when she looked at me, no repulsion. Her expression was one of confusion, but there was awe as well.
We ate the meat when it was cooked, and even though I was anxious to know what my friend was thinking, I did not ask. She needed time to sort through her feelings, and I would give it to her.
It was not until we had settled down in hopes of getting a little rest that she finally spoke. “Is it wrong to take a life to save one?”
“I am not sure,” I said with a sigh. “But I do know I feel no remorse for the people I have killed. Perhaps that makes me as evil as the Fortis, or maybe it means what I am doing is not wrong. I have no way of knowing for sure until I move into the afterlife and find out what ghosts have followed me, but either way, I refuse to stop. Not until our people are free.”
“Is that something you can do?” Mira asked, the awe and hope in her voice thick now. “Do you think killing a few Fortis hunters in the woods can set us free?”
“No. It cannot. We must do more. What that is, I still do not know, but I will figure it out. When I do, I will make sure all the Outliers are set free.”
Mira shifted so she was facing me, and the fire reflected in her blue eyes. “I am not sure if I have that kind of strength in me, Indra, but if I do, I want to find it. You are brave, braver than any man I have ever met. Think of what we could accomplish if more people had your courage. Think of what we could do if the Outliers chose to work as one instead of living as we do. Like we are separate.”
She was right. Outliers outnumbered the Fortis and Sovereign put together, and if we could somehow find a way to join forces, we could accomplish so much more than what I had already done. But I was not sure if such a thing was possible. Centuries had passed since the Outliers had been one unified tribe, and since then we had interacted very little. I had doubts that the other tribes would even be willing to try.
9
As soon as the first rays of sunlight lit up the horizon, Mira and I were ready to resume our trek through the wastelands. By that point the fire was low enough that all I had to do was kick a little sand over the embers. It went out in a puff of smoke, and Mira watched it get carried away on the wind in silence. Like me, she was probably thinking about what we might find when we finally reached our village. About all the things we might have lost.
Impatience warred with dread inside me when we set out. I wanted to get home, to see my mother and sister and know I had not destroyed everything by saving Mira, but I also found it difficult to put one foot in front of the other. Found that my legs were heavy, as if weighed down by something huge and life altering, and it scared me more than anything I had ever faced before. More than the morning I woke to find Bodhi gone, more than sitting in a cell whil
e I waited to watch my husband’s murder. This was far bigger. I could sense it, and even though I was desperate to get home, I was sure that after today my life would never be the same.
It did not take long for the skeleton trees to become more common and closer together, and then we had reached the edge of the wilds. Smoke from the Huni village was visible to the west just above the trees, but Mira and I moved east to avoid them. Their village skirted the wastelands, right where the skeleton trees and wilds met, and they had settled there for a reason. The Huni were not friendly toward outsiders, even other Outlier tribes.
After the long trek through the wastelands, reaching our village should have been a relief. But it was not to be. We saw the smoke before the huts came into view. It wound its way through the trees, thicker and more spread out than usual, and even before we reached the clearing, I knew we were too late. Mira must have realized it as well, because she began walking faster just as I had come to this conclusion. I did the same, charging through the forest in an effort to keep up with her, my heart pounding with the beat of my footsteps against the ground.
The first hut we came to was little more than smoldering embers, the fire that had taken it down recent enough that smoke still wafted from the ruins. The next hut was the same, and each one after that, but worse than the sight of the burned huts were the bodies.
The snow dotting the ground had been dyed red by the blood of our people. Women had been stripped naked before they were killed, and children had been run through with swords. There were men who had been beheaded or tied to trees as if being forced to watch the slaughter before they too were sent into the afterlife.
As I walked, the lifeless eyes off my people stared up at me accusingly, asking why I had scarified all of them to save just one person. Asking me if it had been worth it. With Mira at my side, alive and well, I could not bring myself to think that it had not, but the ruins of my village contradicted every speck of resolve inside me until I thought I might vomit it out.
“They are all gone,” Mira said, collapsing on her knees in the bloodstained snow. “The Fortis killed them all.”
I did not fall down at her side, but instead moved deeper into the village, thinking only of Anja and my mother. Had they survived the massacre? Had anyone?
I reached our hut to find it, like all the others, had been reduced to ash. The outline of where our things had once stood was still visible—the table, a bowl that was charred from smoke now sitting on the ground, and the bed I had shared with Anja for most of my life. To my relief, it was empty, but the feeling was short-lived. Unlike the other one, my mother’s bed held the charred remains of the woman who raised me. The woman who had been my strength and courage, who had loved me even though I had not come from her womb.
I dropped to the ground then, just as Mira had, falling to my hands and knees in the snow. My fingers groped at the ash that had been my childhood home while I stared at the bones of my mother. They looked impossibly small, and her body was twisted as if she had curled into a ball in an effort to protect herself from the smoke and flames.
This was my fault.
She was dead, and even though the Sovereign had ordered the Fortis hunters to kill her, my mother’s blood was on my hands. I had brought this not only on her, but on my entire village as well. I had been arrogant and impulsive, and I had acted without considering the consequences, and as a result my people had been wiped out. My mother was dead, probably my sister, too, as well as Mira’s family and Bodhi’s, and everyone else I knew and loved.
The tears started without warning, but it was the sobs that immobilized me. They threatened to rub my throat raw with their violence, making it difficult to breathe, making my limbs shake until I had to lie on my stomach in the snow. I pressed my face against the ash, knowing I would be covered but not caring because the pain inside me was worse than anything I had ever experienced. It was impossible to imagine how I would ever be able to do anything but lie here on the ground. If only I had been in the hut. If only my body was spread out next to my mother’s. At least then my suffering would finally be over.
My sobs grew worse until I could not breathe even a little, and I gasped, certain I was suffocating, suddenly desperate to fill my lungs even though only a second ago I had been sure I wanted nothing more than to die. When I finally managed to get a mouthful of air, a wail came out of me that sounded like a wounded animal. It rose, bouncing off the trees, and above me a group of rawlins flew from the branches, their feathers as bright red against the blue sky as the blood was against the snow.
“Indra.”
Mira’s hands pulled me up, and then I was in her arms and we were crying together. I held onto her like I was afraid she, too, would be ripped from my life, my body shaking and words impossible to get out in the midst of the wails coming out of me.
“This is my fault,” I finally said. “I did this. I killed them.”
“No. You saved me, Indra. The Fortis killed them, sent here by the Sovereign because you stood up to them.” Mira pulled back so she could look me in the eye.
She had ash smeared across her face, probably from me, but trying to wipe it off would be pointless. My hands were painted black from the stuff.
“I have never heard of anyone standing up to the Sovereign the way you have,” my friend continued. “No one. You are stronger than anyone I have ever known. You have killed Fortis hunters, men twice your size, and you defied the Sovereign. You told me that you did it because you could not stand back and do nothing anymore, and you were right. We must stop them from doing this, and you can do it. I do not know how, but I know you can.”
“I cannot.” I looked around at the destruction of my village, the slaughter of my people, and anguish filled me. “All I will do is bring more pain on everyone. Look at what I have done so far.”
“Look at what you have done? Look at what they have done. They did this, Indra. Not you.”
“I have lost everything, Mira.” I looked back toward my mother’s body. “I do not even know where Anja is, and I cannot make myself look. If I find her—” My voice broke and I could not finish.
Just thinking about the bodies of the women lying amongst the ruins of our village, naked and frozen from the cold night, made me sick. If that had been my sister’s fate, I would never be able to live with myself. Knowing I had brought that horrific end down on her would crush me for good.
Mira hugged me again. “We will find her together, and then we will put her to rest. We will put them all to rest.”
Mira and I searched the bodies together. The ruins of her hut held the bones of her own family, her mother and father, as well as her brother, already burned, as did the hut Ronan had lived in. Bodhi’s family had met the same fate, along with so many others, but no matter how hard we looked, Anja was nowhere in sight.
As time stretched on, I began to hope that somehow my sister had escaped. I thought back on the day I had headed into the city after Bodhi, how I had worried the Sovereign would do this very thing—send the Fortis to destroy us. Before I left that day, I had told Anja to hide if she saw the Fortis coming. But that had been months ago. Was it possible she remembered? Could she be alive, maybe hiding in the forest? It seemed so far-fetched, but without her body in front of me, I found it impossible to give up hope.
Mira and I were still searching the bodies strewn across the village when the sound of someone calling my name bounced off the surrounding trees. “Indra!”
My head jerked toward the sound as I scanned the area. I had to be imagining my sister’s voice. There was no way she was still out there. She—
“Indra!”
This time I turned, and Mira did as well. Like me, she was looking around, and we were both still searching the foliage that encircled the village when Anja burst through the brush.
“Anja,” I gasped, rushing toward my sister.
She looked so young as she ran for me, her arms open wide. My sister was younger than I was by six years, but t
aller and lankier, all wiry muscles. With the sun shining down on her, shimmering against the tears on her cheeks, I was struck by how much she looked like our mother—they had the same deep brown skin, dark eyes, and black hair—and the pang that radiated through my body at the knowledge that I would never again see the older version of this girl nearly knocked me to the ground.
When we met in the middle of our ruined village, I threw my arms around her. The tears returned the second she was in my arms, only this time they were less crippling.
“I ran,” my sister gasped between her own sobs. “Like you told me to. When I saw the Fortis coming, I got as many people out as I could. We went into the forest and hid.”
“I am so glad. I am so happy to see you,” I said between tears.
“How many of you are there?” Mira asked from behind me.
Anja pulled back so she could look at my friend, but I refused to let her go completely. “Around twenty. We hid, and later, after the Fortis left, Xandra showed up. She told me what happened in the city.”
“Xandra is okay?” I said. “What about Isa? Who else made it out of the city with her?”
“Xandra said she knew there would be retaliation, so she tried to find as many of our people as she could before leaving. Instead of coming straight home, they hid in the Lygan Cliffs. She only managed to find Isa, Tris, Zadie, and Cera, though. She thinks everyone else from our village will be kept. That the Sovereign will make them move into the quarters.”
“The building is almost complete,” Mira said as if to confirm Xandra’s suspicions.
“Indra,” my sister said, turning her gaze one me, “I tried to get our mother out. She was so weak, and there was so much chaos.” Anja’s expression crumbled the way dead leaves did in the fall. “She could not walk, and I did not have the strength to carry her. She made me leave her.”