In opstand

by Marieke Veringa

“He needs a name, though,” Uriah said. “We can’t keep calling him ‘baby’.”

  “I can’t give him a name. He’s not mine.”

  Uriah looked at her from across the flames of the fire, the light reflecting in his eyes. He’s so skinny, she thought. Uriah hadn’t had much meat on his bones when she first met him, but the tough weeks in the SIDR had transformed his face. His eyes were sunken, his black curls were unkempt and touched his shoulders. Stubble covered his jaws. He no longer looked like the boy who’d taken her to the Ghetto, Emma realized. But maybe she herself had changed beyond recognition as well.

  “Well, his mother’s dead,” Uriah pointed out. “Someone needs to tell him about her when he grows up, and I bet by then he’ll want to know why he doesn’t have a proper name.”

  Emma chuckled. “Well. What about Angel? Because he managed to convince that soldier to let us go.”

  To her surprise, Uriah barked out a laugh and lifted the baby from her arms. “Angel? Are you meshuggene?”

  “What’s wrong with…”

  “Esmeralda would haunt you forever if you saddled her son with that name,” he grinned.

  “Okay, fine. What about Winter? Or Aurora?”

  “Haven’t you paid attention when you cleaned Baby’s diapers, Emma? This is a boy.”

  “Pff. You don’t like anything I come up with.”

  Uriah stared at the infant in his arms ponderingly. “Esmeralda belonged to my people, you know.”

  Oh, Uriah… She wanted to do something to make the stricken look in his eyes go away. Hug him, press her lips to his mouth, and tell him everything would be all right. She moved in a bit closer, but his gaze was fixed on Baby. Emma swallowed.

  “Not that it matters. We’re just people. You and me. Esmeralda and Elizabeth. But it does get you thinking when they exterminate your entire family. When your grandparents and great-grandparents apparently had the wrong blood running through their veins. Are we so different, Emma?”

  “Of course not, Uriah. You know better.”

  “You used to think it too.”

  Emma swallowed hard. He was right, of course – she’d been a part of it too. She’d been part of the reason that Uriah’s people had mostly been wiped off the earth. She’d never listened, never truly thought about it… “But I’m different now. Just like Sophia was. Just like we can all change, if only people know the truth. We have to tell them the truth.” It was the only hope she could hold onto.

  “Maybe. By miracle.”

  “I always thought the Jews were long gone. And then you showed up. Isn’t that a miracle?”

  He shrugged. “There’s a couple dozen of us, hidden in the Ghettos. Elizabeth and Rachel were the only ones I knew. The only people who still knew our stories. Abraham,” he suddenly added to his story, out of nowhere.

  Emma blinked. “Sorry, who?”

  “Baby,” Uriah, said. Finally, he looked up and to Emma’s relief he was smiling. “That’s what we’ll call him. Abraham.”

  One week later, the protection of the forest fell away to make room for an open plain where the wind howled incessantly. Emma covered Abraham with her coat. The scouts walking ahead of them came back with news that they found a lake three miles down the road. It was probably a drinking place for animals who managed to live on this tundra. Across the lake, another forest was visible and behind those trees, mountains rose up in the distance.

  “We could make it today,” Baikal said. “It’ll be tough, but it’s possible.”

  Dusk set in early, just like in the past few days. The torches and oil lamps that they still had were lit to illuminate the early afternoon, and Emma edged up to Uriah. “Where’s Baikal taking us? Are there any villages around here?”

  “Even if there were, we probably shouldn’t halt there. We’re refugees, not guests.”

  “I don’t even know where north or south is anymore. What our goal is.”

  Uriah pointed to the mountains in the distance. “That’s the Ural mountain chain. Our way back.”

  All the way across the mountains… Emma felt her knees buckle. “Uriah, that’s impossible. No one can walk that far!”

  “We have to try.”

  “But – I can’t even – it’s too harsh. And all those children…” She pressed her hands against her forehead. Impossible. A demented plan…

  “Emma, look at me,” Uriah urged her quietly. He lifted her hands away from her face and fixed her with a serious look in his dark eyes, long lashes framing his black orbs. She inadvertently held her breath. “Listen,” he said. “You’re right, it is absurd. But not entirely impossible. There’s almost seventy of us...”

  “Half of them will die in those mountains,” she whispered.

  “Maybe, but this is our journey. Our exodus. Even if we have to walk for forty years, Emma – it doesn’t matter.”

  Emma laughed nervously. “I can’t walk for forty years!”

  “You wouldn’t be the first one to say that in human history.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Uriah’s smile lit up his gaunt face. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  There’s so much I don’t know – so many things I still need to learn. Their hands rubbed together and his fingers intertwined with Emma’s. Uriah’s hand was the warmest and safest thing she’d felt in a long time.

  “You still afraid?” he wanted to know.

  Before Emma could respond to his question, the light of the aurora shot through the heavens like a sparkling arrow. She tore her gaze away from the sky and looked at the people surrounding them, the dancing flames of the oil lamps that were an indication of how long their procession went on for. She listened to the sound of their footfalls on the frozen ground. Every step was taking them closer to a new world.

  And yet, so much still needed to be done. Battles demanded to be fought and won, walls had to be taken down, and enemy strongholds needed to be conquered. But irrevocably, something had changed with their exodus and if this slow, long procession ever made it home, they’d turn the world upside down. Everything would change.

  She tightened her grip on Uriah’s hand and drew a deep breath of old air. “Yes, I’m scared,” she said. “But I can walk.”

  Jen Minkman

  The Island

  Prologue

  WHEN I step out of my bedroom door, Mother and Father are waiting for me in the hallway.

  The clothes I’m wearing feel uncomfortable. They’re grown-up clothes: rough-textured, scratchy, and of practical cut. Made to last for a long time.

  “I go my own way,” I say softly. The words that every child utters at age ten – the words my brother will say after me today – don’t sound as if I’m sure of them. But I am, because I know this is right. I clear my throat and speak up. “I stand on my own two feet. No one takes care of me but me.”

  Father nods solemnly. Mother looks pale and is staring down at her hands. Why won’t she look at me? Is this her way of saying she wants nothing more to do with me? I haven’t even moved out yet. Dull disappointment grows in my stomach like a heavy brick.

  The door next to mine swings open, and Colin steps over the threshold. My twin brother. He’s wearing brown pants and a simple shirt. Slung across his shoulder is a bag containing a few possessions he doesn’t want to leave behind. Almost all of our things will be destroyed after our departure, our rooms cleared, so we won’t ever be tempted to return. Not that I would want to. I’m done here.

  Colin coughs. “I go my own way,” he says with a quiver in his voice. His eyes search our mother’s. “I stand on my own two feet.” A tear rolls down his cheek. He’s having a hard time with this. Oh well – he’s the youngest, after all. There’s a half hour between us.

  “No one takes care of you but you,” father finishes the speech when Colin can’t go on.

 
When I pass my mother, she suddenly puts a hand on my shoulder. “Leia,” she says, pulling a simple bead necklace from her dress pocket. It has a painted and glazed walnut for a pendant. “For you.”

  My heart skips a beat. That’s the necklace my mother got from her mother when she moved out. And now she’s giving it to me.

  “Thanks,” I whisper. Just for a moment, I imagine her giving me so much more than this. I feel this can’t be the end, but just then my father pushes open the front door for us. I walk out after my brother, into the early daylight, away from my mother.

  Colin is waiting for me and grabs my hand. “You coming?” he mumbles.

  We walk down the path without looking back. We’re going to the manor, where we will live until we each get married and have children of our own.

  The front door slams shut. A new life has begun.

  1

  “HOW MANY freaking times do I have to tell you not to get damp wood?” Ben throws down the branches I hand over to him with a scowl on his face. “You can’t start a fire with that!”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumble.

  “You’re sorry?” Ben’s face turns red under his curly, brown hair. “What good will that do me? You have to make yourself useful in the wilderness, if nothing else.”

  “Shut up, Ben,” Colin snaps. He’s busy next to me skinning a rabbit. “Like you never make mistakes.”

  Ben smiles a superior smile. “Oh, really? Well, as far as I know I’ve kept us all alive so far. Who shot that rabbit? And who caught the two pheasants we ate yesterday?”

  Colin raises a quizzical eyebrow. “And who got smacked in the face last night because he snuck into a sleeping tent he wasn’t supposed to be in?”

  I bite my lip to stop myself from laughing nervously. Ben is a survivor, no doubt about it, but social skills aren’t exactly his strong suit. Last night, Mara made it perfectly clear she’s not interested in him. It was a good thing Colin heard her screaming – I’m not sure the blow to his nose would have been enough to get the message across otherwise.

  “What are you laughing about?” Ben snarls, catching my almost-smile. “You think it’s funny?”

  No, actually, I don’t. Nothing to laugh about in a world where the strong always win and have more rights than the rest of us.

  Ben is Saul’s younger brother, and Saul is the leader in the manor. He organizes fighting games between the strongest boys and the weaker members of our group to keep them perpetually afraid. You never know when your number’s up. Only a few weeks ago Colin was beaten up by Max, a giant of a guy nicknamed The Bear.

  Saul also decides who needs to take hikes into the wild in order to learn survival skills – and if you’re not in his good books, you’re sent out every other week – and who gets to live in the manor house. He decides when to read The Book, and picks the chapters to be read during our assemblies.

  “I think you should leave Mara alone,” I reply feebly. “She’s already told you a couple of times she doesn’t want to marry you.”

  Ben grins maliciously. “Who said anything about marriage?”

  Completely shocked, I hold my breath. Everybody knows where babies come from. If you do… that… without taking responsibility of the child and raising it until its tenth birthday, you’re pretty much a criminal. In the rare event that it does occur, the boy is obliged to marry the girl.

  Something tells me that Saul won’t oblige his younger brother to anything.

  I turn around in disgust. The flints I was using to start the fire fall out of my hands and drop to the ground. I run down the forest path, through the trees, across the grassy fields, as far away from Ben as possible. I won’t let him see my tears.

  I keep running until I get to the beach.

  The sand tickles my toes. I walk toward the sea. The surf bubbles and foams over my bare feet while seagulls shriek above my head. The endless surface of the water extends to the horizon, whichever way I look.

  Our world is small. If I turned around now and walked north, I’d be able to cross our land within a day. It would take me to another beach, and I’d be faced with another stretch of endless sea. Nothing but sea. We’re on our own, and we only have the Force deep within us to depend on. It comes from the inside, not from the outside.

  If I were to walk westward from here, I’d come across a barrier – the Wall. Behind it live the Fools. According to our forefathers we’re not supposed to cross it.

  It’s not difficult to cross the Wall, but nobody wants to. The Fools don’t believe in the Force within. Instead, they believe in something outside of this world that will save them and come to their rescue. No one wants to mingle with idiots like that.

  And they keep to themselves too. They leave us alone. To be honest, I wouldn’t even have believed there are Fools, if not for the fact that I saw one of their ships once. It was far away in the distance, so far away from the island that it frightened me. Everyone knows there’s nothing beyond the horizon. Ships that sail out never return.

  And yet, it stirs something deep inside of me to see how brave they are. Our world may be safe, but it does make me feel trapped sometimes. Especially with a horrible leader like Saul. I know I should get married as soon as possible to get away from the manor and move back to Newexter, where the parents live, but I don’t like anybody enough to want to get married yet.

  Sighing, I spread my arms like wings and walk into the sea. When the water reaches my waist, I lower them and touch the water with my fingertips. The cold gives me goose bumps all over my body, but standing in the sea and touching the surf like this makes me connect with the Force. It’s as though I’m closer than ever to the source that feeds the entire universe. It feels like I can take on everything – the hikes through the wilderness that Colin and I have to endure because Saul claims we aren’t ‘embracing the Force’ enough yet, the fear of never finding anyone to share my life with. My fear of being disappointed.

  When I turned ten, I was a grown-up. Colin and I joined the rest of the youngsters in the manor house after our birthday. We had our own room, but we didn’t stay in them a lot. Much more often we were outside, making bows and arrows for the hunt. We were taught how to make fishnets. We learned how to make fire – although I never quite got the hang of that. And some time later, Saul claimed most of the rooms in the house as his own, but we no longer cared about sleeping indoors. We had our own tents and huts.

  We learned how to take care of ourselves.

  I startle when I see dark clouds gathering on the horizon. Thunderclouds are a bad omen. The stories of our ancestors tell us about rain burning the skin and causing sickness in their people. It’s never happened in my lifetime, but we’re still afraid of it.

  It’s time to find shelter.

  2

  WHEN I return to our camp after the downpour passing over the island, only Mara is still there waiting for me, a bag of camping gear at her feet.

  “Oh, good, there you are,” she exclaims in relief. “What happened to you?” Her hand reaches for my jet-black hair, all matted with sea salt and tangled up because of the wind.

  I shrug. “Nothing much. I ran until I hit the beach. Stayed there for a while to unwind. I really had to get away from Ben.”

  “Yeah, who doesn’t?” Mara sighs. “He should be called to order, but who’s going to do it?”

  “You,” I tease her. “I bet his nose still hurts.”

  Mara stares hard at her feet. “Yeah, about that – I’m not looking forward to getting back to the house. Saul will probably give me the shittiest job imaginable for giving his brother a left hook. I bet I’ll be scrubbing filthy bed sheets in the laundry house for the next three weeks.”

  Together, we pack my tent and hit the road home, Mara walking silently beside me. “I really have to get out of here,” she breaks the silence after a while. “For all I know, Saul will marry me o
ff to his brother, just to stop him from always harping on about me.”

  “An arranged marriage?” I gape at her. “Come on, that never happens anymore! We’re free to choose our own partners.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Saul’s not freedom’s biggest fan. The guy is nuts. You think he comes from a line of Fools?”

  I chuckle. “You crossed the Wall and fell off? Nobody here is descended from Fools.”

  Mara averts her eyes. “Aren’t you ever curious, Leia? About the people on the other side of the Wall?”

  “No, of course not,” I deflect quickly. “We know how it is with those people.”

  “Why? Because Saul says so?”

  “No, because the parents taught us that way. And they were taught by theirs. Besides, it’s also written in The Book.”

  “Yes, the part we’re allowed to read,” Mara mutters.

  I come to a stop in the middle of the trail and stare at my best friend. “Mara, what are you talking about? Who told you these things?”

  “Andy did,” Mara admits. “He says…”

  “He says what?” I press on, when Mara bites her lip and stares at the ground. My best friend starts to blush under my inquiring gaze.

  “I went on a date with Andy,” she stutters. “Right before we had to go on this hike. We were together all evening. And he told me a secret. About The Book. He says Saul’s keeping things from us.”

  Andy and Mara? My heart cracks a little. Admittedly, I don’t really like anyone, but if I had to choose, it would be Andy. Eighteen-year-old Andy with his kind, brown eyes, black hair and broad shoulders. But he likes Mara. My best friend with her slender, willowy body, chestnut hair and her fifteen years. For just a split second, I taste the bitter flavor of jealousy on my tongue, but then I see the look of insecurity in Mara’s eyes. She doesn’t want to lose me over this.

  “So what did Andy say exactly?” I ask, not digging deeper about the date.