That flash of admiration sparkled again in his eyes. This time, he glanced at her from top to bottom. “How is it possible to even cross the Great Wall?” Colton said, looking over her shoulder at it. They were near enough to see the Great Wall in the distance; a construction disguised in some hologram technology, making it look like a sky in the distance, so it didn’t hurt anyone’s eyes or make citizens feel imprisoned from afar. In fact, the Great Wall had been everywhere in The Second all along. Whenever you saw a far away mirage you couldn’t reach, it was nothing but the Great Wall. A deception to the eyes. The Council had their robot androids securing the Great Wall a mile ahead of it. They blocked anyone from passing through; protecting it, and protecting citizens from it. It was illegal to cross over under any circumstances. The robots had license to kill. Citizens of The Second had been obedient in general, except for a group who claimed they were the new revolution. They were always hunted down, only tens of them left scattered and uncaught—yet—probably hiding in the Ruins.
“All we have to do is cross the guards,” Iris smirked.
“And how are we going to do that?”
“We won’t,” Iris said. “There is a building at the corner of the street,” she pointed at a bakery called the Barnum Bakery nearby. “The woman who owns it has a tunnel underneath that leads to the Ruins. Whenever you want to go there, you can use it. I’ll introduce you.”
“And why would that woman expose her life to such danger?” Colton asked.
“She is part of the revolution,” Iris said.
“There is a revolution?”
“Of course there is,” Iris sighed. Most people didn’t know about it. “When society is full of nonsense like ours, when the government makes decisions people don’t approve of and tells you that you have voted for those same decisions, sooner or later there will be a revolution.”
“And I assume you’re part of it,” Colton said.
“Not at all.” Iris laughed. “I’m just an ordinary girl who wants to know why she is subject to being taken by the Beasts. That’s all. Once I know why and do something about it, I will sleep better at night. Maybe find a Prince Charming first, and then sleep better at night.” She rolled her eyes. Part of it was at her attempt at flirting, and the other part, to cover up the fact that she actually was flirting with Colton.
“I’d like to know what happened to Eva, so I can sleep better at night too,” Colton mumbled, staring at some invisible nowhere.
Iris squeezed his hand and shot him a sympathizing look. It was a true gesture. She might not have liked Eva, but she felt guilty about her being taken, after she had wished it herself. It was ironic that Colton and Iris were here together because of Eva.
Iris squeezed his hand again, and they began walking toward the bakery. His hand felt warm and strong, and so did her heart. She hadn’t told him yet about Eva’s words.
8
“What the heck is that?” Colton squinted at the shady Ruins.
Iris knew his infatuation with the tunnel and the Barnum Bakery hadn’t withered yet, but the darkened Ruins beyond made his heart skip a beat. The sky above him was purplish, with a feeble sun trying to pass its orange hues through the thick layers of gray clouds. Hell, he doubted the sun was even there behind it. It was as if there was some kind of fire in the sky, one that had only been put out recently. All kinds of smoke swirled around them as they walked through the old and abandoned buildings. The Ruins smelled like ashes left in the rain.
“Welcome to the Ruins,” Iris said. Her gaze was cautious and alert. She knew of the dangers lurking in every corner. She had never encountered a slug, a dangerous animal, or even a revolutionist. But she’d heard them so many times. There was always this feeling that she was being watched in here. That’s why she preferred to go back before sunset, when the place dimmed from shades of gray to obscurely dark. “This is the world as it might have been before The Second. In your terms, this is probably The First.”
“Do you really think this is the old world before the Beasts arrived?” Colton’s mouth was left agape. He couldn’t stop walking around and touching things, and taking pictures with his camera. Like Iris expected, whoever entered the Ruins was immediately entranced by the brick, stone, and wooden buildings.
“What else would it be?” Iris pulled him toward the building she wanted to go to. A place where she could practice the Pentimento.
“So the Beasts aren’t the bad guys after all,” Colton said. Iris shot him a worried look. “I mean, maybe the world was in Ruins and the Beasts saved us from it, like they always tell us in school. The Beasts designed a brand new place for us to live in, and we should be thankful.”
“How could you say that?” Iris frowned.
“It’s the most plausible explanation,” Colton said. “Look at this horrible place.”
A limping dog showed from behind a far wall. He looked thin and scruffy. Colton looked worried. She knew he’d never seen a real dog before. Dogs in The Second looked too good, with fair skin and hair. They didn’t even drool, because they weren’t real dogs. Only one of the Beasts’ many inventions. You could even buy a dog that didn’t bark or poop, if you so wished.
“It won’t hurt you if you leave it be.” Iris said.
“You’ve been bragging about this place having real animals. But they’re deformed and ill. Look at him. I wouldn’t want him in my world, and I should thank the Beasts for that. And you said you saw real plants? I bet they are as ugly as that.” Colton pointed at a single green plant, barely making it out of the black soil covering the ground. It was full of fungus and weeds. “Is this the kind of plants you’re talking about? And look at this soil. Would you eat something grown in here?” he sighed, staring at the darkened sky again. “What have our ancestors done to this place?”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” Iris protested. Colton wasn’t on her same frequency by any means. “If the Beasts saved us from a great danger, then why didn’t they fix the Ruins as well?”
“Maybe the whole world outside is the Ruins. It might have been too big for them to fix, so they just picked a smaller place for us to live.”
“Listen to yourself,” Iris said, nearing the building she was heading to, Colton following her. “You don’t make any sense.”
“Maybe there is a great danger in the Ruins that could hurt us, or hurt the Beasts,” Colton stopped and glared at her. He could feel the presence of unseen things here, although he couldn’t hear or see them. “Maybe the Ruins is home to the Beasts’ enemy.”
“We don’t have proof of any of that, and it will take us forever to keep guessing,” Iris said. “All these theories come down to one last mind-boggling question: why do they take a girl every now and then?”
Colton’s face knotted, remembering Eva again. Iris thought he was just confused; happy with his life in The Second, a popular and loved teen. His mind was pre-programmed by society’s standards, and it wasn’t really his fault. Thus, he was repeatedly trying to find excuses for the Beasts, so his life would make sense.
“If we want to know the truth about the Beasts, I have a better way. Come with me.” Iris ushered him through the old buildings. Most of them were missing walls, and the buildings with brick walls were missing windows and doors. Blocks of cement and logs of wood scattered all around the streets, and the asphalt was mostly cracked and spilt into huge holes in places. Iris thought Colton should have appreciated her knowing her way around here, or he’d get lost or fall into some ditch.
“I admire you for coming here on your own,” he said as they walked, a little calmer now, probably trying to reason things. “I’m still wondering though what this Pentimento thing is, and how it could help me learn about the Beasts.”
Iris finally stopped in front of a six-story building, mostly in a much better condition than the rest. Although damaged, the building looked like a construction site with ladders, ropes, and all kinds of machinery—mostly made of wood—gathered around it. Someo
ne had built some kind of wooden steps that grew tangent to the building’s surface, like ladders spread diagonally to the left and to the right. It looked like a zigzag of wood on the walls from afar.
“Who did this?” Colton raised his head.
“Who else? I did it.”
“You?” Colton grinned, that curve of admiration loping on his lips again.
Iris nodded proudly. “My father taught me.”
“Your father knows about carpentry in a city made of steel and holograms?”
“A rare hobby, I know. He had been taught by his ancestors,” Iris said. “I prefer you don’t tell anyone. The Council get suspicious about anything unordinary.”
“Being with you is illegal already,” Colton smirked. He meant it with a good heart. “I’ve got blood on my hands already, and I’m not telling anyone anything. But Cody told me your father’s hobby was painting.”
“Cody told you a lot in such a short time,” Iris said. “True, my father was some kind of painter in his youth.”
Colton still looked dazzled by the construction. “So why did you go through all the hassle to build this stuff? Why in here, and why is this building so important?”
“Well,” Iris sighed a little longer than usual. “My father never painted with a brush and then sold his glamour portraits for money. He practiced a forgotten art that had to do a lot with painting, though.”
“And it has to do something with this building?” Colton inspected the building again, noticing the fading paint on its wall.
“Yes.” Iris said, clasping her hands. As much as she liked Colton, telling him about her deepest passion was a tricky moment for her. What if he didn’t like her hobby? That would have spoiled any future plans between them—although she believed she’d never see him again after today anyway. But Iris, being who she was, couldn’t stop thinking about it. Her passion for her art seemed to have overruled any relationships in her life. If she’d break up with a boyfriend, she’d survive. But if her passion was taken away from her, she would have died. “This building has a lot to do with my father’s painting hobby.”
“Wow. I am curious,” Colton said. “What is this art and what is it called?”
Iris noticed that some of the sparkling in his eyes had returned now, and she was happy about it.
“Come on, tell me. I’m curious,” Colton demanded.
“It’s called Pentimento, and it’s kind of forbidden by the Beasts. It’s a beautiful, but dangerous art.” Iris said, remembering the first time her father told her about what Pentimento was, and how it had changed her life and the way she thought about the Beasts forever.
9
When Iris was about five, a long time before her mother died, her father used to lock himself in the basement for hours while her mother braided her hair in front of the mirror. Iris wasn’t blessed with good hair. It was naturally a bit stiff and hard to comb, blonde but not golden. Golden was always adored in The Second. Her hair grew much better in her adolescent years, if they had only waited and seen what this girl could do when she grew older. Her mother thought braiding Iris’s hair camouflaged its defect, and made her daughter look stylish. Iris didn’t care about her hair. If the world didn’t like it, they’d better just look away. What piqued her curiosity was what her father was doing downstairs.
She might not have been that interested if everyone in the house hadn’t been so secretive about it. Whatever Charles Beaumont was doing would be a great threat if the Beasts had known about it.
Iris had seen her mother fight with her father about the matter before. She’d be protesting that this hobby of his was going to expose them to the Council’s wrath. Thus, the Beasts’.
“It’s the only thing that makes me happy,” Charles used to tell her mother. “And no one will ever know about it. My father did it and my grandfather did it. It runs in the family. I don’t care if the damn Beasts don’t allow it.”
“No one said they didn’t allow it,” her mother had explained. “I don’t think anyone even knows about this Pentimento. I just have a feeling that it breaks the Beasts’ first, and only, commandment.”
“I know what the first and only commandment is, mother,” Iris had tiptoed in and raised her hand, as if she were in class. “Can I recite it?”
“And here we go with the Beasts’ bloody commandment,” Charles rolled his hands, and his eyes. “How can they teach this to the kids in school?”
“I’m in kindergarten, daddy,” Iris had felt obliged to correct him. “Will go to school next year.”
Iris’s mother had shot Charles a look of guilt, then knelt down and held her daughter gently by her arms. “Please do tell your father what you have learned, Iris.”
“The first commandant is,” Iris straightened her back and made sure her top button was closed, then coughed to clear her voice. “‘Thou shall not question the Beasts.’”
“Good girl,” her mother rubbed her daughter’s hair gently, avoiding Charles protesting eyes.
“In The Second we can live in prosperity and enjoy our lives under the sovereign of the Beasts. We are a nation of freedom, like no other,” Iris saluted her mother like soldiers do. “Every individual is free to think and do what he pleases, as long as they abide by the law,” she turned to her dad and rose a warning forefinger. “Never question the Beasts.”
Charles sighed and ruffled her hair, as he had no choice to object. “How do they teach this to kids?” he mumbled, and climbed down the stairs to his double door basement.
“Don’t be long,” her mother had told Charles, then turned back to Iris. “And because you’ve been a good girl, I’ll now comb your hair, then braid it the way you like it.”
But then, Iris’s mother got a call while doing her hair. Iris couldn’t resist the curiosity of climbing down to the basement. To her surprise, her father had kept the door open.
Iris tiptoed into the room. It was full of books and paintings of all kinds. She wondered why her father still had some paper-books, when nobody used them anymore because they were available digitally everywhere.
Still, there was no straight law against owning old books just because no one liked them. Paper notebooks and pencils were still sold in auctions, as they were considered antiques. Painters used them mostly as part of their artistic endeavors, which were too expensive for them and made art a rare practice.
Painter! Iris thought. Her father must have been a painter of some sort. But why was he secretive about it?
Iris snuck closer to see what her father was doing. He was wearing his thick glasses while bowing over a painting she’d never seen before. It was of a woman with an unusual smile. A very serene smile, Iris thought. The woman in the painting wore a black veil, and the painting was mostly of dark and yellowed colors. Iris’s father had tapped a sticker on its upper right. It was labeled, “Renaissance.” Iris had no idea what that meant.
It didn’t matter though. What Iris was interested in was the woman’s amazing smile. She noticed that however she changed her angle looking at the smiling woman, the woman still smiled back at her, as if standing right in front of her.
Charles also had a stack of different oils and brushes next to him, a small and round magnifier, and what seemed like a metallic torch, like the one she later kept in her locker at school. Charles wasn’t painting, but rather scratching the surface of the painting. Slightly. Carefully. Tentatively. And with love.
The painting seemed to be worth something that money couldn’t buy, an expression she had heard her father say to describe her when he was in a good mood, smoking his cigar and rocking on his favorite chair.
Iris took a step closer and craned her head to take a better look. Her father was pouring a few drops of a strange green liquid from a thin bottle on the painting, before scratching again. He waited for a moment, then breathed onto the painting’s surface, as if cooling it. Lastly, he used the magnifier to inspect the drawing.
Iris watched him let out a defeated sigh. He wasn’t i
mpressed with the results—with whatever it was that he’d expected to happen to the painting after pouring the liquid on it. He took his glass off and leaned back, then stretched his neck. Iris had no time to retreat. As he craned his neck, Charles caught a glimpse of her.
“Iris?” he said with a welcoming tone.
“I-I’m sorry,” she took a step back. “I found the door open.”
“You aren’t supposed to climb down here,” his face knotted, as he looked over her shoulder and back to her again. “How did you come down here? Where’s your mother?” he whispered.
Iris’s eyes widened, trying to match her father’s conspiracy-minded mood. “She’s on the phone,” she whispered like Charles, not a pitch higher or lower. In fact, she tried to sound like him, which was too hard for her because he smoked, and his chest was full of garbage, like her mother used to say. Garbage in the chest thickened the voice.
“Do you think she will finish her call soon?” Charles raised an eyebrow, still worried her mother would come down and turn this into a dramatic soap opera.
“No,” Iris giggled. “She’s talking to auntie, so the conversation might take until dinner.”
“Good,” Charles nodded. “Come closer. Let me show you my secret.”
“Really?” Iris jumped in place.
“Shhh,” Charles flung a warning finger. “Don’t raise your voice, and no matter what I show you, you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
Iris nodded with a serious face.
“Not anyone,” he insisted. “Now come here.”
Iris approached the painting. The woman’s smile was still marvelous when she got closer. “Who is she, daddy?”
“No one really knows,” Charles sat Iris on his knees as he stared at the painting. “The painting is called the Mona Lisa though.”
“What a beautiful name,” Iris considered. “Can I have a name like that?”
Charles laughed. “You already have a better name. Iris.” He looked into her eyes. Iris knew what her name meant. She’d always thought she was special in her parents’ eyes, and therefore the name came up.
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