by Jill Cooper
With ease, I was on the other side and I waited for George to land beside me. “We’re going to have to get faster than that.” I adjusted my messenger bag across my chest, so it’d be easier to carry, and make it less likely to get caught on something.
We were on a small narrow street, and from our location I saw the fountain of the town square. To our left, not far off, was a canopy and a row of wooden boxes. If we snuck out, we used the boxes for cover, approaching the train station, but if the freight train left without us, this would be a real short trip.
Squatting, we hurried out from our hiding spot and stayed low behind the boxes and crates piled up in front of Mr. Hodges Bins and Essentials store; his wife had nailed basket weaving, I thought, as the sight of a hunter across the way caught my eye, patrolling a house across the way.
I squeezed George’s hand and he squished in close so we’d both be hidden from view. His hand shook in mine and our gazes locked, just as our destiny had. Fear lined his eyes and I felt his body shake as he lay so close to me. The shriek of the hunter drew closer, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose up.
Such a fool I was to think we could get away from this.
George’s eyes held the same pain mine did and he pushed his lips against mine—a stolen kiss, maybe the last one to be had. Then the crate was lifted up and thrown against the brick wall in front of us.
The hunter shrieked, his skeletal hands on our shoulders. He chortled the siren of victory, calling to his brethren.
I wasn’t ready to die, I wasn’t ready to sink away as though my life, my heart, meant nothing. I elbowed his robe back and felt how little of a body there was beneath the fabric. It was enough to loosen his grip on us, and George and I fled, racing up the hill. The hunter pursued and the fight was taken up by two more hunters, flanking him on each of his sides.
I glanced behind me, and saw that they were splitting up, one going right, one going left, the other straight down the middle. They planned to flank us, trap us no matter which way we went.
“Keep going!” George screamed and gave me the push I needed to take my weary legs up the hill.
I pushed myself hard. The city bells continued to gong, people came to their windows, pulling up their blinds to watch—but no one dared open their doors. No one dared to see what was going on, everyone grateful they weren’t the ones the hunters were after
We headed toward the stack of apartment ghetto’s that lined the industrial zone. On the other side was the valley that led to the train station. If we could pass through, we could make it.
“Abby! Hurry!” George screamed as the hunter from the left side emerged. It growled, hands extended as it rushed toward us.
I jumped, caught a fire escape and pulled myself up, wrung by wrung. If we could get to the roof, we could slide down and make a getaway before the hunters realized what had happened to us.
Too bad the ladder leading to the roof was broken off.
I jumped to grab the railing, but I missed. I fearfully gazed back as the hunter approached us.
“That way!” George pointed to an open window where someone beckoned to us.
I ran, my heart pounding in my ears. We climbed into the window and helped Margret move a box to block it.
“How?” Breathlessly my voice vexed up and down. This wasn’t her cramped apartment.
“Some nights I stay here. Earn extra medicine for my mother by working for Mrs. Westleton changing beds and washing sheets.”
Now that she said it, I saw Margret’s eyes were tired and there was dirt and soot on her cheeks, and trapped beneath her fingernails. “Margret, you put yourself in danger helping us.”
“It’s better than you being dead.” She took in our faces. “Go, out the other side before they catch you.”
I gripped her arms as George sprinted toward the door. He might’ve been ready to just walk out of there, but I wasn’t ready yet. “You never saw us. You were never here, do you understand?”
Margret kissed both of my cheeks, holding onto the back of my head. “What you did for my family I’ll never forget. Go. Hurry.”
Her words spurred me on. I caught up to George and we hurried out of the apartment building. The stairs barely supported our weight and the hallways were covered in thick blankets, people sleeping on the floors everywhere. They weren’t the unforgotten, they were the unmentionables. People that society ignored because they were a blight, and civilized folk were embarrassed for their suffering.
We headed outside, and in the distance, the train station and smoke billowed up from the waiting freight train, three cars long. The finish line in sight, George and I stayed together, sprinting across the twisting road and into the dead and brittle grass. We left the streets behind and waded through the fields, away from the conductors and toward the west side of the train.
The call of the hunters sent us sprawling on our bellies and we crawled along until we were at the freight train and we climbed on board. I shooed George inside and together we slid the freighter’s door closed so we’d be naked to the human—or supernatural—eye.
There was no sign of a conductor—for once we had been lucky. The floorboards beneath me vibrated—the train was still running and it’d be moving soon.
I pushed George back behind some barrels of vegetables and squeezed in close behind him. I lifted a sack of potatoes on top, hoping it would obscure us from the area.
“This isn’t going to hide us forever,” George whispered.
“It’ll buy us time.” I reached into a sack and grabbed an apple, tossing it to him. George bit into it without hesitation and then moaned with happiness. “I never thought I’d have an apple ever again.”
“Welcome to the good life,” I said and slid my satchel off. Sitting cross-legged, I rested it between my legs as the train started to inch forward.
George glanced back at the rear of the train car as though he could see beyond it. “We’re moving. I never thought I’d see the day when I left Rottenwood, not like this.”
“We’re together now,” he continued, “I’ll see you through to the barrier and we’ll have a good life, no matter the odds.”
“I’m not going to the barrier.” When George’s eyes widened, I opened my satchel and pulled out the secret map—the one I had loathed, feared, the one that was now as sacred to me as the books I carried.
Flattened on the wooden boards, my finger traced across the top of the map and I read the headline to him. His eyes focused on it as did mine, and my love for him swelled to see how intently he did it. It wasn’t lip service or pretending, he was interested.
“The last library, you say? What is it?”
“A stronghold. A place with books—maybe even art—hidden away from the ministers and the hunters. I think it holds the knowledge on how to defeat them, free our towns and cities from their rule.”
George stared, awestruck.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could allow stories, music, color, all these wonderful things back into the world? Imagine how inspired we could be?”
“Here I thought I was the one who only thought those things,” George said with raised eyebrows. “History, science, these things are forbidden, but when I hear bits and pieces. I love it Abby.”
“Me, too,” I said with great joy. “Maybe we can find others like us.”
George nodded quickly and excitement built in his eyes. “It’s as wondrous as you are. Inspiration and life away from the ministers and their enforcers? It’s everything I’ve always dared to dream but was too afraid to voice out loud. Even to you.”
Biting my lip, I smiled. “Then we do this together. We stand against everything that would oppress us, but first I need to return to Effletown.”
“Why?”
“An old man gave me this map. I met him in the alleys of the forgotten. He waited for me, and he knew I took in books that were found in secret.”
“He called you by name?”
I shook my head. “There I don�
��t go by my real name, but I go by the name Tarnish Rose. The saver of books. It sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”
George shook his head. “Workmen, no. Not stupid at all. It sounds like you’ve known what you were meant to do, even before you knew it.” He laughed. “Now that sounds stupid.”
I laughed, too. “It won’t be without danger. Once the ministers get word that we’ve escaped together, they’ll send word. I can’t guarantee we’ll get far on our journey at all.”
“But we’ll try, we’ll do the best we can.”
It was just the type of promise a girl like me could hope for. As we shared a brief kiss, I worried about Rottenwood and what would become of them. My parents, dear Margret. I hoped I hadn’t put them in too much danger, unavoidable as it was.
Hopefully, I’d live to find out.
Chapter Seventeen
Minister of City Affairs
The call came from the sounding of the city horns wailing in the distance. He who had been appointed as the Minister of City Affairs awoke from his slumber and stared up at the canopy above his bed. His bedroom dwarfed most of the full-sized homes that the people dwelled in. The fabrics that covered his bed were softer, and more luxurious, but all that comfort came with a price.
A price that was kept secret from the masses and was something most wouldn’t be willing to pay.
He reached for his cane as he rose to his feet. Still in his pajamas, he stood and placed his pristine top hat behind his head. Stretching over to the window, he gazed outside at the city landscape and heard the hunters’ call in the dark. Their figures swirled out by the moon and even if their outline hadn’t shone brightly against the backdrop, the Minister would’ve felt their presence.
While everyone thought he and the other ministers controlled the dreaded hunters, it was the other way around, a secret that would always be guarded and well protected by the legion.
The one marked for death has escaped and he had someone helping him. She’s strong, and may be the one we’ve been looking for.
“Who?” the minister mumbled.
A hunter flew up to his window top and it’s skeletal hands gripped the ceil. Its breath etched onto the glass as he lowered his hood. His grotesque appearance, flesh stretched across jagged bone, startled the minister back, but as their eyes locked, what the hunter had seen became the minister’s own memory.
A girl in a cloak, racing over a fall. He saw a flash of brown hair and little else, but something about the way she moved jogged the minister’s memory, even if he couldn’t put his finger on it.
You know her, don’t you? the hunter hissed. It flew circles around the tower of the minister’s home. Find her family. Find where they have hidden her.
“At once.” The minister nodded and gripped his cane tight in his hand. Whoever she was, her identity was important. It ached in the hunter’s bones in a way that made the minister’s bones ache, too. They wanted her, they craved her. How destructive must she have been?
“What is she?”
Curator. The hunter hissed, as if it hurt him to do so, its robes ebbing back and forth as if with an involuntary movement.
Curator. The minister hadn’t seen one of those in over six hundred years. For that was another one of the gifts given to them by the hunters; immortality, but the price for that was equally high.
Find her and we shall kill her. We shall absorb her consciousness into ours and that will be the end of humanity’s resistance once and for all. Without her, the great Temptress cannot succeed.
For the minister had given up his free will and was powerless to resist the orders from the hunters.
****
A long night turned into an equally long day for the Minister of City Affairs. After everything was done, all his i’s were dotted and his t’s were crossed, he adjourned to the smoking lounge. There he sat in an overstuffed chair by the fire, slipped his feet up onto a gray upholstered stool, and waited for his dinner and his hot tea to arrive.
He relaxed while he waited, and through the connection he shared with the other Ministers over a telepathic link, saw news of the crumbling cities. Next to fall would be Beantown. Already the hunters herded the humans like cows onto trains to move them to more sustainable accommodations, but Beantown was the heart and soul of their vegetable and animal crop. If it fell, what would become of the rest of the civilized world?
What would become of Rottenwood?
Civilization was falling. The dark lord’s plans weren’t working as well as he’d thought it would. After so many years of peace, it might be time to look to the one place they had been avoiding all this time.
Set their sights on the uncharted terrains of the wild. Force those who refused the Dark Lord Creighton’s rule onto bended knee and make them submit.
So startled by his own thoughts, the minister missed that his stew and tea had been delivered. The young woman, Tina, had already stepped off and the minister grabbed the bowl. He blew onto his spoon to cool the steaming stew before tasting it—all the comforts of home.
Footsteps interrupted what should’ve been a quiet meal. The minister didn’t look up, because only one man was foolish enough to interrupt him while he ate—his second in charge, Mitchell Richardson. Normally, the minister’s office didn’t promote men of his type, no matter his stature.
But Mitchell was one of the elite, his wife a seamstress, and she carried the minister’s official seal. Evelyn had even repaired the Dark Lord Creighton’s robe herself, and had sewed his banners for his tower in town. A more skilled woman with a needle there wasn’t, at least no more.
“What is it, Mitchell?”
“Sir, I’m sorry to disturb your meal, but a false wall was discovered in town.”
“The Taylors?” The minister admitted to being intrigued with such news.
Mitchell shook his head. “I’m afraid not, sir. It was the McMann’s, over on Sturrow Drive. I’m afraid they found two children living there. It seems Mrs. McMann is quite fertile and has gone above and beyond what is to be expected of her.”
The minister dredged his spoon through his stew and contemplated his answer as he chewed the hearty flavor. The news Mitchell brought ruined what was otherwise a fine meal. “You know what I’m going to say. Do you get pleasure in making me say it?”
“No, sir. I thought with the age of the children being quite young. Maybe the rules—”
“Rules are made to be followed, not broken.” The minister slid his bowl back onto the table beside his chair and sank down a little bit lower as he gazed into the fire. “It brings me no satisfaction to see the children brought to the stockades to await sentencing. It’s a tragic thing, Mr. Richardson.”
“Very tragic, yes, sir.” Mitchell’s voice was low and haunted.
“Send a squad of hunters. We can end this without any undue suffering of the parents or the children.”
“Right away, sir.”
The minister quickly thought of something. “Are any of them girls?”
Mitchell stammered. “One of them, sir. A two-year-old.”
“Very well, spare her. We need more girls in Effletown. Have her transferred to the stockade and we’ll find a married couple unable to bear their own children. This child’s life will be saved and in turn, she will save this couple a life of hardship and looks of disdain.”
Mitchell bowed without another word and hurried off, probably so the minister wouldn’t have a chance to change his mind. A pity, all of it was. The minister got no joy in killing or destroying people, good people, but for the good of society, for the good of the Dark Lord Creighton himself, he didn’t have a choice.
Never had.
Chapter Eighteen
Sandra and Robert
“You let her go? Why!” Sandra Taylor’s voice reached a pitched squeak and she couldn’t believe her husband’s decision. “Without consulting me? How could you?”
Robert hurried through their little shop to make sure the door and windows were still clamped
down tight. “She was going to go after George no matter what I said. They’re friends and to be married.”
“And now they’ll die together!” Sandra’s hands balled into tight little fists. “Is that what you want?”
Robert pulled down the shades. “Quiet yourself, Sandy, or someone will hear!”
“After everything we’ve done to hide her.” Sandra’s eyes narrowed, and she placed her hands on her hips. “They’ll figure out who she is, where our family is from now that she’s gone, Robert.”
He placed his hand over her mouth. “We don’t talk about it. Did you forget that?”
Sandra’s eyes widened, and she removed his hand from her mouth. “A moot point now that she’s gone. Did you tell her everything?”
Robert shook his head. “I told her nothing. The less she knows…”
Sandra sighed. “Damn, you’re a fool, Robert Taylor. A fool I thought I once loved but this…this is the ultimate betrayal to everything we’ve built. What if they catch her? What if they know what it is she can do?”
“We gave her as much a head start as we can. We sent her on another errand and then she was delayed.”
Sandra snorted, scoffing at such a simple suggestion. “You think that’ll help? You think if it was that simple we wouldn’t have run years ago? The minister will find out and it’s not just us who’ll burn.”
“They won’t find out if we stick to the story.” Robert gazed down the hall and Sandra feared what he was looking at. Abby’s room? What did he want them to do?
“You stop staring down there and you tell me what you’re thinking.”
“We search her room,” Robert said with a sadness clipping in his throat. “Anything that points to who she is, what she can do, we burn. Cards, papers, pencils. Any of it.”
Sandra covered her mouth at the idea of destroying her daughter’s things. She wanted nothing more than to keep Abby safe, but the idea of burning her things even to cover her tracks broke her heart. “And the books?”