Relic (The, Books of Eva I)

by Heather Terrell

  Nothing in Eamon’s evaluations makes me think that any particular Testor is capable of forming alliances, other than Jacques and Benedict, whose ambitious fathers serve together.

  Movement in the brush interrupts my musings.

  I ready my bola, hoping to get at least a couple of hare. But it isn’t a hare that appears from the woodland. It’s a musk ox.

  The creature is legendary for its ability to skewer a man with a single swipe of its enormous curved horns, so I fight against every instinct to flee. This one animal could feed me and my dogs for days. Its qiviut, highly prized for its warmth, could help me survive the long nights on the way to the Frozen Shores. If I can only figure out how to kill him. He could easily swat away my bola with a shake of his huge, shaggy head, so that’s not an option. I don’t dare get close enough to use one of my knives; not anticipating that I’d run into a rare musk ox, Lukas hadn’t schooled me in the best way to slay one by hand. Even though the animal has a thick, hairy hide, my only option is my atlatl.

  The creature stops to nibble on some caribou moss, and I look at it closely. I decide to aim at an indentation behind its horns. I pray to the Gods for their blessings, because if I miss, the musk ox will charge and gore me. Something he might have done even if I hadn’t decided to take aim, I console myself.

  Pointing my atlatl to the ground, I place my spear into the hooked end of the bone stick. Then I lift the spear and atlatl off the ground and align them with that spot on the musk ox’s head. Then I release. I’ve practiced the atltal throw hundreds of times with Lukas—he thought the weapon would provide me with an advantage because it’d give me greater leverage and better aim despite my lesser strength—but I’m shocked at how far the spear goes and how powerfully it launches.

  The musk ox falls to the ground with a deafening thud. I race to its side, breathless. My eyes are wide. I am shocked that I actually killed the famed creature. I want to laugh aloud, thinking of the absurdity of a Maiden from the Aerie slaying one of the mammoth musk oxen. But the thought of my mother dispels the smile.

  As I examine the spear protruding from the musk ox’s dense hair, still incredulous that the spear is mine, I realize something critical. Something that I forgot to consider in my haste to kill the musk ox. There’s no way I can haul this thousand-pound animal back to camp by myself. None of the Testors could do the job alone. I need to harness my dogs back to the sled to carry the musk ox, and I need to do it fast. Soon, too soon, the first horn of the evening will sound.

  Ducking and weaving through the darkening forest, I race back to the edge of the Taiga, where I set up camp. My dogs smell the musk ox on me, and it makes them frantic. They fight my efforts to re-harness them; they want to be let loose to find it. After a few stern cracks of my whip and a tick alone with Indica to set him straight, the team reluctantly forms its pairs and lines. How I’m going to control them and lead them through the forest without ruining my sled, I cannot imagine.

  I soon discover that I don’t have to guide my team through the Taiga. With Indica in the lead, the dogs guide me. They follow the scent of the fallen musk ox, and instinctively pull us through. I think of Lukas again: this is something else I didn’t expect to learn.

  The first horn of the evening sounds. Sensing my panic at the shortening time, the team quiets as I roll the huge creature onto my sled. I crack the whip as hard as I’ve ever done and we careen back toward camp. That’s when I see them, making their own dash through the Taiga before the final horn. The two Testors who’d been talking in the forest: Aleksander and Neils.

  What should I do with my suspicions? The Lex mandates that I report any offenses to the Scouts, but at least one Scout is biased against me. Maybe more. If the Scouts don’t believe my report—or even if they do—they could make my disclosure known and choose not to pursue the offenders. Sharing my suspicions about the Lex-breaking conversation, or an alliance, would then backfire, leaving me a target for the Testors I’ve named. And perhaps others.

  Anyway, what did I witness? Was it really an offense as defined by The Lex? I heard—not saw—two people talking in the Taiga. Then later, I saw two Testors near the Taiga border. The assumption that they were talking to one another—about me—is open to challenge. And I feel certain the Scouts are looking for a reason to challenge me. Or worse.

  The question plagues me as I ready the musk ox. From my time spent in the kitchens—watching the Attendants prepare food and listening to their gossip and stories, always with my Nurse Aga close at hand—I learned how to prepare the meat of almost any animal so that it wouldn’t spoil. Even still, readying the qiviut and the meat is a job that takes me most of the night. I have way too much time to think about the Scouts and the Testors. I wish I could talk it through with Jasper. Or Lukas. Or Eamon, most of all. I miss him so much out here. Even more than I missed him at home.

  By dawn’s light, I have repacked my sled, fed myself and my team, prepared enough meat for several days, and made a decision. It’s what my brother would have done, and certainly what the guarded Lukas would advise me to do. I will keep my theories to myself. I will no longer communicate with Jasper under any circumstances. But I’ll keep a close eye on Aleksandr and Neils.

  Other Testors—Jasper, Aleksandr, Neils, and Benedict among them—must have camped nearby, because we line up when the first horn of morning sounds. In unison, we immediately cross into the Taiga; we must pass through the forest to get to the Tundra, the final stage in our journey to the Frozen Shores, the third of the first three Advantages. When the dense tree-life of the Taiga requires my undivided concentration—I must stave off the splintering of my sled or the fracturing of my team—it is almost a relief. I don’t want to think about anyone else for a while.

  By the first horn of the evening, I have entered the Tundra—so white after the greenery of the Taiga. It is curiously beautiful with its frost-sculpted landscape, a treeless plain of ice and glaciers. In the distance I can see snowy peaks. And I can already feel the Tundra’s extreme cold. Dread spreads through me—many, many Testors have died out here—but I push it down back into the dark recesses where the Maiden still exists, imprisoned. Instead, I force a steely determination. Lukas never treated me like a Maiden during training, and I will not act like one out here. I haven’t so far, as Jasper can attest to. I will prevail over this. I have come too far to not succeed.

  Rather than riding out onto the frigid desert to gain a small distance advantage, I cling to the shelter of the Taiga border. If Lukas is right, it will take me nearly five sinik to cross the Tundra, and I will need every tick of protection I can find to get me through it. For this night, I will allow myself and my team the refuge of the relatively warm Taiga. From the hum of camps being erected around me, other Testors seem to be making the same decision.

  By the first horn of morning, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Or so I think. Once I actually enter, it’s clear I’ll have to fight to stay alive every tick. From a distance the Tundra appears fairly flat, but really it’s a mass of unexpected glacial outcroppings that threaten the stability of my sled. Frozen mounds lie hidden beneath the ice; even my experienced huskies break stride. I also notice that I am really hungry. And that my dogs are snarling and nipping at one another, the way they do when it’s close to feeding time. Lukas had warned me that we would need to eat more out here, so periodically, I halt the team and toss pieces of the musk ox to each dog. I thank the Gods that I came across that enormous creature. Supposedly, according to Lukas’s map, meals can be found in the Tundra, as well—foxes, bears, wolves, caribou, and snow geese—but I haven’t seen anything other than a few straggly geese in the air. I can’t imagine how the other Testors I spy in the near distance—Jasper, Aleksandr, Neils, and Benedict—will survive without the musk ox stores.

  The worst part, though, is the wind. Growing up in the Aerie, I thought I had reached friendly terms with frozen air. That was the naiveté of a Maiden; I had no true understanding of cold. During the day
of my siniks in the Tundra, when I must constantly focus on the dogs, the sled, the terrain, and the food, the cold seeps into my bones but doesn’t imperil me.

  At night, it’s a different story.

  Stillness in the Tundra means death, Lukas had cautioned. And I feel it the moment I stop moving and lay down in my tent. Even though I’m dead-tired, I’m scared to doze and let the icy fingers of the Tundra freeze me into a permanent slumber. I keep my mind busy to ward off sleep. I write in this journal. I tabulate the number of points the Triad might award me for the first two Advantages, if the Scouts return with truthful reports, that is. I kneel before my diptych, offering more prayers to the Gods. I lie back down and try to tease out the meaning in Eamon’s cryptic, last journal entries: Must we truly risk our lives in the Testing in order to be worthy of the Archon Laurels? Our lives are so precious and so few … Will they still love me when I do what I must?

  What did he mean? Will we still love him when he does what he must during the Testing? It’s got to be something else. I even think on Jasper’s words about a future together. Only then, under the extra layer of warmth that the Gods-sent musk ox qiviut provides, does rest come.

  On the morning of the final sinik in the Tundra, I awake freezing but alive. Thanking the Gods as I bundle up and leave my tent, I learn from the howls that my team hasn’t been so blessed. At night, the dogs curl themselves tightly and let themselves be covered by snow for insulation, but this morning, one dog doesn’t uncurl. It is Sigurd, my lone female husky.

  As I look down on her poor frozen body, I feel like crying. Sigurd was tougher than the rest of the dogs, but had a certain kindness to her as well. And she was the only female out here with me. I will miss her. So will her howling brothers.

  I cover her body with snow and place a circular symbol of the Gods on top of the mound. Just as we do in the Aerie cemetery. As I tether the team to their lines, I feel like howling along with them.

  At the first horn of morning, I have no choice but to forget grief and take off. I pass a rare patch of birch trees amidst the white, white sameness. I think how the Ark Gardeners would love to study this hearty growth, to figure out how they thrive in such adversity. Otherwise, the landscape lulls me. Dangerous, I know, but I can’t help it.

  By late afternoon, the ice changes color, becoming a slightly bluish shade. Only as my dogs draw closer and the blue grows more and more intense, do I realize that I have reached the Frozen Shores.

  I stop the team from racing forward, and stare out at the endless icy sea.

  I am hungry and exhausted. My muscles ache. My eyes and ears throb. I thought I’d be elated at the sight of the startlingly blue waters with icebergs bobbing, but instead, a curious emotion floods over me. Sadness.

  Just as the Chief Basilikon said it would. Every year, on the annual commemoration of the Healing, he reads from The Lex:

  In the eyes of the Gods, our world was corrupt and full of lawlessness. When the Gods saw how corrupt man had become, the Gods said, “We will wipe out from the Earth mankind whom we have created, and not only mankind, but also the beasts and the creeping things and the birds of the air.” At the last tick, Mother Sun intervened and convinced Father Earth to save a chosen few. To those, the Gods said, “Make yourselves arks. Go into the arks and sail North. Take with you seeds and birds and beasts to stay alive. When the waters recede, you alone will survive to lead a new life following The Lex in our chosen land.” The Gods then unleashed the final waters for forty days and forty nights, submerging the wicked and lifting the arks of the chosen to New North where they would serve as its Founders. This, the Gods called the Healing.

  After he reads this Lex passage, the Chief Basilikon says that, if we should ever survive a journey to the Frozen Shores, the Gods will send us a symbolic gift. They will send tears to remind us of the Healing waters that deluged Father Earth in a rightful cleansing. This weeping, he claims, is the Gods way of telling us we are the chosen ones, and that they approve of our new Lex life in New North.

  Icy tears pour down my face. But I don’t feel like I’m crying for the reasons described by the Basilikon. I weep because I am staring at the end of the world. Billions of people and living creatures—many of them innocent bystanders to the evil that destroyed them—lie frozen beneath the seas covering the Earth. We of New North are all that’s left.

  My sense of sadness is quickly overwhelmed by my sense of pride and duty. We of the Aerie—the descendants of the Founders—are the chosen. The Gods have given us this one last chance to lead a righteous life. For me, this means that I must endure the hardship of the coming days—and win.

  The tears crystallize on my cheeks. As I wipe them away, I notice a spot of red off to the west. What could possibly be red in this monochromatic expanse of white? Then it hits me; the color red can only mean the Testing flag. The final stop in our journey from the Aerie.

  I crack my whip, and direct my team to the west. The first Testor to reach the Testing flag garners extra points in the first Advantages. Those points belong to me. Having worked so hard to prove that an Aerie Maiden is just as capable as a Gallant of becoming an Archon, it’s my duty to win them. For me, and for Eamon.

  Racing across what remains of the Tundra, I aim for that spot on the Frozen Shores. The closer I get to it, the more wildly the flag seems to flap in the bitter, fierce unalaq. I also notice something else near the flag … a series of black smudges on the white landscape. What in the Gods are those?

  As I strain to figure out the nature of the black stains, I unconsciously push my team even faster. Then I see: twelve Scouts in their black uniforms flank the Testing flag.

  What a welcoming party. My stomach lurches at the thought of facing the Scout from the other night again. I almost want to turn around. The Tundra suddenly seems more inviting than that lineup of black. But I remind myself that this win is key. I square my shoulders, invoke my brother’s name, and say a small prayer to the Gods.

  Even though I’ve been schooled in humility my whole life, I can’t keep a victorious smile off my lips as I hurtle the final distance to the flag. I’ve come in first. In fact, I haven’t seen another Testor all day.

  I engage the sled’s claw-brakes, dismount, and tie my team to a spiky ice formation. It’s eerily quiet and deathly cold as I trudge toward the black-clad figures, ready to receive some sort of commendation. Only then do I see that the lineup does not consist entirely of Scouts, although the Scout from my early-morning visit is present. And I miscounted. Jasper stands alongside the Scouts: the thirteenth in their perfectly formed row.

  I nearly lose my footing. He got here first. How in the Gods did he do it?

  The last time I caught sight of Jasper, it was the end of yesterday’s sinik, and he was far behind me. Not a single Testor has been on my heels all day. How could he have possibly made up for the lag without notice? He appeared out of nowhere on that first sinik of the Testing, too. It’s as if he’s operating from a map I’ve never seen. A map that no one has seen, for that matter. Not even Lukas.

  I know Jasper is just doing what’s he supposed to. Still, it upsets me, as he’s now won the first three Advantages. Have all his pronouncements—about me as his Maiden, about a shared future—been a ruse? Some kind of game designed to soften me? The thought seems crazy; I don’t think anyone really perceived me as a major threat. Until we got out here, that is. Did he just play at being the perfect Gallant the other night at the iceberg so that I’d administer to him and salve his wound? He had no idea I had remedies, so how could he? I look at him, trying to read his eyes, getting madder by the tick. But he’s staring straight ahead.

  “Testor, join the ranks,” a grey-haired Scout at the line’s center booms, interrupting my cynical thoughts. I guess this is what counts as congratulations in the Testing. There are no extra points for reaching the Testing flag second.

  I search for an opening in the queue. A Scout close to Jasper motions for me to join the line next to him. I’m
still not sure how to feel about Jasper right now, but what choice do I have? To sidle up instead to the Scout from the nighttime visit? He scowls at me. So Jasper and I stand side by side, almost touching, but with a fissure between us. And not only because The Lex demands it.

  Then we wait.

  I guess we’re biding time until the other Testors arrive, but no one explains. No one talks or moves. I pray to the Gods that the other Testors get here fast, because this stillness is excruciating. And cold. It feeds my exhaustion and general miserableness. Not to mention that my dog team is bedraggled and starving. Even Hansen and Rasmus, normally the most well-fed of the bunch, are looking uncomfortably lean.

  I watch the Sun move across the sky, and silently count the bells. The sunlight begins to wane, and I think the first horn of the evening must sound soon. Maybe in a bell or so. As if on some unspoken cue, the Scouts gather at the line’s center, gesturing for Jasper and me to stay put while they convene.

  After a few ticks, they reassemble. The elder Scout announces, “We have made a special decision, although, of course, it complies with The Lex. You two Testors will be permitted to begin building your igloos, so that you may have some shelter by the final horn of evening.”

  How generous. We’ve been standing around for bells, and they will give us a single bell to build an igloo. Of course, we also have to build a fire, gather food, and feed our teams. An experienced Boundary person like Lukas could fashion a rudimentary igloo in no time. Until today, I would have guessed that Jasper would need a full day for the task, but now, I’m not so sure. He’s full of surprises.

  Realizing that the Scouts could have given us the usual fifteen ticks from the first and final horns of evening to seek refuge, I nod in gracious acceptance of their ruling. Jasper does the same. We are dismissed.