The New Day

by Lorraine Thomson

  “David!”

  Within a heartbeat, they were in each other’s arms, hugging, kissing, crying.

  “I knew you were okay, I knew it.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” David murmured in her ear.

  Their sweet reunion was brought to a halt when Tailwagger leapt up at them. Sorrel laughed and told her to get down. “Meet Tailwagger,” she said to David. “She’s our dog.”

  “Hello, Tailwagger. I can see how you got your name.”

  “David – where’s Eli?”

  “He’s with Brig – he’s safe, I promise.”

  “Brig? You and he – you’re friends?”

  “It’s a long story – I have so much to tell you – but first, there’s something I’ve got to do.”

  David left Sorrel’s side and went to Einstein.

  “I’m sorry, Einstein. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you, and I’m sorry for the things I said. Will you offer me your hand in friendship?”

  Einstein looked at Sorrel and a slow smile appeared on his lips.

  “Are we okay?” David asked.

  Einstein nodded. “More than okay – we are family.”

  Sorrel gasped in delight as David and Einstein embraced.

  “This is all very touching,” Niven said, “but we have a battle to prepare for.”

  The smile faded from Sorrel’s face. “This is not a battle. War is coming to Dinawl.”

  Epilogue

  Mara held up her dark red hair and smiled as Martin fastened the clasp. She gazed at her reflection. The necklace was from Before, a fine piece, the chain fashioned from gold, the pendant a cluster of emeralds.

  Martin kissed her neck before she let her curls tumble over her shoulders. His scent no longer bothered her, in fact, she had taken to tending the sawberry plants he valued so highly. She admired their razor-edged leaves.

  “The stones are no match for your eyes.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  She smiled at him in the mirror. Martin smiled back, his moist lips catching the light. He was not a handsome man, and he was not young, but he had something better than either of those ephemeral qualities. Martin had power.

  “I’ll see you downstairs,” he said.

  “I won’t be long.”

  She watched the door closing behind him in the mirror then looked back at herself.

  Amat had been too small, she missed it not a jot. In Dinawl, she had been too small. But here, in Ulbroom, Mara reigned supreme.

  Book Six

  HOPE

  11.

  The Distraction

  “I thought you were dead!”

  The words were out of Sorrel’s mouth before she could stop them. She ran across the room and flung her arms around her father, fearing he’d evaporate, that she would wake up to find that it was all a dream. But no, he was flesh-and-bone real.

  Valen had always been a strong, healthy man. Good stock, he used to joke. But when she felt the jab of his bones under his clothes, Sorrel eased her hug for fear of breaking him.

  When he didn’t respond to her embrace, she pulled back and studied him. It was only then she realised that though he was there in body, he wasn’t really there at all. The phrase soul dead rose unbidden to her mind.

  So many times, she had wished that her father would return home to Amat. Her grandmother had often warned her to be careful of what she wished for in case her wishes came true, and now Sorrel understood what that meant. Her dreams had all come true, but not in the way she’d imagined.

  She had been reunited with Eli, in the sense that they were in the same room, but her brother stayed close to Brig and would not look her way. Her euphoria at discovering that Martin had not killed her father after all was tempered by Valen’s catatonic state. Yes, her father was alive in as much as he was upright and breathing, but he was empty.

  She looked at David. “What happened to him?”

  “Cyrus found him wandering around. He wasn’t wearing anything, and he had these big red circles – bite marks, Cyrus thought – all over his body.”

  “That’s right,” Cyrus said. “Valen – though I didn’t know his name at the time; I called him Loner – had been itching at himself pretty good. Broke the skin in a few places. I reckon that’s why he stripped off, so that he could get at the bites. I cleaned him up as best I could and hoped the sores wouldn’t get infected.”

  Martin must have found her father’s belongings after Cyrus had found Valen. Sorrel had an inkling about what had happened to her father.

  “The place you found him – was it a meadow – the kind that looks like a good place to spend a night?”

  “It was that,” Cyrus said. “Up north, not far from Desolation Road.”

  Sorrel nodded. “I know it.” She looked at David. “The same thing happened to me, only it was Martin who found me instead of Cyrus. The bites were from ticks – I woke up covered in them. I got them off, but they’d been feeding on me all night. I collapsed in a fever. That’s when Martin found me. When I woke up, I was in Ulbroom. There was a doctor there – Abigail – who treated me, or I guess I could have ended up like my father. All this time, we thought he was dead. Dad, it’s me, Sorrel. Don’t you know me?”

  She gazed at her father’s face, but there was no recognition there, no response of any kind. He was there, yet not there; his proximity, like Eli’s, was reassuring and torturous at the same time.

  Valen’s jokes about being of good stock had stopped after Sorrel’s mother gave birth to an unviable child. Despite the loss of the baby and the knowing that it was his own mother who had despatched it at birth, Valen had clung on to his good humour, using it to lighten the load for all of them. But now his eyes were as empty as the dead pools they used to find in the hills above Amat, the furrows around them so deep they looked as though they’d been carved into his bones.

  Losing Valen had first broken her mother’s heart, then calcified it. To find him like this was bittersweet, with the emphasis on bitter.

  “He’s in there, I know it,” David said. “Something happened when he saw your necklace on Eli – there’s a chance for him yet.”

  Sorrel glanced across the room at her brother. He was sitting on the floor at Brig’s feet in front of the fire, using a stick of charcoal to scratch shapes on a slate. Tailwagger was curled up beside him.

  Sorrel knew that love could not be forced, and though it took a monumental effort on her part, she knew she had to give Eli space to come to her in his own time.

  David spoke as though reading her mind. “Eli needs to get to know you again, and we can reach your father. We just need to keep trying.”

  Sorrel was grateful for his words and thankful for his presence. Being reunited with David was one wish that had worked out just fine.

  In the time they had been separated, David had grown. He’d cast off the raw, bitter anger he’d been nurturing since Amat and managed to make peace with himself. Now, when she looked at him, she caught glimpses of the good-natured boy he had once been in the man he had become. Not so long ago, she thought she had lost everything, but being with David gave her hope. The world would never be as it was, but together they would find a new way. They had to.

  That there was hope at all was evidenced in the peace David had made with Einstein. Sorrel guessed this conversion was down to the time he had spent with the Zeros, not least Kala, the charismatic mutant with eyes the colour of catkins.

  Sorrel took hold of her father’s hand. Dirt from digging the great trench had lodged under his nails and worked its way into his calloused skin.

  The supervisor Sorrel and Einstein had met at the trench had spoken the truth: everyone worked. The jail had been emptied of petty criminals, the shackled inmates put to work alongside free citizens on the great trench. Only those, such as Slade, who threatened the security of Dinawl, remained behind bars.

  Though the ditch wouldn’t keep the invaders at bay indefinitely, it would impede their progress. But the grea
t trench was more than a simple line of defence – it was a unifying project for the people to focus on, something for them to work on side-by-side. Digging it deep and wide had become a matter of civic pride.

  Sorrel had no idea how much understanding, if any, Valen had of the great trench, but she was glad of the dirt ingrained in his hands. It was testament to the fact that her father was not a useless eater.

  “We’ll bring you back, Dad, I promise.”

  Sorrel thanked Cyrus for taking care of her father.

  “My pleasure,” Cyrus said. “I did not have the honour of knowing him before, but something about him struck me. Call it a gut feeling – I knew he was a good man when I saw him.”

  With the exceptions of Warbles and Zee, who had been given jobs and sleeping quarters at the newly established city kitchens, the group had been quartered in one large ground floor room in the Palace. The chamber was sparse, with beds made up on the floor and only the minimum of furniture, but there was enough tell-tale in the ornate fireplace and the fancy plaster-work in the ceiling to understand that it had once been a luxurious apartment.

  The chamber would have been large for two or three and had space comfortable enough for five and a dog, say herself, David, Eli, Valen, Einstein and Tailwagger. But with eleven sharing, plus the dog, Sorrel felt both hemmed in and exposed. No words could be uttered in private, every interaction, including her reunion with her father, was a public display, and with Lizbit constantly hovering around, intimate moments with David were frustratingly difficult. Kala’s approving glances when Sorrel and David shared the smallest of moments were almost as irritating as Olaf’s snide comments and snickering.

  After so much time spent out in the open with just Einstein and Tailwagger for company, the sudden close proximity of so many people unsettled her.

  She wanted to be near to Eli of course, but his continuing rejection stung her deeply, and Brig’s constant presence was a barrier. Brig even took Eli with him when he went to work.

  As for the rest of them, Ivan and Olaf were locked in an endless power struggle for Brig’s approval. Einstein and Brig were each determined to pretend that the other wasn’t there and made a show of not looking in the other’s direction. Cyrus and Kala amused themselves by wrestling with each other, verbally and physically, their voices bouncing off the ceiling, their bodies banging into the floor, and Lizbit was in constant orbit around David.

  It was all too much.

  “I have to get out of here,” Sorrel said to David.

  She’d whispered the words, but she’d have been as well climbing onto the table and shouting them.

  Kala released Cyrus from a neck lock and stood up. “Me too. I heard tell that there’s a distraction on at the market place tonight. We could go there.”

  “Sounds good,” Cyrus said. He was still lying on the floor.

  “Eli will enjoy the distraction,” Olaf said. He puffed up, pleased with himself for making the suggestion.

  Brig’s gaze drilled into him. “Like a badger enjoys the hunt.”

  “I just thought…” Olaf’s words floundered as he deflated.

  “Thinking is beyond you.”

  “Brig is right,” Sorrel said. “The streets are crowded, Eli is safer here. But I need to get out of this room before I suffocate.”

  “I’ll stay with Eli,” Brig said.

  “I’ll keep you company,” Ivan said.

  “Please don’t,” Brig replied.

  “What about Tailwagger – will you watch her?” Sorrel asked.

  Brig grunted his agreement.

  “I will also stay behind,” Einstein said. “I have experienced distractions before and have no desire to do so again.”

  Brig looked at him sidewise before concentrating his gaze on Eli’s slate.

  “Are you sure?” Sorrel asked. She had meant the excursion to be just for her and David, but the thought of leaving Einstein and Brig alone together was like trapping two rabid badgers in a pit.

  “We’ll be fine,” Brig growled.

  As soon as they left the room, Cyrus whispered to Sorrel that he and Kala would look after Valen and Lizbit so that she and David could have some time alone.

  “And because we like you, we’ll even drag Olaf and Ivan along with us.”

  He winked when he said it, and when Sorrel saw Kala grinning, she knew it had been her idea and immediately felt guilty about her earlier irritation. But her guilt didn’t last long. They left the Palace by a side gate and slipped straight into the thronging mass of people heading to the market place. She linked arms with David and they grinned at each other, alone at last in the teeming mass of people.

  Dinawl was more crowded than before. The poor markets at the East Port and South Gate had been shut down, the remains of the Dregs emptied. Those who had scraped an existence outside Dinawl had been brought within the walls. The gates were locked down at night, no exceptions, the city full.

  “I can’t believe the difference in a few days,” David said. “When we got here, it was miserable. The people looked like they were trying to blend into the walls. Now look at them.”

  Sorrel was already looking. People cavorted in the streets lit by flaming torches, turning cartwheels and dancing jigs as if they had no worries in the world. Slogans were called out and echoed – Dinawl forever, surrender never – while laughter, fat and ripe, rang high in the air, feeding the exuberant atmosphere.

  “I think,” he said, “that the threat of the army was exactly what Niven needed. He was losing control of the city – I could see it. We came here to warn people, so that they could protect themselves, but Niven has used the news to better himself.”

  “Niven tries to use everything to better himself,” Sorrel said, “but you did the right thing. Imagine if they hadn’t been warned. They know hard times are coming. This is the light before the dark.”

  She looked up at the Palace from the street and saw a figure standing in an upstairs window. Juno, watching. Sorrel wondered if Juno could see her, or if she was just another blurred face in the crowd.

  Since her return, Niven and Sam had repeatedly quizzed Sorrel about the army, asking her over and again how many, what had they been doing, what equipment had she seen.

  Growing weary of their questions, she had snapped, “Why don’t you ask Juno? They are her people after all.”

  “Juno has been more than helpful,” Niven replied.

  “Did she tell you about the farms? About the plans the Monitors have for Dinawl?”

  Sorrel blurted the words out, hoping to surprise Niven, but he remained unruffled.

  “We’re in this together,” he said, “you, me, Sam, Juno – and all the people of Dinawl.”

  “Does that include Einstein and all the other mutants?”

  “As I have already explained, the mutant non-person edict was an error in judgement – it was repealed after the terrorist attack on the mine. Mutants now enjoy the same status as all other persons in Dinawl.”

  “Those who survived.”

  “Many perished, it’s true. We have Slade to thank for that. But we live in troubled times and I have to think about what is best for the people.”

  “You don’t care about the people, Niven. All you care about is living in the Palace and having power.”

  Niven’s words writhed and turned to fit his fortune. “You’re mistaken, Sorrel. The Palace is just a building, one in which you yourself now reside along with your friends and family. Don’t forget about them, Sorrel. Don’t forget about Eli and your father. You’ve seen the army for yourself – you know what we’re up against.”

  “Yes, I know what we’re up against.” Sorrel said. “The Monitors have risen from the earth – that’s what we’re up against.”

  Juno turned away from the window.

  Niven had implied that she was on his – and Dinawl’s – side, but her whole purpose here was to prepare for the arrival of the rest of the Monitors. She had shown glimmers of kindness to Sorrel before,
and had helped them to escape, but could she really have turned against her own people, against everything she had been working towards? Sorrel didn’t think so. Nor was she convinced that Slade had set up the explosion in the mine.

  “We need to get into the jail and speak to Slade,” Sorrel said to David. “I don’t believe he did what they said.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing – it doesn’t make sense.”

  At the market place, the distraction was in full swing. A troupe of stilt-walkers strode through the boisterous crowd, towering over fire-eaters, sword-swallowers and jugglers.

  The crowd surged each time a new distraction appeared, jostling and elbowing for a prime viewing spot. A male-female singing duo was pelted off their platform with rotten fruit, sold to them by an enterprising stall holder, their spot filled by a trio of drummers.

  “It’s so loud.” Sorrel had to shout for David to hear her.

  “In here,” he said, and led her into The Three Rats.

  The vittle house was packed, every table taken. The buzz of voices and the clatter of platters filled every crack and gap between ceiling and floor.

  “Are you hungry?” Sorrel asked.

  “No – there’s someone I want to see.”

  David craned his neck.

  “That’s her,” he pointed to a pale-skinned girl emerging from the kitchen, her arms laden with platters. They waited until she’d served the food then caught up with her.

  “Oh, hello you.” The girl looked at David, her eyebrows raised. A dark mark circled her neck.

  “Sorrel, this is Stacey. Stacey, meet Sorrel.”

  “You look familiar,” Stacey said, “are you a customer?”

  “First time here,” Sorrel said, thinking that Stacey had probably seen her paraded through the city on her way to be hanged.

  “You managed to lose the thrall-band?” David said to Stacey.

  “Finally.” Her hand went to her throat. “All that time I spent wrapping cloth around it and still it’s left its mark.”