I spend the day with Olandon and the twins, taking them to the village. The twins had never been there before and I’m happy to see them enjoying themselves. The villagers give us an extra wide berth. I wonder if the twin’s reputation has preceded them or maybe it is Olandon’s scowl.
I sit in my room once the dinner feast is over. This afternoon, I had skipped training and working at the orphanage to visit the springs in an attempt to make myself more attractive. Never having had to worry about this before, I had no idea how to really go about it. Suddenly the elaborate hair styles, jewels and beaded robes of the court did not seem so stupid. I had even thought about rubbing some berry juice into my lips as the other Solati women my age did. Instead, I had washed my hair as I normally did and scrubbed my face a bit harder.
These last moments drag on longer than the whole week put together. Inevitably though, the smoke creeps over the sky. I climb out of the window and down the Kaur walls of the palace to meet Kedrick, feeling excited and a bit broken at the same time. Kedrick had suggested we just take off my veil at Aquin’s after a training session. But I had not wanted anyone else to be there when my veil was removed, not even Aquin. Especially as he had been so weird lately. The darkness had also appealed to me, maybe he would not be able to see my imperfections in the poor light. My sense of unease had not abated either, so I had instructed him to meet me at the Kaur tree I had thrown him into a few weeks before.
I creep along the palace wall until I reach the tree line and hug this until I can no longer see the large shadow of the palace. I wait at the Kaur tree and soon I hear the crackle of leaves as Kedrick approaches. His lightness of step has only improved slightly with Aquin’s training. It was a great source of frustration to them both.
My eyes have become accustomed to the darkness now and I make out Kedrick’s outline moving into the clearing. He pulls me into his arms and we just hold each other for several moments.
“Today was horrible,” he says, in a hushed voice. Maybe, like me, he is reluctant to disrupt the night.
“All I wanted to do was spend time with you. But ended up talking to your bloody mother.” He rubs his cheek over the side of my head, before resting his chin atop it. I breathe in his scent, he smells like soap. My palms get clammy as I remember why we’re here.
“Adnan wanted to talk of inventions he has seen here which he wants to try back on Glacium. And I ended up snapping at Sanjay because he was being too loud or happy. I don’t know.” He sighs. I giggle nervously at his babbling. With sudden clarity, I realise things between us will be changed forever after this moment. I try to prolong it by asking him a stream of questions about his day.
Eventually he brings a finger to my face, searching for my lips before placing the finger across them. I do not need to see his face to feel the love in the gesture.
“You sound like Oberon. It’s okay.” I giggle again. The sound is high pitched. My breath becomes shallow and short. The clamminess of my hands has spread all over my shaking body. I turn away and brace my trembling hands between two Kaur trees, trying to deepen and slow the air into my lungs and control my sudden nausea. The air comes out of me in a shuddering wheeze. Hands wrap around my waist, and I’m turned around. My body is nearly jumping with the terrified rattles which have taken over me. Still gasping for breath, I scrunch my eyes closed.
A warm hand rests under my chin and a kiss reaches me through the veil, warming me. An errant thought crossing my mind. Tonight we will be able to kiss without the barrier between us.
His fingers move to the outside of the veil, and I dig my fingernails into my palms to stop myself from grabbing his wrist. The veil slides up over my chin, then up over my nose and the raises of my cheek bones. No longer breathing, I feel the material brush over my eyelashes, and then I’m unveiled. It is off. And I’m not in the dark springs or in my room. The warm air is on my face!
I hear the Prince gasp. I cannot bear to see his expression and continue to keep my eyes closed. He rests his hands on top of my shoulders.
“Lina, my love,” he says. His hands start to move from my shoulders, but then he tightens both hands into a painful grip. I open my mouth and tell him to loosen his hold, but do not get a response.
The hairs on the back of my neck raise. I open my eyes and look up at Kedrick. He is peering into the darkness over my head, his face clear to me without the veil. I see terror flash across his face one second before he throws me to the side with astounding strength. I hear a sickening squelch behind me just before I slam into a tree. The air is crushed from my lungs. I crumple to the ground.
There are footsteps crashing away through the forest. I roll to the side as the noise fades. In a painful daze, I rise to my knees and look back to see where Kedrick is. My heart stutters and then stops. He is still standing in the same place. But an arrow protrudes from the middle of his chest. I watch, in horrified disbelief, as he falls to his knees.
I recover my legs and stumble to him, helping him to the ground. What do I do? I don’t know what to do! I look around desperately for something, or someone who can help him.
I open my mouth to scream for help, but snap it shut as he groans. The sound gives me some hope.
“Kedrick. Kedrick!” I plead, touching his arms, his stomach, everywhere but the terrible, wound in his chest.
“Tell me what to do,” I say. My eyes dart around the forest again.
He coughs and rolls onto his back. My eyes widen at the blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. The little hope I had vanishes.
“Lina,” he chokes, reaching for me. I grab his hand and hold it in both of mine, bringing my face over his. My black hair surrounds us in a cocoon, my tears fall unchecked onto his face.
“Do n-not cry,” he gasps as he forces a grimacing smile through his pain.
His hands reach to my chin and he traces my wet lips with his thumb, his eyes following its trail. He looks so peaceful.
“Don’t give up, Kedrick! I will go for help. Please!” I say. I want him to say something. I want him to tell me it will be okay. I sob underneath his touch, my body knowing what my mind will not admit. His lips are turning blue.
There is a look of complete awe on his face. I help him as he traces his hand up over my cheek bone, underneath my eyes. I watch, my mind and body numb, as his look of peace turns to utter shock when his eyes meet my own. He opens his mouth, but no words come out, just bubbles of blood. His desperate eyes meet mine once more.
I sit staring at his face, waiting for him to come back. I shake him a little. He will come back.
His hand is limp in my grasp. It gets colder and colder.
There is some kind of disturbance, a noise. It rouses me from my vacant stare. My gaze falls on my veil in Kedrick’s other hand. I pull it from his grip and put it on and then look back down at him.
The arrow is sticking out of his chest, disrespecting him.
Moving in a stupor, I stand and use all my weight to pull the arrow out. I snap off the end. I lean over and wipe the blood from his mouth and pull up my veil to kiss his blue lips. We were going to kiss without the veil between us.
The feel of his cold skin shatters the deepest part of me, but my tears have run out.
The disturbance grows louder, closer. I realise in a distant part of my mind that Malir is shaking me and yelling, but the words are muted. Rhone is at Kedrick’s head. He is shaking his head sadly. They talk over my head.
Everything is too much. There is a flash as something hits the back of my head.
I surrender to darkness.
Part Two
Chapter Eleven
I wake with a gasp and struggle to sit. My body is moving reluctantly as though I have lain in bed for too long. I close my eyes and place a steadying hand on the rocky ground beside me, groaning as dizziness grabs me. I check my veil and then gently explore a massive lump on the back of my head.
“Well, at least you didn’t kill her,” a voice speaks. I jerk at the sound.
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Once the dizziness ebbs, I crack open my eyes. It takes a moment for my surroundings to stay still. When they do, I’m startled to see that I’m surrounded by a semi-circle of delegates.
I stare in confusion, my mind scrambled. Their postures range from wary to aggressive. I look to Malir and Rhone who, rather ironically, appear the least hostile right now.
“Where is Kedrick?” I ask and wince because I have forgotten his title. I was just telling him off for the same thing a few weeks ago. Luck is with me though, as no Solati are around to pick up on my mistake.
Malir and Rhone turn their heads to each other.
What is going on?
I roll over to stand, but feel something lodged underneath my right foot, my old hiding spot. I haven’t hidden anything there from mother since I was a child.
My hand is reaching to dislodge the object when I remember; Kedrick’s injury, the blood, his empty eyes. I remember everything, including placing the fletching from the arrow between my shoe and foot.
I gasp as memories of last night rip through my mind, tearing it apart. I put one hand over my mouth. A terrible wailing sound fills the air, and I wonder where it comes from. When I take a breath, the sound halts and I realise the haunting sound is coming from me.
I hear Malir’s answer as if my head is under water.
“He’s dead,” he says.
I don’t hear anything else, I just watch as his mouth continues to shape words. Instead, I’m rubbing the tips of my fingers together, remembering Kedrick’s hand in mine as it had slowly gotten colder. I choke and struggle to my feet, turning my back on the delegates. Kedrick is not gone. He cannot be, because I was just with him. It is too much. I feel like my mind is going to shatter. But then, blissfully, I start to numb again, as I had when he had died. I stare without blinking and although the memories of last night batter at my mind, my newfound numbness allows them to slide off and drift away.
None of it is real.
Time passes while I stand and stare, I do know how long it has been.
“Step away from the edge, Tatuma. It is not safe,” somebody says. Another person approaches me with a wet cloth. When they go to tie it underneath my veil, my hand moves to take it from them and I complete the task myself. The motion rouses me slightly, enough that when food is offered to me, I respond and shake my head. A hand grips my arm and pulls me to my feet. When did I sit down? A hand pushes me along for a few steps until my body takes over and begins to place one foot in front of the other.
I walk. I do not care where to, as long as Kedrick is there.
The smoke is getting thicker. I look up from my feet and can barely make out the person in front of me. Drawing a breath through the wet cloth over my mouth, I stumble through the growing darkness. The black chasm we are in, is familiar to me somehow. Maybe because it is how I feel inside now.
I bump into the person in front of me and someone stands close behind me, steadying me. We move into more blackness.
A rhythmic thudding sound starts up, my eyebrows crease as I struggle to place the familiar noise. Several more of the same rhythmic thuds begin. The dense smoke begins to clear, someone cheers. I stand stationary until I’m pushed over to a rock. I take some offered food, but my stomach tells me I will not eat it. I set the food on the ground. The others around me go about their business, hardly talking. They roll out blankets on the ground. They look at me and share glances, but I don’t care if they think me crazy. I cannot imagine ever caring again.
Chapter Twelve
Images of Kedrick’s lifeless face pass before my eyes, jolting me awake. I sit up and see the delegates are still asleep. Malir’s huge frame keeps watch by the fans which were the cause of the rhythmic thudding last night. He looks over at me, then glances away.
I untie the now dry mouth covering which is still in place and drop it by my side. For the first time, I realise I have no idea where I am. I try to summon some kind of emotion over this, some shred of self-preservation.
The light starts to shine through a large swath of material covering the mouth of this cave. Malir stands, stopping a bit to clear the roof of the cave, and moves with confident steps between the sleeping delegates to draw the curtains back. Orange light pours into the cave, bouncing off the sharp, uneven walls of the cave. I look out and some small shock finds me.
I’m on Oscala. I stand and hobble towards the entrance.
The Oscala were something every child dreamed of exploring. The floating shelves numbered in the thousands. No one I had ever spoken to knew how many. While some could take half a day to walk around, others were only stepping stone size. The shelves were dotted throughout the divide between Glacium and Osolis. The only means of communication and passage between the two worlds. They were the essence of many stories told by villagers. Aquin had told me many of them as he had once been part of a delegation to Glacium. It was the place I had promised Kedrick I would never go.
I stand on one, lone shelf, in the middle of countless others. There are only shelves and no way of knowing which direction to go. It is tempting to just start drifting as Kedrick had once told me could happen here, to get lost in the barren space. But Malir watches me with steady eyes, perhaps following the direction of my mind.
I take in the burnt glow of Osolis, wondering how I got from the Kaur forest to Oscala without remembering any of it. I imagine it had something to do with the bump on the back of my head. It must have taken several days to travel to the first and then some more time to get to our current position. I don’t know enough about the Oscala to know how long it would take to get to this stage.
“It takes your breath away, doesn’t it?” Malir says. The sound of his voice startles me out of these thoughts. I shrug, not replying.
Soon the others are rising. They haven’t bothered to put on their mouth coverings this morning. The Kaur trees have already been hard at work and have cleared the air in the divide. As we start the day’s trek, I soon begin to wonder how I didn’t die yesterday. I hug the walls closely as we climb the jagged steps cut into the sides of the cliff.
The shelf we are currently on is huge. The steps are narrow and on the other side is a drop into nothingness, if you do not hit the rocky obstacles on the way down. When the leaders of the two worlds first sent out parties to explore the opposing world, a sort of pathway was formed. On some of the bigger shelves, steps had been chipped into the sides to make a more direct route. They had placed ropes on the steep and dangerous shelves to help scale up the sides. I look around me at the floating rocks and wonder how many people died trying to discover this still treacherous pathway.
It takes at least an hour to get off this shelf and we come to a long, thin shelf next. A heavy rope dangles down one side. Malir grabs a length of rope from his pack and signals to me to stand next to him. I look at the rope. It seems only slightly longer than the one in Aquin’s training room. Malir goes to grab me, I push his hand away, irrational anger surging up. I grab the rope and prepare to make my way up. A heavy hand lands on my shoulder.
“Get your hand off of me,” I say, my voice low and dark. The hand slips off.
I start up the rope before I change my mind and decide to push the delegate attached to the offending hand off the shelf. I take pleasure in the physical exercise, in the familiar burn through my arms as I haul my body weight up. I don’t look down, I just pretend I’m with Aquin.
Slightly out of breath, I reach the top and wait for the others. I take satisfaction in the shocked looks directed my way as each delegate climbs over the cliff edge. The yellow head of Rhone comes into sight as he reaches the top, a ghost of a smile lingers on his sharply featured face as he looks at me. I suppose the hand on my shoulder belonged to him. Lucky I did not attempt to throw him over the side. I would have lost.
We move onwards to the next rock, and the next, only stopping to wet the covering and tie them over our mouths again as the smoke from the fourth saturates Oscala. The temperature has cooled sligh
tly during the day’s climb, but the air is still warm, just cooler than the first. A gentle breeze teases the edges of my veil as I walk. The colour here is different from anything I have ever seen. It is a kind of brown. The light is fading as we move away from the orange glow.
We reach the second cave. Adnan starts up the fans once again so the thickening smoke does not choke us in the night. Images of Kedrick drowning in his own blood pushes forward, I scrunch my eyes shut until they pass.
We’re all sitting when a nasally voice breaks the silence. I look up at Blaine.
“Tatuma, we demand to know what ha-” he starts. A bag flies through the air, hitting Blaine in the chest and cutting off his words. He starts to stand, but quickly sits back down when he sees it is Rhone who has thrown the bag.
It takes me a moment to understand what the sneering, greasy man was about to ask. Of course. The delegates would have no idea of what happened in the forest the night Kedrick died. Even Malir and Rhone would only have the barest knowledge of his death. I scrunch my eyes closed and roll away from them to face the cave wall, tuning out the whispered argument which erupts behind me. I’m not ready to talk of it yet. I am exhausted, tired of being in my mind.
When I wake from a nightmare sometime during the night, a single vivid memory stands out. My hand covers the middle of my chest. The arrow had hit Kedrick right here.
He was so much taller than me, it was the level where my head usually rested. The arrow had hit him exactly where my head had been at the time. If he had not thrown me out of the way, I would be dead. My hands cover my mouth, horrified as this discovery leads to an even worse realisation.
I had been the target. It had been my mother. One of her Elite had tried to kill me. This was what Aquin had been warning me about. Guilt and anger streak through my stomach, scraping it raw. His murder was my fault. I had angered my mother and she had intended for me to pay the ultimate price. It had worked regardless, I would rather be dead than have his death on my hands. I deserve to feel this way for what I have done to him. Tears well in my eyes.
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