“Yes,” Kara answered simply, not saying much so that her mother would go on sharing memories.
“Do you remember the wonderful days when your tutor would come and while he was helping with you with your lessons, I would bake treats for you and for your father when he returned home? Do you remember the days when neither of us had to toil so hard at another’s tasks? And do you remember our lovely home on the hill?”
Tears clogged Kara’s throat at her mother’s words. “Yes,” she choked out. “I remember.”
And she did remember. She remembered when her mother’s hands were the soft hands of a gentlewoman, not the cracked rough hands of a laborer that they were now. She remembered the joy she herself had taken in learning the lessons her tutor had taught, instead of learning by her own mistakes and from the rough slaps of correction that Leila Malmont administered if she did not perform her duties correctly now. And, more clearly than the rest, she remembered their family suppers together at the great table that sat in the dining room of their beautiful house on the hill.
All of that had gone once her father had passed on. Those things had been provided because of his position with the Sovereign, and the wonderful things that he had been able to make the Old Tech do for the Sovereign. And when her father was no longer available to provide those skills, the Sovereign had no real use for the man’s widow, other than as a laborer who did menial tasks of his choosing. And those menial tasks, of course, did not warrant the many benefits that had been provided to her father because of his work with the Old Tech.
Old Tech the words struck a pang of fear through Kara. She vaguely heard her mother’s voice as she shared more memories, but the fear that suddenly shot through Kara changed her focus and made her think of the forbidden thing that her mother had hidden beneath the loose floor board near the hearth, only feet away from where Kara lay now.
If the Sovereign knew about the Old Tech, and that her father had meant for them to have it and that they all had kept it a secret from him, they would most likely forfeit their lives.
Kara struggled to calm her pounding heart, pushing away the thoughts of what would happen if the Sovereign ever found out about their secret, and instead focused once more on her mother’s soothing voice.
Minutes passed, and soon, after listening to the shared memories, Kara was lulled into a sense of safety once more, and she found herself struggling to keep her eyes open.
Kara gasped and sat bolt upright, frightening a squeak from Jax as she jostled him as she awoke from the dream. It had been more like a memory. As her heart slowly stopped its pounding within her chest, Kara cuddled Jax closer and stroked his silky fur as she thought about the dream. She had once lain beside her mother before the fire, just as in the dream. And, as in the dream, there had been a forbidden secret hidden in their little cottage. A secret that Kara had brought with her which was, even now, hidden deep at the bottom of her bag.
Sighing, Kara held Jax close for another moment, enjoying the silky slide of his fur through her fingers as she stroked his thick coat. The movement calmed her, and also filled her with love for the tiny creature that was now her constant companion. She gave him one more pat then carefully tucked him into the warm spot that was left from her body as she wiggled off of the sleeping mat that she’d made of reeds. Covering him with her mother’s shawl, she scooted over to her bag and dug to the bottom, where she’d hidden the Old Tech.
Drawing it out, she unwrapped it from the soft length of worked leather that it had always been rolled in, and let its heavy weight drop into her palm for the first time.
She stroked the smooth surface, which was made of shiny glass that was paper-thin and so glossy that it glimmered with reflected light even in the dimness of the little cave.
Chapter Twelve
Kara stroked the smooth delicate-looking surface of the Old Tech, remembering her father’s fascination with the devices that he worked with on a daily basis at the Sovereign’s House. Why had her father kept this one? What was so special about it? Why had he risked their lives to hide it in their house the night before he had left on the Sovereign’s errand?
They were questions that Kara had often wondered about, but she had never had the courage to look upon the Old Tech until now. Before, when she’d thought of the thing hidden under the floor, cold dread had filled her and her stomach had knotted with worry. The thing was a secret that promised instant death if discovered. It was forbidden for the people of GateWide to own or possess Old Tech. Expressly forbidden by the Sovereign’s decree. Only the Sovereign was permitted to own Old Tech.
Old Tech was from the time before the Fall, and the people of GateWide had been taught to fear the things that had been left behind from that time. But Kara’s father had been gifted with discovering the purposes of the Old Tech that the Enforcers found on their forays out into the wilderness, and he had often told Kara that the Old Tech was not dangerous in and of itself. He had said that some of the Old Tech could be used for bad purposes, and had hinted that the Sovereign did, on occasion, use Old Tech for just that. Bad purposes. Her father had said that, like anything, the Old Tech was not dangerous on its own; it took a person to use it for ill or for good. He hadn’t shared many of his discoveries of the purposes of the Old Tech with her, for he knew that to give her that knowledge would put her in danger, but he had told her some of what he had discovered of the time before the Fall. Bits of knowledge that he’d gleaned from the Old Tech. Tales of fascinating things and places called cities and times when the world was crowded with people and there had been no vast wilderness of mutated creatures.
The tales had both delighted and frightened Kara.
Kara ran her fingers around the sides of the thing, feeling the sleek angles and odd texture of the Old Tech, her eyes straining to see detail in the dimness of the cave. The material that the Old Tech was made of was like nothing that was made in GateWide. Kara had seen glass before, but none so thin and glossy as the piece on the face of the Old Tech, and she had never seen the material that made up the rest of the thing. It was a strange, hard material that covered the surfaces not covered by the thin glass, consisting of meshed lines and glittering flakes of some shiny material that were embedded within a clear hard surface that was not glass, but yet looked like it.
Kara’s fingertip caught upon a raised circular protrusion on the slim side of the thing. She prodded the small circle with her fingernail, pressing against it, surprised with it depressed into to the side of the Old Tech, then popped out again.
The face of the thing flared with light, temporarily blinding Kara in the gloom, and she gasped and dropped it into her lap, where it landed with the glass surface facing up at her.
Frightened that it could emit light, but not heat, Kara pushed it off of her lap and scooted backwards quickly, staring at the Old Tech much as she had stared at the snakes she’d found in the cave earlier. To her amazement, the bright blue-white light formed into a symbol on the face of the Old Tech for a moment, then resolved itself into an image. An image of her father!
Kara’s heart thumped against her ribcage with astonishment, joy filling her thoughts. Her father’s face stared back at her.
She quickly scooted back to where she’d been and picked up the Old Tech gently, staring lovingly at the man’s face. How she missed him! She stroked the glass surface of the thing with her fingertip, and then gasped as the image moved and her father began to speak.
“If you are seeing this, then it means that I have not returned from my journey. Fear not, for I am not dead as the Sovereign has told you. I have moved on, through the Narrow Gate. You must flee GateWide when you see this message and you must never return. You must follow me. And to do that, you must study the Word and learn to do the right thing. It is only through doing the right thing that you will find the Narrow Gate. Be safe, my beloveds. Keep this device with you always, and I will try to contact you. This Old Tech will allow me to speak to you and ...”
Her father�
��s image went still on the face of the Old Tech, his words cut off in mid-sentence, and Kara felt tears pool in her eyes and stream down her face as she stared at his much-loved face. He looked exactly as she remembered him. Exactly. He must have somehow put his moving image into the Old Tech on the day before he had left on the journey for the Sovereign.
Kara suddenly realized what that meant. Her father had known that he might not return. What sort of dangerous errand had the Sovereign sent him on? What secret had her father known that he had not told them before he left?
The Old Tech in Kara’s hand began to dim, the image of her father going gray, then fading to darkness.
“No,” Kara gasped as the Old Tech’s glass surface went black and lifeless once again. “No,” she moaned into the silence of the cave, missing the sight of him as soon as his image was gone.
A sob caught in her chest, and tears fell in a stream upon her hands. She brushed them away from the Old Tech, then carefully wrapped the thing back into its soft leather covering as she cried. She missed her father so.
His message had given her hope. Perhaps she was not alone in the wilderness after all? Perhaps her father was there, somewhere, looking for her?
But, what had he meant by learning to do the right thing? And how was she to study the Word, if she had no Book?
Kara put the Old Tech back into her bag, then dried her tears and lay down again next to Jax, cuddling his warm form against her stomach and pulling her mother’s shawl over the both of them.
She knew a little of what her father had meant by doing the right thing, her mother had taught her much of it from the Book, though the Book’s teachings had been frowned upon by the Sovereign. But Kara didn’t understand how doing the right thing would help her reach her father at the Narrow Gate. The Narrow Gate was supposed to be a religious myth. A sacred place that was visited after death. How could her father be there, and yet still be alive?
She had so many questions. She didn’t know how to do what her father had asked. But, she did know one thing without a doubt. She knew that she had to try.
Read more of Kara’s story in THE NARROW GATE
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Read a preview of THE NARROW GATE:
Mathew awoke to a dank world of wrenching pain. His head throbbed from thirst, his eyes felt gritty, his lacerated hands throbbed, his blistered feet ached and his back quivered with spasms caused by being forced into such a cramped position for so long.
His mouth tasted like blood, and his lips were already cracking from lack of water. He licked his lips to moisten them, tasting dirt and wincing as his tongue, swollen and sore where he’d bitten it when he’d fallen, passed over his mouth.
He wasn’t accustomed to pain. And he was pretty sure he’d never had this much of it at one time before. He couldn’t ever remember having more than a scraped knee or a bruised shin in his whole fourteen years. But that was before. Now things were different. Now he was just a commodity. Before, he’d been a person. But then his mother had died, and he’d become an orphan.
He caught his breath at the thought, feeling the worst pain of all slither through his chest. His heart twisted in the agony of deep sorrow as he remembered his mother’s passing. He missed her. Oh, how he missed her. But most of all, he missed everything that she had done for him. Things he didn’t even know about until it was too late.
He shifted inside the hole in the ground, dislodging dirt and small pebbles from above his head. They rained down on him, coating him in more grit. He was already filthy, covered in dirt, mud and quite a bit of his own blood, but he hated the feel of more dirt on his skin. That was something else he wasn’t used to. His mother, the maid and the housekeeper had always insisted that he keep himself very clean so that he wouldn’t be mistaken for a Stray. He hadn’t minded. He liked being clean. He liked the fancy clothes they gave him to wear. The feel of the dirt now coating his skin disgusted him. He didn’t like the way it stuck to him, or the way it clumped in his many scrapes and scratches, or the way it smelled mixed with his sweat and blood. Mostly, he didn’t like it for what it represented. Stray!
His stomach growled, a nasty reminder that he couldn’t stay hidden inside the hole forever. He winced at the foreign feel of his own hunger. He wasn’t accustomed to being hungry, either. How long had it been since he’d eaten? How long had he been hiding in the hole? It was dark now, and above him, he could only see a sliver of night sky, the blackness polka-dotted with bright stars. No sign of the moon. Not that seeing the moon would help him anyway. He wouldn’t know how to tell the time by looking at the moon any more than a rock would. He sighed. He wasn’t used to taking care of himself. He didn’t know how. He was realizing that he didn’t know a lot of things.
He did remember that it had been yesterday morning when he’d last taken a bite of food. It has been a fat, flaky pastry, filled with nuts and dried fruit, fresh from the oven. Prepared just for him by the housekeeper. He wished now that he’d eaten the whole thing, and asked for a dozen more, but at the time he had sneered at the offering after taking only one bite. A pastry hadn’t been what he’d wanted. He’d wanted cake at the time. If only he’d known what the day would bring. Right now, if she was near, he’d have eaten whatever the housekeeper gave him, and he would have been grateful. He sighed, sniffing back his anguish. He would never see the housekeeper, or one of her pastries, again.
He would probably never be clean again. Or full again. Or not thirsty. He would probably be miserable the rest of his short life, now that everything had changed.
His stomach growled again, and though he had no idea how he would find food or water, he forced himself to crawl slowly out of the hole. He felt a bit like the animal that must have made the underground den, cautiously creeping up out of the ground, keeping a lookout for anything that moved, knowing that he was being hunted.
A whimper of pain and fear escaped him as he emerged fully from the hole and his stiff muscles protested. His eyes darted around, looking for any sign of the Enforcers. Seeing none, he stood up, whimpering again as his back cramped when he straightened. He pressed his dry, cracked lips together, compressing them to prevent any further sound from escaping. He didn’t want to risk giving himself away if they were near.
He didn’t know where they were, or if they were even close. It was hard to see through the bushes, trees and darkness that surrounded him now. They had been quite close when he’d found the hole and crawled inside. But he had blacked out from fear and exhaustion, and now he didn’t know how much time had passed or how far away the Enforcers might be. He started forward cautiously, one step at a time. So slowly.
With every step, his body ached. He tried to ignore the pain. To a certain extent, he was successful. He was able to block out the painful scrape of his shoes against the blistered spots on his feet. The sting of the myriad of tiny cuts and scrapes on his hands, arms and face were a mere nuisance compared to everything else, so he ignored them too. But he was unable to ignore his raving thirst. The dryness of his mouth felt like torture, the need for a drink of water pounded in his head with a fierce ache.
He didn’t know much about survival skills, but he knew he needed to find something to drink soon.
He slogged on through the darkness, trying to be as quiet as he could, trying not to think of what would happen if the Enforcers caught him. He was more afraid of them than he was of anything else that might lurk out in the darkness. Which was ironic, because before he’d been afraid to be outside GateWide after dark, terrified of the unknown things that were said to lurk there, and he’d believed that the Enforcers were to be revered and trusted.
How wrong he’d been.
He stumbled over a fallen branch and froze as it snapped with a loud crack. The noise seemed as loud as the reports from the pistols that the Enforcers had fired at him earlier as he’d fled out the Gate. He loo
ked around in panic. Had they heard? Were they near? He strained his eyes in the darkness, feeling his eyeballs bulge out of his head as he forced them to try to peer through the cloaking blackness.
To the right, he heard a whisper of sound. He tiptoed over to a large tree, pressing close to the trunk, trying to make himself smaller. The tree was wide enough to hide his slim form, but he still felt exposed anyway. He crouched down into a ball, huddled against the tree bark, listening.
He heard the sound again. There was someone near. The sound came from a pair of men’s deep voices, pitched low.
“Do you see the little Stray?” one harsh voice whispered.
“No, but I heard a noise. He’s got to be close. Gabert lost his trail only a few hundred yards from here,” another voice answered.
“That was hours ago! The sniveling little Stray is probably long gone by now. You probably heard a squirrel.”
The other man laughed quietly, “He’d better be gone, and hope we don’t find him. I can’t remember when a Stray has led us on such a chase or caused as much trouble. Gabert is ready to strangle the little Stray with his bare hands.”
“Might as well. This one is scrawny. And too pampered. He won’t hold up long in the House.”
“Doesn’t matter. Gabert may kick him a few times, maybe even slap him around a bit, but he won’t waste a Stray by strangling him. Even if the Stray won’t last long in the House. The Sovereign wants all of the Strays that he can get. And you know the Sovereign gets what he wants.”
Mathew stopped listening, frozen in horror. The House! They were going to send him to the House? Mathew tried to keep his knees from knocking together as he shivered in fear.
He had to escape. He didn’t want to go to the House. He’d heard stories about the House. None of them were good.
He began to move away from the voices, still crouched low to the ground, trying to make himself small and invisible. He wanted to run, but he’d tried that earlier. It hadn’t worked out so well. All of the cuts, scratches and bruises on his body attested to that. He was clumsy when he hurried, and not accustomed to strenuous physical activity. In the dark, he would try to go slower. Be quieter. Be sneaky. He was good at sneaky. If there was anything he was good at, it was that.
After the Fall (The Narrow Gate Book 1) Page 5