The Hawkweed

by Candace J Thomas

  I opened the letter, started to read, and stopped.

  “What is it?” Talia snatched it from me and read it for herself. “Melina? This isn’t like my letter.” She stared at me, disbelieving. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. I promise.” I took the letter and read it again. ‘Daughter of the late Dr. Ilov Gershan, inventor. . . special assignment. . . new identity to be provided’—the words jumped off the page.

  “I don’t like this.” Talia busied herself around the kitchen. “They can’t steal you away. Change your identity?”

  Verona felt so far away, even colder than anything I had experienced. I didn’t want to leave Talia or Petersboro—my home. I didn’t want to be someone else. I needed the bravery of Jaren. I couldn’t do this alone.

  My eyes flitted over the details, but it didn’t matter. I would leave in a week. The guards would escort me to the train station, and I would bring nothing with me, except the bare essentials. They would give me a new identity, a different life, a life without Jaren or Spen. I would no longer be Melina.

  Talia noticed the startled look on my face. “When are you leaving?”

  I didn’t answer. I handed her the letter and went to get dressed. As I looked around my room, I saw Spen’s sweater and put in on, sinking my face in it as I cried.

  I didn’t want to leave. My world had fallen apart swallowing me with it.

  The pale yellow paper I had crinkled in my hand now sat still on my pillow taunting me with its cryptic message. I stared at it with my streaming, watery eyes. I stared blankly at the curving ‘g’ of my last name. Why did he write it? In my despair I tried to analyze the writing; Spen’s writing. I thought of all the things he could have been thinking when he wrote it.

  My head lifted. I picked up the piece of paper again and looked at it. I knew this paper, yellow, small, a shred from all the old paper they used in the school library.

  Somewhere deep inside me a spark ignited. My tears dried with a faint hope. I had an idea.

  617.874 PET

  I knew where I would find the answer to my questions.

  I grabbed my cloak without a word to Talia and headed to the Secondary school.

  The fog hung around thick and the sleigh driver followed along the lines at a slow pace. My pulse beat faster than the clipping of the horse hooves on the brick pavement. I looked around at the newer part of Petersboro—the shambled remnants of the attack were undetectable here. The Secondary School sat on the very edge of town nearest to the craters. I glanced quickly at what I could see through the fog, the large dark holes vacant of life.

  The blasts happened nearly thirty years ago, long enough for me to think the holes were normal. As I aged and understood the balance of life here in the Tundran, I realized the huge significance these holes brought to the world, rocking the axis, changing the orbit, and altering life, but I couldn’t imagine anything differently. So close, yet so distant.

  The sleigh stopped on the corner before the school. The fog had grown very thick around the base, but the parapets stood tall and visible. The old architecture shown through. It had once been a church of some sort, but held strong in the blasts, and when the old ways were abandoned and the new revolution came in, the government made it a school. I slipped the driver two coins and asked him to wait. I knew it wouldn’t take me long.

  I ran across the long field to the large doors. The guard at the door recognized me.

  “I’ll be just a few minutes. Promise.”

  He nodded and pressed for entry. The government controlled everything, especially the schools.

  Small clips from the soles of my boots hit the polished marble floor. I glanced in the classrooms as I walked by, filled with children in the pressed blue and gold uniforms. I finished with classes a few months ago, my new occupation wouldn’t require much more education. My science credits ranked high, but the government was careful. Not another Gershan ruining mankind.

  The biblioteka came into view, near the end of the east wing in the Cathedral. Shelves of books lined the walls all the way to the painted ceiling. Students and teachers occupied a few of the desks. I immediately went to the catalogs. My eyes spied a stack of small yellowing strips of paper and the lump came back to my throat. Fumbling in my pocket, I brought out Spen’s note—the very same.

  I followed the category along the walls.

  I followed the numbers not knowing what I looked for.

  800 . . . 700 . . .

  I stopped. 600 . . . Technology. I walked down the aisle looking through the different classifications.

  610: Medical Technology.

  I scanned the books, my eyes darting all around looking for 617.

  617.874. A huge book sat before me. I gulped, and everything closed around me as I stared at this book whispering from the grave.

  I knelt down on the floor to get a better look. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one stood close. My fingers trembled down its spine.

  Technological Advancements in Surgery through the Last Century,

  Compiled by Dr. Emil Vladnir Petra

  What was Spen doing looking at this book? My hands shook as I heaved it off the shelf. I started thumbing through the pages, but noticed a break in the spine. A small lump lifted the pages. My heart raced as I slowly flipped the pages back and stared.

  A small orange hawkweed sat pressed between the pages. My heart felt as if it would burst. I loved this little flower. In dreams I envisioned fields covered with them. I remembered pointing out the little flower growing between cracks in the brick.

  “Look, Spen. See how resilient this little flower is. It’s proven to survive the winters, the bombings, the climate. I think it will live forever.”

  Spen had smiled at my gentle comment, his last gift to me.

  This . . . was that same flower.

  I closed the book. The last thing I wanted to do was start crying here, where others were watching me. I stood up and composed myself.

  “May I check this out?”

  Marta, the old bibliotekar smiled. She knew me and stamped the pass. I exited the school with the book in my arms.

  Verona

  Cadet’s Bathroom

  I had gotten used to the way my face looked with facial hair. The blade scraped away the last of my beard and I splashed my face and neck again with the cold water, feeling around the smooth angles of my jaw, my youth hidden under the scraggly hair. I looked into the mirror. I didn’t look like me. I looked like Spen.

  “Come on, Jare.” Fenwick knew we needed to act now while the other cadets were gone. I looked at the stolen uniform I wore. This would work, I knew it.

  Fenwick stood near the door. He wouldn’t come with me. People would know who he was, too recognizable. I had to act on this alone.

  He handed me the security badge taken from the drunken officer the night before. “Don’t get dead,” he warned me.

  I nodded again. “Go out. Have fun. I’ll fill you in when you get back.”

  Fenwick winked with his good eye.

  I took a deep breath and walked through the doors.

  I walked straight forward across the large, slick floors of the hanger without hesitation, with confidence, over to the hallway and toward the security doors of the fortress. I had the map in my head. I felt confident I knew where I needed to go.

  I prepared to lift the badge to the scanner when the security doors opened. I held still. A man who I’d never laid eyes on before nodded to me. I saluted like a good officer and walked in as he exited.

  My anxiety raced through me. That felt too easy. I walked down the vacant hallway and turned toward the elevators. I marched along with confidence. There were a few more people here, some conversing as they walked along. No one even glanced my direction. I reached the elevators without a single question. Too easy? Wrong.

  “Hey!” someone yelled at me. I ignored him. Sweat built up in my palms. “What are you doing here?” the voice echoed through the halls.

 
; I glanced around me. If I continued down this hallway I could make it to a window.

  The footsteps came faster behind me. I looked back and stared at this man as he came closer. “I thought you were on mission,” he said to me.

  I couldn’t think of a reply and just stared at him, trying to understand the words. I looked closer at his face, the black glass surrounding ice blue. I had seen the face before. This man was the same one who gave me the note.

  “It’s obvious something went wrong,” he stated to himself. “I’ll tell Petra.” He started scribbling something down on his paperwork. I couldn’t see what he wrote.

  The elevator opened. “Come on, let’s get you back.”

  I walked in the elevator, the same one that took me to the chambers. The man entered in the code. I watched—the code had not changed. But this time, he took me to the first floor.

  He tapped a button on his badge. “Yeah, Steffan. It’s Andre. Tell Petra I’m bringing his man back.”

  “Will do,” a voice returned through the commander.

  The man named Andre looked over me, scrutinizing everything. I knew he would find something wrong. “Remarkable,” escaped his mouth. “I guess it’s lucky that I found you. Petra said it might be too early, but you had made such progress.”

  He knew me. I had no clue what he talked about, so I thought it best to be silent.

  The elevator opened on one. The floor looked very different than the chambers; lights illuminated the entry and a collective hum surrounded the silent hallway.

  “I need to return to my station. I can trust you to find Petra.”

  I looked back at the man still in the elevator. “Yes.” I felt I should speak this brief word.

  He nodded back and the elevator closed.

  I stood alone. Again, too easy.

  I started to walk down the hallway. The technology surrounding me looked old and new. The Tundran Government controlled electricity. No home in Petersboro had use of it. The schools and workhouse had it, but with restrictions. The officers’ quarters used little round balls of light and the mess hall contained long cylinders. Here in this hallway, I felt like I had stepped into a different world.

  The wall itself had an iridescent light source running along the hall, like fibers stretching out in different ways. Flat lights reset in the ceiling pushed out a strange blue glow, like the moon blocking the sun. I couldn’t help but stare at it. I knew we had the technology, but I lived in ignorance of it. Our society was strictly deprived of such luxury.

  “Seven?”

  That name again. I turned to see a small man in a white coat approaching. The hair left on his head stuck out from behind his ears, his strange eyes bulging behind round glasses sitting in the middle of his face.

  “What happened, my boy,” the man’s voice sounded as if something had stuck in his throat. “Steffan said you were lost.”

  This must be Petra.

  I just stood there looking at the man not speaking. My nerves might give me away. He knew me within a blink. He knew me and didn’t question that I was not this Seven that he called me by. My stomach sunk like a stone. An eerie familiarity came over me.

  Petra grabbed my arm and led me through the hallway. We wrapped around several hallways all with the same fiber patterns on the walls. I quickly lost my sense of direction and panic flooded my veins. He took me to a door and opened it up with his palm pressed to a plate in the wall. This place I shouldn’t be able to walk into.

  The door opened and I blinked.

  White. Everything was covered in white, white tables, desks, papers. I couldn’t tell how big the room extended, not knowing the end of it. Smart looking men and women walked around with electrical tablets or sat in front of moving pictures. I’d never seen anything so interesting and beautiful. This must be the jobs you land if you excel on your aptitude test. I joined the army before I found out my results. We walked past it all and turned up a rounded staircase. I could view the large room like a perched bird. The view amazed me.

  Petra led me into another room to the right, smaller, but no less brilliant. This one had a long cylinder bed right in the middle of it. Metal surrounded the bed like a cocoon wrapping it with light.

  “Please sit,” the man indicated to a metal chair near a small desk. He placed a small circle connected to a wire near my temple. He touched a few buttons and then took a scope and listened to my heart.

  “Heart sounds good. Pulse, good.”

  He looked on the wall. There sat a screen showing wavy lines. “Your brain activity is phenomenal.” He moved around and checked my face. “I’ve never had such activity. Maybe too much stimulation. Yes, too much.”

  He began typing very fast on his keypad.

  I looked around the room. Several charts covered the walls, skeletons, models of anatomy and maps of neurons, a brain sliced in two.

  “Tell me, Seven,” Petra interrupted my thoughts. “Why did you come back?”

  I looked at the man thinking of what to say. “I . . . didn’t know where to go.”

  He began typing and muttering again. “. . . lost connection. Neuron activity possibly severed . . . Listen, Seven, the mission input is invisible from your connection. I can see you are confused, which is natural. Do you hurt anywhere? Do you have headaches?”

  I looked at him. “No, sir.”

  “Right. Do you remember anything?”

  I looked at his small brown eyes and thought about the question. He opened up the passage to this world I had just entered. “No.”

  The doctor looked back at his screen. “The visual map tells me that you do have memories. What are you remembering?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Petra moved in front of me and placed a laser light into my eyes. I blinked away from the brightness. “Memories can confuse us. I’m sure that’s why you’re back here.” He shined the light into the other eye and I tried to hold still. “What was this memory?”

  I thought fast. “My mother.” A mother felt safe. “I think it was my mother.”

  “Oh . . .” the doctor put down his light. I couldn’t see beyond the dull spot in my vision. “A mother . . . a mother is a powerful memory to erase. But I don’t think it wise to try another surgery. I think we’ll need to map the brainwaves and try to isolate the memory.”

  I just nodded, though the thought frightened me. The more he talked the deeper the lie buried inside.

  “I can tell you’ve had a lot of excitement. I just have one more question for you.”

  I looked without blinking. “What is that?”

  “Where is your spot?”

  Train Crossing

  Trolley

  I hid the book in my pack. The soldiers didn’t check it. I sat alone in the trolley with no other passengers. I felt like a prisoner instead of a guest. The book now sat across my lap, the flower still lying in between the pages. The train jostled the book distracting my reading. I often looked out the window at the passing country. No one could survive in little villages anymore, and every once in a while a small, abandoned town, covered with drowning snow, passed my sight. I thought of the poor people dead or gone. Their livelihood changed within seconds. Then they would vanish and more white would appear.

  The flower was a message. Life withstanding. Life finding a way. The pages pressing the precious hawkweed formed a perplexing question to what really happened to Spen before he died.

  ‘Surgical Advancements in the Reanimation of Tissue including Brain Activity’

  I read the chapter over and over. A few clues stood out: Verona, where the government experimentation had started, and a doctor who specialized in it, Dr. Emil Petra, also in Verona.

  Verona would have answers for me. I knew it would.

  Ahead grew more and more brick buildings, but more than that I could see lights, like lightning storms in the distance. I must’ve been getting closer to Verona.

  The train slowed and I found myself awestruck by the industrial life I stared at.
The government controlled electricity and here I sat in the heart of the Tundran Federation.

  The door opened and I felt the blast of freezing air. I threw on my ushanka and coat as the soldiers marched me forward to a sleigh. My cheeks stung from the freezing wind.

  “You are to take her to building 527 and leave her,” one of the soldiers said to the driver.

  The sleigh master looked concerned as he eyed me up and down. “This child?” he questioned.

  He flashed a white paper at him and the sleigh master looked at me again, perplexed, but conceded to let me into the sleigh.

  I stepped in as he closed the door. My body trembled with nerves. I felt the anxiety whelm up inside. I wasn’t brave. I couldn’t do this. I wanted to go home, to Talia. I needed Jaren near. He would protect me. I didn’t know why I felt so scared, but this didn’t feel right. It felt wrong.

  The sleigh wrapped around the city and as the lights flashed past the window, a small square would move from one side to the next. Then the light traveled much slower and I took my thumb and smudged the frost off the window. I saw a large building, bigger than anything I had ever seen. Here stood the Ice Fortress, the central of the Tundran Government. I thought I would go there, but the sleigh swerved and I saw instead a tall cement building with only a few square windows at the top. As the sleigh slid closer, ice moved through my veins. This couldn’t be right. The weathered walls and cold exterior filled me with panic. Is this right?

  The sleigh entered the gate to where someone stood all dressed in black with a long cloak hiding his face. As it slowed, I looked more directly at the man standing there. He almost felt like we approached a statue, still straight shoulders and a long staff struck to the ground by his side. He turned to profile and I caught sight of a sharp jawbone and clever chin. My heart jumped. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I concentrated harder to see the angles, the nose, the raw cheeks slapped with cold, the stern brow.

  I knew them. I could close my eyes and see this face.