by Jenn Polish
Then, a single, soft but strong, voice breaks through the crowded Gathering. “If Dreaming really spreads the blood plague, why would you risk making them Dream in the middle of the Gathering?”
An audible gasp rises through us all, and I think it’s Kashat, one of the nears on my labor shift. He’s a bit of a heartthrob amongst the Lunamez learning pod this season, and I hear them quickly fly and gallop to close ranks around him.
Bows are strung and swords are drawn, but oddly, Evelyn just smiles softly. She holds up her arm and the Hands relax their weapons.
“My Grovian isn’t as sharp as it could be yet, but I believe I was asked about the dangers of Dreaming. It’s an important question. Please don’t be alarmed, young man.” I roll my eyes. He wasn’t alarmed. He was challenging her logic. Either she doesn’t get it or she’s choosing to ignore it. I suspect the latter. “The suspects will be isolated by a magical barrier to prevent their contagion from spreading, should there be dissident Dreamers amongst them.”
Her eyes shift and fall squarely on mine. She lowers her hand, and without further warning, the enchanted arrows holding all of our ropes in place slam down, splaying us all face first into the ground.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter to the creatures beneath me, and I think they’re rumbling a powerful response before I realize that no, that’s just me, shaking.
Silence falls.
An air of expectancy settles in.
And then the pain begins.
It’s not excruciating, but it’s a low burning, like a deeply uncomfortable tingling, starting at my wing sprouts and moving out to my extremities. The Energies tighten around me; they must have magicked those barriers the Controller mentioned.
I try not to squirm with the discomfort, but it’s hard not to when the Grovians around me are flinching, the young ones are crying openly, and E’rix down the line is thrashing.
Then the prisoners around me all go limp, eyes closed and slack jawed. I’m about to scream when I see Leece’s chest rising up and down, slowly.
Grogginess starts to replace the burning, the pain, and I remember the tablet Mama made me eat, how it wakened my entire body.
They’re forcing us to sleep. And when I sleep, I Dream.
But something’s fighting the grogginess inside me, like a jittery burning. The tablet. My growns made sure I wouldn’t sleep. It’ll keep me awake, despite whatever spell they’re twisting the Energies into.
But Mama also told me to keep calm. I have to pretend to sleep if I want to survive this. So I let my head fall forward, my body relax, my breathing even out. Which is rough, because my heart is slamming so hard against my chest that I’d be surprised if Evelyn couldn’t hear it, let alone see it, standing over me like she is.
Heavy footsteps approach.
“Ma’am.” Tacon’s voice, in a horrible Highlander non accent, grates into my ears. It’s clear from his tone that he never expected to be addressing a girl from Izla as a superior, no matter what he said to me this sunup about Controllers not bossing him around. “How long will it take to root out the Dreaming ones?” He sounds eager. Hungry. I fight not to pull my face into a glare.
“Not long, Registrar.”
Skin boots crunch through the Gathering, observing us. Faint whispers and soft sobbing fills the air above me and behind me.
I wonder if my growns were able to slip Leece a tablet to keep him awake and resistant to whatever spell they put into the barriers around us. Because if they didn’t… I want to open my eyes, I want to wiggle my fingers, at least, so I can twist the Energies around him, make sure he can’t Dream. I’m close enough that I could at least try. But they’re watching us for any movement. Especially her, I’d bet anything.
I have no doubts about why I’m in this lineup.
But Leece… I have to hope that my moms were able to get to him, to give him a tablet to keep him awake.
I start twitching my fingers slowly, just in case.
They didn’t get to him. And I’m too slow. Too cowardly.
Because now there’s movement to my left, crawling sounds—Leece might be Dreaming an insect—and gasps and screams erupt all around us. I am going to join all that screaming if I can’t open my eyes, if I can’t at least see what they’ll do to him, now, what they’ll do to me one day, because if this is how the new Controller is going to play things, I won’t be able to hide my Dreaming forever.There is scuffling next to me, and someone kicks me in the gut. I grunt involuntarily and decide that, even if I were in an induced sleep, that kick would be enough to have me open my eyes, at least a little, at least groggily.
What I see is worse than what I could have imagined.
They’re taking Leece’s wings and forcing them into his wing sleeves, binding his entire torso in irons, not even clamping his wings outside his body. He is still trying to crawl. They pay no mind, because they’re taking him quickly—quickly, because there are throngs of enraged faeries and centaurs ready to attack, to free us, behind him, behind us.
Immediately, weapons are on all of the prisoners, what looks like two Hands for each of us. A sword grazes my temple, and I close my inner eyelids. I swallow and try not to shake.
I thank Lunara that the others, at least, are sleeping through this living nightmare. Maybe somewhere else in Lunav, someone is Dreaming their sleep.
The crowd hushes. They won’t storm the Hands with weapons at all our heads.
I clench my already rope-crunched wings deeper into my body, inviting the sharp pain. I focus on it. I breathe it in. The agony, somehow, keeps me conscious. Keeps me from screaming.
Part of me wishes Mama hadn’t given me the tablet. At least then I wouldn’t have to fake it like this. I could just be arrested, finally, for what I am. At least I wouldn’t be lying anymore.
But Leece. They’re going to kill Leece. Or lock him up in the Pits forever. Mara too, for helping him.
I’m the only one from the Grove in this lineup who actually helped sabotage the weapons caravan. They won’t stop until they find us, and Evelyn must already suspect me.
I’m going to be hunted forever anyway. Might as well get the capture over with.
Sorry Zaylam, I think to myself, because somehow it’s her agonized cry when she was almost killed in the Kinzemna massacre that rents through my mind.
I writhe out of my faked sleep, wrenching open both sets of my eyelids. They meet the Controller’s eyes immediately.
But she doesn’t move to arrest me, which would surely shock the Grovians who always assume I’m on the nons’ side.
I’m confused momentarily, and chance a glimpse at everyone else in the lineup. They’re all waking now too. It must just look like I was the first to come out of whatever spell they’d done. Sure enough, the Energies around me are reluctantly starting to unwind, and I can breathe a lot easier.
I swear internally at the same time as the pit in my stomach spasms with relief. I can’t even turn myself in properly, and I’m glad of it.
Maybe I am as worthless, as non-like, as everyone seems to think.
Evelyn clears her throat as her Hands use their swords to none too gently cut us out of our enchanted binds. Or at least, they’re none too gentle with the other prisoners. They very carefully cut me from my ropes. I must look a little too much like them for comfort.
I hear hissing behind me, and I know my fellow Grovians have noticed.
The pit comes back to my stomach, relief gone.
The Controller raises her voice to address the entire Gathering again. “As all of you can see, the instincts of His Esteemed Majesty are correct.One of the traitorous Sampians does, indeed, Dream. The other, his coconspirator in sabotaging the palace caravan, supported him in keeping his secret. They will both spend the rest of their short lives in the palace prisons.”
I can’t look at them. The Pits. Short lives. They’re in love.
Leece’s screams to let Mara go, to let her go because she passed the test, burn into my ears.
My eyes sting. I flex my crumpled, sore wings, ashamed that they exist. Ashamed that they’re the most faeric things about my body. Ashamed that I’m staying quiet, that I’m letting Leece be punished for doing the same thing that I do every night. I just have a family to protect me. I just look like a non. That’s the only difference between us.
Leece is still screaming, still trying to throw off his captors. The Controller, her face stone, nods at one of her Hands, giving a silent order. He obeys, winding up and striking Leece backhanded across the mouth. Blood spurts everywhere, and it’s Mara’s turn to scream.
The Controller nods again, and the Hand kicks Mara in the back of the knees before socking one of her eyes completely shut with the club he carries in his belt. When Leece tries to get to her, the Controller nods still again, and the Hand knocks him unconscious. He crumples to the ground and Mara writhes for him.
Enraged, horrified grumblings and gasps spread through the crowd behind me and above me, but the Controller gestures for her Hands to dig their weapons near into the prisoners’ skins. I grit my teeth, E’rix lets out a single sob, and no one moves. The Controller drones on with a blank expression, like there isn’t blood on her hands, like there isn’t thick pink fluid pouring out of the faces of the two broken nears at her feet.
“Though none of the Grovians we tested today were found to Dream, we will not be ending our investigations. Someone assisted the Sampians in their criminal act of sabotage; we will be increasing our patrols and increasing our random Dream checks to ascertain who are the traitors among you.” She lets her words hang over the stunned silence, interrupted only by Leece’s sniffling and trembling next to Mara, whose steely eyes are breaking.
“You may all go about your evenings.”
Murmurings arise and faeries and centaurs rush forward to their family and friends who were subjected to the test. I hear Lerian galloping toward me, and Mom is speeding through the crowd with little Aon wrapped in her arms. Before they reach me, someone takes me by the forearm.
A jolt of energy surges through me. I look down into the Controller’s cold eyes.
“I know where you were last night. We’ll see if you pass the next test.”
I ignore her quip. I can’t think about last night. I have Leece’s blood spattered across my face, in my hair.
“How can you do this? Those Sampians, they’re just nears. They’re in love, for Lunara’s sake. How can you send them off to die like that?” I don’t know why I’m speaking. But even more, I don’t know how to account for the contrast between the girl I met in the Forest and the cold-blooded Controller in front of my now. All I know is that my limbs are shaking and her eyes are on fire.
“How can you wish mass death on all of Lunav? Because that’s what they’re risking, the plague, with their pointless Dreaming. They don’t deserve the mercy of the Pits.”
“You’re calling that torture hole mercy? You can’t be serious, you conceited—”
“You don’t want to finish that sentence. Watch yourself. Faerie.”
She spits out the last word like it’s poison in her mouth, and she releases my arm like my skin burned her hand. I blink as I try to respond. When I look up again, she’s gone, and I’m surrounded by Lerian and my growns. I scoop Aon out of Mom’s arms and put my forehead to quers.
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad we got you Sliced, little one. You’ll be safer this way,” I mutter as Mom’s hands flutter up and down my body, checking for injuries. Aon coos and drools a little, squirming in my arms. I don’t tell quer—que wouldn’t understand yet anyway—that quer hatchling dragon will probably never be hatched because que can’t Dream.
But right now, I don’t even care about that. All I care about is that when que gets older—in just a season or two—the Controller might put quer under this Dream test, and que needs to pass it.
My little sibling can’t be dragged away in chains like they’re dragging away Mara and Leece.
Tears streak down my growns’ faces, and I know they’re thinking the same thing.
I wonder if Mom’s regretting faking my Slicing. I wonder if she’s regretting subjecting me to being the only one. I wonder, and then I look at her steely eyes as Mama puts her lips to her temple.
They’re inscrutable.
Chapter Six
WORD FROM THE shrubbery is that Leece and Mara are halfway to the Highlands proper by now. They’re rumbling that the Mach met the regular soldiers who arrested them halfway along the Tread as soon as they left the non settlement in Lethe.
That’s when we give up any hope of rescuing them en route. The Mach are the most elite of the king’s forces, specially trained in massacre tactics. They’re the ones who carried out the original occupation of Izla and the institution of nongovernmental control throughout the Grove and the Samp. They designed the massacres of the dragons and attempted to infiltrate the Plains barrier in the attack that killed Jax’s joiner.
There’s no overcoming the Mach. Their magic tears the Energies in ways most faeries refuse to do. So we can’t beat them.
Mara and Leece are lost.
“What is it, Sadie?” Mom asks me one sunup, long after the Dreaming test. The labor canon won’t go off for a while, and she’s sitting between Mama’s open legs on Banion, Aon’s hatchling tree. My little sibling is bouncing around in Mom’s lap as Mama undoes Mom’s braids.
“What, what, Saaaadie,” Aon babbles as que stretches quer wings tentatively, almost pitching querself off of Banion’s canopy.
Mom leans down to catch quer and Mama jerks her hands away from Mom’s head, narrowly avoiding yanking her hair at the sudden movement. Mama’s eyes are on me, eyebrow raised, as Mom settles back into her with Aon. Mama’s fingers pick up where they left off expertly.
I run my hand down Banion’s trunk to ask if I can collapse onto one of his lower hanging branches. He rumbles a “not now,” so I spin in the air irritably, rolling myself around until I’m regarding my growns upside down, like Zaylam tends to do to me.
“It’s nothing,” I tell them with my body. I shake my shoulders and fly off, figuring I’ll go for a morning fly with Zaylam before labor instead of hanging with the growns.
“Sadie,” Mom calls again. It’s her you-better-talk-to-me-right-now voice. My wings droop and I hover where I am, turning around cautiously. I catch Mom’s waiting expression, and all at once everything is spilling out of my lips.
“You should never have let them lock themselves back up in that caravan! How could they possibly expect to lead those soldiers off course? They couldn’t even do magic in those chains, they kept them from twisting the Energies or else they would have escaped without any help from us!”
I glance around us and switch to unspoken body language. “And you knew he could Dream too, you knew, and you abandoned him! You made me lie next to him while they took him away, and he was like me! He was so like me, and you didn’t even care!”
Mom’s eyes are full of tears, and Aon is just staring at me, quiet. Mama’s hands have left Mom’s hair, and are now bracing her waist, thumbs running up and down her skin.
“Are you done?” Mom’s voice is full of gravel, and she says it like a statement. Something hot, like shame, comes rushing to the pit of my stomach.
“Faye.” Mom ignores Mama, who takes a deep breath and looks away from both of us.
“Sadie, he was so heavily guarded from the moment they brought him here. We had no time to prepare, and we couldn’t get to him, Sadie. Don’t you think that kills me just as much as it does you? He grew up in non chains, so he was like me too, Sadie, in case you missed that bit.”
A tear slips down Mom’s cheek and breaks my heart along its path. Mama swallows and leans her head heavily onto Banion’s trunk, her eyelids fluttering closed.
“You think…” My voice is all croaky now too, and I clear it and fly tentatively closer to my growns. Aon reaches quer pudgy arms around Mom’s neck. I glance around again and swit
ch to communicating with my body. “You think it’s better to get Sliced? To not Dream? Changed your mind now that one of your young ones can and one can’t?”
Mom says nothing, her eyes wide, but Mama shifts and her eyes flash. “Since when do you talk to your mother that way?”
I glower and just stare at Aon. Que reaches for something behind me, the bulb of quer hatchling dragon, hanging loosely from Banion’s branches. Its fluorescent sunset orange glow, matching Aon’s wings, is fading by the sunup. Because que can’t Dream, the hatchling will never be born.
At least Aon Dreamed Banion in the short days after quer birth, before que was Sliced. A lot of newly borns don’t even get to connect with their hatchling tree anymore. I sigh exaggeratedly, and I hear Banion rumbling something, though I can’t feel it.
“He says you can come sit if you’d like,” Mama says stiffly. “Though I don’t know why.” She directs this to Banion. I grimace as I scoot onto his branch with my growns and sibling, stroking my thanks into Banion’s bark.
I lean around Mama to look at Mom. I take a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Mom. Sometimes…” I toss up my hands helplessly and switch to using my body to talk. “Sometimes I don’t know if I’m sad for Aon or if I’m jealous of quer. For being Sliced. Because sure, I can’t imagine life without Zay or Jorb, but…”
I shudder and the anger fades from Mom’s eyes. “But you’re always at risk of someone finding out.”
I shake my shoulders back and forth, and both my growns put one of their hands on mine.
“You were so alone in the Highlands, Sadie. We weren’t really allowed to socialize with a lot of other faeries, and I…I wanted you to be connected to people. To faeric life, to your hatchlings.” Mama rubs her shoulders and continues with her hair. Aon crawls over to me.
“I was younger, and I was alone, and I was probably stupid. Selfish. For putting you at risk like that.”
I’m shaking my head now, and I’m hugging Aon to me like quer Mom. I nod my head toward Zaylam and Jorbam. “You’re not selfish, Mom. I wouldn’t have them if you didn’t take that risk for me.” I glance at the scar above her lip and shudder. “You lost a lot too.”