“I will, Myrtle said I would.”
I shifted even closer to Thomas, wanting to crawl onto his lap and never leave. He was the one person I trusted, the man who saved and protected me from this vile world.
He kissed the side of my head. “Well, she might not be right this time. She’s got it wrong in the past. And let’s remember that she’s completely batty.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that about Myrtle.”
He chuckled. “Athena, you’ve called her far worse.”
I shoved him with my shoulder. He was right. I had called her a lot worse when she stepped up as the new village elder. It was a time when I was still raw, hurt from my gran’s unexpected death. And it was Thomas who had come to my rescue, saved me from sinking into a depression even worse than the miserable darkness that surrounded us.
“Why don’t you talk to Hannah?” Thomas said, reaching for my hand. “She was summoned to see Paymon yesterday. Haven’t you spoken to her yet?”
I shook my head. I’d been so wrapped up in worrying about myself that I’d forgotten it was Hannah’s birthday yesterday.
Thomas raised his brow. “Make sure you talk to her today.”
“I can’t believe I forgot.”
He placed another kiss to the side of my head. “She’ll understand.” He released my hand and shifted to the side of the bed.
I picked at the fraying threads on the edge of one of the blankets. “Myrtle said that she’d be leaving the village. She’ll be sent to the Master.”
“Well, you need to talk to her. Find out if crazy Myrtle was right.” He sighed before standing up and reaching for his jacket. “She’s your best friend. Ask her. I know Paymon scares you but he won’t do anything to you, it’s the Ascension Ceremony we need to worry about. That’s when you’ll be taken away, not today, and after all this worrying, you might not be going anywhere.” His familiar dimple appeared in his left cheek as he smiled. “And like I said earlier, you’ve got a party to look forward to tonight.”
I scowled at him. I wasn’t in a party mood.
He pulled his jacket on before returning to the edge of the bed and grinning. “I wasn’t going to mention it, but . . .”
“But what?” I said, trying pointlessly to hide my curiosity.
He shook his head. “No, no, I can’t tell you. It’ll spoil the surprise.”
I shifted across the bed, dragging the covers with me. “Tell me,” I said, reaching for his thigh.
He chuckled before tapping his chin with his finger. “What would you say if I suggested that your twenty-first party became slightly more than just a birthday party?”
“Explain.”
“What about if it was also, oh, I don’t know . . . say . . . your engagement party?”
“My what?” A lightness fluttered in my chest.
“Your, or rather, our engagement party.”
“Really?”
He crouched at the side of the bed, never taking his eyes off me. “Athena, will you do me the honour of promising to be my wife?”
I stared at him. Thomas and I had been inseparable since Gran and I arrived in the village. We’d grown up together. He’d been the boy who stopped the other children picking on me, the boy who’d made me laugh through the dark days, and I wanted nothing more than to settle down with him in the village and have a family of our own.
“You gonna answer me?” Thomas said, tilting his head to the side, suddenly serious.
I nodded.
Thomas’s lips lifted at one corner. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I don’t want you to be sent away any more than you want to go. And if you are taken away from me then I want you to know that I’ll be here for you when you get back.”
“Thomas . . . I . . .” My words failed to form. I threw myself at him, and he stood up as I wrapped my legs around his hips.
“Hey,” Thomas chuckled in between my fervent kisses. His familiar hands held my thighs. “Look at you, all naked and warm. I should be hung, drawn and quartered with the thoughts I’m having at the moment.” He dipped his head and captured my lips. Stumbling forward with me still wrapped around him, we fell onto the bed. “Don’t tell anyone we’re engaged,” he said. “Let’s surprise them tonight.”
I nodded before dragging him back for more kisses.
The holler of the village men trudging to the fields rung out as they passed outside.
“Shit,” he mumbled. “I have to go.”
I pouted and attempted to pull him closer for another kiss, but he straightened, pushing himself away from me. His eyes narrowed as they wandered over my body, and then he sighed. “You’ll have to make your own porridge,” he said, his eyes shooting to the heavy rug hanging at the window. “I can’t be late again.”
“Go then,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows, and flashing him a flirtatious smile. “Don’t let me keep you.”
He shook his head, a grin pulling at the sides of his mouth. “I’ll definitely see you later.” He strode to the window and pulled the heavy curtain back. “Keep the bed warm,” he said before throwing the wooden shutters open and jumping through the space. The rug swung back to its original position.
“Pig,” I muttered under my breath. But I was glowing inside. We were to be married. We’d have children together. We’d have our own family.
Thomas had lost all his family when our village demon set fire to his house. He had as much reason as me to hate Paymon. His family survived the demons’ arrival but perished soon after. My parents and sister presumably died when the demons came. They’d have been in a car travelling at speed when the world literally split open. Hardly anyone survived the carnage that occurred on the roads that day. I was eight when it happened—old enough to remember, too young to understand.
I sighed as I grasped the blankets and pulled them tightly around me. I didn’t look to the window as the footfall of the passing men reached a crescendo. All the men who were fit enough to work trudged to the fields surrounding the village. It was a wonder anything grew under the constant heavy veil of darkness, but the fields around us were controlled by our village demon. He, and he alone, had the power to restore the light over the fields where the crops grew and the animals lived.
Yawning and stretching, I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I shivered when my bare feet touched the cold wooden floor and hurried to the chest of drawers containing my socks and shoes. My socks reached my mid-thigh, and my shoes, made from soft leather, covered the soles and sides of my feet. Laces threaded criss-cross over the top of my foot and around my ankle. They were comfortable to wear but offered little protection from the sharp stones and hard ground around the village. Only the men wore boots, the hardwearing thick leather was needed when they worked in the fields. The women were left with the flimsy coverings. I pulled my thin linen underdress over my head, wriggling as the coarse material scratched my skin, and then added my day dress over the top. I looked at the basic cut of what I wore and sighed at its simple box-like style. The underdress had long sleeves and covered my body from my neck to my ankles; the day dress laced up the front from my waist to my neck, and it also reached my ankles. It was brown and dull. Even the leather twisted belt I added did little to give the dress any defined shape. I vaguely remembered the clothes from before: bright colours, floaty skirts, jeans, thick coats to keep the cold out, proper shoes, underwear. We had no way of making those items in the village. In the thirteen years since the demons came, the clothes we brought with us had rotted, fallen to pieces or worn out. Gradually, we’d adapted to make the most basic of items.
I hated this monotonous, hard life. Gran told me what it was like before they came, and I always marvelled at how easy everything must have been. I longed for that life even though I only had vague memories of it. Electricity sounded like magic. There were computers, phones, televisions, engines, cars, and aeroplanes—machines that flew in the sky. I glanced toward the window, picturing the world beyond. The only things that flew in the
sky now were the birds that surrounded our village.
Ravens.
Thomas had caught one once, pulled its neck and then plucked it before roasting it on a spit over the central fire. But I’d refused to eat it. They were messengers of the demons, and I wanted nothing to do with them.
I yawned loudly as I picked the lantern from the top of the chest of drawers and stepped into the other room—the combined kitchen and living area. A fire danced within the central stone fireplace. It split the house in two, offering its welcome heat to both the bedroom and the living area.
This main room was bathed in a soft flickering orange glow from the fire. A lit lantern was situated on the large wooden table, and added another angle to the sinister shadows dancing on the walls. Four wooden chairs, all various designs, were tucked underneath the table. The only other item of furniture was a tall cupboard that kept all the pots and pans out of sight. I strode to the window and pulled the rug back before opening the shutters. The familiar smells—smoke, damp thatch, and stale cooking—and the sounds of a village waking up greeted me. I cast my gaze across the centre of the village and toward where Paymon lived. I squinted and was sure I could make out the fuzzy outline of his house through the dusty haze.
My house was set back from the centre of the village—one row of mismatched homes between mine and the bare earth around the large fire. All our houses looked like triangles from the front and back, the roofs sloped right to the ground. We lived simply, using the resources of the forest to build what we needed. Some people had brought, or stolen, items from the distant towns and cities where we used to live. Disease and the renegades, gangs of outlaws, that now lived there, and the dangers in between, made journeys back too perilous. A few houses had small windows with white plastic frames that rested in wooden low walls. They offered protection from the bitter winds that frequently rushed through the village. I had wooden shutters nestled against the open spaces, like the majority of people, and all of us had wooden doors, either made in the village, or once again stolen from the cities, but behind each one hung a thick rug to fight the chill.
“Athena!” Hannah waved as she strode toward my door. “The men have gone,” she said, tucking her long blond hair behind her ears. “Let’s get our jobs done, and then we can make you look pretty for tonight.”
Her exuberance was difficult to ignore; she was like a whirlwind whenever she entered a room. But I nodded my reluctant agreement to her offer.
“What’s wrong?” she said before linking her arm with mine and leading me to one of the chairs at the table. “You’ve got something on your mind. I can always tell. Sit and tell me what the problem is.” She looked at the spluttering fire and tutted. “And I’ll make the porridge seeing as you haven’t.”
I sat on one of the hard wooden chairs as she unclasped her cloak and threw it next to me.
“Do you ever wish it could be like it used to be?” I asked, placing my elbows on the table and resting my head in my hands. “Bright and sunny, magic homes, clean clothes?”
Hannah eyed me wearily. “We need to embrace our life as it is. Make the most of it, Athena. It’s no good pining for something in the past.”
“Maybe we can have it again.” The light was the key—it wasn’t the only thing that changed when they came, but it was the one thing I’d decided they couldn’t tolerate. Why block the light and live in a depressing world? There was one reason and one reason only as far as I was concerned. They couldn’t stand the light. Maybe it hurt them, burnt them, I didn’t know, but I was confident it did something. That’s why they hid it from us with the thick layer of grey clouds.
I sighed, sliding my hands to rub at the back of my neck as I looked toward Hannah. “It might not happen in our lifetime, but eventually we’ll become as wise and powerful as we were before they came. We’ll find a way to get the light back and destroy them.”
“Shhh . . .” she scolded. “They may hear you.”
I raised my eyebrows at her statement. She sounded no different than Thomas.
“It’s the light I miss the most,” I mumbled. “I’m sick of all this gloom. Can you imagine what it would be like if it came back?”
“We’d probably all fry or be blinded by it.” She scooped the oats that I’d left to soak overnight into a large black pot and hooked it over the fire. “Stop day-dreaming. It’ll never happen, and it does you no good to obsess over it the way you do.”
She usually humoured me when I started ranting about the dark, but I could tell that now was not the time. I knew we’d not fry, or be blinded by it. I’d stood in the light once, many years ago now, when Gran was alive. Inherent curiosity had pushed me forward to go to the beam of light that lit the sky above the fields, not just sit on the roof of our house and stare at it for hours on end. I’d followed the men one morning, sneaking away before Gran was out of bed. When they got to the fields I’d stayed along the perimeter watching them, ensuring nothing untoward happened. Gran always warned me that there were creatures in the forest that could attack and kill, and over the years several men had indeed disappeared, never to be found. But that day, I didn’t care, and I longed to feel the heat of the sun, and see the true brightness of everything around me.
“Didn’t Thomas have breakfast this morning?” Hannah asked, her back to me as she poured a jug of water into the oat mixture.
“No,” I said, snapping from my memories. “He rushed off. We slept in. Which reminds me, I need to see Myrtle after we’ve eaten.” Myrtle provided the women of the village with Queen Ann’s lace, our only form of contraception.
I twisted a length of my dark hair, running its wild smoothness though my fingers. It was a nervous habit, one my Gran always scolded me for.
Hannah grinned. “I need to see her as well.”
I chuckled. “Who is it this week?”
Hannah tapped the side of her nose with her finger. “Not telling.”
“Hannah, I’m your best friend. You should tell me these things.”
“Aren’t you fed up of having to go to Myrtle for the lace?” she said. “She judges us every time we ask her for it. Does she glare and tut at you whenever you ask for it?” She wafting the smoke from the fire away from her face.
“No, not that I’ve noticed.” I didn’t have the heart to tell Hannah that it was probably because I was in a steady relationship with Thomas. Hannah wasn’t in a relationship with anyone. But Myrtle wasn’t stupid—she gave the Queen Anne’s lace to those of us seeking its results. Even though it wasn’t completely successful, it had always worked for me. Its side-affects were mild, a slight stomach-ache, perhaps a little constipation—both better than ignoring the situation and risking the alternative.
Hannah swung to face me, waving the wooden spoon in her hand. “I’m thinking of picking some of it myself, then I’ve got my own supply.”
“No, you can’t!” My heart lurched, and I sat straight in my chair. “It’s too dangerous. Remember what happened to Charlotte?”
Hannah screwed her nose up. “I’m not stupid. I know the difference between poison hemlock and the lace.”
“Promise me you won’t,” I said, appealing to her as I recalled Charlotte’s agonising screams. The silence that followed was even more unsettling. “Hannah! Promise me.”
She sighed and then nodded before turning back to the porridge pot. “We can take Thomas some food later seeing as he missed breakfast,” she said, completely changing the subject. “Creep out when nobody’s looking and surprise him.”
I frowned, watching her as she continued to stir the porridge. She was acting so normal. Was she staying in the village or had Myrtle been right with her prediction that she’d be sent away in a few days? I shuddered and desperately tried to forget that today was my birthday. It was as unwanted as the stupid darkness.
“You know we can’t take him anything,” I said, pushing my nagging thoughts aside. “We’re not allowed through the forest.”
She turned again while still
tending to our breakfast. “Don’t be so boring. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“It’s too dangerous.” My thoughts drifted again to when I’d stepped out into the rays of light at the fields. My body had warmed as if heated by a thousand fires. Even my toes felt the tendrils of heat that melted the harsh bitterness of the soggy and cold earth. I’d narrowed my gaze, and tried to stare at the sun, but it was impossible. Years of gloom had diminished my tolerance to any form of natural light, and my eyes had watered and stung as I looked around.
My journey to the light over the field had been uneventful, but as I made my way back through the forest a loud howl had erupted in the distance. It echoed through the trees, before wrapping its sinister tone around me. I could still remember the putrid stench of rotting flesh. I could still hear my frantic loud heartbeats as I ran. And I could still hear the pounding footsteps of something chasing me.
I’d never stepped foot into the forest since that day.
“The men do it every day,” Hannah said, as if her statement had a bearing on what we did.
“We’re not men.” I shifted from my chair to fetch two bowls and spoons from the cupboard. I placed them on the low bench next to the fire.
Hannah smiled her thanks. “Well, maybe we should both live a bit, have a last adventure. I’ll not be here in a few days.” Her voice faltered, but she quickly recovered. “I doubt you will either.”
I slumped back into my chair and placed my shaking hands under the table out of sight.
“So Paymon confirmed that you’re going to the Master’s?”
She nodded, avoiding my gaze.
“Are you scared?”
Hannah stopped stirring the porridge. “No. I’m not scared. I’ll miss my brothers when I go, but not my parents.”
I widened my eyes at her admittance. “But your parents—”
“Interfere all the time. Restrict me. Tell me what I can and can’t do.” She tipped her head to each side as she checked off her list. “You know what they’re like. They’ve been like it for years. There are times I wish they were dead. All they care about are my brothers.”
Iniquity (The Ascent Book 1) Page 2