“Ugh, dust!” I exclaimed, patting wildly at my navy hockey skirt.
The tension broke as Sam and I burst out in howling laughter at my reaction.
“It’s that damn short skirt you’re wearing,” Sam laughed, teasingly pulling my skirt down toward my knees. “You know men can’t resist those killer legs,” she said, eyes rolling.
I felt my ears flush and my cheeks turn scarlet. Sometimes, I was just like the girls I hated in that I also used my looks to get some attention. I sighed, disappointed in myself. I wasn’t built like any other sixteen year old girl. I fervently wished that I was tall and slim. Instead, I stood a meager five-foot-two and had short, curvy legs and an apple-shaped bottom. In addition, I was somewhat small busted. I quickly turned when the bike came to a swift stop between a group of boys, who were all highly amused, shouting and laughing. Sam ground her teeth together. I knew what the set in her jaw meant. I grabbed her arm to settle her anger. The dark prince continued to stare in our direction, and without removing his helmet he dismounted from his bike. I turned away.
“I won’t satisfy him that easily,” I said out loud.
“Well, that would be a first,” Sam mocked, opening her eyes wide.
“Hey, that hurts,” I sneered.
“The truth always hurts,” she said, staring me square in the eyes.
It really did. Did I give in to my rapist? The horrible thought brought my guilt to the surface, my chest threatening to explode. I shoved it far down again. I could not think like that, even if it might have been true.
“What?” I heard a voice behind us say.
It was Maya, who was suddenly at our side. I glared at Sam. My anger at her comment twisted like a wire around my heart, squeezing the life out of it.
“Touchy, are we?” Sam said as she glared back.
She wasn’t joking anymore. The sarcasm in her voice was clearly noticeable. She looked away, saying to Maya that it was nothing, but I didn’t believe her.
Maya raised her hands. “Did I interrupt something?” she asked, stepping backwards.
“No, of course not,” I remarked, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her toward us. Sam had something on her mind – I wasn’t ready to hear it. I was thankful Maya was there to defuse the tension, before I told Sam how she could sometimes be the biggest bitch ever. I held on tightly to Maya’s arm, making sure she didn’t back off. Okay, so I cowered behind her, but Sam was a vicious girl; I didn’t stand a chance. Grateful that she was on my side, I gave her a slight smile. Sam then interlocked her arm on Maya’s other side. Maya was Minoan and approximately a year younger than we were. She played for one of the other schools’ hockey teams. Poseidon only had three schools: the Military School, the Arts and Agriculture School (which we attended), and the Science and Medical School where the English students resided. I often thought, with a good measure of sarcasm, how appropriate it was that our hereditary languages divided us. Maya had dark, silky, shoulder-length hair and was also a curvy girl. She was half a head taller than I was but half a head shorter than Sam. We resumed walking toward the exit, which lead us out onto the wide main street. This street was constructed of compressed dark soil, but years of traffic had given the soil the appearance of hard shiny rock. It ran alongside the western wall of the teachers’ quarters, bordered a small road that ran parallel to the boys’ apartments, and followed an orchid of apple and peach trees into the shopping district made up of a short row of cafés and clothing stores. I missed the pink orchid blossoms that bloomed in spring, the crisp smell following a downpour and the fresh taste of sweet dew on my lips. We had to clone our fruit because there hadn’t been a warm spring in ages. This robbed us of the rewards of beautiful blossoms and, to be honest, I could taste the difference between the reproduction of our natural fruits and the real thing. The road curved toward a string of modern containers that held most of the shops and small businesses. The Minoan folk hired some of these from the Council. Trading was what they called it. I heard the boys whistle and shout behind us as we walked out of the gate. A loud howl rang through the air followed by laughter and a dull thump. The three of us turned simultaneously. The dark prince had his back toward us, and lying flat on his back between his legs was a red-headed boy. I felt something inside me move. I am not sure if I was scared, proud, turned-on or grateful, but whatever the feeling was, it was strong and paralyzing. No one had ever defended me like that.
“Boys,” Maya joked.
“Tell me about it,” said Sam, as we walked away.
“Shopping?” Maya asked as we headed through the gates, leaving the boys staring after us.
“Hungry,” Sam said, pointing to her stomach.
Sitting on the cold steps of a café, Maya and I exchanged sandwiches. Neither of us was sure if we felt like tuna or chicken, so we had half of each.
“Look,” I said to Sam.
“What?” Sam snapped, crumbs falling from her mouth as she spoke.
I swallowed my food and pointed toward the sky.
“Sky, yeah,” Sam said. “I see it.”
I tapped her on the shoulder.
“Clouds, you smart-ass.”
Sam shrugged.
“You’ve never seen clouds before?”
I bumped against her with my shoulder.
“Not like that!”
The clouds seemed heavier and darker than usual, swirling and spiraling over Silverwood Forest. I drew in a deep breath as an old, yet familiar smell made my senses tingle.
“Oh,” Maya interrupted. “My brother says there’s been a change in the skies. We thought we saw lightning last night.”
Last night, I thought inquisitively. My mind took me back to the night before when the stranger had been in our kitchen. I felt slightly guilty at how rude I had been to him. It was deserved, I assured myself. How dare he openly mock me like that? I wasn’t sure why I had acted the way I had acted the night before. Usually, I would have shied away from confrontation. It was the first time I had felt alive with fury, automatically saying exactly what was on my mind. Good for me, I nodded to myself.
“The atmospheric pressure, you mean,” I heard Sam say.
“OMG, Sam! Get over yourself. There is no one here to impress with your scientific weather talk,” I said irritably.
Sam cocked her head toward the café window. François was sitting inside with a bunch of his buddies. Sam, literally, drooled over François. I thought he was nice, but I would never date him or any of his friends. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in any of the boys from our school. I looked through the café window and scanned each one’s face. I rolled my eyes at Maya, who smiled in acknowledgement. I didn’t know what Sam saw in those boys. English boys, I thought to myself. I recalled the dark prince on his motorbike and felt warm with excitement. I knew he was English as no Afrikaans boy would have had so much freedom, so much sex appeal, or held so much danger in his stare. Somehow our school felt more militarized than the Military School. A repetitive tapping on the window, and an annoying voice calling for Sam, caught our attention. It was Werner, a blond, sharp-faced, wide-shouldered obnoxious boy who always ran his mouth off. Sometimes, he talked so much, it gave one the impression that his mouth was growing wider with each word and would eventually swallow him whole. I hoped he would swallow himself and save us all from his stupid babbling.
“Poseidon to Sam, Poseidon to Sam! They’re calling you,” Maya teased Sam, while she rubbed the crumbs from her mouth.
I stood up and threw the crusts of my sandwich into the decomposer next to the recycling bins. Sam got to her feet, wiped her mouth and pulled her ponytail tighter.
“I’m going in!” she said excitedly.
She stood in front of me, her chin tilted upwards, and I wiped the last lingering crumb from her chin.
“You’re good to go,” I declared, patting her on the arm. “Go get ’em soldier!” I mocked.
“See you later!” She waved and half skipped toward the caf�
� entrance, her ponytail bouncing from side to side.
“Ta-ta!” I yelled as I waved back. I envied her social skills.
I held Maya’s arm as we walked down the café stairs, across the road and past the heavy iron gates as they stood open for a few more hours, proceeding down a narrow path. I could smell the strange yet familiar scent on the breeze and as we headed into the forest, I noticed that the dark clouds above us had made the trail a little dimmer than usual. The contorted branches overhead were intertwined, forming a tunnel of dark branches that hugged us onto the rigid path. Spooky, I thought. The path always appeared abandoned and unused, but I knew that wasn’t true. It was the only path between the town and their village, probably used every day. I stared at Maya absently. She turned her head and smiled, her smile then turning into a frown.
“Hey, I never noticed the color of your eyes before,” she said.
“Oh, they have a mind of their own,” I said bashfully, averting my eyes to the ground. Not many people knew about my eyes. Sam promised never to tell anyone and I guess that perhaps that was the reason I distanced myself from others. I felt a strange sense of shyness wash over me as I responded to her odd remark. Usually, I was the one who noticed these things about others, not the other way around.
“I thought you had blue eyes,” she said softly.
“I did.”
“Oh” was all she said, as if she didn’t want to intrude.
“They changed color a while ago. I just woke up one day and poof!” I flung my hands into the air. I could tell Maya couldn’t decide if I was joking or not.
“They’re extraordinary,” she said, still staring at me.
I stared back at her. “It doesn’t bother me, if that’s what you want to know.”
She kept silent.
“Hey, no big deal, right?” I declared, shrugging my shoulders.
“I guess not,” she replied quietly.
She fell silent once again, but I could sense she wanted to say something. She bit down on her lip.
“Oh no, you don’t believe that nonsense about changing, do you?”
“Well, yes. It’s not just a story you know,” she said, nervously peering into the forest.
I swallowed hard, remembering Errol, the boy who had raped me. They said he had changed. It was said that some of us would give in to the Change, but genetic enhancement had its faults. Our recipe of genes was incomplete, so even though we were the third generation of The Broken, something special awaited us upon changing. I have to see it to believe it, I decided. I had thought only Sam and I knew about it as we had read it in my mother’s journal. It was clear from Maya’s remark that the Minoans also knew about it. Maybe that’s why we were discouraged from mingling with them, I thought. Maya was still staring at me.
“Broken. I get it,” I said, and immediately my mind started to wander again. My thoughts turned to my dreams of wild cats and the ocean.
“Hey, you okay?” I heard Maya ask.
“Sorry, I’m not used to people complimenting me, that’s all.”
“That’s nonsense!” Maya shrieked with disbelief.
“I’m serious. If people do, I don’t notice or pretend not to.”
“Well, if it counts for anything, you’re hot,” she said and smiled.
“Hot?” I queried. “I didn’t know that Minoans used words like ‘hot’.”
“You don’t think we just hang around our village the whole day and twiddle our thumbs, do you?” she asked playfully. “My mom says I can attend the same school you go to next year,” she noted, changing the subject. Her navy eyes twinkled brightly.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
“That’s…”
“Cool, I know. The only reason why I’ll be able to go to school in the city is because it seems the Council owes my family a favor.”
“A favor, for what?” I asked way too bluntly, slapping my hand over my mouth, instantly recognizing my own pig-headedness.
“I’m sorry,” I said timidly and somewhat embarrassed.
“No need.” She waved her hand at me, smiling sincerely.
I felt ashamed that I, who hated judgment, had judged her. Why would the Council owe her family a favor? I wondered. The thought lingered for a while, twisting and turning in the back of my mind. I hated the Council for the simple fact that they dictated what we did and who we were. Their wish was our command! I wasn’t that narrow minded. I wasn’t satisfied with the life they gave us and I never would be. I could feel the pull of adventure and a better existence tugging at the strings of my heart, my dreams, my everything. The next fifteen minutes of our stroll to the market was spent in silence. I loved to be quiet when walking through that particular part of the forest as it was my favorite. I loved the way the forest opened out onto smooth, gigantic boulders, like something out of one of those fantasy books I read as a child. Behind the boulders, water flowed in a snaking stream that trickled down the rocks, and a beautiful wooden bridge stretched over the stream before the stream cascaded down into the valley below. I could never make out the valley below the falls because of the tree cover, but I could hear that it was a fair drop. The huge trunks of the silverwood trees bowed over the narrow winding path. Silverwood trees were evergreen and lush and they emanated a refreshing scent that held notes of fresh pine. During the summer months, the ground was a carpet of tiny purple flowers. Somehow, the forest seemed larger, emptier and quieter than I remembered it. I reasoned that I was probably just imagining things, that perhaps my heart was reflected in what I experienced around me. But something was troubling me – something seemed out of place. The hairs on the back of my neck tingled as a cold breeze cut through the air. Maya must have noticed how drawn in I was by my surroundings and broke the eerie silence.
“It’s said that the forest originated from Earth.” She smiled plainly. “Or at least, its genetic make-up did.”
She cocked her head to one side in front of me to catch my attention. She knew it was hard to snap me out of my dream world. I had known Maya for almost half my life. Her cousin sold jewelry at the market and owned a jewelry store on the shopping strip as well. Sometimes her aunt, Anaya, sat beside Kim during my sessions in which they ‘observed my case’. Anaya was also one of the Minoan representatives on the Council. I thought about Kim for a moment and felt a sharp pain in my stomach. I wondered what ‘suitable punishment’ the school board would decide on for Sam and I this time. Having to see Kim first thing on Monday was making me feel queasy. I wished I could run away, but that was insane. Where on Poseidon would I go? I realized that Maya was still talking and tried to catch up with the conversation.
“…nearly died out some time ago. Our people made a deal with your scientists.”
“A deal?”
I looked down at my feet.
“Humans could share this island with us and in return, the scientists would provide us with trees and other plant life that would bring Poseidon back to life. No one has figured out why this planet just decided to quit on us.”
“Hmm,” I said thoughtfully. “What else did we trade?” I asked, my suspicions rising by the minute.
“Anaya could tell you more,” she said.
I silently glanced back down the narrow path over my shoulder. Ahead of me, the dark forest floor curled around a big silverwood tree and disappeared behind the boulders. I listened for the trickle of the small stream that cut through the boulders like a dancing blade of silver.
“You don’t like her?” Maya asked faintly.
“I do. I do!” I protested hastily.
“Good,” she said and smiled. “I was beginning to wonder if you liked anyone.”
“Ha, ha. Funny,” I said sarcastically. “I like you, don’t I?”
“You better!” she replied, squeezing my arm tightly.
She kept both of her hands wrapped around the top of my arm as we walked around the bend. In a somewhat unexpected state of silence and serenity we followed the path deeper into the hollow of
the canyon. Between two sets of large boulders that were separated by a long wooden bridge, the canyon opened up onto a dry river bed, resembling a wide expanse of desert seemingly covered by blue and gray stones. White pebbles, small and round, lay loose on the parched surface waiting to be swept away by a raging river, to be taken away from their concave limbo of loneliness and relieved of having to spend an eternity in a place where they did not belong. Somehow talking to Maya stirred something inside me; I would find my answers only from the Minoans. I began walking with a little more haste as urgent questions started to form in my mind. I now knew why we weren’t allowed to interact with Minoans and that they knew all about us, yet, I suspected that they knew more. I needed answers in order to uncover our true identities and to unlock the mysteries behind our origins, our home planet, and my mother, who was said to have died giving birth to me. There were so many questions I hadn’t even thought of. Where did I begin?
“May I ask you a personal question, Maya?” I asked.
“Sure,” she hesitantly remarked, uncertain.
“I’ve heard the others say that… that your Minoan parents took you in… that your uncle found you in the caves. Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true, except for the part about my uncle. I don’t have an uncle or a father anymore for that matter.” She lowered her eyes. “No one really knows who my real parents are.” I wasn’t sure if I should continue, but I felt compelled to ask anyway.
“You have no recollection of your parents?”
“No,” she said openly. “I don’t have any memories from before I was found. I remember nothing of where or who my real parents were. I don’t even know if I am from this planet.”
I stared at the smooth surface of the boulders thoughtfully.
“Does it hurt?” I asked, deep in contemplation, my index finger curled around my mouth.
“Sometimes,” she answered, turning to face me.
I could see the hurt was there, somewhere out of reach, behind her navy blue eyes.
“Should I say I’m sorry?”
The Broken Destiny Page 4