by Kate L. Mary
Grizzard attacks happened often, which was exactly why so many Fortis guards were employed inside the walls of the city. The birds traveled in flocks that sometimes numbered in the hundreds, and their attacks were usually spread out evenly between the Fortis village and Sovereign City. After it was over the carcasses were collected and taken outside the walls, which meant the Fortis were free to claim them. On those days even the walls were unable to keep the smell of roasting meat out.
True to her word, Saffron ordered me back to the bakery as soon as the siren had sounded, giving the city the all clear. The streets felt empty when I headed out. The usual crowds were still cowering in buildings, and the shrieks of the grizzards had all been quieted. The road that ran in front of Saffron’s house was empty of people, but there were at least half a dozen dead birds lying on the ground. I hurried by the one that Asa had killed, shivering when I remembered the moment its cold, yellow eyes had zeroed in on me. In that instant, I had been certain it was going to kill me. As usual though, Asa had arrived just in time to save me, and I could not help thinking that I would never stop being indebted to him. There was nothing I could do to pay him back for all he had done for both Mira and me, because I was just an Outlier. I had no power. I was nothing.
With the exception of the same Huni woman who had been behind the counter the first time I was here, the bakery was empty. The electric lights shone down from above, highlighting every ridge on the woman’s shaved head, and the eyes that looked me over were the same shade of sandy brown as her skin.
“You look like you had a close call,” she said.
“I did.”
She glanced beyond me, toward the street. “They come into our village sometimes. My mother was killed by one of them when I was a little girl. Their shrieks haunt my nights.”
“I am sorry.”
The woman tore her eyes from the door barely blinking before she said, “She was a great hunter and had many lovers. She lived an honorable life and she died an honorable death.”
“It sounds like it,” I replied, unsure of how else to reply.
The Huni intimidated me more than any of the other Outlier tribes because their customs were so opposite of ours. The women were treated as if they were as strong as the men, and they did not believe in monogamy. It made it difficult, if not impossible, to know how to interact with them.
“Be careful on your way back,” the woman behind the counter said when she held the bread out to me.
“Thank you,” I replied as I took the bread from her, “I will.”
More and more people appeared in the streets as I headed home. The Fortis were hard at work clearing the bodies and cleaning the blood from the pavement, and I began to worry that Asa might not be back by the time Mira and I were ready to leave. When I turned back into the alley that led to Saffron’s house, he was already there. Waiting for me.
“Mira said you were hurt.” His gaze moved to my wrist, but he made no move to touch me. Which I was grateful for.
“I will be fine. Thanks to you.”
The urge to say more came over me, the words tickling my tongue as they tried to get out, but I bit them back. I could not tell this man—a man I was not married to—that I was indebted to him. Even if it was the truth. It would change our relationship, put me in a situation where everything would be added to the list of things I could never repay him for.
Of course, if I acknowledged the truth to myself, I would have to admit that it was already that way. At least on my side. Figuring out what was going through Asa’s head was impossible though, because he was impossible to read.
Instead of telling him all the things I had been thinking, I nodded to the door. “I need to get this bread to the kitchen so Mira and I can leave.”
His head dipped when he nodded. “I’m right behind you.”
We repeated our normal end of the day routine, Asa pretending he searched us before he made certain that we got out of the city safely, and more than any other day I found myself watching him as we went through the motions, wondering what he was thinking and more than anything, what his motivation behind it all was. They were questions I would never have the answers to, but it was impossible to banish them from my mind after such an eventful day.
By the time we made it through the gate, the scent of roasting bird was overwhelming enough to make my legs weak. Asa escorted us through the village as usual, but for the first time we met very little resistance. It seemed that everyone was busy either preparing the birds or working on the quarters being built for the Outliers. Something I had forgotten about in the midst of the grizzard attack.
Like always, Asa stopped at the threshold of his village and Mira and I continued on alone, and like always the Fortis man watched us walk away in silence. With each passing day, I found the quiet way he went about life less and less unsettling. In fact, there was something almost relaxing about it.
“What are we going to do about that?” Mira asked when we stopped to retrieve our weapons.
I glanced back once under the pretense of looking at the construction now well under way, but instead focused on Asa, who was now headed back to his village. “I don’t know.”
My gaze was torn from the man who had saved me when Mira tapped my bow against my arm. She had retrieved our weapons and replaced the rock, and was now waiting for me so we could head home. The knowing look on her face told me she knew that I had not been looking at the building. A flush spread across my cheeks and I turned my back to the village as I took the bow and arrows from her, slinging them over my shoulder. Then we started walking.
With the pounding of the hammers fading in the distance, the silence between us felt heavy. Earlier today I had begun to reconsider Bodhi’s proposition that we head out into the wastelands, but walking beside them now, with the shadow of the grizzard attack hanging over us, I once again felt the impossibility of the plan. It was about more than just my mother’s health. It was about Anja and how we would be ripping her away from the village just as she was getting close to Jax. It would be about leaving Mira behind, and Bodhi’s family too. He had not thought it all through, and I needed to do it for him.
“How is your wrist?” Mira asked.
A stifling breeze blew across our path, bringing with it dust from the wastelands, and I covered my eyes. “It will be fine. I am more concerned with how Bodhi is going to react.”
“You are lucky, Indra.”
“I know.” I glanced at her without turning my face. “There is much more to it than that.”
Mira’s brows lifted, but she said nothing, instead waiting for me to tell her on my own. In the light of what had transpired, I found myself wondering if she thought I was referring to Asa, and it was that possibility which finally made me decide to let Mira in on everything that had been happening in my life.
I first relayed what Bodhi and I had seen in the wastelands beyond the cave, and then what we had learned about the tunnel behind Sovereign City and the baby that Xandra had brought back to the village. After that it spilled out of me. I told Mira all of it, everything I had been keeping to myself, and I found that it was a relief to share my worries with someone. It should have been Bodhi, I should have been able to let him ease my anxiety, but the fear of what would happen if I did stopped me.
“You cannot tell Bodhi about Asa,” Mira said firmly when I had stopped talking.
For the first time since this had all started I felt like she understood why I was so quick to keep Asa a secret, and I was more grateful than ever that I had decided to tell her.
“I know.”
“You cannot leave either, Indra. You must know that.”
“I do. It was a nice dream, but that is all it is. If there was something beyond the wastelands, I think we would know about it after all these centuries.”
“Maybe,” Mira said, “but even if it exists, you cannot possibly survive trying to reach it. They are called the wastelands for a reason. Nothing grows. There is no water. You
bake during the day and freeze at night. Bodhi does not understand. He is smart, but he has not come out here as much as we have. He has never seen how far the wastelands go.”
She was right. Bodhi had only seen the never-ending desert from a distance. Not like Mira and me, who traveled the borderland between the Lygan Cliffs and the wastelands on a daily basis. Bodhi did not see the dangers we saw, he had never felt the dread they could bring. If we went beyond what we knew, to the ruins or further, it would be even worse. There could be creatures out there that were twice as dangerous as the ones we knew, I was certain of it.
No matter what the Sovereign brought down on us, it had to be better than what was out there.
My husband had not yet returned from the forest when Mira and I reached our village, something that happened only when his day of hunting had yielded very large game, and even after I had changed into my own clothes he had still not found his way back to me. Having nothing else to do, I decided to take the opportunity to visit with my mother.
She was asleep when I slipped into the hut, and all it took was one glimpse at her face for me to feel as if I had been pulled back in time. I was once again a small girl, and all I wanted to do was curl up beside her on the bed. As surely as if I were there at this moment, I could feel the rough skin of her fingers as they stroked my arm, the skin on her hands dry and cracked from washing dishes in Saffron’s house, but comforting anyway because they were familiar. I longed to be that girl again, to have fewer responsibilities on my own shoulders, but I knew there was no going back, and I also knew that my mother was too weak to carry the burden. I was the adult now, the passage markings on my temples proved it. Both my mother and Anja needed me, and I owed it to them to push aside silly notions about running away and instead focus on what I needed to do inside the city to ensure that my family had the things they needed.
Careful not to wake my mother, I lowered myself onto the floor beside her thin mattress. Her face was relaxed, but even with the extra game Bodhi had provided, she seemed to have lost more weight. I was well aware that her time was getting shorter every day, a fact that no amount of medicine from Sovereign City could change. Since getting married I had found less and less free time to spend with her, and as I stared at her thin frame now, I chastised myself for being so selfish. She had taken me in when I had no one, raised me and trained me to take her place in the city. I owed her everything, but over the last couple months I had neglected my duties. It was something that needed to change.
My mother stirred, and with her eyes still closed reached out to find my hand. Her skin was no longer as dry as it had once been, but her hands were bonier, foreign.
She turned her head my way and opened her eyes. “Do not make yourself feel bad, child.”
“What do you mean?” I scooted closer and her fingers flexed on mine, giving them a reassuring squeeze.
“I know you, Indra. You are feeling guilty that you cannot be here more. Are you not?” I nodded, and she gave my hand another squeeze, this one weaker than the last. “Do not trouble yourself. You have a husband to attend to and I sleep most of the time now. Things have changed, and I will not allow you to take on blame where there is none.”
Her words seemed to sink into me. Instead of making me feel better, they caused a lump to form in my throat. “I should try to come more,” I said in a gravelly whisper.
“You come enough.” She glanced down to our entwined hands and her mouth pulled down in the corner. “What happened to your wrist?”
“There was a grizzard attack in the city today.”
She shook her head ever so slightly. “I do not miss those birds.”
“I was out. On the street.” I paused and swallowed when the memory of the large bird’s yellow eyes made me shiver. “It was a close call, but a Fortis guard managed to take the bird out before it got me.”
“At least they are good for something.”
She let out a deep sigh and her eyes once again slipped shut, but her grip on my hand remained firm. I stayed quiet, thinking that she might be once again drifting off to sleep and not wanting to disturb her if rest was what she required.
Her eyes were still closed when she said, “I miss the city, sometimes. Not the work or the Sovereign, and especially not the Fortis, but the beauty of it all.”
Beauty? I had never looked at much of anything in the city as beautiful, at least not after the first week or two of working there, and especially not lately. True, in the beginning I had marveled at the chandelier and the homes that were solid and tall, towering over my head. I had stared in awe at the paintings hanging in Saffron’s house. Pictures of gardens that were more colorful than even the wilds, and bodies of water that stretched out the way the wastelands did now. But those things had lost their charm, and now they seemed as useless and impractical as the Sovereign themselves.
“It’s hard to see at times,” my mother continued without opening her eyes, “but there is so much beauty that we take for granted. In the wastelands and the Lygan Cliffs, even in the creatures that live there.” Her eyes opened to slits and focused on me. “They have adapted and found a home in a place where nothing should be able to live. Even better, they have thrived. Just as we have.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Sovereign have spent centuries trying to keep the Outliers down, but we have not given up, have not let them win. Instead, we have figured out a way to survive, and we outnumber them. We are stronger than we believe ourselves to be, Indra. Always remember that.”
I found myself unable to utter a sound. My mother was a strong woman, this was something I had always known. She had taken on the responsibility of keeping Anja and myself fed after our father’s death, and she had done it without a complaint. But she was still an Outlier and a woman, two things that should have worked against her in this world. Inside the city walls we were looked at as lower than animals, and in our village we were told time and time again that we were weak and needed to be protected. And yet, looking at my mother now, she acted as if she did not believe any of those things. The opposite, actually. Even as sickly and weak as she was right now, the expression in her eyes made her look fierce and strong.
“I do not believe that I am strong,” I said.
“You have fought off lygan attacks.” Her fingers tightened on mine, showing that she had more strength left in her than I had originally thought. “You have faced people who violated you.”
My cheeks flushed at the memory of Lysander and I wanted to look away, but I found it impossible. It was as if my mother’s gaze had captured mine.
“I had to,” I whispered. “If I did not, you and Anja would have suffered.”
“That is strength, Indra. Being able to stand tall when the world wants nothing but to pound you to dust. That. Is. Strength. Remember that.” Her grip on my hand eased and her body relaxed, and a beat later her eyes were once again closed. “It is something you can not afford to forget. Not when the world is as uncertain as it is. If I had been unaware of my strength when your father died, we would have starved.”
I kept my hand in hers. In no time at all her breathing had deepened and her body had gone completely slack. I knew that she needed the rest, but I found myself wishing she were still awake. Her words were still spinning around in my head, and I was trying desperately to grab hold of them, but after a lifetime of being told I was nothing, it was a difficult thing to do.
Even though the things my mother had said were true, I could not feel strong. Facing a lygan was a matter of survival. If I had not stood my ground, the thing would have ripped me to shreds. It did not mean I was strong, only that I had no desire to die. It was different with the Sovereign and Fortis. Looking the other way when they hurt others, enduring the abuse they flung at me, that was how I would survive inside the city walls. Fighting back was unrealistic and would only get me killed.
Just like the day that Mira and I had encountered the lygan, Bodhi saw that I was injured the second he se
t foot in our hut that night.
“Indra.” He took my hand gingerly in his, staring at my wrist with an expression that made him look as if he were in physical pain. “What happened? Who did this to you?”
“No one, calm yourself,” I said gently. “There was a grizzard attack today, and I fell trying to get away. I am fine.”
His shoulders relaxed even though concern still swam in his eyes. “It looks swollen.”
“It barely hurts.” I pried my wrist from his hands. “Did you get something big?”
“A boar.” He straightened his shoulders the way he always did when he was proud of something he had accomplished. “A big one.”
I wrinkled my nose at the thought of the round, flat-nosed creatures with the pointed tusks that could gore a man all the way through. They were a treat when cooked, especially as rare as they were this far from the lake, but they were mean and smelled worse than the dung building at the edge of our village.
Bodhi was watching me though, and the expectation shimmering in his eyes made a smile curl up my lips. I knew what he was waiting for, and I had no desire to disappoint him.
I stood on the tips of my toes and kissed him gently, whispering, “Thank you for providing for me. ”
His smile grew and he seemed to stand taller at my words. My husband may have seen me as strong enough to hunt, and he may have said that women could take care of themselves if necessary, but he was still Winta, and in our tribe men prided themselves on being able to take care of their women. Bodhi was no different.
17
Lysander’s wedding day arrived at last, and it was a flurry of activity from the moment I stepped into the house to the moment I left to return home. Not that I had expected anything less. The actual ceremony was held in the community building, a lavish event that all the Sovereign were invited to, but the feast that followed was held in the house and would be attended by only the elite.