by Janean Worth
His stomach wrenched with nausea. It was impossible. He must render restitution. He did not care if he would be killed. He must go back for his family.
“I cannot . . .” he choked out. Bitter sobs struggled to escape him, but he held them back. “I cannot.”
Chapter Four
Merrilee crept into the building that adjoined the one that she lived in with the other Strays, which everyone called the sanctuary. The adjoining building, where the horses were kept, they called the stable. And the stable was where Jack was. She crept silently inside the stable, gliding soundlessly into a large pool of shadow. In the shadows she felt safe. In the shadows she did not have the lingering feeling that someone, or something, was watching her. Spying on her. Merrilee knew it was odd for her to just to sit in the shadows and watch Jack as he tended to the horses, because she had developed such an aversion to being watched herself, but he made her feel safe. She didn’t know why he made her feel safe—other than she didn’t imagine that someone was watching her nearly so much when she was watching him—because he wasn’t very brave and he wasn’t very strong. But she couldn’t really hold it against him that he wasn’t brave or strong. None of the Strays were brave and strong. The Sovereign had seen to that. Except maybe Mathew and Kara, who had never been true Strays, quashed by the Sovereign’s evil. They were still brave. Still strong.
Yes, Kara, who had escaped a life in the House and caused the death of Merrilee’s mother, was still brave and strong. Merrilee frowned darkly at the thought as she mashed herself more firmly into a corner at the far side of the stable, where the deepest shadows lay, settling in to watch Jack as he brushed one of the horses. He was smiling, and his eyes gleamed with enjoyment as he cared for the huge animal in front of him, gently running a ragged cloth across the horse’s side. He was even humming a little under his breath, a catchy bit of a tune, just a few notes that he repeated over and over.
Merrilee looked at his smile and wondered what that felt like to really, deeply enjoy something. It seemed like a long time since she had enjoyed anything. She’d tried very hard to enjoy the sanctuary, and the plentiful and delicious food. And even the safety and freedom from pain and fear that the sanctuary offered. But, though she appreciated those things every much, she did not think that she enjoyed them. It seemed as if something inside her was missing or broken. Some little piece of something that allowed her to enjoy these things. It seemed that, instead, there was a larger piece inside her that wasn’t supposed to be there. A wall. A huge wall that kept her from feeling enjoyment, but it also kept her from feeling other things, too. She did not feel the horrible, wrenching grief that she used to feel when she thought of her family. But she could no longer feel the bubbling of joy inside, either. Sometimes she felt a faint hint of what she thought might be happiness when she was with the little fox, Jax, or when she was near Jack, but those moments were fleeting and they felt more like a temporary relief of the emptiness that pressed down upon her than anything else. She held on to those moments when they came, trying to make them last, but she did not enjoy them.
But, sometimes lately, she did feel a flicker of something else. A little something that escaped from behind that huge wall inside her. When she looked at Kara, she felt something. Something that wasn’t good. Almost every time she looked at the girl who had risked her own life to come back to GateWide and free the Strays, all Merrilee could think of was a remembered whisper of the Sovereign’s words.
You can thank that filthy Stray girl for this . . .
He’d said it in the throne room on the day he’d executed Merrilee’s mother, using the woman as an example to the crowd of others that he’d called to a gathering there. He’d hissed the words so that everyone could hear, but his eye, his one remaining human eye, had bored into Merrilee’s own eyes as she’d watched in horrified, silent terror.
He’d said it each time he’d punished her brothers and sisters in the ensuing two, agonizing years that they’d been Strays.
You can thank that filthy Stray for this . . .
He’d said it when he’d angrily rid himself of some of the other Strays forever, by ending their miserable lives too soon, because he’d been notified that Kara and Mathew had escaped the Enforcers he’d sent after them.
You can thank that filthy Stray for this . . .
Merrilee shivered, though neither the shadows nor the air around her was particularly cold. She shivered at the memory of the malice and madness in the Sovereign’s gaze as he’d stared at her and said those words.
And he said them sometimes when he had punished her, too. You can thank that filthy Stray for this . . .
And despite her attempts not to blame Kara for what the Sovereign had done, she couldn’t quite help herself. She tried to be thankful that Kara and Mathew had come for them. She tried very hard to enjoy the things that Kara did for her. The food that the girl brought to her. The efforts that the girl made to be her friend and to help her settle in. The small gifts that Kara sometimes gave to her after she or one of the others returned from a foraging trip with a little something extra. Once it had been a comb made of some odd substance that felt smooth like the Sovereign’s window glass had felt, but was not glass, nor metal, nor anything like what Merrilee had ever felt before. The metal giant had called the substance “plastic.” Another time, Kara had given her a bit of a pretty, iridescent disk that gleamed in the sun and reflected back a prism of colors so brilliant that Merrilee had stared at it for hours as she stood in a beam of light in the conservatory.
But despite the girl’s care and these small, precious gifts, Merrilee heard that hateful hiss of malice inside her mind almost every time that she saw Kara. She could not seem to escape it.
You can blame that filthy Stray for this . . .
And she did, she did blame Kara. Kara’s selfish choice to flee her Stray’s fate had cost Merrilee her entire family and two years of servitude at the Sovereign’s hands. And while Merrilee had suffered the fate of a Stray in Kara’s stead, Kara had been free of the Sovereign’s will out in the wilderness.
Merrilee stifled a sob that almost escaped her and stuffed the memories back behind that large wall, silencing the emotions that had almost crept out. Hugging the shadows as if they were her only solace, she stared hard at Jack as he smiled and hummed, and she wondered again why he made her feel safe. Why didn’t the metal giant make her feel safe? Why didn’t the maze of rubble surrounding their haven make her feel safe? Why was it that she only felt safe sometimes, and those times were always when she was near Jack? Perhaps it was the way that he took care of the animals. Her mother had always said that you could tell what a person had on the inside by how he or she treated animals when no one was looking.
As if he could feel her eyes on him, Jack stopped humming and raised his head to look into the shadows that she hid inside.
“I know you’re there, Merrilee. You can come out now,” he said.
She shook her head, knowing that he couldn’t see her, but needing to do it anyway.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” he said.
“I’m not afraid,” she said, and she wasn’t. Not really. She was just waiting for the next bad thing to happen. And that wasn’t fear. Not exactly.
“Okay,” Jack said as he went back to tending the horse, not saying another word, as if he knew that she preferred the silence.
Merrilee stood in the shadows, hugging herself, watching him until Kara and Mathew returned hours later. She was still there, even later still, when a dark, hunched shape slunk into the stables and crept up behind Jack as he worked.
Chapter Five
River water gurgled against the embankment as it rushed along on its way, flowing freely between the two banks of the wide gorge that it had cut into the land with its passage. The sky above was cloudless, the brilliant blue reflecting upon the greenish waters of the river, shifting upon the moving surface in a kaleidoscope of cool color.
Gemma sat with her back propped a
gainst one of the huge, ancient trees that shaded the river. Some of its massive, gnarled roots, huge and knotty, had been exposed near the side of the embankment by the flow of the water, and Gemma used those as a footstool as she hung her fishing pole out over the deep waters below and stared at the sky, waiting for her dinner to find her.
Though many in her small village found fishing to be boring and would rather farm or raise livestock for their food, Gemma found it relaxing. And she preferred foraging for wild edibles to growing crops. For this, she received much in the way of censure from the Grandfather Elders. But, as she’d been doing for years, she simply ignored their reproof and did as she pleased. She didn’t rely on the others for food, did she? She was proficient at hunting and gathering and had no need to ask them for meat. And, if she did want something that the other villagers could provide, she was always able to trade a couple of wild prairie chickens, a half dozen fresh fish, or a basket of the wild fruits that she brought back from her foraging forays, which sometimes stretched into weeklong adventures.
Still holding the fishing pole with one hand, she reached over to pluck a piece of sweet grass from the ground beside her and stuck it in her mouth, letting the seed‑tasseled end hang out as she chewed on the fibrous stalk.
She knew that many of the others felt sorry for her, since she had no longer had anyone to call family and she lived alone in her tiny little hut that she had built with her own two hands at the far end of the village, but she did not feel sorry for herself. She quite liked her freedom. She was able to come and go as she pleased, and she wasn’t beholden to anyone. Best of all, she was able to keep the other things that she found on her foraging forays all to herself, which she was happy to do because she had no interest in sharing the fascinating objects that she sometimes found when she ventured so far from home.
None of the other villagers were as adventurous as she was. Not even a single one out of the forty‑nine people who lived there had any desire to venture more than a mile from their homes. Not that she could blame them. The prairie and the encroaching forests to the one side and the mountains to the other were often filled with dangers. She didn’t blame them at all for wanting to stay near their homes, tend their crops, milk their cows, and feed their children. Not only did she not mind that none of them were the adventurous type, she actually was grateful for it. It meant that they did not even know enough about the world beyond their village to guess at the odd treasures that she found on her forays.
She took one of the treasures from her pocket, angling it side to side in a filtered beam of sunlight that shone down through the leafy canopy above her. The shiny multi‑colored surface and the tiny little light that blinked red fascinated her. She didn’t know what the thing’s purpose was, other than to look pretty, but looking pretty was enough for her. She had found it several weeks ago in a ruin very far from her village. It was very small, only about the size of one of the wild pecans that she found while gathering sometimes. She would carry it in her pocket until she tired of looking at it, and then she would add it to her hidden collection and find something else to carry around.
She sighed, content, then put the thing back in her pocket and gazed back up at the sky.
Her pole jerked, indicating that she’d most likely caught her supper, and she pulled it up the embankment just as a strange loud crack rent the air, followed by a whine and then a pinging thwack as a small chunk of the tree’s bark flew off and slapped her in the cheek.
“Ouch!” she yelled, dropping her fishing pole into the water as she shot to her feet and brushed at her cheek. Her fingers came away smeared with a small amount of blood.
“What . . .” she muttered, unable to fathom why the tree’s bark had flown off like that, and what the odd sound had been. She’d never heard anything like that before.
“Stay where you are, or the next one will find your heart,” said a gravelly male voice. A voice she’d never heard before. Definitely not one of the villagers with whom she’d lived with since her birth.
Gemma couldn’t hold in her gasp as she let her hand fall to her side, frantically glancing around for the source of the voice.
She found it mere moments later. He wasn’t bothering to try to hide his position. Across the gorge, he sat mounted on a large horse, staring at her with steely eyes. He was dressed in fine clothing, and there was some sort of design upon the upper left side of his well-made gray jacket.
And he was not alone. There were perhaps twenty other men with him. All dressed as he was and all mounted on fine horses.
To Gemma, who had never, ever seen anyone who did not live in her village, the sight of another living person made her heart leap with joy. They were not alone in the world as the Elders had always thought. As she had thought, because even on her most lengthy forays from the village, she had never found evidence of any other living people. Of course, she’d found old abandoned cities, crumbling ruins of the past, but she’d never found any other living people. She was so astounded by the prospect of seeing the men with her own eyes that she was momentarily dumbstruck. Her mind could not seem to process the sight of them. How could this be?
She smiled at the man. But he did not smile back. It was then that she realized what he’d said. The next one will find your heart. Was he somehow responsible for the wound on her cheek? What next one was he talking about? What had the first one been? And why would he intentionally wound her? That was not the way of the world, or at least what she and her village knew of the world. Kindness was the universal standard by which all were measured. The Elders taught this: “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering.” The Elders read this from the ancient Colossians paper—the only scrap of paper that they had that bore writing—every night as they gathered by the communal fire. Had these men never been taught the universal truth? That the One True God was to be worshipped, life was a precious gift, and kindness was the order of each day?
The man held out something in her direction, something with a long, slender round tube with an open end that faced her. He gestured with it, pointing into the gorge with it.
“Swim across and join us. I won’t fire another warning shot. That one was just to get your attention. As I said, the next one will go in your heart. The Sovereign will not miss a slave that he never knew he could have had,” the man said, his voice harsh and filled with arrogance and unkindness.
The other men around him laughed. Gemma frowned, reaching up to feel the cut at her cheek again. Had the man made a joke? Why was his statement funny?
She thought about it. None of his words had contained a humorous meaning. In fact, the opposite was true. The idea of swimming across the gorge to join them was not funny at all. The gorge was wide, and the water was deep in the middle of the river. Though it was not fast‑flowing, she still did not think it a good idea to try to swim across it there, at its widest and deepest point. It was a good fishing area because of the depth, but not a good swimming area for the same reason. And there were water snakes that flourished in the shallows at the sides of the embankments there.
She wiped her bloodied fingers on her coarse, rough‑spun, pounded‑reed leggings.
“It is dangerous to swim here in the deep water. Why do you not follow me to the fording place down river and then join me in my village so that you may meet the Elders?” Gemma questioned. She knew the Elders would never believe her unless she brought the men into the village for them to see with their own eyes. And the other villagers would never forgive her if she did not bring the men to meet them.
The man across the river smiled, showing his teeth, his eyes cold and gleaming with an unkind light. She thought he rather looked like one of the huge shaggy wolves that lived in the forest when he smiled like that, but then she immediately chastised herself silently for her unkind thoughts. Unkindness was not the universal standard. Kindness was.
So she smiled back at the man and gestur
ed to her right as she began to walk toward the fording place, which was only a short way down river. As she walked, she glanced down into the waters below and saw her fishing pole stuck in the gnarled roots of a tree. She sighed, seeing it there. She would have to whittle another one the next day. And pound the reed to make fibers to braid for the fishing line, too. It would take quite some time to replace the fishing pole.
She glanced across the gorge at the men, feeling a soaring spike of delight at the sight of them. Learning that there were others in the world was well worth the cost of a single fishing pole. She smiled again, nodding at them as they watched her.
“It isn’t far,” she told them, gesturing downriver with her hand, her feet hurrying toward the fording spot with alacrity. She couldn’t wait for the men to meet the Grandfathers, as they in the village sometimes fondly called the Elders.
In no time at all, she’d shown them the low spot in the river to use for crossing, and they had ridden their horses across. One of them had even kindly offered her a ride to her village so that she didn’t have to walk, then pulled her up onto the back of his horse when she accepted. It didn’t take them long at all to get to the village after that.
And it took even less time still for the men to bring chaos down upon the peaceful villagers.
As soon as they arrived, Gemma was tossed to the ground, roughly bound hand and foot, and pushed to the side to lie there helplessly as the men stormed through the village. Soon, most of the other villagers had joined her there, bound tightly against escape. The village livestock was gathered, too. Only one man, one of the oldest of the Elders, escaped being bound with the rest of them. And that was because the next one had found its way into his heart instead of Gemma’s. And the Elder had died when the next one had found his heart. The beloved old man had been killed simply because he had tried to prevent the burning of his hut and the destruction of the precious, irreplaceable ancient Colossians paper that told of the One True God and urged a dedication to kindness.