by C. B. Stone
He’s mostly worried about Samantha though, while I worry more about him. Kids are adaptable and I’m fairly certain Samantha would be okay. She might be retaught, but Sammy is only nine. Things would go a lot easier for her if she were sent to Rehabilitation than they would for Jacob. She would learn pretty quickly to forget everything he taught her.
But Jacob? I just don’t think he’s capable of forgetting God. And if I’m being 100% honest, I’m not sure I’d even want him to. It’d change who he is too much. He wouldn’t be “my” Jacob any longer if his beliefs were eradicated. Even if I do think his stubbornness puts him in unnecessary danger.
I grimace inwardly, shoving thoughts of Jacob’s crazy stubbornness aside. He drives me nuts sometimes with how stubborn he is, so I find it best not to dwell on it much.
We’re out scavenging again today. It’s early in the morning, and there’s a low mist hanging in the air, so it’s damp and cold. Winter’s in full swing now and makes everything a lot harder. In a few more weeks, we won’t even be able to go out into the Old World city, there will be so much snow.
The little wall surrounding the Gate will wind up completely covered and even if we managed to make the hike to the Old World city successfully, we’d have a hard time finding our way back out again. When snow comes down hard like that, everything looks the same. Makes it super easy to get lost, and lost around here usually means you wind up dead.
Jacob has been strangely quiet all morning. We move mostly in silence, our movements easy and practically in tandem. We’re just so used to working together it’s like we’re one person sometimes. But today, whenever I look over at him, he’s got a frown on his face. That’s uncharacteristic of him. He’s always the upbeat one, the ever hopeful one. I’m always the pessimist. Or realist as I prefer to call it. It worries me he’s so stoic this morning though.
Our boots press through the soft new snow, creating firm indents with each step, the crunching and squeaking the only sounds to be heard out here. I keep trying to think of something to say to him, feeling a need to engage, to wake up the regular old Jacob, “my” Jacob, but I can’t think of anything. When we’ve made it about a mile outside of the Gate, he stops.
After only a couple of paces, I realize he’s not walking with me anymore. Stopping too, I turn back to look at him quizzically.
“Jacob?” I ask, hesitant. He’s been so weird all morning.
He stares at me for a long moment. There’s something in his eyes, a flicker of something important, but I can’t read it, can’t decipher what it means.
“We’ve been friends a long time, right Sinna?” he asks finally, his voice low.
I wrinkle my brow, wondering where he’s going with this. “Yeah, of course,” I answer without hesitation. “We’ve been friends for years now.” I take a step back toward him, watching his familiar face as some unknown emotion flickers across it, and my brow creases even more.
He nods, clearly mulling over something hard in his head. “And you trust me, right?”
Trust? Did I trust Jacob? Yes, of course I did. There isn’t a lot of trust between denizens of the Gate, but Jacob and I share a special connection. We understand each other and instinctively we both know we would never betray one another. “Yes,” I answer after a moment. “Jacob, what’s this all about exactly?”
“I—” he starts, but something makes him stop. He looks around, eyes restless as they roam the woods around us, his brow now creasing too, except his is creasing with worry, not confusion.
“What is it?” I ask.
He steps closer to me, and puts his fingertips to my lips to quiet me. His fingers are warm, despite the coldness of the day and I can feel his touch spark a tingling sensation against my lips. Rosy warmth rushes my cheeks and I fall silent immediately.
After a moment where both of us stand there in silence, in utter stillness, he finally pulls his hand back, index finger grazing along my lip caressingly before falling away, and shakes his head. My breath hitches, I’m still struck by the tender touch.
“Not here,” he murmurs. His blue eyes search out my amber ones, alight with something I can’t quite name, and holds them. “Will you meet me tonight?”
Without even thinking, I nod my head. His blue eyes are deep and dark, not like the dreary gray of winter around us, but more like a vivid summer’s sky. Warm, inviting. They’ve always managed to captivate me, even when nothing else could.
“The Gravestones,” he whispers, so quiet I can barely hear him. “Midnight.”
I find myself unconsciously leaning forward to hear him better.
Jacob’s lips tilt in a slight smile. Almost absently, he reaches out and pushes back a strand of sandy brown hair from my face. “We don’t need to be out today,” he tells me.
What?
The strangeness of what he says startles me out of the hypnotic haze his eyes seemed to draw me into, and I take a step back. The small smile on his face drops as does his hand.
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “We’re not going to get many more chances out here before the snow gets bad. We need to find as much as we can now—”
He just gives a firm shake of his head and starts walking backwards. “We don’t need to be out today,” he says again, just as cryptic as the first time. He turns away and begins to head back toward the Gate.
I stand staring after him a long moment, my expression incredulous. What is wrong with him today. I want him to tell me, but know I won’t ask him. Mostly, because I think he won’t answer. I frown, hoping instead he’ll explain tonight, when we meet at the Gravestones, but the hope doesn’t make me feel any better.
I glance over my shoulder at the towering ruins of the Old World. Part of me wants to go plowing on anyway, despite what he says. Or maybe because of it. I don’t like being told what I can and can’t do, especially from Jacob. We get enough of that from the Elite.
Ultimately, I just sigh and shake my head. There’s no point in going out alone, it’s too dangerous. I spin around and start walking back fast, catching up to Jacob as quick as I can.
I’ll get answers tonight, I promise myself. My eyes spark, my own stubbornness rearing its resolute head. Definitely tonight.
******
Later, after darkness falls, I hurriedly dress as warm as I can. Home is a long house with two floors, each lined with beds that have only a few feet between them. It’s a Girl’s Home, a place for all the girls who don’t have parents anymore. I ended up here after my dad went missing and my mother died in the madhouse down the street.
There are maybe twenty of us here in the older dormitories, ten on each floor. There’s two other wings of the building, one for the younger girls and one for the babies and nursemaids who take care of them.
The girls are all asleep tonight, as far as I can tell, and I’m grateful. Getting dressed warm enough to go outside in the middle of the night would be kind of hard to explain, and frankly, I don’t trust any of these girls not to say anything to the Matron.
The Matron watches us and runs the Girl’s Home. She’s not all that interested in us for the most part, but she’s a stickler for rules. If any of us get caught breaking them, it’s an immediate report and Selection for Trials.
I’m not worried about passing Trials though. I haven’t failed yet. Still, that doesn’t mean I want to deal with them. Besides, even if I pass Trials, there would still be repercussions for breaking the rules.
Thoughts of this are enough to make me extra quiet as I get dressed tonight.
I curl a thick gray scarf around my neck twice and grab the wool cap I wear when it starts to get especially cold. I pull it over my hair, giving it a firm tug and glance around once more to make sure no one’s awake. The coast looks clear, so I snag my boots in hand and carry them as I tiptoe toward the door.
It’s not until I’ve nearly made it to the door that I see movement out of the corner of my eye. It startles me enough I drop my boots and curse under my breath as they h
it the floor with a dull thunk.
I squeeze my eyes shut and freeze, waiting. I don’t hear anything, so I open them and glance around the dark room. None of the girls seem to have woken up... except for one girl is sitting up in the corner bed nearest the door. It’s Miriam, a small girl with ash blonde hair and wool gray eyes. She’s staring at me in the darkness.
“Sinna?” she asks, her voice quiet, head tilting to the side as she studies me.
“Shhh!” I hush instantly, looking around to see if anyone else has woken up. No one has, so I put a finger up against my lip to let Miriam know I need her to remain quiet.
She looks around, realizing all the other girls are asleep. Lowering her voice to a barely audible whisper, she asks me, “Where are you going?”
I purse my lips, cursing myself for not making it out of there before someone noticed. I debate the pros and cons of telling her a lie versus telling her the truth. If it had been one of the other girls, someone like Jezebel, I wouldn’t even hesitate. Automatically, I would lie.
These girls have all been here so long they wouldn’t know something like trust or community if it was right in front of their faces. But Miriam is different. She had only just arrived at the Girl’s Home a few months ago after her mother had been taken away for Trials.
She still held hope her mother would come back for her and I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.
It’s probably stupid. In fact, I know it’s stupid, but I decide to tell her the truth.
“I’m going to the Gravestones,” I whisper.
She studies my face. “Why? It’s nearly midnight.” Her eyes dart to the window across the room. It’s been covered by a thick wool blanket in an ineffectual attempt to keep out the cold of winter. “Plus it’s got to be freezing outside. Can’t this wait until morning?”
I shake my head. “No. I’ve got to meet...” I hesitate. I don’t know why, I don’t think Miriam will tell anyone about tonight, but still. It doesn’t mean I want to go tossing names around. Especially Jacob’s. He’s starting to get a reputation and it’s definitely not a good thing. “... someone,” I finish lamely.
She stares at me a moment longer, then shakes her head. Curling herself back into her covers, she lays down. As I start to leave again, she says, “Take the front door. The Matron always guards the back one this late.”
Surprised she knows things like that and grateful she doesn’t appear interested in turning me in, I rush out of the room as quick and quiet as I can. When I’m down the hall and down the stairs, I finally put my boots on, lacing them tight.
I hesitate when I reach the front door. Now that I’m here, I realize how risky it is to trust Miriam’s advice. She could be trying to set me up, wanting me to get caught. But then, why not just sound the alarm before I even left the room? And how would she of all the girls here know anything about the Matron’s patrols?
Glancing down at the watch I’ve tied around my wrist, I decide to risk it. It’s creeping up on midnight and I need to get across town to the Gravestones before Jacob decides I’m not coming.
Taking a deep breath, I open the front door slowly, wincing each time it creaks and groans. A frigid blast of air hits me as the door cracks open further, eliciting a strangled gasp, goosebumps popping up along my flesh. Steeling myself as best I can, I dive out into the cold night, carefully shutting the door behind me.
Miriam was right, it’s freezing outside. At least it’s still. That single blast of cold air through the door seems to be the only wind out tonight and for that I’m grateful.
With a final glance behind me to make sure no one’s watching, I tramp off into the snow and darkness of night. The snow’s deep, nearly up to my knees. There must have been a storm tonight while we were all sleeping. I’m glad it hit before I started for the Gravestones, but the fresh snow makes it slow going.
The courtyard, where Selection is held, is only a few blocks from here. I know the way so well I don’t worry about getting lost. I travel the distance quickly despite the snow. All the while, I can’t keep my mind from wondering what the heck is going on.
Why does Jacob want to meet at midnight? It’s risky to go to the ruins, but not this risky. No one expects people to run off into the destruction of the Old World—why would they? But there are patrols to keep watch for people at night here in the Gate. I’ve been lucky enough not to see any and I think most of them no doubt are shacked up in their guard huts, huddled around a coal fire to keep warm instead of out looking for the unlikely wanderer. Even so, this is more danger than either of us have put ourselves in before.
Why would he risk it?
I continue to ponder as I plow on, the effort of getting through the deep snow at least helping to keep me warm. I reach the courtyard in record time. Although the official use is for the Selection process, the courtyard also serves as our market place. Since it’s winter, there aren’t all that many people who set up booths right now, since the smart thing to do is stay inside out of the cold, and most have already stocked up for the hardest months. Even so, I know come morning several people will still set up their little booths and try to sell what they can before people stop going out altogether.
It’s because they can’t afford to stay inside, I know, but then not many of us can. Even stockpiling for winter isn’t a guarantee.
I stomp through the snow, my boots completely buried in it as I walk half a block past the courtyard. Staring out into the darkness, I can just make out the sharp points of the black gates and the spindly dead trees that mark the Gravestones.
After a few more long, cold minutes of walking, I finally reach my destination. In front of me a long row of black iron gates rise up in stark contrast to the powder white surrounding them. The iron is rusted now but they’ve been here since before the After World.
My dad used to tell me stories about why the gates were here, why they were important. I did myself the favor of pushing those stories out of my head so I never had problems with the Elite—like Jacob—but standing in front of the gates now, I can’t help but remember.
Before the After World, people were buried beneath the earth with stones erected to honor their memory. These places were considered hallowed ground then, where the bodies of good people were placed to rest, so their souls could reach the next world. They don’t mean much of anything nowadays though. Here, just like everywhere else in the country, when someone dies, their body is burned. And of course, everyone knows there’s no such thing as a next world.
The idea of hallowed ground is merely an old superstition and being superstitious today is against the law.
Besides, what’s so special about a place where a bunch of bodies laid to rot in the ground? I shove a macabre vision rotting flesh out of my head, resisting the urge to shudder. Maybe it made sense back when there were Believers, but not anymore. There isn’t anything to believe anymore. And I’m not going to waste my time looking for something to believe in either.
A frown starts to pull at my lips. Jacob likes to say I’m a pessimist but I prefer realist. I think what you see is what you get and this is the lot we’re stuck with. This world is all we’ve got, and today is all that matters. Hoping and believing in anything else is a waste of time and effort—not to mention incredibly dangerous. But Jacob still remains ever hopeful. Which would be okay, if only his hopes weren’t so pinned and centered on things involving superstition. My frown deepens.
Since the After World, it’s against the law to Believe. At least to Believe in the sense of believing in a higher power, like God. We can believe someone is telling the truth, or lying of course. We can believe it’s going to rain tonight or might be sunny tomorrow. We can believe there will be more food tomorrow than there was today. As long as there is a concrete reason for us to believe something, belief is considered okay.
But to just Believe? Like Believe in something bigger than ourselves? Or in something invisible like God? That’s the worst kind of law breaking. Do not Believe
in that which is not there. I can hear the lifeless intonation of the Elite law reader in my head. Do not Believe in that which is not there is a direct quote from one of the Elite law books. Every other Sunday, the laws are recited to us by the law readers. Three main ones mostly, and other minor ones, too. But the ‘do not Believe’ law? That’s a real big one.
We’ve all grown up governed by the Elite’s laws and I try to make a point of not questioning them too deeply. I know they’re in place to combat the disease of the mind we’re told destroyed things before the After World came into existence. The disease called God. Now we know better and know there is no God.
Regardless, it’s usually not difficult for me to follow most of the laws laid out by the Elite. Well, with going into the Old World to hunt being the exception I suppose. As far as the law for not Believing? It’s almost never a problem, despite memories of my father’s lectures and Jacob’s constant search for a church in the ruins of the Old World.
It’s only some days... some days, when things are worse than normal, when there’s no food and the Girl’s Home is freezing and I remember my mother going crazy before she died, my dad being taken away for Trials and never coming home... well, I suppose somewhere deep down I'd like to believe God exists then. Mostly because I’d really like to think He’d do something to help us.
But he doesn’t, not that I can tell. Not since the war at any rate. What sort of God allows places like Rehabilitation and a regime like the Elite to exist, to dictate our every move?
If God were so great, he’d do something. But he hasn’t. At best, we’re forgotten. The funny thing is, that’s the strongest evidence I have that He doesn’t exist. Because if He did, things just wouldn’t be like they are today.