After the Fall

by Janean Worth

  Mathew awoke to a dank world of wrenching pain. His head throbbed from thirst, his eyes felt gritty, his lacerated hands throbbed, his blistered feet ached and his back quivered with spasms caused by being forced into such a cramped position for so long.

  His mouth tasted like blood, and his lips were already cracking from lack of water. He licked his lips to moisten them, tasting dirt and wincing as his tongue, swollen and sore where he’d bitten it when he’d fallen, passed over his mouth.

  He wasn’t accustomed to pain. And he was pretty sure he’d never had this much of it at one time before. He couldn’t ever remember having more than a scraped knee or a bruised shin in his whole fourteen years. But that was before. Now things were different. Now he was just a commodity. Before, he’d been a person. But then his mother had died, and he’d become an orphan.

  He caught his breath at the thought, feeling the worst pain of all slither through his chest. His heart twisted in the agony of deep sorrow as he remembered his mother’s passing. He missed her. Oh, how he missed her. But most of all, he missed everything that she had done for him. Things he didn’t even know about until it was too late.

  He shifted inside the hole in the ground, dislodging dirt and small pebbles from above his head. They rained down on him, coating him in more grit. He was already filthy, covered in dirt, mud and quite a bit of his own blood, but he hated the feel of more dirt on his skin. That was something else he wasn’t used to. His mother, the maid and the housekeeper had always insisted that he keep himself very clean so that he wouldn’t be mistaken for a Stray. He hadn’t minded. He liked being clean. He liked the fancy clothes they gave him to wear. The feel of the dirt now coating his skin disgusted him. He didn’t like the way it stuck to him, or the way it clumped in his many scrapes and scratches, or the way it smelled mixed with his sweat and blood. Mostly, he didn’t like it for what it represented. Stray!

  His stomach growled, a nasty reminder that he couldn’t stay hidden inside the hole forever. He winced at the foreign feel of his own hunger. He wasn’t accustomed to being hungry, either. How long had it been since he’d eaten? How long had he been hiding in the hole? It was dark now, and above him, he could only see a sliver of night sky, the blackness polka-dotted with bright stars. No sign of the moon. Not that seeing the moon would help him anyway. He wouldn’t know how to tell the time by looking at the moon any more than a rock would. He sighed. He wasn’t used to taking care of himself. He didn’t know how. He was realizing that he didn’t know a lot of things.

  He did remember that it had been yesterday morning when he’d last taken a bite of food. It has been a fat, flaky pastry, filled with nuts and dried fruit, fresh from the oven. Prepared just for him by the housekeeper. He wished now that he’d eaten the whole thing, and asked for a dozen more, but at the time he had sneered at the offering after taking only one bite. A pastry hadn’t been what he’d wanted. He’d wanted cake at the time. If only he’d known what the day would bring. Right now, if she was near, he’d have eaten whatever the housekeeper gave him, and he would have been grateful. He sighed, sniffing back his anguish. He would never see the housekeeper, or one of her pastries, again.

  He would probably never be clean again. Or full again. Or not thirsty. He would probably be miserable the rest of his short life, now that everything had changed.

  His stomach growled again, and though he had no idea how he would find food or water, he forced himself to crawl slowly out of the hole. He felt a bit like the animal that must have made the underground den, cautiously creeping up out of the ground, keeping a lookout for anything that moved, knowing that he was being hunted.

  A whimper of pain and fear escaped him as he emerged fully from the hole and his stiff muscles protested. His eyes darted around, looking for any sign of the Enforcers. Seeing none, he stood up, whimpering again as his back cramped when he straightened. He pressed his dry, cracked lips together, compressing them to prevent any further sound from escaping. He didn’t want to risk giving himself away if they were near.

  He didn’t know where they were, or if they were even close. It was hard to see through the bushes, trees and darkness that surrounded him now. They had been quite close when he’d found the hole and crawled inside. But he had blacked out from fear and exhaustion, and now he didn’t know how much time had passed or how far away the Enforcers might be. He started forward cautiously, one step at a time. So slowly.

  With every step, his body ached. He tried to ignore the pain. To a certain extent, he was successful. He was able to block out the painful scrape of his shoes against the blistered spots on his feet. The sting of the myriad of tiny cuts and scrapes on his hands, arms and face were a mere nuisance compared to everything else, so he ignored them too. But he was unable to ignore his raving thirst. The dryness of his mouth felt like torture, the need for a drink of water pounded in his head with a fierce ache.

  He didn’t know much about survival skills, but he knew he needed to find something to drink soon.

  He slogged on through the darkness, trying to be as quiet as he could, trying not to think of what would happen if the Enforcers caught him. He was more afraid of them than he was of anything else that might lurk out in the darkness. Which was ironic, because before he’d been afraid to be outside GateWide after dark, terrified of the unknown things that were said to lurk there, and he’d believed that the Enforcers were to be revered and trusted.

  How wrong he’d been.

  He stumbled over a fallen branch and froze as it snapped with a loud crack. The noise seemed as loud as the reports from the pistols that the Enforcers had fired at him earlier as he’d fled out the Gate. He looked around in panic. Had they heard? Were they near? He strained his eyes in the darkness, feeling his eyeballs bulge out of his head as he forced them to try to peer through the cloaking blackness.

  To the right, he heard a whisper of sound. He tiptoed over to a large tree, pressing close to the trunk, trying to make himself smaller. The tree was wide enough to hide his slim form, but he still felt exposed anyway. He crouched down into a ball, huddled against the tree bark, listening.

  He heard the sound again. There was someone near. The sound came from a pair of men’s deep voices, pitched low.

  “Do you see the little Stray?” one harsh voice whispered.

  “No, but I heard a noise. He’s got to be close. Gabert lost his trail only a few hundred yards from here,” another voice answered.

  “That was hours ago! The sniveling little Stray is probably long gone by now. You probably heard a squirrel.”

  The other man laughed quietly, “He’d better be gone, and hope we don’t find him. I can’t remember when a Stray has led us on such a chase or caused as much trouble. Gabert is ready to strangle the little Stray with his bare hands.”

  “Might as well. This one is scrawny. And too pampered. He won’t hold up long in the House.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Gabert may kick him a few times, maybe even slap him around a bit, but he won’t waste a Stray by strangling him. Even if the Stray won’t last long in the House. The Sovereign wants all of the Strays that he can get. And you know the Sovereign gets what he wants.”

  Mathew stopped listening, frozen in horror. The House! They were going to send him to the House? Mathew tried to keep his knees from knocking together as he shivered in fear.

  He had to escape. He didn’t want to go to the House. He’d heard stories about the House. None of them were good.

  He began to move away from the voices, still crouched low to the ground, trying to make himself small and invisible. He wanted to run, but he’d tried that earlier. It hadn’t worked out so well. All of the cuts, scratches and bruises on his body attested to that. He was clumsy when he hurried, and not accustomed to strenuous physical activity. In the dark, he would try to go slower. Be quieter. Be sneaky. He was good at sneaky. If there was
anything he was good at, it was that.

  He crept quietly away, careful not to step on any more branches, listening intently for any sounds of pursuit. Minutes ticked by as he methodically put one foot in front of the other, carefully placing his weight so that no sound would be heard from his footfalls, hunched down low, barely breathing. For once, he was thankful for his small size. Other boys his age were much larger than he was. He’d always hated that. But now, his small size worked in his favor, allowing him to move silently through the darkness.

  After a while, his straining ears began to pick up another sound – the trickle of running water. His mouth watered in response and he swallowed reflexively. As if on queue, his head commenced pounding out his thirst again.

  The sound meant that there must be a creek or river nearby. And the Enforcers were sure to be watching it. But he was so thirsty. He had to have water.

  THE NARROW GATE IS AVAILABLE NOW!