Untamed Series, #1

by Madeline Dyer

  I’m running. I have to find it. The sky darkens around me. It’s turning Brunswick green. Swirling shapes. I turn frantically, looking for the bison. But he’s not there.

  Is this a dream? I pause. Am I in the Dream Land again? My hip…my mother’s pendant…and the sky shouldn’t be green.

  My breathing’s getting faster. This is very wrong. I don’t know where I am. But if this is the Dream Land then none of this is real—or at least, it’s not real at the moment. I frown, what is this telling me? I press my fingers to my forehead, but it doesn’t help me, doesn’t clarify anything.

  Now, the sky’s shades of green are getting brighter and brighter. The desert is green. I’m in a land of greenness and nothing else. Everywhere I look, there is green. Foliage, leaves, trees, vines, grass—too green.

  I walk forward again. I run. I run for hours. Or maybe I’m not running at all. The green around me closes in. The land gets smaller, smaller. I’m trapped. The sky’s falling. Cobwebs press over me, blankets. I take a breath, but inhale fogginess. Fogginess that dives down my throat.

  I fall down.

  Everything’s sticky around me, pressing against me, getting stuck. I can’t move. Whatever it is that is solidifying pulls at the tiny hairs on my skin.

  “Is she alive?”

  The voice makes me jump. I try to turn my head, but can’t. The green heavy stuff locks my neck into place. I can see it around the edges of my vision. A swirling, musty kind of green.

  “Yes. Though she’s struggling to breathe, looks bad.”

  The green’s covering me, more slithers onto me, pulling at my skin, pulling at everything.

  “Put the pendant back on her!” That voice is more high-pitched. “Do it! She’s a Seer. She needs it, Rahn! She could already be lost!”

  My body’s too stiff, too solid. I can’t do a thing, I’m too heavy, I’m sinking, sinking deeper and deeper into the greenness.

  “But if she’s a Seer, she could be seein’ valuable stuff. She could learn stuff that would help us… We need as many warnings as possible.”

  “She can see the stuff with the pendant on too—”

  “Not as much though, we all know how one of those pendant works!”

  “Without it she’ll be trapped in the Dream Land! She needs the pendant to anchor her to this world. Put it back on her. Now.”

  I gasp and gasp and gasp as the greenness drags me under. The world disappears amid the green. I’m disappearing. I look up at the sky—my last look at the world. The bison. Just a glimpse of him. The bison.

  He’s watching me, laughing as the walls of the Dream Land close in on me, until nothing’s left.

  I open my eyes, coughing and spluttering. Pain swarms my body, like water filling a container. I reach up to my throat. The pendant’s there. Its beautiful weight rests against my skin. I clutch it so hard my knuckles crack.

  I sit up slowly, with the help of Esther and Three either side of me. Three’s arm supports my back. His skin feels like it burns through my shirt. I start to cry. This world feels more stable. It’s real. It’s true. And I’m not alone.

  “What did you see?” Rahn demands.

  He’s crouching behind Esther and Three, cradling something on his lap—a wooden box with ornate carvings. Corin and Kayden are behind him. We’re all together.

  “She’s weak,” Three says. He glares at Rahn.

  “We need to know what she saw. If she’s a Seer, it’s her duty to tell us.” Rahn’s voice is stern and commanding. But he won’t look at me—he’s looking anywhere but me: at the ground, the sky, Three, Corin, Esther, Kayden. Just not me.

  Guilty. That’s the face of guilt. I press my lips together. He got rid of my mother. Now he’s trying to get rid of me too.

  “What did you see?”

  “Green,” I mutter. “Everything was green. I was trapped…in the ground.” I turn away, gagging.

  Rahn wrinkles his nose. He folds his arms across his chest, and his index fingers tap at his armpits. “What does that mean?”

  I shake my head, looking around. To my left I can see the Titian Mountains, but to my right the landscape is flatter, with less grooves and more vegetation.

  “Anythin’ else?”

  Another shake of the head. I can’t remember anything else. Just the overwhelming greenness. And the bison.

  “You’re hidin’ somethin’,” Rahn grunts, the sun flashing off his glasses. His arms fly out toward me, and Three grabs me, yanking me back away from the leader. “What are you hidin’? You workin’ against us?”

  “Rahn!” Three glares at him. “Seven just got trapped in the Dream Land because of your idiocy—”

  “No, I was tryin’ to help her learn more.”

  “We nearly lost her in there.” Esther’s voice is quiet and subdued. Tears have streaked through the dirt on her cheeks, emphasizing the scarring below her left eye.

  “What does green mean?” Corin snaps, turning on me as he pulls a rather soggy cigarette from his pocket.

  I shrug as he taps at it, flicking water from it. The beads of water catch my skin, and I shudder.

  Rahn points his forefinger at me. “She knows.”

  I shake my head, even though it hurts. “I don’t know what it means. Everything was green. The sky. The land. Everything.”

  Kayden steps forward, his red hair slicked back with grease. “Green can mean prosperity and life. It could be an omen for our survival.”

  Rahn does not look convinced. “Yes,” he says, “because we can easily survive with no truck and no supplies. With no nothin’.” But he’s still got that box with the strange carvings on it. I can’t work out whether they’re of animals, or just patterns.

  There’s a long silence. Eventually, I’m the one who breaks it.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  I no longer have the Glock Corin gave me, and I can’t see the truck. Corin’s still got a grenade launcher pistol and a rifle—he’s balancing them expertly as he struggles to light the cigarette—and Rahn’s got a Glock and a Luger, but they’re the only weapons I can see. Four, between the six of us.

  Corin answers. “We ran into a chivra. Didn’t get a close look at it, mind you. But it got control of the truck, and then took it from us. And our stuff.”

  A chivra. One of the most evil spirits out there. Great.

  “We need to keep moving,” I say suddenly, the words spilling out.

  “Why?” Rahn’s voice is full of suspicion.

  “She’s a Seer,” Esther says. “We shouldn’t question—”

  Corin and Rahn both snort.

  “Seers aren’t reliable,” Corin says. “And they make mistakes. They can be stupid. Think what Two did.”

  I flinch.

  “Seven’s right though.” Three stands up. “We should keep moving. If the Enhanced are after us, we need to be on the move. We can’t just wait for them to find us.”

  Suddenly, I look around. “Where’s the terrier?”

  Three looks away, and a tear falls from Esther’s left eye.

  “We don’t know,” she says at last.

  Corin takes a long drag, then breathes out smoke.

  I look at the ground, swallowing hard.

  “Come on,” Three says. “We’re getting on the move again.”

  My brother is taking control, and I can see neither Rahn nor Corin like this. Yet neither protest. At the moment.

  Walking in the heat of the desert is never a good idea, especially with a badly bruised hip. We walk for a good few hours—Rahn, Kayden, and Corin in front, and Esther, Three, and me behind them—until I think I am going to collapse from exhaustion or dehydration.

  At last, Rahn calls a halt. He looks worn out, and sweat patches cover his clothes. Somehow, even though I can’t see his eyes, I know he’s regarding me with the look a hunter sends his prey. I shudder. But Three’s standing next to me, and I know he’s on my side.

  “Which way?” Rahn asks, he’s carrying the wooden box.
We are at a kind of junction in the dust road. “Left or right?”

  “Right,” Corin says, and my brother agrees.

  Esther and Kayden both shrug. I go to voice my opinion, but Rahn doesn’t even look at me, just nods and heads to the right. His pace is fast, and a part of me wonders if he’s setting that pace to get at me. He knows I am hurt. But I won’t protest. Not yet, anyway.

  I look ahead, to the right: the desert spreads out. Although there is nothing obvious in that direction, surveying the sandy terrain encourages a bad feeling to set into my gut. I shrug. I would’ve voted to go left.

  No one speaks. All I can hear is a distant humming sound. No one else seems bothered by it. If the terrier were here, he’d be whining, or demanding to play. He’d make this journey lighter and less foreboding. But he’s not here. It’s unlikely he survived falling from the truck. Kayden said he looked for his body during the first few minutes when I was stuck in the Dream Land, but found nothing.

  In front, Corin points ahead. His stocky arm is rigid as he indicates something ahead. I squint, peering into the distance. It’s a rock. On the rock is a black dot. A black dot that is so black and glossy that it can only be an artificial marking. It’s a marking I haven’t seen for a long, long time. We had to get rid of all our signs around Nbutai as we feared the Enhanced would know what they meant. It was a precaution necessary for our own survival. Anyway, we’d thought there was little point in keeping them; we’d believed for a long time we were the last Untamed in this region. So there was no point signaling to anyone that our camp would be five miles directly behind a certain rock.

  But this rock isn’t one of ours that we’ve forgotten to remove the black dot from. No, we’re hundreds of miles away from the end of our territory.

  This rock belongs to others. Other Untamed.

  Rahn, Corin, and Kayden have come to a stop now. Three, Esther, and I catch them up in a matter of seconds. They’re talking fast and quietly.

  “They can help us replenish our supplies,” Rahn says firmly. Corin agrees with a slight nod of his head. Rahn looks back me. “Did you foresee this?” he asks.

  “No.”

  Rahn makes a sound close to a grunt. “What is the use of havin’ a Seer, if she is not even gifted?”

  “Seers only see stuff that is dangerous. They see stuff so they can warn us.” Three folds his arms, then steps closer to me.

  Now Corin looks at me, and, for the first time, since he was trying to stop me from licking the augmenters from the floor back at the compound, our eyes meet properly. I see how dark his are, how they look deeper and more solid than usual. He looks away quickly. “So these people aren’t a threat?”

  I shrug. The movement hurts my back. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen anything about them.”

  But I haven’t seen much. I wish he wouldn’t ask such a stupid question, because now, if these people are hostile, they’ll blame me for not warning them.

  “It could be a trap,” Esther says.

  “No.” Rahn shakes his head. “We have a Seer to warn us of traps. She does not think these people are dangerous.”

  That wasn’t what I said, and everyone knows it. I look toward the black-spotted rock. It is still a hundred or so feet away. I look at it hard. Something is wrong. Very wrong. I can feel it. We should have turned left. This is bad. We are on bad land.

  I look up at Three, trying to tell him, but he’s arguing with Rahn. And Corin and Esther and Kayden are all getting involved. No one’s listening to me. So I walk over to the black-spotted rock. And, with every step nearer, the unease within me grows.

  At last, I reach the rock. Looking behind me, I see Rahn and Three are still arguing over whether I am a liability who’s going to turn on them and lead them straight to the Enhanced, or a valuable asset.

  I turn back to the rock. It’s big. It reaches my knee and is a dark orange color. The black mark is perfect. Slowly, I walk around the rock. When I reach the back, I stop. My chest hitches. A red circle. It is bright, like a dying sun.

  “Three!” I shout.

  For a second, my brother looks surprised that I’m so far away, but then he runs to me. His expression darkens when he sees the red circle. Then he grabs my arm, pulling me back.

  Rahn blocks our way. “What the hell is happenin’?”

  “A red circle,” Three and I say in unison, and then we glance at each other. I’m shaking—can’t stop shaking.

  The corners of Rahn’s mouth lift up slightly. “Then we must go there. They have no use for their resources.”

  “We can’t!” I stare at him. “Are you mad?”

  “You do not decide what we do or do not do,” Rahn says. “Unless you have foreseen trouble. Which you haven’t. And you never question my sanity.”

  Corin, Esther, and Kayden now join us, and Three tells them what’s on the back of the rock. Corin goes and checks it for himself. When he returns, his face is grim.

  “We must head in the opposite direction.” He meets Rahn’s stern glare with his own.

  Rahn shakes his head and folds his arms. “They could have been dead for years,” he reasons. He looks at me. “If there was a problem with us goin’ there, Seven would know.”

  “Seers don’t see everything. Even if they do, it’s not always in time,” Corin says.

  We all know he’s referring to his parents’ deaths. They were killed in the attack that my mother and Two failed to see in time. My brother was killed in that attack too but everyone seems to forget that.

  Corin folds his arms and looks down at Rahn. His extra couple of inches in height makes all the difference. “We are not going there.”

  Rahn shakes his head vehemently. “We are.” He stamps his foot, turning toward Esther and Three and myself, before looking back at Corin. “They might not even be dead yet. It would be stupid to not pay them a visit,” he says. “They could have stuff that we need.”

  “We could be walking to our deaths,” I say. “We’ve no idea how fresh or old the disease is. We could catch it.”

  Now it’s obvious what the green in the Dream Land stood for: illness.

  Rahn points at his nephew. “You can see the sense in goin’, right?”

  But Corin shakes his head. “Sev’s right,” he says, and he looks at me briefly, but his tone suggests he’s almost disgusted to find himself agreeing with me.

  I sigh. Every time he looks at me, I’m sure he’s seeing me how I was in the Enhanced compound. Maybe he still thinks I’m feeling like that inside.

  Maybe I am.

  “We’ll vote on it,” Rahn says at last. He’s holding the box with the carvings under his arm. “Yes. A vote.” I’m surprised; he must be feeling confident enough to suggest a democratic vote. “Look at us. We only have the clothes we’re wearin’. No food. No water. No medicine. Nothin’. Yes, these people are dead from a contagious disease, but we can use their stuff to aid our own survival—”

  “We don’t know that they’re dead,” Corin counters. “If there’s just one still alive, we could get the disease too. We still could even if they are all dead. It’s not worth the risk.”

  “Seven and Eriksen are right. It isn’t worth the risk,” Three says.

  We look at Esther and Kayden.

  Esther looks uncomfortable. “It may be our best shot though,” she says at last. Rahn smiles at her widely, and I notice the sunburn around his lips for the first time. It’s not as bad as Corin’s, but it still looks painful.

  Kayden nods. “We’ll die without water anyway.”

  “We can find water somewhere else!” Corin shouts. And he actually looks toward Three and me for support. “Anyway, we’re divided, we shouldn’t go. Not without a clear-voted answer.”

  Rahn smiles, but it is not a kind smile. It’s a smile that will haunt me. “I am the leader. My vote holds more weight in cases such as these. We are goin’. And, anyway, if it really was a bad idea, Seven would warn us.”

  He looks at me, waiting for me t
o speak. For a second I consider making something up. But I don’t. I don’t want to lie to them or abuse my powers as a Seer. Anyway, I’m an awful liar.

  “There we go then,” Rahn says. “We’re goin’. All of us.”

  The five-mile walk is awful, and by the time we reach the buildings, I am breathing hard. I look around. These shacks are more sturdily built than ours. And there are more of them than we had. At least twenty. But they’re old; fabric is rotting.

  Something else is rotting too. I wrinkle my nose, trying not to gag. Flesh. Human flesh.

  “I’m not going in,” Corin says. He has stopped about two hundred feet from the nearest shack. “We’ll stay out here.”

  It takes a second for me to register that he’s including Three and me in the ‘we’, and it makes me feel strange. Triumphant? Scared? Nervous?

  Rahn turns to the three of us, slamming his left fist into his right hand. “You’ll do as your leader says. And you’ll do it now. We’re goin’ in. We’re salvagin’ what we can.”

  I shake my head. “The disease is fresh. We can’t go in there. We’ll get it too. If it’s airborne we could already have it.”

  “Then it won’t make any difference, will it? We have to take what we can, when we can.” Rahn steps right up into Corin’s face, and the two men attempt to stare each other down.

  “I’m not sure about this anymore,” Esther says.

  “We should go back,” Corin adds.

  Rahn swears loudly, and his fist leaps forward a few inches in a striking movement, but doesn’t go any farther. “I am the leader,” he says. “You obey me. You always obey me.” He looks at Three, then Corin, then me, then Esther, then Kayden. “Do I make myself clear? Now, get in there.”

  For a long second, no one moves. Then Esther steps toward the abandoned Untamed village. Kayden follows her next, but there is a few seconds’ delay. Rahn turns his heavy glare on me. I don’t move.