Eos (The Eos Dawn Series Book 1)

by Jen Guberman

  I sat down, dropping my bag on the floor beside the couch.

  “So, what’s your name?” the blonde girl asked pleasantly.

  “Eos.”

  “That’s such a pretty name!” she said, her face lighting up in a smile. “I’m Leanne, but most people just call me ‘Lamb.’” She motioned to a boy on my left, sitting on the couch opposite me.

  “This is Luka Deston.” A slightly heavier guy of about 20 or so with caramel-colored skin, dark hair, and dark eyes gave a half-smile and put a hand up in greeting.

  “And this is Zane Hess.” She pointed to the other guy, handsome, and visibly a little older than Luka. He smirked, his skin fairly pale. His skin contrasted his nearly black hair, which was in a loosely styled spike, and he had soft brown eyes.

  “Hey,” I said awkwardly, nodding at the boys.

  “Zane, how about you get our guest a drink,” she asked lightly. “Is water okay?”

  “Yeah, that’s perfect.”

  Zane got up and walked past me, making brief eye contact as he walked by.

  “How long have you guys been here?” I questioned.

  “Well, I’ve been here since I was 16, becau—”

  “Wait what?” I interrupted. “I thought you couldn’t be exiled as a minor?”

  “Well, in theory you can’t be, but they make exceptions for people like me, who get caught doing bad things a few times too many.” She giggled. “I’ve been here for a little over two years. Luka has been here for about the same time as me, but Zane has been here for only about a year. So tell me, Eos—”

  “E,” I said. “You can call me E.”

  Lamb smiled.

  “So, E, tell me your story. How’d you wind up here?”

  I recounted the previous night, how I had wanted to take two bottles of rum, and how I had been caught in the act and sentenced shortly after. As I was telling my story, my eye caught sight of Zane, leaning against a wall, holding a cup of water in one hand, and rotating a small item in his fingers with the other. I squinted. It was a ring. A copper ring.

  I stopped mid-sentence, hurriedly digging through my bag, grappling around with the contents, none of which included my ring from Fabian.

  “Is that my ring?” I approached him, my eyes wild.

  “Are you accusing me?” he asked, the same smirk from before growing on his face.

  “I don’t know. Let me see that ring!” I grabbed at his hands.

  “Finders keepers,” he said, clasping his fingers over the ring in a swift movement.

  “Give me my ring back!” I hissed through gritted teeth.

  “Make me,” he challenged, a playful grin on his face, which remained cool when I proceeded to pin him to the wall with my forearm, sloshing some of the water out of the cup.

  “Just give me the ring!” I pleaded. “It was from an old friend, and since it’s quite apparent I’m never going to see him again, I’d really appreciate if you would give it back.”

  “Nah.” He tucked the ring into his back pocket, leaned against my weight, and casually walked back to the couch, putting down the cup and snatching up my bag in the process, bolting out the door.

  “I want to meet with the representative,” I demanded.

  “Now, let’s just be nice!” smiled Lamb.

  “Please,” I added.

  She sighed, the warmth fading from her face.

  “Alright. Follow me.”

  She walked out of the building, checking behind her to make sure I was following. She crossed the town center and the well, working her way through a thin gap between buildings. When I got out of the tight fit, I saw piles upon piles of stuff. Everywhere I looked, there were mounds of trash—discarded containers, rusty jewelry, broken glass, and old books. Lamb continued, weaving around some of the piles, until we made it to a small brick house. She knocked on the door.

  “Hey, Jack,” she hollered in her girly voice. “Open up! We have a new one!”

  We waited a moment before the door swung open and there stood a tall, thin man, with small cuts covering his face, an eerily warm smile, and gingery brown hair flattened and greasy on his head.

  “Jackson, this is E.”

  Jackson smiled, revealing sharp and crooked teeth.

  “Come in, E, we have a lot to discuss.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Come, sit down.” He gestured to a red leather armchair full of tiny holes.

  I sat down and the chair made a squeak. I looked around at the small room, seeing an eclectic array of decorations. There were four wooden chairs, all with different styled backings, different finishes, and different degrees of wear. There were a few uneven side tables, sloppily painted white, with picture frames propped up on some, old coffee cups on others. I tried to find something to compliment, hoping to get myself off on a good foot with Jackson.

  “I—“ I struggled. “I like your clock.” I looked at a cheap-looking golden wall clock fixed on the far wall.

  “Thank you!” Jackson replied with a sharp-toothed grin. “I collect décor, which I’m sure you noticed.” He giggled, his laughter high-pitched as he sat on the shiniest of his wooden chairs.

  “I’m sure you have a bunch of questions! I’m afraid I won’t be able to answer all of them, but I will do my best. I’m also responsible for showing you your living quarters, and where meals are! I will also be assigning you your residency job, which is basically a simple task you will have to do daily—if you skip three days within a month, you’ll be booted out of your living area until you can prove yourself again. If you skip one day, you’ll get a warning. It isn’t very difficult to keep up with!” He smiled reassuringly. “We just need everyone here to pull their weight, since it is up to everyone to contribute to putting food on their plates—the cities only provide a little bit of food to the exile towns per month.”

  “So, you mean I’ll be farming?” I asked.

  “Mmmm…” he pondered. “Most likely. I’ll have to think, but I don’t think we need anyone anywhere else right now.”

  “How is it that you have all of these belongings if we are only allowed to take five things from home?” I asked, curious about his collection.

  “Well, aren’t you a nosy thing?” He grinned again.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, no, dear! It’s quite alright! Curiosity isn’t something to be shunned, though you really should be careful—it tends to get a good many in trouble,” he warned. “As for my collection, I obtain things through a variety of means. Keep in mind, we are an exile town for thieves—do you really think anyone is going to kick a person out for stealing?” He let out a concerning hyena-like laugh.

  Upon seeing a look of worry on my face, he continued.

  “No, dear, see, I don’t steal everything! And what I do, I assure you the owners don’t miss anyhow! Some of this stuff I just got from rummaging. In case you haven’t noticed, we are living in a literal dump. Some of us spend more time than others digging through the trash—you wouldn’t believe the things people would just throw away!”

  I nodded, not as bothered at the concept of a room full of trash as I think I would have been just a day ago.

  “So, let’s go see your living quarters!” he said gleefully, his smile stretching some of the cuts on his face.

  He led me out of his house and back through the small gap between buildings, the same that I had gone through with Lamb. He walked toward the second building from the left of the gate—the same building in which I met Lamb, Luka, and Zane.

  “Wait!” I called after Jackson, trying to keep up with him. “Is that where I’m going to be living?”

  “Yup! We try to keep members of Avid in buildings with others around their age. It really does help keep things in order—you wouldn’t believe the problems it avoids!”

  “But, see, I met a few of the people in there, and within minutes they already stole all of my stuff,” I complained.

  “Please don’t tattle to me, dear. I may have some highe
r responsibilities here than anyone else, but that doesn’t make me your mother. If you want something—take it,” he said, the sharp-toothed smile disappeared as he continued into the building.

  “Welcome back!” chirped Lamb from the couch in the middle of the room.

  I noticed it was just Luka and Lamb on the couch, and I wondered where Zane was. Probably hiding my belongings.

  Jackson made a sharp left turn down a narrow, dimly lit concrete hallway I hadn’t noticed before. There were doors on either side of the hallway, evenly spaced. He kept walking, and made a sharp right, revealing a small staircase. Once we had reached the second floor, we walked past a couple doors on our left, the balcony looking down on the couches downstairs on our right. Once we reached the fourth door, he pushed it open and walked straight inside.

  I followed a few steps after him. When I had stepped into the room, I saw that it was similar to the rest of the building—lots of concrete, a single window on the far wall, and a dingy red carpet covering only the far half of the room. I can’t say I expected anything better. The room was empty except for a thin mattress covered in unidentifiable stains on the floor. On top of the mattress was my leather bag, with my blanket taken out and folded nicely at the foot of the bed.

  “This is your room!” Jackson said. He turned back to face me and handed me a small metal key, his smile returning. “Luckily for you, Avid has a lot more rooms than it does inhabitants. Some of the exile towns have a lot more people, and a far fewer rooms than we do, but you get your very own room! I know it doesn’t look like much, but I’m sure you’ll decorate it to your fancy in no time. Okay, time to show you where we eat!”

  He briskly started back out of the room, and I trailed after him. I stepped out of my room and turned back to lock my door. When I turned around, I was face to face with Zane, causing me to jump a little with surprise.

  “Welcome to Avid.” He smiled. “Keep a close eye on your stuff when you can, and if you think that people here don’t know how to pick a lock, you’d be wrong.”

  I stood, stunned for a minute, until Jackson called back at me to pick up the pace.

  “Thank you,” I managed to say in a half-whisper, still agitated that he took my things in the first place, but just grateful he gave them back.

  Zane nodded.

  When Jackson and I exited back out to the town center, he turned to the first building I tried to enter when I first arrived at Avid. He pulled out a key ring with about a dozen different keys jingling on it as he fumbled around for a golden one. He jammed the key into the door’s lock.

  “Aren’t you afraid someone will pick the lock?” I asked, thinking about what Zane said.

  “No, because anyone to steal from this building would be an idiot,” he said harshly, pulling the heavy door open. “After you.”

  I stepped into the room, which was nothing more than a high-ceilinged cafeteria with another door on the far wall. There must have been about twenty long tables arranged in the room, with a handful of seats situated along the length of each. The walls were different than that of the building I was to live in—instead, these walls were covered in windows that filled the room with a deceptively warm glow. In this building, even the ceiling itself had a large window, which looked fairly new.

  “This is where we eat!” Jackson said, his cheerful voice echoing in the empty building. “We keep our food storage in that room over there,” he said, pointing to the door on the opposite side of the room from me. “Mealtime is three times a day, and meal times are posted on papers in each building.”

  As he showed me around the room, I began to realize how hungry I was. I don’t think I’ve eaten since before I was arrested.

  Then, we were out of the dining hall as quickly as we had come. Jackson crossed the town center and the well, making his way between two different buildings than before.

  “Where are we going?” I called after him, trying to keep up.

  “I’m going to show you your job.”

  After clearing the narrow space, we continued walking, following a dirt path surrounded by just as many trash mounds as were near his house. We continued to walk for a while, or rather, Jackson continued to speed-walk, with me occasionally jogging to keep up.

  “How far out is this place?” I asked.

  “You see those trees?” he stopped and pointed to the distance at some trees that looked no bigger than my thumbnail from where we stood. Once I replied that I did, he continued walking.

  “Jackson?” I called.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Why are you the representative of Avid?”

  “Every few years, the cities check up on the exile towns to make sure they are still livable, and they reassign a representative each time they visit. They just pick from a list of the inhabitants.”

  “Do you have to accept the position?” I asked.

  “No, you don’t. They don’t want total chaos in the exile towns, so they won’t appoint someone who doesn’t want to, or that person will purposely get everyone into more trouble. Instead,” he continued, “they bribe the person. The representative gets special food rations for just his or herself from the cities. It isn’t much, but it is a bit extra, and I quite enjoy the occasional chocolate cake the cities throw in for me for being a good boy.” He let out a maddening giggle.

  By this point, we had almost reached the trees when he began to describe to me that I would need to water the carrots every day with the water buckets that other people would fill as their job. According to Jackson, many people were assigned different plants to water, weed, or harvest, making the jobs really simple for everyone to keep up with. We got to the trees he had pointed out and continued on the dirt path until we were inside a huge ring of trees, revealing a large field of a wide variety of crops. Jackson motioned to the patch of carrots.

  “This is all you are in charge of. Water them a little bit daily. You get the buckets from over there,” he pointed to a row of metal buckets. “Make sure you take any empty buckets with you back to the well for the water-runners to fill.”

  “Do people ever try to escape?” I asked, looking around the tree ring.

  “To where? The cities don’t want us anymore, and there’s nothing more out there. Besides, the wall is too high to climb, even if someone were to be stupid enough to leave,” he said, walking back toward the town center.

  “Is that it?” I called after him.

  “Is what it?”

  “Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

  “That’s all you need to know.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  When I got back to the town center, I figured I would make my way to my room. In the common center of my building, Lamb, Luka, and Zane were all sitting on the couches. As soon as Lamb spotted me, she hopped up to come greet me.

  “Hi, E!” she said, hugging me as if we were friends. “The boys and I were thinking of helping you get some little decorations for your room to make it a bit more homey!”

  “Oh, you guys don’t have to do that. Thank you though,” I assured her.

  “We insist!” She smiled.

  I grumbled, sighing a forced “Okay.”

  She led the way behind the buildings to the trash piles, with the boys and me behind her. Once we had walked past the first few piles, past Jackson’s house a little ways, she stopped and turned to me.

  “Some of this trash has been here quite a while, and has already been picked through, but some of these are newer. They all come from the cities and the exile towns. A good bit of the trash in the New Territory eventually gets sent here. The rest goes to some other dump away from here. As the newcomer, you can have the first pick of the piles!” she said, her arms extended outwards.

  Oh boy, I thought. What an honor…

  “Uhmm… I guess I’ll start there,” I said, pointing to a random hill of garbage.

  She smiled happily, nodding her head.

  “Good choice! I’ll take this one,” she said, claiming a pile.


  The boys each proceeded to head to their own trash mounds, and the three all began picking through the junk without hesitation. This is so not natural.

  I stood there for a moment, not really sure it was worth digging through trash just to find a few cheap decorations. After a moment, I began picking gingerly at a few things in the pile. I hooked my finger under a decaying cardboard box, flinging it to the side.

  “Don’t worry about getting a bit dirty,” Lamb said upon noticing my obvious disgust. “We have showers, ya’ know.”

  “Yeah,” I said, still uncertain, picking at a few empty milk jugs.

  “I found a pillow!” called Zane, holding a small throw pillow in the air. “It doesn’t look too grungy. Anyone want it?”

  Everyone declined and Zane dropped the pillow back into the pile.

  As I chucked aside a moldy box, a little glimmer of light caught my eye. Squatting down, I dug around the sparkle until it revealed a tiny mirror about the size of my heel. I pulled on the mirror, lifting up a miniature mirrored box.

  “Oooh!” Lamb cooed, trotting over and admiring my find. “Pretty!”

  I smiled, slightly satisfied. With a little scrubbing, I’m sure it’ll clean up well. I pocketed the box in my coat and resumed digging.

  About a half hour after picking through what turned out to mostly be boxes and jugs, with a few petite, empty clay pots that I took, Luka called out to get our attention.

  “Hey, guys, I found something!” He lifted a thick wooden box above his head.

  “Is there anything in it?” Zane asked, walking over to Luka from his spot.

  “I don’t know; I haven’t opened it yet.”

  “Well, go on! Open it!” chirped Lamb excitedly.

  Luka set the heavy box on the ground and unlatched some hinges. He flipped the lid over, revealing a bunch of old papers, still in good shape.

  “That’s it?” He sighed, aggravated. “A bunch of papers?” He kicked the box and went back to where he left off, digging through garbage.