Season of Hytalia

by Jennifer Arntson

  “How’d you find it?”

  Her eyes widened, like a trapped animal. “Same as you.”

  “You were running from a family that wished to enslave you?”

  Trisk faked her laugh and slapped my arm. “You’re so funny, Una!”

  I wondered why she acted so strange but figured she was getting anxious about taking me to Hawk. A friend would try to stop me, but were we friends or criminals with a shared experience?

  Changing the subject, I asked, “What’s your job?”

  It seemed to be a welcomed attempt. “Security. They trained me to use a blade, but in reality, I’m just a number.”

  “A number?”

  “We need to outnumber whoever comes upon us. It’s not about strength; it’s about the perception of strength,” she recited. “It’s better than being a diversion like I used to be before we got here.”

  “Interesting,” I commented, wondering what a diversion did. I’m sure there were countless birthrights I’d never heard of. The part about being a number, however, made complete sense. An enemy would be less likely to cause trouble if they thought they’d lose.

  “Once a cycle, I do kitchen detail like everyone else. Other than that, we are all required to tidy the camp. What did you get as your assignment?”

  “I don’t know. Nik asked me to come for training but didn’t say what for.”

  “Everybody goes through training of some sort. The teams grow every day, it seems. With all the flooding, we keep getting more and more people heading our way.” She slowed her pace. “Here’s your stop.” She pointed to the cave.

  “He’s in there? I thought you said he’s in a tent?”

  “Stay to the left, you’ll see it. I need to get back to the gate. We’re in residence forty-four. They’re all marked. If you get lost, ask someone for directions.” She hugged me. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

  We said our goodbyes, and she ran off into the camp.

  The cave’s entrance was not much higher than I was tall; in fact, Marsh would have to duck. The narrow opening kept much of the daylight out, so the grand room stayed dark and damp. The vaulted ceilings of the cave were so high, they could have easily accommodated Pantis’s house within it. The main branch continued forward into complete darkness, and a smaller, almost unnoticeable corridor curved off to the left. Per Trisk’s instructions, I followed it around. This end didn’t really have an opening; the rock just split above me and widened to the outside. Ferns and other green foliage grew in its void as the path terminated on a natural veranda. Several panels of canvas were draped over a strong wooden frame to the left.

  This must be it.

  “Can I help you?” A man leaning against the rock face pushed himself into view.

  “I’m here to see Hawk.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “No, but I’m sure he won’t mind.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Una,” I answered.

  The man signaled for me to wait while he spoke quietly to whoever was inside. When he returned, he told me to sit. “He’ll be out in a moment.”

  I picked at my fingertips as I waited. Not wanting to appear too eager, I faked an interest in something beyond the terrace. When I heard voices, I turned to see a woman and two men emerge from the tent with the man I’d come to see. Bowing to each of his departing guests, Hawk thanked them properly for their assistance. He waited with his hands folded loosely together until they left before cracking a smile.

  “Well, what did the wolves drag in?” Holding open a drape of the tent, he gestured for me to enter. He raised his voice to grab the attention of his guard. “No disruptions, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Once inside, my former cellmate poured me a glass of water. “How long have you been here?”

  “We arrived this afternoon.” I took it from him and guzzled the entire thing, not realizing how thirsty I was. He pointed to a chair, and I obliged.

  “I honestly didn’t expect you here this soon.” He sat down in the seat next to me. “Since you’re walking around without an escort, I take it you’ve been approved?”

  “I have, I think,” I paused, “and so has Marsh.”

  “Your brother is here with you?”

  I nodded.

  “Does he know about me? What I did?”

  “I told my family about meeting you, but I don’t think he knows anything else.”

  “I will make sure to let him settle in before I make myself known to him then. What is his assignment?”

  “A man named Lark, I think, is supposed to train him to use a bow and arrow.”

  “Nik made him an archer?” He shook his head while pinching the bridge of his nose. “Of all the positions…”

  “If it’s any consolation, Marsh isn’t happy about it either; he hates the idea, but Nik was pretty sure it was the right thing to do.”

  “He does have a way of knowing things.” He laughed at his own joke. “What about you?”

  “I think he’s going to train me.”

  “I’m sure he will. He’s been expecting you.” He drank the last of his water. “It will be nice to have another Seer here.”

  “Did he know my brother was coming with me?”

  “I’m sure he did. It’s not something he would have mentioned to me; having seen our overlapping past, he wouldn’t want to cause me to leave camp based on the fear of meeting someone I’d wronged.” Then he mumbled, “Although a heads-up would have been nice.”

  “How would he know?”

  “I don’t know how his gift works. It just does.”

  Wonderful.

  “What’s the plan for Marsh? Why a bow?”

  Hawk shook his head. “If Nik didn’t tell him, it’s because he wants Marsh to have a choice in it. If I did know, it wouldn’t be my place to tell. I’ll leave that between them.”

  “This all seems very confusing and indirect.”

  “Then let’s change the subject. Besides, if you’re meeting with Nik, he’ll teach you these things soon enough.” He stood and refilled my glass, leaving the decanter on the table nearest him. “How is your back?” He grimaced.

  “Oh, it’s fine now. It left a scar, but my mother healed me the moment I got home.”

  “And the baby?” He glanced at my stomach.

  I pushed my clothing over it. “Doing well, I guess. I’m getting bigger, although right now it looks like I’m just fattening up.”

  “Do your parents know?”

  “Yeah, they do. Mother knew right away, of course…” I hesitated.

  “What is it, Una?”

  “Well, it’s what I came to see you about, actually. Reinick came to the house and reinstated Calish’s birthright, making him a Junior Lord.”

  Hawk sighed. “So he accepted the offer?”

  “Not because he wanted to.” I touched my abdomen.

  His jaw fell. “Oh, geez, kid. Are you telling me that Calish is the father of your child?”

  I nodded. “No one outside the family knows; in fact, Blue thinks that it happened in prison by one of the guards. I came here because he wants to marry me anyway and say the baby is his, but I can’t. I refuse to be with him after everything he’s done to me!”

  “Did something else happen?”

  “It’s an awful story.” I hung my head in shame. I told him about Blue coming to the house to take me away by the point of his blade, the fight between him and my family, and the threats he made to my father and brother.

  “No wonder Calish took the bait.” He sat down. “So, if he has his birthright back, and reversed the Petition, why come here to get away from Blue?”

  “Because he didn’t come home.”

  “Come home from what?”

  “From his training at the Authority.”

  Hawk leaned back and exhaled slowly. “How long has he been gone?”

  “Today is day six, or seven, depending how you add it up.” I didn’t like the sudden cha
nge in his expression. “What is it?”

  “Nothing, I’m just thinking.” His eyes focused on some distant object while he searched his mind.

  “Please say something,” I begged. I wanted the truth, not a padded explanation.

  “He would have been taken in for uniform and weapons issue, but there’s no training for being a Lord, unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “…he’s with Reinick.” He paused to think again. “I bet he is.”

  “So he’s alive?”

  “Probably,” he assumed. “They’re not at the Authority Building, that I’m sure of.”

  “Why not?”

  “The lower floors of the prisons have flooded, and the water is only going to get higher. All senior officers, including my father and Calish, would have been moved off-site to a more secure location.”

  “Why don’t you know? I mean, aren’t you still doing things over there? I thought you’d be the one person who did know or at least could find out,” I argued.

  “My father charged me with finding the Resistance. I bring the people back to him that are denied residence here,” he said. “They’re questioned and released.”

  “You actually let people go after they see this place? Why take that risk?”

  He must have heard those objections before and answered a hundred questions just like it. “It’s not a problem; you’re going to have to trust me on this one.”

  I didn’t care about how the camp ran or what they did to protect it. That was not my concern. He and Nik should worry about that; I only cared about one thing. “Can you find him?”

  “I’ll do what I can.” He stood. “I’m sorry to cut you off, but there are some things I need to attend to.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure,” I stammered.

  He led me to the entrance of the tent. “You are always free to come by. I’ll let you know if I hear anything about Calish.”

  “Thank you.”

  I’m sure he was a busy man, and the pleas of a lovestruck pregnant woman didn’t rank high on his list of priorities. At least I made the request. Maybe, since we were family, he’d look into it. If he didn’t, then I hadn’t lost anything by trying, other than Hawk’s opinion of me lowering a notch or two given I had admitted to being intimate with my brother.

  The sky darkened by the time I exited the Council tent, and the cave grew even darker. The man who guarded this area was gone. It seemed odd a guard would leave his post with Hawk still there with a newcomer.

  I poked my head back inside Hawk’s tent. “Your man is missing.”

  He stopped sorting the stack of papers on his desk. “So?”

  “Well, should you be here alone?”

  He set his documents down in a neatened pile. “The men who attend the tents or the Council aren’t assigned to the task. They volunteer.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  He rose and came to my side. “Some habits are hard to break. The residents here are accustomed to seeing officials guarded and protected. They are not used to having people judged by their intentions, just their actions, so a few of them feel the need to repay our acceptance by making sure Council members are not harmed.”

  “What if someone changes after they have been here awhile? What if when they came here, they were approved, then they do something to compromise the camp later?”

  “Now you sound like the men who stand guard outside my tent.” He led me through the cave.

  “I can understand why they would doubt your ideals. It sounds like rubbish.” I stopped.

  “You mean, unbelievable?”

  “Impossible, actually.”

  “Give it some time. Go to your training, and keep an open mind. I have a feeling we’ll all benefit from it.” He squeezed my shoulder as we got to the other side of the cave. “I’ll check in on you. Do you have a residence yet?”

  “I’m staying with Trisk.”

  “I’m happy you two found each other.”

  “Me too,” I confessed.

  “You better go find your tent, then.”

  * * *

  Having no plans of my own, I found myself wandering around the grounds. If I did get to stay, it would be better if I knew where things were located. Because of its size, residents tended to their tasks in close proximity. Still, the development seemed well planned out and kept tidy by everyone who called this place home. The camp had been divided into two distinct spaces. One side had been dedicated to living space, while the other operated as functional work areas for various trades. The expanse between the two became a sort of common area where nothing productive seemed to happen at all.

  The entire community was self-contained, with the great walls, caves, and a sheer drop-off revealing a gorge hundreds of feet down. Unlike the outlook at home, there were no accessible game trails to climb up. Few animals other than a spider could conquer such a feat, and men would be wise to avoid trying. Judging by the activity of the rapids below, losing grip and falling in the river would not be a pleasant experience, even if you knew how to swim.

  Wandering through the residential area of the camp, I took note of the numbered markers to find Trisk’s tent. Knowing where to sleep seemed to be a useful piece of information, not that I felt tired yet. The people I passed coming in and out of their quarters were friendlier than the people of the village were to one another. At some point, it became apparent they weren’t speaking to each other; they were greeting me.

  Me.

  I’d never been acknowledged by strangers. No one ever seemed happy to see Scavengers; they certainly never made us feel welcome. There must have been something about being approved by Nik that gave a person unquestioned acceptance. Were customs different here? Suddenly I wished Trisk had stayed with me. Perhaps she told me the rules, but I was too busy plotting ways to kill Blue that I never heard them.

  I found tent forty-four, but I didn’t go inside. Being acknowledged felt so unfamiliar, but not at all threatening or rude, that I walked every row twice in an attempt to understand why they would be so…welcoming. I never stopped to talk, only practiced keeping an upright posture instead of cowering in their presence. Talking to them might be against the law, but since no one threw rocks at me for walking among them, why stop? My head didn’t need to be covered nor did the whites of my eyes offend anyone. Citizens warned their children that looking directly at me would make boils grow on their skin or cause their teeth to fall out. Folklore and lies ruled over my behavior in public, so for the sake of my new neighbors, I kept my eyes below their knees.

  After a bit, I found myself at the end of the housing area. If I made a third trip through it, someone might think I got lost and try to actually help me. I couldn’t risk talking to anyone, so I ventured off in a different direction. The north perimeter of the fence was just as impressive as the one at the entrance and just as unwelcoming. Here on the inside, however, it was used as part of small cross-fenced pastures to corral various livestock. Goats, rabbits, pigs, chickens, and a couple mud oxen and steers were housed in stalls with individual roaming areas divided by simple split-rail fencing. The animals could have migrated from one area to another, or wandered out, but they didn’t. Even the smallest ones stayed in their zone when they could easily pass under the rails to the other side. Nothing kept them physically contained. I waved my arm in the vacant spaces between the fence posts, expecting some mysterious barrier to make itself known. All I accomplished, other than scaring the animals on the other side of it, was confirming my days of cuddling furry critters had passed.

  Chatter and activity rose from the central area of the camp, stealing my attention from the farm. It must be dinnertime. Is that why they are so on edge? Huddled in the far corner, the chickens wedged themselves so tightly one popped forward. Her wings flapped erratically, lifting her high enough to walk over her fellow birds, forcing out another unsuspecting and terrified fowl. Not wanting to torture them further, I left them to join my own species.

  The c
ommon space around the great grills and firepits of the kitchen were filled with festive colored lanterns along with the more traditional ones used to illuminate the expanse. I wondered if everyone met here nightly for the evening meal, or if the temporary lack of rain provided an opportunistic gathering. Unsure of what to do or how to behave, I stood in the shadows and searched for someone I might recognize and cling to. Thankfully, Marsh’s height made him easy to find. Getting to him without bumping into strangers took a while.

  “Oh, excuse me.” A middle-aged man patted my arm before scooting around me.

  Did he apologize…to me?

  I waded through the crowd, trying to get to my brother while wondering how the behavior of those around us would change when they found out I lacked a birthright. How did his day unfold? Did he feel as out of place as I did, or did his personality help him overcome his doubts?

  “Well, hello, little sister! Come here.” Marsh moved down the bench to create a place for me to sit. I expected him to get up, not ask me to join him at a crowded table.

  “Hi.” I smiled timidly at the people sitting around him. “How was your lesson?”

  “Ergh.” He rolled his eyes as the people around us roared with laughter. It startled me.

  “Entertaining!” one of the men blurted out while pounding his fist on the table.

  Why is he talking to us?

  “Una, this is somebody.” He shrugged.

  “I’m Jaki.” He nodded. “Pleased to meet you.”

  You are?

  “This is my sister, Una,” Marsh introduced me, “and these are a bunch of people I get to hunt with, apparently.” He took a bite of bread.

  He seemed relaxed, but I felt my muscles twitch defensively. I took an inventory of everyone here and the weapons they carried on their person. Sliding my hand across the table, I took a fork and hid it in my lap.

  “We think that Nik must have made his first mistake ever by giving your brother a weapon,” Jaki informed me.

  “Great. You broke the Seer, Marsh,” a dark-haired girl next to Jaki added.

  Talking so candidly felt unnatural. Strangers, especially in a group, never engaged us in conversation. My fingers readied themselves on the underside of the table. A quick greeting made in passing was fine; an actual discussion was outright intimidating. The fact they wore blades belted to their thighs and torso made holding a fork to defend myself seem more ridiculous by the second.