The Bastard

by V. K. Ludwig

  “What are you doing to me?” I asked, but the two men ignored me as if I had no voice. My eyes bounced around as if they might find an explanation for all this, but settled on Isabelle’s raised brows and the death stare she shot towards the door. I followed her gaze. What is going on here? My chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. Then it stopped altogether, and I held it in tight. Councilwoman Svea?

  She closed the door from the inside, her arms as pale and blue-veined as her face. The defender let go of my arm and positioned himself in front of the door.

  “So?” the councilwoman asked and stared at the little blue rocket.

  It whistled, beeped and a red dot lit up, making his owner shake his head with quick sharp movements.

  She pinned me down with those colorless eyes of hers. “Not pregnant then, what a relief.”

  Her words kicked me in the guts and left me breathless. How could she possibly know? I rubbed my hand over the area where the little thing had poked me, my head dizzy and confused.

  “I owe you an apology.” The councilwoman took a step towards us, and the defender hurried and pushed one of my chairs behind her. “Oh Ayanna, this is all my fault. I gave you the permission to go to the clans and now look at the mess at our hands. Now, I don’t want to blame you for your plan to have yourself inseminated. No, I blame myself. The council should have known better than to send you to those men, days after your application had been rejected. That was poor —”

  “Their chieftain told you, didn’t he?” I blurted.

  “No.” She shook her head and sat on the chair, her hands neatly folded on her lap. “Did you really think we would let you go to a clan without some sort of security? The holo-band we gave you did not just work on both networks, it also listened to your every conversation. We considered bringing you back when he said he loved you.”

  I shrunk back at Isabelle’s questioning stare, which crawled over my shoulder like an uncomfortable truth.

  “Like I tried to say earlier,” Svea continued, “That was poor judgment on my part. I can’t condone what the clanswoman did, but in a way, it helped us to step in before you would make a terrible mistake. We had to make sure that you are not pregnant, which you are not, thankfully. Can you imagine the headlines? District woman pregnant with a child of inferior genetics… that would have been something, don’t you agree?”

  “Nothing about River is inferior!” I spat in a venomous tone, and tiny white specks clouded my vision. Why did I come back to this place? Fury made my knees tremble, and I pushed my feet around as if I could get rid of it that way.

  Svea leaned back, her stare as intruding as a detective hunting down the truth. Something foreboding glistened at the back of her eyes as if the knowledge of the world compressed inside her head.

  “At least we can understand your mother’s death now,” she said. “Very tragic. But after discussion with the other council members, we have decided to approve your application to be inseminated. Once your hormones are back on track, and you have recovered from this confusing experience, please —”

  “I don’t want to be inseminated anymore.” I flung my hands onto my lips as if my mouth had just outpaced my brain. “I… I believe I want to go back.”

  Svea and the defender exchanged a quick glance, then she nodded and rose from the chair. “You and I both know it’s not possible. What would we tell the members of your community home if you suddenly went back, never to return? I know the next couple of weeks might be painful as you go through this transition, but I am confident that it will all work out in the end.”

  She reached her hand out, and I eyed her skinny fingers for a long moment, pressed together and tense as if this situation made her just as uncomfortable as myself. When I finally shook her hand, her sweaty fingers pressed against mine and a pointy object poked against my palm.

  She winked and slowly pulled her hand away, leaving the object in my hand. “In situations like this, it is always best to involve those we hold dear, such as your friend Isabelle here.”

  Within the fraction of a blink, my room returned to silence, and I stared at the piece of paper in my palm. Neatly folded until it didn’t take up more space than a ladybug would, it wore me down as if it held the weight of my entire life wrapped inside it.

  “What is this?” Isabelle pointed at the matte yellow thing and released a deep breath. “You got yourself in some deep shit with all this, and I can’t get rid of the feeling that I am in it too, now. Go check what it says.”

  I opened each side with such caution, one might have thought the paper could explode at any moment now, and force our community home down on its boulder-like knees. The corners lifted underneath my sharp breaths, but my thumb pinched the handwritten letters down as if they could disappear from the page. Thickly penned words arranged from left to right, jarred and without any prettiness to them, in a way that didn’t precisely model the diligence of a council member. Anxiety poured into my chest, making my heart pound against the inside of my ribs.

  “What does it say?” Isabelle asked, her voice nothing but a faraway whistle for me. Her fingers gripped the paper from me, which shook seconds after. “This message is creepier than a night alone on a graveyard, and I really don’t think we can trust her.”

  Chapter 28

  Pancakesh

  River

  “I want pancakesh,” I said.

  The laughter of the villagers made my table vibrate so hard, the vomit climbed up into my throat.

  “Is he still drunk?” Rowan pointed at me and looked over to Adair. “Didn’t I tell you to make sure he’s sober in the morning?”

  Adair shrugged his shoulders, his smirk buffed and trimmed for the occasion. “How would I know he can’t hold his liquor? He seemed ok enough when I brought him back to the cabin last night.”

  “Adair,” Rowan said. “I just asked him if he wants to confess, and he answered he wants pancakes.”

  I sighed and placed my head on the table, hoping I could doze off for just a minute, but no such luck. The relentless stomps of Rowan’s heels made my brain bounce against my skull. I would need to throw up soon, and I wanted this over with — nothing’s worse than barfing in front of the entire village. Tried it once. Got scolded by the women for setting such a bad example for the young boys. Oriel tugged on my shirt, but I grunted at him.

  “You have to get your act together,” he said, “if you play your cards right, he might let you stay. People here know that you are not a bad guy, River. Stupid, yeah, but not like the other scum he usually exiles.”

  “Where’s uncle Peter?”

  He slung his arms around my shoulders and pulled me back against the chair. “At my place gobbling up the winter stash and living it up with science-fiction novels. We will tell Rowan about him once the waves calmed. And now look straight at Rowan and tell him what we discussed.”

  “Whish one of them?”

  The slap on the back of my head sucker punched my eardrums, making me wish I would have stopped at six horns of mead. Sweetness still clung to my tongue, flavorful and a bit medicinal, but with an aftertaste of sorrow.

  “The way I shee it,” I said, “is that Ayanna isn’t a cla… clans… claaans-woman, and your law shouldn’t apply to ush. She wanted me to sheep with her, and just for the record...” I flung my hand up and extended two or so fingers in the air, facepalming into the surface of the desk with a grand slam that resonated the longhouse.

  “I don’t believe him,” someone shouted from the crowd. “Why would a woman from the Districts want to sleep with him? Come on people, we all learned they have no interest in it. I say all this is nothing but a farce.”

  Clansmen laughed and nodded while others shook their heads and threw their hands up demanding justice. Rowan held the clan in a tight grip not letting anyone escape his verdict, and neither would I.

  Oriel raised from the chair beside me. “Before she left, she confessed that she stopped taking the water the moment she got here. She al
so confirmed that she wanted to sleep with River, so we can be certain that this was not rape. It was consensual.”

  “He still broke the law.” Rowan combed his fingers through his beard and rubbed the ends, strapping me down with his stare. “The law states that no man can be closer to a woman than three feet unless it is his wife, mother or sister below the age of ten. A woman, as in everyone female regardless of where they came from. River, do you want to deny that you have been closer to her than three feet?”

  I pushed myself up, staggering from left to right, my stomach a clenched ball of bile and dulled panic. “No. It’s the besht thing that ever happnd’ to me and I sure as hell won’t deny it.”

  Turmoil trampled through the room like a cattle herd, and some clapped while others yelled their complaints. Would he exile me today or let me sober up in a cell? I gazed over to the door, ears, and eyes alert in case she would step inside. Any moment now, she will step through this door and save my life in more than one way.

  Rowan’s boots all but dragged over the floor, his eyelids heavy and his shoulders rounded. He kneeled in front of me, and I optioned for breathing through my nose again. Gotta have some decency for your chieftain.

  “I really want to save your life because that’s the least I owe you,” he whispered, “but you’re not making this easy for me. I get how you feel, man. Do you think I wanted to live after my wife disappeared? I am still dragging myself from day to day because she's gone. But I am chieftain now, and I carry the responsibility of the entire clan on my shoulders. You are the son of a chieftain, River, do you understand what that means? You have a claim by blood, and one day you might carry the responsibility of that clan on your shoulders.”

  I hung my head, stared down at my pants and shrugged. “I don’t want to be a chieftain. That job sucks ballsh, and I just want Ayanna back.”

  “Yeah. I also didn’t want to be chieftain. All I wanted was my wife, Darya. And look at me now… I am chieftain of the Clan of the Woodlands, and my wife is probably six feet under somewhere in a two-hundred-mile radius. Go figure.”

  I spit on the floor, fearing I would have to throw up if that blob of saliva ever hit the bottom of my stomach. Once in a while, that did the trick, right? Well, not this time, and I tossed my cookies right next to me on the ground. Feet shuffled, and I suddenly had a lot more room to breathe. It didn’t smell nearly as bad as that one time when the smoked brisket came back up, but some left the longhouse, anyway.

  Rowan shook his head, hiding a smirk behind his hand. “Alright, that’s it. We are going to postpone this meeting until tomorrow morning, same time. You can’t expect me to cast a verdict on him if he can’t even walk straight. Throw him in a cell and bring him a bucket of water so he can clean himself up.”

  Adair and Oriel grabbed one arm each and dragged me over to our cozy prison. Snowflakes weaved from the dark clouds above us, dissolving into drops of water the moment they hit the ground as if they never existed in the first place. They left no proof behind — just like me! Rowan had given me another day, but really, it was just an additional twenty-four hours of suffering.

  They placed me onto the yellow-stained mattress and closed the door behind me, locking me up for some one-on-one time with my broken heart. Hey, at least they gave me some water so I could get myself cleaned up a bit!

  Defeated and bitter, I flung myself onto the mattress but regretted it the moment my ass hit the springs. A disgusting stench filled the room, like seven-day-old underwear, probably coming from the carpet. Who puts carpet in a cell, anyway? The room spun around me with the speed of a merry-go-round, making my stomach gurgle. I dozed off for what felt like twenty seconds and awoke to a dark room with Uncle Peter and Oriel staring at my puffed up face.

  “Well, nephew, who would have thought I would ever get to meet you.” Uncle Peter handed me a plastic cup of water and kneeled down beside my bed. “You look just like your mother, except for the beard of course. But the hair black as tar and those curls… there’s no denying that you are her son.”

  Oriel gave me a nod. “Can’t give you more than a few minutes, ok?”

  He closed the door behind him as he stepped out, the shadow of his body peeking through the gap underneath it.

  “Tell me about them.”

  Uncle Peter scratched the few strands of hair he had left on his head, and the corners of his mouth pulled into a wide smile. “Kate was a good shot — a lot better than me, that’s for sure. Could shoot down a squirrel from the highest tree without getting the arrow stuck in the bark. Brave, too! She sang to you when you were in her tummy, you know? Got that cute little tune like a da, da, daaa, da, bam, hm, hm, hmmm. Not sure if I still remember that one correctly. Now, your dad was a proud man, tall and strong, but not unkind at all. Tried to get as many women out of the village as possible while the dagger poked through his ribs and into his lungs. It was of no use, of course, but he tried.”

  For a moment, his words drove the darkness from one half of my heart and replaced it with content. Having decent people as your parents were a luxury these days lots of situations couldn’t afford. No such issues in the Districts of course. I sighed, and my body fell into a state of relaxation. I had known love, been inside a woman and knew where I came from. Now I could die a happy man, somewhere between a rock and a dead oak, its roots cemented underneath a layer of ash.

  Oriel stepped back inside the room, a steamy plate in his hands which soon replaced the stench with sweetness and a note of vanilla.

  “With regards from our chieftain,” he said and placed the buttery stack in front of me on a stool, topped with whipped cream and chocolate drizzle.

  “Pancakes!”

  Chapter 29

  Perfectly safe

  Ayanna

  It’s perfectly safe. Safe safe safe. My body trembled, the mantra the only thing keeping me from insanity. Cold concrete painted in shades of blue, steal overhangs and glass… so much glass. Through the door, an abandoned office building as dark as a cave entrance. No way I was going in there.

  “Are you sure this is the correct building?” Isabelle gave the sign in front a push, which creaked like a set of crooked hinges. “Just do me a favor and read the note once more. Because I am not stepping in there with my baby unless you are telling me for certain, this is the address.”

  I fumbled the note from my pocket, damp from sweat, worn out from the many times I had turned it in my hands. “In a divided world, love remains true North. Topaz District, building 72b. Ten PM. Bring the baby.”

  “Each time you read it out loud it sounds more and more creepy.”

  This part of the district scurried with nonconformists and was no place for women like us — genetically sound and all that. But the note burned between my fingers like a metal slide in summer. She wanted us to find something or someone, and we stood less than ten feet away from it.

  “Do you think we should turn around and go back to the community building?” I asked, less surprised than proud of what I had called it. Community building, because home was miles from here — I knew that now.

  “Svea is an oddball for sure, but she doesn’t strike me as someone who would endanger my baby,” she said. “I think we should go inside, take a quick stroll through the reception and check it out.”

  My gaze wandered over the abandoned concrete squares, checking if anyone might have followed us. Empty streets and grass infiltrated flagstones, but not a single face in sight… not even dirty ones.

  “Fuck it.” I climbed the three steps and pushed the glass door open.

  “That’s the spirit,” Isabell said, “and I am thrilled that you broadened your vocabulary while at the clan.”

  We left the dirty streets and walked into a place even dirtier. Yellow crusted stains greeted us with a whiff of acidity and disease, and the old air limped around me and crept into my nose. Desks and chairs stood scattered across the entry hall, some on their sides, others upside down. Brown-stained paper documents tiled
the floor and almost made me slip.

  I pointed at the staircase. “Up or down? And don’t even think about splitting up because that’s not going to happen.”

  Isabelle bounced on her feet, and with her, Rose, who slept in the baby carrier snugly wrapped to her mother’s chest. Her eyes darted up along the rail, and then down into the dark basement. “Upstairs for sure.”

  “Hm.” I scrunched my nose. “I think we might be luckier in the basement. After all, we are looking for a secret, and I’ve never heard of anyone finding secrets in well-lit offices on the second floor. Everybody knows it’s always the basements.”

  Isabelle sighed. “Whatever, basement then. I don’t care as long as we hurry. If this turned out to be a total fake, I could still make it home in time for movie night.”

  I gaped at the mold-covered wall, leaned over the rail and took a deep breath; mold and water leaks, just as one might expect from an old basement. Down by the landing, an orange emergency light illuminated the lifeless body of a rat or mouse — Please be a mouse!

  “Alright,” I said. “I’ll go first, but watch your steps because there’s a dead mouse down there. Don’t want you to go shrieking if you step on it.”

  She followed behind me and peeked down. “That’s most definitely a rat.” Ugh!

  We followed the orange hall where the grout had crumbled from between the red bricks and crunched underneath our shoes. Dark red metal doors stood wide open, each one revealing a room stacked to the ceiling with cardboard boxes, more chairs and thick sheets of glass neatly leaned against the walls. The foul humidity made my hair curl and my stomach twist, but turning around wasn’t an option. What if this could get me out of here, back to River?