Bisecter

by Stephanie Fazio

  I almost groan out loud as the head miner dumps five empty buckets at my feet. Mining is hard, monotonous work. And because I’m stuck next to the same two trash-talking, pickax-wielding men all day, the company falls just shy of intolerable.

  I take up my place along a portion of wall gleaming red from the sparkle of rubies and drive my pickax into the gray wall. A spray of rock sends up a puff of dust. Even though I turn my head to the side, my face is covered in the fine powder.

  The dust is the worst part. It leaves white streaks in my dark hair, the only part of my mother’s beauty I inherited. The dust makes my tongue feel thick and chalky, and is permanently embedded in the creases of my gloves.

  “Someone help me with this.” The man beside me strains against a boulder blocking his access.

  “Not you,” he growls as I move to help. I shrug my shoulders and grit my teeth, telling myself I don’t care. You are more than what they see. My mother’s words, which always sounded wise and true when they came from her lips, ring hollow in my head.

  A scream of agony cuts through the usual sounds of the day. I drop the fist-sized ruby in my hand and run in the direction of the cry.

  CHAPTER 3

  A small crowd has formed around a man whose leg is caught beneath a boulder. The stone is so large it dwarfs the four Dwellers who heave and groan against its weight. The stone doesn’t budge.

  “Dark God save me!” The man writhes on the ground, the droplets of his blood like small rubies scattered across the stones. He twists his body as though trying to rip his leg off. I shudder and resist the urge to look away.

  Try as they might, the others aren’t making any progress with the stone.

  I could help, I think as I watch the men struggle. I should help. But my father’s words echo in my head, a constant warning. Don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself. Don’t let them see what you can really do.

  The man’s screams are so loud I can’t hear myself think. Before I consider what I’m doing, before I can think about what it will mean, I push my way to the front of the crowd.

  I only meant to lift the stone enough for the Dweller to drag out his leg, but the entire boulder comes off the ground. One of the miners trying to help is drawn more than a foot off the ground when he doesn’t let go.

  There’s a collective gasp from the onlookers. They all turn to stare at me. For several moments, no one speaks. No one moves. I focus my attention on keeping the rock I’m still holding up from falling back on the Dweller’s leg.

  “You can gawk after you get him free,” the head miner barks.

  The others pull the man—unconscious now—from beneath the stone before I let it fall back to the ground. It settles with a thud that makes the ground shudder.

  A short laugh escapes from me as I look down at my dust-covered gloves. I always knew I was strong, but it’s been years since I’ve done anything even close to testing my limits. I forgot how good it feels to use, rather than resist, my strength. I should feel tired, exhausted even, from the strain of lifting something so enormous. Instead, I just want to do it again. I give the boulder a satisfied look.

  “Papa!”

  I recognize little Sirrel’s voice even though I can’t see her face as the tiny cloaked figure runs straight toward us.

  To my surprise, the girl doesn’t run to her father, who is being carried back to the Subterrane so the healers can tend to him. Instead, she collides with my legs, wrapping both arms around my knees and kissing my cloak.

  “You saved Papa! You saved Papa!” she cries over and over again.

  A rush of emotions hits me—gratitude for Sirrel’s affection, satisfaction to have been able to help…regret I hadn’t been brave enough to act when my own mother needed me….

  “It’s alright.” I pat her small back. “Your papa is going to be fine.”

  She blinks away tears as she squints up at me. “I was coming back from the river and I saw—I saw—” She swallows another sob. “But you saved him! You’re the strongest Dweller in the whole entire Subterrane!”

  I don’t try to hide the smile spreading across my face. No one ever talks about my differences like they’re something to marvel at. Maybe I should stop hiding all the time. Maybe I should let them see me for what I am every once in a while….

  “Here now.” One of the miners lifts Sirrel off her feet and places her on the ground behind him. “You best not be speaking with the Bisecter.”

  The sting of his words leaves me speechless. The stupid smile plastered on my face dissolves.

  “She saved Papa,” Sirrel argues, pointing a small, gloved finger at me.

  I try to tell her it’s okay, that she shouldn’t worry about me. But the words stick in my throat.

  Two of the miners exchange a look, and then one of them lifts the squirming, screaming child and carries her back toward the Subterrane.

  Her shouts of protest are soon lost. When I turn back, the others are staring at me.

  “You really are one of them, aren’t you?” a miner who has never before spoken to me asks. He makes no effort to hide his disgust.

  “Did they teach you that trick? Or were you just born like them?” another sneers.

  “I—”

  “The only thing human about you is your pretty looks,” chimes in a third, “and even those are ruined by your eyes.”

  They laugh.

  “Filthy Bisecter. If Captain Harkibel wasn’t your father, you would’ve been dragged off to Malarusk years ago.”

  The blood drains from my face. It’s true; my father has always protected me, even gone so far as to hide me so the Duskers wouldn’t find out about me.

  You are more than what they see. You are more than what they see. I chant my mother’s words over and over again as I wait for the tightness in my throat to ease.

  A few of the miners throw suspicious, hateful glances in my direction. I try to make my way back to the ladders, but I stumble on something unseen in my path. My feet get twisted up in each other.

  Not now, Hemera!

  I try to regain my balance, but it’s too late.

  I hit the ground hard, gravel biting into my palms through my gloves, as I roll into an undignified position. The men laugh as they stalk past me.

  “Clumsy and a freak,” one of them says. “What are the odds?”

  I wait until they’re gone before I pick myself up. I look down at the ground through blurred vision.

  I just saved a Dweller’s life, but it doesn’t matter. To them, all I’ll ever be are the black eyes I share with the Halves.

  CHAPTER 4

  I blink away the tears threatening to spill over.

  My gaze moves past the protective wall to the forest, where the beasts we all fear are lying in wait. With every rustle of leaves, I can imagine seeing the monstrous Halve creatures waiting for some unsuspecting Dweller to cross their path.

  The first time I heard about the Halves, it was from the Duskers. They told the story that I have since heard word-for-word at the closing of every Dark God festival.

  “No one knows from whence they came or for how long they’ve existed,” the Dusker boomed across the crowd of Dwellers. “But we all know the horror they’ve brought upon us.”

  He went on to talk about how the Duskers would protect us so long as we continued to pray for darkness and make sacrifices to the Dark God.

  It’s the same promise they’ve been making for generations, and still, there is no darkness, and the Halves are still murderers.

  The Halves, so-called for their vague resemblance to humans, are hunched over, grotesque beasts. They only go out in the low day like the rest of us, but they don’t need cloaks; their rough, scaly hides protect them from the sun. The Halves are bigger, stronger, and faster than any human, but they are witless; they know only how to murder and destroy. Some Dwellers believe the first Halves were once humans who got the Burn but somehow survived, but no one knows if that’s true.

  When I was a
small child, I overheard a Dweller woman telling her granddaughter about me. Before then, I hadn’t understood why the Halves and my name were often whispered in the same breath.

  “A few months before the Captain’s daughter was born,” the woman explained to her granddaughter, “a group of Halves attacked Subterrane Harkibel. During the battle, a Halve made it past the guards and began to attack the women and children hiding in the Subterrane. Hemera’s mother was very brave, and tried to protect the children. She put herself in harm’s way to defend them.

  “When Lady Harkibel’s dagger sliced through the Halve’s body, its poisonous blood landed on her. Welts rose on her arms and spread across her body. She should have died when the poison got into her blood. Instead, her welts healed and she became the only person ever to survive contact with Halve blood.”

  My mother lived, but the healers told her there was no hope for her unborn child.

  My survival was called a miracle…until I opened my eyes, and the healers looked into the wide, black stare of the Halves.

  The healers decided the unborn baby had absorbed the poison that should have killed my mother. By taking the Halve’s blood into my own, I became something different—neither human nor Halve. My father came up with the word Bisecter to describe the anomaly, but it soon became a title the Dwellers used to isolate and humiliate me.

  It was only because my father was the Captain that I was not thrown out of the Subterrane to die.

  ✽✽✽

  I can’t hide my black eyes, but until today, my father was the only one who knew I inherited the Halves’ strength.

  I wipe my dirty cloak sleeve across my face. There’s no sense in standing around and waiting to see what will happen once news of my inhuman strength spreads through the Subterrane.

  I measure the long shadow my body casts across the ground. Lowest day, which means there are six more hours before the sun reaches deadly heights again. The miners’ pickaxes clink against the stone walls of the pits. As their insults churn in my head, an aching loneliness creeps over me.

  Propping my pickax against one of the ladders, I begin to walk in the opposite direction.

  Clumsy and a freak.

  A desperate need to see Brice pulses in my chest. The thought of his arms wrapped tight around me sends prickles of anticipation down my spine and makes my feet move almost of their own accord.

  I don’t stop until I reach the protective stone wall enclosing the land above Subterrane Harkibel. Brice is the best scout in the Subterrane, which means he’ll be stationed in the large clearing where Halves are known to pass through in greater numbers.

  My heart beats faster. If anyone sees me sneaking away from my work assignment, I could be locked in the prison caves. Worse, I might come across a Halve before I find Brice.

  Freak. Unnatural. Bisecter.

  I feel an irresistible urge to see one of the only people who doesn’t flinch at the sight of my black eyes. I pick my way over the crumbled part of the stone wall until I’m on the other side. There, I pause.

  When the two guards pacing alongside the wall turn their backs, I take my chances, and run.

  I reach the base of an enormous script tree and duck under its thick, green branches. The air smells like river and new leaves. It’s the forest’s scent. It smells like Brice.

  Taking what feels like my first deep breath in days, I scan the ground for the unworn path I know by heart. I follow the narrow trail that winds around thick tree trunks. I move slowly, listening for the telltale trample of Halve feet, ducking behind tree trunks whenever an animal scurries through the brush. After the better part of an hour, the clearing appears.

  The first time I came to this clearing, it was by accident. It wasn’t long after Brice rescued me from the cave collapse. I felt lost and alone in a way I never had before. I hadn’t realized how much my mother protected me from the other Dwellers’ hatred and fear until she was gone. After Henri and two other kids shouted insults until my ears rang, I ran out of the Subterrane without any plan or care for where I was going.

  I was running from the Subterrane, but also from the dreams that haunted me each high day.

  I discovered the cave behind the waterfall just as low day turned. No sooner had I closed myself into the darkness, the stone door was pushed aside to reveal a boy with brilliant green eyes framed in the swirling waterfall mist.

  When the echoes of my startled scream stopped ricocheting off the cave walls, Brice, the only Dweller who refused to leave me for dead, smiled as if we were two normal humans exchanging greetings by the Dark God shrine.

  Brice wasn’t just admired by every beautiful girl his age, he was also the youngest and best scout in the Subterrane. Even my father spoke highly of Brice, and he usually keeps his praise to himself.

  I smile to myself at the memory of Brice, leaning against the wall of the cave, looking as comfortable as I was awkward.

  Unlike me, who could find a way to trip over air, Brice’s every move was fluid. There was no hint of the stoop so many Dwellers have from a lifetime of ducking through tunnels.

  It was the first time I saw—really saw—the golden hair and green eyes every other girl in the Subterrane swooned over.

  “Nice to see you, Hemera,” he said.

  Brice looked right into my eyes, then. No one besides my parents and Destinel had ever had the courage to meet my gaze.

  As it did then, the gentle rush of the waterfall fills me with a sense of calm. It’s almost impossible to imagine how something as evil as a Halve could exist in a place as beautiful as this. I let out a slow breath as a quiet relief spreads through my tense limbs.

  I kneel down beside the stream to splash water onto my face. I reach under my hood and try to comb my fingers through the tangles in my thick hair, but it’s too matted with sweat and my gloves are too bulky for me to make much progress.

  A dark shadow flits behind a tree. The bush to my left rustles. My shoulders tense.

  Brice leaps out from behind the tree, dagger in hand.

  “Hemera!” His dagger drops to the ground. “I could have killed you.”

  I laugh, my adrenaline turning to relief. “I missed you.”

  “And I you.” Brice pulls me against his chest. “But you can’t just wander into the forest any time you please. Especially since it’s your father who makes the rules.”

  “Is it?” I feign surprise. “I had no idea.”

  Brice tries to hide the smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

  This conversation is familiar. It’s the same one we always have whenever I sneak away from my work assignment to be with him. I smile up at Brice, into eyes the color of new leaves.

  “You don’t always have to do everything he says, you know,” I tell him.

  “I most certainly do.” He picks up his dagger and sheaths it at his belt. “And so do you. He’s our Captain.” There’s pride in his voice.

  I raise my eyebrows in challenge. “So, if my father told you to kill me, would you?”

  At the look that crosses Brice’s face I can’t help but laugh.

  “That’s not funny, Hemera.” He glares at me, but the tension in his shoulders is already melting away.

  “It’s not just about the Captain,” he continues. “What if you came across a Halve?”

  “Then you and your dagger would save me.”

  I meant it as a joke, but Brice’s chin lifts and he stands a little straighter. “You’re right about that.”

  We look at each other for a moment, just basking in our togetherness.

  “Admit it,” I say. “Breaking the rules feels good, doesn’t it?”

  Brice sighs, relenting.

  “I’m glad you came.” His handsome face, usually so stern, rewards me with his perfect smile. “Even though it’s much too dangerous to make a habit.”

  As he leans down to kiss my forehead, his hair falls over his eyes. It’s soft and warm as it brushes against my face.

  Brice straightens
up and looks into the trees. “Think you can handle things on your own for a few hours?”

  The other scout, who had melted against the trees so completely I hadn’t even seen him, steps out from behind a trunk. He gives Brice a disapproving look and nods. Brice is the lead scout on his watch, and so none of the others would dare to say what they’re really thinking…that Brice shouldn’t be abandoning his post when there are Halves about…that he shouldn’t be abandoning his post for the likes of me.

  Brice doesn’t seem to notice the other scout’s disapproval. Smiling at me, he takes my hand and leads me toward the rock ledge over which a narrow waterfall flows. When I step onto the slippery rocks, my feet betray me. I wobble, my arms flying like a spastic bird, as I pitch forward.

  All that saves me from plunging head-first into the pool is Brice’s steadying hand.

  If it was anyone except for Brice or Destinel, I would have been embarrassed, but the two of them know me well enough to expect my feet to betray me.

  “I swear those rocks were out to get me,” I say.

  Brice chuckles. “Always too busy looking ahead to pay attention to what your own feet are doing.”

  “It’s not funny,” I say.

  The Captain stopped teaching me how to duel because he was convinced I was always falling over on purpose. Learn how to use your feet, he said, or for sun’s sake grow some new ones.

  I’ve done neither, as my body likes to remind me.

  “I think it’s cute,” Brice says, leaning under the brim of my hood to kiss me. “I wouldn’t want to change a single thing about you.”

  My heart does a little flip in my chest. I’ve already forgotten the Dwellers’ angry words and their ugly stares. When I’m with Brice, everything they hate about me only seems to make Brice love me more.

  When I turn back to him, the look in Brice’s eyes sends a fiery heat coursing through me.