Melancholy: Episode 1

by Charlotte McConaghy

  My mouth opens but nothing comes out.

  “I’m Raven. But you already know that, don’t you?”

  I nod.

  “You’re the one with the dual eyes.”

  We look at each other. I have absolutely no idea what to say, but I do finally understand her name. It’s the blackness of her eyes; they are chilling and bottomless.

  “You came with Luke.”

  I give her another nod.

  “You saved his life.”

  “No.”

  “I wanted to thank you for that. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

  And with that, all sense of wonder at her beauty vanishes. Instead my hackles rise.

  Raven tilts her head, her smile growing wider. “Shall we go and see him?”

  We fall into step side by side. “How long was he here?” I ask calmly.

  “Several months.”

  I can’t believe Luke dumped me in a loony bin and went to have an adventure with the resistance. It’s been pissing me off since I got here – I was the one who always wanted to find them. And now they all know and love him, as of course they would because everyone always does, and it just makes me feel like even more of an outsider.

  He sleeps, and I wait, and everyone here no doubt compares the two of us and can’t fathom how a man like Luke could ever come to know a woman like me. I haven’t told them that I’m a science experiment and a murderer because I can’t say the words out loud. I haven’t told them that Luke pretended to love me because I was a danger to humanity – it’s too humiliating. I haven’t told them how I killed my therapist with a stool leg in his spine. I haven’t told them anything, because all the words I have to say are poison.

  I realize as we walk the real reason I lied and told them my name was Dual. It’s because I don’t want to be Josephine Luquet anymore.

  “How’s the harvest going? Or should I say, how is the sleeping?”

  I falter.

  “Don’t worry,” Raven grins. “I won’t tell anyone. You’re tired and you’ve clearly never done a day of labor in your life – it’s not your fault.”

  I am instantly outraged, wanting to tell her that I could do a day of work if I wanted to, but then I realize how bratty that sounds and start to feel embarrassed.

  Raven stalls me at the door with a cool hand on my arm. “Do you speak, Dual?”

  I remember all my words, all the thousands of them, spoken to Luke and then Anthony. Those days I spent talking and laughing, the hours in the therapy office, staring out the window and recounting incorrect versions of the truth. I meet Raven’s eyes. “I used to.”

  Ranya is sponging Luke down when we go inside. His shirt is off and her strong, thin hands move with a mother’s tenderness as they dribble water over his smooth skin. He looks pale, and there is bruising on his torso that scares me dark inside.

  “What’s that from?” I demand.

  “It’s internal bleeding, love,” Ranya says softly.

  “So fix it.”

  She doesn’t say anything, because there’s nothing for her to say. She’s not a surgeon. She can’t fix it.

  The sun is sinking and the air has a chill to it. I want to cover Luke’s body so he won’t feel the bite, but I don’t move; I stand frozen, watching as Raven calmly takes the sponge and starts dabbing his chest. As if she always does it. The image is scoured into my brain and for some irrational reason I can’t look away. They are beautiful, the two of them. She is so at ease in her body, in her interactions with his body. Did he and I ever look like that together?

  A hand takes mine and I realize belatedly that Ranya is leading me outside. “Dual? Are you listening?”

  I nod dumbly. “Is she a nurse or something? Does she normally do that?”

  Ranya looks at me and I see pity in her eyes. Pity. Jesus, I know what’s coming. I know what she’s about to say – it’s all there in her gaze.

  “He’s dying, love. His organs are shutting down. He won’t survive much longer.”

  I swallow, then shake my head. “You’re wrong.”

  “Dual, listen to me – ”

  I turn and run. I don’t feel the wounds in my feet or the jerking of my broken elbow, I don’t feel anything at all but the wind against my face and the thump of my heart. Ranya is wrong.

  And I am wrong – I have been wrong. Luke would be disgusted at the way I’ve behaved, cowering in fields and sleeping when I should have been helping. Avoiding people and skipping meals so I don’t have to be in the hall under Quinn’s probing eyes.

  I plunge through the field until I find my discarded scythe, and then I start working on my row, the one bloody row I should have finished weeks ago. I bend my back and I hack at the wheat, cutting and dividing and tying it into piles that I carry on my back. And when the sun has gone down, I keep going. I don’t stop, even when the pain in my body is unbearable, when my back aches and my feet ache and my elbow and hands and head all ache. I keep working, because my life has been a series of nightmares and throughout it all I have kept going. I kept going until I got here, and then I stopped, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why I suddenly became a coward – perhaps I have always been one, and reality has finally caught up with me.

  “Dual!” a voice shouts late into the night. I ignore it and keep going, lost in the rhythm and the pounding of my head.

  I am further into the field than I have ever gone. In the dark it all looks the same, but above me I can see the emaciated fingers of wasted branches snaking up to obscure the moon. For a disoriented moment I think I am beyond the wall. In the wild. My heart jams out of beat and I sway.

  The next thing I know, I am staring up at the inky black sky, where the stars are the same as they have always been, but brighter and clearer. And now there are hands on me, lifting me, and I go to tell the hands that I’m fine, but no sound comes from my mouth. It is Hal, I think, from the white of his hair in the moonlight.

  “Let me keep working,” I manage.

  His eyes are enormous and so pitying that I start to struggle. I can’t bear the expression they all wear. I hate pity.

  “It’s alright,” he says gently. But he’s just a child, and Luke is dying. There will be no alright.

  Chapter 3

  February 4th, 2065

  Luke

  I’ve never been so thirsty in my life. There’s dry blood on my cracked lips and my eye seems to be swollen shut, meaning my peripheral vision sucks. This is making itself apparent because each time I slyly want to take note of the people watching me, I have to really obviously twist my head the whole way around.

  Quinn sits opposite, hands folded on the table, watching me calmly. We are the only ones seated in the large dining hall. Stationed around the room are several resistance fighters, all armed and very wary of me. My hands have been tied again, and the fact irritates me.

  “Well go on,” I say. “Ask me whatever you want.”

  “How did you know about us?”

  “I hacked my boss’ hard drive.”

  “Who’s your boss?”

  “Jean Gueye.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Would you like me to forward you a resume? She might not have a particularly glowing reference for me though – ”

  “No, it’s bullshit that you hacked her drive.”

  I shrug. “And yet here I am. Can I have a drink? It’s hot out here.”

  Nobody moves. I sigh.

  “Why did you come here?” Quinn asks.

  I run my swollen tongue over my teeth. “Few reasons.”

  “Which are?”

  “The first is my girlfriend.”

  His frown deepens and I see disappointment set in. Someone in a corner sniggers.

  “The government’s been torturing her.”

  “Revenge, then?”

  “Of sorts. And redemption.”

  “For what?”

  “For having spent the last thirteen years working for them. I can’t take that back, but I
can use it to take them down.”

  He considers this. “How can you prove you aren’t a spy?”

  “I guess I can’t. Not until Jean’s dead and the cure’s been destroyed.”

  “What you’re talking about is a lot bigger than Jean Gueye,” he warns me. “She’s practically a pawn.”

  “Good. Means she’ll be easy to destroy.”

  “And the king?”

  “Falon Shay, Prime Minister of the regime. He needs to be taken out, along with the other eleven Ministers.”

  “And when they’re gone, we’re still left with a city of drones.”

  “Not for long,” I murmur. “I have an ally in the city.”

  “Who could possibly – ”

  “Ben Collingsworth.” The inventor of the cure. I let that sink in for a moment. “He’s already working on the antidote as we speak. If we can find a way to take control, we can make everyone human again. Which is why I came to you. I need fighters.”

  Quinn falls silent, eyeing me closely. Finally he smiles. “You’re intriguing, Luke Townsend. I’ll give you that.”

  “Can you also give me a glass of water?”

  Quinn nods and someone brings me a cup, lifting it to my lips for me. It dribbles down my chin, making me look like a fucking infant.

  “I’ll make you a deal, Luke,” Quinn says. “You stay here and we see what you’re made of. If you can make it through a few months, and convince us of your loyalty, I may just believe you. Then we can start talking about working together.”

  I nod but all I can think to myself is that a few months better not turn into more than that, because Josephine is in an asylum waiting for the blood moon, and if I don’t get back there in time to save her from the transformation then I might as well keel over and die right now.

  *

  Raven

  Hal and Will are guarding the dining hall doors. “Move,” I order.

  “Sorry, Raven,” Hal says nervously. “Quinn said it’s private.”

  “Would you rather deal with him or me?” I ask sweetly.

  The boys hesitate, then stand aside. I push into the hall to find Quinn alone at a table with a man I have never seen. The prisoner everyone’s been talking about. Rumour has it he’s a Blood. I stride over and slide into a seat next to Quinn’s.

  Quinn sighs. “Luke, this is Raven. Raven, Luke.”

  I extend a delicate hand to him. He’s a large man, broad and muscular even when slouched in his chair. There are bruises over most of the skin I can see, and he has a bad black eye and split lips. But when he turns his one good eye to me, I see a forest of green and a world of cunning, and I know that if I don’t make this man belong to me I will die.

  “My hands are tied,” he points out as if I’m an idiot.

  I withdraw my hand. “A pleasure.”

  “Luke’s decided to join our cause,” Quinn informs me casually.

  “And is it true that Luke is a Blood?”

  “It is.”

  “Was,” the man grunts.

  I tilt my head, studying him more closely, but his attention has already gone back to Quinn. Which is unusual. I learned at an early age that whether I want them to or not, people stare. My father used to stare, before Quinn gutted him for it. So now I use the stares, and I like them.

  They pick up their conversation. Luke is listing names of other Blood agents, a whole host of them, along with their security codes. He finishes by saying, “I want a vow that we’ll stop the sadness cures before they’re administered next year.”

  A bubble of laughter leaves me. “And how do you propose we do that?”

  “With planning and courage,” he answers me flatly.

  “City folk are always foolish when they arrive here,” I remark. “Full of heroic ideas. But as they settle in, they always see.”

  “See what?”

  “The futility of fighting.”

  Luke leans forward in his seat, eyeing me closely for the first time. “What the hell are you doing out here then?”

  “Surviving.”

  He stands without having been dismissed by either Quinn or me, which is a punishable offence for a prisoner, and says, “That’s not enough anymore. Show me to where I’ll be sleeping. I’ve had a rough few days.”

  *

  October 24th, 2065

  Josephine

  They let me sleep. I am ashamed, but I let them let me sleep, again and again. I stay in bed for the entire next day, letting the world wash away from me, my soul beginning to ready itself for a vast, unnameable grief.

  I wonder, in my dreams, if I will keep going once he’s dead. Or if my soul will simply drift away, untethered.

  As sundown nears I am assailed with an abrupt desire to see the ocean. And not just from atop the wall – but from the sand of the beach. I have always loved being immersed in water; it suddenly seems imperative that I have my first swim in the sea.

  I rise stiffly from bed and hobble through the streets to the gate. Guards above peer down at me. “You alright, kid?” one of them calls to me.

  “Can I go out for a bit? I just wanna see the beach.”

  The guard snorts. “No way in hell. You’re untrained and unarmed. Who do you think’ll give you permission?”

  “You?” I ask hopefully. “There’s a rock cliff protecting the beach – I’ll see them coming from a mile away. There’s never anything out there anyway.”

  He whistles. “You are green, aren’t you, kid?”

  “Look, whatever,” I snap, growing frustrated. “I’m opening that gate and I’m walking through it, because this isn’t a prison anymore, and it sure as hell isn’t the city.”

  “You open that gate without permission,” the guard says clearly, “and I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  It causes something in me to go cold. Without warning a very large, dark-haired man appears silently beside me and I lurch in fright.

  “Jesus,” I gasp. “Don’t do that.”

  He glares at me with eyes of coal and he has a bow and arrows strapped to his back. Without a word he signals to the guard on the wall.

  “Training?” the guard asks, and the dark-haired man nods. He then unlocks the gate’s heavy iron bolt and walks out into the shadows, long and lanky and utterly silent.

  He pauses only very briefly to glance at me and say, “Come.”

  It’s a bit like déjà vu of the morning Luke first appeared as a tall stranger. I followed him, too. I must be the kind of person who’s incapable of learning a lesson.

  Moving through the dusky night out here in the beyond, it’s quiet enough to be creepy. The air has grown cool but remains thick as always.

  I’ve lost sight of him. “Hey!”

  A hand clamps over my mouth and I gasp. “Shh,” he utters. “Be silent or we die.”

  Fear curls within my gut. I follow him into the dead, moonlit forest, trying to remain as quiet as possible, but I’m breathing fast and there’s dry earth crumbling under my feet. If we weren’t heading in the direction of the ocean I’d be bolting back inside the walls by now. My earlier bravado is gone, replaced instead by an instinctive awareness of danger. I think, over and over, of Pace’s last roommate, and how she died.

  We walk for about fifteen minutes or so. The man leads me past ghostly white trees until we come to a ridge. He motions for me to flatten myself to the ground and then we crawl up to the lip of earth. I’m not sure what to expect, but it certainly isn’t what I see.

  There, down in a ravine that leads directly to the sea cliff, are dozens of people grouped around campfires.

  “What the hell? Who are they?” I whisper.

  The man doesn’t reply, and I find myself looking more closely. They’re people, yes, but they’re … strange. Distant sounds drift up to me on the wind and I hear not words, but the animal noises of breathing and snarling and growling. It’s unnerving, and the back of my neck prickles. The creatures down in the ravine, even from such a distance, are wild, and as I realize
this I know what they are. “Furies.”

  “That’s the path to the sea,” he tells me softly. “We’re upwind now, but if they knew we were here we’d be dead.”

  “Why did you bring me?” I ask him, even though I know the answer. It is my lesson for wanting out, for wanting free.

  He doesn’t reply, and I can’t help but murmur, “They look just like us. It seems … civilized, the way they’re grouped around the fires. The children’s stories describe them as mindless.”

  I think, inevitably, of my first encounter with the fabled creatures. Luke and I were in an abandoned building when we were set upon by Furies, and I heard four words that changed everything I knew about them. Hold. I smell flesh.

  But however intelligent they are, they still wanted to devour us. I remember that just as clearly as I remember the fact that they could speak.

  “What’s your name?” I ask the man beside me.

  “Shadow.”

  “Shadow. Really? Okay. What are they, Shadow? Where do they come from? What makes them like this?”

  He shakes his head slowly. He doesn’t know.

  “But you kill them.”

  He nods.

  “And if they’re still human?”

  Shadow looks at me for what feels like the first time. “They are human.”

  The moon is almost full. I can see the ocean in the far distance, reaching up to meet the inky horizon. The night is undeniably beautiful, but whatever we’re doing here suddenly feels ugly.

  I crawl my way back down the incline and head for the compound, even though walling myself in is the last thing I feel like doing.

  “Your last name?” Shadow asks, moving silently alongside me.

  “I can’t remember it. Why?”

  “What happened to your parents?”

  “No idea.”

  “And Townsend?”

  I glance at Shadow. He’s probably in his late forties or so, leathery skin, wiry muscle in his limbs and a completely unknowable darkness in his gaze. “I met him for an hour. Then he went into a coma,” I lie bluntly.