Uprising_A Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Novel

by Kate L. Mary

  After a moment, Asa said, “You would take me as one of your people?”

  “If it is what you desire,” I whispered.

  When he lifted his eyes, his brows were raised, but he said nothing. He was waiting for me to take the next step, the one I had told him I could not take. Things had shifted since then, and now everything was different. Again.

  “I will marry you, Asa.” My voice came out amazingly calm and sure, and there was not an ounce of doubt inside me. “Not only will it unite our tribes, but it will also make the other Heads see how much I trust you.”

  “And what about your people?”

  I looked toward Mira, who stood silently next to the cave opening, and she nodded once. Her approval meant more to me than I could say, but I would have made this decision regardless. At Mira’s side, Nyko wore an expression of amusement, but there was relief and even understanding in his eyes as well.

  I turned my gaze back to Asa, and his grip tightened on my hand. “By now my people should know I would never do anything to risk my tribe. Not after everything we have been through.”

  Asa smiled, and it was such a rare sight that it caused a flutter in my chest. “Then we get married?”

  “We get married,” I said, returning his smile.

  I knelt as Asa’s side, my back to the fire. Our two tribes stood in front of us, the remaining Fortis men, women, and children, and the remnants of what had once been the Winta tribe. Not only would this unite us, but it would also heal a part of me that I had been certain was damaged beyond repair.

  For the most part, my people were not upset by the union—it had even seemed as if a few of them had expected it—but they were still reluctant to get too close to the Fortis. Most were women and children, and I had to hope the memories of how vulnerable we had felt when our own tribe was first wiped out would help them accept these new members. It would not always be easy, but nothing we had done since our village was attacked had been. And yet we had come so far. Thrived, even. We could do this as well.

  My future husband’s hand was wrapped around mine when Anja stopped in front of us, setting the bowl of ink on the ground before kneeling. We had spoken at great length about what was to come next, if we would continue our tradition of passage markings, or if we should start anew. The markings I wore on my face were a source of pride for me, and the idea of leaving the tradition behind did not sit well. But Asa was not Winta or Windhi, he was not even an Outlier, and while his people had decorated their bodies with markings much like our own, they had been for show and not to commemorate moments in their lives. It was for this reason that we had decided to alter our traditions, but only slightly.

  Anja lifted the tebori as I pushed the fur covering my chest aside, revealing my collarbone. My sister tapped the tool against my skin, over and over again, and each prick against my flesh reminded me of a moment Asa and I had shared. How he had saved me, stood up for me, and watched over me. How he had come to see me in the forest, and how I had given myself to him. Not just my body either, but my heart. He had helped me heal, and I hoped to do the same for him. Together we would be stronger, just as our tribe would be.

  When Anja finished with my new marking, she rubbed the dye into my skin before turning to my husband. He was naked from the waist up, showing off his chest and arms, both of which were crisscrossed with lines. Anja did not put Asa’s marking in the same place she had put mine, but instead placed it on his bicep, between a few other lines.

  I watched as my sister began tapping the tool against his skin, practically holding my breath until she had finished. Then she rubbed the dye into it just as she had with me, using a piece of fur to wipe it clean so I was able to get my first glimpse of the marking we shared. It was an arrow. No bigger than my little finger, thin and delicate, it had a sharp point at one end and wispy feathers at the other.

  “You are now one,” she said as she stood.

  Asa and I stood as well, our hands still joined as we faced our new tribe together.

  “This is a new beginning for us,” I said, my voice bouncing off the walls of the cave and coming back to greet me. “We have had many new beginnings since the Winta were wiped out, but this is the one that will define us. Will we be as narrow-minded as our enemies?” I looked around the room, taking the time to focus on my people. “Or will we prove we are better by embracing those who are different than us?”

  Around the room, people nodded or shifted, or even looked down. No matter how they reacted, I could tell they were thinking my words through. I only prayed the people standing in front of me would be able to understand what the words meant.

  As I turned away, Emori’s eye caught mine. No one had attempted to dispute my marriage, and only a few people had shown displeasure in it, but it had come as no surprise that she and Linc were the biggest dissenters. I had expected it, but the anger in her gaze acted as a reminder to keep an eye on her. She would not evolve to fit our tribe, but she would never consider leaving us to join the Trelite. Emori would not make it in a tribe that did not validate her, but she would not be able to make it here either.

  I did not want to waste time worrying about it now, though, so I pulled my new husband past her and toward my alcove. Soon Asa would be leaving, heading into the city where he would risk his life, and I wanted to be alone with him before we had to say goodbye.

  Alone in our alcove, we undressed one another in silence. The man before me seemed imposing in size, but the look in his eyes told me who he really was. He was gentle and kind, and loving and brave, and it was all those things that had captured my attention back when Bodhi was still alive, and then my heart later when I when I been certain I would never love again.

  When he wrapped his arms around me, I kissed him with more force than I ever had before. In no time at all we found ourselves on the ground, which was much softer than it had been due to the things we had scavenged from the Fortis village. Asa rolled me onto my back, his body on top of mine, and I sank into the soft cushion.

  “I’ve wanted you to be mine for so long,” he said.

  “I have been yours for a while now.”

  “Not like this.” Asa’s eyes moved over me, down my chest, between my breasts and to my stomach, and his hand followed. “Before, I had no real right to touch you.” He paused and pressed his lips to my collarbone, right over the arrow. “To kiss you. But I do now.”

  “You had every right,” I told him, “because I wanted you to touch me. I wanted you. I have wanted you for so long, much longer than I allowed myself to accept. And now you are leaving me.”

  “Not forever.”

  I had to whisper because my throat felt as if it were locked in the grip of a Fortis soldier. “For long enough.”

  Asa leaned down, and his mouth covered mine. I wrapped my arms around him, and then my legs. We kissed, enveloped in one another’s embrace as our bodies moved together.

  A tear slid down my cheek when I thought about saying goodbye. “Do not leave me,” I whispered against his neck, thinking of another time I had said those words and how it had turned out. “Please.”

  “I’ll never leave you,” he lied. Just as Bodhi had.

  30

  We left before sunset as planned, Mira, Asa, Nyko, and I. The four of us did not speak, and to our right the Lygan Cliffs were just as silent. Almost like the beasts knew we had much bigger things to worry about.

  Our army would not be far behind, the three Outlier tribes and Asa’s people, now part of the Windhi tribe. It was something I had not yet told the other Heads, and something I might pay dearly for, but I could not regret what I had done. I had made the decision to be true to myself when I decided to form a new tribe, and this was no different. I loved Asa, but more importantly, I knew him, and I knew he was trustworthy.

  We did not pause until we had reached the end of the valley. Here the cliffs had died away, and in their wake the ruins of the Fortis village sat, their remains dark against the brown dirt of the wastelands.
I had expected the grief radiating off Asa and Nyko, but not the shame that squeezed my heart. I had done what was necessary, but the necessity of it did not alleviate my sorrow at the lives I had taken. Not completely. Now all I could do was hope the guilt did not follow me into the afterlife and drag me down to the underworld where I would burn for eternity next to the very people I had killed.

  The break in our journey was a quick one, just long enough to make sure nothing was moving. Wind whipped across the ruins and blew ash into the air, grizzards cawed in protest at the disturbance, and I spied a few marsoapians in the distance, but otherwise, the landscape was still.

  “It’s clear,” Asa said.

  He grabbed my hand as he started walking, moving faster than before like he was in a hurry to get to our destination. But as we reached the wall of the city and the ruins of his home faded from sight, he slowed, and I realized he had only been trying to run from his ghosts. Like me, he carried the blame of what had happened on his shoulders. He could have warned them, could have saved hundreds of lives, but he had chosen not to.

  Behind us, Mira and Nyko were quiet. In the distance, the setting sun reflected off the mirrors, and beyond that the wastelands stretched out until they faded into nothingness, and I found myself wondering if anything existed beyond our world. If Bodhi and I had left the way he had wanted to, would we have found another place, or would we have died in the wastelands? Were we all that was left in this world?

  “What do you think is out there?” I asked Asa, nodding toward the horizon where the sun sat, hovering just above the wastelands.

  “In the desert?” I nodded, and he shook his head. “I don’t know. Nothing.”

  “Do you think it is possible that somewhere beyond this place there are other people?”

  “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “But far away. In Saffron’s library there are maps of what the old world looked like. It was massive, and there were great bodies of water separating other stretches of land. There have to be other people who, like us, descend from survivors of the cataclysm, but they’re far away. Too far for us to reach.”

  I supposed he was right. If someone else existed, we surely would have seen them by now.

  We stopped when we reached the rocks that sheltered the tunnel, and Asa’s gaze moved from the wall surrounding the city to the tower where his sister lived, and then to me.

  “If I don’t come back, you’ll watch out for her?”

  Once again, it felt as if someone was choking me, and I was forced to swallow before I could talk. “You will come back.”

  “I’ll do everything in my power to get back to you.”

  He reached out and grabbed me by the hips, pulling me against him. When he leaned down, I closed my eyes, concentrating on his warmth and size as his mouth closed over mine. My heart pounded harder, and I found myself grabbing hold of his jacket, clutching it like I was afraid if I did not hold on tight enough, he would be swept away by the breeze blowing across the wastelands. I lifted myself up on my toes, moving closer to him. Not wanting to let him go. Ever.

  But it was over too soon, and then he was pulling back. Mira had already removed the tunnel’s cover, and Nyko was descending. His red hair disappeared into the darkness, and Asa extracted himself from my grasp. I did not want to let him go, and I had to force my hands to relax.

  Mira was at my side before Asa had climbed over the rocks, her arm around me as together we watched him move to the opening. He looked up, his eyes holding mine, and I remembered that first day I noticed him in Saffron’s house. How I had stumbled, and he had almost reached out to catch me. How I had assumed he was a brute like all the other men and women in his village. It seemed impossible that we were those same people. So much time had passed and so many things had changed that I almost could not remember what it had felt like to be that meek girl.

  “I love you,” he said.

  I swallowed. “I love you.”

  Asa nodded, and my heart swelled at the familiar gesture, and then he began to climb down. I did not move, not even after he had disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. It felt like I was about to be a widow again, and the pain of it made my legs wobble.

  “He will be okay,” Mira said.

  “There are no guarantees.”

  She turned to face me. “He would destroy the whole city by himself before he allowed the Sovereign to keep him from getting back to you.”

  “Let us hope it does not come to that.”

  We had not been in the valley long before we spotted the army in the distance, and my back stiffened at the sight of Roan and Ontari. With my focus on Asa, I had nearly forgotten what I was about to face. The other Heads had declared Asa was not to be trusted, yet I had aligned myself with him anyway. The confrontation was not going to be a pleasant one, but it was a stand I had to take. Just as Asa’s stand at the tower had been one he had had to take.

  When the group stopped in front of me, the warriors from our tribes began to settle down. It would be at least a few hours before we heard anything from Asa, and we all needed our rest if we were going to be ready to face what came next.

  “Your Fortis man has entered the city?” Ontari asked.

  I nodded, but then shook my head. “He has, but he is not Fortis any more.”

  Roan stiffened. “What have you done?”

  “What I had to, just as I have since the day my husband died.” I swallowed even as I straightened my shoulders. “Asa and I are married.” I pulled my fur aside to reveal the passage marking my sister had given me only a few hours earlier. “His people are now members of the Windhi tribe.”

  Ontari turned her gaze on Mira. “And you agree with this? The Winta have never married outside their tribe. No Outlier has.”

  “And look where that has gotten us.” Mira’s gaze moved back and forth between the two Heads. Ontari had her mouth open as if to speak, but she shut it when Mira lifted her hand. “If we had trusted one another more, perhaps things would have been different. Perhaps we would have won our freedom decades ago. Perhaps the Winta would still be here. We know Asa, even better than we know you, and we are certain of his loyalty. Leaving his people to suffer and starve when we could do something would be wrong, just as allowing the Sovereign to continue to oppress us would be. Asa and his people are Windhi now, and if you accept us, then you must accept them as well.”

  Although I had known my friend supported my choice, and that she trusted Asa, I had not expected such strong words from her. It obviously took the other Heads by surprise as well, because neither one spoke at first. I held my breath, waiting to find out what they would say, uncertain if they would be able to see our side or if they would pull their armies out.

  After a moment, Roan let out a deep breath, seemingly blowing all his frustration out with it. “If you are willing to put the safety of your people on the line, you must be very sure of this man. You have risked a lot for them, have done everything to ensure they survive. You would not risk that for nothing.”

  “My people are everything to me,” I said, “but so is Asa. Which was why I had to join our tribes. He is my people now.”

  Roan nodded again, and it was followed a beat later by Ontari mimicking the gesture. My body relaxed as tension melted off me the way snow melted off the trees in spring.

  “You have proven yourself trustworthy, Indra of the Windhi,” the Huni Head said, “but you cannot keep things from us if you wish this alliance to continue after we have killed the Sovereign. We must be open with one another so things do not return to the old ways.”

  I had never thought about them returning to the old ways, not when I was on such good terms with Ontari and Roan. But I also had not taken much time to reflect on what came next. On what our lives would be like after we completed this mission and freed our people. I had been too focused on the now, on the next step, the next kill.

  “What will we do after this?” I looked past the Heads to where our army sat.

  It was dark n
ow, but fires had been lit, illuminating the valley and the people gathered there. Mountari, Huni, and Windhi intermingled, gathered together around fires as if there had never been a gorge between our tribes. They looked very different from one another, the pierced faces of the Huni contrasting with the passage markings of my own people and the pierced bodies of the Mountari, but we were all the same. People who wanted to be free. Here and there I spotted one of Asa’s people, the former Fortis men and women. Their large frames stood out among the much smaller Outliers, but they were a part of us now. Asa and I had made sure of that with our union.

  “What do you see becoming of our tribes when this is over?” I looked back at Ontari and Roan. “We are on good terms. Do you see us intermarrying?”

  Ontari’s back stiffened. “The Huni do not marry.”

  “What if they wanted to?” I nodded to the group gathered behind her. “What if one of your men decided he liked one of my women?”

  She blinked and her shoulders relaxed. “I would not stop them. We embrace all ways of living.”

  I turned my gaze on Roan, and his lips were already pursed as if thinking the question through. “Our women fight for their mate.”

  The corner of my mouth quirked up. “Do you not think some of my women could defeat some of yours?”

  Roan returned my smile. “I believe they could, Indra of the Windhi. And if they wanted to challenge someone in my tribe for the right to a mate, I would not stop it.” He paused and looked me over, and I was reminded of how he had expressed his admiration for me in the past. Thankfully, he said nothing of it now, but instead nodded again. “Yes, I believe we could create something much stronger than we had before by allowing our tribes to mix in this way.”

  “As do I,” Ontari said.

  “I agree,” I replied as I once again looked past them toward the army gathered in the valley. “No matter what, I want to ensure that our people stay strong. That even when the Sovereign are gone, we will never again be held prisoner.”