by Sara V. Zook
“Run, Anna!” Jo screamed.
Staring at the crowd gathering before me, I turned around and attempted to sprint away from the field and toward Jo. I could hear footsteps right behind me, but I didn’t dare look back for fear that I would stumble. My only chance was to not make any mistakes. No tripping and no falling. I tried to keep focused on running, looking ahead toward Jo who stood safely in the distance. She was waiting for me. The knowledge that she wasn’t leaving without me helped me gain determination to go on, even though my lungs felt as if they were about to explode and my legs seemed barely there, a mush of jelly threatening to collapse from underneath me at any moment.
A pain that took what little breath I had left crushed into my back to the right of my spine. White spots darted in front of my vision as I felt myself slip and go tumbling to the ground on my side. My back felt as if it was splitting apart, the pain now searing up into my neck. I managed to look back and saw some young children running toward me, giant rocks held up in their hands. One of those rocks had just made a connection with the bones in my back. It appeared that I was about to be stoned to death.
Chapter 3
Panic settled in as I didn’t know where I was or what was happening. I tried to move my arms and legs, and then I felt the soreness of my back and remembered the rock hitting me. I winced in pain.
“Stop wiggling.”
I looked up into the face of Jo. She was carrying me.
“What are you doing? Set me down,” I said.
She stopped walking and carefully placed me on my feet. I grimaced but realized how fortunate I was to be alive. “Wow. How in the world are you strong enough to carry me? You’re half my size.”
“I’ve carried things a lot heavier than you,” she confessed.
We were back in the dust, but I could see mountains towering above us. They were dark and creepy without a trace of color or plant life. I sat down and tried to reach around and feel my back. “Is it bad?” I asked.
“You’re going to have a nasty bruise for a long time,” Jo replied. She peered up into the mountains for a moment. “There’s a gash in your skin. I cleansed it and put a dressing on it made of leaves. You got lucky. No broken bones.”
“What happened? Why were they throwing rocks? I mean, I know we were taking their food, but they could’ve hit me in the head and …”
“Killed you, yeah,” Jo said, finishing my sentence for me. “They would’ve.”
“How’d we escape?” I had so many unanswered questions. I needed to understand what was going on here in Evadere. Things here weren’t like Earth, and they weren’t adding up in my mind. I needed to have a general understanding of this planet so I could be more prepared next time. Next time, I thought and shuddered. I really hoped there would be no next time like that. I didn’t know how many hits a body could take from a rock, but I didn’t want to find out.
Jo sighed and sat down next to me. She handed me a fruit and bit into one of her own. “Here, take this.”
I hesitated.
“Take it,” she insisted. “You need to eat. It’s okay. We’re safe, for now.”
I gave her an uneasy look as I lifted the fruit to my lips. It tasted as sweet and juicy as it appeared. I had no idea what it was, but it was delicious and soothed both hunger and thirst at the same time. “Delicious.”
She nodded.
“How am I still alive?” I asked.
“I came back for you.”
“You reached me before they did?” I raised my eyebrows. It seemed impossible.
She nodded. “I’m very fast. Those contributors could never catch me. I was just hoping not to get a rock in the back before getting away with you.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, amazed that she cared that much to risk her own life in order to save mine.
She shrugged as I had obviously embarrassed her by exposing her kindness.
“Now what?” The words slipped out from my lips. I needed to know if she had some sort of plan for me. Was she going to just take me this far and leave me? I couldn’t blame her if she did, but I prayed that she wouldn’t. Evadere was a terrifying place. Foreign didn’t even begin to describe how I felt here. I was absolutely sure that I wouldn’t be able to figure things out on my own without getting into trouble. I really needed this little girl to help me.
Jo finished the fruit and wiped her sticky mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m not sure.” She stared at me then. I felt like a vulnerable human, weak and desperate. She was small, but so strong. She had carried me this entire way. “I’m a Scave. I have to return to them. They’ll be expecting me.”
“And you can’t take me with you?”
She cast her eyes toward the ground and shuffled her feet in the dust. “It’s not an easy decision. I like you, Anna. I know you’re lost here. I know I’m not like the other Scaves, too. They’re not tolerant. When they know you’re a human, they’ll kill you. If they know I even helped you, they may kill me.”
I could see the pain I was causing her. She had a good heart, but it seemed as though mostly everyone else here did not. She wanted to help me but not at the cost of her life.
“Do you have to go back soon?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Can we just talk for a little while? Would that be okay?” I tried to remain calm, even though inside I was screaming at the top of my lungs for her to take me along with her. Night was settling in fast, and I didn’t have any desire to be alone, afraid that the next thing that stumbled upon me would actually be a real monster and not at all someone like Jo.
“You probably have a million questions. Do you want to know about the contributors?” she asked.
“I saw that man touch the wilted plant. I saw it come back to life instantly.”
“Of course,” Jo said. “That’s his contribution. That’s his power.”
“To bring life to sick plants?”
“To maintain all plants bearing food so that the plants will flourish and produce more. They also pick all the food and store it in places like that building we hid behind. Then they send it out to the other contributors,” Jo explained.
I took the last bite of my fruit, my stomach eagerly wanting more. I tried to shake the hunger pangs away. “So how do the powers work?”
“They’re born with it. It’s how this entire planet works. You’re only born with one power and that determines where you end up living.”
“So all of those people back where we just were, all of them have the same power and they all contribute to the food?”
“Right,” she said, happy that I was understanding a little. “Their offspring may not have a power to do that, but whatever power they have, that’s where they go and learn how to use it to benefit others. That’s why the ground goes from green to gray. It’s the boundary of where their power ends. They aren’t using the gray parts for farming, so that part is left untouched.”
“How many contributing groups are there?”
Jo looked up at me. “I’m not sure exactly. Hundreds.”
“Really?”
“I’ve not seen them all of course, but the Scaves have always stayed as close as possible to the farming contributors in order to keep fed.”
“Scaves …” I let the word linger momentarily. “You’re a Scave?”
She nodded.
“And what does that mean exactly?”
“Scaves are just short for scavengers. We’re misfits. We have no powers. We cannot contribute.”
“Oh,” I managed to get out. All of this talk about powers and whatnot and I hadn’t even thought about someone not having a power.
“See?” Jo pointed out. “You’re looking at me like I’m a misfit now that you know I have no power.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m just processing it all.”
“That’s how everyone survives here, on powers from themselves and from others. Every once in awhile, someone is born powerless. Aren’t people like that back on Earth
? Is everyone born the same?” she asked.
Earth. The word hit me like a brick, and I instantly wished I was there. I actually missed that place, my world. Here in Evadere, I was nothing. Others were trying to kill me. Here I was a Scave, and then the realization of all poor little Jo probably had to go through in order just to survive, came to me. “No,” I said, choking a little from the sadness that washed over me. “Not everyone is the same. There are misfits there, too, depending on how you view a misfit to be.”
“Well, you don’t have to pity me,” she said in a hurt manner. “It’s not like I’m alone.”
My eyebrows raised in curiosity.
“Yeah, there’s a group of us, actually a pretty large group now. But Scaves are … different.”
“You just said you’re different because you have no powers.”
“Right, but I mean other than that. Scaves live up there, in those rocky cliffs. We hide up there from the contributors. We come out at night to take what we need when we need it. We have to forage the land, and many of the older Scaves have become vicious. They’ve been hunted all their lives.”
I shifted my position as the ache in my back was beginning to throb. Jo saw my discomfort and gave me a small smile.
“It’s fine,” she assured me. “Your back, I mean. I made sure it was cleaned out. There shouldn’t be an infection as long as you keep it clean now.”
“Thank you for that,” I whispered. “Thank you for everything.”
Those words seemed to uplift her spirits slightly. “A long time ago, when someone was born powerless, royalty killed them.”
“Royalty? Like a king and queen type of thing?”
“Yeah,” Jo said. “There’s a queen here with a castle and everything. I’ve never seen it though. It’s the farthest from the farming contributors actually, but I’ve heard stories about it. And they got rid of the misfits because they couldn’t contribute to society. Mothers began hiding their babies when they knew they were powerless, and eventually a small group of Scaves began living in these mountains together. They hate the royalty. They have been trying to get a group together large enough to wipe them out, to avenge the deaths of the other baby Scaves that were never given a chance to live. It’s been an ongoing battle between contributors and Scaves.”
“The Scaves, your people, have to steal food and everything else you need from the contributors because you can’t get it on your own, is that right?” I questioned her.
The sky grew darker, the stars larger. It was the same wondrous sky that I first laid eyes upon when Emry accidentally transported me to this world when he was back in the prison. The memory pained me.
“I don’t think of it as stealing,” she snapped defensively. “What you humans do on Earth is stealing. We have every right to partake in that food as everyone else. It’s wrong that they exclude us.”
“I agree,” I replied quickly. I wondered how much she knew about Earth. It seemed as if she knew a lot. She had a disgusted tone of voice when speaking about humans, and I didn’t want to upset her. I didn’t want to chase her away and leave me here all alone.
“Why do you think your people would want to kill me? If they hate how others tried to kill them, why would they want to kill others?”
Jo sighed. “They don’t kill their own. They kill those that oppress them, which mainly is everyone else other than their own. You are not a Scave.”
“Technically here I sort of am.”
“You are a human.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about my kind,” I admitted, trying to pry just a little to see how far I got.
She nodded. “I do. We all do. It’s a shame that it’s as they say, and you know nothing about us. I’ve had to explain all of this to you. You have no clue, do you?”
I stared at her curiously. I wasn’t quite sure what she was getting at. “No,” I mumbled.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m tired. You’re tired. We both need to rest. Let’s just sleep here for the night and let me think about this whole thing a little while longer.”
I was relieved, yet a little scared at the thought of another night in Evadere. The first one had been creepy enough. “Okay. Where do we sleep? Here?” I looked at the bare ground beneath us. It was hard, and I’d be covered in the dust.
The question had annoyed her. “Yes, here.”
I watched curiously as she laid down in the gray filth and curled up on her side into a ball. There was nothing else around to even try to make a bed out of, so I just plopped down near her and closed my eyes. I was exhausted and my entire body hurt, especially my back, but the thoughts of how this was going to end up with me stuck here kept edging its way back into my mind.
My once heavenly realm, Evadere, now seemed to lurk with the threat of death around every twist and turn. I thought about the beach and Emry. As I wiggled my fingertips into the gray ashes below me, I struggled to find our love in this place. Surely Emry belonged here because of his power, but what exactly would his contribution be, and how did he come to be raised on Earth? I began to wonder if there were other planets out there that I had no clue about. Why did Earth seem so confined to just itself and Jo seem to know about where I was from?
My head hurt from all the what ifs. I felt as though a train was ripping through me. Emotionally and physically this place daunted me. All I had to depend on was Jo, a Scave with a big heart, at least I hoped. Surely she wouldn’t have gotten me all this way to lead me straight into a death trap with the other Scaves. I immediately shook the thought from my mind. No, there would be no reason for that. She could have allowed the contributors to stone me to death instead of risk her own life to save mine. She was a good person, maybe the only good person by the sounds of it.
Oh, Emry, please come for me, find me, somehow, someway.
Chapter 4
For the past hour, I sat next to a too quiet Jo, the morning light edging its way up on the horizon. A throbbing ache from my wound reminded me it was still there, though it was bearable. I couldn’t help but keep wondering what it was exactly that Jo was thinking. It unnerved me the way she was positioned, her head resting on her crossed arms as she stared off into the distance.
“They sent me to look for you, Jo.”
My head snapped around to see who had snuck up on us. A teenage boy with protruding ribs and dark disheveled hair cut unevenly, peered down at me, an amused smirk on his lips as he pointed the end of a jagged spear at my head.
My eyes then shifted toward Jo who sat parallel to me, her eyes large in fear at the sight of the strange boy. She quickly moved in front of me so that the weapon was now aimed at her. Puzzled by her reaction, he retracted the spear and lowered it to his side.
“What are you doing?” he snapped. “Why are you protecting this contributor? Why is she not tied up?”
I felt my pulse begin to race as Jo seemed so utterly terrified of this young man that she couldn’t even find the right sense to speak.
“What are you up to, Jo?” He eyed her warily.
“Please, Rooney,” Jo finally managed to say. “Leave her be.”
“Why?” he asked, his hand tightening the grip around the spear still positioned at his side.
“She’s not a contributor,” Jo mumbled.
“I …” I began, feeling as if I needed to say something, anything to defend myself, but Jo held up a hand to my face, silencing me.
The young man glared at me, his cheeks flushing red. “Who is she then?” he demanded to know.
Jo got to her feet and faced him. “She’s a Scave.”
The boy she had called Rooney immediately began to inspect my face. “How can that be possible?”
“It just is,” Jo told him.
“She’s one of us?” he asked, still a little uncertain.
“She’s one of us.” Jo’s voice wasn’t as shaky now. “Take us back with you?”
The boy’s eyes were still locked on mine. I stayed very still as he examined me, feeling as th
ough I was failing some sort of visual inspection.
“You have a lot of explaining to do,” he said, his hand easing up on the weapon along with the rest of his body.
Jo nodded. “I know.”
“Where is your sack of food?” he asked.
A wrinkle appeared in Jo’s forehead. “I left it on the beach.”
“How could you let that happen?” he yelled out, his temper flaring once again.
Jo looked back at me and then faced Rooney again. “I was trying to save her.”
“You,” he said, motioning toward me.
I tiptoed out from behind Jo and stood beside her. He looked so frail. I wondered why Jo was so afraid of him. He looked as though if hit hard enough, he’d shatter into a million pieces.
“You’re a Scave?” Rooney questioned.
I glanced at Jo who met my stare momentarily. “Yeah.”
“What’s your name?”
“Anna.”
“I’m Rooney,” he introduced himself. “What’s your story?”
“It’s a long one,” Jo interrupted. “She’s on the run from the contributors. It’s not safe to stay here.”
After a slight moment of hesitation, Rooney turned around and moved at a fast speed toward the base of the mountain. Jo and I exchanged glances one more time, and I understood that if I didn’t go with them, I’d be left here alone to fend for myself. Either way, I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Wait for someone or something to come find me here by myself or dive head first into the domains of the Scaves. I could also tell by the way Jo was acting, that these scavenger people weren’t going to be the type to just accept me instantly when they laid eyes on me. I felt my hands tremble slightly. Taking a deep breath, I forced my legs to move and follow Jo and Rooney up the mountainside.
