Even the dim memory of his voice set off the ache in the pit of my stomach. He’d been so insistent the people of Pantheon needed a gradual reintroduction to the idea of an outside world, that Octavia’s creations could endanger it all. And I’d accused him of being arrogant, of denying them a chance. Now he was gone, and it looked as though the only people who believed there could be more to life, were those who’d experienced the least of it.
I was sandwiched between Eli and Lake, around a long dirt trough serving as a makeshift dinner table. And as a succession of small fires were kindled inside its length using old sticks and dry grass, I suspected the main event would not be standard Arafel fayre.
‘How long have you been living down here, like this?’ Max asked as a young satyr presented four lifeless adult rats to Atticus.
I stared distastefully at their thick tails hanging lifelessly over the edge of the rusted platter. An attempt had been made to lay them out ceremoniously on a bed of yet more nettles, but that only made their appearance more grotesque. I swallowed hard. The young insurgents had to be surviving on something, and rodent was technically meat, but one glance at the mangy fur and weeping eyes was enough to know these specimens weren’t in their own best health.
I thought rapidly. ‘Of course rat is always a … delicacy, but Arafel farms chicken, lamb, pork – and enough bread and fresh vegetables for you all.’
My words hung like choice, ripe fruit upon the air, as sixty pairs of hollowed, hungry eyes swung my way.
‘We live in a treehouse community,’ I continued, taking care to keep my voice emotion-free, ‘but there are no leaders growing fat while others work. Instead everyone takes their turn in the village fields, to ensure there is enough grain for the harvest. For everyone. And there is a village school, where children like you can learn about our ancestors, about life before the war.’
‘What use is that?’ Atticus scorned, picking up a wooden stake and driving it straight through the first rat, rump to brain.
‘Life before the Great War was broken. People worshipped money, images, everything that distracted them from real life – it led to nothing but violence and death.’
A pregnant silence hung in the air while the vein in Atticus’s neck pulsed visibly. He was fierce, and I guessed these were words he’d learned from another. The hard way.
I glanced around at the sea of young faces willing me on, urging me to challenge Atticus’s leadership and his decision to stay here.
‘How do you see the stars, if you don’t first know darkness?’
It was one of Grandpa’s favourite mottos. He used to reinforce the richness of our simple lives compared with before the Great War.
There was another silence as Atticus pulled out a large knife, hacked off one of the rat tails, and threw it into one of the small crackling fires in the trough. It writhed and twisted in the sudden heat, making me shudder.
‘The past is ugly. Why do we want to waste time learning about that? Far better we spend our time building something new and far better. Building our own new world where no one works from dawn ’til dusk, where respect is earned and where no one is forced to be anyone they don’t want to be!’
Atticus’s voice rose suddenly, betraying his youth and anxiety. He scowled and hacked off the other two rat tails with machete-style blows. There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘You don’t have to be alone, Atticus,’ Max responded gently. ‘In Arafel, you would be part of a big community. A community that knows how to survive on the outside, in the real world. This …’ He looked slowly around the sea of white faces. ‘This isn’t living. This is existing, like one of those rotten creatures you’re about to roast!’
He pointed distastefully at the rat platter.
All eyes swung back to Atticus, and there was a guilty mutter around the trench. His group were far from settled, and yet he clearly held great influence.
‘It’s OK to change your mind and want something else. In Arafel, you could share the work and responsibility,’ I urged, watching a flush creep up his neck as he lifted one of the vermin to his mouth.
‘For the love of … wait …!’ Max intervened, guessing what he was about to do.
But his horror only goaded Atticus further, who after only a second’s deliberation, clamped down hard with his teeth and tore off one of the mangy rodent’s ears. A muffled gasp echoed through the chamber, as he chewed swiftly and intently, before swallowing.
‘Maybe I’m not afraid of responsibility, the same way I’m not afraid of raw rat or Cassius … maybe I don’t need anyone else to tell me what to do!’ he ground out, running his tongue around his mouth deliberately as though to tease out any remaining gristle.
‘That’s gross!’ the elfin boy blurted, before hiding his face beneath his burnished wings.
A black scowl twisted Atticus’s face, just as Eli started signing rapidly.
‘My brother wants to say something,’ I interrupted, putting out a hand to prevent Atticus from rising.
His scowl intensified.
Eli gesticulated again. I nodded. Yet again my insightful twin was doing a far better job of reading the room than anyone else.
‘He says … I’ll translate as he signs … He says … In Arafel, people are all treated the same, no matter how many fingers, toes, wings or friends they have – and no matter where they’ve come from.’
Atticus’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to interrupt, but I ploughed on, translating Eli’s thoughts as swiftly as they came.
‘Our grandpa would have said: “Come what may, nature finds a way.” And Arafel is as rich a mosaic of life as you would want. There are many imperfections among us, some visible like my own, and some invisible – like Max’s inability to share his food.’
I paused as Max threw his eyes to the cavernous ceiling, and a giggle trickled through the room.
‘But one thing is constant,’ Eli continued. ‘We all believe that life on the outside is worth living, and dying, for. After all, what point is there in escaping one sewer, only to trap yourself in another?’
I gazed at Eli in admiration. Sometimes he reminded me so much of Grandpa.
‘And raw rat runs the risk of Lassa fever, hantavirus, salmonellosis and hemorrhagic fevers among other unattractive options, by the way.’
He shrugged unapologetically, as my words echoed around the cold space. I smiled. He was nothing, if not brutally honest.
Tension swallowed the room, as Atticus placed the speared rats over the smouldering fire. Then he looked up.
‘We looked for you,’ he began, his voice sounding suddenly younger, ‘but we found nothing but deserted, charred buildings. Then we lost three of the youngest trying to cross the plain to the forest.’
‘The scorpions?’ Max asked gently.
Atticus nodded, his face schooled but his eyes full.
‘But I always had a back-up plan,’ he added, lifting his chin, ‘and we started making a new home a few weeks ago … It’s here in the Dead City – New Arfel!’
‘Why don’t you show us?’ I urged, conscious of the scrutiny around the cavern, ‘and in turn we can tell you more about Arafel. Then you can choose whether you might prefer to live somewhere Cassius can’t hunt and find you.’
‘I’ll show you,’ Atticus returned defiantly, ‘but we’re not leaving. We want Cassius to find us. How can we prove to the older Prolets there’s a real world outside if we disappear? How will they find us when they come?’
‘Your parents?’ I asked after a beat.
There was a pause before he shook his head.
‘We have no biological parents. Most of us are Octavia’s Type A3 workforce, genetically designed to meet a specific objective.’
His eyes barely moved, but I could sense the test behind his words.
‘Designed? Objective?’ I repeated, feeling my bile rise. She was dead, but her legacy was here, in this room. Still trying to throw off her shackles.
‘August, the comm
ander general, told us about you,’ he clarified after a beat, ‘before he went missing. He said no matter our Pantheon grading or laboratory number, we all still contain Outsider DNA. He said that inside each of us a free heart was beating – just like yours.’
I gazed into Atticus’s questioning eyes, willing the glass veneer that had been my friend these past months not to break. I was so conscious of Max’s scrutiny, but the words ran on repeat through my head anyway.
He’d not forgotten me.
***
We pooled the remainder of Eli and Max’s food provisions; and accepted three folded hammocks that were stacked neatly inside an empty inset archway. It was warm enough with the trough fires burning, but the air was rank and stale despite the number of dark arch exits. I viewed each in turn before dragging my eyes away. No one mentioned the children who’d lost their lives on Scorpion Plain, but it was obvious the hanging beds had once belonged to them.
And there was no prospect of visiting New Arfel tonight – that much was clear. But I could tell we’d rattled Atticus, and there was a hushed excitement among the group who seemed to view us as some sort of providential sign.
‘Did it hurt?’
The soft whisper was barely perceptible, but I turned anyway, and found two large doleful brown eyes peeping around the edge of our arch. It was the small boy with the burnished wings, and now he was closer, I could see the feathery down extended all over his head.
I smiled. He had a vulnerability that was hard to resist.
‘Did what hurt?’ I repeated quizzically.
‘That.’
He pointed to a scar that ran up my brown calf, which kept shining in the flickering light of the cavern. It was an old injury resulting from a tangle with a field scythe when I was eight. It had taken two of Arafel’s best medics to clean and stitch the wound, and the pain was still etched in my memory.
‘Not too bad,’ I lied with a smile, ‘but you should have seen the tiger!’
The boy crept around the corner and sat cross-legged on the floor, his eyes as round as grapes.
‘You fought a tiger?’ he breathed.
‘Yes, and she strung his teeth around her neck as a warning to any others!’ Max teased from the shadows of the archway where he’d been hanging up his hammock.
I lifted my hand instinctively to the handful of snow leopard teeth strung around my neck. They were Jas’s baby teeth Eli had fashioned into a necklace when I was much younger. I rarely took it off.
‘A tiger is only half the size of a molossus, Therry,’ Lake interjected from the shadows before taking a seat beside the boy. ‘There are far greater creatures in Pantheon!’
‘Well, that depends on the measure,’ Eli signed. ‘Technically, if weight and size were the only relevant factors then Pantheon could indeed make that claim, but as complexity of nature and purity of gene pool could argue for equal, if not greater, weighting … you could be on thin ice there, as Dad used to say.’
I grinned as Lake stared, confused.
‘What did he say?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Nothing,’ I reassured her. ‘Obviously a tiger is small fry compared with most Pantheonite creatures.’ I watched her pull a handful of small stones from her pocket and scatter them around Therry’s feet.
He made a grab for them and shook his small fist. It was clearly a game they played here, something similar to pick-up sticks, a favourite of the children in Arafel. Their complete distraction was poignant, it echoed their age and vulnerability in a way words couldn’t.
Lake smiled, her eyes widening in childish delight as Therry’s stones failed to beat hers.
‘In Isca Prolet, we used to place bets,’ she offered tossing the stones again, ‘on fights in the market square. Sileni never lose.’
She grinned into the shadows, and when I followed the direction of her gaze I realized Pan was there, watching. His presence was oddly reassuring, though their precise relationship was still a mystery, and I felt sure his care was solely for Lake’s wellbeing.
‘Not completely true,’ Atticus interjected from the floor where he was whittling dubious-looking arrows. ‘When Brutus was sent to quiet the satyr rebellion, no one saw a silenus stepping in to help.’
‘Brutus doesn’t count!’ Lake fired, her cheeks flushed with sudden anger. ‘And neither does the black aquila! They are more Cassius than creature!’
My ears pricked up.
When a black aquila falls from the golden sky, it will spark a winter of a thousand fires.
‘Black aquila?’ I repeated swiftly, looking from Lake to Atticus.
He stood up and after making a big play of brushing himself down, sauntered forward. And there was something in his gait right there and then that took me back to the asphyxiating fear when we were trapped in the Flavium, faced with a crowd of jeering Pantheonite faces.
I flexed my fingers. He was young and arrogant, but he wasn’t one of them. He was here, beneath the Dead City, leading the Prolets. And I was letting my emotions get the better of me.
‘Haven’t you met Cassius’s newest pet?’ He smiled sardonically.
‘Well, we’ve had the pleasure of rattling monkeys, monster hounds and manticores,’ Max levelled, stepping in beside me, ‘so there’s not too much that’ll surprise us. Has he got a new toy?’
‘Cassius is always working on something new,’ Therry moaned, tucking his head inside his wings.
Instantly Lake slid across and put her stick thin arms around the smaller boy, hugging him tightly. I bit my lip, feeling as though my chest was caught in one of Bereg’s forest traps. They were no older than the schoolchildren I taught in Arafel, some even younger. They’d already lived a hundred lifetimes, and bore the scars to prove it.
‘We can help you, Therry,’ I tried. ‘Arafel is a hidden valley, surrounded by mountains. You’d be safer there from Cassius … and Livia.’
I crouched down and placed a hand on his bony, down-covered back. He flinched as my fingers brushed the fleshy ravines barely hidden by his feathery down, and sank a little lower.
Lake looked up at me, her eyelids narrowed so much I could barely see the emeralds glinting beneath.
‘They are the ones who need to be afraid!’ she hissed, making a grab for the scattered stones.
‘We are getting bigger and stronger all the time,’ she continued, ‘so we just watch and wait for the right moment. Then we strike them down … and watch them burn.’
She threw the stones again so fiercely a few of them ricocheted off the back wall. Max winced and rubbed the back of his calf, as Pan slid out from the shadows, his snow-white skin glowing in the lantern light.
‘Nice arm!’ Max joked ruefully. ‘In Arafel you’d be very welcome in the construction team, not to mention the wrestlers!’
There was a tense moment as Lake eyeballed Max, then Pan placed a hand on her shoulder and she relaxed. She reached up to place her own small white hand over his and smiled, the strain gone.
I moved off to give them space. Pan was gentle I was sure, but I still couldn’t decide if he was more guardian or guard.
‘You see, why do we need your help, when we have a savage eleven-year-old promising hellfire and damnation,’ Atticus drawled, exiting into the shadows.
***
It was hard to tell night from day in the cave in the Prolet camp, and if it wasn’t for the arrival of fresh rat and boiled water for breakfast, I could have been persuaded it was still the middle of the night.
Max eyed the morning offerings with distaste.
‘There is no way I’m eating that rank rodent again for anyone. Who’s for an al fresco?’
He gesticulated above our heads to the Dead City. I caught his arm, watching Atticus address a small group across the cavern.
‘I think a morning shift may be in talks,’ I whispered, as Atticus trod swiftly towards one of the black arches with two small satyrs, a human boy and the pig-dog trailing behind. They all looked distinctly unhappy about whate
ver lay ahead.
‘Atticus!’ Max’s voice echoed around the cavern, making a group playing fetch with a tiny griffin, look up.
‘Need another hunter?’
Atticus nodded once, scowling and, not needing any further invitation, Max joined the grateful team.
An hour later we were feasting on fresh rat and nettle tea, a distinct improvement on the run-off we’d drunk the evening before.
‘Well at least it’s seen grass and sunshine,’ Eli signed, hardly able to repress his delight at Max returning with a sackful of above-ground rats and proclaiming it was the worst hunting ground he’d ever seen.
I shook my head faintly, trying not to grin.
Max maintained a proud hunting record, but his ego was fragile, and Eli knew it. It was funny, but hardly the time.
‘So, did you get to see New Arfel?’ Eli signed, as we helped clear away the broken miscellany of foraged pots and plates.
‘Not a hint.’ Max shook his head. ‘We followed tunnels for a good half-kilometre and came up in a road I didn’t recognize. No wonder Atticus is confident they have time – it’s a complete maze down here!’
‘The molossers would still sniff them out in seconds,’ I muttered.
Eli shot me a concerned frown. I glanced over my shoulder and cursed under my breath. A young girl with red plaits and a bag full of freckles was standing close by. I’d heard the others call her Faro, and she looked no more than eight or nine years of age. She had the cerulean-eyed monkey perched on her shoulder. It was chewing nettle leaves, and darting its gaze around inquisitively.
‘Are we going to die here?’
Her question was just loud enough to stop the cavern, and all eyes looked our way, including Atticus.
‘We all die in the end,’ Lake intervened, ‘but not without a fight. And not here, not today.’
Faro beamed and, accepting a handful of pick-up rat bones, scuttled away. Content, for now.
I stared down at wise little Lake, an unofficial mother figure with the world on her young shoulders. She returned my look with a defiant smile. As though she was ready, and my questions were a game.
‘Who were your parents, Lake?’ I asked.
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