by S D Smith
“Or it could be that the old forest is trying to tell us to be wary,” Helmer said, eyes keen and voice a soft rasp.
Picket lowered his own voice as well. “Isn’t that—I don’t know—childish?”
“May be. Children can, I think, feel things that grownups can’t. They are awake to the warnings in the wind. Or so my wise old nurse believed.”
“There can never be a wise young nurse, can there?” Picket said, still looking carefully around.
“There can never be a wise young anything,” Helmer answered, smirking as he took in their surroundings.
“What was that?” Picket whispered, crouching at the sound of a snapping twig in the distance. He gripped his sword hilt tightly.
“Possibly that ‘nothing’ you spoke of earlier,” Helmer whispered back, but he motioned for Picket to stay low and follow. Picket moved close behind his master as they stalked to the edge of the thicket and lay down, well-hidden, to peer out into the small glade before them and the dense forest beyond.
After staring silently for a while—Picket could see nothing—Helmer whispered, “If we get separated, take the most direct route to Harbone, and don’t stop for anything.”
“Yes, sir. How close are we?”
“For you? A twenty-minute dead run.”
Picket nodded.
“Something’s out there,” Helmer said, and Picket saw the creases deepen at the edge of his eyes. “Friend or foe? I don’t know.”
“I’m ready,” Picket said, adjusting his pack and preparing to move.
“I’ll cross the glade,” Helmer said, “and you follow after I signal you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Helmer breathed deeply, then stood and stepped carefully into the glade. An arrow sped toward him. Picket heard the bowstring’s thwick, saw the blurry arrow collide with Helmer and his master spin and fall.
“No!”
Chapter Eight
THE COMMANDANT’S GIFTS
Heather held her breath and slowly walked down the long dark hallway toward the Commandant’s office. She felt she might faint with fatigue, hunger, and fear. The door at the end of the passage bore an emblem of a hawk in silhouette, his sickle in hand and a black crown on his head. At his feet lay skulls. Rabbit skulls. A single word stood out beneath the grizzly emblem.
Longtreader.
Hadley had said the Commandant was Garten Longtreader’s brother. Heather knew her father was here in Akolan. But how? Have I ever been told the truth by anyone? Her knees felt weak. She wanted to run away, to never see what she had to see. But the door opened, and she was shoved inside. She fell to her knees, afraid to look up.
“Well, my dear. What brings you here?”
She looked up, brows knit. A tall rabbit stood before a wide window. The full day’s brightness shone behind him, and she could see only an outline in black, much like the symbol on his door.
“Who are you?” she asked, for he was not her father. She knew it, and her heart beat faster at the certain knowledge. The world, so wrong, was righting itself at least this much. She could tell it was not Father from his voice and frame. But who was he?
“I ask the questions here!” he barked. “Have you not heard that you must not ask questions of your masters?”
“Who told you this rule?” she mumbled, tired eyes defiant.
He smiled, took two long strides, and struck her in the face. She toppled back, rolling over with the heavy blow. “On your feet!” he screamed. It took her a moment to comply. When she had only gotten to her hands and knees, he crossed and kicked her in the stomach so that she rolled again. Wincing in pain, she got to her feet and, eyes blurry, glanced around the room. Ten rabbits in uniform surrounded her, officers all, she thought, by the gold bands on the sleeves of their black uniforms. Gold bands on their arms. Red collars. Wings on their left shoulders. These rabbits were, she now knew, what Akolan called “Longtreaders.” Followers of her uncle Ambassador Garten Longtreader. They obviously ran this slave city, and this violent rabbit before her was their leader.
“I am the Commandant,” he said, pacing around the room. The full light fell on his face, and she barely withheld a gasp. One side of his face was ordinary, but the other side was cruelly scarred. Crossed with many wounds, his eye gone and a patch to hide it, his face was a catalog of pain. “I believe you were dropped in the Lepers’ District last night, is that correct?”
“It is, sir,” she answered, head down.
“Good. Good,” he said, brushing at a sleeve that bore five golden bands around it. “It has been some time since Lord Morbin has authorized a new drop. If you live to see the outwallers, they may be glad to have some of the horrible news you can bring and so wallow more deeply in the putrid pool of their sorrows.” He spat. “Bring her!” he called, exiting the office through a side door.
Two of the officers grabbed her and shoved her through the door and up several flights of stairs. They pushed her through a stout door, and she stumbled out onto a balcony. No, not a balcony. She could see, as her eyes adjusted to the bright morning light, that it was not a balcony. It was the roof of the building they had been in. They moved her to the edge where she could see, glancing around wearily, almost the full city around and below her.
It was amazing. The vast wall stretched around the center of the massive pit, and inside it were homes and other buildings. The ash fell lighter now but still spread across the sky in wispy flight, piling on the building tops and the streets below. Beyond the wall, several different neighborhoods, almost like little towns, held clusters of stone homes. She saw the Lepers’ District, a blight on the otherwise orderly condition of the city. She saw that, despite the ash, Akolan was an orderly place. The Lepers’ District was the gross exception. It was especially tidy inside the thick wall, where buildings were cut straight and the lanes and streets were neat. Sweepers worked to move the ash out of sight, especially inside the wall. Just below, there was a large open space surrounded by buildings like the one she was on. Outside the wall and past the L.D., the waterfall ended in a wide reservoir, where high-propped aqueducts carried great quantities of the water into the walled-off district. There she saw it spill into another reservoir, where it was then channeled into several places, including just outside the wall, where rabbits hoed and dug in large fields. The workers pulled up potatoes in great quantities, then loaded them into wheelbarrows and carts. It was a large-scale operation, and, even in her deep fatigue and pain, she marveled at it all.
A blow to the back of her head brought her attention back to the Commandant, who stood sneering with his half-ruined face. She spun to face him, her back now to the low-lipped edge of the roof. “You see what I have to administer here?” he asked coldly.
“I do, sir,” she answered. “It is amazing.”
“It has been thus since the Longtreaders have come,” he said, spinning to survey the pit, extending his hand to reveal it all. “It was not always so for rabbits in Akolan. But now, thanks to Ambassador Garten’s vision, we are largely left to our own measures and have no sentinels here.” Heather had heard rumors of the sentinels in far-away First Warren, the birds of prey on watch from the wall around that distant city, quick to swoop in and take horrific action at any sign of trouble. She shuddered as he went on. “We rule ourselves in most ways, and Lord Morbin leaves us to it. We provide skilled labor for his kingdom, and we live our lives. We have a kind of peace. Do you see it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I will not have any disruptions to my peace. Do you understand?”
She nodded. He touched his ear, and she said, “Yes, sir,” again, louder this time. He nodded. Then he closed his eye and recited,
“We are here and alive,
Let us make a life for ourselves,
Among our own kind,
And end our rebellion,
Against destiny.
Peace and prosperity forever!”
“Peace and prosperity forever!” repeated the gathered
officers in unison.
The Commandant smiled, contempt and total confidence unified in his hard grin. “This is our creed in Akolan. You will have it by heart by Victory Day, which is very close at hand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We celebrate Victory Day here, and we fill the square and say our oaths. We keep allegiance to Lord Morbin because he is the ruler of all Natalia and that is the way of peace. But there are those in Akolan who have not yet surrendered to the inevitable. I advise you—no, command you—to avoid and, if information becomes available, inform on these traitors. You will be placed in a home, assigned a job, and given rations.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your rations are a gift. Your water is a gift. Your job is a gift. Your quarters are a gift. Everything is a gift of the administration.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are a nurse, yes?” he asked, looking at her uniform, now badly torn and filthy, and the battered satchel still swinging at her side.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you will report to…” he glanced at a lieutenant, who consulted a sheaf of paper.
“District Four, Commandant,” he said.
“You will report to the clinic in District Four for assignment in, let me see,” he said, looking her over, taking note of her injuries, “no more than four days. And you will be wearing your preymark. At all times. At no time are you ever to be seen without clear red at your neck. All times! It is the law.”
“Yes, sir.” Heather was barely able to stand. She sagged and was held up by the officers on either side of her. She blew away some drifting ash that threatened to land on her face.
The Commandant came close, looking intently into her eyes. Heather thought, for just a moment, that there was a hint of kindness in his eye. He took her face in his hands and whispered softly, “We are here and alive. Let us make a life for ourselves, among our own kind. And let us end our rebellion against destiny.”
He released her face, gave her one last smile, then struck her so hard that she toppled over the edge of the wall and fell.
She screamed, panicked in mid-air, then struck the first of several slung canvas awnings. She fell from one to another, unable to stop, until she finally spilled onto a high mound of cut stones. The jarring impact made her gasp and lose her breath.
Pain. Intense, pulsing pain.
She wanted to cry out, but her air was gone. She knew it would come back, but that didn’t stop the panic. She tried to stand but toppled hard down the steep slope of the rock pile. Coming to the bottom, she gulped in air as the spasm stopped, and she tried to stay upright. But it was too much. Too much pain. Too much exhaustion. Hunger. Thirst. She fell to her knees as a small band of soldiers walked up to her, the first kicking dirt in her face.
“The Commandant is done with you,” he said, stepping forward, “for now.” She felt sharp pain travel up her back and shoot down her right arm. Possibly rebroken, she realized with a wince. Her vision blurred. Blackness.
Heather blinked, awake again, and realized she was moving. But she wasn’t walking. She saw that the surly Longtreaders had her feet. They were dragging her toward the massive wall. She felt the hard stone tear at her back, the wrenching twist in her legs. Her right arm ached. She drifted out again.
When she awoke once more, she looked up to see…no one. Not a single soul. Only the hard stone wall some yards away and an abandoned ash pile. Not even the gate. They must have dragged her down the street along the wall to get her away from their comings and goings at the entrance. She rolled off her right shoulder and onto her left. Still no one. Only rows of homes in the distance.
Her body was in agony, but the fatigue was more insistent. She felt concern, but like a distant call, however urgent, that she could only barely hear. Her mind just had room to inventory her various pains. She knew she was dehydrated, exhausted, and famished. She knew of several sprains, innumerable bruises, and a few likely breaks. Distantly, she remembered the cause and the reasons she had exchanged her life for Emma’s. Through her anguish, she weighed the cost and settled in her heart that it was worth it.
Why should I despair here at the end, when death is just what I expected?
Chapter Nine
A GOOD DREAM
For Heather, there were songs and there were dreams, and they seemed to be at war.
The dreams came often. A cycle of dreams. Repeating themes, fading in and out over what felt like months. A damp cave, dark but for a pinprick of light high above. The ground packed with slick moss-covered stones. Slime and mire, slippery mud. A voice in the darkness, echoing the brittle shriek of Tameth Seer, cried out. “Sleep, or death?” Laughter. Darkness. Darkness. Down, down, down. A flood, an inescapable flood, and the end of all Natalia at hand. Kylen, terrible in his anger, surrounded by an army and marching on her friends. Darkness, and restful interludes. The songs came and went in doubtful snatches. Then more dreams, more falling. Once she dreamed she was awake and back in Nick Hollow. She drank something cool; then there were more and more troubling scenes. The songs were still there, poking at the edges of her meager store of hope. Then she was lost again. Lost in sleep.
She woke on the third day.
But she didn’t know she was awake. Or couldn’t be sure. She felt herself in a bed but dared not open her eyes for fear of seeing all that had so terrified her in an endless sequence of unsettling scenes.
Heather yawned. She heard a gasp. Then, a soft singing began.
“Are you come home, my baby girl?
Were you alone, my baby girl?
Fear not, Love, you are safe in my arms,
Home and home and home, again.
Home and home and home, again.
Fear not, my love, where’er you’ve been,
You’re home and home and home, again.
Home and home and home, again!”
Heather smiled and opened her eyes. Mother! Mother was there, rising from her chair across the room. Sween Longtreader wept and smiled and ran to Heather, wrapping her in those warm, familiar arms. Heather’s pains were gone for the moment as wild joy and gratitude swelled inside her. She clung to her mother tightly with her good left arm and felt she must never let her go.
They stayed like that, clasped together, for a long, long time.
Finally, Heather tired, and Mother helped her lie back down on the bed. They looked at one another, tears flowing freely, grins impossible to displace. It was Mother who finally spoke. “Welcome home, dear Heather.”
For a moment Heather wondered if everything had been a dream and she was back in Nick Hollow again, safe and away from whatever troubles the wider world might hold. But she felt her right arm bound close to her body and remembered it was likely broken. Then, like the flood she’d dreamed of so vividly, the world and its woes came rushing over her again. “We’re in Akolan,” she said.
“We are,” Mother replied, nodding. “But this is truly our home for now. Jacks is at school, or what passes for a school here, and Father is working. He should be home soon. He will be so happy to see you awake. We were very worried.”
“Father is alive!” Heather said, a sob choking her. “And our Jacks?”
“They’re both alive, my sweet girl.”
“You’re all alive! Say it again, Mother. Please, tell me it’s really true.”
“It’s true, Heather, my love,” Mother said, wrapping Heather once again in a long embrace.
“You sang!” Heather said, suddenly panicked. “At Morbin’s lair, you sang. Didn’t they find you?”
“Hush, dear,” Mother said, patting her head. “I escaped through a trash chute and made my way back. I arrived not long after you were brought here.”
“Someone found me at the wall?”
“Father did. Word got to him quickly.”
“Hadley? The timid buck at the…at the Longtreaders?” she asked, saying the name painfully.
“I know, dear,” Mother said, and she made the nonsense noises she had
always used to calm Jacks when he was a baby. “It’s a troubling thing to see our name so ill used.”
Heather nodded. “I’m sort of used to it.”
Mother frowned. “I want you to rest again. I know we have so much to discuss. I want to hear everything about your life and any news you might have of the world, how you came here and everything. But you must sleep. You must recover. Drink this,” she said, bringing a bowl of broth to Heather’s mouth. Heather drank it greedily, then followed it with water. “Not too much, my baby. More later. Rest now, my love.” She backed up and crossed to the door, smiling at Heather through tears.
Heather started to object to more rest but felt a weight of exhaustion descend on her even as she began to voice her protest. “Thank you, Mother.”
“I love you so much, Heather.”
“We missed you,” Heather said, wiping at her eyes. “We were so scared.”
“I know, I know,” Mother said, crossing back to sit beside her, taking her hand. “We tried to get away, to find you. Father fought them—he fought so hard and so bravely—but there were too many.” She bowed her head. “I am afraid to ask, but I must.” She took a deep breath and, almost flinching as if she expected to be struck, she said, “Picket?”
Heather frowned and Mother staggered back, an expression of deep sorrow on her face. “No, Mother! I’m sorry; come back,” Heather said, extending her left hand. “I was only thinking how I miss him. Picket is well.” Heather smiled wide and squeezed Mother’s hand. “More than well, he is a lovely buck, full of courage, strength, and goodness. He’s a hero, Mother. He killed Redeye Garlackson. He saved the cause. Mother,” she said, wide-eyed, “he flew!”
Mother smiled uncertainly and patted Heather’s head. “There, there,” she said. “Is he really alive, Heather?”
“Yes, Mother. Alive and well,” Heather answered, yawning. “I will tell more later. And you will believe me. I am something of a storyteller myself, now. Father will be very proud…” she trailed off and, eyes heavy and ears full of gentle singing, she fell fast asleep again.
