by A. S. Hames
It scared me to my core and I turned my back on Ma, Pa, and Ax as empaths because of it. Instead, I threw myself into school work, which I see now was just learning the wisdom of the Leader as if it meant something worthwhile.
I realize I’m getting agitated. I try to calm my thoughts…
So every single detail I learned about the Nation came at a cost, only I didn’t realize it. That’s placed me in a position where I’m unable to ask my brother to help me, because he’s never liked me. So that’s it. There’s no-one to turn to. The strangest thing is the woman who died in that house way back. I was only with her a few moments, and yet our bond felt more significant than any I’ve ever made with a stranger.
I think of Zu and Ben. What would they make of it? Especially Ben. Would he view me with suspicion or accuse me of stealing his thoughts?
“I’m still not convinced,” Ben says. “Each day gets harder and we still don’t know if we’re risking our lives for nothing.”
I turn away from thoughts of empaths and take out the letter. I’ve done this many times, but, just for Ben, I try to get my thinking to burn through the confusion.
3 098/9&+ ~9809/. a+ a& 3 #53b~9 820 18a275~ 05+ +6 +9~~ 65 +#8+ +#9 $8/ a2 +#9 26/+#-$9&+ 069& 26+ g6 $9~~. 65/ g929/8~ #8& ~a90 +6 65. $9 8/9 b/a2ga2g 4#a~0/92 a2+6 65/ 7ag#+a2g /82k& 26$.
I give up.
“Sorry, it just doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“But why would the Representative want to keep it away from the colonel?” Ben asks.
“We’ve talked about this before. He felt military men would want to keep the war alive.” I don’t think I’m the only one who glances at Ax.
“I never got that feeling with the colonel,” Zu says.
“The colonel had training in code-breaking,” Ax says. “It’s possible he might have worked out what it says. So… we should or shouldn’t trust the colonel or the Representative. Take your pick.”
“Sorry, Ben,” I say. “It’s hope or nothing.”
Once we’re ready, we set off. Another day awaits and, who knows, maybe something just plain nice will occur.
We walk in silence for an hour or so and I keep Von with me. I try to get a sense of him – and I do succeed to a limited extent. I’ve felt it before with our wolf, his focus on knowing what’s around him, and a need to be alert and ready for any sudden change in circumstances. I could be wrong, of course. I could be fooling myself. The only time I really get a sense of others’ emotions is when those around me are in a heightened state. Their raw energy, when expressed as fear or lust, is easy to sense, but I wonder if that’s a special ability in me or not. I’m almost sure some non-empaths can sense just as much in those circumstances. But then Ax told me he thought I was special in having my first experiences as a young girl when he didn’t feel the gift in him until he reached puberty.
I think about that for a while. It must have been a lot to take on for him: becoming aware he was a much-admired young man among women, and getting a sense of what they were thinking and feeling. It would be easy to go wrong.
Later in the day, with Ax and me twenty yards behind Ben, Zu, and Von, I wonder if I might try to start the healing process between us.
“I don’t mind that you never liked me.”
“Why bring it up then?”
“Well, I…”
“Truth is, I don’t know how I feel about you. I suppose it’s your self-righteousness I’ve always hated.”
That hurts. “I’m sorry about that, Ax. I never meant to be a pain to people.”
“No, I guess not. You never made it easy though. You always had to be right. Any dispute and you would quote the damned Leader on the matter. Then, when I started to embrace the gift, I hated you all over again, because I assumed you’d been developing your powers in secret since you never wanted to admit to being one of us. All I ever saw was Ma and Pa’s pride in you being thrown back in their faces.”
I feel really bad now and wish I hadn’t started the conversation.
“Ax, I never realized…”
“For what it’s worth, they loved you more than you’ll ever know. They accepted you for who you are – even though you refused to accept them, or me, for who we are.”
“Well, maybe we both let them down.”
“How so?”
“I’m just saying… maybe we both made mistakes.”
“Spit it out, Jay. What’s on your mind?”
“I saw Ti before we left.”
He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that at all.
“That’s all in the past.”
“You’re an empath, Ax. You’ve been practicing for a number of years. Did you use it to gain an advantage over her?”
Ax snorts. “You know nothing about being an empath.”
He marches off to get away from me, but I can’t forget Dub’s words – that Ax never takes no for an answer. Did my brother use Ti’s thoughts against her?
“Did you force yourself on Ti? Is that what’s going to happen with Zu?”
“I’ve never forced myself on anyone. If you must know, her father was trying to get her married to some lumber merchant’s boy. I put a knife to his throat and explained how Ti would be staying with me.”
“Oh… so you were arrested?”
“The lumber merchant’s brother is the Town Guardian.”
“Oh.”
“So I joined the army.”
“Oh.”
“Seriously, Jay, for someone who went to school, you don’t get much right, do you.”
After dark, I can see them by the camp fire. Ax and Zu. They’re talking but I can’t quite hear them. They think I’m asleep. I look over to Von with Ben. They’re both snoring lightly.
Zu laughs gently. It’s a happy laugh. She’s enjoying Ax’s attention. I seriously don’t trust him.
Zu kisses him. She damn well kisses him! No! He’s no good for you, Zu. He’ll never love you.
They lay down together.
No, Zu, no.
I sit up and… it’s dark. And quiet. Zu is sleeping by Von. Ax is the other side of me. He stirs.
“What’s up?”
“Uh… nothing, Ax.”
A dream.
BEN
It’s early morning and I’m wondering about our mission. We need more information. I know what the Representative told Jay, and I know we’ve discussed it, but there’s still a big doubt in me.
“How about we look at the letter again?” I ask Jay. “I’m thinking we should try harder to decode it.”
Jay sighs like she’s losing patience with me.
“We can’t. We’d need a lot of paper and time. You have to try different replacement letters to see if it gets you anywhere, and I’ve never tried anything that complicated before.”
“I’d like to know what it says, that’s all. We’re risking our lives for it.”
“So you keep saying, Ben – but there’s nothing we can do. It’s a report for the Leader. That’s all we can be sure of. If the Representative was telling the truth, it could save lives.”
It’s a fair point. I’m just not convinced we can trust what he told Jay. That aside, until we have proof he lied, we should probably carry on – even though it might get us all killed.
It’s not long before we set off in silence. Another long day awaits us. It’s hot and dry. In truth, the situation feels bad.
We stop around midday, too tired to keep going in this heat. Von seems okay though. He has his nose in the air one second and on the ground the next, taking in all the available information. As it is, he goes off and disappears. Then he comes back looking happy.
“His nose is wet,” Zu says.
She’s right.
With our hopes raised, we follow the wolf and, thank God, we come up against a slow-moving river. Filled with renewed optimism, we collect berries and find some fish gathered under the shade of a tree. We shoot a couple of trout. Or they might be salmon. Frankly, I don’t care.
&n
bsp; JAY
We enjoy cooking and eating the fish, and it’s another of those times where you could forget we’re in the middle of a war.
“Shame wolves can’t catch fish,” I say. I’m looking at Von, who looks capable of eating more than the rest of us put together.
“Here, have some of mine,” Ax says to Zu. He’s offering her a piece of fish, which she eats off his fingers. Zu doesn’t need more food than him.
I think back to the dream I had, with the two of them together at night. Maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe it was a vision of the future.
The question is – how do I protect Zu? Do I explain my thinking to her? She might think I’m crazy. She’s from a place where they marry at fourteen. She’s already old enough. I fear for her though. What if she falls for Ax and ends up conceiving? What in hell is she going to do then? Because I wouldn’t expect Ax to stick around. That’s one thing he’s never done.
“Wolves are good hunters,” Zu says. “Deer, elk, bison, moose, rabbits, beaver. The only reason there are so few wolves is because those others exist in low numbers too.”
“I didn’t know you were an animal expert,” Ben says.
“Chee told me.”
“Who?” I ask.
“The film woman. She had to study them for a film she made. A wolf can eat twenty pounds of food if it’s hungry.”
“And survive a week without eating at all,” Ben says. “If it has to.”
“Let’s hope ours doesn’t have to,” Ax says.
“We have rabbits to the north of our valley,” Ben says, “so we get wolves from time to time.”
“They won’t eat people,” Zu says. “Unless their life depends on it.”
“How do they train a wolf?” Ben asks. “Did Chee say?”
“With food,” Zu says. “She said it was the only way – rewarding them with food as cubs.”
“Same with people,” Ax says. “With the right reward you can train anyone to do anything.”
I think back to some of the things I’ve seen. Seems you can train some young people to kill the innocent just by giving them a uniform, some fake news films, and meat in their potato pats.
Once we’ve rested, we wrap some cooked fish in broad leaves and get going again. As ever, the first few yards are hard until we get into our stride.
I’m with Ax, so I ask him what else he knows that might prove useful.
“The only thing you need to understand is a single word. Control. That’s at the heart of it all. Everyone’s trying to control everything. The Leader is trying to control the Nation, the East State is trying to control the Nation, others… and there are others you won’t know of yet… empaths who want to control everything.”
“Empaths?”
“Yes, but they can’t. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Too many missing pieces.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Maybe you will – one day. Meantime, you really need to concentrate on the here and now. That way you might survive. Then maybe you’ll discover more.”
I hate the way Ax keeps so much to himself. Maybe it’s part of being an empath. Or maybe it’s the way he was trained by the army. I think about what he said. Control. He’s right about that. Big powers fighting over whole countries. The Nation, controlling how people live, what they think, and how much they know. And tiny people like me, trying to control their tiny lives, usually without success.
It’s an hour or so later when we reach the remains of a town. It’s another like the one by Renner’s Town – a place of vanished streets. I find some broken pottery and ragged remnants of clothing that have survived exposure. I even find a blue number 8 stuck to a piece of rotten wood. I try to separate it from the timber, but it’s too brittle and breaks apart.
“It’s like there’s a history we don’t know about,” I say to no-one in particular.
Ben shows me a small glass handle, curved like it might have come off a jug of some kind.
“People lived here,” he says.
Indeed they did.
“We need to get moving,” Ax says.
Yes, we must deliver the Representative’s envelope. But what about after we’ve done that? Do we just go home? Will we ever go home?
Two miles south of the ghost town, the way turns east for a number of tiring miles. I check the map, but the blood on it still won’t let us see where we are. It doesn’t matter though, because the hours and miles pass anyway until we eventually come across a sign.
RIVERSIDE
ALL WELCOME
“Riverside. All welcome,” Ax says, like he’s one of the locals welcoming us to the town.
BEN
Riverside. All welcome. I like the sound of that. I’m hoping it’s a big, friendly place with plenty of food and drink, a shower, and some bicycles for us Nation troopers to use. Hoping, but doubting. More likely it’s been overrun by rebels who will want to shoot us. I wish we’d taken time to find other clothing. I’m thinking the Nation is finished from end to end.
“Buzzards,” Zu says. She’s spotted some circling up ahead. It suggests something is dead. I try not to think beyond that.
As it is, we soon come to see that Riverside is also a ghost town, but not like others back up the trail. Here, some of the buildings still exist, although there is invading vegetation. It doesn’t look like anyone has lived here in… how long? A hundred years? Longer? I’m not sure how you tell.
A lizard scuttles across an open patch.
A little farther on, it’s like a small part of the town has been protected until more recent times.
“A radio mast,” Ax says. He’s spotted a thirty-foot metal structure lying in a side street. “Someone wanted to cut them off.”
To me, it looks like a small band of people have lived here in this abandoned town, but had to leave. Maybe food was short. Or maybe someone forced them out. The fact some buildings have been repaired to keep out the elements maybe suggests a pattern of people occupying this place on and off over time.
I pick up a battered straw hat. After a bit of re-shaping, I replace my army cap with it. I like the fact air can get in through the gaps in the straw and keep things cool.
“Hey! Hey!” Someone is yelling at us. It sets my heart thumping. “Are you Nation troops?”
He’s at an upper window of a house set well back from the trail. I don’t know if it’s good or bad that he can spot the moss green tunics tied around our waists from that distance.
“Yes, we’re Nation troops,” Jay calls.
When he comes out to greet us, he’s an old man dressed in rags. He looks as underfed as we are.
“How many are coming?” he says.
Now he sees Von and looks scared.
“It’s alright, he’s with us,” I tell him.
“I’m sure glad the Nation is doing something,” he says. “The rebels must be two hundred strong. Came up from the south two days ago. Most people left town for the forest over the hills.”
“Do you have any food you can spare?” Zu asks like she hasn’t heard a word he said.
The man almost laughs. “There ain’t anything to feed you four, let alone whatever numbers you got following…” He then looks at us with a degree of suspicion. “Exactly how many troops are coming?”
“Only us,” I say.
“We haven’t come to fight,” Jay says.
“Not unless we have to,” Ax adds.
The man wheezes. “Then what in hell’s name are you doing here? This ain’t a place for kids in Nation uniforms.”
“We have to get to the Lake Towns,” Ax tells him. “Are there any bicycles we could take?”
“Don’t you understand the situation? There’s a whole bunch of rebels down by the river!”
My chest tightens. We need to leave.
“What about the bikes?” Zu says.
“You might find one or two if you have a good root around,” the man says. “More likely you’ll just stir up t
rouble. Besides, if you’re headed for the Lake Towns, you’ll just be riding into more rebels.”
This is the worst kind of news.
“I’m not bothered about bikes,” Jay says. “The road’s so bad, riding won’t be any faster than walking.”
Ax considers it.
“Okay, let’s go,” he says.
Jay addresses the man. “You should come with us.”
“I can’t. My wife’s sick back there.”
He has my sympathy. All I can do is give him a cookie. But even as we turn to walk on, we spy a skinny middle-aged woman emerging from a shack. She sees us and comes hurrying over. Her rags are in worse shape than the old man’s, and she stinks of an infected wound at five paces.
“You got any food you can spare?” she asks.
Jay gives her a cookie.
“Are you Nation troops?” she says.
“They are,” the old man confirms.
“We’re leaving,” Ax says.
“Take me with you,” the woman says.
“We can’t,” Jay says. “We’re heading for the Lake Towns. I don’t think you’d keep up with us.”
“No,” she says. “South is too dangerous. We have to go north. You have weapons. You can protect us.”
“We’re going south,” Ax says.
“No, she yells. “North!”
“Shush,” I tell her. “You’ll get us all killed.”
“You have to help us,” she says. “There are twenty people trapped in the town. You can take us back to Nation territory.”
“We can’t,” I say.
“It’s your duty.”
She’s right, but there’s no way we can take twenty people north. We’d all end up dead.
“Is that one of your people,” Ax says, pointing behind her.
I can’t see anyone, but as the woman turns to look, Ax crashes the back end of his rifle into her neck. The woman falls, unconscious. I know it’s war, but I’m still shocked.
