The Markings

by Catherine Downen

  “Yeah, I’ve helped with boats like these before,” he says.

  “So you know what I mean when I say I need you to get us out of here by manipulating the motor to be as quiet as possible so we don’t draw attention to ourselves. I can’t do it because I need to get some papers straight now that we are leaving earlier than planned.”

  “Yes, I can manipulate this type of motor to get us far enough away from shore without it making much noise,” Alexander responds, and hints of an officer shine through. He was trained to take orders. I watch him climb to the upper level on the rear of the boat and take a seat in front of a small control panel. There’s not much on there. A button or two and a small switch.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Mio says, approaching Leo and Kimberly.

  “We’re sure,” Leo says strongly to Mio.

  The two stare at each other for a long while until Mio finally turns away, coming onto our boat, and saying, “Then let’s get going.” Mio and Cinder both undock the boats and we start to float deeper into the dark depths of the ocean. Mio sits toward the front of the boat. I try to see what papers he was talking about, but I can’t make out what he could be reading.

  Alexander starts flipping switches on the small control panel for the motor and slowly but surely the boat inches along silently in the water. I glance across the water and see that Cinder is doing something similar to Alexander.

  I look out at the ocean and can hardly believe that I am on a boat. I think back to mine and Alexander’s first night together in the forest and remember talking about going to Libertas together. After a week of fighting Paylon, finding Zavy, and meeting my brother again we are finally doing it. We actually made it to the ocean and are on our way to Libertas. To freedom.

  I look back to Sard and watch the moonlight dance across the tall metal buildings, and in my head, I beg that no officers see us as we leave.

  Chapter 23

  After what seems like an hour or so, I turn and glance back in the direction of Sard. It’s only a small glowing light off in the distance.

  “All right, we’ll turn on the motors now,” Mio says, breaking the cool silence as he walks to the back of the boat. Alexander flips a switch and the motor comes to life with a low hum. He relaxes and moves to sit on the edge of the upper level, hanging his legs over the side.

  The group falls silent again, except for the sounds coming from the motors of both boats. I look into the horizon, letting the wind flip pieces of my hair around my head and blow a light mist of seawater on my face. I can barely make out hints of sunlight breaking through the night sky, signaling a new day is arriving.

  “We’ll have two people stay on watch while the rest of us get some sleep,” Mio says.

  “What are we watching for?” Molly’s little voice says almost humorously as she lets out a large yawn. She’s taking this abrupt leave awfully well. I assume she doesn’t really understand the caliber of King Renon’s forces that are looking for us. Even all the way out here in the middle of the ocean I feel the need to glance over my shoulder every once in a while.

  Mio drops his voice and says, “Creatures lurk in the depths of these waters. You can never be too safe, Molly.” He gives a low chuckle, and Molly sinks deeper into her seat.

  “That’s not funny,” I mumble, shooting him a glare. We’re quiet for a moment until I say, “I’ll keep watch.”

  “Great, we can keep each other company,” Mio says.

  “No, I’ll keep watch with Adaline. You should get some rest, Mio,” Cooper says.

  “You both should get some rest, you’ve done too much for us as it is,” Alexander speaks up.

  “Well, I’m not going to say no to sleep,” Mio says as we rearrange ourselves.

  “You wake me up when you want to switch,” Cooper says, meeting Alexander’s gaze.

  I join Alexander on the perch of the boat and we take our seats along its back edge. I watch as everyone else spreads out from lying on the side benches to the floor with the clean blankets and pillows from our backpacks.

  Alexander and I sit with our backs pressing against each other so we can each watch a side of the ocean. On my side, there is an infinite stretch of calm seawater. On Alexander’s side is Cinder’s boat, and it looks like Cassandra and Essie are taking their first watch. We sit like this, soaking in the ocean breeze and silence until it seems like everyone has fallen back to sleep.

  “What’s your favorite color?” I ask Alexander.

  I hear him huff a small laugh before responding, “Blue. What’s yours?”

  “Yellow,” I say simply.

  “What’s your favorite animal?” Alexander asks.

  “When I was growing up, I had a book of all these animals that lived in the world before the asteroid shower. The red panda was my favorite,” I say, and the thought of the old book makes my chest feel heavy. I wonder if it’s still buried deep in the drawers of my bedroom nightstand.

  “So specific,” he responds, and I feel his laugh shake against my back.

  A smile falls across my face, and I can’t help but laugh too, “You’ll find that with me even the little things have a very specific and deeper meaning.”

  “So then why’s your favorite color yellow?” he asks.

  “Because my mother would always pick the yellow flowers around our house, and she would keep them in a vase inside. Yellow was her favorite color,” I say, reliving the happy memories. “Why blue?” I ask him, wondering if he has a reason behind his favorite color as well.

  “Because whenever life got hard, I’d always just look up into the sky and remind myself there was more out there than the awful cards I was dealt,” he says.

  We’re quiet for a moment before I ask, trying to keep the conversation going, “So you like light blue?”

  “Yes, light blue like the sky,” he says.

  “And what’s your favorite animal?” I ask him.

  “Birds,” he says shortly.

  “Any specific type of bird?” I ask, curious.

  “Every once in a while I’d see a red cardinal fly by my bedroom window. Cardinals are my favorite because on this exotic island they seemed so out of place. The only explanation is that they’ve traveled here from another place on Earth. So, there is hope that there’s more than just Garth on this planet,” he explains. I shake my head. We’re lucky these islands survived the asteroid shower, he shouldn’t be hoping for the impossible. I’ve found though, with Alexander, he seems to always be hoping for the impossible.

  “So then a lot of what you like has to tie into the fact that you just want to leave the life you had?” I ask for clarification.

  “Basically,” he says shortly.

  “So then this whole journey is good for you?” I ask gently, noticing we are delving into much deeper waters.

  “In a way,” is all he offers to me.

  “You don’t have to explain,” I say, letting the topic go.

  Alexander turns from the side of the boat to face its front. I turn to face him, and he says, “I want to tell you.”

  “You can tell me if you want,” I reassure him.

  He pauses for a minute and places his arm around my back, and I let my head rest on his shoulder. The wind picks up a bit, and Alexander loosens his muscles against me. Whatever he wants to tell me he doesn’t want the others on the boat to overhear, and the wind will cover his words. “My current mother and father, the one who traveled to Libertas with your father and worked with me in the prison, aren’t my real parents,” he says, his voice breaking as he speaks, and my heart hurts for him. I take my hand and grab his.

  “Do you know who your real parents are?” I ask softly, my eyes dancing along the stars glistening in the water, not wanting to meet his eyes. I know this is hard for him, and he doesn’t want me to see him upset. He’s always tried to be strong and not let me see a weak side to him.

  “Yeah, I do,” he says and pauses, taking in a deep breath. “I’m King Renon’s brother
.”

  “What?” I whisper, shock running through me. I lift my head off his shoulder and look at him. “You’re what?”

  “I’m Renon’s brother. When I was just a baby, Renon took me from the castle and left me in the woods to die. He didn’t like the idea of sharing the royal title, so he got rid of me. My now mother and father found me wrapped in a blanket that was embroidered with my name and the royal family’s markings. They brought me back with them and raised me as their own. When I was ten years old, and I went to work for Renon, my father told me the truth, and then my memories were blocked from me and your mother made me believe I was your childhood friend.”

  “So when we restored your memories, that was the last real thing you had from your life?” I whisper.

  “Yeah, that’s why I was in so much shock. I didn’t know what to do. I’ve never had the time to process this because the moment I learned the truth, it was taken from me.” He pauses and then continues, “So when you ask me if I think this journey is good for me, it really isn’t me living a new life. Yes, meeting these new people is good for me, you are good for me, but I’m still Renon’s brother on a journey where I am running for my life. Nothing about that is new for me.”

  “Does he know you’re his brother?” I ask suddenly.

  “I don’t think so. There’s no way he could know. I just think he wants me dead because I’m one of his guards and I betrayed him,” he says. I know Alexander is right. They don’t resemble each other in the slightest. Tears brim in his eyes and his hands shake.

  “What is it?” I ask him.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this right away. I’m sorry I had such a hard time getting myself to tell you this. You think of me as this good guy who is just as innocent as you in all this mess, but I’m not. I come from such a dark and evil family,” he says, tears running down his cheeks

  I reach up and place a hand on his cheek, “Your family doesn’t define you, Alexander. You are still a good person.” I rest my forehead against his as he cries. “You are a good person.”

  When his tears have stopped coming, I move my head on his shoulder again. “I won’t tell anyone. We can keep this between us.”

  “We need it to stay that way,” he says, his voice broken.

  Then after a long moment of silence, I finally say, “Alexander, can I ask you something?”

  “I guess,” Alexander replies, his voice a little hoarse.

  “What’s going on between us?” I ask, simply too tired to care anymore.

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  “You know what I mean,” I mutter, looking up into the sea of stars above us.

  “Not really,” Alexander pushes.

  “All right, let me put it like this,” I say. “I’ve never known who you were before this trip and now, suddenly you’re with me every day, and while I still have the feeling we are strangers, there is something else here. Let’s call it the endless feeling of butterflies I have when I’m with you.”

  I pause for a second before finishing, “I don’t know Alexander. I feel like I like you more than just a friend or companion, but I don’t know how you feel. I know you told me you feel protective over me, but I don’t need another older brother,” I say, glancing down at Cooper, still fast asleep. “And you told me that before you had your real memories back.” I wait for Alexander to respond, but he doesn’t so I push, “Can you please just tell me how you honestly feel about me?”

  He’s quiet for a moment longer. He rests his head onto mine and grabs my hand in his. “Let me put it this way,” he starts, “Once upon a time, I was supposedly best friends with this girl when we were little. One day she gets thrown in prison, and me being the hero of the story, I go to her rescue to break her out of the prison. My plan to do this is by working in the castle. Unfortunately, it was going to be a lot harder to rescue her than I had thought.

  So, I had to plan and wait for the right time. Well, me being the awful hero that I am, waited seven years to do anything. By this point, she had just rescued herself. When I met her again she wasn’t a little girl anymore. Now she is this gorgeous woman who has had to go through so much pain, and the kicker is I don’t even actually know her.” He pauses again and I let his words crush against me before he clarifies, “but I want to know her. I want her to be a part of every day of my life. I just have this feeling we are supposed to be together.” A smile falls across my face until he says, “But-”

  I cut him off and say, “Oh can’t you just let us enjoy this moment before the ‘but’.”

  He laughs and pushes forward, “But I also know how much it would kill me if I let us get even closer, and then she’s taken away from me. I’m afraid to let myself admit to loving her because once I do, there’s no going back, and right now I’m not in a place where I’m secure enough to let myself truly love her.”

  We both fall silent after he says this because it’s true. As much as I hate it, I know Alexander’s right. I can’t let myself care anymore for Alexander when I have to live a life not knowing if he’ll even be here tomorrow. Instead, I’ll just enjoy what we have while he is here. We stay silent, just enjoying being able to sit here together, but in the silence, my mind wanders. I start to analyze our relationship and how I feel about the cards life has dealt me.

  If I had never left my cell that night, I never would have even known I had an older brother. I never would have gotten to see Zavy again. I never would get to have this connection with my father. Before, he was just someone who had left me, but now, even though he is still gone, this journey was something he planned for me. So I feel this connection to him that I didn’t have before. This doesn’t mean I’m not still mad at him for leaving me. I still blame him for my mother and Titus dying, but at least now I know why. At least now I can connect to him and know what he was thinking when he made that decision, and I think knowing that will help me be able to let him go.

  And Alexander. If I never left my cell that night I never would have met Alexander. His memories would never have returned. So many good and bad things have happened to me from meeting him. It’s odd to think I can’t even picture my life without him now. It’s hard to believe that our relationship all originated from lies my mother had planted in our heads. We were given these false memories to allow us to trust one another, but what I’m sure no one expected was that we would still feel the same about each other after the false memories were gone and we got to create new, real ones together.

  Some would say we’re lucky. We get to fall in love with each other twice. I don’t know if I’d say we were lucky. I think we got dealt with these cards and a lot of things could have gone wrong. Like incredibly and awfully wrong. I think each of us on our own walks through life with a tragic story. We are both broken and lost, but also hopeful and strong. And I think that’s what it means to be in a twisted love. A love where you can be broken and strong at the same time. Where you can be lost in life, but hopeful that at the end of the day you will find your way. I don’t think we are lucky. I think we are dangerous to each other because somehow we are both able to look at the other person, see their twisted life, see the warning signs, but still go hand in hand over the edge.

  We aren’t lucky. We’re idiots. You go through this life destined for death. Smart people try to prolong that inevitable end. But idiots, see idiots can’t understand the difference whether they die today or ten years from now. We are these idiots because we are so twisted in our broken, strong, lost, and hopeful mess that we can’t see or comprehend the difference of dying today or years from now. So we look at each other and walk into the battlefield together with no protection and no weapons, but death will catch up to us. I would rather fall in love once and live out a long, happy, and simple life. Trust me. I think people who can accomplish that are truly the ones who are lucky.

  People don’t ask to be broken. We don’t ask to be given the cards that will send us into a twisted life where we don’t care if we die today or tomorrow.
It’s a tragic and dramatic life that is destined to have some highs but also to have some really low lows. So when you live this twisted life, you have to learn how to let the few highs balance out all the lows. It’s tragic, sad, and dramatic, but it’s mine. And it’s Alexander’s. With all the lows that come from loving someone as twisted as yourself, there are some beautiful highs that will keep you going.

  So every time he breaks my heart when he tells me he has feelings for me, but the timing is wrong, I have the high of the comfort I feel when my hand is in his. From the lows I’ll have when he can’t talk to me about his past because it’s hard, I will have the high of being able to look into those green eyes, knowing that I can trust them with my life. It’s a crazy adventure, sure. It’s up and down. It’s tragic and sad, but it’s also amazing and powerful. It’s a bond I never would have been able to have if I wasn’t here right now walking into this new life.

  My past was a warm, sunny day all the time until the prison, and since then this new life has been a storm, and it changes day to day. Some days it sprinkles, and some days it pours. Some days it doesn’t rain at all. It’s just an eerie warm air that swallows me, and I live the entire day in fear of a storm that will eventually come. There’s thunder and lighting, and it’s dark. It’s so dark all the time, but there are moments, specifically right after the worst storms, where the sun peeks through the clouds as it does in every storm. Just a glimpse of the light and those are the highs.

  The highs. They don’t last long, but the effect they have on you does. So you learn to enjoy the highs and to make them last as long as possible, but you also learn to love the rain. You learn to love the sound of it as it pours down on the rocks and the creek. You learn to love it like a song the clouds above are singing for you. And that’s how you survive. In this hand of cards, you don’t live. You survive. And I think that’s been the hardest part of it all. To go from being a kid, living a safe and stable life, to being tragic, broken, and having to just simply survive. Just survive.